by BJ James
“Crowley.”
She paused, waiting.
“I meant what I said, double vision doesn’t keep me from seeing that you’re beautiful.”
“And old enough to be your mother,” she quipped, and was grateful he couldn’t see her blush.
“So? Who said mothers couldn’t be beautiful?” Thoughtfully he added, “Mine was.”
“I would’ve bet on it.” She was smiling again as she opened the door, believing he meant every word, and understanding the charisma that made Steve Cody a champion in tragedy, as well as triumph. “Rest now, if you can. You’ll have a busy morning ahead of you. Not the least of which will be Mr. Cowboy.”
The door closed behind her with a muffled thud. Steve lay as he had before, starkly still, staring at the ceiling. “You don’t owe me anything,” he murmured. “Not a thing, Mr. Cowboy.”
Then he laughed, and somewhere deep inside, he knew he should be thankful he was alive to feel the hurt.
“Steve?”
“Hey! Charlie!” Steve lifted a hand, moving as little as possible. In the course of the morning and the battery of tests to which Dr. Hayworth had subjected him, vertigo had been added to a growing list of symptoms.
“You all right?” Charlie curled his own knotted and callused hand around Steve’s.
“If I’m not, I’m getting there.”
“I told ’em you would.”
“How about you?”
Charlie moved to the foot of the bed, in range of Steve’s vision. “A broke rib, or two. Some bruises. They tell me you’re seeing double, so I’m only half as beat up as I look, and only a particle as ugly.” He spun his hat nervously, threading the brim through his palms.
“I can see you fine, Charlie,” Steve said quietly, his fingers straying to the patch over his eye. “There’s only one of you when I wear this. Nurse Crowley says I look more like a train robber than a cowboy right now.”
Charlie Abramson didn’t laugh. It was too soon, too much lay ahead for Steve. “You don’t remember the rodeo, what happened?”
“It’s coming back in bits and pieces.”
“But you don’t remember what you did.”
“No, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Does to me,” Charlie declared vehemently. “Lord knows, what happened to you in a glancing blow was bad enough, but for me it would have been a direct hit. That bronc would’ve put my lights out if you hadn’t shielded me.”
“Where would I be if you hadn’t lifted me off a few hundred saddle broncs intent on putting my lights out, Charlie?”
“It ain’t the same. Picking cowboys off broncs is my job. Getting kicked in the head ain’t yours.”
“Charlie, let it go. If it makes you feel any better, we’ll count it even.”
“Can’t,” the older man insisted stubbornly. “What are your plans?” he asked in an abrupt change. “What are you going to do when you get out of the hospital?”
A look passed between them, and Steve realized that his old friend knew Steve Cody, the hard luck kid, wouldn’t ride the rodeo circuit again. His luck seemed to have changed for a while. He’d never ridden better, or luckier, and the elusive national championship was nearly his. Then, in one disastrously placed hoof, it all slipped away, and he’d spent his life chasing a dream lost forever. His father’s dream, sacrificed for his ailing wife and growing son.
Steve fought back a wave of grief. One more painful than the sum of all the physical battering. His mother had gone first, then his father, and now the dream, the focus of his life. He felt unanchored and adrift, and more lonely than he’d ever been.
“I don’t know, Charlie. I’ve been thinking about the ranch. You know, that distant goal for someday. Maybe it’s time to stop talking and make it reality.”
“Maybe,” Charlie agreed noncommittally.
“Horses,” Steve mused, for the first time squarely facing a future without the rodeo. “I’d like to raise horses. The prize money’s been good this year—maybe I’ll take what’s left after this and find that perfect tract of land. Nothing big, but good grass and sweet water, and after that some good breeding stock. The Cody horse, bred and trained by Steve Cody.” Steve grinned at the weathered cowboy. “Has a nice ring, don’t you think?”
“If there’s any prize money left,” Charlie groused. The hat spun, work worn fingers worried nervously at the soiled brim. He didn’t like being the bearer of bad news. The only way he knew to deal with it was to say what he had to say flat out, no frills, no sugarcoating. “Angie was here.”
