This Calder Sky (13 page)

“Yeah, and the guy who gets caught.”

“Do you know what the odds are against that?” Tucker glanced at O'Rourke and smirked. “In order to prove anything, they'd have to catch you in the act, and the chances of that happening are a million to one. Even if they did, the man would probably never go to prison. It's a lucrative business with little risk involved. The days when a rancher would hang a rustler on mere suspicion are long gone.”

“That's true enough,” Angus conceded and eyed the hulking form of the café owner with curiosity. “I never
knew you had so much larceny in your blood, Tucker. I'm going to have to watch you when we start dealing on these cattle so you don't cheat me.”

“Basically, I'm an honest person, Angus. I never try to screw the people I do business with—only the other guy,” he explained with wry humor. “But I'm just as interested in making money as any other poor devil. If it means doing something a little shady, then a man has to balance the returns against the risks and make up his mind whether it's worth it.”

“I suppose.” O'Rourke sounded hesitant.

Tucker was slightly contemptuous of the rancher's blindness to the facts. “Crime pays in this day and age. Don't take my word for it. Look around for yourself. This is a big empty stretch of Montana, and all we have in the way of law enforcement are a couple of state police on the highway, and Potter and his excuses for deputies in the County Sheriff's Department. If a rustler wanted to steal some Triple C cattle, there wouldn't be anyone to stop him—or catch him. Even Calder couldn't patrol every inch of his range.”

“I guess you're right.” Despite the affirmation, Angus continued to sound skeptical.

Tucker glanced around, as if getting his bearings, then turned his horse toward a ridge. “I'll show you what I mean.” The cattle scattered as the pair rode through them to climb the rough hill. At the crest, Tucker reined his horse to a stop. Beyond him stretched Calder land. “Do you see that back road over there?” He pointed to a narrow band of dirt in the distance. “All a rustler has to do is have a semi-trailer waiting there while a couple of riders drive the cattle to the fence and load them up. It's a slick operation—in and out in less than an hour. There's no one to see you or hear you. It could be days before anyone knows any cattle are missing.”

“If it's so easy, how come no one has tried it yet?” Angus wondered.

“It's usually a hit-and-run operation. They move into an area, work it for a month, come away with three or four loads, and move onto the next. The last time I remember hearing about cattle being stolen around here was about ten years ago,” Tucker recalled and stared thoughtfully at the expansive view before him. “Whoever did it got away clean. Around here, though, everybody knows everybody, so they're quicker to notice a strange vehicle or a strange face and not pay any attention to a local—” He stopped abruptly, not completing the sentence. He'd been thinking out loud. Now he wanted to keep those thoughts to himself, on the outside chance something might come of it. With a quick glance at O'Rourke, he changed the subject. “You never did quote me a price on that beef.”

Angus was mulling over the unfinished sentence, completing it in his head. He realized it was true; the comings and goings of a local person wouldn't arouse anyone's curiosity—definitely not as quickly as a stranger. He was slow to follow the shift in the conversation.

“You haven't said what you're willing to pay,” he finally countered. With a turn of his stout wrist, Tucker started to rein his horse in a half-circle. His meandering gaze noticed movement along the boundary fence between O'Rourke's property and the Triple C and he paused. His interest sharpened when he recognized the couple walking hand in hand.

There was curious speculation in his glance at O'Rourke. “So Chase Calder has come a-courting your daughter. I knew you must have had an inside track. I couldn't imagine Webb selling such high-quality cattle to just anybody.”

At his comment, O'Rourke's head jerked around to
see the pair. Rage flashed through his expression, but his face was averted from Tucker and the man never saw it. Angus kicked his horse to turn it away from the sight and started down the slope ahead of the heavier rider, leading him away from the couple.

Angus brooded over that scene for three days. He didn't confront his daughter with his knowledge of her meeting with Chase Calder; nor did she mention it to him. His darkening thoughts realized that his visit with Webb Calder had accomplished nothing, and to carry another protest to him would be equally futile. There was no justice in the world when a man could take a girl's innocence and go unpunished.

