Mace reached out a hand and touched her hair. "I don't reckon it will come to that, Beck. You're pretty responsible."
"I try to be. But sometimes I forget. He forgets," she said with annoyance. "He forgot to pick me up at Tuck's last weekend. I went down to spend the afternoon, and he was s'posed to get me before dinner, an' I ended up eating dinner there!"
A corner of Mace's mouth quirked. "Reckon I ought to suggest that if he doesn't remember you, he won't get to keep you?"
Becky considered that with rather more seriousness than he'd anticipated. "He'd prob'ly be glad to see me go," she said finally.
Mace tipped her chin up so she had to look at him. "Don't you ever say that, Rebecca Kathleen. You know he loves you more than anyone on earth."
"'Cept Felicity and Willy and Abby."
"Different than Felicity. Different than Willy and Abby. You and your old man go back a long, long way. Heck, you practically raised him while he was raisin' you. Nobody has the relationship with him that you do."
"Nobody'd want it," Becky muttered.
"Maybe not right now. But he'll come around. Give him time."
"Not if he gives away Digger!"
"He won't give away Digger," Mace promised. "If he even thought about it, I'd punch his lights out."
"You would? Really?" Becky brightened at once. The beginnings of a smile played around the corners of her mouth.
"Don't you go forgettin' to feed that dog just to test me," Mace cautioned, having seen that look before.
Becky shook her head. "I won't." She touched his sleeve lightly and looked up at him with wide, green eyes. "Thanks, Mace."
He winked at her. "Don't mention it."
They stood in silence a moment. Then Becky said, "Are you okay?"
He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. "I'm all right," he said.
"Jenny an' Tom are—"
"I know."
"But—"
A group of rowdy bronc-riding students came out of the barn just then, laughing and talking as they headed for their trucks.
"Hey, Mace," one of them called. "You wanta go grab a couple beers with us?"
"An' a couple of babes?" another yelled.
Mace's jaw tightened. "Not tonight."
"You can eat with us," Becky said quickly.
He shook his head. "Thanks, but I gotta go on now."
"Where?"
Good question. Was he going to go back to the cabin to sulk and stew, knowing that Jenny was entertaining another man in his house?
Or did he plan to skulk around outside watching like he had the night Tom kissed her in the doorway?
Would Tom kiss her again tonight? Or wouldn't that be enough for him?
Would he make love to her?
"I gotta go to Bozeman."
Mace needed space and distance and anonymity.
He needed a few beers—or maybe more than a few. He needed a little whiskey. Or maybe a lot.
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
There was an elk on one wall, a moose on the other and a couple dozen jackasses in between.
The music was loud, the girls were pretty, and everybody wore a hat and boots, even the bartender. It was definitely the right place to come, Mace decided, settling in with a beer.
He leaned back against the bar and contemplated the crowd. It was clearly a Bozeman crowd—better heeled and younger than if he'd stayed closer to home.
There was no way he wanted to tip a glass with the likes of Warren and Mick tonight—or any of the rest of Noah's bunch at the Dew Drop back in Elmer. He'd considered dropping anchor in Livingston, but there was always the chance he'd run into somebody he knew there, too—somebody who'd take it into his head to commiserate or, worse, ask questions.
He wasn't likely to find that in Bozeman. The town had grown so big over the past ten years it looked almost like a million tiny lights spreading out in the valley as he came over the pass. Every time he came to town he found more development—new houses, new businesses. New bars.
But Mace didn't want a new bar. A new bar would mean a horde of sandal-wearing students drinking special-label beer and playing pool and looking down their educated noses at him while the Grateful Dead improvised on the jukebox.
Mace wanted George Jones and Brooks and Dunn, a little honky-tonk music—old or new—to soothe his battered soul. He wanted the rough-and-ready, tried-and-true.
There was only one good place for that—so he parked his truck outside the Six Gun and went in.
The Six Gun had been around for years, probably since its clientele had packed 'em. It was, in a word, a cowboy bar.
