Cowboy PI (12 page)

Samantha and Roark traded astonished glances. No wonder he had seemed familiar. Although it wasn’t an obvious likeness, mother and son resembled each other, sharing the same Hispanic heritage.

Ramona set the skillet on a tripod and moved toward her son, this time expressing her anxiety in words. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, Ma, I’m okay.”

She reached out to him with both hands. Roark, watching her, expected to see a loving embrace. What he and the others witnessed was Ramona cuffing her son swiftly on both cheeks.

“You should have listened to me!” she railed. “Why didn’t you listen to me?” And before he could answer her, Ramona rounded angrily on the others. “What have you done to him? If you’ve gone and hurt him—”

“Whoa, Ramona,” Shep strove to pacify her, “take it easy. No one’s done a thing to him.”

“Except drag him down here like he’d gone and committed some crime!”

“Maybe he did,” Roark said. “Or have you forgotten last night’s stampede?”

“I told you, man,” her son insisted, “I didn’t have a thing to do with that.”

“Then why have you been following us the last two days? What was that all about if you’re so in—” Roark broke off. “What is your name, anyway? Or are you still refusing to tell us even that much?”

“Ernie,” Ramona said. “His name is Ernie Chacon.”

“Don’t tell them anything, Ma. We don’t have to answer their questions.”

“No,” Roark said, “we could leave them for the nearest sheriff to ask. There ought to be one somewhere in the area. What about it, Ernie?”

For the first time Ernie looked uneasy, his dark eyes shifting from face to face. He’d been in trouble with the law before, Roark guessed. The threat worked. Ernie caved.

“I heard things back in Texas,” he mumbled. “They worried me.”

“What things?” the trail boss demanded.

“Guys in the bars talking. Saying this cattle drive had trouble brewing for it. It worried me, you know.”

“Because of your mother?” a perceptive Samantha gently prompted him.

“I told him that was all a lot of nonsense,” Ramona said. “That he had absolutely no reason to think I wouldn’t be safe.”

“And that’s why you’ve been following us,” Samantha said. “You wanted to be there for your mother in case there was any danger.”

“I didn’t want her to come on this drive. I had a bad feeling about it. Then when she says she wasn’t staying behind, and she wouldn’t let me come with her…” Ernie shrugged. “Well, sons are supposed to look out for their mothers, ain’t they?”

Roark could see that Samantha was touched by his explanation, as well as prepared to accept it. But he wasn’t ready yet to buy it. It was altogether too innocent, besides leaving several unanswered questions.

“If that’s the case,” he said, “then why didn’t you just ride down here and tell us who you were and what you were doing?”

“Yeah? And would you have let me join up with you?”

“Probably not,” Shep replied honestly.

“See, I knew it,” Ernie said defiantly, and then he
abruptly turned to his mother. “I’m famished, Ma. You got anything for me to eat?”

“Come on around to the back of the cook wagon, and I’ll fix you a plate.”

“Not yet,” Shep said. “There are a few more questions we’d like to ask.”

“You’ve heard enough,” Ramona said swiftly. “He’s explained everything to you. There isn’t any more to tell. Let’s go, Ernie.”

Mother and son disappeared around the side of the truck.

“In a hurry to get him away, wasn’t she?” the trail boss said after they’d gone.

“Oh, yeah,” Roark agreed. “Like she was afraid of what he might say next.”

“You don’t think she’s hiding something?” Samantha asked, sounding as though she couldn’t believe Ramona was capable of being devious.

“Why not? She must have realized from the beginning it was Ernie up there on the ridge, and yet she denied knowing anything about him. Why keep it from us?” Roark turned to Shep as something else occurred to him. “There must be a father somewhere. You know anything about Ernie’s father?”

“Hell, I didn’t even know Ramona had a son. I never heard her mention anything about either a husband or a boyfriend, past or present.”

No explanation there then, Roark thought. But he suddenly remembered something. Looking around, he saw that Dick Brewster had finished his breakfast and left the campsite to help Cappy Davis with the herd. But Alex McKenzie was still with them. Alex, who, along with his surprise when Ernie Chacon first arrived on the scene, had worn a look of recognition.

