“My pleasure,” Rio said simply.
And it had been.
“You should see your cattle,” Moran said enthusiastically. “They’re multiplying like flies. I’m thinking you’ll want to cull some. That’s why I left word down to Rimrock for you to come see me. I didn’t want to sell any of yours without you okaying it.”
“Our deal was that you would treat my cattle just like yours. Nothing has changed.”
Moran smiled. “Fine. I’ll put the money in your account or in better bloodlines, whichever you choose.”
“Better cattle.”
“You got it. Come on to the house and put your gear in the spare room. Marti must have known you were coming, because she baked enough cookies to bury us chin-deep. After dinner, we’ll—”
“I won’t be staying,” Rio interrupted softly.
“Of course you are. Marti would have my hide if I let you get away.”
“Maybe next time.”
Moran started to say something else, then looked at Rio, really looked at him, for the first time. Rio was drawn, filed down, honed to the kind of edge that could cut everything in reach.
“Well, sure,” Moran said. “Maybe you’ll see Marti on the road back.”
“Maybe. Say hello to her for me.”
“Sure. Where you going in such a rush?”
Rio didn’t answer. He didn’t know. He only knew that he must leave.
As he went back to his truck, the wind blew restlessly, freely. It combed his hair, tugged at his sheepskin jacket, and whispered to him about the woman who had looked at him, seen him, and loved everything she saw.
Even the wind.
Twenty-seven
GRINNING, MASON PUT a final twist on the connection that would bring water from Rio’s well into the old network that had been serviced by the wells that had gone dry. May first was the beginning of a new life for the Valley of the Sun.
“Let ’er rip, honey!”
Hope turned the valve. After a moment, water churned and thundered into the cistern buried beneath her feet.
Behemoth had made its last run to Rio’s well to bring water. She had replaced the ancient truck with an expensive, gleaming pipeline that snaked back along the old road starting from the ranch house and ending in Wind Canyon’s shadowed depths. Within a week, other pipelines would be finished. Then there would be a network of thick silver straws leading to troughs where range cattle could drink during the dry months of summer. Other lines had been laid so crops could be irrigated.
There weren’t any cattle yet. Even with the new loan, she didn’t have enough money to replace her herds. She would have to start with calves and go from there. If the crops this year were good, if the alfalfa and oat hay grew thick and rich, there would be enough money and feed to buy and fatten up beef calves in the autumn.
Autumn.
Rio had come to her in the autumn, telling her that he would find water. It had been in autumn that he had first made love to her while a cold wind blew.
The memory shook her even as wind had shaken the house that night.
Her fingers curled around the cold steel valve and she hung on, waiting for the storm of yearning to sweep through her, leaving her spent. Each time it happened, she told herself that her memories of Rio would grow dimmer with each passing day.
They hadn’t.
They had grown even as the life in her womb grew, thriving in the secret places of her body, stronger with each hour. She could hardly wait until next autumn, when Rio’s baby would be born. She ached to hold it to her breast and hear its tiny cries.
“Prettiest sound I ever did hear,” Mason said with satisfaction, listening to the rush of water.
When Hope didn’t answer, he glanced at her. The distant, strained look on her face told him that she was somewhere else. He frowned and bit back a curse. She hadn’t been the same since Rio left. It wasn’t just that she didn’t smile easily or laugh at all. She was just different. A woman now, no girl left in her.
The Valley of the Sun had always been important to her, but it was more than that now. It was everything.
In the three months since Rio had left the ranch, other men had come. They had asked Hope to church and to barbecues, to movies and to parties. Her answer was always the same, no matter how handsome or respectable the man was.
No.
Mason had chided her once, telling her that she should go out and enjoy herself. The look she had given him had been enough to make him flinch, but all she had said was, I’m a one-man woman.
The sound of a heavy truck driving into the yard between the barn and the house pulled Hope out of her autumn dreams. She looked at Mason. He shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “I didn’t order nothing.”
