The Thunder Rolls

by Bethany Campbell

  “Don’t,” she said tautly. “Rory will see. Please don’t. And don’t touch me like that. I—don’t have feelings that way. I don’t want to have them.”

  “I want to see you again. After today.”

  “No. I don’t want to see—anybody.”

  “Ever?” His hands fell away from her face, slowly, as if he didn’t want to move them.

  “Never,” she said, the knot in her throat throbbing again. “Never. I mean it. Besides,” she added, “I don’t want anything to do with cowboys. I’ve seen too many. Even Gordon tried it.” She allowed herself a bitter smile. Gordon had failed as badly at ranch work as at everything else he did. They had spent six miserable months on a ragtag ranch in the Texas panhandle before Gordon got fired. “I’ve seen all I care to of that life, and I want better—for me and Rory.”

  Almost imperceptibly Ken winced, then his face grew more unreadable than usual. He gave one curt nod, as if what she’d said didn’t surprise him.

  Nora blinked back the tears, forcing her emotions under control. Her words had been cruel, they hadn’t even been completely true, and she regretted them, but she didn’t know how else to protect herself from this man.

  “It’s been—a nice afternoon,” she said. “But I think you should take us home now.”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “And not come back?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And not come back.”

  He stood, picking up his hat and slapping it against his thigh. He offered her his hand, but she refused, and scrambled up nervously, watching him as if he might make some sudden, dangerous move toward her.

  He put his hat on, pulling it low across his eyes. He wanted to tell her that all men weren’t like Gordon Jones or her father or her brother.

  He had tried to tell her he worried about her. That he was concerned about all of them—her, Rory, Dottie, too. She hadn’t wanted to listen. Ken, at best never a talkative man, was now completely at a loss for words.

  If he were like his good friend Cal McKinney, he would know what to say. He would find the right words, clever ones, sweet ones, funny ones to make her smile—Ken would very much have liked to make her smile.

  He looked down at her, then looked away. She was so pretty, and her soft mouth looked so defenseless that it made him want to swear and grab her and kiss her anyway.

  But that would only frighten her. He permitted himself a small, stiff, self-mocking smile. She was young, educated and ambitious.

  In contrast he suddenly felt old and plain. She was twenty-four, and he was almost forty-one. What could he offer her? She was right—he was only a cowboy. A glorified cowboy, maybe, but these days people said that his way of life was dying. Soon nobody would need a man like him anymore. Least of all a beautiful young woman. Was he crazy or what?

  Now, as the July breeze stirred and the larks sang, he wanted to reach out to touch her hair once more, but he stopped himself. “I’ll take you home,” he said.

  All the way home he talked to Rory about windmills. The back of the pickup was loaded with windmill parts.

  Windmills, he understood.

  Women, no.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NIGHT WAS FALLING, and Ken sat in the swing, his long legs crossed and his booted feet resting on the porch railing. He didn’t need to have his hat on, but he always did when he was in a bad mood, and it was pulled down to the angle that said: Don’t mess with me.

  For years he had lived in the foreman’s house on the McKinneys’ Double C Ranch. It was a tall, white, Victorian clapboard that long ago had been the original ranch house. It had curli-cues on the porch and the eaves, which Ken thought silly. And it was too big for one person.

  In summer the part of the house he liked best was the front porch, which looked over the rolling pasture between his place and the McKinneys’. The porch had a rosebush, almost a hundred years old, that climbed a trellis. Day and night, its red blooms kept the air fragrant.

  The porch also had a wooden swing hanging from chains. Evenings he could sit, listening to the whippoorwills and thinking, just thinking. Lately, most of his thoughts had been of Nora. Damn, but he was a fool, he told himself.

  Beside him on the floor sat a flowerpot he’d gotten from Lettie Mae, the cook at the main house. In the pot, which was far too large for it, drooped one small, withering clover plant, sure to be dead by morning. But he’d planted it, wanting it to live because Nora Jones had picked it and said a poem about it.

  I am the worst diddly-damned fool whose miserable ass ever dragged through Texas, he thought, the corners of his mouth grim. I should be out patching fence or getting drunk. Not potting goddamn plants.

  So deep was he in self-disgust, that he hardly noticed a horseman coming across the pasture, lickety-split.