“Angie?” Steve’s grin faltered. “My lovely not quite ex-wife?”
“You know another Angie?”
“No. Maybe that’s my one stroke of luck in this.” Angie, a lovely woman, indeed. Once he’d thought he loved her, now he knew he’d married her out of loneliness in the long, desolate days after his father’s death. She’d married him for the fame and fortune she thought an up-and-coming bronc rider could give her, but she hadn’t reckoned with Steve Cody’s renowned bad luck. When she did, she’d left him, taking half of all he had as compensation for her disappointment. “What did she want? Did she come prepared to celebrate my wake?”
“Maybe.”
“I’d be lying if I said I was sorry to disappoint her again.”
Charlie stared glumly at him.
“That was a joke, Charlie.”
“She might’ve been disappointed, expecting to line her pockets with the life-insurance money, but she didn’t leave empty-handed. She claimed half your winnings, Steve.” The hat brim crumpled in his fist. “She skipped nearly a year ago, then you get your shot at the big time, collect the biggest prize money you’ve ever won, and just like that she waltzes back. She was all set to play the dutiful wife of the national champ if you survived, but she preferred the grieving widow. Then the doc gave her the facts and she couldn’t skedaddle fast enough. Hell,” the grizzled cowboy growled, “even the weight in her pockets couldn’t slow her down. Said she had it coming.”
Steve was silent for a while. Too silent, as he put a surge of bitter disappointment behind him. “She did,” he said quietly, at last. “The law says her rightful share is half. Maybe she deserved it too.”
“For what?” Charlie exploded. As far as he was concerned, if Steve Cody had one single character fault, it was that he was too willing to see both sides of an argument, too forgiving.
“She stuck by me through some lean times.”
“Less than a year by my calculations. And every time you landed in a hospital or was hurt, was she by your side? Nooo...” He drawled the word in utter disgust. “She was out dancing and partying with someone who hadn’t tangled with a bronc and wasn’t stove up.”
Steve had no answer for Charlie. He couldn’t deny the accusation, and he didn’t want to get into another discussion. Angie was out of his life, and maybe it was worth half of all he ever hoped to have to keep it that way. “Things could be worse, Charlie. The doctor assures me I’ll recover, but it’s going to be a long haul.”
“A long, expensive haul,” Charlie interjected. “And breeding stock don’t come cheap.”
“So, when I get out, I’ll take what’s left and buy land. The stock can come later.”
Charlie knew there would be precious little left, even for land. Steve had been years clearing the debt accumulated during his mother’s chronic illness, then his father’s. Now he had his own to contend with. “You’re thirty, Steve. How long are you going to have to wait?”
“A little while.” At Charlie’s accusing look, he shrugged and admitted, “All right, quite a while.”
“Seems like you got a problem.”
“Seems like,” Steve agreed.
“Well, now, I got me a problem too.” Charlie laid his hat at the foot of the bed to scratch at the paper tucked in the pocket of his shirt. “In a way our problems sorta jive. We can each solve our own problem by helping the other.”
“What’s wrong, Charlie?”
/> “You know I got a daughter.” He paused for Steve’s nod, then rushed on. “She came along late in my life, and we ain’t been exactly close since her momma left me. But lately we’ve mended our fences. She’s got a little one coming now. Her ma’s been gone a few years, and her husband ain’t got a family, so she thinks it’s real important the little tyke has a grandpa. Seeing as this was my last year to rodeo, she’s asked me to come live closer to her.”
“Hey, that’s not a problem, that’s great! You do get along with them, don’t you?”
“Sure, sure.” Charlie frowned and scratched his head. “But you see, I got this other problem. I got this ranch, had it for years. Good grass, better water, a natural canyon perfect for horses. Always thought I’d go back, now I know I won’t. I was in a study what to do with it, then it come to me. You could take it off my hands. If I was to sign it over to you, I could go on down to California without a care.”
“Ranch? You’ve never talked about a ranch.”
“A man don’t talk about everything.”
