Renegade Man

by Parris Afton Bonds

  And where was Jonah? When she’d left that morning, he had already taken off somewhere in his pickup. If he wasn’t with Nelda, there were plenty of other women willing to try to tame him. Rita-lou detested the way the young coeds with their perfect figures and unlined complexions had sidled up to him on the Bor der Cowboy dance floor. His rough good looks and trail-weary attitude had made the college jocks look like callow youths.

  The next event was the bareback bronc-riding, and the first man out of the shoot was Buck Dillard, astride an iron-jawed bucking horse named Deep Trouble. “I hope he’s thrown,” she grumbled softly.

  “So do most of the spectators,” Soren said.

  Unhappily for her, Buck clung to the rampaging horse until after the eight-second buzzer, when he leaped off, took a roll and got deftly to his feet. Beating the dust off his chaps with his hat, he swaggered out of the arena.

  Disgusted, she was more than ready to leave when Soren suggested browsing through the bazaar. Artists displayed their paintings on easels, the women showed off their quilts spread on wooden frames, and antique dealers put out their stores of old firearms and knives, frontier chamber pots and brass spittoons.

  She and Soren pawed through the dusty boxes of cheaply priced rocks set out by amateur collectors. They shared a love of the earth’s natural treasure. But then, so did Jonah.

  “Old-timers still remember when free gold could be picked up in the streets after a heavy rain,” she told Soren, holding up a carbon-crusted rock for him to view. “Gold? A diamond, maybe?”

  “Now what would you do if we found something valuable in here?” Soren asked.

  “Like the star sapphire that man in Texas found?” she asked, and smiled up at him. She picked up a lavender-gray stone, saying, “Well, finish putting my son through college, for one thing. What about you?”

  “Oh, I suppose go into business for myself. But I don’t think I’d let a couple of million dollars change my lifestyle that much. I’ve seen the better part of two continents, and I don’t think there’s a better place to put down roots than right here in Silver City.”

  She replaced the stone in its box and shook her head. Her hair, unbound for a change, swirled around her shoulders. “Silver City’s not for me, Soren. Too many bittersweet memories.”

  “They don’t have to stay that way, Rita-lou.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Come on, let’s get something to drink.”

  By then the rodeo was over, and the Border Cowboy was filling to overflowing with thirsty revelers. After the bright sunlight, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark interior. “Why does a saloon only smell of stale beer in the day and not at night?” Soren rumbled near her ear.

  Laughing, she looked over her shoulder at him and saw Jonah. He was in the far corner, playing pool with a couple of men she didn’t know. He looked good in his faded jeans, western shirt rolled up at the sleeves, boots and hat. Of course, he looked good in anything.

  She and Soren strolled over to the group. She asked, “Another one of your sailors’ games, Jonah?”

  He raised his eyes from the five-ball to focus on her. He stared at her for a moment, then made a shot that sent the orange ball spinning into a side pocket. When he straightened, he was grinning cockily at her. “Want to take me on? We could make the game more interesting by . . .”

  “No!” She was grateful that the dim light didn’t betray her hot blush.

  “. . . betting quarters,” he finished with an innocent smile."

  “Well, if it isn’t Silver City’s resident Girl Scout.”

  She turned in the direction of the taunting voice. Buck was standing at the brass-railed bar, his elbows braced on the mahogany counter behind him. With him were some Split P hands.

  “This is no city slicker, guys. She likes to rough it— camps out at Tomahawk Flats. A real bra-bumer, this one.”

  Beside her, Soren stiffened, but before he could make a move, Jonah leveled his cue in front of Soren.

  “She’s a big girl, good buddy,” Jonah told him quietly.

  Rita-lou leaned her hips against the pool table and crossed her arms, regarding C.B.’s foreman from a distance of twenty years. “From what I heard in high school, Buck, the only bras you ever saw were the ones in those nudie magazines you kept hidden in your locker.”

