“Here we are.” Freddy parked the truck and swung to the ground. “The old ranch house, which was frame, burned down in the thirties, so my grandfather decided to build the new one of adobe—less of a fire hazard. It’s grown like topsy over the years, but we’ve tired to keep Grandpa’s basic design.” She gestured toward the house. “You’re standing at the base of a U shape. Sixteen guest rooms are on the right wing, living and dining room in the middle, and kitchen, storage and family areas on the left. Oh, and we have one little cottage about fifty yards away in a mesquite grove. We use it for honeymooners.”
T.R. surveyed the one-story structure that stretched in front of him. Graceful was the word that came to him. A developer might want to convert the building into a clubhouse for the golf course because of its charm. The whitewashed adobe contrasted nicely with the red Spanish-tile roof, and a wide porch stretched the length of the building, with potted geraniums blooming under the porch’s shade. Shade had quickly become important to T.R., whose shirt was already sticking to his back. He noticed that Freddy seemed barely to perspire.
“Do you have many guests now?”
“Not many this week,” she said. “A group of German tourists will arrive on Sunday. The Europeans don’t seem to mind the heat, but the bulk of our business is during the winter months, although business hasn’t been that terrific recently. Anyway, now’s the time we catch up on our chores.”
Like castrating poor Red Devil, T.R. thought.
“Let’s go in.” She started down the flagstone walk, her boot heels clicking on the hard surface. “Duane and Curtis will be along in a minute with your luggage and some riding clothes. In the meantime, I think Belinda can find us each a glass of lemonade.”
The suggestion reminded T.R. that he was desperately thirsty. He never remembered being so thirsty in his life.
Freddy grasped the wrought-iron handle set into one of the carved wooden entry doors, opened the door and ushered him inside. He nearly sighed with relief as cool air welcomed him.
She led him through a short tiled hallway into a large room with beamed ceilings at least fifteen feet high. In the far left corner stood a huge beehive fireplace flanked by worn leather couches and two leather easy chairs, also battered. A rough pine coffee table held pewter ashtrays and some back issues of Arizona Highways.
Next to the fireplace, a wide bay window looked out on an enclosed courtyard, a kidney-shaped swimming pool and a Jacuzzi. A high rock wall broken by an archway curved beside the pool, and a waterfall spilled from the top of the arch. A mother and her two young children played in the tumbling water. T.R.’s thirst grew.
“Why, there you are, Freddy,” called a musical voice.
T.R. turned as a woman he judged to be in her mid-seventies walked into the room. Her gray hair was cut short in a no-nonsense style and she wore slacks and a flowered smock over her ample bosom. She had one of the sweetest faces he’d ever seen.
“You must be a mind reader, Belinda. We could sure use some lemonade.” Freddy took off her hat and slapped it against her thigh. “But first, let me introduce you. Belinda Grimes, meet T R. McGuinnes.”
Belinda nodded to him politely, but without enthusiasm.
“When the True Love was strictly a working ranch, Belinda was the only cook, but now she supervises a staff of three,” Freddy said. “She’s been working here for fifty-one years.”
“Fifty-two,” Belinda corrected in her lilting voice. “I came in March and it’s already May.”
T.R. received the news uneasily—a foreman whose ancestors homesteaded the ranch and a cook who’d spent at least two-thirds of her life here. There was some serious entrenchment at the True Love. He’d be wise to keep his plans for the property to himself for the time being.
“Dexter came in with the mail a few minutes ago,” Belinda said. “I put it in your office.”
“Thanks, Belinda.”
“Duane and I passed him on the road,” T.R. told her. “That seems like quite a hike for a man who has to use a walker.”
Freddy’s back stiffened. “Dexter Grimes was the best team roper and the finest ranch foreman in southern Arizona until his stroke ten years ago. I think your husband can manage a little walk to the mailbox, don’t you, Belinda?”
“I think that walk is what’s keeping him alive,” Belinda said.
T.R. groaned inwardly. The news just got worse and worse. There was no doubt that Belinda and Dexter Grimes were like a second set of parents to Freddy.
