More Than A Cowboy
They’d promised they’d give him his pet back in a week or so, but that had all been a soothing lie. By the time Adam had realized this and gone looking for his friend, hunting through every pound in New Orleans a thirteen-year-old could find, the dog was…gone. He blinked his eyes rapidly in the waning light and scowled. “Last thing I need up there is a chow hound.”
Last thing he needed was a dog, or anybody else, tripping up his heart. That was one lesson he’d learned and learned very well. First with his dad, then his mom, then Johnny, then most lately with Alice. Alone was the safe way—the only way—to travel.
“Besides,” he continued into Gabe’s disapproving silence, “the only dogs that are welcome on the summer range are working dogs. Cattle dogs. Any mutt that runs the cows is sure to be shot.”
“He minds his manners. Heels, comes, sits and all the usual. When Watson isn’t eating or tracking, he’s sleeping, according to Tracy. He wouldn’t get in your way.”
“He’d take up half the cabin I’ll be living in, and five’ll get you ten he snores. No thanks.”
His cousin shrugged and bit into his sandwich. Some hundred miles to their west, the sun was a blood orange, squashing itself past a jagged line of purple mountains. A splash of fiery juice, then it squeezed on down. The ruddy light cooled instantly to blue. Down in the valley, the city twinkled.
“It’s a pretty big area you’ll be patrolling,” Gabe observed mildly, at last. “The lynx are spread out over some two thousand square miles, and no telling which one of them our guy’ll decide to stalk next. Reckon it’d be like hunting for an ant in a sandpile, if you don’t know where to look. At least Watson could point out the cats, then you’d take it from there.”
Adam shrugged and sipped his beer. The dog drooled in the twilight. “Think he’s still operating out there?” Adam asked finally, to break the edgy silence.
“’Fraid so. We’re down to forty-four animals. Collar YK99M3, a male from our original batch, stopped signaling last week. Last heard from ten miles north of Creede.” Gabe sighed and reached for the rolled map he’d brought from his truck. Unscrolling it across the dash, he tapped an inked-in asterisk with a tiny notation beside it. “He vanished right there. And that one really hurt. He was one of the lynx I flew up to the Yukon to collect and bring back here. A big healthy two-year-old with a white bib on his chest like a housecat, and paws like catcher’s mitts. Freed him myself. He looked so…right…floating off into the woods, the day we let him go. Home and free.”
Gabe rubbed a hand across his face. “Dang it to hell! How anybody could bring something that pretty down… Why they’d ever want to…”
Adam grunted his sympathy. That was something a homicide cop often wondered, seeing the aftermath of killings in the city. The good and the beautiful willfully smashed. Ruthlessly brushed aside. Such a waste, such a shame. Any time you could stop it, you felt a little bit better, a little bit bigger. Like you’d done your part, fighting the good fight. Making the world safer for the fragile things that mattered.
Taking the map from his cousin, he spread it over the steering wheel and squinted in the dusk. Checked its mileage scale, then grimaced. Damn, but the West was big! Distance took on a whole different meaning out here. He’d known it already, but looking at it now, peak after peak, range upon range… And roaming out there somewhere in all that craggy wilderness, a bunch of forty-pound cats…
And whoever was stalking them.
“You really think he’d be useful?” The mutt had a home and an owner, after all. He was only on loan. No commitment necessary, beyond opening his cans for the next three months.
“Show you something.” Gabe slid out of the truck, strode over to his own, and leaned in its open window. He pulled out a battered Stetson, then offered it to the dog. “Kitty, Watson! See the kitty?”
The dog pranced and nosed the hat, yodeling his approval. That hollow banging was the sound of his tail, slamming the sides of the pickup.
“Nice kitty. No, boy, sit. Staaay.” The dog sat with an anguished yelp and Gabe brought the hat to Adam’s window. “Lynx hatband,” he noted, pointing to its greasy circlet. “Tracy found it in an antique store. It’s got to be fifty years old at least.”
“And she trained him on that? You sure he’s not chasing mothballs?”
“He’s found plenty of lynx in the Mission Mountains. They’re doing a census up there and he’s accounted for most of ’em, at least in Tracy’s section. Distract him for a minute and I’ll show you.”
Adam sighed, grabbed a bag of potato chips and went to the hound. Stood glumly by while the dog inhaled one chip after another, then wiped his hands on his jeans as Gabe returned from the dark. “Now what?”
