by Janet Dailey
“Hey, Dallas.” His avid gaze devoured the close fit of her cotton top. “Don’t you look sweet tonight?”
“Thanks.” But he was easily the last man she wanted to notice that. Dallas continued past him with hardly a break in stride.
He quickly caught up with her. “Not so fast. I was just going to buy you a drink.”
“Sorry, but I’m with someone.” Even as she made her claim, her glance skipped ahead. Her steps faltered when she failed to see Quint sitting at the far end of the bar.
“If you’re talking about that stranger, he left.”
Dallas wanted to take issue with that, but the evidence seemed to be all on John Earl’s side. Quint was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t expected him to walk out without waiting for her to come back. She told herself that it was just as well he had. It saved her from having to deal with any attempts by him to get her to stay longer.
“Good,” she said. “I have to be leaving anyway.”
“You can’t go yet,” John Earl protested, catching hold of her arm before she could walk away. “I want to buy you a drink.”
“No, thanks. I have to go home and study.”
“And I said you’re going to stay,” he insisted with an angry scowl. “Forget about those damned books for a while.”
“Why?” Dallas was suddenly suspicious. He seemed more anxious than eager for her to stay.
“Because I want to buy you a drink. Why do you think?” He turned a big smile on her, but there was an edge of desperation in his voice that was impossible to ignore.
“What’s going on, John Earl?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” The denial came a little too quickly. And the pause was a little too long before he remembered to say, “I just want to buy you a drink.”
“Where exactly did Quint go?”
“I told you he left.” John Earl tried to appear cocky and indifferent, but only succeeded in looking nervous and uneasy.
“And rather suddenly, too. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“Me? Whatever put a crazy thing like that in your head? I don’t even know the guy. Forget about him, and have a drink with me.” He tucked a hand under her elbow and tried to turn her toward the bar.
Dallas pulled her arm free and bolted for the door.
“Hey! Where are you going?” a dumbfounded John Earl called after her. “Damn it, come back here.”
Dallas knew without looking that he was coming after her. She broke into a run the last few feet. But the flat of his hand pushed the door shut a second after Dallas had pulled it open.
“You can’t leave yet.” There was anger and something else in his eyes.
“Watch me,” she replied and simultaneously gave the door a hard jerk before he had a chance to set his weight against it.
The suddenness of her action enabled Dallas to open the door wide enough that she could slip out before John Earl could recover. By the time he came charging out the door after her, she was halfway to the parking lot.
“Come back here, you damned, spooky broad!”
She threw a glance over her shoulder and saw that he had stopped to glare at her, jaw ridged in a tight, angry line. In that same second, he pivoted away and bulled his way back inside the building.
In the next breath, Dallas heard the hasty thud of running footsteps, more than one set, the sound mixed in with the hiss of whispers. She reached the parking lot’s graveled lot in time to see the dark shapes of two hatted figures ducking behind the building.
“Quint?” she called in a low, hesitant voice.
There was a scrape of a foot on gravel somewhere close by, off to her left. She turned toward the sound. There, in the shadowy gap between the two parked vehicles, she saw him half standing and half leaning against the side of a pickup. A light from the street revealed the black gleam of his hair and the glisten of a dark wet streak running from temple to jaw.
“My God, Quint. You’re hurt,” she murmured and rushed to his side.
“I’m all right.” He brushed aside the hand she stretched out to him, and shifted to make his legs take more of his weight, but Dallas could see the effort it took.
“You are far from all right,” she informed him.
Blood continued to seep from a nasty gash along one eyebrow. There was a swollen area along the opposite cheekbone that was already showing the discoloration of a bruise. One side of his mouth was puffy, with more blood trickling from the corner.
“It’s nothing,” he insisted and pressed two fingers to his mouth, winced, and stared at the coagulating blood on them with a kind of groggy recognition.
“Just the same, I think we’d better be safe and get you to a doctor.” Dallas didn’t like the vaguely dazed look he had.
He dragged in a deep, long breath, then slowly released it. “Nothing’s broken, only bruised. I know the difference.”
Unable to argue with that, she swung away. “I’m calling the police then.”
“Don’t bother,” he said in a weary voice. “I didn’t get a good enough look at their faces to recognize any of them again—unless you did?” His gaze sharpened on her when Dallas turned back to him.
“No,” she admitted.
“Then it would be a waste of time and paperwork.” He frowned and lifted a hand to his bare head before making a scan of the ground near his feet. “Where’s my hat?”
Dallas found it lying half under the pickup and retrieved it for him. He took it and eased it carefully onto his head. Then he seemed to focus on her for the first time.
“You’d better get out of here and go home,” he told her.
Dallas hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
“The smart thing—go home and nurse my wounds.” He brushed past her and angled across the lot while fishing a set of keys from his pocket. Dallas watched, half expecting his gait to be a staggering one, but he walked a slow but straight line to the rear of a black pickup, then took aim on the driver’s side. She saw the interior light come on when he opened the door.
There was a slight pause between the time he opened the door and pulled himself into the cab. Then the light went off, and the engine rumbled to life, tail-and headlights coming on.
