Widow Woman

by Patricia McLinn

  Nick had seen it his first time through Wyoming. Even then the buildings hadn’t counted for much more than piles of logs. But there’d been something in the sweep of land toward the grand, brave mountains of the Big Horn range that pumped into his lungs. He’d ignored that, and methodically checked the water and grass. Both were good.

  It was the kind of place a man, with a little help, could run some cattle and get a start. A safe place to bring his sister for now. Maybe over time and a lot of hard work, a place to build up to the size of the Circle T or even the Lazy W or KD.

  But a man working cattle for someone else wasn’t supposed to own any of his own. It was cattle-country law—some places unwritten, some places on the books. He’d heard owners say it kept the hands from a temptation to turn an owner’s calf into their own. He’d heard hands say it was the owners’ way to keep anybody else from getting rich. Some cowhands broke the rule and kept meticulous count. Some broke the rule and weren’t so meticulous. Either way, a hand caught was near sure of being fired.

  Even with no cattle yet. Nick figured buying this land would end his working for the Circle T. That might be for the best.

  The Widow Terhune needed him on the Circle T, but she didn’t enjoy having him around. She made that clear enough.

  Between not being wanted, and the itch under his skin he’d carried since first seeing her, it sure as hell would be easier to get on with his own business.

  The land Enoch Wallace had claimed and searched for gold never brought him the riches he’d sought, and all the son he’d left back in Baltimore wanted from it was cash. Nick had made an offer right before he’d walked into the Texas Rose the first time.

  Now he’d hear what answer the banker had gotten.

  “May I ask to what use you intend to put the land?” Carter Armstrong asked after leading Nick to his office.

  “No.”

  The banker’s protuberant pale eyes stared. “I simply ask because some might think there are prospects for gold in the higher elevations, and if you are entertaining such hopes, Mr. Wallace does not want you to be disappointed.”

  Nick didn’t believe Mr. Wallace—or Mr. Armstrong—gave a damn for his disappointments. The banker wanted to know what he wanted the land for. And that likely had more to do with Thomas Dunn than Mr. Wallace of Baltimore.

  “I’ll take my chances. Wallace take my offer?”

  “No. He wrote that your offer of eight thousand—Where are you going?”

  “You answered. I’m leaving.”

  “But don’t you want to hear what Mr. Wallace wrote?”

  “I heard. He said no.”

  “But there’s more.” Armstrong held up two sheets of closely written paper. He met Nick’s look and let the papers drop to his desk. “All right, the sum of it is, he’s made a counteroffer.”

  “How much?”

  “Twelve thousand.”

  “Nine.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—”

  “You write and tell him I’ll pay nine thousand for a parcel of land he’s never seen and doesn’t want.”

  He walked out, leaving the banker’s expostulations behind.

  In the Texas Rose, he placed his coin on the bar and ordered with a single word. The barkeep poured and pushed the glass toward him, all the while studying his face.

  “Well, I’ll be. You’re that hand that came through here near a month ago, ain’t you?” He didn’t await an answer. “You went and hired on with the Widow Terhune just like I told you, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew it. I said to myself, Simon Hooper, that’s got to be the one he’s talking about. Couldn’t be no other dark Texan with a dangerous look, had to be the same one, I said to myself.” A smile creased his round face. “Didn’t know your name. So when he asked, casual like, if I knowed someone named Nick Dusaq, I just said no. But when he described you, I said to myself—”

  “Who asked?”

  “What? Oh, Thomas Dunn. Stopped by the other day, like always when he comes through town, to pass the time of day, you know, hear the news. He says before the Texas Rose nobody knew anything that was happening in this country. Now, all you have to do is set at the bar to hear it all. I’m not saying that’s true, because to my way of thinking Thomas Dunn always worked his way around to hearing whatever was worth—”

  “What’d he want to know?”

