"I do things right," her father countered. If he were running it, John Malone always said, "the world would be a hell of a lot more efficient."
"Hell," Deke once said, "being the operative word."
Basically Dori agreed with her brother. But every time she thought it, she was forced to acknowledge two other things as well: Her father had taken her back when Chris tossed her out. And he thought Jake was the most wonderful person in the world.
For that last alone, Dori could put up with almost anything. Loving Jake excused a multitude of sins.
"You're not doin' the boy a favor, lettin' him think there's a chance to keep that ranch," her father said now. "Just say no."
"I've said no. But I have to wait and get Riley Stratton's official offer."
Judge Hamilton, Poppy's father, had told her that yesterday, when she'd called to ask his advice on how to do things properly. "You want it on paper," he'd told her. "Always important to have everything on paper."
The paper hadn't arrived yet.
So Jake kept hoping. At least five times a day he looked at her with those big blue eyes and said, "You know, Mom, it'd be okay if you changed your mind." And no matter how many times Dori assured him that she wasn't going to, he always said, "You might."
"I can handle Jake," she told her father now.
He didn't look convinced.
The letter came on Friday morning.
It had clearly been drafted by a lawyer. It was full of proper legal jargon and phrasing. It contained a copy of an abstract as thick as her wrist, and in the end, it made an offer for Jake's half of the ranch.
It was a lot of money. For a long moment Dori just stared at it. Then she thought about all the things that they could do with it. Jake's future was taken care of. She wouldn't have to worry anymore.
Desperation she'd never even realized she was feeling—apparently had been feeling since she'd got pregnant with Jake—suddenly seemed to loosen its grip on her.
Thanks to Chris—she said a silent prayer for the repose of his restless soul—she and Jake would be all right.
It was an unbelievable relief.
Her fingers trembled as she scanned the letter again, then set it aside to look at the abstract. Riley hadn't been kidding. Jake was heir to what, on paper certainly, looked to be a substantial spread. She read details about the herd, the acreage, the number under cultivation, the water rights, the BLM leases, the three-bedroom ranch house, barn and other small outbuildings. For just a moment she tried to imagine it, then shoved the thought away.
There was no point in daydreaming. They had a bird in hand right here.
She picked up the phone and called Ranee Phillips's office. Poppy's father had recommended him, even though his office was in Helena.
"I just need someone to check over the contract," she told him.
"No problem," Ranee said cheerfully. "We'll check it over and have it back to you next week." It was that simple.
She rang off and kissed the contract. She felt like kissing the whole world.
Dori wasn't sure Jake would want to celebrate the selling of his ranch, but he had other things to celebrate when he came home from spending a day at Taggart Jones's ranch. He was grubby, sunburned and exhausted when he appeared on the doorstep at six. But he was also grinning all over his face.
"I helped, Mom! Taggart tol' me what to do, an' I did it! He said I'd make a hand!"
Dori gave him a hug. "Wonderful." She put an arm around his shoulders. "We've been invited to Grandma and Grandpa's for dinner," she said. "Go get some clean clothes. You can get cleaned up at Grandma's."
Jake never stopped talking about the ranch the whole time he was getting his clothes. He kept talking all the way over to his grandparents' house.
"Guess what!" he told his grandfather, the second John Malone got home from the store. "I herded cattle today. I did good, too. Taggart said so. I'm gonna make a hand."
Dori watched as her father's smile faded slightly. He looked at Dori. "You let him go out there again?"
"He likes it," she said simply.
"It's filling his head with foolishness," her father replied.
No, it's not, Dori wanted to retort, but she swallowed the words. Her stormy adolescence had provided enough fights between them. And though she often found herself disagreeing with him silently, her gratitude for his taking her in and accepting Jake had given her the fortitude to suffer their disagreements in silence. His recent heart problems had only confirmed that approach.
So she didn't argue now. But as they sat down to dinner, she said mildly, "He needs something to do in the summer."
"He can come to the store."
"I don't wanta come to the store," Jake said. "It's boring."
"It's life," his grandfather said sharply. "Sit up straight."
