Calder Born, Calder Bred

by Janet Dailey

  “But—” Cat wanted to protest this secrecy, but she had no adequate argument against his reasoning. Who would believe a story like this, without proof? She had difficulty swallowing it herself, but she was convinced her uncle believed it.

  “Do I have your word?” His earnest gaze searched her face.

  “Yes,” she agreed after a second’s hesitation. She bit at the inside of her lip, still trying to figure out what she could do about doctoring his wound. “I’ll fix you something to eat,” she said. “Then I’m going to ride back to the ranch and see if I can’t get some sort of medicine from the vet’s office. I’ll come back later tonight.”

  “Better not. If somebody sees you with it, they’ll start asking questions and they just might check up on any story you give ’em,” he warned.

  “I have to do something.” Her frustration came through in the vehemence of her statement. “If you get infection—” She stopped, unwilling to voice the possible consequences. “I’ll be careful. No one will see me, I promise. I’m just as good at it as you are.” She tried to inject a light note into the conversation. “Look at how many times I slipped out to meet Repp without anyone finding out.”

  When she returned to The Homestead, the situation took on a terrible unreality. Twice after dinner, she almost called Ty aside to confide in him so he could tell her it was a lot of foolishness and make it something to laugh about. But her desire to protect her uncle was stronger. Regardless of his reasons, he could be arrested for what he’d done; maybe they’d put him away again. He trusted her, and she couldn’t betray him like that.

  With her head whirling with large doubts and small suspicions, she avoided spending any time in Dyson’s or Stricklin’s company, worried that she might unconsciously stare at them. There were plenty of houseguests to occupy their time as well as Ty and Tara’s, so she doubted that her absence was noted when she took the key from the study and left The Homestead to get some medical supplies from the vet’s office.

  There were only two means of transportation available to her—a ranch vehicle or a horse. Using one of the ranch pickups might lead to questions about where she was going and the necessity for a nighttime visit to her uncle. Only in theory did she have the run of the ranch and could do just about anything she pleased because she was a Calder. At sixteen, she still faced certain restrictions, and permission might be withheld if her reasons were insufficient. Cat didn’t want to make up any more stories than she had to in order to conceal her reasons. A late-evening horseback ride, supposedly for pleasure, was unlikely to arouse any curiosity, even though it would take a lot more time.

  It was well after midnight when she returned to the ranch headquarters. Darkness had forced her to take more time on the way back. She rode straight to the stable, unsaddled her horse, and rubbed it down.

  Only a couple of lights showed in the upper-floor windows of The Homestead, indicating the occupants had just recently retired. Guests invariably meant late nights, so Cat wasn’t surprised to discover not everyone was in bed. She slipped into the house and moved through the darkened living room to the lighted staircase. Despite her try for silence, the steps creaked now and then under her weight.

  At the top of the stairs, she turned to the hallway leading to her room and walked close to the railing where the flooring was more solid and the boarding was less inclined to grind together under her footsteps. The door to a room opposite from her was opened, and Cat turned with a guilty start. Her heart leaped into her throat when she found herself staring into Stricklin’s opaque eyes. For an instant, panic raced wildly through her.

  The lateness of the hour and the silence of the rest of the house made all the things Culley had told her about the man she faced seem very believable. He’d always struck her as being a cold fish; now that impression seemed especially chilling.

  “You scared me.” She finally forced out the honest admission. “I’m not supposed to be out past midnight. I thought I’d been caught.” Cat watched him closely while she faked a smile, trying to see if he was going to buy her implication that she had been out with Repp.

  The corners of his mouth curved upward, but she wasn’t sure what that meant. “I was just on my way downstairs to see if I could find a book to read.” He spoke as softly as she had, avoiding any comment on her weak explanation.

  Cat was afraid to prolong the conversation, wary that the suspicions Culley had imbedded in her mind would not allow her to behave normally with him. Neither did she want to bolt from him like a frightened rabbit. A noise from one of the rooms offered her an excuse.

