The Cowboy Finds a Family

by Anne McAllister

  If he closed his eyes, he could still remember Jenny kissing Morrison in the doorway. And the wail of the steel guitar didn’t drown out the replay of Warren and Mick’s conversation.

  “I’d keep her barefoot and pregnant—”

  Barefoot and pregnant. Barefoot and pregnant.

  Mace slammed his glass down. Damn it all anyway!

  “Nichols? Mace Nichols? Well, I’ll be the son of a pot-bellied pissant! I reckoned it was you! What the devil you doin’ here?” The long-forgotten, but still familiar twang jerked him out of his misery.

  Mace turned and tried to focus on the cowboy grinning at him. “Rooster?”

  The chipped tooth, broken nose and thatch of graying red hair peeking out beneath a battered cowboy hat proved him right.

  “None other.” Rooster Lynch grinned like the Cheshire cat and slapped him on the back. “Been years, ain’t it? How the hell are ya?”

  Mace had never known if Rooster got his name from his bright red hair, his bandy-legged gait or his quick temper. Whichever, it suited him.

  He’d been a young cowpoke on the spread where Reese Nichols, Mace’s dad, had worked when Mace was a boy. He’d followed Rooster around a whole summer. In the fall, he’d been mad when Rooster left.

  “Got himself a girl down in Cheyenne,” his father had said.

  Later he remembered hearing Rooster had married the girl.

  Later still he’d met up with Rooster and discovered that the girl from Cheyenne was three brides back. He’d been married and divorced three times by the time Mace and Jenny got married. He’d probably married three or four more since.

  “Thing about marriage,” he’d once told Mace over a bottle of gin, “is you can’t take it serious.”

  Mace hadn’t believed him then. Now he thought maybe Rooster had the right idea.

  “Buy you a beer, Rooster?”

  Rooster hoisted himself onto a barstool. “Don’t mind if you do.”

  The bartender slid one down in front of him, then sent another on to Mace, followed by a shot of tequila.

  “I could use me one a them, too,” Rooster said, eying the tequila. “I got woman troubles. Some of us ain’t as lucky as you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Mace protested.

  “Me, I ain’t got the stayin’ power. Things get tough, ol’ Rooster just up and runs.” Rooster drained his beer in one swallow, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “What’s her name?”

  Mace frowned. “Whose?”

  “Your wife’s! Who else?” Rooster looked at him impatiently.

  “Jenny, but—”

  “Ah, right. Jenny.” Rooster’s beaming grin melted into a sweet, sad smile. “I had me a wife named Jenny once. You ever meet her?”

  Mace shook his head slowly. “Don’t believe I ever did.”

  “You’d a liked her. Pretty li’l redhead, she was.” Rooster’s face screwed up in concentration. “Leastways, I think she was a redhead. Maybe not. Maybe she was the blonde and Evie was the redhead. I disremember now.”

  Mace had a lot he wished he could disremember. He supposed he should have said he was getting a divorce, too, but somehow his didn’t seem at all comparable to Rooster’s.

  “Met her in Vegas,” Rooster mused, then frowned. “I think.” He stared into the tequila glass, then tipped the shot glass and gulped. His eyes shut tight, and he let out something close to a death rattle, then sucked in a deep breath. “But she ain’t my problem tonight. Tonight my problem’s Fifi.”

  And he started in on Fifi.

  Mace let it all wash over him—the French can-can dancer named Fifi that Rooster had met and married in Reno three months ago, his ill-fated decision to take her up to the line camp with him for the summer, the startling revelation that she wasn’t thrilled to find herself spending months at a time in the middle of several hundred thousand acres of Nevada desolation with Rooster and a herd of cows.

  It didn’t require any more than the occasional nod or grunt. Rooster could handle a conversation or a herd of cows all by himself, with equal capability and assurance. And if he fretted about one or yammered on about the other, it was more to hear himself tell a good story than because it really bothered him.

  Tom Morrison in Jenny’s bed really bothered Mace.

  It bothered him so much that the more he thought about it, the more upset he got.