When the black truck reversed out of the parking slot, Dallas started toward her own vehicle. Despite all his assurances, she wasn’t totally convinced that Quint was okay. Rather than be nagged by her conscience, she followed him at a discreet distance all the way to the entrance of the Cee Bar.
She slowed as she approached the gate, and caught a glimpse of his taillights disappearing around a bend in the drive. Satisfied that he would make it safely the rest of the way, she turned around and headed home.
PART TWO
An evening star,
A Texas moon,
A Calder trusts,
But is it too soon?
Chapter Seven
Morning light streamed through the windows as Boone entered the Slash R’s formal dining room. He winced at the bright light that flooded from the huge chandelier above the table. The harsh glare of it sharpened the pounding in his head, the lingering result of one too many whiskeys last night.
To avoid the light’s direct assault, Boone tipped his chin down and crossed to his usual chair, situated midway on one long side of the table, grateful for the plush area rug that muffled the heavy tread of boots. As usual, the hangover made his hearing much too acute, magnifying the smallest sound.
As he took his seat, he slid a glance at his father, already ensconced at the head of the table, then reached for his napkin, shook out its folds, and dragged it across his lap. A connecting door to the kitchen swung open and a servant glided into the dining room, carrying a steaming bowl of oatmeal on a serving tray. Boone’s stomach rolled a little at the sight of it.
“None for me, Vargas,” Boone stated, intercepting the servant’s quick look at him.
“I suspect Boone needs one of the cook’s tomato juice concoctions before he tackles any food,”
Max informed the servant. The servant nodded, placed the bowl in front of Max, and left the dining room. The stirring scrape of a spoon across the bottom traveled up Boone’s back like the screech of chalk on a blackboard, setting his teeth on edge.
“I understand it was after three o’clock when you finally staggered home.” The comment had an offhand quality to it, but Boone heard the underlying tone of disgust.
“That’s probably about right,” he agreed and took considerable pleasure in adding, “I know it was right around two o’clock when I got back to the ranch.”
“Two?” The single word carried a demand for an explanation for the hour’s difference in time.
“Two,” Boone confirmed as the servant swept back into the room and placed a tall glass of the cook’s personal hangover antidote, the ingredients of which he refused to divulge, before Boone. Boone downed a healthy dose of it and felt the spicy bite of it on his tongue and throat, its fiery flavor burning away much of the dullness in his head.
“If you were back by two, why did it take you an hour to get to the house?” Max eyed him with sharp suspicion.
“When I pulled into the ranch yard, I happened to see Tandy struggling to get one of his buddies out of his pickup. I figured the guy had probably passed out, so I stopped to give John Earl a hand.” He paused deliberately, savoring that rare feeling of knowing something his father didn’t.
“That couldn’t have taken you an hour,” Max stated with certainty. “What did you do—tip a few glasses with the boys?”
“You always told me that whiskey is a sure way to loosen a man’s tongue.” Boone was well aware that whiskey hadn’t been necessary. Tandy, Saunders, and the other two had been only too eager to tell their story. “And it was an interesting tale they had to tell about how they got the cuts and bruises, black eyes, and cracked ribs they sported.”
Max laid his spoon aside, his gaze growing hard with impatience and intolerance. “The only thing that could be of any possible interest would be who they had the fight with.”
“Exactly.” Smugness marked the curve of Boone’s mouth. “It seems they cornered Echohawk in the parking lot at Tillie’s and roughed him up a bit.”
Elbows resting on the arms of his wheelchair, Max clasped his hands together and coolly regarded him. “Did you put that idea in their heads?”
The icy contempt in his father’s voice suddenly made Boone uneasy and defensive. He lifted one shoulder in a nervous shrug.
“They came up with it themselves. The opportunity was there and they took it. What’s wrong with that?” He frowned, confused and not liking the feeling. “They didn’t do anything different from what you’ve wanted done in the past.”
“But in the past,” Max began, speaking slowly, drawing out each word and coating it with sarcasm, “the target was always some hired man. It was never a Calder!” He issued the last with explosive heat.
The hangover left Boone with a short temper of his own. “I don’t see what difference that makes,” he fired back. “Echohawk’s never laid eyes on any of them before. He can’t connect them to us.”
“Do you really think he’s as stupid as you are?” Max jeered, then waved aside the question in disgust. “Don’t bother to answer that.”
“What the hell difference does it make what he might suspect?” Boone demanded, his voice raising. “He can’t prove a damned thing. He never even called the police. Tandy hung around Tillie’s to make sure of that.”
“The police are the least of the problem,” Max said, dismissing that as a concern. “I can pull enough strings to handle a scuffle outside a bar.”
“Then what the hell’s your problem?”
Max ignored the question. “You said the boys roughed him up. How bad was he hurt? Or did you even bother to ask?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to care,” Boone replied with sarcasm. “But he couldn’t have been hurt all that bad. Tandy saw him behind the wheel of his pickup, driving out of the lot. Odds are, he got home under his own power.”
With that concern eliminated, Max’s thoughts went down another road. “I wonder why Echohawk went to Tillie’s in the first place,” he mused aloud. “Was he hoping to invite the kind of trouble he got? I wonder.”