  She glanced toward the sound and whispered a quick “Good night,” then stole softly down the hallway to her room. Once the door was safely shut, Cat nearly laughed aloud with hysterical relief.

  Stricklin was slow to descend the stairs, his mind clicking over the small details he’d noticed—the horsehair on her clothes, the length of time she’d been absent from the house, and the fear he’d seen in her eyes, not merely alarm. The vindictive pranks at the strip mine were just the kind of thing a teenager would dream up.

  Alone in the study, Stricklin dialed the telephone number at the mine. The security chief answered.

  “This is Stricklin. Has it been quiet so far tonight?” he asked.

  “Quiet as can be,” the guard assured him. “With all the floodlights we’ve got trained on the equipment, it’s like daylight out here. There’s no way anybody could get within thirty feet before they’re seen.”

  “Good.”

  For a long time after he’d hung up, Stricklin sat in the chair by the desk and cleaned his fingernails. He wished for Dyson’s intuition on the matter. As in a defensive chess game, he had blocked his opponent’s initial strategy; now he was waiting for the next move, certain it was coming, but he lacked his partner’s ability to anticipate where.

  28

  It began as a dark bruise on the sky, a gentle rumble of thunder in the distance. Then it spread, churning black clouds rolling to block out the sun with the suddenness and violence that accompanies the spawning of a thunderstorm on the plains. The hot, lank air caught a sudden cool breath, sweet with the smell of rain. The wind died, and absolute stillness settled onto the land.

  Darkness rapidly descended under the fast-moving storm, and the air was suddenly split with ragged bolts of lightning, blue-white tongues of fire raining a death dance over the ground. The claps of lightning and booms of thunder came one on top of the other, vibrating the earth, while slanging rain sheeted down in torrents. It was a dramatic and awesome display of nature’s violence. In fifteen minutes, it was over and past.

  Thirty miles away at the Triple C headquarters, there had been no more than a whiff of rain smell in the air. Standing in the feedlot with puddles of water soaking into the sponge-dry ground, Ty looked at the destruction the storm had left in its wake. The carcasses of ten dead steers were crowded in a corner of the lot where they had bunched in a frightened, bawling mass during the storm, a large target for the ball of lightning that had exploded on them. The weight of their bodies had collapsed a section of fence, and the rest of the fat cattle in the lot had stampeded through it, three more steers trampled to death in the panicked melee. The sophisticated feeding machinery had been hit as well as the grain elevator. Half the grain in it was likely ruined by the inpouring rain.

  The cost of the damage was staggering, none of it insured. With an operation the size of the Triple C Ranch, the theory had always been that it was big enough to absorb its losses. But there had been too many other drains on its reserves. There wasn’t anything left to cushion the blow.

  “I don’t know what to say, Ty,” Arch Goodman offered grimly. “I’ll let you know how much grain we can salvage. With feed prices today, if we have to buy more grain, the fat cattle aren’t bringing in enough on the market to offset the increase. We’ll wind up going deeper in the red.”

  “We’ll have to fatten most of them on grass and finish them with a couple weeks’ wor
th of grain.” It seemed the only viable alternative, even though it meant the cattle wouldn’t bring top prices. More and more, circumstances were pushing him toward another decision.

  “You aren’t going to get top dollar for ’em that way,” Arch warned, voicing what Ty had already considered.

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Impatience put a sharp edge on his reply.

  Goodman stiffened slightly at the harsh tone. “Looks like they rounded up the rest of the steers.” He observed the trio of riders herding a small band of cattle toward the feedlots, his attitude stilted and cool. “I’ll go give ’em a hand with the gate.”

  Tight-lipped, Ty simply nodded and covered his silence by lighting a cigarette while the man walked away. He shook out the match and dropped it on the wet ground where there was still enough moisture on the surface to make the match head sizzle faintly. A truck was backing into the yard to load up the carcasses of the dead cattle. Ty left the men to their job and angled to the fence to look over the steers being herded into an adjoining lot.