Rio! He’s come back!
The thought was like lightning—hot, blinding. She didn’t know that there was a flash of raw hope on her face as she turned and ran toward the sound. Nor did she know that every bit of light faded from her eyes when she saw that a stranger drove the truck.
“Lost?” she asked evenly as the driver rolled down his window.
The man was at least fifty, as weathered as the hills, and about as talkative. “Yer name Hope?”
“Yes.”
“Where ya want it?”
“What?”
“Seed.” He jerked a grizzled chin toward the truck bed.
She peered around the cab and saw the bags of oat hay and alfalfa seed. “I didn’t order any seed.”
He nodded and waited impatiently for her to answer his question so that he could unload his truck and get back to his farm.
“If I didn’t order any seed, then that’s not my seed in the truck,” Hope pointed out reasonably.
“Rio sez bring it. I brung it.” He stared at her, waiting to be told where to put the seed.
She stared back, speechless, a single word echoing through her mind and body and soul: Rio.
A look of exasperation crossed the stranger’s unshaven face. “Where ya want it?”
Mason came up behind Hope. “You say Rio sent you with this seed?”
“Ain’t this Hope Gardener’s spread?”
“This is her ranch,” Mason said.
“So where you want it?”
“I’ll show you where to put the seed,” Mason said.
“ ’Bout time,” the man muttered.
Having exhausted his well of small talk, the stranger revved his truck’s engine and slowly followed Mason.
Bewildered, Hope watched the man back up to one of the storage sheds and begin unloading bag after bag of seed. He answered no questions, asked none, and refused anything more than a cup of coffee.
After the man left, Hope and Mason stood side by side in the shed, looking at the unexpected delivery. Silently Mason pulled out a worn folding knife, opened a blade, and slit the top of a bag.
Smooth, rich, plump, the satiny contents cascaded from his hands and whispered back into the sack.
“Prime,” he said softly, “really prime seed.”
Hope didn’t answer. She simply thrust her hands wrist-deep into the seed and lifted. When she poured seeds from one hand to the other, she saw fields green with alfalfa and shimmering gold with oats. There was thousands of dollars worth of seed stacked neatly in the shed, sacks pregnant with future harvests.
With Rio’s seed she could begin rebuilding the Valley of the Sun.
When Hope slept that night she dreamed of Rio’s child, her child, their child, running through fields thick with grain and sweet with alfalfa flowers. The dream slowly changed, filled with the muted thunder of rain. She woke up in a rush, only to find that it wasn’t rain that had awakened her, but trucks.
She ran to the window and simply stared. A convoy of cattle trucks was driving into the ranch yard. Above the roar of diesels came the concerted bawling of yearling steers.
Rio?
Again, like lightning, the thought scored across Hope’s emotions.
She
yanked on her clothes with fierce speed, kicking into her boots even as she shoved her arms into her jacket. When she ran into the front yard the sun was barely an incandescent fingernail hooked over Eagle Peak.
A broad-shouldered, bluff-looking man climbed down out of the first cattle truck’s high cab. His motions were stiff, those of someone who had been on the road a long time.
“You Hope?” he asked.
She looked up into his ruddy, wind-roughed face. “Yes.”
“Name’s Martin,” he said, holding out his hand.
Hope shook it, feeling as though she was still asleep, still dreaming. The sound and smell of cattle swirled around her on the dawn wind, stirring her. She had missed the earthy smells and plaintive bawls of cattle. She looked at them yearningly.
“Yeah, you’re Hope, all right,” Martin said, smiling. “He told me, ‘Look for a woman with dreams in her eyes.’ ”
Hope’s eyes widened, revealing hazel depths where both gold and shadows turned. “Rio sent you?”
“Sure did. Where do you want the calves?”
“But I didn’t order—” Her voice broke. She swallowed and tried again. “Mr. Martin—”
“Just Martin, ma’am.”