  It was all well and good for Rooster to say you shouldn’t take marriage seriously, but hell, when you’d been married to the same woman for fourteen years, when you’d been completely faithful to her for longer than that, when, in fact, she was the only woman you’d ever made love with in your life, it did not set well to think of her having another man in her bed.

  In your bed.

  Mace gulped his last shot of tequila and thumped the glass on the bar. “Damn it!”

  Rooster stopped, midsentence, and looked sideways at him. “T’ain’t that bad. She wasn’t that great, I don’t reckon.”

  “She was—is—the best goddamned woman in the world!”

  Rooster’s brow drew down. “How do you know?”

  “I was married to her, damn it!”

  Rooster choked, then burst out laughing.

  “What the hell’s so funny?” Mace demanded, furious.

  “You ain’t been listenin’ to a thing I said, have you?” Rooster was still grinning his fool head off.

  Mace’s fists clenched on the bar. “I got things on my mind.”

  “No joke,” Rooster said mildly. He considered Mace. “Your lady givin’ you a few problems, too, is she?”

  “No.” Mace bit off the word.

  “Pull my other leg while yer at it. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it? In the bar? Drinkin’? Wondered when I saw ya. You wasn’t ever much of a bar hopper as I recall.”

  “A man can change,” Mace said through his teeth.

  “No. He can’t.” Rooster seemed certain about that. “A man is what he is. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change him. B’lieve me, I know. Wasn’t one a my wives didn’t try to set ol’ Rooster on the straight an’ narrow, but it didn’t work. I’m here, ain’t I?” he said with a thump on his chest. “No sir,” he went on without giving Mace a chance to reply, “a man don’t change his spots no more’n a leopard does.” He bent closer and poked his face close to Mace’s. “You, f’r instance.”

  Mace kept staring into his glass. “What about me?”

  “You still love her.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Mace didn’t answer.

  It didn’t need an answer in any case. Rooster would believe whatever Rooster wanted to believe. And there was no arguing.

  There was just hurt, and loss, and—suddenly—a burning, boiling-over anger.

  Mace dug in his wallet and threw down some bills and started pushing his way past inebriated cowboys and giggling girls toward the door.

  “Hey! Mace! Hey! Where ya goin’?”

  Mace didn’t answer. He didn’t stop. The anger that had been simmering inside him since the day he’d got the doctor’s test results boiled over at last.

  Damn it all, yes, he still loved her! With everything in him, he loved her! Always had, always would.

  And tonight another man had her!

  “Mace! Wait up.” Rooster hastily gulped his beer, tossed down the shot, shuddered and scrambled through the crowd after him.

  Mace still didn’t stop. “I need some air.”

  Rooster caught up at the door and pushed it open. Out on the sidewalk, with the noise and heat behind them, he regarded Mace with a sort of foggy concern. “Well, here now. Ya got air. Breathe.”

  Mace breathed. He shook his head. It didn’t do any good. It didn’t cool him at all. He started to walk.

  Rooster, torn, stood watching him, then hurried to catch up. “You’re antsier than a polecat with chiggers tonight! You an’ your lady have a fight or somethin’?”

  “We didn’t have a fight.”

  “Somethin’s sure biting y
our butt.”

  “’M all right.”

  “Sure y’are.”

  Mace walked. Rooster almost ran to keep up. Up one street and down the other, fast and furious.

  “You know where you’re goin’?” Rooster asked, panting now.

  “No. Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Why you walkin’ so damn fast then?” Rooster panted.

  “You don’t have to come along.”

  “Reckon I do,” Rooster said, loping beside him. “Your daddy wouldn’t thank me if I let you get throwed in jail.”

  “I’m not gettin’ thrown in jail.”

  Rooster looked at him with eyes of long experience. “Yet.”

  Mace didn’t know how far they walked. He didn’t even know where they walked.

  If he was back at Taggart’s he’d take on the roughest bull on the place. He needed something—anything—some sort of outlet for the cauldron seething inside him. He just didn’t know what—

  And then he saw Sherpa’s.