Before he took matters into his own hands, he resolved to give Calder one more chance to stay away from his daughter. If he left her alone, Angus would let the matter drop. If he didn't, Angus would make him pay. He had vowed it to himself.

The emptiness of his stomach told him it was nearly noon, so he left the motor to the well pump, half-reassembled, and started for the house. The cantering approach of a horse and rider caused him to stop. His gaze narrowed in sharp suspicion when he recognized Maggie riding up to the corral. He reversed his direction
to walk to the corral, where she was dismounting to unsaddle her horse.

“Sorry I'm late, Pa. It'll only take me a few minutes to fix lunch.” Her face was flushed and her eyes were shining when he stopped beside the board fence.

His glance fell to her mouth and noted the swollen soft curve of her lips. He didn't have to be told to know what had caused it. “You've been with Chase Calder again,” he accused.

She focused all her attention on loosening the cinch. “I'm not a little girl anymore, Pa.” Her low voice was stiff and defensive.

Black anger clenched his jaw, but it wasn't directed at her. To him she was the victim, a helpless female, thus incapable of knowing her own mind. He had no choice but to take matters into his own hands.

“Don't bother to fix any lunch for me. I have to go into town to pick up another part for the pump motor,” he lied. It was only half a lie; he was going to town, but not for a motor part.

Maggie caught the note of falsehood in his voice. “Pa, you aren't going to—”

“I'm going into town, I told you!” he snapped and pivoted from the corral. Driven by a barely contained fury, he crossed the littered ranch yard to the pickup.

As Maggie dragged the saddle and blanket into the barn, she heard the slamming of the cab door and the coughing sputter of the truck motor before it started. The truck was bouncing down the rutted lane when she emerged from the barn to walk to the house.

There was still her brother to feed, so Maggie walked to the sink to wash her hands before fixing lunch. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, unable to understand how her father had known she'd been with Chase that morning, or how he had guessed that they had made love.

The pickup's accelerator was pressed to the floor all
the way into town, where the truck clattered to a bumping stop in front of the small café. Angus charged out of the cab, slamming the door and stalking into the building. It was lunch hour and the place was half-filled with customers. His glance swept over the occupants in undisguised irritation as he crossed the room to sit on a stool at the far end of the counter. The bullet-headed owner was standing at the grill behind it, a metal spatula in his chubby hand.

“What'll you have, Angus?” Tucker didn't move, except to turn his head and look at his latest customer.

“Coffee.”

The owner-cook flipped a pair of hamburgers with the spatula and squashed them flat, then shifted his hulk the two steps needed to reach the coffee urn. After filling a white cup, he traversed the length of the counter to set it in front of Angus.

“Anything else?” Tucker paused to wipe his hands on the stained front of the white bibbed apron.

“Yeah.”

“Stick around,” Tucker advised. “This place will clear out in another half-hour. Then we'll talk about it.” A gleam brightened his small eyes as he added softly, “Partner.”

Two weeks later a full moon peeked from behind a cloud, casting its light on a pair of riders walking their horses through tall, Calder grass. The creaking of saddle leather was loud in the stillness. Angus glanced at his son, whose head seemed to be on a swivel, always looking nervously around. He had the same crawly feeling in the pit of his stomach, too, and his throat was dry. Damn, but he wanted a drink. He looked to the front again, gathering courage from his all-consuming hatred.

“That bunch of cattle we spotted should be over that next hillock,” he whispered to Culley and pointed.

“Pa, what happens if we get caught?”

“We aren't gonna get caught. Tucker and me have it all figured out. All we have to do is drive the cattle to the road where the truck is waiting.”

There were several seconds of silence before Culley asked, “Are you … nervous, Pa?”