  But then he heard that half-crazy rebel yell that only one person in the world was demented enough to make, and he looked up just in time to see the horse clear the white rails of the fence.

  Oh, Lord, he thought, his mood blacker than before, he’d forgotten. Cal McKinney and his fiancée, Serena Davis, were at the ranch home for the long weekend. They’d set up a boot shop over at the Hole in the Wall Dude Ranch, and Cal was also checking as often as possible on J.T., his daddy. J.T. had thrown the fear of God into them all by having had a heart attack.

  Although Cal was the only man for whom Ken might admit anything resembling love—he loved him as he might have a rascally younger brother—he didn’t want to see him tonight.

  Cal was too damned cheerful. Cal took few things seriously, and if he knew about Ken and Nora Jones, he would turn it into an even more rotten joke than it was. Worse, Cal was in love. Being Cal, he was not merely successful in love, he was disgustingly successful. The kid was so happy that Ken wondered why his ass hadn’t lit up and turned luminous, like a lightning bug’s.

  The horse pulled up and reared slightly as Cal slid from its back. He ground-reined it, grabbed a saddlebag and started up the porch steps, grinning that grin that made even old ladies think young thoughts.

  Suddenly, dramatically, Cal stopped and put up his hands as if shielding himself from some malevolent force. He pretended to stagger back down the stairs as if he’d been struck. “Jehoshaphat!” he cried, in mock alarm.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ken asked sourly. He was in no mood to amuse or be amused.

  “It’s the hat.” Cal crossed himself as if warding off a vampire. “You got on your lethal hat. Spare me. I’m too young and pretty to die.”

  “That’s altogether debatable.”

  Cal grinned and stood, one hip cocked, with the saddlebag thrown over his shoulder. “I know the slant of that hat brim. Who you gonna kill? And why?”

  “You, maybe,” Ken said. “And why you runnin’ that horse like that in the half-light? He’ll step in a gopher hole and break his leg. Who taught you to ride, anyhow?”

  “You did. For all intents and purposes. Oh, Daddy and Tyler can sit a horse, but neither is what you’d call your veritable centaur.”

  “Well, I never taught you that,” Ken said with a disapproving nod at the fence Cal had jumped.

  “Oh, shut up,” Cal said amiably and climbed the stairs. “I brought two six-packs of Lone Star beer and an itch to sit on your porch and look at the stars. When I itch, I scratch. Move and let me sit.”

  Ken didn’t move. “If you brought any beer, you’ve gone and foamed it up till we can’t open it for an hour. It’ll foosh all over my porch.”

  “Then we’ll start with yours,” Cal said, throwing the saddlebag to the swing. Uninvited, he went inside the house, whistling as he made the door bang.

  Ken swore, but moved to make room for the younger man. He called over his shoulder, “Why aren’t you with your ladylove? Did she get wise to you?” He put as much sarcasm as possible into the words.

  He heard his refrigerator door open, he heard the clink of bottles, he heard Cal say, “Don’t you ever clean this thing? I bet there’s bacteria in here sc
ience ain’t even dreamed of yet.”

  He reappeared, butting the screen door open with his lean hip, and came to the swing. He handed Ken a beer and dropped down beside him. He gazed up at the stars and swore softly in pleased wonder. “No stars prettier anywhere in the world than from this porch. Damn.”

  Ken didn’t bother to look. The stars might as well have been cowpies for all he cared. “I said where’s your ladylove? Didn’t she come?”

  “Course she did.” Cal took a drink and sighed with pleasure. “She couldn’t be away from me three whole days. She’d wither up like a raisin.”

  Ken snorted in disdain. “Then where is she? Off witherin’?”

  Cal made a grimace. “Ain’t you heard? Miss Beverly Townsend is givin’ a weddin’ shower. Ladies only. Tyler’ll be along shortly. Ruth’s over there, too. We thought we’d come over and bay at the moon with you.”

  Inwardly Ken cursed his sorry luck. One McKinney son in love was bad enough. Two would be insufferable.

