This Calder Sky (49 page)

“It's kinda hard to figure how the calf got tangled in the first place, and how there wasn't much sign of struggle in the grass. And it's a really strange coincidence that the end of the wire got wrapped nine times.”

The hangman's knot. Another message that had been meant for him, but he hadn't gone to get it. The noose on the desktop had been the first warning. The strangled calf was the second. His blood ran cold as a solitary cloud passed in front of the sun. These warnings had to be the product of a twisted mind. There was no way he could outguess what Culley O'Rourke might do next. Even if he could, how could he go against Maggie's brother? Either way, he would be damned. It boiled down to which risk was he willing to take—the chance that the next time Culley might use something other than a dumb animal in his attempt to terrorize Chase, or the chance of losing Maggie. She would never forgive him if he caused something to happen to her brother. How far would Culley go? Was he just trying to scare him, or was there true vengeance planned? Or—was this a clever ploy to cause trouble between him and Maggie so she would leave him and go to Culley?

All he said to Nate was, “That's quite a coincidence. If a man had a guilty conscience, he might make something out of it.”

“He might,” Nate agreed and moved away from the fence to saunter bowlegged to the mouse-colored horse standing passively in the middle of the corral while Ty dismounted.

That evening, Ty was already sitting at the table when Maggie saw him for the first time since morning. It wasn't until dinner was finished and he excused himself to leave the table that she noticed how stiff and awkwardly he moved, favoring his right leg.

“Ty, are you hurt?”

“Naw.” He shrugged away his aches, but not very convincingly. “I banged my knee a little. Nate gave me some liniment for it. It'll be all right.”

She watched him limp out of the room, then started clearing the dinner dishes from the table while Chase finished his coffee. When she returned from the kitchen, Chase was staring at his cup with a hard frown. She suddenly realized how quiet he had been throughout dinner, his thoughts apparently elsewhere.

“Is something bothering you?” She paused beside his chair.

He looked up, seeming to bring himself back to the present with an effort. He smiled, but the frown never completely left his face. “Yes. You.” He caught her hand and pulled her onto his lap. He kissed her soundly, then lifted his head, his lazy eyes regarding her possessively. “That's what I wanted for dessert.” His hand stroked her thigh and hip.

“What were you thinking about before I came in?” she persisted, caressing the angular planes of his cheek.

“You would have been proud of our son today. He rode one of the green four-year-olds we're breaking. He was bucked off four times, but got back on each time and rode the horse to a standstill.”

“Chase, he could have been hurt,” Maggie protested with a quick frown. “He doesn't know the first thing about riding an unbroken horse. He's been on some young, untrained horses, but never one fresh off the range.”

“He has to learn how it's done sometime.”

“But—” His mouth was on hers to silence her argument. When she made a half-hearted attempt to elude his kiss, he caught her lip between his teeth and chewed it gently. Her hands wound into his hair to force his mouth fully onto her lips.

Chase didn't tell her about the calf that had been strangled and left with the hangman's message around its neck. He knew better than she did how fragile the feelings she had for him were. Too much outside
pressure might snap them before they had a chance to grow strong. Every minute, every hour, every day he could gain just altered the odds a little more in his favor.

He already knew she was his. He could never let her go again.

Maggie reined in her horse and maneuvered it to open the gate to the Broken Butte range. She was to meet Chase out here somewhere. He'd suggested this morning that she come out this way on her afternoon ride. In these miles of wild country, there were only three places where they would be working a herd. She rode through the gate and closed it behind her, trying to decide which of the three to try first. Then she saw a rider cantering down a slope to meet her.

“Hello, Maggie.” Buck Haskell touched the rolled point of his hat and reined his horse, swinging it around beside hers. “Chase asked me to meet you and guide you back.”

“I wondered where I was going to find him,” she admitted, smiling briefly at the gregarious cowboy Chase counted as his friend.

They started out at a trot. “You're looking beautiful today, Maggie. I think marriage agrees with you.”