“Martin,” she said somewhat desperately. She didn’t know a gentle way to tell this stranger that he had made a long drive for nothing. She hadn’t ordered cows because there wasn’t enough money to pay for them. Not yet. Not until she harvested and sold a few crops. “I’m sorry. I can’t afford to buy your cattle.”
Martin shook his head. “Nothing was said about money, ma’am. Didn’t Rio tell you we were coming?”
She shook her head mutely.
“Yeah, well, that’s Rio. He was edgy as hell when I talked to him. Never saw a man so restless. He came four months early and didn’t hardly even stay for a cup of coffee. Just gave me your name and told me to ship whatever I owed him down here.”
“Down here?” Hope shook her head and fought for breath. She felt like she was drowning in the soaring dawn and the bawl of cattle. “Where are you from?”
“Montana, way up by the Canadian border. Don’t mind telling you, it was some trick to comb these yearling steers out of a storm and ship them through the worst spring I’ve seen in decades.” He smiled suddenly, his dark eyes alive with laughter. “Not that I minded. Not a bit. If Rio had said drive his cows to Hawaii, I’d have loaded them up and driven west until my hat floated.”
She just stared at him.
Martin looked over to the pastures opposite the house. “That fence in the bigger pasture strong enough to hold back a few yearlings?”
Closing her eyes, Hope forced herself to breathe. The earthy smell of cattle was more beautiful to her than roses.
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Follow me.”
She turned and walked toward the big gate leading into the pasture. She didn’t know where she was going to find food for all the cattle—there had to be hundreds of them, and even now another truck was pulling up to the ranch. Although the winter had been mild, there hadn’t been much rain. There wasn’t much natural food for the cattle.
Then she realized that she could buy hay with the money she had earmarked for seed. Relief made her light-headed. She shook it off. She didn’t want to miss one instant of watching cattle streaming back into the Valley of the Sun’s empty pastures.
Yearling Herefords crowded down the truck ramps and spread over the pasture in a rich russet tide. Wind sighed and curled through the yard, making dust into a glittering golden veil rising with the dawn. The bawling of cattle rose to meet the cataract of sunrise spilling down the Perdidas’ rugged slopes.
Hardly able to believe her eyes, Hope leaned on the pasture fence and simply watched cattle returning to her ranch.
Martin watched Hope for a long time before he walked up to stand beside her. She turned to him with a smile that made him wish she wasn’t Rio’s woman. But he didn’t doubt that she was. It had been in Rio’s eyes when he spoke her name—and in hers when she spoke his.
“They’re beautiful,” she said, emotion thickening in her voice.
Martin laughed as he looked at the wild-eyed, winter-lean yearlings fanning across the pasture. “You’re a rancher, all right. Nobody else would think those ragged steers were beautiful.”
She hesitated, watching Martin from the corner of her eye, wanting to know how Rio had looked, if he was happy or sad, well or drawn out to a fine humming wire of tension.
Like her.
Restless. Edgy as hell.
Like Rio.
“I didn’t know they were short of water in northern Montana,” she said, fishing delicately for information.
Martin gave her an amused look. “Not the part I’m from. I met Rio a different way.”
She turned and looked at Martin directly, silently urging him to talk, drinking each word the way thirsty land drinks water.
“Twelve years ago I found three men driving about forty of my cattle into Canada,” Martin said simply. “I should have gone for help, but I was so damn mad I just waded right in. You see, those cows were every penny I had in the world back then.”
Hope made a sound of sympathy. She knew just how he felt.
Martin shook his head, remembering the younger and much more foolhardy man he had been. He drew out a pipe, packed it with tobacco, and lit it with a special lighter. The pungent fragrance of his pipe mingled with the smell of cattle, dust, and a dry wind.
“Well, to make a long story short,” Martin said, “those rustlers beat hell out of me and left me for dead. I would have been, too, if Rio hadn’t happened along. He patched me up, got me to a doctor, and disappeared before I could thank him.”
She wasn’t surprised. “He wouldn’t have waited around for thanks.”