Low-key during the day, with not much music at all. If there was, it'd be Patsy Cline or Jim Reeves singing an old lonesome tune, so the depressed, serious and unemployed could feel sorry for themselves while they drowned their woes in cheap beer and rotgut whiskey.
But at night, especially Friday and Saturday nights, it was a different story. Oh, the cheap beer was still available. So was the rotgut. But it wasn't quiet now. It was the hoppin'est place in town.
Cowboys and ranchers alike came in to blow off a little steam, find an old friend or two, and make the long, solitary hours spent on the range recede for a while. There was the requisite number of cowgirls, too, and a few buckle bunny hangers-on who made life interesting.
Mace reckoned his life was interesting enough at the moment. He didn't need the added complication a woman would provide, even though it'd serve Jenny right if he took one home with him.
The thought of Jenny made him tip his beer up and drain the glass, trying to drown out any notion of her. He realized pretty quickly that beer wasn't going to do it. He'd be all night if he was intent on drowning his sorrows in that.
He chased the second one with a shot of tequila.
Ah, yeah. That was more like it. It burned all the way down. The edges of his mind fuzzed a little. His toes curled. But the worst visions of Jenny in bed with Tom Morrison blurred a bit, and that was good.
He had another beer. And another shot of tequila. It helped. But not enough. He kept drinking—more than he ought to have had, but fewer than he needed to forget.
If he closed his eyes, he could still remember Jenny kissing Morrison in the doorway. And the wail of the steel guitar didn't drown out the replay of Warren and Mick's conversation.
"I'd keep her barefoot and pregnant—"
Barefoot and pregnant. Barefoot and pregnant.
Mace slammed his glass down. Damn it all, anyway!
"Nichols? Mace Nichols? Well, I'll be a son of a potbellied pissant! I reckoned it was you! What the devil you doin' here?" The long-forgotten, but still-familiar, twang jerked him out of his misery.
Mace turned and tried to focus on the cowboy grinning at him. "Rooster?"
The chipped tooth, broken nose and thatch of graying red hair that peeked out from beneath a battered cowboy hat proved him right.
"None other." Rooster Lynch grinned like the Cheshire cat and slapped him on the back. "Been years, ain't it? How the hell are ya?"
Mace had never known if Rooster got his name from his bright red hair, his bandy-legged gait or his quick temper. Whichever, it suited him.
He'd been a young cowpoke on the spread where Reese Nichols had been working when Mace was a boy. He'd followed Rooster around a whole summer. In the fall, Rooster had left.
"Got himself a girl down in Cheyenne," his father had said.
Later Mace remembered hearing Rooster had married the girl.
Later still he'd met up with Rooster and discovered that the girl from Cheyenne was three girls back.
He'd been married and divorced three times by the time Mace and Jenny got married. He'd probably married three or four more since.
"Thing about marriage," he'd once told Mace over a bottle of gin, "is you can't take it serious."
Mace hadn't believed him then. Now he thought maybe Rooster had the right idea.
"Bu
y you a beer, Rooster?"
Rooster hoisted himself onto a bar stool. "Don't mind if you do."
The bartender slid one down in front of him, then sent another on to Mace, followed by a shot of tequila.
"I could use me one a those, too," Rooster said, eyeing the tequila. "I got woman troubles. Some of us ain't as lucky as you."
"I wouldn't say that," Mace protested.
"Me, I ain't got the stayin' power. Things get tough, ol' Rooster just up and runs." Rooster drained his beer in one swallow, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "What's her name?"
Mace frowned. "Whose?"
"Your wife's! Who else?" Rooster looked at him impatiently.
"Jenny. But—"
"Ah, yeah. Jenny." Rooster's beaming grin melted into a sweet, sad smile. "I had me a wife named Jenny once. You ever meet her?"
Mace shook his head slowly. "Don't believe I ever did."
"You'd a liked her. Pretty li'l redhead, she was." Rooster's face screwed up in concentration. "Leastways, I think she was a redhead. Maybe not. Maybe she was the blonde and Evie was the redhead. I disremember now."
