Palomino

by Danielle Steel

  Sam looked at her now, in answer to her question, “Help me find him. Please, oh, if you could do that…”

  “How?”

  Sam sat back against the couch and sniffed as she thought. “He'll go to a ranch somewhere. He Won't want any other kind of work. How would I get a list of ranches?”

  “I can tell you all the ones I know in this area, the men can tell you others. No, let me ask them, we'll cook up some excuse, some reason. Sam”—Caroline's eyes lit up—“you'll find him.”

  “I hope so.” She smiled for the first time in hours. “I won't stop until I do.”

  By mid-April Sam had contacted sixty-three ranches. At first she had called the ones in the area, looking for Tate, then those farther north, some farther south, then she had begun to call other states. Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Arkansas, she had even called one in Nebraska that one of the men had suggested. He had talked to Tate about the place and said the food and the pay were real good. But no one had seen Tate Jordan. Sam left her name and address and Caroline's number and asked them to call her if Tate should appear. She used Caroline Lord's name everywhere and it helped her, and the two pored hourly over directories, want ads, listings, advertisements, and the names they got from the men. She had long since asked her office for an extension and had promised them some kind of definitive answer by May 1. If she wasn't coming back to New York, they wanted to know by then. Until then the job would be hers. But she didn't give a damn about her job, all she wanted was Tate Jordan, and he was nowhere to be found. It was as though a month before he had dropped off the face of the earth never to be seen again. He had to be somewhere, Sam knew, but the question was where? It was becoming an obsession with her. She no longer rode with the men, no matter that that began rumors or confirmed their suspicions. From the day that he left she rode with them no more.

  She went to the cabin once alone, but couldn't bear it, and had ridden home on Black Beauty, her face covered with tears. Now she seldom even rode the big black Thoroughbred, even when Caroline encouraged her to do so. All she wanted to do was stay at the house, make phone calls, go over lists, look at maps, write letters, and try to figure out where he was. So far it had all been fruitless, and secretly Caroline was beginning to think that it might stay that way. The truth was that it was a big country, and there were countless ranches. There was always the possibility that he had gone to a different line of work entirely, or that he wasn't using his real name. She was much too familiar with the scores of drifters who had worked on the ranch in the years she had owned it to be able to hold out great hope to Sam. It was entirely possible that he would turn up somewhere, someday, but it was equally possible that he would never be seen or heard from again. It was even possible that he had left the country, gone to Canada or Mexico, or even one of the big ranches in Argentina. Often the ranch owners let men like Tate work without papers, or with falsified ones, just so they could have them on their ranches. As ranch foremen went, Tate had a long list of good credentials, he was a reliable, hardworking man, and he had a great deal of expertise to offer any ranch. Any ranch owner with half a brain would recognize that, the question was—which ranch owner and which ranch.

  By the end of April there was still nothing, and Sam had three days to call her office and tell them where things stood. She had told them a month before that Caroline was ill and it was suddenly difficult for her to leave when she had said she would. They had been understanding at first, but now Charlie was calling. The fun was over. Harvey wanted her back. They were suddenly having big trouble with her automobile client, and if she was coming back at all, then Harvey wanted it to be right now. She couldn't really blame him, but she couldn't tell them either that she was in worse shape now than she had been when she left New York. More than ever, now that he was gone, she knew how much she loved Tate, how much she respected him and his way of life. It was particularly painful to her now when she saw Bill and Caro, and it was agonizing for Caroline to share in Samantha's loss.

  “Sam.” As she looked at her young friend over coffee on the last day of April, she sighed deeply and decided to tell her what she thought. “I think you should go back.”

  “Where?” She was glancing again at one of her lists of ranches and wondered if Caroline had thought of one they should try again. But Caroline was quick to shake her head.

  “I meant New York.”

  “Now?” Sam looked shocked. “But I haven't found him.”

  Caroline gritted her teeth for what she wanted to say next, much as she hated to hurt Sam. “You don't know that you ever will.”

  “That's a rotten thing to say.” Sam looked at her angrily and pushed away her coffee. She had been testy and nervous since the whole nightmare had begun. She never slept, she never ate, she never got fresh air anymore. She only did one thing. She looked for Tate. She had even driven to some of the ranches, and flown briefly to one.

  “But it's true, Sam. You have to face the truth now. You may never find him again. I hope like hell that you do, but you can't spend the rest of your life looking for a man who wants to be left alone. Because if you find him, you don't know that you'll be able to convince him that what you think is right and that he's wrong. He thinks that the two of you are too different. It could just be that he's right. And even if he isn't, if this is what he wants, you can't force him to change his mind.”

  “What brought this on? Have you been talking about it to Bill?”

  “No more than I have to.” Sam knew that he disapproved of her relentless search for Tate. He called it a “fool manhunt” and thought Sam was wrong to push. “The man said what he wanted to tell her when he left here, Caro. There's nothing more to say.” But then once he had admitted that if he had done the same thing he hoped that she would have tried as hard to find him. “I just think you ought to face the possibilities, Sam. It's been a month and a half.”