“Let’s finish our supper.”
They ate, talking when the mood hit them, but mostly in comfortable silence. The same way they’d ridden the range as kids, not so far from where they now sat. Adam said finally, “Had my own notion about how we could nail this creep. Most economical way of making a collar.”
Gabe turned to prop his shoulders against his door. “How’s that?”
“We do a sting. Instead of searching the mountains for the bad guy, we sucker him to us.”
“I like it, but how?”
“You said, back in N’Orleans, that the one thing these cats haven’t done is have kittens. Is it still that way?”
“So far, I’m afraid so. Oh, we’ve seen signs of courting behavior. According to their satellite signals, the males have been moving around for the last six weeks, searching for ladies. But with only forty-four lynx remaining, they’re spread so thin on the ground, and they only have a one-week window to find each other, while the females are fertile…”
“So nobody’s scored yet?” Adam demanded dryly.
Gabe shook his head. “No. Not that we know of. We’ll try to contact as many of them visually as we can this summer, especially any females whose signals go stationary. Maybe a queen will den up with kittens, though if she does, she’ll keep them well hidden. It’ll be next winter before we know for sure. We’ll snow-track them then. Look for juvenile footprints following a female’s.”
“But kittens, that’s what the pro-lynx camp wants, right? It’s the proof that your repopulation program is starting to work.”
“Exactly, but—”
“So kittens are the last things the anti-lynx camp wants to see in Colorado. There’s your bait.”
“How are they bait when we haven’t got any?”
“You already report on the DOW Web site your cats’ latest doings. Their latest sightings.” Even their pictures, when someone lucked into a telephoto shot. This was pure foolishness, in Adam’s book, drawing attention to potential victims, but try to tell that to a pack of politicians and bureaucrats. He supposed the Division hoped that publicizing the lynx re-intro program would get the public behind it. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad notion, considering the DOW was spending a million or more of the taxpayers’ money.
“So…” He tapped the map northwest of Trueheart, Colorado. “You post on your Web site that one of your females has moved to this location, where I’ll be waiting. That she’s been spotted and she’s knocked-up for sure. Set to drop a passel of kittens any day now.”
“They only have three or four, usually.”
“Fine. Four imaginary kittens. You plant them in my backyard, and I guarantee you, your perp will come hunting. If he’s smart enough to buy his radio direction finder off the Internet, then he’s bound to be checking your Web site for the latest news on his quarry. Heck, if you report every time one disappears, then he can read his own score sheet. Better believe he’s tuning in.”
Gabe rubbed his jaw. “It might work… I think it would work. Now all I have to do is persuade my boss to try it.”
“Your problem, friend.” Adam drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Meantime, you gonna show me ol’ Watson’s stuff?”
He lounged against the hood of his truck, while Gabe loosed the dog and commanded him to ‘fetch the kitty!’ Nose to the ground, tail waving, the hound snuffled off into the night.
“Did you lay a drag trail?” Adam inquired. By the sound of his snorts, the dog was circling the parking area.
“No need, with his nose. There’s enough of a breeze to carry an air scent. Once he gets downwind…”
“If he doesn’t find his hat, you send him back to Montana. How’s that for a deal?”
“You’re on,” Gabe agreed with a smirk.
They waited some more. Adam didn’t mind, if it ended this nonsense. He could just picture the other hands’ faces if he showed up with Watson in tow for the cattle drive. A dog with ten pounds of ear, and no cow sense? It would take him all summer long to live that one down. Cowboys loved to tease and a newcomer was fair game. Come on, Watson. Lose the kitty.
“You know any women over towards Trueheart?” he asked, to pass the time. The Monahan family ranch lay east of Durango, while Trueheart lay northwest, but on the odd chance…
Gabe cocked his head at him. “Lonesome already? Well, there’s Kaley Cotter.” It was Gabe who’d found Adam the Circle C line-camp job with Kaley’s brother, three summers ago. “But you met her. That was the year she came back, wasn’t it? And I hear she’s married since then.”
“To Tripp McGraw,” Adam reminded him. He’d be riding for the McGraws this summer. “No, this is somebody else. Met her in passing, but didn’t catch her name. Hair dark as…” Wishing he’d never spoken, Adam jerked a thumb at the starry sky. That dark.
That velvety, when finally he buried his face in it, but how did he know that already? He stirred with impatience, then forced himself back to stillness.