“It does.” Chase had warned her that Buck was prone to flattery. He did have a boyish charm that was
irresistible, his wide, appreciative grin prompting her smile to be more natural and less polite.

“I have to tell you that when Chase told me you two were getting married, I didn't think you had a Chinaman's chance after what happened to your pa.” He shook his head wryly. “But I should have known that Chase always gets what he wants.”

The breeze seemed to take on a chill at the reference to her father. It was better if she didn't let her thoughts dwell too much in the past and open old wounds. She could almost hear Chase saying, “Hold on tight to what we have, Maggie.” No, she wouldn't look back, not that far back.

“In this case, it's what we both want,” she said.

“I can see that.” Buck grinned at her. “Chase thinks the sun rises and sets on that boy of yours. You want to talk about a proud papa—that Chase, he's one. That boy means everything to him. ‘Course, that's natural for a father to feel that way about his son.”

“Yes.” Maggie listened to the praise and felt uneasy.

“I guess there isn't anything Chase wouldn't do for him,” Buck said thoughtfully. “Once he sinks his teeth into an idea, he won't let it go. It was just a matter of time before he got you around to his way of thinking. Chase knew what it was like growing up without a mother, and he didn't want that for the kid. My mother was kind of a second mother to him, but it isn't like having your own. I guess that's the way you thought—wanting the boy to have his own father.”

“Yes.” Maggie didn't dissuade him from that belief. There was no reason to tell him Chase had initially blackmailed her into this marriage with threats of winning Ty away from her.

“Chase and me were practically raised as brothers. I have pretty strong feelings about him. I guess you know the story. There aren't many people that would give an
ex-con another chance. I owe him a lot, but I guess I don't have to convince you what kind of a man he is.” A short laugh came from him. “Here I am, riding beside a beautiful woman, and what am I doing? Raving on about her husband! I'm really slipping. I'd better deliver you to Chase before I lose my reputation.” He spurred his horse into a canter and Maggie followed suit.

The lowing of cattle greeted them as they crested a rise and a meadow spread out before them. The holding pens were in the center of it. Maggie easily spotted Chase among the riders. Mounted on a blood bay gelding, he was positioned near the main gate of the holding pens, watching the action. Buck stayed beside her, not leaving until she was delivered into Chase's hands.

“Here she is, safe and sound,” he said with a wide grin.

“Thanks, Buck.” Chase was too busy looking at her to notice Buck tip his hat respectfully toward Maggie before reining away. “You look like a young girl again with your hair tucked under your hat like that.”

But he already knew the maturity of the curves beneath the long-sleeved designer blouse of yellow chamois cloth, and his gaze was now lingering on her mouth. She smoothed an escaping tendril of hair under her hat, enjoying the warm disturbance his look caused.

“It's getting too long,” she said to explain why she was wearing her hair the old way, then broke contact with his eyes to survey the scene. “Where's Ty?”

“He's out with Dave finishing the gather. We should start moving the herd within the hour.” There had been a delay in driving this herd to summer graze due to a breakdown of a windmill pump, and a creek unexpectedly went dry, making the water supply on the range
temporarily insufficient. Now the pump was fixed and a beaver dam high upstream had been destroyed to allow water to flow in the creek bed again. He challenged Maggie with a glittering look. “Want to cowboy this afternoon?”

“Sure.” It had been a long time since she'd actually worked on a ranch. It sounded like fun.

When the last of the stragglers were brought in and the count was confirmed, the gates to the holding pens were opened and the herd was driven out. While Maggie rode the left flank beside Chase and two other riders, Ty was stationed back on drag. Not wanting to be pegged a “momma's boy,” he had barely nodded to her when he'd ridden in with his teacher-partner, Dave. Amused, but understanding, Maggie had been careful not to watch her son too closely.

A cow and calf broke from the herd directly in front of Chase and Maggie. His blood bay gelding made a lunge after them, but Chase reined it short and nodded to her. “They're yours.”