  One look at the bar, with its pseudo-rustic log exterior, its massive stone fireplace, beveled, leaded glass windows, and the sign by the door urging, “Paddle Your Own Canoe,” set Mace’s teeth on edge. If the Six Gun was at one end of the Bozeman bar spectrum, Sherpa’s was at the other.

  As he stood staring, a tall blond man with a goatee held the door open for a lady. She smiled at him, batted her lashes, touched his arm. The tall guy grinned. He stroked his goatee. He curled his toes.

  Mace’s gaze stopped right there. Curled his toes? By God, yes, he actually did. And Mace could see him doing it because he was wearing a pair of goddamned sandals!

  He stalked straight in after them.

  “Hey! Mace, what in holy hell d’you think you’re doin’?” Rooster stared after him, aghast. “We don’t b’long in there.”

  Mace didn’t even slow down. He had reached the edge. Sherpa’s was where he jumped.

  While no one had given him a second glance at the Six Gun, plenty of heads turned when he stopped just inside Sherpa’s heavy wooden door. The room, though not nearly as noisy as the Six Gun, seemed to quiet further as the patrons looked him over from the top of his straw cowboy hat to his shiny Cody Rodeo bronc-riding buckle, down the length of his dusty Wranglers, to the toes of his well-worn boots.

  No one said a word.

  “What’sa matter?” he said loudly. “None of you ever seen a cowboy before?”

  Rooster sidled up next to him. “This ain’t a good idea,” he said under his breath.

  “It’s a fine idea,” Mace said loudly, not even glancing his way. His eyes locked on the blond goatee’s gaze and never wavered. “Best idea I’ve had all night.”

  “Sir?” a nervous voice addressed him.

  Mace wasn’t even sure where it came from until the men at the bar parted a bit, and he saw the bartender eying him warily. “What?”

  The bartender gave him a thin smile. “I think perhaps you’ve had enough.”

  “Enough? I haven’t had any yet. I just got here.”

  “It appears that you had plenty before you got here,” the bartender said in polite, but firm tones.

  “Not enough,” Mace muttered under his breath.

  “C’mon, then, an’ I’ll buy ya another,” Rooster said, latching on to that idea with the same enthusiasm that he grabbed Mace’s arm and trying to tow him toward the door.

  Mace dug in his heels. “Buy me one here.”

  “Mace,” Rooster protested in a low voice. “You don’t wanta drink here.”

  “Why not?” Mace said. He advanced on the blond man with the goatee who was sitting on a barstool with his arm around the woman he’d opened the door for.

  “You think I don’t belong here?” Mace said to him.

  “I think you have a perfect right to drink in any bar you want to,” the goatee replied smoothly and shared a conspiratorial smile with the woman.

  Mace saw red. “Damn nice of you. Very generous. But then, you university types are like that, aren’t you?”

  “We try,” the goatee said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, you’re interrupting my conversation.” He gave Mace a dismissive nod and turned back to the woman. The bartender brought them each a fancy private label beer.

  Mace’s teeth went on edge. “Draft beer not good enough for you?”

  “Mace,” Rooster pleaded, hanging on his arm.

  The goatee took a long swallow, then stood up and faced Mace squarely. “You know, fella, I don’t know what your problem is, but I think the bartender was right. You have had enough.”

  The problem, Mace could have told him, was that he didn’t have any of what really mattered! But he was beyond talk now, beyond reason.

  In what was left of his rational mind, he knew the goatee had nothing to do with any of it. His fight was with Tom Morrison, God, and above all, himself.

  But Tom Morrison was home in bed with Jenny, God wasn’t into bar fights, and Mace had done enough harm to himself.

  All he wanted now was one thing he knew he could accomplish—to wipe that smug smile off this man’s face, pound him into the ground and mop the floor up with him.

  “Don’t tell me what I’ve got,” he said, and his fist came up, and his arm swung round as he aimed directly at the goatee’s astonished face.

  He put all of his force into that swing.

  And ended up flat on his butt!

  His head rang. His ears buzzed. He felt like a herd of buffalo had flattened him.

  “Wha—?” It was all he could say with the breath he had in him.

  The goatee stood over him, shaking his head.