  First, Tyler had found a pretty little California gal to help him in his sacrilegious scheme to turn good Texas pastureland into vineyards. Then Cal, as good a natural cowboy as had ever lived, finally gave up rodeoing—but not to come home and ranch. He’d found a long-legged beauty in Wolverton and was taking up boot making. The world was going to hell in a hand basket, sure enough, with neither son eager to take over the ranch when the time came. Ken supposed he would be running this damn ranch alone forever or until Tyler turned it into one giant grape arbor, whichever came first.

  Cal took another long swig of beer. “I’ll tell you, man, it’s a good life.”

  Ken didn’t think so. “How’s your daddy tonight? Shouldn’t you be at his side?”

  “Why, hell,” Cal said, a wicked glint in his eye, “you see him more than I do. He’s fine. The only thing he’s worried about is you. He said today’s the first day you took off since he was sick. He’s worried that you work too hard. So what’d you do today? See anybody? Where’d you go?”

  Ken sidestepped the question. “Somebody around here’s got to work. We can’t all be off makin’ fancy boots and growin’ grapes and pitchin’ woo.”

  Cal stared up at the stars in satisfaction. He smiled as if at a private joke. His drawl grew slow and taunting. “Now be careful what you say—I heard you pitched a little woo yourself this afternoon. That true?”

  Oh, Christ, no, Ken thought with a sudden wave of bone-weariness. He pulled his hat a notch lower over his eyes and glowered at the gathering dusk.

  Cal went unexpectedly quiet. “I’ll be damned,” he said at last, his voice serious. “It’s true. Ain’t it?”

  Ken drained the last of his beer with one long, ferocious pull. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? Crack me one of those Lone Stars. I don’t care if it does foosh up like a geyser.”

  Cal let another uncomfortable minute of silence spin out. “It’s true. You took Nora Jones on a picnic today.”

  “I’ll get my own damn beer.” Ken fumbled in the saddlebag and extracted a cold can.

  “Give me one, too,” Cal said, still surprisingly serious. He started to set down his empty long-necked bottle in the flowerpot that held the dying clover plant.

  “Watch it, dammit!” Ken snapped.

  “Watch what?”

  “You’re settin’ your beer bottle smack on my plant, is what. Watch it.”

  “What plant? Lettie Mae said you were up at the house askin’ for a flowerpot. And—these are her very words—‘He was mighty mysterious,’ she said. This is what you planted? That’s nothin’ but a dead old clover flower.”

  “It’s not dead. Keep your hands off it.”

  “I’m not hurtin’ it. Jesus, what’s so special about a dumb old clover? There’s a million of ’em out in the pasture.”

  “It’s special, is all. Leave it alone, that’s all.” Ken opened his can of beer. It foamed up and spilled onto the floor of the porch. This gave him an excuse to recite all the curses he knew. He did so with dark passion.

  Cal sat in the shadows, watching him with the same wonder he’d bestowed earlier on the stars. “I’ll be a patch on the devil’s long johns. This flower’s got something to do with Nora Jones—don’t it?”

  Ken jerked his hat down until the brim almost touched his nose. “Shut up.”

  “You took out Nora Jones, you made a shrine to a weed, and your hat just got three degrees more lethal.”

  “I would not do anything as stupid as plant a flower for some woman. It’s—an experiment. In horticulture.”

  Cal didn’t laugh. “No.”

  “’Tis.”

  “’Tain’t,” Cal said with certainty. “I know you.”

  “So?” Ken demanded.

  Cal still didn’t laugh. His hazel eyes narrowed, growing almost solemn. “I mean I know you. You don’t fool me. How serious is this?”

  No answer came. Cal looked worried. “I see. That serious. God, Slats, of all the women in town—why Nora Jones?”

  Ken threw his hat on the porch floor and stood up. “Get the hell out of here,” he ordered. “What do you mean—‘Why Nora Jones?’ So she got in trouble when she was a kid. So what? Like you were never in trouble? I saved your sorry ass many a time—get outta here before I throw you out.”

  Cal didn’t get up. He folded his arms, settled his feet more comfortably on the rail and looked at Ken, one eyebrow cocked. “Oh, settle down. You’re like a bear with a sore head. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, ‘Why Nora Jones?’ because she isn’t exactly out there tryin’ to catch a man with a net. She’s been hurt. You can see it in her eyes. You don’t exactly go for the easy pickin’s, do you?”