  One was lame. The rest were probably a few pounds lighter from the run—valuable pounds. Ty made a climbing vault of the fence and stood on the other side to watch. Without conscious effort, he picked out Jessy among the trio of riders. When the gate had swung shut on the last of the animals, he waited. It seemed there was no end to the unpleasant decisions he had to make.

  Jessy was on the outside of the riders as they came to the fence and dismounted. Her caramel hair was tucked under her hat, giving him a view of her long, slender neck. She gave him a clear-eyed look which skipped away to the feedlots. Then she turned her patrician-strong face to him.

  “Some storm,” she remarked idly.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. As he looked at her and heard the stiffness in their exchange, there seemed to be a lot of things he didn’t need to say. Yet some things had to be said to make it final.

  “This just adds to your problems, doesn’t it?” Jessy said and looked again at the destruction the storm had left, some of it visible.

  “Yes, it does.” He struggled to find an easy way to lead into the things he wanted to say to her. He didn’t want to be blunt.

  “There’s been some grumbling among the boys. Some of them aren’t happy about the way things have changed lately.” She rested her gloved hands on the top rail of the fence, gripping it slightly and rocking back from it. “They claim they’re spending more time catering to your guests than they are cowboying.”

  “They’re lucky they’re working at all.” Irritation made his response sound curt. “I can just barely cover the payroll for the regulars now. Have they been complaining to you about their working conditions?”

  “No. I’ve just heard talk. I thought I’d pass it along in case nobody had said anything to you.” A shoulder lifted, attaching little importance to her knowledge of the issue.

  And it did gall him a little to learn there was dissatisfaction among the ranks and he hadn’t known about it till now. “There’s not much I can do about it.”

  Jessy eyed him through shuttered lids. She sensed that he’d managed to lose touch with some basic things, not so surprising considering the pressure and responsibilities that had been heaped on him of late. Not to mention the constant stream of guests that had been at The Homestead. It was all those other demands on his time that she’d blamed for his not coming by her place. But looking at him, at the aloofness he wore like a barrier, she wondered if those demands were the only reasons.

  “I suppose not,” she said.

  “Jessy—” Something in his voice flattened her heart, and she mentally braced herself. “What we had was good.” Past tense.

  “Yes, it was.” She turned to meet him square on. “And I have no regrets.”

  Ty had some, but it seemed pointless to voice them. “I never set out to hurt you. I know I have.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She slowly shook her head, her wide lips turned upward at the corner in a sad shadow of a smile. “I’ve always known she came first with you.” She’d known it much longer than he realized. The sting of tears was in the back of her eyes. She looked away at the horizon, squinting a little to keep them in check. “It’s probably best if I hand in my notice the end of the month.”

  “You once told me I was free to go or free to stay, whichever I wanted. Now I’ll say the same to you.” Ty didn’t want to think of her being anywhere else but right here, where he could keep an eye on her and watch out for her. But it wasn’t his right to ask that.

  “Thanks, Ty.” Her throat hurt, but pride insisted on a show of lightness. “I’d better get back to work before I’m accused of loafing on the boss’s time.”

  When she climbed into the saddle, her head was held high. It was the only way to keep her chin from quivering. It hurt to breathe; it hurt to live. A long time ago her mother had told her that no woman had ever conquered loneliness. It was an endless battle, especially in these lonely spaces.

  As Ty watched her ride away, he swore he’d never met a more honest woman. There had been no commitments, no promises between them, and she had not pretended she had been wronged by him. She was as honest about this as she had been about her emotions. He felt the lesser for it. But Tara’s ripe beauty waited for him—the kind men spun dreams around.

  Halfway to the headquarters, he spied a wet-looking and bedraggled Cathleen riding her paint horse along the road’s grassy shoulder just ahead of his pickup. He slowed the truck to a crawl as he pulled alongside her.

  “Did you get caught in that downpour?” He smiled at the sodden state of her clothes. It would take them a long time to dry even in the warm sun.