Jake sat up straight. He thwacked his fork on the side of his plate.
"Don't do that," his grandfather said. "And don't whine about the store. It's your legacy."
Jake's brows furrowed. "What's a legacy?"
"What you inherit. What you're going to do one day."
Jake brightened at once. "Well, I inherited a ranch! So I'm gonna be a rancher."
"No," his grandfather said, "you're not." Then, ignoring the boy's stricken look, he turned to Dori. "Did you get the contract?"
Dori didn't answer. She was looking at Jake.
He was white. Absolutely white. She had never seen him white before—not when he'd had food poisoning when he was three, not when Buster Keogh, the bully down the street, had sucker-punched him in the stomach when he was five. Not even last fall when he'd fallen off the jungle gym at school and had broken his arm.
He was white—and in pain. And he looked from his grandfather to her—as if she was the only one who could save him.
"Did you?" her father persisted.
Dori dragged her gaze from Jake's face, unable to bear it. "Yes," she answered and heard the raggedness in her own voice. "I did. Today."
He nodded, pleased. "Good. Sign it. Then if you're so interested in catering to the yuppie crowd, you can use some of that ranch money to stock a few new lines. Get some of those granolas you're so keen on."
"Granolas?" Jake echoed.
"Might want to think about reroofing the building, too," John Malone went on. "Reckon we could last a few more years, but it's not a bad idea to do things before they absolutely need to be done."
"Roof the building?" Jake's voice was faint.
"I know it's not my money to be telling you what to do," her father continued, still talking to her, not to Jake. "But it's going to be Jake's someday. You've got to see it succeeds so he'll have something when it's his turn."
"You're sellin' my ranch for the store?" Remote no longer, Jake was almost shouting now. "But I don't want the store!"
"Jake!" Dori said desperately.
"I don't! I want the ranch!"
"Someday—" Dori began, trying to placate him, wishing she could just stick a glob of mashed potatoes in his mouth. She did not need another dinner table battle. Not now. Not ever. She'd spent the last eight years of her life trying to make sure it never happened again.
"I don't want someday," Jake wailed. "I got half the ranch now an' I wanta keep it. I don't want that dumb ol' store! Not ever!"
"Jake!" Her father stood so quickly his chair tipped over. And in his voice Dori heard the doomsday knell she remembered all too well. "Go to the bedroom."
For a long moment Jake didn't move. Dori knew he'd never heard his grandfather speak to him in that tone before, had never had his grandfather look at him that way—as if he'd spoken the unspeakable when he'd dared express what was in his heart.
Dori reached beneath the table and gave his fingers a squeeze. He looked at her.
But she couldn't help him. Not now. "Go on, Jake," she said quietly.
His lips came together in a thin line. His eyes went glassy and flat. Slowly he pulled his hand out of hers, got to his feet and turne
d away from the table.
Then he stopped and looked back—at her. It was a look she'd hoped never to see—a look of betrayal.
"It's my ranch," he whispered.
Dori started to reach a hand out to him, but her father said firmly, "That's enough, Jake. Go. Now." Jake went.
The silence that settled over the table echoed with the bitter words of a thousand confrontations. Deke's and her father's. Hers and her father's. Storms and recriminations. Anguish and harsh words.
Gone, Dori had dared hope, forever. But they weren't gone. They'd come again to strike another generation.
Then, "Pass the meat loaf," her father said.
Her mother passed it. Held it out to Dori to hand on to her father.
Dori didn't move. She sat in the eye of a hurricane, the emotions of a lifetime whirling around her.
Her mother reached past her and handed it on. Then she patted Dori's hand gently. "He's just a little boy, dear. He'll learn what really matters."
"Damn right he will," her father said gruffly. He helped himself to the meat loaf and forked another piece onto Dori's plate, as well.
She stared at it. Bile rose in her throat. "I'm full," she said. "I don't want any more."
Her father poked a fork at her. "Don't insult your mother's meat loaf."
"Have some brussels sprouts, dear," Carole Malone said. "You know you like them." He'll learn what really matters.
