She stood beside the window looking out at the mountains behind the house and brushed her hair until her scalp tingled. She braided it in a loose rope and pinned it to the back of her head. It would not do for Mr. Lenning to return and find her looking like a trollop with her hair hanging down her back.
What to do now? She felt like an intruder, and if not for the beast outside the door, she would have gone out onto the porch. She peered out the kitchen window again but was unable to see if the animal was beside the door. She didn’t dare open it to find out.
Kristin sat down in the cowhide-covered chair. Mr. Lenning was likely away doing roundups and branding and the sorts of things cowboys do. Ranches were supposed to have lots of cowboys. Dear Uncle Yarby. She wished she could thank him for leaving her this lovely house. What a joy it would be to tend to it.
One of the first things she would do would be to move the table farther from the cookstove, and wash away the soot and the cobwebs behind it. As soon as she could find enough rags she would make a rug to go in front of the fireplace.
The glass windowpanes needed to be washed. They would shine when she finished with them. Someday, when all this trouble was over, she would go to Big Timber and buy curtain material.
My, this chair was comfortable. She leaned her tired head against the back, telling herself that she would close her eyes for only a moment.
* * *
“Wake up! What the hell are you doin’ here?”
Kristin came dazedly out of the wells of sleep when she heard a man’s voice. With an effort she opened her eyes. They traveled up long legs to where a gun was strapped around narrow hips and on up to eyes that held such anger that for a second or two she froze with fear.
Oh, dear Lord! They followed and found me!
Chapter Seven
Kristin shot up out of the chair and ran to the table where she had left her pistol. Grabbing it with both hands, she pointed it at the man.
“Stay away from me.”
“Mother of Christ! Who the hell are you?”
“You know who I am, you . . . you bounder, shyster, crook!” she sputtered. “I’m not signing, no matter what you do. Break my fingers, twist my arm, do what you will! I’ll not sign my land over to you and that’s that!” By the time she finished speaking she was shouting.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’d better get out. Mr. Lenning will be back soon. If he doesn’t shoot you, I will.” She steadied the hands holding the gun. Not for anything would she let him know how frightened she was.
Eyes the color of oak leaves beneath thick dark brows never moved from her face. The man stood there strangely quiet. He gazed at her for a long while before he spoke.
“I’m Buck Lenning.”
“You’re . . . not Mr. Lenning,” she scoffed. “He’s an old man like Uncle Yarby.”
“Mother of Christ!” he said again. “You’re . . .”
“Miss Kristin Anderson. And you . . . get out of my house!”
“Your house?”
He was a tremendously tall, sun-darkened, wild-looking man with green, amber-flecked eyes. Thick black hair curled and twisted around his head in complete disarray.
He stared. She stared back.
“Put the gun down before you shoot yourself.”
“Not till you leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere. What’re you doing here.”
“Where else would I go? I couldn’t stay there. That slick scallywag was going to force me to sign over my inheritance. They’d have . . . hurt me. They’ve done it before.”
“Forsythe?”
“Oh . . . oh—”
There was no sound to alert her to the presence that filled the doorway behind her, but she knew it was there and whirled around to point the gun at the animal who watched her with fangs bared.
“Don’t . . . shoot!” The man leaped. His big hand grabbed hers, forcing the gun point to tilt toward the floor. “Give me that thing.” He wrested it from her hands. “Hell and damnation! If you’d a shot my dog, there’d a been hell to pay.”
Kristin glared at him defiantly, not wanting him to know that she was so tired and unsteady on her feet and that she felt faintly giddy. Beads of sweat stood on her forehead and upper lip.
“Dog? That’s not like any dog I’ve ever seen.” She tried to put strength in her voice and failed miserably. “It’s a wild, vicious . . . beast. It came running at me and would have killed me if I hadn’t gotten in the house.”
“How’d you get out here?”
Their eyes met in a duel across the table. His were instruments of power. His unwavering stare sent a series of tremors up and down her backbone.
“A friend arranged it.”
“What’s your game, sister?” He ejected the bullets from the gun and tossed them and the gun on the table. “Come here, Sam.” The big dog came silently into the room and stood by the man. “How’d she get in here, boy?” He spoke to the dog, but his eyes remained on Kristin as if to pin her to the floor. Strong fingers reached down to scratch the woolly head. “Have you been out smelling around that wild female again?”
“That dog’s dangerous. You can see the claw marks on the door.”
When Lenning said nothing, Kristin raised her brows. Eyes, the color of a cloudy winter sky, looked down her nose at him even though he was a head taller. Confidence was etched in every line of her face, belying the fact her insides were quivering with fear. Pins had come loose from the hair at the nape of her neck and the long coil of silvery blond hair had slithered down her back. She was aware of the disarray but too proud to give it notice.
It came to her that perhaps she had acted in a harebrained fashion—that it had been stupid to come to Montana, stupider yet to come out here, alone, to Larkspur.
“I’ll not take your word that you’re who you say you are,” she said stubbornly. “It was my impression that you had worked for my uncle for a very long time and would be a much older man.” Her voice was hoarse and jerky and didn’t at all sound like her own.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you. I thought I had aged mightily this last year. And . . . why should I take your word that you’re who you say you are?”