“No, ma’am. He had bigger fish to fry, and he fried them up real crisp. When I got home again a week later, every last one of my cows was back like nothing had ever happened.”
Her breath came in swiftly. “What happened to the rustlers?”
“I didn’t ask. Rio didn’t say.” Martin puffed hard, savored smoke, and continued, “He stayed and ran things until I was on my feet again. I told him that half of everything I owned was his. He refused it, saying even God only took a tenth, and God was a hell of a lot more useful than one crossbreed Indian.”
Hope’s eyelids flinched in pain for the man she loved, giving so much, taking so little in return.
“Rio never asked a thing from me until now,” Martin said. Smiling, he added, “I’ve done right well for myself and Rio in those years.”
Martin and his men left a few hours later. Hope and Mason spent the rest of the day turning on pipelines and putting out the hay that had remained after she had sold her cattle to pay for Rio’s well.
Tired but smiling, Mason and Hope finally sat down to dinner. They had barely picked up their forks when two huge hay trucks rumbled up the road. She and Mason looked at each other and got up without a word. As soon as they reached the yard a familiar greeting rang out.
“Where you want it?”
Hope’s mouth opened, closed.
Mason walked up to the first truck. The driver was a rail-thin man with a gray mustache that was no wider than the string tie that circled the collar of his pale western shirt.
“You sure you aren’t lost?” Mason asked.
“Ranch gate said Valley of the Sun. That’s where he sent me.”
“He?” Hope stepped forward. “Are you talking about Rio?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Tim Webster. My wife Betty is driving the other truck. We brought our boys for the heavy work, because Rio said you didn’t have any hands.”
“Where are you from?”
“Southern New Mexico.”
Hope took a breath. Northern Montana. New Mexico. Rio was everywhere but Nevada. “Show them where to put it, Mason. I’ll see about some food for everyone.”
The Webster family stayed long enough to unload the h
ay, eat, and drink quarts of coffee. When Hope offered beds for the night, the Websters refused.
“Thank you, but we need to get back to the ranch,” Tim said. “Now, you remember what I told you. This isn’t but a handful of what we owe Rio. You ever come up short of feed, you give us a holler. We’ll start loading trucks before you hang up.”
Their simple generosity moved Hope. “Thank you,” she said huskily, “but I hope it won’t be needed, now that the ranch has a reliable well for irrigation.”
“Just the same, you remember. Without Rio, Betty and me wouldn’t have a handful of spit between us. We don’t forgot what we owe him. We never will.”
The next afternoon two more cattle trucks arrived. Hope watched the dust plumes rise behind the trucks and she thought she couldn’t be surprised anymore. She was wrong.
When the lead truck turned, she could see the name on its long black trailer: MCNALLY’S BLACK ANGUS.
Hot and cold chills chased over her skin. She had bought Sweetheart from McNally, and sold her back to him. Dazed, she watched the rig drive up. A big man in worn jeans and an expensive leather jacket climbed down. He walked up to her with a smile as wide as his broad face.
“McNally?” Hope’s voice was ragged. “What are you doing here?”
He just kept smiling and looking around at the ranch where late afternoon sunlight flowed like honey across the land. “Didn’t really notice it last time, but this is a pretty little place you have. Mite dry, but Rio said he fixed that.”
Numb, she just stared at McNally.
Mason walked up and stood beside her, looking at the black trucks.
With a muffled groan, McNally stretched like a man who had spent too many hours behind the wheel. Then he looked at Hope and grinned. “Well, darlin’, where do you want your Angus?”
She couldn’t have spoken if her life required it.
Next to Hope, Mason laughed and swore softly. He gestured to the other driver, showing him the empty pasture gate where the Angus had been when McNally bought them back.
After the big rig was maneuvered into the opening and the ramp lowered, Hope’s voice came back.
“My Angus?” she said, turning on McNally. “If they belong to anyone, they belong to Rio.”
Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Page 27
