by Nora Roberts
“Ham doesn’t need anybody checking on him, and I’ve got work right here.”
Willa stepped closer, bumped her temper against his. “I said go cool off. Then get your butt in your rig and check fences. You do it, and do it now, or you pack up your gear and pick up your last paycheck.”
His color rose high, as much in anger as at the humiliation of being ordered around by a woman half his age. “You think you can fire me?”
“I know I can, and so do you.” She jerked her head toward the gate. “Now get moving. You’re in my way here.”
They stared at each other for ten humming seconds. Then he stepped aside, spat on the ground, and stalked toward the gate. Beside Willa, Jim blew out a breath between his teeth.
“You don’t want to lose him, Will. He’s ornery, Christ knows, but he’s a hell of a cowboy.”
“He’s not going anywhere.” If she had been alone, she could have pressed a hand against her jittery stomach. Instead, she crouched and prepared the next hypo. “Once he clears the mad out, he’ll be all right. He didn’t mean to swipe at you, Jim. He likes you as well as he likes anybody.”
Grinning now, Jim hauled a cow toward the squeeze shoot. “That ain’t saying much.”
“I guess not.” She smiled herself. “Prickly old bastard. How much you win off him last night?”
“About seventy. Got my eye on some pretty snakeskin boots.”
“You’re such a dude, Brewster.”
“I like to look sharp for the ladies.” He winked at her and the routine fell back into place. “Maybe you’ll come dancing with me sometime, Will.”
It was an old joke, and cleared more tension. Willa Mercy didn’t dance. “And maybe you’ll lose the seventy back to him tonight.” She wiped sweat off her forehead and kept her voice causal. “This guy from Three Rocks?”
“J C. He’s okay.”
“Did he have any news from over there?”
“Not much.” As Jim worked he recalled that J C had been more interested in the workings of Mercy. “He said how John Conner’s girl broke things off, and John got himself shit-faced drunk and passed out in the toilet.”
It was easier now, and again routine. Old gossip, familiar names. “Sissy breaks up with Conner every other week, and he always gets shit-faced.”
“Just so you know things are as usual.”
They grinned at each other, two people hunkered down in blood and manure with the cool breeze blowing the stink everywhere. “Twenty says he’ll buy her a bauble and she’ll take him back by Monday.”
“No bet. I ain’t no greenhorn.”
They worked together for another twenty minutes, communicating with grunts and hand signals. When they paused long enough to cool dry throats, Jim shifted his feet. “Will, Pickles didn’t mean to ride you, either. He’s missing the old man is all. Pickles had a powerful respect for him.”
“I know.” She ignored the nagging ache in her heart as she squinted her eyes. The line of dust coming down the road meant Billy was back. She thought she’d go hunt down Pickles, soothe his ruffled feathers, and give him the tractor to repair. “Go on and get your dinner, Jim.”
“My favorite words.”
She took her own meal with her, climbing into the cab of her Land Rover and eating the roast beef sandwich one-handed as she negotiated the dirt road, crisscrossed with tire tracks and hoofprints. The path cut through pastures, toward hillocks, then rose, and gave her a breathless view of autumn color.
It was passing its peak, she mused, going soft as it faded and leaves were stripped from the trees. But she could hear a meadowlark’s high, insistent call as she left the window down to the play of the wind. It should have soothed her, that familiar music. She wanted it to soothe her, and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t.
With a careful eye she studied the fencing she passed, satisfied that it was, for now, in good repair. Cattle grazed placidly, a cow occasionally raised its head to stare with marked disinterest at the passing rig and driver.
To the west the sky was growing dark and bad-tempered, casting shadow and eerie light on the peaks. She imagined there’d be snow in the mountains and rain here in the valley before evening. God knew they could use the rain, she thought, but she had little hope it would be the slow, serene soaker that the land would absorb. Likely as not, it would come in hard, brittle drops that would batter the crops and bounce like bullets off the ground.
Already she yearned to hear it pound on the roof like angry fists, to be alone with that violent sound and her own thoughts for a few hours. And to look out her window, she thought, at a wall of mean rain that masked everything and everyone.
Maybe it was the coming storm that was making her so restless, so edgy, she thought, as she caught herself checking her rearview mirror for the fourth time. Or maybe she was just annoyed that she’d come across evidence of the fence crew and not the crew themselves.
No rig, no sound of hammer, no men walking the fence line in the distance. Nothing but road and land and hills rising into a bruised sky.
She felt too alone. And that made no sense to her. She liked being alone on her own land. Even now she was longing for time by herself with no one asking her questions, demanding answers, or listing complaints.
But the nerves remained, jumping like trout in her stomach, crawling over the back of her neck like busy ants. She found herself reaching behind her, laying her fingers on the stock of the shotgun in her gun rack. Then, very deliberately, stopping the rig and stepping out to scan the land for signs of life.