"Eat," her father said. "I didn't hurt him. He'll get over it."
He won't. Dori knew he wouldn't. She picked up her fork. It was all she could do not to gag as she ate.
Riley had never been so tired in his life.
He'd been moving cattle from sunup to sundown all week, doctoring pinkeye, doing some vaccinating, fixing some fence, cursing the hot dry weather that seemed to invite his calves to try their swimming talents in whatever bogs they could find.
It seemed like he spent all day hauling them out and moving them, only to find them bogged in the following day somewhere else. It was not his idea of a picnic.
He dragged himself toward home Sunday evening, eager for a long hot soak, a heated-up frozen dinner and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, after which he was definitely going to find himself a hired hand.
Last year Chris had come home long enough to help him during the busy times. This year there was no Chris.
There was no one but him.
According to Jeff, if Riley actually bought Jake out, there wasn't money to hire a hand, either. According to Jeff, there wasn't going to be money for much of anything. But Riley had gone ahead and made the offer, anyway.
Once he had made up his mind about something, that was that.
He'd find the money somewhere, he'd told Jeff. There were plenty of useless things in the house he could sell. "Junk," Jeff said.
"Well, yeah. But hey, I reckon it's all in the eye of the beholder. What's junk to you and me might well be somebody else's antique."
Jeff had been doubtful, but Riley persisted. He'd sorted through piles of stuff that he hadn't used in years, and when he'd gone into town to pick up the letter Jeff had drafted for him, he'd stopped at the paper and told Sherry to put an ad in.
"It'll run in Sunday's paper," Sherry had told him.
Now he urged his horse into a trot as he came over the hill, then hauled up on the reins as he saw a car with a trailer attached parked next to the ranch house.
"Well, I'll be damned." He rubbed a hand against the back of his head and grinned. "How 'bout that?" he said aloud. "I told Jeff they'd be coming out of the woodwork, an' he didn't even believe me."
He touched his spurs to his horse's sides and started down the slope. A child came around the corner of the barn and spotted him.
"There he is!" the kid shouted. "He's comin'!"
The door to the car opened and a woman got out.
Riley was pleased. A woman was more likely to buy junk and think she'd got a deal than a man was. He tried to muster up a smidgen of cowboy charm.
Then the kid came running toward him, grinning and yelling—a kid with cowlicky brown hair and a gap-toothed grin that Riley recognized about the same instant he heard the words.
"Hi, Uncle Riley. Guess what! We're movin' in!"
* * *
Four
« ^ »
She hadn't expected Chris's brother to be thrilled. But she wished he wouldn't look quite as poleaxed as he did.
Granted that the twilight didn't show colors to their best advantage, he could have at least managed a little in his face as he rode toward them. In fact, Dori thought Riley Stratton looked whiter than chalk as he reined in his sorrel and stared down, first at Jake and then at herself.
She rubbed her hands down the sides of her jeans and pasted her best cheerful-shopkeeper smile on her face. "We decided not to sell," she said.
His brows drew down. "You what?"
She shrugged awkwardly, hating her nervousness, hoping she didn't betray it to him. "We decided not to sell," she repeated, slower this time in case he simply hadn't heard her.
But from his darkening expression, she knew he had. "I sent you a letter," he said. "A contract. You were supposed to sign the contract."
"Yes. I know. It was … very generous. But … well … Jake doesn't want to sell."
That's right, Dori. Blame it on your child, she thought, disgusted with herself, "I … don't think it's right for him to sell," she corrected herself.
"Why the hell not?" Riley Stratton's voice was harsh.
Dori glanced quickly at Jake, hoping he didn't pick up on the anger in his uncle's tone. They'd heard enough anger recently.
But if he did, he didn't show it. Jake was as matter-of-fact as ever. "'Cause I want to be a cowboy," he said simply, looking up at his uncle. "I know you tol' Mom I'd get the ranch eventu'ly, but I don't want it eventu'ly. I want it now if it's already half mine. That's why we're here. That's why we're movin' in."
