Jake nodded sympathetically. "Been out of the game for a bit, eh?” he asked.
Jenny would have bristled if anyone else said such a thing to her, but this man was oddly disarming in his directness. "A bit more than a bit," she admitted. "But yes, we're waiting on Josh. He should be here any minute. He owns the land to the west of us and he's been out with clients this afternoon.”
"Hunters?" Jake asked, folding up the table and closing the cabinet doors.
"Yes, but with cameras, not guns. It's a nature ranch."
"He's a photographer?" Jake asked, following her outside and shutting the trailer door behind them.
"Yes, and a good one."
"If I find anything up there in the creek bed, I may ask him to help me record everything. Documentation is crucial when you’re trying to get someone to foot the bill. Think he'd be interested?"
"I think so," Jenny said, leading him across the yard, "but you'll have to ask him yourself. He knows the area up there really well," she added.
"Oh, how so?" Jake asked.
"Part of that land used to belong to his family," Jenny hedged. "We've agreed to let him bring some clients over here from time to time. The country gets really rugged up in there. Very photogenic."
She hoped the explanation didn't sound as lame to him as it did to her, but disarming or not, she didn't know this man well enough yet to talk to him about the recent events on the ranch or the unexpected role Baxter's Draw played in it all.
Before Jake could ask any follow-up questions, Josh drove up. Jenny introduced the two men and when Kate came out of the house to join them, they all piled in Jenny's SUV for the ride to town. The talk in the car focused on general topics, Jake's drive out from Lubbock, the broad history of the ranch. Joe and Mandy were standing outside the restaurant waiting for them when they arrived, so the six of them walked in together.
When everyone had a cold Dos Equis in front of them and access to massive bowls of chips and chile con queso, Jake held up his beer and said, “Here’s to new friends.”
They all clinked the necks of their bottles and drank to his toast. “I really do appreciate the chance to work on the ranch, ladies,” he continued. “Lots of folks would think I’m absolutely nuts, which I actually don’t deny, but I believe that creek bed is key to proving my theory about the legend of the ‘lost’ silver.”
Joe said, “My dad said when he was a kid, he and his buddies went all up and down the South Llano River looking for the silver. He calls it the Bowie Mine.”
“Well, they were a little far south for that version of the story,” Jake said. “As that story goes, the Spanish had a vast treasure of gold and silver at the Mission San Saba in Menard that was buried before the Comanche overran the place and killed everyone. Jim Bowie visited the old presidio in 1832 and carved his name on one of the gate pillars. When his party was also attacked by Indians, they holed up in a place that came to be called Bowie’s Fort. They were supposedly right on top of the buried treasure and didn’t even know it.”
“Why in the world would anyone think there was gold and silver at an old Spanish mission?” Mandy asked.
“By some accounts, when the Spanish picked the site they found two walls forming a right angle already there and some silver and gold pieces. That’s what led them to find the lost mine, which was supposedly worked by the Aztecs,” he said.
“This far north of Tenochtitlan?” Kate asked. “That doesn’t seem very likely."
"Ten-oh-teaches-what?” Mandy giggled.
“Tenochtitlan,” Kate repeated, grinning. “It was the capital of the Aztec Empire. The ruins are about 30 miles north of Mexico City.”
“Very good,” Jake said approvingly. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I read up a little after we talked,” Kate admitted. “Isn’t this lost mine business right up there with the Seven Cities of Cibola?”
“Let me guess,” Jenny said, reaching for a chip. “Also filled with gold?”
“Mountains of it,” Jake said.
“Why don’t we just throw in the Fountain of Youth while we’re at it?” Josh laughed. “You’d sure enough make mountains of dough off that!”
“The Fountain of Youth was actually supposed to be in Florida,” Jake said.
“I’ve been to Florida,” Josh replied. “There’s lots of folks down there thinking they’re young enough to be sitting on the beach in those bathing suits but . . . well . . . damn.”