  “—knowing,” Hooper finished, then picked up without pause. “Wanted to know if I knew this Nick Dusaq. If I’d heard what business he might have in this part of the world. If he’d known the Widow Terhune before he went to work at the Circle T.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Couldn’t tell him nothing, could I? Didn’t know any Nick Dusaq.” The barkeeper’s smile grew wide. Nick decided Hooper was no great fan of Dunn. “After he left here, he went on over to Armstrong’s office. Thought that might interest you. Carter Armstrong’s right interested in staying in good with Dunn.”

  Nick frowned. Nothing he could do about it. And Armstrong couldn’t tell Dunn much, since he hadn’t told the banker any more than necessary. Still, he didn’t like it.

  He tossed another coin on the bar before starting out.

  “You leaving? Ain’t you going to have this drink you just paid for?” Hooper asked, reaching for the bottle.

  “No. Have one yourself,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  * * * *

  The first day of calf branding, Rachel drove out a supply wagon to the main branding pen. They would use two more distant pens, too, but most of the branding of calves not marked at roundup would be done here, where Pryer Creek fed into Jasper Creek.

  While Fred set up the grub wagon, she and Joe-Max tied off rope to form a temporary corral for the horses that Shag and Nick were driving up. The other hands were drawing in calves between the main ranch and here, so she and Joe-Max built fires and set out irons to be ready for the afternoon’s branding. Dinner would allow them their only rest between breakfast and supper, and Fred muttered and hummed as he prepared the generous portions that went a long way toward making his reputation as a cook.

  Rachel lost track of his preparations when the horses arrived. Pulling her bandanna over her mouth and nose, she mounted Dandy to join Joe-Max in helping guide the horses into the rope corral. Even with Shag and Nick keeping an easy pace, the saddle band kicked up a thick haze of dust.

  Then Tommy and the others started bringing in cattle. She helped guide them to the pen, sending the hands for grub after a morning’s work that had started well before sunup. Heat and dust burned her throat and nose, and she was so thirsty she understood why dry cattle stampeded to water.

  As hands finished eating, Shag paired the best ropers with a crew on the ground who would wrestle calves down, hold a sizzling Circle T brand to their sides and then wield their knives to change male calves to steers.

  The stink of sweat, blood, dust, burned hide and animal dung fouled the air. Men shouted, calves bawled and horses protested. Smell, sound, dust, hunger and thirst overwhelmed Rachel’s senses, leaving her light-headed and heavy-limbed by the time Davis rode up.

  “Mrs. Terhune, ma’am, Shag says for me to spell you, and you’re to take your dinner now, ma’am.”

  The polite embellishments on what she’d wager had been a brusque order stirred Rachel’s amusement. But she was too weary to do more than thank him and follow orders. Wiping her face with a damp rag, taking a brave swallow of Fred’s coffee—”There’s no such thing as coffee too strong,” was his motto, “just people too weak”—and downing a plate of hot biscuits, beans and fried beefsteak did much to restore her energy.

  She took a final swallow of coffee, preparing to return to work, when she saw a rider coming into camp.

  Stocky, broad-faced and with a shock of gray hair a shade lighter than his beard, Gordon Wood cut an impressive figure, especially on his strapping buckskin. He looked as weathered and solid a
s the mountains to the west.

  And equally impervious to hints that his presence was not desired.

  “Just branding now, Rachel?” He shook his head.

  Little drawl and no subtlety remained from Wood’s Mississippi upbringing. But his bluntness had a great advantage in her mind over Dunn’s polite innuendo—it meant she could answer in kind.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Wood?”

  “Why, we finished branding at Natchez nearing on two weeks ago.” He added as a hearty afterthought, “None of this Mr. Wood, now. I told you to call me Gordon.”

  She hadn’t told him to call her Rachel.

  “I don’t have as many men as you, Mr. Wood. They worked hard at roundup, and needed rest. If you’ve come to hire away more, I won’t take it kindly. In fact, I’d invite you off Circle T land.”

  “An invitation you’d make at the end of that rifle you’re known for carrying, Rachel?” He chuckled appreciatively. “A pretty girl like you should be wearing pretty dresses, not toting a rifle.”