  Ken stared down at the younger man, searching his face for any sign of satire. Then he sighed and leaned against a porch post. He stared out at the night and swore, briefly but eloquently. “I’m sorry.”

  Cal shrugged and reached down for Ken’s hat. He dropped it carelessly on his own head, the brim set back at a cocky angle. “Well, hell,” he said with a shrug of admission, “I mean, it took even me a little while to get through to Serena. Different problem, but same situation—you know, a man-shy woman. I understand where you’re comin’ from. That woman was bound to hold out against me.”

  “Ha,” Ken said. “Hold out against you? How long? A half hour?”

  Cal’s self-mocking smile disappeared, and when Ken glanced at him, he saw pain cross the younger man’s face. Cal had never talked to Ken about courting Serena. He’d kept the story to himself, more tight-lipped than Ken had ever known him to be.

  Cal shook his head moodily. “I thought she was going to hold out against me a lifetime.”

  “Ha,” Ken gave a laugh of disbelief and stared off into the moonlight again. “I’d like to have seen that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I was shameless. I stood on her doorstep and howled like a hound. I got down on my knees and begged like a bum. I stalked her in Wolverton, and she wouldn’t have me. I stalked her in Amarillo, and she wouldn’t have me still. I pinned my heart to my sleeve with a bowie knife. I was ready to lie down and let her walk on me just to feel her heel prints.”

  “You’re breakin’ my heart,” Ken said.

  “Yeah? Well, she nearly broke mine, which I’m sure you’ll find laughable, too.”

  Ken narrowed his eyes and stared off in the direction of the faraway pond. He remembered the dark blue of Nora’s eyes, remembered her soft mouth uttering the words of the poem she’d said for him.

  “I don’t find it laughable,” he said. And he didn’t. The idea of Cal desperate for a woman’s love was a foreign one to him. Maybe it was a good sign. Or maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know. He purely didn’t.

  “The point is,” Cal said, arching a dark brow, “I did not stand around on my porch mopin’ and moonin’. Or snap like a dog at my best buddy. I went out and did something about the situation.”

  “Right,” Ken said, folding his arms. “You stood on her porch and ho
wled like a hound. You begged like a bum. You stalked her here, and you stalked her there, with your heart on your sleeve. In short, you made a damn fool of yourself.”

  “So?”

  Ken shook his head derisively, but it was himself whom he found bitterly funny. “I already done that. Made a damned fool of myself. She won’t have me. She’s says she’s got no feelin’s like that, and that she doesn’t want any cowboy. She couldn’t have made that last point clearer if she poked me in the eye with a sharp stick. Besides, I’m old enough to be her father—almost.”

  “Oh, hell,” Cal said with true scorn. “You talk like you’re Grandpa Hank. How much older are you’n her? Eleven, twelve years?”

  “Almost seventeen. And of late, on a winter morning when I get on a horse, I creak more than the saddle. My eyes have got crow’s-feet on ’em, and my hair’s going gray.”

  Ken should have known his luck couldn’t last forever. Cal looked at him blankly, then roared with laughter. He laughed so hard he spilled beer on himself, then laughed even more wildly.

  Ken looked away in disgust. “Oh, shut up, you fool.”

  “I can’t,” said Cal, and kept laughing. “Did you hear what you just said? Your eyes have crow’s-feet—”

  “Well, that’s what they call them, ain’t it?”

  “My God, you always said I was the vain one. I never thought you’d be starin’ in a mirror worryin’ about crow’s feet. I’ll phone up Mary Kay Cosmetics and order you a hundred gallons of wrinkle goo—have Mary Kay deliver it personal, in her pink Cadillac.”

  “You ought to go work on a jackass farm—give brayin’ lessons.”

  “I—can’t—help—it,” Cal said, holding his side, “Oh—my broke ribs—ouch—lordamercy. You’ve killed me for sure.”

  Ken, still leaning against the post, swore and turned away to glower into the night again.

  At last Cal’s laughter subsided to gasps, and the gasps, too, dwindled away. He got to his feet and came to Ken’s side. He clapped his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he said, and Ken knew the kid meant it. Cal was irreverent, but he was the most generous man Ken knew, and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.