by Janet Dailey
After reading it through again, he folded the letter and pushed it into his hip pocket, reminding himself to look her up when he got back home. The contents of the letter had briefly transported him away from the heat of a May afternoon in Texas back to the cool spring of Montana and the excitement and hubbub of branding time. He forgot the perspiration collecting on his skin as he combed his fingers through his hair, absently checking its length.
A horn honked just to his left, jerking his thoughts to the present. A sports-model convertible had pulled close to the street curb. Tara was behind the wheel, dressed in a smart white tennis outfit with a white band sleeking the hair away from her oval face. His blood quickened as Ty swerved off the sidewalk and crossed the grass to the car, idling at the curb.
“Hop in.” She gave him one of her provocative half-smiles.
Lithely, Ty vaulted over the door and slid his long frame into the bucket seat beside her. The car smoothly accelerated away from the curb and into the light traffic on the campus street. Ty studied her profile and the perfection of her features, something he never tired of doing.
“You were deep in thought when I drove up.” Her remark almost chastised him for not noticing her before she honked.
“I was trying to decide whether I needed a haircut.”
Her glance wandered over his dark hair, rumpled by the breeze blowing over the car’s front windscreen. “It looks fine to me.”
He was conscious of the brevity of her costume and the bareness of her shapely, tanned legs. “Got a tennis date?” Ty guessed, already noticing how cool and refreshed she looked.
“Roger Mathison and I are partners in a mixed-doubles game at four,” she admitted with considerable aplomb. “Are you on your way to the library or the frat house?”
“The library.” He adjusted the ringed notebook on his lap and stared straight ahead, showing no reaction to her admission she had a tennis date with another man.
Nothing had changed between them, not the way he had hoped it would. If he was lucky, he dated her once or twice a month. In the meantime, she dated others while he satisfied his baser urges with a string of nameless girls. As Tara became better known on the Austin campus, the competition for her favor had grown more intense. A date with her became a prize guys bragged about. Ty had lost count of the number of rivals he faced. Some came and went, especially the ones who attempted to dominate and demand more of her attention—a fact Ty had observed early on. So he ate his pride and became one of the regulars.
“Do you have any plans for the summer?” he asked.
“Nothing specific.” She shrugged.
“Your father usually makes one or two trips to Montana in the summer. Why don’t you come along with him?” It would be a chance to have her all to himself, with no competition.
“We’ll see.”
He didn’t push for a more definite answer as she stopped the car in front of the university library. Instead of reaching for the door handle, Ty partially turned in the seat to face her, his arm bridging the backs of the two bucket seats.
His hand cupped the back of her neck and pulled her closer as he leaned to her. There was a certain passivity in the way she let him draw her near, a passivity that bordered on indifference. But she tipped her head for his kiss to show him she did want it. That stirred him, as it was meant to do.
Ty struggled to keep his impulses in check as he kissed her, but his passion crowded through. She responded, yet kept something in reserve, never letting him have all that he wanted from her. Impatient, he pulled back, catching sight of the pale blue vein throbbing in her neck even while she smiled so calmly.
“Come to Montana, at least for a weekend this summer,” he insisted. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a damned long time until September.”
She ran a finger over his lips, the glow in her dark eyes almost laughing. “It’s too soon to be making summer plans,” she chided him playfully. “The semester isn’t even over yet. Now scat, or I’ll be late for my date with Roger.” When Ty reluctantly climbed out of the car, she blew him a careless kiss and drove away.
Tara didn’t visit the ranch that summer. On three separate occasions, E. J. Dyson and his partner, Stricklin, flew to the Triple C, but she didn’t accompany him as she so easily could have done. Twice, Ty called her to renew the invitation. If it hadn’t been for the heavy work load that left him, most nights, too tired to think, he would have gone wild, wondering what she was doing and whom she was with.
Again Ty found himself being razzed by the ranch hands, wanting to know what he’d learned in college. Some of the older veterans were a bit standoffish with him at the beginning of the summer, again relegating some of the dirtier jobs to him to see if he thought college had made him too good for such work. Eventually he was accepted again.
It was the middle of summer before he was assigned to work in the southern end of the ranch and happened to cross paths with the tall and still gangly thirteen-going-on-fourteen-year-old Jessy Niles. By then, he’d forgotten about the letter she’d written him.
6
The cattle guard rattled under the wheels of the car as it rolled onto the eastern limit of the Triple C Ranch. The east gate was an unimposing structure consisting of two high poles supporting a sun-bleached sign that hung across the road between them. It read simply The Calder Cattle Company, with the Triple C brand burned into the wood. There was nothing in sight but the flat high plains, undulating in golden waves of tall grass. It was another thirty miles plus before the main buildings of the ranch headquarters could be seen.
The silence in the car was weighted with brooding. Maggie’s thoughts had turned back to the leave-taking at the airport. When Ty had left to attend his first year of college, she’d been happy for him. But this second time, it was more difficult. She didn’t like being separated from him, even if he did come home every chance he could.
“I wish Ty were attending a college closer to home.” She murmured her wish aloud.