  “I’m hardly a girl.”

  “Not much more than that.” He dismissed her comment with a wave of his gloved hand. “What you need is a man who’d give you pretty dresses. Why don’t you let me marry you, Rachel, and I’ll get you those dresses. Then you’d have no worries about anyone hiring away hands. No worries about running a ranch at all.”

  “I don’t mind the worry. And I’ve been married. I didn’t much care for it.”

  “That’s why I figure you’re not staying a widow now from any partial feeling to the Terhune name.”

  Accustomed to his blunt speech, Rachel didn’t blink. “I’m not.”

  “So, why not change it to Wood? It’s a good name. Natchez is a good outfit With the Circle T added, it’d be a da—dashed big spread. That’d be a fine thing for a man to leave to a son.”

  Rachel ignored the squeeze of pain in her heart—how easily the ranch that her father had loved and lived for, that she’d sacrificed so much for, could be absorbed into the great, sprawling land. As if it had never existed. Gordon Wood’s easy disregard for her feelings—as well as his casual inclusion of her as a means to getting himself an heir—made it very easy to tell him no.

  “You’ve already got a dashed big spread.”

  He laughed, then gave a grin, surprisingly boyish against his gray hair and grizzled chin. “But with the Circle T, I’d have an outfit to rival Dunn’s KD.”

  Wood’s honesty about his unabashed rivalry with Dunn made it very difficult to dislike him.

  “You’ll have to find another way. I’m keeping the Circle T.”

  “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Maybe not the first few times, but these proposals are trying my patience.” More sharpness edged her words than usual, and Rachel felt ashamed. Being tired and a shade uneasy was no reason to be rude to neighbors.

  “All right,” he said slowly, eyes locked on her face. “I’ll let it ride a spell. So long as you know the offer stands.”

  She nodded briefly, relieved.

  “And I want you to understand that if you need help with anything, if Shag should have another of his spells, or if you have any trouble, you come to me, understand?”

  “Thank you.” They’d had this conversation before, too. She wondered if he noticed she never said yes, she simply thanked him.

  “Are you in trouble now, Rachel?”

  “Beyond being behind on the work?” She smiled, dry and weak.

  “Yes.”

  His abrupt answer brought her to attention. “What makes you think I might be?”

  “Not you personally, the Circle T.”

  She waved off the distinction. “Why?”

  “I’m hearing some things about a new hand of yours.”

  Rachel’s heart beat harder; she knew without asking he meant Nick. While her mind acknowledged Nick had the air of a dangerous man, something in her prayed he wasn’t.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s asking questions.”

  Air streamed out of her in relief. “What kind of questions?”

  “That’s just it. Odd things. Some of my boys said he’s asking how things got handled in spring roundup, and asking about the boys who came over to Natchez from the Circle T.”

  Rachel was hard-pressed imagining Nick talking enough to ask such questions, much less imagining why he might want to know. “Maybe things are done different here from what he’s used to and he’s trying to figure things out,” she offered.

  Wood snorted. “They do roundups same way Texas to Montana. This ain’t no different.”

  “You’d know that better than me.”

  He studied her. “Well, as long as he wasn’t asking questions because you’d had trouble or—” his voice added a deeper note of warning “—wasn’t thinking to make any trouble for you. You’ve got to be careful with some of these boys, you know, Rachel.”

  “Thanks for your concern, Mr. Wood.”

  First Thomas Dunn, now Gordon Wood. Why did these men seem to distrust Nick Dusaq? She had reason for discomfort around him, but did Dunn and Wood see something both she and Shag had missed?

  Wood took his leave, while Rachel remained where he left her, turning over his comments.

  For the first time, the question occurred to her that should have been the first asked before she and Shag offered Dusaq a job at the Circle T. It would have been the first, too, if she hadn’t allowed their earlier encounter to throw her for such a loop.