Maggie relaxed the pressure on the bit and, quick as a cat, her bay gelding was streaking after the fleeing pair. The old exhilaration of pursuit returned. The cow was turned and trotting toward the herd, the calf at its side. In that wild moment, racing over rough ground, it became sharply clear how much she had missed this life. That was why she had adjusted to it so quickly and so easily. There was a flash of guilt that her education and all the things Phillip had taught her might go to waste out here. Her concentration was broken. She wasn't prepared for the sudden swerve of her horse as it checked a half-hearted attempt by the cow to make another escape to freedom. The gelding jumped out from under her and Maggie tumbled to the ground, rolling and coming to a stop, sitting up, unhurt. For an instant, all she could do was sit there, surprised,
stunned. When she saw the black legs of Chase's red bay gelding beside her, she looked up. He could see she was unhurt and amusement glimmered in his eyes. Suddenly a smile broke across her face and she laughed at herself.

“I got caught sitting loose. I guess I'm a bit rusty.” She rolled to her feet, brushing off the seat of her pants, and picked her hat up off the ground.

“You'll have plenty of opportunity to practice.” Reaching down, he clasped her forearm and swung her into the saddle behind him. She wrapped her arms around his middle, holding on tighter than was necessary as Chase turned his horse toward the herd.

One of the riders had caught her loose horse and was waiting midway to the herd. When they reached him, Maggie loosened her hold to swing down, but the saddle creaked as Chase half-turned to hook an arm around her waist. Instead of lowering her to the ground, he curved her against his side, pressing her hips against his thigh. She saw the dark fire in his look and felt the responding lift of her pulse as his gaze lingered on her mouth.

“They can see us.” She reminded him of their audience of cowhands.

“They'll look the other way,” Chase assured her and tipped his head to cover her lips in a hard, hungry kiss. Then he reluctantly lowered her to the ground. There was a disturbed rhythm to her pulse as she swung into the saddle of her own mount. Joy filled her when she reined her horse alongside his, their legs brushing, a joy that was both fierce and fragile. They rode forward at a shuffling trot, not in a great hurry to catch up with the herd that had passed them.

Ty had been assigned the position of riding drag with a veteran cowboy. The position at the rear of the herd was the least desirable, since the rider was subjected to
the collective stench, heat, and dust of the herd. It was frustrating to be constantly assigned to the lowliest tasks. When he'd ridden that green-broke gelding to a walk, he thought he had proven himself, but he soon discovered he hadn't. True, he was out on the range working cattle, but his remuda string consisted of the worst horses on the ranch, those with either nasty habits or purely mean streaks. The other cowboys made him the butt of innumerable practical jokes, and his ignorance of ranch work and cattle made him gullible to almost any tall tale a cowboy chose to tell him. There were times when Ty was convinced everyone hated him, and other times he was certain he would never be accepted by them. He vacillated between a grim determination to prove himself and a bitter desire to tell them all to go to hell.

What made it worse, he had no one to whom he could confide his frustrations. His father had made it plain from the beginning not to come complaining to him, that he had to sort out his own difficulties. And his mother … In the first place, the way she acted around his father, Ty knew she would side with Chase. Besides, he had been so determined to live here, and there was the matter of his pride if he went to her and told her he couldn't take it. And if she did try to intervene on his behalf, then the cowboys would probably start calling him a “momma's boy.”

A shallow creek intersected the path of the herd. The first cows were pushed across it and the rest followed. Ty started to follow the stragglers across the stream, but his glass-eyed horse pricked its ears nervously at the glistening sheen of the sun on the water's surface and began mincing along the smooth graveled bank. The water was no more than ankle-deep, and Ty became impatient with his mount and jabbed his heels into the animal's belly to force it into the shallow water. The
horse leaped sideways, avoiding the glistening water and nearly unseating him.

With his free right hand, he grabbed for the saddle horn to pull himself back into the seat. He had barely regained the off stirrup when his fellow drag-rider came alongside and brought the end of his nylon rope down sharply on the hand clutching the saddle horn. Even through the tough cowhide leather of his glove, Ty felt the smarting sting of the rope. Still trying to control his unruly horse, he shot a furious look at the cowboy.