“If you had listened to me, he would be,” Chase snapped. “But, no, you insisted that Ty make his own choice.”
“I know.” Her answer was stiff, not inviting further discussion of the subject. There had been too many arguments over this issue of college already.
“Then stop complaining.” His attention never left the ranch road.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Maggie retorted. “I was merely wishing.”
“Well, I wish to hell he’d never gone to college at all!” Chase ground out the angry words.
“You’ve made your opinion quite clear before.”
“Dammit, it is a waste of time.” His hand slapped the wheel. “If he wanted to be an engineer, a teacher, a doctor, then this schooling would be valuable to him. But, dammit, he wants to be a rancher. He told me so! And the way to learn the ranching business is through practical experience.”
“Why? Because that’s the way you learned it? Does that mean it’s the only way?” she countered in a rush of temper. Knowing how futile it was to argue with him, Maggie squared around in her seat and stiffly crossed her arms in front of her. “There’s no reasoning with you, Chase,” she said tautly. “As far as you’re concerned, there’s a right way and a wrong way—and your way. And if it isn’t yours, it’s naturally wrong.”
“I know one damned thing for sure. My way works.” It was a flat, hard answer.
The last twenty miles of the journey passed in charged silence. Chase wished the first word on the matter had never been said. He was never able to explain to Maggie how much he wanted to be wrong about this. Talking about it increased the tension between them instead of dissolving it. She always pushed at him, never giving an inch, never conceding he might be right, never acknowledging any validity in his concerns. She couldn’t see that he needed her understanding; she was too busy defending her son’s action.
He stopped the car by the front steps of The Homestead and kept the engine running. Maggie had opened the passenger door before she realized
he wasn’t coming with her. A curtness was still in her expression as she gave him a questioning look.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“No.” Glancing beyond her, Chase saw his daughter come running out of the house to greet them. “If I’m late for dinner, go ahead and eat. I’ll warm up something when I get back.”
Although she was too angry with him to ask where he was going, Maggie was troubled by his action. He drove away the minute she shut her car door—without stopping long enough to greet his young daughter. She couldn’t recall Chase ever being so rushed that he didn’t have time for a word with little Cathleen.
“Daddy!” Cathleen wailed and began stomping her feet on the wooden floor of the porch in a tantrum when her tears didn’t bring him back.
Driving back to the two-lane, Chase followed it to a small collection of buildings out in the middle of nowhere. It was a boom-and-bust town called Blue Moon, lying by the road in one of its bust cycles. Another house had been abandoned to its weed-choked yard, its back broken and sagging. The sunburned paint on the sign above the grocery store and service station was peeling and faded. A pair of cars sat abandoned behind the building, wheelless and rusted.
The building next door appeared to be in better repair, except for a broken sign that had been snapped in half by an accumulation of ice followed by a high wind. It identified the building simply as Sally’s. Chase parked the car in front of it alongside two dusty ranch pickups and went inside.
Half the tables were covered with gingham cloth and the other half were bare. A lone pool table sat in a far corner of the long room, a cowboy crouched over it taking aim on the cue ball. The jukebox in the corner was playing a cheating song.
Chase walked to the counter where an auburn-haired woman sat on an end stool. She smiled at him, a glint of sad longing showing briefly in her blue eyes.
“Hello, Chase.” She slid off the stool and walked around behind the counter. “What can I buy you? Beer? Whiskey? Coffee?”
He glanced at the half-finished cup of black coffee she’d been drinking. It didn’t look nearly strong enough. “Whiskey with water back,” he ordered and crawled onto the stool next to the one she’d vacated.
She refused the money he laid on the counter when she set his drink in front of him. “The first drink’s on the house.”
His mouth twitched in grim remorse. “I guess I haven’t been in since you started serving liquor, have I?” He bolted down the drink. At first he felt nothing; then it began to burn his throat.
When he looked at her above the brim of his hat, she was calmly watching him. Chase wasn’t sure whether it was the whiskey or the calming influence of her presence that seemed to soothe him. There was a time before Maggie came back to him when he had considered marrying Sally. There was a pleasing quietness about her that was always comfortable and settling.
“I don’t particularly like the idea of you running a bar, Sally,” he said, accustomed to his opinion carrying weight.
“It was a business decision,” she reasoned, not taking offense the way Maggie would have. “My clientele consists mainly of cowboys, and they’re a drinking crowd. As much as they liked my food, they started driving elsewhere. If I wanted to keep the doors open, I didn’t have a choice.”
“You’ll let me know if anybody gives you trouble.”
Again there was that quiet smile that seemed to soften the lines around her mouth and eyes and make them attractive. “The boys get rowdy sometimes, but no one’s stepped out of line. The place has sorta become a second home to most of them. I usually have plenty of defenders on hand if I ever need one.”
“I suppose you do.” He lowered his head and pushed the empty shot glass to her. “Fill it again, then sit down and finish your coffee.”
This time he sipped at the whiskey while she settled onto the stool beside him. “How have things been at the ranch?”