“You hear all that, Alex?”

“I heard.”

“You know Ernie, don’t you?”

The young drover hesitated. Then he put down his plate,
got to his feet and came to join then. “I don’t know him, but I know about him,” he admitted. “I used to see him sometimes hanging out in this bar.”

“Back in Purgatory?” Shep wondered.

Alex shook his head. “I don’t guess he ever spent much time in Purgatory. This was up in Austin when I was going to the university. He worked construction there, I think. When he had a job at all, that is. The thing is…” He stopped, an expression of reluctance on his boyish, good-looking face.

“We have a potential problem here,” Roark urged. “You need to tell us what you know.”

Alex nodded. “It’s not what I know, just what I heard from other guys. That Ernie had this hot temper, and it would get him into trouble sometimes. Fights, and that kind of thing. Anyway, I steered clear of him.”

Alex’s disclosure had him looking increasingly uneasy, as if he hated being an informer. Shep took pity on him. “Thanks, Alex. You’d better go out and relieve Cappy now.”

With a sheepish look in Samantha’s direction, which she answered with a smile, Alex hurried away.

“Useful?” Shep asked when he was gone.

“Maybe,” Roark said. “If Ernie has a bad reputation, it could explain why Ramona was afraid for us to know about him.”

“And why Joe didn’t want him hanging around the Walking W, even if it was to visit his mother.”

“That doesn’t make him responsible for the stampede,” Samantha said.

“It could if he figured it was a way to prevent his mother from going on with the drive.” Or, Roark wondered to himself, did Ernie Chacon have a more sinister agenda than that? Something that had his mother very nervous?

“What do we do about him?” the trail boss asked.

“Add him to the outfit. We could use another drover.”

“Is that wise?”

“I don’t think we have a choice. If we let him go, he could be a threat all the way to Alamo Junction. And no sheriff is going to hold him when we don’t have evidence he sabotaged the drive. But if he rides with us, providing he’s willing, we can keep a close eye on him.” And Ernie bears watching, Roark thought. “Well, it’s your call, Shep.”

“I’ll go talk to him.” He went off to the back of the cook truck, leaving Samantha and Roark alone.

“This drive is getting awfully complicated,” she said, her tone registering her regret.

In more ways than she meant, Roark thought, remembering the blistering kiss they had shared last night and how much he wanted her. Not just physically either, but emotionally as well. With each passing day, his feelings for her grew more intense. He didn’t know if it could be defined as love, not yet anyway, but whatever it was, it was hell. Because in tandem with his longing for Samantha was his growing desire to live the kind of life she despised.

He had yet to make a decision to abandon PI work to be a full-time rancher, but the cattle drive was pulling him in that direction. All its hardships and difficulties aside, he found himself savoring the experience, feeling as if he belonged to it. It was a powerful argument, and a frustrating one when it made the gulf between Samantha and him all the wider.

Shep returned to report that Ernie had agreed to join the drive. “Let’s hope he’ll be of use to us. You two had better grab some breakfast. It’s long past time we were underway.”

Roark knew that the trail boss was right and that every delay was costly to the drive, which made him feel guilty when he and Samantha went off away from the others so that he could steal several more minutes of precious time. It was necessary.

Wendell’s voice was so sleepy when he answered his
call that Roark knew he had gotten his young trainee out of bed. He had forgotten how early it was.

“You phoning from Lost Springs?” Wendell asked, referring to the town that was scheduled to be the cattle drive’s first stop along the trail.

“Still ahead of us,” Roark said, cell phone tight against his ear.

“Then you couldn’t have picked up the photographs I e-mailed to the copy center there. Or my two reports.”

“What reports would those be?”

“The outcomes of the interviews I had with the director of the Western Museum in Purgatory and the abbot of St. James Monastery.” Wendell sounded grieved that Roark hadn’t seemed to remember his assignments.

“Any luck?”

