by Diana Palmer
About two weeks ago he’d remembered that old IOU from Ray Wyler. Though it wasn’t nearly enough to buy a horse of Pancho’s talent and experience, three thousand would give him the means to get started again. He’d used all of his savings since the accident, and he was as close to being busted right now as he’d ever been. His current status was very little money, no horse and some aches and pains that would probably stay with him for the rest of his life.
But rodeo was all he knew, rodeo or getting a job on a ranch, which sure as hell didn’t appeal to him. Anyway, he’d packed up and driven to Whitehorn, Montana, to find Ray Wyler and collect on that old debt.
Instead he was standing in the Wyler yard and being stared down by a woman whose stubborn expression suggested that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing that money again. Whether she had the money or not really wasn’t the issue, Luke realized. She wasn’t going to pay Ray’s IOU, and that was final.
Well, it might be final to Maris Wyler, Luke thought irately, but it wasn’t final to him. He began looking around, taking in the house—a modest home—the barn and corrals, a number of other outbuildings and last, but certainly not least, a large pasture containing about a hundred horses. His gaze went further out to the snowcapped mountains he could see on the western horizon. The view was spectacular, in his opinion adding enormous value to this ranch. Grimly, he looked again at the horses. Money on the hoof, he thought. And plenty of it.
“I’ll take some of those horses for payment,” he said brusquely, turning around to look at Maris.
Her back became rigid. “You’ll do no such thing. You will not touch one thing on this ranch, and if you try I’ll call Sheriff Hensley, who happens to be a personal friend.”
Anger was in the air now. Luke felt it, Maris felt it.
“You’re not even going to try to make good on any part of that debt, are you?” he accused.
“Why did you wait two years to collect on it?” Maris spoke harshly. “Ray probably put it out of his mind five minutes after you gave him the money. Didn’t you know him at all?”
Luke was staring at the horses. They were mostly quarter-horse stock, good-looking animals. “I thought Ray raised cattle. I don’t remember him mentioning horses.”
Maris wasn’t going to get into that dismal story with Luke Rivers. “Like I just said, didn’t you know him at all? Look, you might as well take your IOU and go on about your business. I’m not paying it, and—”
“The law might say otherwise.”
Maris sighed wearily. “Take your best shot, cowboy. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do about it. Your piddly little IOU is nothing compared to what else I’m facing.” Maris turned to walk away.
Luke’s eyes narrowed angrily. “It might be nothing to you, lady, but it’s a hell of a lot to me. You don’t have it so bad, and your whining isn’t impressing me in the least. You’ve got a damned nice little ranch here, a home, a—”
Maris whirled. “I was not whining! And your judgment of my situation doesn’t impress me in the least. So why don’t you just climb back into that fancy truck and take yourself off of my land?”
Fancy truck? Luke looked at his only asset, a six-year-old pickup that he’d kept in good repair and just happened to be clean and shiny from the recent wash and wax he’d given it. He was down to practically nothing, and Maris Wyler was taking slams at his one possession of any value?
Anger burned his gut. He wasn’t giving up on that IOU, damn it, not when her assets were everywhere he looked. “I’d take payment on an installment basis, half now, half in a month or so,” he said flatly.
Maris threw up her hands in exasperation. “Have you heard one word I’ve said?”
“Have you heard one word I’ve said?” he shouted. “I’m flat broke, busted, and you’re acting like I’m trying to steal something’s that’s mine in the first place. If you really don’t have the cash, why not let me have a couple of those horses? At least I could sell them and eat until I figure out what to do next.”
“Sell them?” Maris scoffed. “They’re green, Luke, unbroken, wild as March hares. Who would buy them?”
“They’re green?” Frowning, Luke walked away, moving to the fence. The animals appeared docile, grazing on the lush grass in the pasture. “Mind if I take a closer look?” he said over his shoulder.
“They’ll run right over the top of you,” Maris drawled with some sarcasm, at the same time thinking that might be a picture worth seeing. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”
Luke took off his hat to crawl between the strands of barbed wire, then settled it back on his head. Watching Luke closely, Maris heard footsteps behind her and then Keith’s voice. “What’s going on, Maris?”
Keith Colson was the one employee Maris was able to keep on the ranch. Keith had been in trouble of one kind or another since childhood. An alcoholic, abusive father and no sensible adult supervision had left their marks on the sixteen-year-old, but since Maris had put him to work on the ranch, Keith hadn’t been in even one small scrape with the law.
He was a handsome boy, dark and lanky, and he was willing to work hard at whatever chore Maris suggested. She had developed a genuine fondness for Keith, thinking on occasion that he could be her own son. Ray had been adamant about not wanting kids, and, in fact, had gone and had a vasectomy without Maris’s knowledge. Months later, when he’d been drunk one night, he’d told her about it. She had wept for days, and then, as always, she had regathered her courage and carried on.
Keith was watching the man on the other side of the barbed wire. “What’s he doing? Who is he?”
“His name is Luke Rivers, and I don’t think he believed me when I told him those horses are green.”
“Dang, Maris, he could get hurt.”