“Then there’s Lara Tankersly, one of Ben Tankersly’s daughters,” Gabe continued. “I slow-danced with her once, at a shindig over in Cortez. Didn’t sleep well for the next year. But she moved to San Antonio shortly thereafter, and she’s a cornsilk blonde.
“Then, speaking of blondes, there’s a café in Trueheart called Michelle’s Place, and Michelle’s—” Gabe broke off as Watson came blundering out of the dark, gripping the hat by its brim. “Well, well, what have we here? Good boy! Whatta guy, whatta nose! Good fella!” He thumped the hound on his side as he accepted the trophy, then straightened with a grin. “And who needs a woman when you’ve got this for company?”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT TIME Adam saw her was the last night of the drive.
Following a century-old tradition, the combined herd of all the Trueheart ranches arrived on the summer range at sundown. The cowboys held the cows overnight at Big Rock Meadow. Come morning, the best riders would show off their mounts’ cutting skills. The cattle would be sorted by brand, then driven east or west across the foothills, to their own ranch’s grazing allotments.
Low, laughing voices rumbled around the campfire, punctuated by the occasional satisfied belch. Tonight was the cowboys’ final chance to savor Whitie and Willie’s chuckwagon cooking. Grilled steaks and barbecued beans and cornbread tonight, then tomorrow—and for the rest of the summer—it would be bachelor fare cooked in their own solitary camps.
This was their last night to pull a prank, swap a yarn or tell a joke to an appreciative audience, before they rode their separate trails. Starting tomorrow, company would be scant and seldom, not that it bothered this crew.
Line-camp men were chosen for their solitary ways. Solid, self-sufficient men, they were amiable in company and even better apart. After five days of rubbing elbows with sixteen men, most of whom were strangers, Adam had to admit he was ready for a spell of solitude himself.
“Dubois, this danged hound’s ’bout to break my heart! Claims you ain’t fed him since Christmas.” Across the fire, Jon Kristopherson scowled in mock indignation. Watson stood behind him, with his chin resting on the rancher’s shoulder. “He’s droolin’ down my collar again. Call him off.”
“Don’t you believe that beggar!” warned Willie. At seventy-five, he was the oldest hand on the drive. Too stiff to sit a saddle these days, he shared the driving of Suntop Ranch’s pride and joy, a genuine mule-drawn chuck wagon that was older than he was. And he reigned over the cookfires alongside Whitie Whitelaw. “Worthless bum stole half a skilletful of biscuits this morning, and Whitie’s been sneakin’ him bacon all the livelong day.”
Since Watson had turned out to be terrified of cows, he’d been consigned to ride on the wagon, where the old guys were spoiling him rotten. At this rate he’d be too fat to track a lynx hatband, much less a lynx.
“Watson, get your ass over here!” Adam patted the ground and the hound shuffled meekly around the circle to sit by his side, then heaved a long-suffering sigh. Adam was the only one who refused to be charmed by his “gimme” eyes. “Stay,” Adam told him sternly, then glanced up….
And there she was, stepping into the glow of the fire on the far side of the gathering. Slender as a young aspen in her boots and jeans, dark hair gleaming loose on her shoulders.
“Tess! What are you doin’ up here?” called one of the Jarretts, over a shouted chorus of similar questions and greetings. Faces brightened, bodies shifted to make room for the newcomer. Adam sat up straighter. At the edge of his vision, men were rebuckling loosened belts, tucking in shirttails and wiping greasy mouths. Seventeen men with a sexy woman suddenly dropped in their midst.
“Now, how could I stay away, knowing this was Last Night and Willie would be serving his apple pie with vanilla ice cream?” She laughed and folded gracefully down, to sit cross-legged between Rafe Montana, manager of Suntop and boss of the trail drive, and his stepson, Sean Kershaw. Firelight danced across her vivid face as she cocked her ear to something Sean said.
She was all he’d remembered and more, Adam told himself, as she glanced up and over her shoulder, then reached for the plate Kent Harris had brought her. The line of her throat lengthened with the movement—glowed golden in the flames. Adam moistened dry lips as he pictured himself laying a kiss there where her pulse beat below her ear. Another in that shadowy hollow between her delicate collarbones…
She murmured her thanks, dipped a fork into Willie’s famous pie à la mode, then closed her eyes in ecstasy as the fork touched her tongue. “Ohh!”
He must be imagining that little moan off her lips. No way it could carry over the surrounding hubbub; still Adam could hear it, clear as if she’d moaned against his mouth.