Everyone at the table laughed. “I hear you,” Mandy said. “I used to sell those same women clothes in Nieman’s. There is just no good way to tell a woman she’s no longer young enough for the current fashion.”
“What do you say?” Joe asked curiously.
“Oh, you smile and say things like, ‘Your friends are not gonna believe how you look in that dress!’” Mandy said. “You just have to be sure to make your voice go up in all the right places.”
“So you sing the Song of Delusion?” Jake asked.
“It is the music of my people,” Mandy assured him with mock sincerity.
“Which people would that be?” he asked, playing along.
“The Fashionistas of Planet Retail,” Joe said, yelping when Mandy socked him in the arm. “Ouch! Baby that hurt!”
“Don’t go mocking her sense of fashion, Joe,” Jenny warned. “You’re taking your life in your own hands.”
“Then I reckon I’d die a happy man,” he said, looking at Mandy with adoring eyes.
“Oh dear God, you two,” Kate said. “The food’s here. Stop already.”
The conversation continued over heaping plates of steaming Mexican food. As she listened and occasionally joined in, Kate watched her sisters and the men at the table. Jenny’s natural edginess softened to good-humored bantering with Josh, whose perpetual ease seemed her perfect counterbalance. Mandy’s bubbly exuberance found a devoted audience in Joe, but he clearly respected her intelligence and really listened while she talked.
And then there was the newcomer. Jake Martin. Handsome, well-educated, seemingly without pretense, and disturbingly direct, but with no hint of rudeness. At the moment he was discussing metal detectors with Josh, effortlessly switching over from a conversation with Joe about education as an economic indicator after promising Mandy he’d speak to the book club she’d just joined at Jolene’s insistence. Kate had known him all of two hours, but in the oddest way, it seemed like he’d always been there.
It probably wasn’t what Langston Lockwood intended when he drew up a will that bound his daughters to the Rocking L as a condition of keeping their inheritance, but just months after his death, Kate was overwhelmed with a new sense of family, and with possibilities for her own life she’d long ago dismissed from her mind. Even if that possibility wasn’t sitting across the table from her, just the opening up of her heart to the idea was an unexpected gift.
She felt a hand on her arm and turned toward Jenny who leaned in whispering, “You’re awful quiet, Katie. You okay?”
“I’m fine, honey,” Kate answered with a smile, laying her hand over her sister’s. “I’m just fine.”
31
“A horse?” Jake asked weakly. “You want me to ride a horse?”
Kate grinned. This was going to be fun. She pushed back her hat and leaned forward in the saddle looking down at the vaguely panic stricken professor. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, but when Kate looked out the window a little before five, the lights in Jake’s trailer were on. He’d said he was an early riser and assured her he’d love to get a look at the area around the creek first thing in the day.
So, true to her word, she finished her coffee and her book, went to the barn, and saddled two horses, selecting the ever-patient Horsefly for her guest. Now she was sitting in the saddle just beyond the awning of Jake’s trailer looking down at him and not even trying to hide her amusement. “Is there a problem, Jake?” she asked, grinning.
Horsefly bobbed his head up and down as if asking t
he same question, which sent Jake backpedaling a couple of steps. “When you said we’d take a ride up to the creek bed this morning,” he protested, “I thought you meant in your pickup, not on . . . on that . . . thing.”
“That thing’s name is Horsefly,” she said. “He’s almost as old as I am and gentle as a lamb. He also speaks English perfectly well, so don’t be rude.”
Jake threw Horsefly a cautious glance and mumbled, “My apologies, Horsefly, no insult intended.” He jumped when the old horse replied with a soft nicker.
“Dear Lord, does he really know what I’m saying?”
“Jake, for God’s sake, he certainly knows his own name,” Kate said, leaning forward and patting Horsefly’s neck. “It’s okay, boy. He’s from the city,” she explained. Then turning back to Jake she said, “Look, he knows the way up to the creek better than I do. You just get on him and hold on. He’ll do the rest.”