Steve shifted carefully in the bed, and waited for the wave of vertigo to subside. “I can’t let you sign it over to me. I could look at it, and maybe we could make a deal and I could buy your land.”
“You ain’t got enough money to buy my ranch.”
“Then you should sell it to someone else.”
“Nope.” Charlie shook his head. “It’s a fine parcel of land. I only left it ’cause Sarah’s momma was so unhappy there. When she skipped out on me anyway, I just didn’t have the heart to go back. Leastwise, not at first. I joined the rodeo, then one year piled on another, and another. And here I am, too late and too old. I always pictured a good horse ranch there, but I ain’t going to sell it to just anybody. It’s gotta be somebody who’ll love it, work hard, and take care of it.” He shrugged. “That kinda person don’t grow on trees.”
“You can find someone, Charlie.”
“Already have.” Charlie slipped a folded paper from his pocket. “Already solved my problem. There’s some paperwork you’ll have to see to, but it’s a done deal. You got yourself a ranch.”
Steve was staggered by the older man’s generosity. “No.” He turned his head cautiously. “I can’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Charlie.”
“Maybe not, but you sure as hell owe me. You saved my life, now you owe me what it takes to make it a good one.” He tossed the deed onto the bed. “That means taking the ranch off my hands.”
“Charlie, no.”
“Hey, it won’t be all belly high grass and sweet water. The land’s been lying like open range for so long, some folks consider it just that. They won’t take kindly to your coming. So you got a little trouble on your hands. But I ain’t seen much trouble you couldn’t handle. Go to it, boy. Make the ranch what I always wanted it to be. I’d count it a flavor.”
Grinning, he plucked his hat from the bed and settled it firmly over his brow. Instantly he looked more at ease, more natural. More like the old Charlie. “We’ll talk some more later. I’ll tell you about the ranch and your neighbors, especially your closest neighbor. It’ll take half a day just to tell you what an ornery son of a bitch Jake Benedict can be on his best days. Right now my daughter’s taking me out to lunch.” Charlie tilted his hat to a rakish angle and laughed. “Do I look spiffy enough to go to lunch with a beautiful woman?”
“You look fine, Charlie. In fact, you look downright handsome. Any woman would be proud to be seen with you.”
This time the laughter erupted from him. Laughter so deep, it could have come from his toes. “Then I’ll see you later.” The folded deed lay on the bed. “Think about this while I’m gone.”
“I don’t have to think, I’m not taking your land.”
“Hey! Who said you had a choice? You owe me, remember.” As if an invisible weight had lifted from his shoulders, the best pickup man in the rodeo strolled from Steve Cody’s room.
“I won’t,” Steve muttered when he was alone. “I won’t take your ranch.” Leaning back against a stack of pillows, he stared at the familiar ceiling. If the doctor was right, he had a long haul ahead. He had to concentrate on himself. Charlie made it sound as if he were choosing the one man he trusted to realize an old cowboy’s dream.
“I’ve spent one lifetime chasing another man’s dream. I won’t again.”
Exhausted, determined, he put Charlie’s ranch from his mind. But as he drifted, seeking the thoughtless limbo, it wouldn’t stay put.
Horses.
A natural canyon.
“No.”
Belly-high grass.
Pure, sweet water.
“I can’t.”
Another man’s dream.
“I won’t”
But this time a dream that matched his own.
There could be no limbo, no peace, for as Steve’s heart waged one battle, his mind and body faced another. Head thrown back on his brace of pillows, he turned his one-eyed stare from the too familiar ceiling. Gray, the color of melancholy. He could lose himself in it if he allowed it. Instead, he forced his tortured thoughts to the future.
Would he be doomed to see the world in twos for the remainder of his life? Would the headaches and transitory weakness plague him forever? Would he grip a rein in his left hand again? By the grace of God, therapy and hard work, would his condition resolve?
If it didn’t, what would become of him? And even if it did, what then?
All he’d known since he was a kid was ranching and the rodeo. With the rodeo and most of his earnings gone, what would be left for a ranch? Would he ever have his own dream? Or was he doomed to serve first as proxy, then as cowhand for hire?