“Yes, I expect he could,” she agreed quietly. “But I think he’s one of those men who do exactly as they want, when they want. In other words, no woman is going to tell Luke Rivers what to do.”
Keith gave her a curious glance, but what was going on in the pasture was too interesting to miss and he quickly brought his gaze back to Luke Rivers.
Luke was walking very slowly. Any time he got within twenty feet of a horse, the animal kicked up its heels and ran off. Maris was right; these horses were completely wild, too spooky to let a human get near them. But some of them looked good, very good. As he’d already noticed, most were quarter horses, and they had marvelous symmetrical and muscular conformation. They were heavily muscled in their hindquarters, necessary for quality cutting horses. Generally, Luke knew, quarter horses had a gentle disposition, but these broncs had been completely ignored, maybe allowed to grow up on some isolated range without human contact. Then, obviously, someone had rounded them up and sold them to Ray Wyler.
Who was going to break them for Maris? Glancing back to where she waited, he saw a young fellow wearing a huge hat standing next to her. Maybe he was going to do the breaking.
Maris was watching Luke’s every move and was impressed in spite of herself. He showed absolutely no fear, and though she wasn’t normally afraid of horses, she gave the group in this pasture a wide berth.
Luke Rivers. The awful evening at that bar in Casper returned to Maris’s mind. Ray had been drunk and disgusting, and she, with her very own eyes, had seen him take that girl out on the dance floor, his hands moving all over her and the rest of his body moving against her as if they were already checked-in at a cheap motel.
Maris had figured that she’d seen just about everything there was to see in life, but her own husband just about bedding a woman in a public place and obviously not caring that his wife was one of the witnesses, was a new low. Teary-eyed, she had scrambled to her feet, knocking down her chair in her haste.
Suddenly Luke had been there, righting her chair, getting Ray off the dance floor and that girl, talking and talking and talking to Ray, and finally escorting her and Ray out of that bar and to their motel, where he even offered, Maris remembered now, to help put Ray
to bed.
She had thanked him but said no, that she could manage to pull off his boots and put him to bed on her own. She had sat up the rest of that night, Maris recalled with the pain of old bitterness, seeing again and again her husband standing there with that idiotic look of drunken ecstasy on his face. The next morning, after feeling just a little bit glad that Ray was sick as a dog with a hangover, she had brought their suitcases out to the car, helped Ray from the motel to the vehicle, gotten behind the wheel and started the long drive home. Not a word had ever been said about the night before, not during the drive or anytime after. As was her way, she had put the whole awful incident out of her mind, and to tell the honest-to-God’s truth, she had never thought of Luke Rivers again.
But here he was, testing her word on the horses, and perhaps doing a little more than that. Wasn’t he studying them rather intently?
After Luke had seen all he wanted, he returned to the fence and crawled through it. “They’re green, all right. Where’d they come from?”
“I have no idea,” Maris replied. “Ray bought them and they were delivered by a trucking firm.” She glanced at Keith. “Keith Colson, Luke Rivers.”
Keith offered his hand. “Pleased to meetcha.”
“Same here.” Keith was a mere boy, Luke realized. If he knew how to break those horses it would be the surprise of the century. “Do you work here, Keith?”
“Yes, he does,” Maris answered before Keith could. But she feared the boy might try to explain how he’d come by his job, and Maris didn’t think Keith’s sad and sorry background was any of Luke’s business.
“Who else?” Luke questioned.
Maris gave him a well-aren’t-you-the-nosy-one look, but decided to be truthful. “No one else right now. I had a few more hands, but I had to let them go.”
Luke’s gaze moved from woman to boy and back again. “And which one of you is going to break those horses?”
Keith’s smooth, whiskerless cheeks got pink. “I could break ’em if someone showed me what to do.”
“Don’t let Mr. Rivers’s question throw you, Keith,” Maris said with a frosty glare at Luke. “He’s only attempting to prove how superior he is to you and me.”
“That’s a mighty narrow-minded attitude,” Luke stated gruffly. “Maybe I’ve got a good reason for asking about what help you’ve got on the place.”
Her golden hazel eyes flashed. “I understand the reasoning behind any question you might ask,” she said sharply. “But let me say it one more time. I do not have three thousand lying around gathering dust. I do not have three thousand gathering interest. I do not have it! Now, if there’s any other way that you would like me to express my financial situation, name it and I’ll be glad to comply.”
Luke stared at her for several long moments, then turned on his heel and walked away. Startled, Maris watched him reach his pickup truck and get in.
Keith said, “He’s madder ’n a wet hen, Maris. How come?”
She sighed. “Ray borrowed money from him two years ago and never paid it back. He came here today to collect, not knowing that Ray was gone.”
“Jeez, that’s tough,” Keith murmured. “Seems like an all-right guy. He probably needs the money.”
“Don’t we all,” Maris drawled. But as Luke Rivers’s truck sped away and she was walking to the house, her own innate sense of fair play began to pinch. She could have handled the situation with a little more diplomacy, maybe explaining just how bad things really were for her right now.