When Jake still didn’t move, she gave him the bad news. “There’s no road. It’s either by horse or walk, and it’s a hell of alot faster on a horse.”
Resigning himself to his fate, Jake tentatively approached Horsefly, who turned his head and gave another reassuring nicker. The old horse had fidgeted a little while they were talking and was now perpendicular to Kate’s mount on her right. Rather than risk going behind the animal, Jake came up on the most readily available side — the right, which would put him backwards in the saddle if he worked up the courage to mount.
She almost let him do it, and then thought better of it. “Uh, Jake, you need to get around on the other side if you want to be facing forward. You mount a horse from his left side.”
“You mean I have to walk around him?” Jake asked, his voice going up a little.
This was getting ridiculous. “As much as you might deserve it to knock some sense into that head of yours, this horse has never kicked anybody in his life.”
Sensing she was losing her patience with him, Jake swallowed, gathered up his courage and navigated a huge circle around Horsefly’s hindquarters. Finally, when he was standing beside the stirrup, Jake looked up at her imploringly, “Now what?”
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “And none of this male ego bullshit. Are you really afraid of horses?”
“I’m afraid of getting thrown off a horse,” he said. “I don’t hold any grudges against the species.”
“Listen to me,” she said, letting warmth come into her voice. “I wouldn’t put you on a horse that would throw you. I promise you, it’s all autopilot with Horsefly.”
“He threw Jenny,” Jake said. “Remember? I heard the story at dinner last night.”
“Yes, he did throw Jenny,” Kate agreed. “I’ll give you that, but she was standing up in the stirrups and Josh scared the hell out of the poor old darling with that ATV. Horsefly never saw one before. You might not believe me, but if he saw one today, he wouldn’t buck again. This horse is smart, Jake. We all rode him when we were kids. Mandy was on him when she was 2.”
“There’s not going to be any ATVs up there today, is there?” he asked, clearly intent on covering all his bases.
“No, Josh is keeping his clients on his own land for the next two weeks so they don’t get in your way.”
Mollified by that news and summoning all his good humor, Jake said, “Okay. If Miss Neiman Marcus rode this horse at 2, I can do it at 38.”
“Good man,” she said, simultaneously filing away the information that they were only a year apart in age and realizing that she really did think Jake Martin was a good man. Then she got back to business. “Put your left boot in the stirrup. Grab hold of the saddle horn; push off with your right leg while you pull up with the left. Just swing your leg over and find the other stirrup with your foot. Surely you’ve watched John Wayne do it.”
Jake cocked his eyebrow skeptically, but he lifted his leg and got his foot in the stirrup. Bracing himself with the saddle horn, he muttered, “Okay, Houston, we have lift off.”
It took two or three half-hopping attempts, but finally his body understood the right combination of push and pull and he was onboard. A look of something very akin to triumph washed over his features and then he looked helplessly at Kate and said, “Unless there’s power steering, I have no idea what’s next.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re only at one horsepower. You just hold the reins and concentrate on not falling off. Okay?” When Jake nodded, she clicked her tongue, “Come on, Horsefly.”
The old horse, clearly sympathetic to the whole situation, obligingly ambled along behind Kate’s horse, Bracelet. When they reached the pasture gate, Kate stepped off and opened it, leading her horse through and then motioning to Horsefly. He placidly complied, standing stock still on the other side until she was back in the saddle and clicked her tongue again for him to follow.
The two horses fell into a companionable side-by-side gait and out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Jake was instinctively picking up the motion and relaxing into the saddle. He actually looked like he could be a natural if he’d just settle down. “You can breathe, Jake. I told you, I’ve seen 2-year-olds on that horse,” she said.
“And I have no doubt they were better horsemen than me,” he replied ruefully, but his voice had returned to its normal pitch. After a step or two he added, “Look, I really don’t think I can do this every day, and I’m going to have some equipment to bring up here. Is there a Plan B?”