  “So maybe it'll just take a little longer.”

  “And a little longer … and a little longer … and a little longer than that. And then what? You spend twenty years looking for a man you barely knew.”

  “Don't say that.” Sam looked exhausted as she closed her eyes. She had never worked as hard on any job as she had on the search for Tate. “I knew him. I know him. Maybe in some ways I knew him too damn well, and that scared him off.”

  “It could have,” Caroline agreed. “But the point is that you can't go on living like this. It'll destroy you.”

  “Why should it?” The bitterness in her voice was easy to read. “Nothing else has.” John and Liz had had their baby the month before, a little girl, and they had even shown her and victorious Liz in the delivery room on the evening news. But Sam didn't care about that anymore either. All she wanted was to find Tate.

  “You have to go back, Sam.” Caroline sounded as stubborn as Sam herself.

  “Why? Because I don't belong here?” She looked at Caroline angrily, but this time Caroline nodded at what she said.

  “That's right. You don't. You belong back in your own world, at your desk, in your office, in your own apartment, with your own things, meeting new people and seeing old friends, being who you really are and not who you pretended to be for a while. Sam”—she reached out and touched her hand—“I'm not tired of having you here. If it were up to me, you could stay forever. But it's not good for you, don't you see that?”

  “I don't care. I just want to find him.”

  “But he doesn't want you to find him. If he did, he would let you know where he is. He must be taking care that you don't find him, Sam, and if that's true, then you've lost the battle. He could hide from you for years.”

  “So you think I should quit. Is that it?”

  There was a long silence between them, and then Caroline nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

  “But it's only been six weeks.” Tears flooded her eyes as she tried to combat the logic of what Caroline had said. “Maybe if I wait another month—”

  “If you do, you
won't have a job, and that won't do you any good either. Sam, you need to go back to a normal life.”

  “What's normal anymore?” She had almost forgotten. It had been a year since she had been “happily” married to John Taylor, since she had led a perfectly ordinary life as an advertising executive in Manhattan, married to a man she loved and whom she thought loved her.

  “Normal?” She looked at Caroline in horror. “You must be kidding. I wouldn't know normal anymore if it introduced itself and bit me on the ass!” Caroline laughed at her bleak humor but the look in her eyes didn't waver, and at last Sam sat back in her chair with a long pensive sigh. “But what the hell am I going to do in New York?”

  “Forget all this for a while. It'll do you good. You can always come back.”

  “I'd just be running away again if I left here.”

  “No, you'd be doing something healthy. This isn't a life for you here, not like this.” It hadn't been since he left.

  Sam nodded silently, left the table, and walked slowly back to her room. She placed the call to Harvey Maxwell two hours later and then she went out to the barn and saddled Black Beauty. She rode him for the first time in three weeks that afternoon, riding him headlong, into the wind, at full gallop, taking every chance, every jump, every hedge, every stream. Had Caroline seen her, she would have feared for the horse's life, as well as that of her young friend. Had Tate seen her, he would have killed her.

  But she was alone now, riding as fast and as hard as she could until she knew that the horse could go no more. She cantered him back to the main compound then and walked him slowly around the corral for half an hour. She knew that she owed that much to the animal, no matter how unhappy she was. And then, when she felt that she had sufficiently walked him and he was cooler, she led him back to his stall and took off the English saddle, stood looking at him for a long time, and then patted his flanks one last time with a whispered, “Good-bye, old friend.”

  The plane landed at Kennedy Airport on a glowing spring evening, and Samantha looked down at the city with a blank stare. All she could think of as she unfastened her seat belt was the last she had seen of Caroline at the airport, standing tall and proud next to the old foreman, with tears running down her cheeks as she waved good-bye. Bill had said almost nothing to her as she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek in the crowded terminal, and then suddenly he had squeezed her arm and growled fondly, “Go on back to New York, Sam, and take care now.” It was his way of saying that he thought she was doing the right thing. But was she? She wondered as she picked up her tote bag and moved into the aisle. Had she been right to come home so soon? Should she have stayed longer? Would Tate have turned up if she'd just waited another month or two? Of course he still might appear, or call from somewhere. Caroline had promised to continue to ask around, and of course if anyone heard from him, she had promised to call Sam. Other than that there was nothing anyone could do. Sam knew that much herself as she sighed deeply and stepped into the airport.

  The crowd around her was almost overwhelming, the noise level, the bodies, the confusion. After five months on the ranch she had forgotten what it was like to deal with that many people, to move as quickly as they were moving. She felt totally devoured by the press of people around her as she made her way to the baggage-claim area, feeling like a tourist in her own town and looking appropriately bewildered. There was of course, not a single available porter, there were hundreds of people waiting for taxis, and when she finally got one, she had to share it with two Japanese tourists and a plastics salesman from Detroit. When he asked her where she had come from, she was almost too tired to answer, but finally murmured something about California.

  “You an actress?” He seemed intrigued as he looked her over, taking in the shining blond hair and the deep tan. But Sam was quick to shake her head as she looked absentmindedly out the window.

