“Yeah, it breaks my heart the way he keeps sayin’ how Chase is gonna get him one. I’ll ask around and find out if the boys know of one,” Stumpy promised. “Is everything else all right?”
“Fine,” she assured him.
“Then I’d better get a-goin’ before your mother has a fit.” He sketched her a wave and drove off toward the ranch commissary.
His departure coincided with Monte’s return with Laura and the pony in tow. “Did Poppy see me?” Laura asked, her brown eyes glittering with excitement.
“He certainly did.” Jessy lifted the girl into her arms. “He told me that you and Sundance looked beautiful together.”
“I know,” Laura replied without a trace of modesty, then bestowed her sweetest smile on Monte. “Can you bring Sundance back tomorrow so I can ride him again?”
“Actually, Sundance is a present for . . . you and your brother.” His hesitation was fractional, but Jessy caught it.
“He is?” Laura all but squealed the words then explained to Jessy, “He’s a present. That means we can keep him, Mommy.”
“It certainly does.”
Laura wiggled to be put down. “I gotta go tell Trey.” The instant Jessy set her on the ground, Laura ran for the house, any thought of decorum temporarily forgotten.
Monte watched, a wry amusement lacing his expression. “At least the pony is a hit with your daughter.”
“I’m sorry about Trey,” Jessy said in all sincerity. “He’s at that age where he wants the exact thing that his older cousin has. He refuses to be satisfied with a smaller version of it. Calders can be single-minded that way. When they get a notion in their heads, it’s hard to get it out.”
“Fortunately your daughter isn’t so inclined.”
“Laura likes anything beautiful, and Sundance is definitely a beautiful pony. It was very generous of you to buy him—” Jessy began.
Monte cut her off. “What good is money if you can’t spend it to bring some joy into the life of a child?” He gave her no chance to reply. “Shall we get Sundance settled in his new home? You take the lead while I fetch his saddle and tack from the van.”
But Jessy didn’t find his beneficence so easy to dismiss. She tried again. “Still—”
“If you feel the need to repay me in some way, invite me to dinner.” His smile was quick and teasing.
Giving up, Jessy smiled back. “Consider yourself invited.”
“When?” he challenged lightly.
“Tonight if you’re available.”
“I am always available to dine at the Triple C. What time?”
“Around seven.”
“I’ll be here.”
It wasn’t until after he left that Jessy recalled the suspicions Chase and Laredo had voiced about Monte. It was a possibility that Jessy couldn’t bring herself to dismiss out of hand. She remembered too well that once she would have regarded any suggestion that Dick Ballard might have had something to do with Ty’s death to be completely preposterous. It made her much more hesitant to jump to conclusions about anyone’s innocence again.
At the same time, she had no regrets about inviting Monte to dinner, convinced it was better to learn as much as she could about him, and certain it was what Chase would do.
As always, Monte was undemanding company, proving to be both entertaining and comfortable to be around. Any concern Jessy might have felt that he might read something into the fact that he was her sole guest for the first time turned out to be unfounded. Nothing in his manner indicated that he regarded it as anything more than two friends sharing a meal. In light of Laredo’s insinuations that Monte might be interested in the “widow Calder,” it was an observation that secretly pleased Jessy.
At dinner’s conclusion, Jessy followed the Calder custom by asking Sally to serve their coffee in the den. She never thought twice about the request until she noticed a white-faced Sally standing frozen in the doorway, pain-filled eyes staring at the empty chair behind the desk. At that second Jessy realized it was the first time guests had been entertained in the den since Chase’s supposed death.
“Sally.” Jessy reached out a hand in instant apology for her thoughtlessness.
“Ah, the coffee has arrived.” Monte immediately crossed to the doorway, eliminating any moment of awkwardness. “Let me carry that tray, Sally. I insist,” he added when she attempted to protest. “It’s much too heavy for you.” Avoiding the desk, he carried it straight to the coffee table. Sally trailed after him, all flustered and upset. After placing the tray on the table, he turned back to her. “Forgive me for failing to compliment you on a delicious dinner. The Beef Wellington was magnificent.”