She swallowed blissfully, opened her eyes, and across the fire, their gazes met—zoomed together like two on-coming trains, blue light to widening green. Her plate fell from her fingers—she let out a yelp and grabbed for it as pie and ice cream slid into her lap. “Oh, darn! Clumsy! Oh, Willie, what a stupid waste!” She brushed at herself, looked helplessly around for a napkin.
Two men rushed off to find one. Napkins weren’t a usual part of cowboy dinnerware.
Quicker-witted than his human counterparts, Watson rose, trundled purposefully around the circle, then insinuated himself under her elbow. Slurped greedily at her slender thigh.
Seventeen men watched in thunderstruck envy as the hound licked her clean—while Tess tipped back her head and laughed. “Why, thank you, sir. And who is this?” She scratched him between the shoulder blades and laughed again as his tail whacked her in the ribs, then bludgeoned Sean.
“Watson, leave her alone! Come.”
“Oh, no, he’s wonderful!” she insisted, glancing up at Adam, then quickly back to the dog. “Can’t he stay here? Clumsy as I am, I’ll probably need him.” She slid her hands under each of Watson’s ears, then lifted them out to the sides. Held their tips. “My! Would you look at these—a three-foot wingspan! Can he fly?”
No, but they would. Together, and soon. As quickly as he could make it happen. Adam hadn’t wanted a woman this much in… He couldn’t think when he’d wanted a woman the way he wanted this one. Or why. She wasn’t pretty like butterflies or flowers. Something much better than pretty, with four times the impact, that hit him like a bolt of summer lightning.
She glanced his way again, and her smile faded. She swung her head toward Joe Abbott, who’d brought her a fresh serving of pie, and it returned.
Whatever this is, you feel it, too, Adam told her silently. He turned to his neighbor, Anse Kirby, not quite the foreman at Suntop, but Montana’s right-hand man. “Who is that?” No need to point. Kirby’s eyes were fixed on her.
“Tess.” Kirby was a man of few words and he saved them for those he knew well. Adam would have to stick around a few more years before he’d qualify.
Tess. It suited her. Started strong, ended soft. A good name for whispering in the dark. Adam swung the other way, toward Bob Wilcox, one of the JBJ crew. He didn’t know the man well, but at least he was a talker.
“Heard tell she’s stayin’ up here for the summer,” Wilcox muttered to the man on his far side. “Over at the Two Bear camp.”
“Well, that oughta liven things up,” observed the other hand. “She ain’t grown up half-bad.”
“They all did. Her daddy had an eye for the lookers, all right. Three outa three.”
Two Bear. That was the peak to the west of Mount Sumner; it towered above the Suntop Range. So. Adam drew a satisfied breath. They were going to be neighbors? For the next three months? All right, then.
Something told him he could have cut her out of this herd of friends and admirers if tonight had been his one shot at winning her. But he preferred to take his time. Cool and easy was the best way when courting a woman. Trying to rush the process only made a man look anxious.
“Dubois.” Someone touched his shoulder and Adam turned to find Rafe Montana standing behind him. “You’re riding herd the ten-till-two shift. Best saddle up.” The trail boss moved on around the circle, tapping other men.
Tomorrow, then, Adam promised himself as he rose. Or if not tomorrow, then very, very soon. He shot her a farewell look as he left the campfire.
If she noticed, Tess didn’t return it.
“WHO’S THAT?” Tess asked old Whitie as the new guy strode off into the dark.
She’d known most of these men all her life. Half a dozen rode for her father’s brand. The rest were friends and neighbors. She’d ridden roundups with them since she turned fourteen, when she’d first flouted her father’s orders, running off to tag along on the spring drive. After that there’d been no holding her back. She’d kept right on defying Ben, riding with the hands fall and spring, till she went away to college.
But she’d never seen him before. Even at fourteen, she’d have noticed.
“The Cajun? That’s Dubois. Riding line for McGraw.”
Dubois, she spoke his name silently. If Dubois worked for Tripp McGraw, that would explain why he’d slept at Sumner cabin last week. He must have been moving in. The hairs stirred along her forearms and a warm ripple of awareness lapped up her spine. So… We’ll be neighbors.
Trouble, that’s what would come of this, she knew instinctively. Trouble and excitement.
“Not from around here,” she noted casually. “Is he really a Cajun?” Or had the men simply dubbed him that, because of his French surname? Still, that would account for the trace of accent she remembered. And his teasing use of the endearment cher.