The choice of that adjective was one Angus could admit to feeling. “Some. But I keep imagining Calder's face when he discovers he has cattle missing. The bastard will be furious.” Angus paused to gloat silently over the thought. “No one's had the guts to stand up to him until we came along. No Calder is going to ride roughshod on us little guys and ever get away with it again. I'm going to get even with that son-of-a-bitchin' bastard for all the grief and misery he's caused if it's the last thing I do,” Angus vowed. “We'll haul every steer off this place before we're through with our midnight rides. We'll break him, Culley—you and me.” A soft, malicious laugh came from his throat. “We'll be rich and he'll be poor. He's going to regret the day he let his son lay a hand on your sister. He's going to regret it real bad.”

“And we're going to make sure of it,” Culley murmured in fervent agreement.

Removing his hat, Chase combed his fingers through his unruly brown hair and set the felt Stetson back in place. The sun was directly overhead, scorching the metal of the pickup where it wasn't protected by the tree's shade. He scanned the hillside in the direction from which Maggie would be coming. She was already almost a full hour late.

They usually managed to meet twice a week at a pre-arranged location. It wasn't the most satisfactory solution, meeting in the daytime with limited time to spend together. Even if he ignored the fact that her
father would never give Maggie permission to openly date him, where would he take a fifteen-year-old girl? The only social gathering place close by was Jake's, and he couldn't take her there.

So they had met when and where they could. A couple of times ranch work had kept Chase away, but this was the first time Maggie hadn't shown up. He felt raw inside, eaten up with a need he couldn't control.

He had waited as long as he could. Abandoning his vigil, Chase turned and grabbed the shirt draped over the side of the pickup bed. As he pushed his arms into the sleeves, he walked to the cab of the truck. He had yanked open the driver's door before he heard the hoofbeats of an approaching horse.

Remaining poised beside the open door, Chase turned toward the sound. Some of the tension eased from him at the sight of the horse's rider, a slim extension of the mount she rode. She cantered the bay toward him, weaving through the stand of trees to reach him. Pleasure swept through him, soft like the stirring warmth of a summer breeze, when she reined to a stop near the truck and kicked her feet out of the stirrups to slide to the ground.

There was a certain knowing look to her smile, an awareness that the rounded shape of her upper body sang to him and excited his male interest. She was a picture of country freshness, framed before his hungry eyes. The pull of her was urgent, but Chase stayed by the truck door, making her walk to him.

“Sorry I'm late, but I had to practically drag Pa and Culley out of bed this morning,” she explained with a kind of breathless rush. “Everything ran behind schedule after that. I wasn't sure you'd still be here.”

Maggie stopped a foot in front of Chase and tipped her head back to study his face—bony and rugged. Inwardly, she strained toward him, asserting her will on
him. It gave her a sense of power to see the glinting darkness of want appear in his eyes. It was there now, but he was resisting it.

“I was just leaving.” Irritation flickered through him at being denied the sight of all that black hair tucked under her hat. “Take your hat off. You look like a twelve-year-old when you have your hair hidden in the crown.” Chase suffered small spasms of guilt when he was reminded of her youth, but they were never strong enough twinges of conscience to make him stop meeting her.

With a soft laugh, Maggie swept the hat off her head and shook her hair free. She eyed him with a challenge that was unknowingly provocative before her gaze drifted down to brazenly admire his hard-muscled torso where the unbuttoned front of his shirt swung open.

“Do you like what you see?” His dark eyes were three-quarters lidded, and there was a lazy curve to his mouth.

“Yes—what little I see.”

Her audacious reply produced a deep chuckle from his throat. “You are turning into a bold little hussy,” Chase mocked.

“Considering that you were my teacher, are you bragging or complaining?” Maggie countered.

“Bragging.” When she turned to catch the trailing reins of her horse, he frowned and reached out to stop her. “Where do you think you're going?” She didn't resist when he turned her back to face him.

“You said you were leaving when I came. I didn't want to keep you from your work.” Her green eyes blinked with too much innocence. Maggie enjoyed exercising the power she'd discovered she had over him, the ability to make him want her despite other prior claims on his attention … even from his father.