  “How did you guess?” she shot back with a snap of sarcasm, wet and miserable.

  “Tie your horse to the tailgate and I’ll give you a ride.”

  Cat wasted no time accepting his offer as she reined her horse to the rear of the truck and dismounted to knot the reins to the bumper. Then she hurried to the front and climbed into the passenger side of the cab, her feet squishing in her wet boots.

  “Cold?” Ty flicked a glance at her.

  “No. Just wet.” Everything stuck to her as she tried to settle back in the seat. “I was just crossing that open stretch between Culley’s gate and the river when the sky opened up. I tried to make the trees, but I was soaked to the gills by the time I got under them.”

  “You were at Culley’s again?” Ty drove slowly, glancing frequently into the rearview mirror at the reflection of the paint horse. “You’ve been going there nearly every day this week.”

  She nervously licked her lips. No one had commented on it, so she didn’t think anyone had noticed the frequency of her visits. “He . . . hasn’t been feeling well.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Ty frowned at her.

  “It was just a mild case of the flu,” she said quickly. “He was up and around today. I think he liked me coming over and fussing with him, which is probably why it took him so long to get well.”

  “More than likely,” he agreed, smiling vaguely as his thoughts began to wander to other, more pressing matters.

  The minute Dyson got off the telephone, he summoned Stricklin into his office. He had a drink poured and ready to put in his hands when he walked in.

  “What’s this?” Stricklin looked blankly at the drink he’d been given.

  “You’ve heard the old superstition that bad news travels in threes. Well, so does good news,” Dyson declared and clinked his glass against his partner’s. “First, it’s been nearly two weeks since we’ve had any trouble at the plant. Second, we were granted the mineral rights to that parcel of land on the Calder ranch. And third—” He paused for effect. “I just talked to Ty on the phone. He’s been considering my proposal for a joint venture on this strip-mining operation and wants us to come so we can discuss it in more detail.”

  “He said that?” Stricklin was slow to join Dyson’s celebrative mood.

  “We’ve got ourselves a deal.” He
saluted Stricklin with his glass and downed a swallow, smiling broadly. “And you were so worried a week ago,” he chided. “So certain there had to be some reason why Ty was holding out. I told you there was no cause to be suspicious. We have a kingdom of coal and all the water we need now that he’s joining forces with us.”

  “Maybe there’s another reason why he wants us to come to Montana. Maybe he’s just using the deal as an excuse,” Stricklin suggested, his mind cautiously turning over the possibilities.

  “No.” Dyson shook his head in a very positive fashion. “He’s buying the deal. With Chase out of the picture, it’s happening just the way I knew it would.”

  “Yes.” It was a somewhat absent agreement from Stricklin as he took a contemplative sip of his drink, then a second with more confidence in his manner. “I’ll begin rearranging our schedule so we can leave for Montana first thing in the morning.”

  Cat watched the car pull away from The Homestead with her brother at the wheel, again accompanied by E. J. Dyson and his partner, George Stricklin. The trio had been practically inseparable since Dyson’s plane landed at the Triple C’s private airstrip the day before.

  It was becoming more difficult for her to believe the pair had perpetrated the deed her uncle suggested. She had known E. J. Dyson all her life, Stricklin, too, for that matter. Even before Ty had married Tara, Dyson had been a friend of the family. Her father had strongly differed with him over the issue of strip-mining, but he had continued to show respect for him.

  None of her uncle’s suspicions seemed plausible. She knew how much Culley had loved her mother—worshiped her almost. Cat was nearly convinced he was trying to blame someone for her death because it was the only way he could reconcile her passing in his mind.

  “Cat, what’s the matter with you?” Repp’s impatient voice cut into her thoughts.

  She half turned, looking at him blankly for an instant. “I’m sorry. I was just . . . thinking.” His dark gaze tried to peel away the layers of her preoccupation to find the source of it. She wanted to tell him the awful secret Culley had given her to carry, but it had begun sounding too incredible.