  “No, a ranch hand.”

  “A ranch hand?” He stared at her in open disbelief and she turned to look at him with a tired smile. “This your first time in the big city?” He looked hopeful but she shook her head and did whatever she could to discourage the conversation after that. The two Japanese tourists were chatting animatedly in their own language, and the driver spoke only in curses, darting between lanes of traffic. It was an appropriate reentry into her city, and as they crossed the bridge from Queens into Manhattan, she looked at the skyline and suddenly wanted to cry. She didn't want to see the Empire State Building and the U.N. and all the other buildings. She wanted to see the big house, the barn, the beautiful redwood trees, and that vast expanse of blue sky. “Pretty, isn't it?” The perspiring plastics salesman from Detroit moved closer, and Sam only shook her head and edged closer to the door next to where she sat.

  “No, not really. Not after what I've seen lately.” She eyed him angrily, as though her return to New York were all his fault. He eyed one of the Japanese girls after that, but she only giggled and went on chattering in Japanese with her friend.

  Mercifully the driver dropped Sam off first, and she stood for a long moment on the sidewalk, staring at her house, suddenly afraid to go in, sorry she'd come home, and longing more painfully for Tate than she ever had. What in hell was she doing here in this strange town, all alone, surrounded by all these people, going back to the apartment she had lived in with John? All she wanted was to go back to California, to find Tate, to live and work on the ranch. Why couldn't she have that? Was it so much to ask? She wondered as she unlocked the front door and struggled up the stairs with her bags. No twelve-hour day in the saddle had exhausted her as this one had, with a five-hour plane trip, two meals, a movie, and the emotional shock of coming back to New York. Groaning under the weight of her bags, she dropped them next to her front door on the landing, hunted for her key, fitted it in the lock, and shoved open the front door. The place smelled like the inside of a vacuum cleaner as she'stepped inside. It was all there, where she had left it, looking vacant and unloved, and different somehow, as though while she'd been gone all the furniture had subtly altered, shrunken or grown or only slightly changed color. Nothing looked exactly the same as it had. Yet it was, every bit of it, just as it had been when she and John had lived there. She felt like an intruder now, or a ghost returning to a scene from her past.

  “Hello?” She wasn't even sure why she said it, but when no one answered, she closed the front door and sat down on a chair with a sigh, and then as she looked around, the sobs overtook her, her shoulders shook, and she dropped her face into her hands.

  The phone rang insistently twenty minutes later, and she sniffed and blew her nose in a handkerchief and answered the phone, not even sure why she did. After all this time it was obviously going to be a wrong number, unless it was Harvey or Charlie. They were the only two people in New York who knew that she was coming back.

  “Yes?”

  “Sam?”

  “No.” She gave a half-smile through her tears. “It's a burglar.”

  “Burglars don't cry, silly.” It was'Charlie.

  “Sure they do. There's ho color TV here to rip off.”

  “Come on over to our place, I'll give you mine.”

  “I don't want it.” And then slowly the tears began flowing again, she sniffed loudly and closed her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. “Sorry, Charlie. I guess I'm not exactly thrilled to be home.”

  “Sounds like it. So? Why'd you come back?” He sounded matter-of-fact as he said it.

  “Are you crazy? You and Harvey have been threatening murder and mayhem for the last six weeks, and you want to know why I'm here?”

  “Okay, so come help us out with your crazy client and then go back. For good, if that's what you want.” Charlie's approach to life was always so damn practical.

  “It's not that simple.”

  “Why not? Look, Sam, life is very short and can be very sweet if you let it. You're a big girl, you're free now, you should be able to live wherever you want to. If what you want is to run around with a bunch
of horses for the rest of your life, then go do it.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Sure. Why not? Tell you what, why don't you just try it out here for a while, kind of like a tourist, see how it feels to you after a couple of months, and if you're not happy … hell, Sam, you can always split.”

  “You make it all sound so easy.”

  “That's how it should be. In any case, pretty lady, welcome back. Even if you don't want to be here, we're happy as hell to have you around.”

  “Thanks, love. How's Mellie?”

  “Fat, but pretty. The baby's due in another two months, and this one's a girl, I just know it.”

  “Sure, Charlie, sure. Haven't I heard that at least two other times?” She smiled at the phone and wiped the tears off her face. It was at least nice to be back in the same town with him again. “The truth of it is, Mr. Peterson, you only know how to make boy babies. It's all the basketball games you go to, something in the air there gets into your genes.”

  “All right, so maybe what I need to do more of in future is go to strip joints. That makes sense.…” They chuckled together as Sam looked around her at the depressing apartment.

  “I thought you were going to water my plants, Charlie.” There was more laughter than reproach in her voice as she gazed at the long-gone wisps of brownish green.

  “For five months? You must be kidding. I'll buy you new ones.”

  “Don't bother. I love you anyway. Tell me, by the way, how bad things really are in the office, now that you've got me home.”

  “Bad.”

  “Terrible-bad or just medium-bad?”