Riley sat absolutely still astride his horse. He looked absolutely stunned.
Apparently Jake thought so, too, and decided that more of an explanation was called for. "We didn't come to mooch," he told his uncle earnestly. "We come to help. I been learnin'. All week. I went and rode with my uncle Cash. An' I helped Taggart, his friend, move cattle. They both say I'm gonna be a good hand," he announced proudly.
In the still-stunned silence that followed, Dori prepared to react. If Riley Stratton said one negative word to Jake, she'd go for his throat and she knew it. She'd had enough sarcastic negativism to last her a lifetime. That was—really—why they were there. Her father had trampled her dreams eight years ago. She'd agreed to it, had known it would happen when she'd come back home. It was the unspoken price her father had exacted for taking her in. It was a price that, under the circumstances, she'd willingly paid. She'd have gone on paying it forever. But she wasn't going to let him trample on Jake's. When she'd seen her son's eagerness fade, his smile vanish and his shoulders slump, when the light in his eyes had gone out and his future seemed to contain nothing better than an endless stream of granola boxes and brussels sprouts, she'd known what she had to do.
But she didn't imagine that Riley Stratton was going to agree.
Now he looked down from his horse at her small son and said, "Of course you are." He smiled a tired, but real smile at his eager nephew. "You're a Stratton, aren't you? We're all damn fine hands."
And Dori felt like throwing her arms around his neck and giving him the biggest kiss imaginable.
Fortunately, before she did anything as foolish as that, he looked back at her. "I don't understand."
"You will," she assured him, breathing easier, breathing deeply, and smiling—smiling all over her face. "I promise. You will."
He'd never seen a woman smile like that. Not at him, anyway.
It was blinding. Astonishing. It damn near knocked him off his horse.
No, what had damn near knocked Riley off his horse was a whole different kind of astonishment. What
the hell did the kid mean, they were moving in?
You can't, he'd wanted to say. No way, he'd wanted to say. Over my dead body, he'd almost said.
But how could you say a thing like that to a boy with such hope—and desperation—in his eyes.
Chris's eyes.
Sucker, Riley chided himself. He rubbed down his horse, taking his time, trying to figure out how to handle this, knowing even as he did so, that control of the situation was escaping him, that even as he stalled, they were setting up camp in his house.
Like he'd ever had control at all, he thought grimly.
Even now he could hear sounds of them moving up and down the front steps, hear the front screen door banging open and closed. They were moving in.
And how was he supposed to stop them?
Tell them to go away?
He couldn't. He didn't have the right.
But he'd never thought they'd want to move in!
You should have thought of that when you made the offer, Jeff would say when he found out. And then he would doubtless grin and say, Well, at least you've got enough money to pay a hired hand now.
Maybe they wouldn't stay.
Yeah. Riley stopped brushing his horse. He stood quietly, letting the words sink in, testing them, probing them. Yeah. Maybe they wouldn't. Probably they wouldn't. They were town people. Town people liked lights and action. They liked to be able to go out to restaurants and to see films. They liked being able to pop over to the neighbors for a cup of sugar. Little boys in town liked to ride bikes with their buddies down the street.
There were no streets here. No bikes. No restaurants. No lights. No action. Not even any neighbors for better than five miles.
People who weren't born to ranching couldn't stand it. Even some people who were couldn't stand it, he remembered. Like Tricia.
He couldn't see Dori Malone and her kid lasting long.
He breathed a little easier. He could put up with company for a little while. It wouldn't last. It was just a matter of waiting them out.
The ranch house kitchen was old-fashioned, its pine-paneled walls were weathered with age. The burners on the old stove, which ran on LP gas, had to be lit with a match. But Dori found matches, and she washed one of the several pans soaking in the sink—obviously Riley was no fan of doing dishes—and heated up a can of soup. That would take the edge off the hunger Jake had suddenly decided was killing him. Then she set about paring potatoes to go with the steak she had brought in the cooler. She was a little worried that Riley would think she was trying to take over, and she hoped a good meal would be a peace offering.
THE STARDUST COWBOY Page 5