I T WAS RISKY. HE KNEW IT WAS RISKY. BUT HE HAD A TASTE for it now and couldn’t stop himself. He thought he’d chosen his time and place well enough. There was a storm brewing, and the fence crew had finished in this section. He imagined they were back at the ranch yard by now, hunting up their dinner.
It didn’t give him much of a window, but he knew how to make the best of it. He’d chosen a prime steer out of the pasture, one that was fat and sleek and would have brought top money at market.
He’d chosen his spot carefully. Once he was finished, he could ride fast and soon be back at the ranch yard, or on a far point of Mercy land. One edge of the road butted the rising hills that went rocky under a cloak of trees.
No one would come upon him from that direction.
The first time he’d done it, his stomach had revolted at the first spurt of blood. He’d never cut into anything so alive, so big before. But then—well, then it had been so . . . interesting. Cutting into such a weighty living thing, feeling the pulse beat, then slow, then fade like a clock run down.
Watching the life drain.
Blood was warm, and it pulsed. At least it pulsed at first, then it just pooled, red and wet, like a lake.
The steer didn’t fight him. He lured it with grain, then led it with a rope. He wanted to do it dead center of the ranch road. Sooner or later someone would come along, and my, oh, my, what a surprise. The birds would circle overhead, drawn by the smell of death.
The wolves might come down, lured by it.
He’d had no idea how seductive death could smell. Until he’d caused it.
He smiled at the steer munching from the bucket of grain, ran a hand over the coarse black hide. Then tugging at the plastic raincoat to be sure it covered him well, he raked the knife over the throat in one smooth move—he really thought he was getting better at it—and laughed delightedly as blood flew.
“Get along, little dogie,” he sang as the steer crumpled to the ground.
Then he got to the interesting work.
P ICKLES WAS HAVING A FINE TIME SULKING. AS HE DROVE along the fence line, he played several conversations in his head. He and Jim. He and Willa. Then he tried out the words he’d use when he complained to Ham about how Willa had gotten in his face and threatened to fire him.
As if she could.
Jack Mercy had hired him, and as far as Pickles was concerned nobody but Jack Mercy could fire him. As Jack was dead—God rest his
soul—that was that.
Could be he’d just up and quit. He had a stake laid by, growing interest in the bank down at Bozeman. He could buy his own ranch, start out slow and easy and build it into something fine.
He’d like to see what that bossy female would do if she lost him. Never make it through the winter, he thought sourly, much less through a whole damn year.
And maybe he’d just take Jim Brewster along with him, Pickles thought, conveniently forgetting he was mighty put out at Jim. The boy was a good hand, a hard worker, even if he was an a-hole most of the time.
He might just do it, buy him some land up north, raise some Herefords. He could take Billy along, too, just for the hell of it. And he’d keep the ranch pure, he thought, adding to his fantasy. No damn chickens or small grains, no pigs, no horses but what a man needed as a tool. This diversifying shit was just that. Shit. As far as he was concerned, it was the only wrong turn Jack Mercy had ever made.
Letting that Indian boy breed horses on cattle land.
Not that he had anything against Adam Wolfchild. The man minded his business, kept to himself, and he trained some fine saddle horses. But it was the principle. The girl had her way, she and the Indian would be running Mercy shoulder to shoulder.
And in Pickles’s opinion, they’d run it straight into the ground.
Women, he told himself, belonged in the goddamn kitchen, not out on the land ordering men around. Fire him, his ass, he thought with a sniff, and turned onto the left fork to see if Ham and Wood had finished up.
Storm brewing, he thought absently, then spotted the rig stopped in the road. It made him smile.
If a rig had broken down, he had his toolbox in the back. He’d show anybody in southwest Montana with sense enough to scratch their butt that he knew more about engines than anybody within a hundred miles.
He stopped his rig and, tucking his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans, sauntered over. “Got yourself some trouble here?” he began, then stopped short.
The steer was laid wide open, and there was enough blood to bathe in. The stink of it had his nostrils flaring as he stepped closer, barely glancing at the man crouched beside the body.
“We got us another one? Jesus fucking Christ, what’s going on around here?” He bent closer. “It’s fresh,” he began, then he saw—the knife, the blood running off the blade. And the eyes of the man who held it. “God Almighty, you? Why’d you do it?”
“Because I can.” He watched knowledge come into the man’s eyes and saw them dart quickly toward the rig. “Because I like it,” he said softly. With some regret, he jerked the knife up and plunged it into Pickles’s soft belly. “Never killed a man before,” he said, and yanked the knife upward with a steady, nerveless hand. “It’s interesting.”
Interesting, he thought again, studying the way Pickles’s eyes went from shocked, to pained, to dull. He kept the knife moving up, toward the heart, leaning with the body as it fell, then straddling it.