“Thank you. I—” She stole a glance at the desk and immediately choked up.
Monte took her hand, clasping it warmly between both of his and then giving it a comforting pat. “I know. It’s very hard for you, isn’t it?” he murmured, all solicitous concern. Unable to speak, Sally merely nodded. Gently Monte slipped an arm around her shoulder and turned her away from the desk to walk her back to the door. “I won’t tell you that it becomes easier with time, because it doesn’t. It merely becomes bearable.”
After Sally had left, he returned to the leather sofa. Jessy poured coffee for both of them and passed him a cup. “That was very kind of you, Monte,” she said, touched by his sensitivity.
“It is rather obvious that she was very fond of him.”
“They were friends for years.” It took a conscious effort to refer to Chase in the past tense, and Jessy wasn’t used to watching her words.
“I haven’t met anyone who didn’t think well of Chase.” Monte stirred milk into his coffee and flashed her a quick smile. “But let’s speak of other things. We can’t escape sadness, but we don’t have to dwell on it.”
“I agree.” Cup in hand, Jessy settled back against the sofa cushions.
“My brother phoned today,” Monte began, then stopped, raising a forefinger to interrupt himself. “I just remembered something. I was told by . . . I don’t know, someone . . . that the Triple C has a feedlot that isn’t being used. Is that true?”
“There’s one up on the north range, but we haven’t run any cattle in it in years. It was an experiment we tried, but after the losses we suffered from a bad storm, we decided to stick to being a cow-calf operation. Why?”
“When I bought my ranch, it seems I stirred up a bit of envy back home. I think you would be surprised to learn the number of people from various walks of life who fancy getting into the cattle business,” he said with amusement. “Several have been pestering me to put together something for them. My first thought was a feedlot operation, since I don’t think they would want to commit to anything long-term. I have been looking for a place to lease for the last two or three months. Then I heard about yours. Its proximity to my ranch makes it ideal.” He paused, his mouth crooking with a rueful twist. “Although to be frank, I have been reluctant to even bring up the subject. I value our friendship very much. I wouldn’t want any business arrangement to interfere with it.”
“Neither would I.”
“Think it over,” he inserted before Jessy could say more. “In addition to paying a fair price to lease the feedlot, the investors would also contract with you to furnish the labor to run it. Financially you would have absolutely nothing to lose. According to Ben Parker, arrangements such as this have become fairly common.”
“True, although it would be a first for the Triple C.” That alone was reason enough to make Jessy reluctant to give his proposal any consideration at all.
“No doubt it is.” Monte nodded in understanding. “I wouldn’t have suggested it at all except that I have complete trust that you will see that the cattle were properly fed and tended. Which makes it very easy to recommend you over some rancher I don’t know as well.”
“I can see that.”
“As I said, think it over. If you should decide you aren’t interested, I will simply look elsewhere.” He smiled easily and took a small sip of his coffee, then abruptly lowered the cup. “It just occurred to me, though, an arrangement such as this wouldn’t be all that different than when the Triple C leased drilling rights to that petroleum company.”
“I had forgotten about that,” Jessy murmured thoughtfully.
It was an argument that prompted her to decide to discuss the proposal with Chase rather than dismiss it out of hand.
The feedlot had been one of Ty’s projects, built to diversify the ranching operation, and it had required considerable capital expenditure at a time when the Triple C had been strapped for cash. The losses caused by the storm, both in damage to the facility and cattle killed, had been crippling. It had been a personal blow to Ty at the time, shaking his confidence. Monte’s proposal offered an opportunity to realize a return on the monies invested in the feedlot all those years ago. Jessy liked the thought of that, certain that Ty would be pleased with the idea.
But first she needed to see what kind of shape it was in. Other than being pressed into service as a holding pen during roundup, the facility hadn’t been used in years.