“I can prove it. I have letters addressed to me in my trunk.”
“That’s no proof,” he scoffed. “It would be like Forsythe and Lee to send you out here with a trumped-up identity to put me off my guard, then slip in here and burn me out. It’s the land they want, not the house and the buildings.”
Kristin’s features took on a look of utter disbelief. She seethed with anger. His high-handed attitude grated on her nerves like chalk screeching against a slate.
“You think I’d have any part of swindling someone out of what’s rightfully theirs? I have letters in my trunk addressed to Kristin Anderson, River Falls, Wisconsin.”
“I never for a moment thought you’d come out here unprepared to prove that you’re the heir to all this!” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he spread his arms wide. “But I’ve not got time now to look at them. Come on, Sam.”
“Mr. Lenning, if you are Mr. Lenning. Keep in mind that my uncle left this ranch to me and that you work for me now.”
“I’ll not forget that, Miss Anderson, ma’am. That is if you are Miss Anderson. And there’s something you’d better keep in mind too—watch your manners if you plan to spend the night in my house.”
“You may have lived here with Uncle Yarby. But the house is mine now.”
“You’re wrong, Miss Know-it-all Anderson. This is my house—and every stick and stone of it is sitting on my land. Yarby’s house is yonder through the grove and it may very well be sitting on my land, too. It’s difficult to get an exact boundary line. You’d better get over there and clean out a place because that’s where you’ll spend the night.”
Kristin froze in shocked silence. Her mind shut down for seconds, then cleared with amazing speed. A rosy redness rushed up her neck to flood her chee
ks.
“Very well. I trust you’ll control your . . . ah . . . dog.”
“He’ll not bother you now, unless I tell him to.”
“That’s kind of you,” Kristin snarled. “I’ll not bother you anymore today, but tomorrow we’ve a few things to straighten out.” She put the pistol and the bullets in her bag, slung it over her arm, grabbed up her shawl and walked out the door and into the bright sunshine.
She had trespassed. Humiliation and fatigue set her lips trembling. Only pride enabled her to press them together to trap the sob that longed to escape and to straighten her back. She would not apologize for her mistake. To do so would give him a tactical advantage.
Buck watched her round the house to the front porch. Her back was stiff as a board. The blond braid that hung to her waist was a sight to see. In spite of his irritation at finding her in his house, the corners of his grim mouth relaxed, and a shadow of a grin crossed his face. He had no doubt that she was Miss Kristin Anderson, Yarby’s kin. She even resembled the Yarby he had known long ago. Traces of blond still lingered in Yarby’s gray hair at their first meeting. He also had been just as proud and as stiff-necked as his niece.
Buck had not even known about Yarby’s will until Mark Lee came out to the ranch. The puffed-up jackass had taken great pleasure telling him about it. Then Buck had thrown the slimy, little piece of horse-dung off his porch, hauled him up out of the dirt, marched him to his buggy and told him to get the hell off his land.
It had come as a complete surprise to Buck that Yarby had left his share of the ranch to Kristin Anderson. He had wondered if she was a woman Yarby had once loved and perhaps lost to another member of the Anderson family. The sissified lawyer had not mentioned her being Yarby’s niece. What in tarnation was he going to do about her? It was clear that the woman had more grit than brains. Didn’t she realize the chance she had taken coming out here alone?
Getting her out of the way for a while had given him time to think. And seeing Yarby’s shack would give her things to think about. She had blurted out something about twisted arms and broken fingers. Would Forsythe and his bullyboys sink so low as to harm a woman? The answer to his question flashed into his mind. You can bet your boots they would!
Damn them!
Cleve, hurry and get here before I’m forced to kill someone.
His thoughts plunged ahead. If she’d signed Yarby’s land over to them, he’d have really been in a bind. And . . . who was the friend who had helped her? It was more than thirty miles to Big Timber. He had kept his eye on the road to town and nothing had come down it but Glazer’s freight wagons.
Holy hell! If she came out with the freighter only one man could have arranged it. Cletus Fuller. That stubborn old fool was going to mess around and get himself killed. Only a couple of people in town knew what was going on out here, and Cletus was one of them. The wily old man must have had a pretty good reason for getting her away from Forsythe. But how was he going to take care of Moss and her, and hold on to the ranch until Cleve got here?
With Sam following him, Buck crossed the yard to the room at the end of bunkhouse, unlocked the door and swung it open. Moss was sitting at a table painstakingly plaiting thin strips of leather into a lariat. It was a skill he’d not lost. Buck kept him supplied with the narrow strips of rawhide because he was afraid to let him use a sharp knife.
“Hello, Moss.”
“I’m obliged.”
“You’ve done a lot this morning.”
“The steers will go loco eatin’ that larkspur.”
“I remember you telling me that, old-timer.”
Buck placed his hand on the Moss’s shoulder. It had been hard to watch his old friend’s mind deteriorate to the point where it was impossible to converse with him. Moss couldn’t remember what he had done minutes before, but sometimes he’d get a glimmer of something that had happened years back and blurt out a name or a place or some bit of information like that about larkspur.