Wearily she rubbed her forehead as she went into the house. How did a woman remain kind and considerate when her very foundation was crumbling a little more every day? There were payments on the ranch’s mortgage to worry about, and utility bills, gas and oil for her car, groceries for her and Keith, Keith’s small wage, and on and on. Right now the horses and few remaining cattle were faring just fine on natural feed, but come winter there would be hay and grain to buy, and what would she use for money?
Luke Rivers showing up and demanding payment for an old IOU she hadn’t even known existed really was a final straw. Small wonder she hadn’t been diplomatic, she thought on her way to the kitchen to scare up some supper. Keith, bless his heart, was a bottomless pit. He didn’t care what she put on the table to eat as long as there was lots of it. Tonight it would be a dish she had grown up calling “goulash,” a filling concoction of ground beef, macaroni and canned tomatoes. Bread and butter and milk would round out the meal, and for dessert there were still a few of those peanut-butter cookies she had baked the other day.
Luke drove away steaming. True, that IOU wasn’t Maris Wyler’s debt, but it sure as hell had been Ray’s, and obviously Maris had control of the family assets. Didn’t one inherit liabilities right along with assets in an estate?
Luke shook his head. He knew beans about legal matters. He could take the IOU to a lawyer and get some answers, but the idea of getting into a legal hassle with Maris Wyler rubbed him wrong. There had to be another way to collect that money. He didn’t think she doubted the authenticity of the IOU, and maybe she was as short of cash as she’d said. But she had other assets, such as those unbroken horses, and if he was willing to take the animals in lieu of cash, why was she so stubbornly opposed?
On the other hand, suppose she had agreed to giving him two or three of the horses? What then? They were all but valueless as they were, and he sure didn’t have a place to take them for the breaking process. Turning untamed broncs into good cutting horses, which was what he would want to do with them, took time and patience. Well, he had the time and he had the patience, but that was all he had. In retrospect, he was lucky Maris had refused to give him the horses.
Reaching Whitehorn, he drove around and decided it was a pleasant little town. It had a courthouse, a police station, a library, a movie theater, two schools, two churches, a fire station, and various restaurants, food markets and a couple of saloons. He noticed the Hip Hop Café on Amity Lane, and the Amity Boarding House at the intersection of Amity Lane and Cascade Avenue.
But he bypassed the boarding house and drove around until he located a small motel on the highway leading to Interstate 90, where he rented a room for the night.
This wasn’t over yet, he told himself as he stretched out on the bed with his hands locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Someway, somehow, he was going to collect that three thousand. Leaving Whitehorn, just driving away and forgetting that IOU, wasn’t going to happen. He could be as stubborn as Maris Wyler, which she was going to find out.
Lying on that lumpy motel bed, Luke’s expression became hard and determined. What he had to do now, tonight, was figure out his next step.
There had to be one. All he had to do was think it through.
Two
The following morning Maris woke up with a throbbing headache. Dragging herself out of bed, she went into her bathroom and took two over-the-counter pain pills. Then she eyed the bottle and wondered how many it would take to put her out of her misery for good.
Tears filled her eyes. Never in her life had she had such a horrible thought, and never in her life had she been a quitter. What was happening to her? There was a solution to every problem, and by all that was holy she was going to find the one that fit her situation. Returning the bottle of pills to the medicine chest, Maris turned on the shower full blast, dropped her nightgown and stepped into the stall. The water hadn’t yet warmed up, but she felt she needed an icy shock this morning.
Fifteen minutes later, she was dressed and ready to face the day.
Maybe something good would turn up for a change, she thought hopefully on her way to the kitchen.
Luke went to the Hip Hop Café for breakfast, which, he discovered, wasn’t at all what he’d expected before walking into the place. Nothing matched. There was a long chrome counter straight out of the fifties, and then a bunch of tables and chairs that had to have been picked up at garage sales, since none of them were the same. Some were constructed of old
oak, some had red vinyl seats, some were painted in startlingly vivid colors. The café’s walls were crammed with objects. He spotted an oval mirror with a seashell frame, baskets overflowing with ivy or straw flowers, posters by the score and hand-stitched fabrics in frames, one that read Home Sweet Home and another advising everyone to Have A Good Day.
The many objects, along with the many patrons occupying the place, gave Luke the impression of clutter. But the country music coming from the garish jukebox in a far corner and the buzz of conversation and laughter invited him in, and he walked to the counter and slid onto an empty stool.
The man on his left nodded. “’Morning.”
“’Morning.” Luke reached for the menu standing on edge between a sunshine-yellow plastic napkin holder and a container of sugar. “What’s good in here?” he asked his neighbor.
“Everything’s good at the Hip Hop. You must be new in town if you haven’t eaten in here before.”
The activity of the place was astounding. The waitresses not only delivered food from the kitchen with speed and efficiency, they chatted and joked with their customers. Luke’s foul mood began lightening up, and he even smiled at some of the conversations he could hear going on around the room.
Then a young woman came through the swinging doors from the kitchen. Her dark, almost black hair was arranged in a French braid that hung down to the middle of her back. She had vibrant blue eyes and a trim figure, and was wearing a flowing skirt that nearly reached her ankles and a bright-pink blouse. Luke looked her over real good as she passed behind the counter, smiling and commenting to people as she went.