Chapter Eight
T
hat old devil curiosity had ahold of Culley O’Rourke and wouldn’t let him go. Two days ago he had spent the better part of the afternoon attempting to backtrack Jessy without success.
Pestered by the questions of where she had gone and why, Culley had taken to haunting the area, mostly out of suspicion. He kept remembering Jessy’s conversation with the cowboy at the funeral, her secret meeting with two men at the old cemetery, and the cowboy following her the next day in his truck. When Culley added it all up, it kept saying to him there was something funny going on. And just maybe it was going on here. If it was, Culley was convinced Jessy would show up in the area again. And he would be on hand when and if she did.
Culley was an old hand at waiting and watching. When there was a reason for it, it came as natural to him as all his restless wanderings. On the first day of his vigil, he had found a comfortable spot that offered some afternoon shade, graze for his horse, and a long view of the ranch road where he had seen her last.
Twice in the last couple days, Culley had sworn he heard the sound of a vehicle somewhere in the distance, but none had shown up on the road, which meant it was probably traveling on another one, making it of no interest to Culley.
Hunkered in the small shade of a grassy hill slope, he idly listened to the
clink
of the bridle chain as the brown horse chomped on some grass. Then he caught the faint hum of an engine and shifted his position to watch the road. The sound grew steadily in volume. Seconds later he spotted the dust cloud and the glint of sunlight on something shiny. Soon there wasn’t any doubt a vehicle was headed in his direction.
Culley rolled to his feet and made his way down the slope to the brown horse. He gathered up the trailing reins and looped them over the horse’s neck, then stepped into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. Wasting no time, he kicked the gelding into a lope and set a course to intercept the road well to the north, taking care to keep out of sight.
When Jessy pulled up to the line cabin, she first noticed the new shingles on the section of patched roof, then the general air of tidiness about the site. There were no tools or ladders about. Any weeds or tall grass growing next to the foundation had been cut short, and starched curtains hung at the windows.
As she climbed out of the cab, the screen door swung open, and Laredo’s tall shape filled the frame. “Your ears must be burning. We were just talking about you.”
“Nothing bad, I hope,” she answered lightly.
“That depends. We were wondering what that English guy Markham delivered to you the other day.” Stepping back inside, Laredo kept the screen door pushed open to admit her.
“A pony.” Jessy moved past him into the cabin and paused to run an admiring eye over the many homey touches that had been added to the cabin’s now spotless interior, everything from the seat cushions tied to the wooden chairs to the pair of rockers that flanked the old cast-iron stove. “You have been very busy,” she said to Hattie.
“It’s a beginning,” the woman replied absently and turned from the short stretch of cabinets, a serving dish in each hand. “We were just sitting down to lunch. There is plenty of food if you care to join us.”
“Is it that late?” Jessy said in surprise, then belatedly noticed the place settings at the table where Chase sat. “I think I’ll pass on lunch, but I’ll take a cup of coffee if you have some made.”
“It’s in the pot.” Hattie nodded in the direction of an old percolator-style coffeepot designed for use on a burner.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us? Hattie makes an excellent goulash.” Laredo pulled out a chair and sat down at the table across from Chase.
“Don’t listen to him,” Hattie warned. “He’s only saying that in hopes of convincing me that I don’t need anything bigger than that Coleman stove to cook on.”
“What’s this about a pony?” Chase wanted to know.
“It wasn’t for me. It was for Trey,” Jessy explained while she filled a mug with coffee. “I happened to mention to Monte that Trey had decided you went to Texas to buy him a horse. Monte remembered that. Only he bought Trey a pony instead. I guess he thought Trey wouldn’t mind the difference, but he did. Fortunately Laura fell in love with the pony. It was such a thoughtful thing for Monte to do that I would have hated it if he had to take the pony back.”
“That would have been a real shame,” Laredo said in dry mockery, “especially when you consider that the quickest way to a woman’s heart is through her children.”