“Yeah,” she said. “There is. I just thought it would be nice to ride up this morning.” She cleared her throat a little self-consciously. “I’m sorry, Jake. I didn’t know how you felt about horses. We just kinda take riding for granted around here. My bad.”
“No, no,” he said, picking up on her discomfort instantly. “Don’t say that. It’s not your bad at all. As much as it kills me to admit it, this isn’t too bad, and I do appreciate you not making fun of me . . . much,” he finished, winking at her.
Kate’s heart did a funny little flop in her chest. She honestly couldn’t remember a man ever winking at her in her entire life. Falling easily into the teasing turn in the conversation, she said, “Aw, the making fun part will come later when I tell the story.”
“Great,” he groaned. “I can hardly wait. So, what’s Plan B?”
“I’ll buy you a mule.”
“Mother of God!” he croaked. “What makes you think I can ride a mule any better than I can sit a horse?”
That did it. Kate laughed so hard she had to wipe the tears from her eyes. Every time she looked at his confused face, the peals of laughter started all over again. When she was finally able to catch her breath a little, she gasped, “Not that kind of mule. Ranch utility vehicle. Four wheels. As in drive.”
“Oh, thank God,” he said, exhaling heavily. “And thank you.”
“No, thank you,” she said, slapping his knee. “That’s the best laugh I’ve had in a coon’s age.”
“Happy to oblige,” he deadpanned.
Snickering, Kate said, “Honestly, I’ve been looking at the mule for two weeks. I told the dealer I had to think about it. I’ll call him when we get back to the house. Daddy wouldn’t have had one on the place just because the brand was Kawasaki if nothing else, but we are trying to bring the Rocking L into the 21st century now that he’s gone.”
Turning toward her a little, Jake said, “I get the idea that your father was a difficult man?”
Well, hell. There was an opening for you. They had at least an hour up to the creek. That might be long enough to explain the Langston Lockwood brand of “difficult.”
32
“Difficult is one way to describe Daddy,” Kate said, staring off across the pasture. A light breeze stirred the air. She shivered, then chuckled and reached to turn up the collar of her jacket.
“What?” Jake asked. “Did I say something funny?”
“No,” she said. “I was just remembering something the old folks say about getting a sudden chill like that.”
“My gra
ndmother used to tell me somebody just walked over my grave,” he said, grimacing. “Scared the hell out of me. My love of over-sized sweaters is a secret plan to hold death at bay with bad fashion.”
Kate laughed. “My love of over-sized sweaters involves books and fireplaces.”
“Essential and complementary objects,” he agreed. “So was the person walking on your grave your father?”
“That’s the sort of thing he’d do. Hound somebody all the way to the grave,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he’s haunting this ranch. Or haunting us. Waiting for us to screw up.”
“Ah,” Jake said, nodding. “One of those fathers. Me too.”
Kate shifted in the saddle to look at him. “What did your father have to complain about? You’re a college professor.”
“Ouch!” Jake protested. “Don’t make it sound like the last nail in my social coffin.”
“No offense intended,” she assured him. “But don’t you have a collection of tweed suits or something?”
“I have never owned a tweed suit in my life,” he said with conviction. “Although I confess I do have a pith helmet. Which is a collectible,” he added. “I don’t wear it.”
She gave him a suspicious look. “Not even at home in front of the mirror?” she asked.
“I plead the fifth,” he said, winking again.
“Just as I suspected,” she laughed. “So are you hiding a misspent youth?”
“Nope. Straight A student. Total nerd in high school. Did my degrees start to finish, no breaks, on scholarship.”
“So what was the problem?” she asked.
“Archaeology. Well, history first, then archaeology. You see, my destiny was, in his eyes, to go to medical school and have a respectable career.” She caught the bitter inflection on the word “respectable.”
Under normal circumstances Kate would have let a statement like that hang in the air. She didn’t want people prying in her business, so she tried not to pry in theirs. Besides, this sounded like an old, sore subject for Jake.
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 15