This Calder Sky (11 page)

“Nate Moore is one of my foremen.” Webb walked toward the entry hall. O'Rourke followed him. “He has an excellent eye for cattle—a very experienced man, well qualified. I'm sure you'll find him very helpful. You know him, don't you?” He opened the front door and motioned for O'Rourke to go first.

“I've talked to him a few times … in town.” It was a terse answer, an enlargement on exchanged greetings and comments about the weather.

“Of course.” Webb nodded as he guided the man to the top of the porch steps. Nate's lean shape was just crossing the yard. “Here he is now.”

As the ramrod approached the steps, his glance flicked to the shorter man, then darted sharply to his boss, silently speculating. But he merely nodded a greeting to both men.

“You wanted to see me?” The question was put to Webb Calder.

“Yes. I've just sold O'Rourke some cattle—fifty head of his choosing. I thought it would be best if you arranged to show him the herds and set up a delivery time.”

“We can look at the herds tomorrow morning around nine, if that suits you?” Nate turned to O'Rourke.

“Nine … nine o'clock is fine.” He shifted uncomfortably.

“As for delivery, we can truck them over, or you can drive them through to your place—whichever you prefer.” The foreman shrugged.

“I'll let you know in the morning,” Angus grumbled in ill temper as he folded the bill of sale and tucked it in his pocket.

“I'll meet you at the barns at nine o'clock.” Nate named the meeting place.

O'Rourke nodded and flashed a dark look at Calder before descending the steps and striking out for the battered pickup truck parked in the yard. Both Nate and Webb watched Angus go.

“He doesn't look pleased with the bargain,” Nate observed in a deliberately low voice.

“Nobody ever is,” Webb replied, then turned to enter the house, dismissing the foreman by his action.

Nate lingered, then shoved off to return to the barns. In one way or another, females were always at the heart of a man's troubles. Every man made a fool of himself over one at some time or another. Nate was just glad he'd never been fool enough to marry one. He liked being free to come and go as he pleased, with no one nagging him about where he was going or when he'd be back. The Triple C provided him with all the family he needed.

When dinner was over, Chase and Webb took their coffee into the den, leaving Ruth to clear the table.
Chase walked to the ornately carved walnut bar in a corner of the room and unstoppered a decanter of brandy.

“Do you want some in your coffee?” He half-turned to glance at his father.

“Not tonight.” Webb refused and studied his tall, broad-shouldered son. “O'Rourke came to see me today.” Chase had started to set the decanter down, but the statement stopped the movement in mid-action. After an instant's delay, it was carried through.

“What about?” Chase broke the ensuing silence but didn't turn around.

Silently, Webb admired the way his son kept himself contained. It wasn't good if someone could read a person's thoughts by his expression. An iron hold on the rest of his emotions would come in time. The boy was still young.

“He claimed you forced your attentions on his daughter,” Webb replied. “Do you deny it?”

“No.” He continued to face the bar, stirring his coffee.

Webb liked the bluntness of the answer, its absence of an excuse and lack of any disrespectful reference to the girl. It showed breeding and the assumption of full responsibility for what transpired.

“Did you make any promises that I should know about?”

Again, it was a straightforward “No.” The immobility was broken by a surge of rippling energy that turned Chase around in tight-lipped anger. “O'Rourke had no right to bring you into this. He should have talked to me.”

“It's been settled.”

“Settled? How?” Chase shot the questions at his father, a sharp ring of demand within them.

“I gave him a bill of sale for fifty head of cattle.”

“Fifty head. And he accepted that?”

“Yes.”

Chase half-turned his head away, his mouth curling in disgust. “I would have had more respect for the man if he'd tied me to a pole and whipped me. Why didn't he come over here and beat the hell out of me?”

“It's what I would have done in his place. I'm not so sure I shouldn't do it, anyway,” Webb stated grimly. “It's natural for a man to sow his wild oats, but he shouldn't do it in young, virgin fields.”