Jessy bristled at his implication that Monte had his sights set on her. Certain he had said it merely to get a rise out of her, she focused her attention on Chase instead.
“Monte did have an interesting business proposition that I wanted to run past you,” she said and proceeded to relate it to him.
Unable to remember anything about the feedlot or the reason it sat idle, Chase questioned Jessy about it. After she had given him the background on it, they went over Monte’s proposal again.
“It sounds very similar to the deal I made,” Hattie interjected. “I leased my pasture land to a company. They run their cattle on it and pay me to look after them.”
“You have a ranch in Texas?” Jessy said with some surprise.
Hattie nodded. “Southwest of Fort Worth, but it’s a small spread compared to the Triple C.” She ran an idle glance around the cabin. “Actually the house on it was in worse shape than this cabin when my husband and I bought the place over thirty years ago. The previous owners had used it for hay storage. Fortunately the old house was still structurally sound, because we couldn’t afford to build a new one, but it took a lot of work to make it habitable. One of our neighbors told us that it had been built prior to the War Between the States.”
“Benteen Calder came from southwest of Fort Worth,” Jessy recalled thoughtfully. “It’s likely he visited that ranch at one time or another.”
Uninterested in idle conjecture, Chase nodded an absent agreement and brought the discussion back to its original subject. “I know that Markham’s proposal is financially a win-win situation for the ranch, but my instinct tells me to refuse it.”
“On the other hand,” Laredo inserted as he pushed back his now empty plate, “it might be wise to pick up the cards he’s dealing. If he runs cattle in that lot, it sounds like he will be a more frequent visitor. Plus it gives Jessy a good reason to hire some extra help—namely me.”
“But you are no cowboy.” In Jessy’s mind, that presented a problem.
Laredo didn’t deny it. “I know enough about cattle to pass for a feedlot cowboy. And none of your regular hands will think twice if a stranger asks a bunch of nosy questions. I might find out things you can’t.”
“That’s true.” But she doubted he would get many answers.
“Besides, it’s going to become increasingly difficult for you to slip away and come out here. Since I would make the trip back and forth every day, I can bring Chase any information that you or I might have learned.”
“That settles it as far as I’m concerned,” Chase announced. “Tell Markham you’ll do the deal. But I want to see any agreement before you sign it.” Finished with his meal, Chase stood up, signaling an end to any further discussion.
Jessy rose as well. “I’ll call Monte as soon as I get back to The Homestead.”
Laredo reached the door ahead of them and stepped outside to hold the screen door open. Jessy was halfway through the opening when Laredo stepped into her path, blocking her exit, his head turned away, tensed and uplifted in a listening pose.
“I think I heard someone,” he murmured in warning.
Just as Jessy was about to scoff at the notion anyone would be out here, she caught the creak of saddle leather, followed by the dull
clink
of an iron shoe on stone. She wasn’t sure, but the sounds seemed to come from somewhere around the base of the hill.
“Get back inside. I’ll see how close he is,” Laredo ordered in a low but crisp undertone and slipped away from the door.
Jessy hesitated only a split second before following him, copying his hunched-over posture as he made his way to the edge of the slope. Well short of it, he sank to the ground and waited for her.
When she crouched beside him, he pulled her the rest of the way down. “I told you stay inside,” he muttered, his eyes a hard blue.
“You wouldn’t know if it was someone to worry about or not,” she whispered back.
“And you would, I suppose,” he taunted in disgust. “Make sure you keep flat. I’d like to see him before he sees us.”
He slipped off his hat and laid it on the grass beside him, then crept forward on his belly. Copying his actions, Jessy inched up to his shoulder and lifted her head slightly to look below. Almost instantly Laredo’s hand pushed her head down, but not before she had caught a glimpse of a horse and rider. Brief as it had been, it had been enough for Jessy to identify the man on horseback.