Mace had a lot he wished he could "disremember." He supposed he should have said he was getting a divorce, too, but somehow his didn't seem at all comparable to Rooster's.
"Met her in Vegas," Rooster mused, then frowned. "I think." He stared into the tequila glass, then tipped the shot glass and gulped. His eyes shut tight, and he let out something close to a death rattle, then sucked in a deep breath. "But she ain't my problem tonight. Tonight my problem's Fifi."
And he started in on Fifi.
Mace let it all wash over him—the French cancan dancer named Fifi that Rooster had met and married in Reno three months ago, his ill-fated decision to take her up to the line camp with him for the summer, the startling revelation that Fifi wasn't thrilled to find herself spending months at a time in the middle of several hundred thousand acres of Nevada wilderness with Rooster and a herd of cows.
It didn't require any more than the occasional nod or grunt. Rooster could handle a conversation or a herd of cows all by himself, with equal capability and assurance. And if he fretted about one or yammered on about the other, it was more to hear himself tell a good story than because it really bothered him.
Tom Morrison in Jenny's bed really bothered Mace.
It bothered him so much that the more he thought about it, the more upset he got.
It was all well and good for Rooster to say you shouldn't take marriage seriously, but hell, when you'd been married to the same woman for fourteen years, when you'd been completely faithful to her for longer than that, when, in fact, she was the only woman you'd ever made love with in your life, it did not sit well to think of her having another man in her bed. In your bed.
Mace gulped his last shot of tequila and thumped the glass on the bar. "Damn it!"
Rooster stopped, mid-sentence, and looked sideways at him. "T'ain't that bad. She wasn't that great, I don't reckon."
"She was—is—the best damned woman in the world!"
Rooster's brow drew down. "How do you know?"
"I was married to her, damn it!"
Rooster choked, then burst out laughing. "What the hell's so funny?" Mace demanded, furious.
"You ain't been listenin' to a thing I said, have you?" Rooster was still grinning his fool head off.
Mace's fists clenched on the bar. "I got things on my mind."
"No joke," Rooster said mildly. He considered Mace. "Your lady givin' you a few problems, too, is she?"
"No." Mace bit off the word.
"Pull my other leg while yer at it. That's why yer here, ain't it? In the bar? Drinkin'? Wondered when I saw ya. You wasn't ever much of a bar hopper as I recall."
"A man can change," Mace said through his teeth.
"No. He can't." Rooster seemed certain about that. "A man is what he is. Ain't nothin' gonna change him. B'lieve me, I know. Wasn't one a my wives didn't try to set ol' Rooster on the straight an' narrow, but it didn't work. I'm here, ain't I?" he said with a thump on his chest. "No, sir," he continued without giving Mace a chance to reply, "a man don't change his spots no more'n a leopard does."
He bent closer and poked his face close to Mace's. "You, fer instance."
Mace kept staring into his glass. "What about me?"
"You still love her."
It wasn't a question, so Mace didn't answer.
It didn't need an answer in any case. Rooster would believe whatever Rooster wanted to believe. And there was no arguing.
There was just hurt and loss and—suddenly—a burning, boiling over anger.
Mace dug in his wallet and threw down some bills and started pushing his way past inebriated cowboys and giggling girls toward the door.
"Hey! Mace! Hey! Where ya goin'?"
Mace didn't answer. He didn't stop. The anger that had been simmering inside him since the day he'd got the doctor's test results boiled over at last.
Damn it all, yes, he still loved her! With everything in him, he loved her! Always had, always would.
And tonight another man had her!
"Mace! Wait up." Rooster hastily gulped the remains of his beer, tossed down the shot, shuddered and scrambled through the crowd after him.
Mace still didn't stop. "I need some air."
Rooster caught up at the door and pushed it open. Out on the sidewalk, with the noise and heat behind them, he regarded Mace with a sort of foggy concern. "Well, here now. Ya got air. Breathe."
Mace breathed. He shook his head. It didn't do any good. It didn't cool him at all. He started to walk.
Rooster, torn, stood watching him, then hurried to catch up. "You're antsier than a polecat with chiggers tonight! You an' your lady have a fight or somethin'?"