Buck watched Moss’s nimble fingers working the strips of leather. He was content for the moment. Buck went back outside and looked in the direction of the shack Yarby had built when he first came to the territory and bought and paid for the land with money he had made in the gold fields. What would that woman do if Forsythe sent his hired guns out to burn him out? Would she fall to pieces?
It was strange having a woman to worry about.
Weeks back, Buck had thought it likely that Forsythe would send men to rustle his herd. As a precaution, he had sent Gilly Mullany and two Indian drovers to drive the herd onto Indian land in the mountains and had struck a deal with the Oglala: a hundred head of cattle for grazing rights. He had always played square with the Sioux, respecting their right to their land.
Gilly was a drifter who had wandered in a few years ago, a man who had had many disappointments in life and who feared being old and alone. He had proved to be a good hand who never undertook to make a decision on his own, but was content to follow orders. He would stick to the last ditch if it came to a fight, but would not seek one. Because of the way the ranch buildings were situated, Buck felt that he and one other gun could hold off an attack for a good long while. Had it not been for the grizzled old cowboy, the two Indian boys, and the Sioux squaw who came down from time to time, he’d not have been able to take care of Moss and tend to his stock this past year.
The woman’s being here complicated matters.
Colonel Forsythe had moved in several years ago and had begun to take over the ranches in what was generally known as the sweet grass country. The Larkspur was the key. A year ago Forsythe had thought he had it, but Buck had managed to foil his plan. If Forsythe secured possession of the Larkspur, he’d control a large chunk of the best grassland in the territory and could shut off water rights to a number of small ranchers, all of whom were scared or unable to put up much of a fight against him.
Buck looked toward the grove. Miss Anderson would be all right for a short time. He was sure of that, or he’d not have let her go over there alone. The prissy town-woman had been so tired she could hardly stand, yet she had headed off toward the grove as if she were marching to Zion.
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes and lifted the ends of his wide mouth as he wondered what she thought, now, about the house she had inherited from her Uncle Yarby.
* * *
Kristin’s arms felt as if they were being pulled from their sockets. Had the box been this heavy when she had carried it from her bedroom to the porch the morning she left River Falls? Of course, she’d not been so tired and she had not felt ready to sit down and cry as she did now. She stumbled over a chunk of dead wood hidden by a growth of grass. The rope slipped from her hand and the box fell on her foot.
“Darn! Darn—” The pain was not severe but her body was so tired and her mind so unsettled that tears sprang to her eyes. Certain that she could not be seen from the house, she lifted the hem of her skirt and wiped her face. She was not even curious about the other house. She just wanted to get there and sit down. How would she get that heavy trunk through the woods? She was sure of one thing—she’d not ask him to help her.
Leaving the box on the ground, Kristin walked on, parting the bushes as she went. If at one time there had been a path, it had long ago disappeared into the heavy growth of brush. She passed through a belt of high grass and stunted scrub pines, and suddenly there in front of her was the old homestead.
She understood immediately why Buck Lenning had looked so smug when he said, “Your house is yonder in the grove.”
Before her was the most desolate, run-down place she had ever seen. It looked as if it had been deserted for years and years. The door hung on one leather hinge. The windows were glassless and without shutters. The roof sagged, and brush grew up to the door.
Kristin went toward it in a near stupor. When she looked inside, she could see that sticks and leaves had blown in the openings and formed a layer of litter that covered everything. Inside were built-in bunk
s, a table and a split-log bench. All were deep in dirt and flecked with animal droppings. A piece of an old blanket lay in the corner and looked as if it had been used as a nest by an animal. The only thing that appeared to be intact was a stone chimney.
Kristin was unaware of it, but her hand was clasped tightly over her mouth as she surveyed the dilapidated homestead. Her shaky legs carried her to the bench, and heedless of the filth on it, she sat down. With her arms wrapped about the bag she held close to her chest, she rocked back and forth.
Her dream of starting an exciting new life had turned into a nightmare.
The dam crumbled. Misery came gushing out. She could no longer contain the hurt and the disappointment within her. Her face convulsed and huge racking sobs came from deep within her, disrupting the silence in the gloomy, pitiful shack.
The troubles had begun with Ferd’s rejection and anger over her inheritance. Then had come the anxiety and discomfort of the long train trip. The encounter with Mr. Forsythe, the sleepless night, the strain of having to steal away from Big Timber in the middle of the night, and the long hard ride on the freight wagon would have been bearable. But this, the house she had so looked forward to, and the insufferable Mr. Lenning, were too much.
She cried openly. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them away. Had she thought about it, she would have realized that she had not cried like this since her mother died ten years ago.
When the figure filled the doorway and blocked out the light, she was so deep in her grief that she wasn’t even frightened of the lean-faced, shaggy-haired man in jeans and worn boots.
Buck had heard her sobbing as he approached and was shaken at the sight of her tears. He could not remember when last he had seen a woman cry. It didn’t matter to him that she was a woman who had come here to lay claim to what he and Yarby had worked for. She was alone and scared. Her wet lashes and tear-streaked cheeks made her look as helpless as a child. Buck had always been softhearted when it came to a helpless creature’s suffering.
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