She signaled Laredo to follow and pushed backward, her thoughts weighted by a heavy certainty that this hiding place was about to be discovered. “It’s O’Rourke,” she whispered when he joined her. “I think he might be following my tire tracks. He must have seen me come this way.”
It took Laredo a full second to remember where he had heard the name before. “Cat’s uncle, the shy one in the trees?”
“I forgot to mention he can also be nosy.”
“Come on.” Laredo scooped up his hat and rolled to his feet in a low crouch. “We better warn Chase that we are about to have company.”
They hurried back to the cabin. Laredo paused with one hand on the screen door and pinned his gaze on her. “O’Rourke—will he ride right up to the cabin or circle around it?”
“I don’t know,” Jessy admitted. “But he’ll definitely come close enough to see where my truck is.”
“Then go out by your truck and wait for him. Don’t let him slip behind the cabin. And before he starts wondering what you are doing up here, make sure he knows you hired me to fix the place.”
“But what reason would I have to do that?”
“Make up one,” Laredo told her and went inside.
The scrape of hooves digging for purchase warned Jessy that Culley had started the climb. She moved quickly to the truck to watch for him. A few faint noises came from the cabin. Jessy could only guess at the source of them, but she suspected Laredo was spiriting Chase out of the cabin through one of the rear windows. All the while her mind raced to come up with a plausible story, but there simply wasn’t a logical reason to repair the old line shack. Her only choice was to come up with a completely illogical story.
A half minute later, Jessy spotted the dusty top of Culley’s hat. Within seconds more of it bobbed into view. The instant she could make out the brim, Jessy went through the motions of pretending to put something in the back of the truck, then made a natural swing around to make it appear that she’d caught sight of him at almost the same second that Culley saw her.
“Hi, Culley. I didn’t expect to see you out this way.” Her heart was hammering like that of a cornered rabbit, but she managed to sound unconcerned when she called to him, fully aware that her raised voice would alert Laredo. Culley immediately pulled up, and Jessy motioned him forward. “Come see the way we’ve been able to fix up this old line shack.”
The instant the invitation was issued, Jessy set out for the cabin, confident that her offhand manner coupled with Culley’s curiosity would impel him to follow her. The ploy worked as Culley rode his horse the rest of the way up the slope.
By then Laredo had already emerged from the cabin, communicating to Jessy with a small reassuring nod that Chase had made it safely out of the cabin. A second later, Laredo showed Culley a sunny smile and a fresh-faced innocence that was wholly deceptive.
Jessy threw a quick glance at Culley and saw the suspicious way he looked at Laredo. “Oh, Culley, I almost forgot—this is Laredo Smith. I hired him to do the repairs here. Laredo, this is Culley O’Rourke, the twins’ great-uncle.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. O’Rourke,” Laredo drawled.
Culley stared back at him, unfazed by the big grin. “Saw you at the funeral.”
“Oh, you mean Chase’s. I was there sure enough, but I can’t say I remember seeing you.”
“You talk like you’re from Texas.” Culley’s statement bordered on an accusation.
“It shows, don’t it,” Laredo replied easily.
Hattie picked that moment to step outside, drawing Culley’s attention. “I thought I heard you talking to someone,” she said, her smile pleasant but curious.
That’s when Jessy realized that she still didn’t know the exact relationship between Laredo and Hattie. She had no choice but to make up her own.
“This is Laredo’s mother, Hattie. Culley O’Rourke.”
“How do you do, Mr. O’Rourke? I’m sorry you didn’t arrive sooner. You could have joined us for lunch. But the coffee is still hot if you would like a cup.”
“No, thanks.” Culley continued to sit on his horse, both hands resting on the saddle horn while he openly studied the woman. She was tall and firmly muscled, making her a little on the thick side. His glance kept going back to the cowboy boots she wore while he tried to figure out if they were big enough to have made the prints he saw at the cemetery. It seemed possible that they might have, even though it hadn’t entered into his calculations that the second person there could have been a woman.