  With grim deliberation, she yanked a work glove over her right hand. She couldn’t afford—the Circle T couldn’t afford—to have her acting like a schoolgirl. For this ranch to survive, she needed to keep all her wits. At all times. Around all her men.

  She pulled on the other glove and made a half turn toward the horses.

  Nick Dusaq was not ten feet away, looking at her as if he knew exactly what was on her mind. He sat on an overturned tub, his back against the wagon wheel, his legs stretched out, shaded by a canvas awning. He’d been out of her line of sight, but she’d wager the next year’s calf crop that he hadn’t been out of earshot.

  * * * *

  Why this woman made him want to grin so. Nick would never figure out. Not when grinning was the last thing to do if he hoped not to rile her. Especially since grinning hadn’t come natural for as long as he could remember. And because grinning didn’t match with the quickening the sight—hell, the thought—of her too often produced in his body.

  He’d settled into eat just as Wood arrived. He’d heard enough to have even less cause to grin. Yet here he sat, fighting a grin, as she charged in like a windstorm, picking up speed and irritation as she came.

  She stopped directly in front of him, close enough that he had to tip his head to make eye contact under the brim of his hat.

  “What were you doing at Jasper Pond that day?” she demanded.

  “Taking a bath.”

  She frowned. And blushed.

  Both reactions pleased him, which made about as much sense as grinning.

  “I know that,” she said, impatient, then blushed harder as he watched the memory of how she knew deepen the color of her eyes. “I mean, why were you still there? You’d made camp the night before, right?”

  “No.”

  “No? But somebody’d made camp. Wasn’t that you?”

  “Yes.”

  She glared at him. “Well?”

  “Not night. Made camp near sunup.”

  Her frown deepened. “What did you do all night?”

  “Watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  “Turns out, nothing.”

  She squared off to him, fists on hips. “Mr. Dusaq,” she said, and he knew the emphasis was deliberate, “this conversational style of yours might do fine for telegraphs, but I want answers. Whole answers. And I want them now. I don’t want a grain of sand for every question, I want a mountain. I want to know what you were doing there and why.”

  Shaking
off a prickling sensation at her choosing the same image as the old padre had used for his sins, Nick straightened from his slouch, then slowly stood, deliberately closing the space between them. She tensed, but didn’t back away. He met her look. She was bucking a lifetime of habit. He didn’t explain. He didn’t answer demands.

  “What you think you want, Mrs. Terhune, might not be what’s best for you.”

  Her eyes changed color again; she was as aware as he that he’d never before called her by name. “I decide what’s best for me.”

  If she’d said it defiantly, stubbornly, he might have ridden out, might even have succeeded in not looking back. But she said the words as flat fact . . . with a bedrock of loneliness beneath. And the fact and the loneliness were so familiar, it was like hearing an echo of his own soul.

  “I left Chelico late afternoon and camped that night just outside Lazy W range,” he started, reciting facts, no more. “Covered their spread the next day, reaching the canyon at dusk. Then—”

  “You crossed Natchez from the east road to the canyon in a day? But nobody . . .” She sputtered out of protests as he met her look unblinking.

  “I spent the night watching,” he picked up as if she hadn’t spoken. “Scouted for signs of rustling. Didn’t see any. Cooked breakfast, ate it, got some sleep, then took a bath. As you know.” He held her eyes, knowing the danger, but courting the hot slide of awareness that went through him. “Then I rode on to the Circle T home ranch, and waited to be interviewed by the Widow Terhune.”

  He was pleased to see her swallow hard before her inevitable questions.

  “What made you think there was rustling?”

  “It was a possibility. Some men trying to drive someone out of business would stop at nothing.”

  She blinked, slowly. “You’re saying Gordon Wood is trying to drive the Circle T out of business? That’s crazy! Sure he wants Natchez to be the biggest and best around here, but the idea he’d resort to rustling . . .”

  “He’d resort to marriage.”

  “He doesn’t seem to think it would be such a sacrifice,” she snapped.

  “Wood wants the Circle T under his thumb and—”