“Sure, a one handed cowhand.” His pained and bitter laugh splintered the sepulchral silence.
He stifled a groan as a wave of agony washed over him, blinding him. As it began to overpower him, one by one the fingers of his fisted hand unfolded. Sliding over the sheet as with a will of their own they found the deed. Sighing, Steve crumpled it in his palm.
“A partnership, Charlie,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Your land, my labor.”
The pain was too much. The void reached for him. As he consigned himself gratefully to its sanctuary, there was sorrow in his hoarse whisper. “Half a dream.”
Chapter 3
“Mr. Cody!”
Steve paused at the foot of the courthouse steps, wheeling around in surprise. No one in Silverton knew him. No one until a half hour ago, and then only the clerk who registered his deed and brand. Could there be a problem with the papers? Some hitch that would keep the Broken Spur of Sunrise Canyon from becoming reality? Scanning past a number of cowboys and secretaries sharing lunch in the shady courtyard, he saw no one who resembled the lady in question. Puzzled, but relieved, deciding he was mistaken, he turned away.
Shrugging the incident aside, he threaded his way through the courtyard. Laughter and gossipy chatter drifted about him, but no one looked up. No one spoke. Crossing a small garden clustered around a bronze commemorating the American cowboy and his horse, he stepped into the flow of foot traffic on the sidewalk. Hesitating at the curb, exasperated by the prickling need to turn back for one last look, he shook his head at his folly.
No one had called his name. The harried clerk was too busy and a bit too plump to come tripping down the steps after him. At any rate, her voice was high-pitched and anxious, edging into squeaky. The voice he heard was low, a sultry contralto.
“The voice you imagined, Cody. Face it,” he muttered in a wry undertone. Next he would be seeing things. But if he did, at least it wouldn’t be in duplicate, and he would recognize it. His recovery had taken many long and costly months, but it was complete. The rodeo was all he’d really lost.
Which was why he was in Silverton recording a deed on the day of the spring stock show and auction.
In Silverton, an old and bustling small town that ha
d preserved the look and feel of a turn of the century Western village. Where no one knew him, he reminded himself as he crossed the narrow street.
“Mr. Cody.”
Or did they?
This time there was no question of mistake or imagination. Stopping in front of the general store, he spun about again, wondering who the hell wanted him and why. His gaze flitted over the procession of ranchers and cowboys and their ladies, shedding winter’s doldrums, dressed in their best for the festivities of the show. He searched among them for a face even vaguely Familiar. Perhaps someone from a rodeo, somewhere, sometime.
At first glance there was nothing, no one seemed unduly interested in him. No one fit the commanding voice with its lilting Southern drawl.
That one drew a rueful chuckle. What bit of nonsense prompted him to think he could recognize her from the sound of her voice?
He was damning the vagaries of a bruised brain when the loosely formed band of revelers scattered and he caught sight of her A woman not quite like the rest. Smaller, leaner, weathered and darker, a single braid lying over her shoulder like a gleaming rope
He was a stranger to her, yet he hadn’t a doubt it was she who had called to him.
He’d never seen her before, anytime, anywhere, but he knew her, and he liked what he saw. As she sidestepped a cluster of rowdy children with graceful ease and moved toward him in an unhurried, unbroken, ground-eating stride, he liked it very well.
In total disregard for the finery surrounding her, she wore a work shirt and Wranglers drawn over worn leather boots. A man’s belt cinched her waist, and a vintage Stetson rode low over her forehead, shading her face. Beneath its curled brim, her gaze was riveted on him.
Strollers brushed by, but Steve hardly noticed. He was engrossed and intrigued, and more than a little curious. He waited, letting the rest of the revelers of Silverton pass him by, as she closed the distance between them.
It gave him an edge, letting her come to him.
Just for an instant he was startled at the turn of thought and wondered if he would ever have the edge with her. Then there was no time to ponder it, for she was there, before him, her head tilted fractionally to look up at him. A captivating woman, not beautiful, but striking, with a look of challenge in eyes as pale as silver.