“That's occurred to me more than once these last few days,” Chase agreed on a breath of self-derision. He set the untouched cup of brandy-laced coffee on a side table. “I'm going for a walk and get some air.”

The closest town to the Triple C headquarters was a wide spot in the road called Blue Moon. It was a standing joke that the town was so named because something exciting happened there only once in a blue moon. The gas station was also the grocery store and post office. There was a café next to what was once a roadside inn with rooms for travelers, but the inn was now a saloon-bar, called “Jake's Place,” complete with a private gaming room in the back. The upstairs rooms were where Jake's “nieces” did their business. The café next door did a good trade, mostly because the owner, Bob Tucker, was reputed to be the best damned cook in the state of Montana.

In addition to those commercial buildings, there was a combination dry-goods-and-hardware store, an abandoned grain elevator, and a house that had been converted into a clinic where Doc Barlow came twice a week to see his patients. Beyond that, there were half a dozen houses for the thirty-odd residents of Blue Moon.

A pickup truck marked with the Triple C brand rumbled off the highway and bounced over the rutted ground, churning up a cloud of dust as it was braked to a stop in the parking area between the gasoline-grocery store and the saloon. Buck Haskell swung out of the passenger's side of the cab, his boots hitting the ground before Chase opened the driver's door.

“Tucker better have some blueberry pie left!” Buck declared. “I've been tasting it for the last ten miles.”

“You've been telling me that for the last ten miles, too,” Chase said, dryness rustling his voice.

“Hey, Chase, you got any cigarettes on you?” Buck slapped the empty breast pocket of his shirt. “I'm out.”

“All I have is a pack of cheroots.”

“Wait for me. I'm going to run in the store and get some.” Buck started toward the grocery store while he forced his hand inside the pocket of his snug-fitting Levi's for the money.

Chase leaned against the tailgate of the pickup to wait for him, tipping his hat to the back of his head, a faint smile showing in his expression. The door to the grocery slammed twice—once when Buck went in, and immediately afterward, when someone came out. Chase glanced around with idle interest.

The sight of Maggie O'Rourke was like a clean, wild wind rushing through him. In these last two weeks, he had managed to push her from his mind, but seeing her again erased those two weeks of forgetting. Her flowing black hair was tied at the nape of her neck with a faded blue scarf. She was wearing blue jeans and boots and a white blouse of sorts. He couldn't see much of it because of the two large grocery sacks she held in her arms. A slight frown marred the smoothness of her forehead as she looked into the sun. Chase realized she hadn't noticed him yet. He straightened from the tailgate, readjusting his hat to sit squarely on his head, and stepped forward.

“Hello, Maggie,” he said quietly.

She stopped, her gaze running to him. Some emotion flickered in her eyes before her expression became blank. “Hello, Chase.” She didn't falter over his name or appear self-conscious at seeing him again. “How have you been?” It was a polite question and he noticed how her lips lay together, full in the center.

“Busy.” He dragged his gaze from her mouth. “Let me carry one of those sacks for you.”

She hesitated an instant before surrendering one into his hands. The white blouse she wore was too small. The fullness of her young breasts made the front gape between the buttons. She shifted the other sack in front of her to hide it.

“We've been busy, too.” She started walking again and Chase shortened his stride to walk with her, carrying the sack in the crook of his arm. “You'd be surprised how much extra work there is when you acquire an additional fifty head of cattle.” Her voice was stiffly proud, like the way she was carrying herself.

“What is that remark supposed to mean?” A faint irritation ran through him at her tone.

She gave him one of those slanting looks that he was beginning to associate with her. “It means I'm not some tramp whose favors can be bought with fifty head of cattle. Maybe what I did was wrong, but it doesn't mean I'm bad.”

“Maggie, you weren't wrong. I was.” He took the blame. “The gift of the cattle was a way of saying ‘I'm sorry.'”

“Well, I'm not.” Her lips were pressed firmly together. “I didn't think Pa would make trouble for you. I mean, he talked a lot about it, but I never thought he would actually try it. When I think about him going to your father and telling him what we did, that's what makes me feel like …” They were passing the inn
when she paused and cast a quick glance at the upstairs windows. “… one of Jake's ‘nieces.'”