“I’ll get you that lemonade,” Belinda said. “Anything to eat?”
Freddy glanced questioningly at him.
“No, thanks,” he said.
“Maybe some sandwiches for the trail, Belinda,” Freddy said. “As soon as Curtis shows up with a change of clothes for Mr. McGuinnes, I’m taking him out for a ride around the ranch.”
Belinda paused. “All around the ranch?”
“I want to make certain he knows what he’s thinking of buying,” Freddy explained. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”
Belinda looked over at T.R., and he had the feeling she was trying not to laugh. Maybe she couldn’t imagine that a city slicker like him could ride a horse. “I think that’s a wonderful idea,” she said, and hurried toward the back of the house just as the front door opened.
Curtis, a lanky blond cowboy of about twenty-eight or nine, stepped inside holding a pile of clothes. Duane followed, carrying T.R.’s suitcase, brass-edged briefcase and sport coat over one arm. He had on another pair of boots, equally as scruffy as the ones he’d loaned T.R.
Duane turned to Freddy. “Where‘re you putting’ him?”
“In the John Wayne Room,” Freddy said.
Duane ambled off down a hallway to the right.
T.R. started after him. “I can—”
“Never mind,” Freddy said. “Duane will set you up down there. He knows to check around for scorpions and black widows. You might not know where to look.”
T.R. controlled a shudder. “You have much problem with that?”
“Not much,” Curtis said. “Except for this time of year. The black widows mate about now and lay their eggs. Once they get what they want from the male spider, they kill him, so if you see a web with this petrified shell of a spider in it, that’s the luckless husband, and his widow’s around somewhere.”
T.R. could do without the explanation, coming as it did on the heels of watching a castration.
But Curtis seemed determined to give a lecture in natural history. “And the scorpions, see, they come out at night. The big ones aren’t too bad, but those little ones pack quite a—”
“Now, Curtis,” Freddy said, laying a hand on his arm. “Mr. McGuinnes won’t be sleeping a wink if you carry on like that.”
“Please call me T.R.,” he said. He’d had enough of this Mr. McGuinnes stuff.
“Initials seems kind of silly,” Curtis said. “What do they stand for?”
“Thomas Rycroft.”
“Ain’t nobody ever called you Tom?”
The comment hit him like a sucker punch to the gut, but years of practice at hiding pain kept his expression neutral. Only one person had ever used that name, and he wasn’t about to let anyone sully that memory. “T.R. is fine,” he said. “Are these the clothes you brought me, Curtis?”
“Yep.” Curtis held them out proudly. “Brought you my newest jeans and a shirt my brother sent me from Abilene. There’s a belt there, and the jacket ain’t got no rips or anything, either, and I washed it last week.”
“Thanks, but I can’t imagine I’ll need a jacket.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” Freddy said. “It gets chilly up in Rogue Canyon. Better take it. And Curtis, would you look in that back closet for a hat? I think one of the guests left a black one that should fit.”
Duane reappeared from the hallway. “All set in the John Wayne Room.”
Curtis returned with a black hat in one hand and glanced at Duane. “You checked real good for black
widows and scorpions, didn’t ya, Duane?”
Duane looked blank. Then he grinned at Curtis. “Uh, shore I did. Shore. Only killed two, but of course, this is daytime. They come out more at night, you know.”
T.R. vowed he’d inspect the room completely before he turned in tonight. Nobody had said anything about tarantulas, but he seemed to remember they lived in Arizona, too. Funny, but bugs had never shown up on the Ponderosa. He accepted the clothes and started toward the hall. Then he turned. “Did John Wayne really sleep there, or is the name just something to impress the tourists?”
“He really slept there,” Freddy said. “He made several movies out at Old Tucson. This was one of his favorite places to stay, and that was his special room.”
At last, a piece of good news, T.R. thought as he carried his clothes down the hall. That settled it. The developers should definitely leave the ranch house standing and make use of the John Wayne Room somehow. There also had to be a way to get rid of the damned bugs.