“Fine.” Chase studied the golden-brown liquor, then lifted it to take another small swallow. “I just got back from putting Ty on the plane to Texas.”
“I’ve heard he’s doing well.”
“He’d do better staying at home.” His sun-browned hand tightened around the glass, the bones showing white through his skin. “I can’t make Maggie understand that, Sally. Everything’s gone so smoothly since she’s been back. She wasn’t here during the rough times. I’m not just talking about the drought we had. There was the time when the small ranches on the north cut the fences and drifted their cattle onto our graze . . . and the hassle I had getting title to those ten thousand acres of federal land sitting almost smack in the middle of the ranch. There’s always something or someone.” Chase sighed heavily.
“It will work out,” Sally murmured.
“Will it?” His glance ran over her face, his lip corners lifting with grim amusement. “I want Ty home, and Maggie thinks I’m being selfish.”
“No two people see eye to eye on everything. You are bound to have something you disagree about.”
Chase released a heavy breath. “That disagreement is becoming hell.” He gazed into her serene eyes. “You’re a woman, Sally. Tell me how I can get through to her.”
“Is that why you came here?” There was a glimmer of regret and a little hurt in her look. “I’m not any good at giving advice, Chase.”
His mouth went thin. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Sally. I guess I just needed to talk to someone and”—a remembering was in the darkness of his eyes when he looked at her—“I thought of you.”
There was a mute shake of her copper-red hair as her throat worked convulsively before she could finally get the words out. “I think you’d better go home, Chase.”
“Yeah.” He grimly concurred with her suggestion and reached for the change from his second drink.
Through the course of that fall and winter, he found several more reasons to make the drive to Blue Moon. Each time, he stopped in at Sally’s—just to pass the time of day. No mention was made again of his problems at home. And Chase kept telling himself that Sally was just an old friend.
The ancient gravestones stood in silent order, tall blades of grass sprouting around their bases. There was a stillness in the old cemetery, with its big shade trees protectively spreading their branches over the chipped and weathered stones.
“When you asked me to come with you this afternoon, I didn’t realize you were going to take me on a tour of an old cemetery.” Tara looked around her with a mixture of wide-eyed curiosity and unease. “I feel as if I should be whispering.”
Ty just smiled and increased the pressure of his grip on her hand. An old, gnarled oak tree stood to one side of the pathway ahead of them.
“This way.” He led Tara toward it.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if you would tell me what it is you’re hoping to find,” she protested.
Next to the spreading trunk of the oak tree, Ty spied the tilted headstone and lengthened his stride in anticipation. It was a plain marker, no designs carved on it. Years of exposure to rain and wind, heat and cold, had smoothed its surface, but the name etched into it could still be read: Seth Calder. It was undated, initialed with Rest in Peace.
“Here it is,” he said to Tara and stepped aside so she could view it. “He was my great-great-grandfather.”
“I didn’t know you had any family buried here in Fort Worth.” Covertly she let her eyes stray from the gravestone to study the tall man, in many ways so much more mature than others his age.
“Neither did I,” Ty admitted. “I didn’t find out about him”—he indicated the grave of his ancestor with a nod of his head—“until this past Christmas. Dad was telling Cathleen the story about the first Calder to settle in Montana. He started the ranch with a herd of cattle he’d driven north from Texas. It’s her favorite story. I’ll bet I’ve heard Dad tell it to her a hundred times at least. But this time Cathleen asked about Benteen Calder’s mommy and daddy and why they didn’t come to Montana with him. My father explained that
Seth Calder had died a couple months before they left for Montana and had been buried here in Texas.”
“What about his wife?”
“Supposedly she ran away with some Englishman when Benteen Calder was still a small boy. As far as Dad knows, she was never heard from after that. Ever since I found out this old cemetery was still here in Fort Worth, I’ve been meaning to come and look for his grave.”
It was difficult to explain this need to know more about his family, a kind of seeking of identity. As he stood at the foot of the grave, looking at the Calder name etched into the headstone, Ty felt a closeness to the past, a sense of belonging. The Calder name was both his heritage and his future.
Tara moved a little restlessly beside him. His attention had strayed, and she drew it back to her. As Ty looked down at her, he observed the hint of impatience in her eyes.
“I suppose this seems crazy to you,” he murmured. He couldn’t say why he’d brought her, except that this was important to him, and because it was important to him, he wanted her to be a part of it.
“No, I don’t think it’s crazy.” She knew it was what he wanted her to say, but she had no insight into the significance of this for him. “It isn’t odd to want to pay your respects to a member of your family.”
“I don’t know much about my family or their history, just bits and pieces,” Ty confessed with a heavy sigh. “My parents were separated until I was fifteen. I lived with my mother in California all that time, so I never grew up knowing details about my father’s side of the family the way my little sister will. It wasn’t easy for me at the ranch in the beginning. I tried so hard to belong.” He laughed shortly as he realized it. “I guess, in my own way, I still am.”
“It really means a lot for you to belong, doesn’t it?” She eyed him with a curious and probing look. “Maybe that’s what makes you different from the others. You seem more serious about your studies . . . and everything else.”