“Now you’re giving him credit for being smarter than he is.” Boone smiled without humor and downed some more of his hangover cure.
“Am I?” Max countered in open doubt. “Then maybe you can tell me what he was doing there? And don’t give me any nonsense about just stopping in for a beer. Echohawk didn’t strike me as the type who goes carousing just because it’s Saturday night—like somebody else I won’t bother to name.”
Boone reacted to the none-too-subtle dig with more sarcasm. “He had a drink there, all right, with Dallas.”
“Dallas,” Max repeated and frowned. “You mean Empty Garner’s granddaughter?”
“There’s no one else around here named Dallas that I know of,” he retorted and drained the tall glass, ice clinking against its sides.
“I wonder how he met her,” Max murmured thoughtfully.
“Could have been the café, or the feed store—or both.” As far as Boone was concerned, it didn’t really matter.
“She works both places, doesn’t she?” Max said in idle recollection. “It’s our bad luck that he hooked up with the Garners so soon after he hit town. But it could explain why Echohawk was so quick to look our direction for the source of the Cee Bar’s problems. It’s odd though,” he added on further thought.
“What is?”
“Let me put it this way—Empty will likely go to his grave still nursing a grudge against us, but I thought the girl had let go of the past.”
“She met with Echohawk, didn’t she?” Boone reminded him.
“But why at Tillie’s? Why at a place where she had to know we would be told about her meeting?”
Boone shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t care if we know.”
“If she doesn’t, she will,” Max stated with a finality that suggested that matter was settled in his mind. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the oatmeal. “As for the three men who jumped Echohawk, right after dinner you can go tell them to pack their bags and head for the feedlot outside Plano. I don’t want them showing their faces around here until all their bruises have disappeared.”
“If you say so.” But Boone regarded it as a needless precaution. “You should know, though, that they’re hoping for a bonus.”
“I’d say they’ve already gotten one. They aren’t fired. Maybe they’ll get the message to do what they’re told—and nothing more than that.” Max scooped more oatmeal into his spoon. “What have you learned about Echohawk’s hired man? Is he from the Triple C?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then find out,” Max ordered with thinning patience. “I want to know who he is, what he drives, and where he’s staying. And I want to know it yesterday!”
“I wish you’d make up your damned mind,” Boone muttered, pushing the words through tightly clenched teeth. “First you’re telling me to do something about that semi load of hay he’s got coming. Now it’s the hired man.”
Max threw him a scornful look. “What’s the matter? Can’t you do two things at once?”
The words were a verbal slap. “Of course I can!” Boone asserted in a voice that vibrated with pent-up fury.
“Then do it,” Max snapped in return.
Saddle leather creaked, a companion sound to the muffled thud of hooves on hard-packed ground. Overhead, the afternoon sun sat at a high angle, its yellow glare shining in a milk-blue sky. An idle breeze wandered over and down the Texas hills, its breath carrying the warmth and faint tang of the gulf shore.
Quint sat easy in the saddle, his hand light on the reins. The bruise along his cheekbone was a colorful swirl of purple and green, but the swelling had gone down. A simple bandage covered the cut above his eyebrow. Other than a lingering puffiness around one corner of his mouth, he looked none
the worse for his run-in with the trio in Tillie’s parking lot.
A quick drumming of hoofbeats came from his right. Quint glanced that way as Empty Garner flushed two cows out of a draw and sent them trotting after the rest of the herd. Twenty feet beyond him was the fence line, every inch of it without cover and empty of cattle.
His job finished, Empty reined his horse away from the cows and took aim on Quint, lifting his mount into a lope to rejoin him. Quint pulled up to wait for him and dug the notepad and pencil out of his pocket to add the last two animals to his tally.
With a short tug on the reins, Empty checked his horse’s gait and swung alongside Quint. “Like it or not, that’s the last of them in this pasture.” He eyed the marks on the notepaper in Quint’s hand. “Is the tally the same as the first?”
“Exactly the same.” Quint wasn’t surprised by that, but he wasn’t pleased either as he returned the tally book and pencil to his pocket.
“I didn’t figure we’d missed any, but there was always a chance we might have.” Empty rested both hands on the saddle horn, one on top of the other, and slanted a knowing look at Quint. “I told you to expect it.”
“To be honest, Empty,” Quint said, allowing a slight smile to curve his mouth, careful not to let it be too wide and open the cut inside the corner of his mouth, “I would have been shocked if you were wrong.”
Empty grunted an acknowledgment and declared, “Rutledge don’t miss a trick and that’s a fact.” He ran a sidelong glance over the multicolored bruise high on Quint’s cheek. “Though, I’ve got to admit I never figured he’d sic his boys on you so quick.”
“It was my mistake for stopping in there for a beer.” But it was Dallas that Quint was thinking about, just as he had countless times in the last two days.
By now she would have heard from Rutledge, either directly or indirectly. Quint could only hope that a warning was all she received. As much as he wanted to make certain she was all right, he knew he had to keep his distance from her.
“Best do your drinking here at the Cee Bar from now on—and damned little of it,” Empty advised.