* * *
CURTIS TURNED to Freddy after T.R. had left the room. “You know, I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for that tenderfoot. The John Wayne stuff is the only true thing he’s heard since he got here.”
“That’s not so, Curtis,” Freddy countered. “Everything we’ve said is true. The ranch is best seen from the back of a horse. We do sometimes have scorpions or black widows around, although the spraying service works pretty well. And you’re one to talk about taking pity on him. You gave him new jeans for the trail ride.”
Curtis grinned. “I saw right away what you’re tryin’to do. Pretty smart. So if he has a bad time out on the trail, he’ll go home, right? And then Mr. Whitlock can buy the ranch.”
“That’s the idea.”
Duane adjusted his hat and chuckled. “You should a seen his face when you cut Red Devil. But I have to hand it to him, he stuck it out and didn’t faint or nothin’.”
“He’s not a bad guy,” Freddy said. “But he’s an Easterner, and I can tell he’s used to running things and wouldn’t leave us alone like Westridge has done. He asked me right away why we didn’t cut down the mesquite bosques and sell the wood to fancy restaurants back East. If he buys the ranch, he’ll have the power to do just that.”
Duane’s jaw tightened. “Then you’d better take him on a nice long ride, boss. I may cuss those trees when we have to go in there after our critters, but I wouldn’t want that wood to be flavoring somebody’s beefsteak in New York City.”
“Exactly.”
“And I can’t picture riding for a boss who calls himself T.R.”
“It is stuffy.” Freddy had noticed that T.R.’s expression had closed down when Curtis had suggested calling him Tom. She wondered if she’d ever learn what caused the sudden reaction. Probably not. By tomorrow, T.R. McGuinnes would be heaving his saddle-sore body back onto a plane bound for New York, and Eb Whitlock would have a clear shot at the True Love.
“Lemonade,” chirped Belinda, sweeping in from the other direction carrying a frosty pitcher and glasses. “I heard you boys out here and went back for more glasses.”
“Thanks, Belinda,” Freddy said. “You didn’t have to serve us yourself.”
“Nonsense. Feels good once in a while.” She held the tray of drinks toward Freddy. “Besides, I wanted to thank you for trying to keep that Easterner from buying the place. I think you’ve hit on a wonderful idea.”
Freddy took a glass from the tray. “I hope so.”
“You know,” Belinda said, “I could probably adjust, but really if Dexter and I had to leave...”
“I’d do just about anything to keep that from happening, Belinda,” Freddy told her.
“I know.” Belinda’s usually kind expression became flinty. “So would I.” She looked over Freddy’s shoulder. “And here comes our pigeon now.”
Belinda’s description made Freddy smile. But when she turned toward the hall, her smile faded. A New York businessman had left the room. Someone with an entirely different aura had returned.
The pearl-buttoned Western shirt, black with a bold gray arrow design across the chest, molded a torso that appeared more muscular than she’d at first suspected. The jeans were snug, too, and looked mighty fine in the front. She didn’t need him to turn around to picture how they looked in the back. The black hat was pulled low over his blue eyes, eyes that flashed with a cool kind of fire, as if the clothes had awakened something elemental in him. Sure as shootin’, T. R. McGuinnes had turned into cowgirl bait. And she was the one who’d suggested they spent the night together. Her plan had just become more complicated.
2
T.R. LOVED THE FIRST two hours of the trail ride. Despite the heat that baked his back and thighs, he enjoyed the rhythm of the horse beneath him, the acrid scent of sun-warmed bushes and blossom-studded cactus plants, the call of birds and the caress of an occasional cool breeze. The hat shaded his face and the leather saddle cupped his groin in a pleasant grip.
Freddy had assigned him to Mikey, a brown horse with a black mane and tail. Mikey’s head bobbed pleasantly as they clopped along the trail behind Freddy’s mount, a reddish mare named Maureen, after Maureen O’Hara, one of John Wayne’s leading ladies. T.R. had never ridden horseback behind a woman before and hadn’t realized how sexy the view could be.