All his fascination with the steer was forgotten. This, he realized, was far bigger game. A man had brains, he mused, pulling his knife free with a wet, sucking sound. A cow was just stupid. And a cat, while clever, was just a small thing.
Considering, he leaned back, wondering how to make this moment, this new step, something special. Something people would talk about everywhere, and for a long, long time.
Then he smiled, giggled until he had to press his bloody hand to his mouth. He knew just how to make his mark.
He turned the knife in his hand and went cheerfully to work.
W HEN WILLA SAW THE RIDER GALLOPING OVER HER pasture, she stopped the rig. She recognized the big black that Ben rode, and the dog Charlie, who was bounding along beside Spook like a shadow. Relief was the first reaction, and one she didn’t welcome. But there was something eerie in the air, and she’d have been grateful to see the devil himself riding up.
Though it was an impressive sight, she sniffed, the way he and the black gelding sailed over the fence with a careless bunch and flow of muscle.
“You make a wrong turn, McKinnon?”
“Nope.” He reined in his horse beside the rig. Charlie, in happy welcome, lifted a leg and peed on Willa’s front tire. “You get that fence fixed?” He smiled when she stared at him. “Zack saw you had one down when he went up this morning. The elk have been a real pain in the ass this year.”
“They always are. I expect Ham’s dealt with it by now. I was going to ride by and check.”
He swung off the horse, then leaned in the window. “Is that a sandwich over there?”
She glanced at the second half of her dinner. “Yeah. So?”
“You going to eat it?”
With a sigh, she picked it up and handed it to him. “Did you hunt me down for a free meal?”
“That’s just a side benefit. I’m going to be shipping some cattle down to the feedlot in Colorado, but I thought you might want to take a couple hundred head off my hands to finish.” Companionably, he broke off a corner of the sandwich, tossed it to the hopeful dog.
She watched the dog gulp down bread and beef, then grin. The grin, she mused, wasn’t so far off from his master’s arrogant, self-satisfied smirk. “You want to dicker over price here?”
“I thought we could do it friendlier. Over a drink later.” He reached a hand through the window to toy with the hair that had come loose from her braid. “I still haven’t met your oldest sister.”
Will shoved the jeep in gear. “She’s not your type, Slick, but you come ahead by if you want.” She watched him mow through the last bite of sandwich. “After supper.”
“Want me to bring my own bottle too?”
She only smiled and eased on the gas. After a moment’s thought, Ben remounted and trotted after her. They both knew she was keeping her speed slow enough so that he could.
“Adam going to be around?” Ben raised his voice so she could hear it clearly over the engine. “I’m interested in a couple new saddle ponies.”
“Ask him. I’m too busy to socialize, Ben.” To irritate him, she accelerated, spewing dust in his face. Still, she was disappointed when she took the left fork and he turned and rode off in the opposite direction.
She wished she could have fought with him about something, made him mad enough to grab hold of her again. She’d been thinking quite a bit about the way he’d grabbed hold of her.
She didn’t do a lot of thinking about men—not that way. But it was certainly diverting to think—that way—about Ben. Even if she didn’t intend to do anything about it.
Unless she changed her mind.
She grinned to herself. She might just change her mind, too, just to see what it was all about. She had a feeling that Ben could show her more clearly and more thoroughly than most just what a man could do with a woman.
Maybe she’d irritate him into kissing her tonight. Unless he got distracted by big-busted Tess and her fancy French perfume. At that idea she gunned the engine, then braked hard as she spotted Pickles’s rig on the curve of the road.
“Well, shit, found him.” And now, she thought, she’d have to placate him. She climbed out, scanning the fence line and the pasture on either side. She didn’t see any sign of him, or any reason why he would have left his rig across the road.
“Gone off somewhere to sulk,” she muttered, and moved toward the cab of the rig to sound the horn.
Then she saw him, him and the steer stretched out in front of the rig, side by side in a river of blood. She didn’t know why she hadn’t smelled it, not with the way the air was thick and raw with death. But the smell reared up and slammed into her gut now, and she stumbled toward the side of the road and violently threw up her dinner.
Her stomach continued to heave painfully as she staggered toward her own rig and lay hard on the horn. She kept her hand pressed down, her head against the window frame as she fought to get her breath.
Turning her head, she tried to spit out the taste of sickness clawing in her throat, then ru
bbed her hands over her clammy face. When her vision grayed and wavered, she bit down hard on her lip. But she couldn’t make herself walk back down the road, couldn’t make herself look again. Giving in, she folded her arms and laid her head down. She didn’t lift it even when she heard the thunder of hoofbeats and Charlie’s high barks.
“Hey.” Ben slid off his horse, the rifle slung by its strap over his shoulder. “Willa.”
A springing wildcat wouldn’t have surprised him as much as her turning, burying her face in his chest. “Ben. Oh, God.” Her arms came around him, clung. “Oh, God.”
“It’s all right, darling. It’s all right now.”