"We didn't have a fight."
"Somethin's sure biting your butt."
"'M all right."
"Sure y'are."
Mace walked. Rooster almost ran to keep up. Up one street and down the other, fast and furious.
"You know where you're goin'?" Rooster asked, panting now.
"No. Don't know. Don't care."
"Why you walkin' so damn fast then?" Rooster panted.
"You don't have to come along."
"Reckon I do," Rooster said, loping beside him. "Your daddy wouldn't thank me if I let you get throwed in jail."
"I'm not gettin' thrown in jail."
Rooster looked at him with eyes of long experience. "Yet."
Mace didn't know how far they walked. He didn't even know where they walked.
If he was back at Taggart's he'd take on the roughest bull on the place. He needed something—anything—some sort of outlet for the cauldron seething inside him. He just didn't know what—
And then he saw Sherpa's.
One look at the bar, with its pseudo-rustic log exterior, its massive stone fireplace and beveled, leaded glass windows, and the sign by the door urging Paddle Your Own Canoe set Mace's teeth on edge. If the Six Gun was at one end of the Bozeman bar spectrum, Sherpa's was at the other.
As he stood staring, a tall blond man with a goatee held the door open for a lady. She smiled at him, batted her lashes, touched his arm. The tall guy grinned. He stroked his beard. He curled his toes.
Mace's gaze stopped right there. Curled his toes? By God, yes, he actually did. And Mace could see him doing it, because he was wearing a pair of damned sandals!
He stalked straight in after them.
"Hey! Mace, what in holy hell d'you think you're doin'?" Rooster stared after him, aghast. "We don't b'long in there."
Mace didn't even slow down. He had reached the edge. Sherpa's was where he jumped.
While no one had given him a second glance at the Six Gun, plenty of heads turned when he stopped inside Sherpa's heavy, wooden door. The room, though not nearly as noisy as the Six Gun, seemed to quiet further as the patrons looked him over from the top of his straw cowboy hat to his shiny Cody Rodeo bronc-riding buckle, do
wn the length of his dusty Wranglers, to the toes of his well-worn boots.
No one said a word.
"What'sa matter?" he said loudly. "None of you ever seen a cowboy before?"
Rooster sidled up next to him. "This ain't a good idea," he said under his breath.
"It's a fine idea," Mace said loudly, not even glancing his way. His eyes locked on the blond goatee's gaze and never wavered. "Best idea I've had all night."
"Sir?" A nervous voice addressed him.
Mace wasn't even sure where it came from until the men at the bar parted a bit, and he saw the bartender eyeing him warily. "What?"
The bartender gave him a thin smile. "I think perhaps you've had enough."
"Enough? I haven't had any yet. I just got here."
"It appears that you had plenty before you got here," the bartender said in polite, but firm, tones.
"Not enough," Mace muttered under his breath.
"C'mon, then, an' I'll buy ya another," Rooster said, latching on to that idea with the same enthusiasm that he grabbed Mace's arm and tried to tow him toward the door.
Mace dug in his heels. "Buy me one here."
"Mace," Rooster protested in a low voice. "You don't wanta drink here."
"Why not?" Mace said. He advanced on the blond man with the goatee who sat on a bar stool with his arm around the woman he'd opened the door for.
"You think I don't belong here?" Mace said to him.
"I think you have a perfect right to drink in any bar you want to," the goatee replied smoothly and shared a conspiratorial smile with the woman.
Mace saw red. "Damn nice of you. Very liberal. But then, you university types are like that, aren't you?"
"We try," the goatee said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, you're interrupting my conversation." He gave Mace a dismissive nod and turned back to the woman. The bartender brought them each a fancy, private-label beer.
Mace's teeth went on edge. "Draft beer not good enough for you?"
"Mace," Rooster pleaded, hanging on his arm.
The goatee took a long swallow, then stood up and faced Mace squarely. "You know, fella, I don't know what your problem is, but I think the bartender was right. You have had enough."
A Cowboy's Tears Page 13