He felt vaguely guilty about his thoughts, but not guilty enough to censor them. Freddy’s firm buttocks rested lightly in the saddle as they walked, but brief periods of trotting sent her into a graceful posting motion that was decidedly erotic. His manhood tightened in response to the suggestive movement, but he didn’t plan to indulge in anything beyond innocent fantasy. The True Love already had too much emotional baggage for his taste. He wasn’t about to add another entanglement by becoming sexually involved with the foreman.
Freddy led him to the south boundary of the ranch, and from there they rode west, then north toward Whitlock’s property. T.R. glimpsed clusters of cattle, but they were never close enough to get a really good look. The sales brochure had mentioned a herd of about two hundred female Herefords, ten bulls and whatever calves had been born that spring. Freddy pointed out a twenty-acre horse pasture fenced with barbed wire to separate the horses turned loose in the pasture from the cattle that roamed the rest of the property. Farther on was another fenced pasture that held a scattered herd of approximately a hundred red-and-white Herefords.
“Those belong to Duane,” Freddy said over her shoulder. “They carry his brand, the D-Bar. He’s working on an experimental breeding project, so we keep his stock separated from ours and lease him the land. Ours forage on whatever they can find, but Duane has to feed this bunch.”
“Have you had a roundup yet?” he called ahead to her.
She turned in her saddle. “Three weeks ago. That’s the one time we’re booked solid because we let the guests help.”
T.R. nodded. He was sorry he’d missed that.
As they headed east, towards the mountains, T.R. began to feel discomfort. He checked his watch and realized he’d expected to be back at the ranch by now. Maybe he’d underestimated his endurance.
A short time later, Freddy gestured to her left. “That adobe building over there is the original homestead built by Thaddeus Singleton.”
T.R. stood in his stirrups, glad for a reason to stretch and get his behind out of the saddle. He studied the squat, flat-roofed structure that wasn’t much bigger than a single-car garage. A hundred years of sun and rain had battered and bleached the earthen blocks; strong winds and animals had knocked holes in the walls. Yet the pioneer in T.R. admired the spirit of the man who had carved out this foothold in a hostile land.
“I can take you a little closer, if you’re interested,” Freddy said.
He probably shouldn’t agree to detours, considering the condition of his thighs, but he didn’t want to seem like a wuss, either. “Sure.”
As they drew closer, he noticed that a wooden lintel remained in place over the front door, and the ever-
present heart with an arrow through it had been burned deep into the wood. In a far corner of the roofless building, the adobe was blackened, as if by fire. “What caused that?” he asked, pointing.
“Hikers staying here for the night, most likely.” Freddy leaned her forearms on her saddle horn and gazed at the ruins. “I’ve found all sorts of evidence of people camping here. Leigh and I have talked about fencing the building off and eventually restoring it, but the corporation hasn’t been interested and Leigh and I don’t have the money. My grandfather poured that concrete floor in the thirties, back when the roof was still intact and we used this place for temporary shelter if we were caught out here in bad weather. That’s the last improvement the place had.”
“I see.” He wasn’t interested in preservation. Attach too much sentimentality to the place by creating a shrine to the original homesteader, and future developers might run afoul of the historic preservation police. He wanted this prize parcel to be unencumbered when it went on the block.
“Thaddeus’s wife, Clara Singleton, once held off a raiding party of twenty Apaches from the roof of that house,” Freddy said. “The parapet was about three feet high back then, and she used a ladder to climb up and pulled it after her. She had three guns there, and she crawled around firing them in succession, so the Apaches thought there were more people at the house. Thaddeus was off rounding up strays. She drove off those Apaches all by herself.”
“That’s quite a story.” T.R. had noticed the defiant tilt of her chin, the flash in her eyes as she told it. No one could doubt that Freddy had inherited courage and determination from Clara Singleton. Unfortunately, in this modern-day struggle for control of the True Love, he and his partners would be cast in the role of marauding Apaches, and this time the Singleton women were outgunned.
The Trailblazer Page 3