“You're not supposed to know about them.” His mouth twitched almost into a smile, amused by her directness.

“You mean I'm not supposed to let anybody
know
that I know about them. Everybody does,” she returned dryly, “and only pretend that they don't.”

“You shouldn't feel like one of them,” he insisted. “I know my father doesn't think of you that way.”

She stopped beside the passenger's door of a battered pickup and turned to look at him. “What do you think about me, Chase?”

“I think you are a remarkable and very beautiful young girl.” Looking into her candid green eyes, he felt the pull of her presence tugging at him. This time he resisted the urge to take her into his arms.

“Beautiful? In this?” She looked down at her clothes with a glance that was wryly skeptical. Then she sobered. “I guess you're just trying to be polite, but you don't need to. I know what people think about my pa … and the rest of the O'Rourkes, too. Pa always blames someone else for his troubles. But I don't want you to think that I blame you for what happened. I knew what I was doing. I know you said you'd see me, but after the trouble Pa caused, I want you to know that I'm not expecting you to come around.”

“Why not?” A gentle quality took the roughness out of Chase's craggy features.

A frown briefly wrinkled her forehead. “Because—”

“Chase!” Buck called and came trotting from the direction of the store. “What are you doing? Playing carry-out boy?”

“Meet me tomorrow at the fence line around ten o'clock. Can you make it?” Chase murmured quickly. She nodded uncertainly. Louder, he asked, “Where do
you want me to put this sack? In the cab or the back of the truck?”

“In the back is fine.”

After setting the sack in the rear bed, he took the one from her arms and put it with the other. He touched a hand to his hat. “I'll see you.” Then Chase turned to meet his friend. “Are you ready for that blueberry pie?”

“Sure am.” The last time Buck had seen the O'Rourke girl, he had labeled her a wildcat and a tomboy. Now he was picking up a different impression. His curious and dancing blue eyes studied the change.

The boldness of his inspection caused Maggie to become more self-conscious. She slipped the tips of her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans, hunching her shoulders forward to ease the strain on the shirt buttons. Her head was tipped at a proud and challenging angle under the rude stare, but Chase was turning away, prompting Buck to follow a second later.

Buck caught up with him in one stride, casting a half-glance in his direction. “I take back what I said about her the other day,” Buck murmured in a low voice. “You sure as hell can tell she's a female.” As he opened the door to the café, he looked back at the girl. “Maybe it's time I started calling on my neighbors.”

The gleam in his buddy's eyes sent a ripple of unease down Chase's spine. Buck tended to be careless of a girl's feelings, lacking a conscience when it came to sexual conquest. That protective instinct bristled within Chase, arrogantly blind to the possibility that he wasn't in a position to judge.

“Leave her be, Buck.” It was a terse reply, his tone bordering on hard authority.

“Why should I?” Buck challenged with a frowning smile and followed him into the café.

Chase attempted to smother the raw irritation with
his friend and succeeded in making his voice light. “Let's just say that I saw her first and leave it at that.” But there was a look of dark warning in his glance.

“Damn, but you're selfish, Chase,” Buck teased. “I always share with you, don't I? We nursed at the same breast, didn't we? I even let you take my rightful place as the Calder heir, and this is the way you repay me.” He feigned a wounded look and swung his leg over the back of a chair to sit at one of the café tables. “Just for that, you can buy my pie. Hey, Tucker!” he called to the man behind the counter. “I want two pieces of your blueberry pie, and Chase here is paying for it.”

Chase noticed Angus O'Rourke sitting on a stool at the counter, but he let his glance slide past him to the rotund owner of the café. “Just coffee for me, Tucker, since I've been stuck with the bill.”

“Old Moneybags is trying to pretend he's broke.” Buck laughed, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth while he searched his pockets for a match. “Got a light?”

“I've got a friend who's a moocher.” Chase tossed a book of matches onto the table in front of Buck. “You get paid more than I do. What do you do with your money?”