“He’s a Lou’siana boy.” Whitie’s shrug said, what more do you need? He’d brought her a cup of hot chocolate, then stayed to gossip. “I bunked at Sumner cabin with him a few years back fer a while. He was workin’ half-time for Kaley and half-time for Tripp, that summer ’fore they came together.”
“But a Cajun cowboy?” she mused on a note of mild derision. “What did he learn to ride on? Alligators?”
“Beats me. He was a close-mouthed, smilin’ son of a gun back then and he ain’t improved much on that count. Seem to recall he said somethin’ ’bout having kin over Durango way. Had his share of cow sense.”
That was high praise, coming from Whitie. Tess changed the subject before the old man could mark her interest. “I see. So…where’s Chang?” Whitie’s constant companion was a doddering Pekinese with an evil eye and a worse disposition.
“In the wagon sulkin’, if he ain’t flopped on his back, chasin’ dream rabbits. He’s been mad enough to bite his-self ever since we let that there Watson hitch a ride.”
The hound was lying with his warm spine propped against her knees. Tess scratched between his ears. “And Watson belongs to…to Dubois?” Funny how momentous that felt, speaking his name for the first time.
Something told her it wouldn’t be the last.
NATWIG LAY half dozing on the couch. Any minute now he’d find the energy to get up and stir the fire, he was assuring himself for the third time, when the phone rang. “I’ll get it!” He sat and scrubbed a hand across his face.
But Karen was already wheeling herself toward the kitchen. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be for me.” Her big orange tomcat leapt down from her lap and stalked off, tail lashing at this disturbance. The little calico that was draped across her footrest stayed put, staring fascinated at the carpet rolling past its whiskers.
Eight months ago, his lively wife would have grabbed the phone by its second ring. Natwig gritted his teeth as it rang a fifth time, a sixth, while she maneuvered her wheelchair around the center cooking island he’d built her only last year. Ought to take that out of there, so she can move easier, he told himself as she snatched up the phone.
Karen had pulled a fit the time he’d suggested it. She was going to walk again—would be riding again by next year—she kept on telling him. Your lips to God’s ear, sweetheart. But Natwig was starting to doubt it.
“Hello?” she cried happily. She’d left a message on her sister’s answering machine just before supper. “Hello? Hel-lo-o-o!” She stared at the receiver with a puzzled frown. “Hung up, whoever it was.”
“One of those damned recorded salescalls, most likely.”
“But there was somebody there. I heard a rustle.”
“Wrong number, then. How about a bowl of ice cream?”
While she tried her sister again and again reached her machine, Natwig dished out two helpings of vanilla. That finished the carton. He scraped up a final spoonful. “This one’s got your name on it.” He teased the spoon across her smile, then eased it onto her tongue.
As she savored it, her wide blue eyes looked into his. She swallowed, then made a little sound as she licked her lips—his stomach muscles jerked tight. He straightened hastily, turned to drop the spoon in the sink. It jangled against a pot he’d yet to wash.
“Honey…” She broke the charged silence. “Dr. Murray says it’s—”
“Yeah, I know he did, but…” But Natwig had hurt her already, allowing her to ride that green-broke colt. Didn’t matter that she’d begged him to let her. What kind of fool took a chance with the thing—the person—that mattered most in all his life?
And if he hurt her again, he’d never, ever forgive himself. She seemed so tiny and fragile, trapped in that hateful chair. To satisfy himself at a risk to her? No way. It was better to wait.
But wait for how long? Forever? howled a voice like a lost coyote in the back of his mind. He swallowed around a lump of rock in his throat, then said gruffly, without turning, “want some peaches on top of yours?”
Her answer was a long time in coming. “No, thanks.”
“Well, I do.” He rummaged in the cabinet, found a can, focused himself on opening it. “How about tuning in the news?”
“I could, sure, but Joe—?”
The phone rang and he snatched it up with relief. “Hello?”
“Ah, you are there. Good.”
Larson, calling him at home. Rage washed over him in a boiling wave. Get out of my house! They met once a month to conduct their business. That was the only claim Larson had on him, and that was bad enough.
Alarm swirled in anger’s wake. Something’s wrong, him calling me here where he never has before! But whatever it was, Natwig couldn’t deal with it now, not with Karen sitting there with her feelings hurt and her ears pricked. “Can’t this wait?”