“Well, the good part is neither one of them was suspicious. They accepted my story I’m a freelance writer wanting to do articles on their operations, so they willingly answered all my questions. The bad part is they didn’t seem to be hiding a thing. I mean, they both freely admitted funds are always a problem, but nothing sounded like there was any critical need.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t one somewhere,” Roark soothed his conscientious trainee. “We’ll keep on digging, but this time we’ll try another direction. I have a new assignment for you.” He went on to explain about Ernie Chacon. “Try Purgatory first. Go back there and see if you can find out whether he has any kind of record. Do the same in Austin. Find out all you can about him, even if it means asking in the bars. This could be important, Wendell.”

H
E WAS DISAPPOINTED
. The stampede had failed to achieve his intention. Samantha had emerged from it unharmed. Nor had it succeeded in halting the cattle drive. They would go on toward Alamo Junction and those waiting stock cars.

But they wouldn’t get there. He’d see to that. There would be other chances to sabotage the drive, other methods to prevent her from qualifying for the inheritance. He just needed to be patient, ready for them. That’s right, plenty of time to take care of her. All he had to do was make certain they didn’t learn the secret he was guarding.

Chapter Six

Samantha was convinced of it. The cattle drive was cursed.

You would think, she told herself wearily, that after forcing two hundred reluctant longhorns into leaving their home range, dealing with a mysterious rider on the ridge and then suffering an even more mysterious stampede in the night, they’d had more than their fair share of trouble. Yes, and that they’d earned themselves a nice peaceful interval free of problems.

But whatever god was in charge of cattle drives, or maybe it was a demon, didn’t see it that way. Because all that day, and throughout most of the day that followed, they encountered hazards in one form or another.

There was, to begin with, the weather. It rained. Not just a persistent all-day drizzle this time, which had been miserable enough yesterday, but a downpour. A hard, driving torrent that roared down from the mountains and soaked drovers and cattle alike. Mercifully, the cloudburst came and went. Not so merciful was what it produced.

Up to that point, the streams they had crossed had been lazy affairs, shallow at this season and easy to ford. This time they came to the banks of a course swollen from the storm and whose current was anything but gentle. No choice. They had to swim cattle and horses alike through the swift waters. By some miracle they gained the other side without losing a single cow, though at one point Irma
was in danger of being swept downstream. Roark’s quick action with a lariat saved the heifer.

The sun should have been a blessing when it finally came out. Yet it felt more like a desert sun in mid-July than a Colorado sun in autumn. It beat down on them, unseasonably hot, baking what had been mud into dust that hundreds of hooves raised into choking clouds.

And then there was the underpass. It was the only route beneath an interstate highway. The cattle weren’t happy about that narrow tunnel, resisting determined efforts to drive them through it. It took almost two hours to squeeze the last of the bawling herd into the bottleneck and out into the open on the far side.

The raw, spectacular beauty of the mountains, their lower slopes ablaze now with a climax of fall colors, should have consoled Samantha. But by then she was too exhausted and exasperated to be anything but immune to the wonders of nature.

All of it justified her certainty that the drive was cursed and that the spirit of her grandfather was looking down on her every ordeal and cackling in glee. She confided as much to Roark riding close beside her on his big roan. Samantha was on Dolly again, for which she was supremely grateful. The little mare never gave her any difficulty. She couldn’t say the same for some of the other horses in the remuda that the drovers, including her, had to use when their favorite mounts needed to be relieved.

Tugging at the brim of his Stetson, Roark turned those breath-robbing blue eyes of his on her and favored her with a teasing smile. “That’s why you’re here, remember? Joe Walker’s dying wish to test his granddaughter.”

“Yes, but I don’t think I’m being tested as much as I’m being punished.”

“What are you telling me? That, wherever he is, Joe is sending down stampedes, floods, and maybe, before it’s all over, even a cattle rustler or two just to discipline you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I wouldn’t put
her
past him. In fact, there are moments when I’d swear she’s my grandfather reincarnated.”

Roark looked in the direction she indicated, his smile broadening into a grin at the sight of the heifer romping in front of them. “Sweet little Irma? And here I thought you were so fond of her.”

“I am when she isn’t giving me grief, which lately is most of the time. I don’t know. Every time I think she’s starting to behave herself, she goes and acts up. It’s my grandfather all over again.”

“Now what did I tell you? If you’d let me teach you how to use a lariat, all your troubles with Irma would be over.”