  “Ippon-seoi-nage,” the goatee explained, as if he’d just given a demonstration. “The one-arm shoulder throw. Judo.” Then he reached down and hauled Mace, still gasping, unceremoniously to his feet.

  “I called the cops,” the bartender said.

  “No!” Rooster yelped. “Don’t do that! He didn’t mean nothin’! He just had a little too much—”

  “Way too much,” the goatee said. He reached down once more and snagged something off the ground and handed it to Mace, who was still trying to catch a breath.

  It was his hat. The crown was folded, the brim bent. But no worse than his pride.

  “Let’s go,” Rooster pleaded. “Lemme get him outa here,” he said to the bartender. “C’mon!” He snagged Mace’s belt loop and began tugging him to the door. “He ain’t always like this,” he apologized to the crowd as they went. “Just had a hard day. Got kicked in the head.”

  “An’ I’m gonna kick ya somewheres else, ya don’t get a move on!” he added under his breath to Mace, propelling him toward the door. “He won’t give you no more trouble,” he called over his shoulder.

  Then he shoved Mace out the door, dragged him down the street and pushed him up against a wall. “What in the name of Debby Deever’s dirty drawers has got into you?”

  “It ain’t like you never got in a bar fight,” Mace mumbled, holding his head and wincing. He could almost talk. His brain felt like mush.

  “At least I ain’t never lost one,” Rooster retorted.

  “He didn’t fight fair!”

  Rooster sniffed. “Huh.” He grabbed Mace by the arm again and hauled him around the corner and down another street like a mother with a grip on a badly behaved child.

  Mace balked. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Gettin’ outa here. You said you weren’t goin’ to jail, remember? Well, if you’re still here when they show up, you’re gonna be tellin’ that to the cops. You want that?” Tonight, apparently, Rooster was the sensible one.

  Mace, somewhere deep inside realized that and, mortified from the top of his head to the toes of his boots, he let himself be drug. His ears rang, his stomach whirled, and his butt still stung from the swift unexpected smack on the hardwood floor.

  Judo, the goatee had said. Judo? Who the hell used judo in a bar fight?

  “I coulda took ’im if he’d fought
like a man,” he mumbled.

  “Uh-huh.” Rooster had had enough. He steered Mace into the parking lot outside an all-night gas-station-convenience-store and pushed him down on the curb. “Sit there.”

  Mace sat. He watched glumly, head in hands, as Rooster disappeared into the store.

  What the hell was he going in a store for?

  Minutes later Rooster returned with a giant paper cup of coffee, which he shoved into Mace’s hands. “Drink this. It’ll make you sober.”

  Mace didn’t know that he wanted to be sober.

  Not now.

  Maybe not ever.

  Rooster hunkered down next to him and stuck his face in Mace’s. “Drink. You’re gonna be sorry if you don’t.”

  Mace gave him a baleful look. “Why? You gonna beat me up?”

  Rooster shook his head slowly. “Not me.”

  *

  They got through dinner fine. The gravy was creamy and thick. The steak was tender and done to perfection. The mashed potatoes were smooth, the string beans were fresh, and the green chili corn bread Jenny had made at the last minute, more to absorb some of her nervousness than because they needed more food, had Tom coming back for thirds.

  She was delighted.

  The longer they spent at the table, the less time they’d have to fill after.

  What did you do with a man you invited over to your house for supper after you’d finished eating?

  She wished she’d thought of that before. Only one thing seemed to be racketing around her brain at the moment: Go to bed with him.

  Of course that wasn’t the only thing you could do with him, but it was the first thing she thought of.

  The most petrifying thing she could possibly think of!

  What if Tom expected her for dessert?

  Of course he wouldn’t. But just as surely, she knew she wasn’t sure of anything.

  She didn’t know anything about dating. Except about dating Mace whom she’d known and loved forever—whom she would have gone to bed with after a dinner she’d cooked for him.

  Only she’d never had the chance. She’d lived at home with her parents until she and Mace were married. Her father would have shot him before he’d have let Mace have Jenny for dessert!

  But times had changed.

  Everything seemed to have changed—but Jenny.