  The cowhands at the bar with Buck snickered. He seemed to go a little pale; his face grew a little tighter, and resentment entered his eyes. He shifted the wad of tobacco in his mouth, but he didn’t say a word.

  She shot him a smile of dismissal and started up the stairs. Following behind her, Soren said, “There’s nothing I’d like better than to sink my fist into his face.”

  She smiled up at the big Swede. “Don’t bother. Buck’s been bounced so often by those broncos that his brain has turned to guacamole.”

  With Buck effectively put in his place, the rest of the evening went as nicely as the morning had. Soren was charming, intelligent, attentive, fun to be with. The only thing wrong with him was that he wasn’t Jonah Jones.

  As she and Soren left the Border Cowboy, a man approached her. Soren stepped out in front protectively, but then the man identified himself as Deputy Sheriff Galloway. He tipped his hat to her and thrust an envelope in her hands. “You’ve been served with a summons, Ms. Randall.”

  She stared dumbly at the envelope.

  “Want me to open it?” Soren asked after the man had left.

  She nodded and watched as he unfolded the paper. “Just like he said—it’s a summons and a complaint for property damage. The plaintiff is C. B. Kingsley.”

  “Just great,” she muttered.

  To top things off, Jonah didn’t come home that night.

  Chapter 10

  What she was feeling for Jonah was a strange and powerful thing, not at all what she wanted in her ordinary life. So it was with a mixture of frustration and relief that she watched his pickup spew dust as it bounced down the dirt road toward camp the next afternoon. He parked beneath the oak and swung down from the cab.

  Hands tucked in the back pockets of her jeans, she waited for him near the picnic bench. Nothing in the world would get her to admit that she had been worried when he hadn’t come home last night. She had been afraid that C.B. had found some way this time to strike out at her through Jonah.

  All morning she had worked furiously at the dig, retroweling the five-by-five squares—and all the while cursing Jonah Jones. At noon she had stopped to wash and change clothes, with the intention of going into town after Jonah, though she honestly didn’t know what she was going to do if she found him.

  Now he was here, striding toward her. She should never have agreed to stay in his camper. But now that she was ensconced there, why couldn’t she come out and just tell him that she wanted to go to bed with him? Tell him she agreed with his no-strings-attached attitude, even if she didn’t. She vowed that she would tell him when she saw him.

  When he was near enough, her vow evaporated. All she could manage was, “You want lunch?”

  He took off his hat and wiped the back of his sleeve across his forehead. The boiling sunlight tinted his mustache a golden copper. Beneath it, his mouth was full, with a suggestion of both the sensuous and the savage. Unleashed male sexuality emanated from him.

  “Not hungry.” He strode on past her and entered the camper.

  Through the screen she watched him tug off his shirt. A fiery ball of wanting formed deep inside her. She definitely had to rechannel some of her energy, or else she was going to go crazy.

  “I’m going into town,” she called. When he didn’t reply, she added, “To see C.B. He’s filed against me for property damage. I allegedly dug a hole that his prized bull fell into, breaking its leg.”

  She heard the tab of a beer can pop; then Jonah opened the camper door, leaned lazily against the jamb and stared down at her. “If you’re hinting that I should go along with you and champion you in your fight, you’re doomed to disappointment, sweethear
t.”

  Fury rattled up her spine. “I’ve done everything on my own all my life, and I’m not about to start asking for help now. Pass me my purse. Please!”

  He stared down at her, a cocky grin curving that sexy mouth, and she felt herself doing a slow burn. At last he reached behind him and came up with her shoulder bag. As he dangled it toward her, a purely lecherous grin lifted the ends of his mustache. “Thought you didn’t want my help?”

  She snatched the purse from him and stalked toward her Chevy. On the long drive into town, she rationed her anger, so that she was still hot by the time she reached the North Addition. She would need her anger when her courage faltered.

  First she went to the telephone booth opposite the fire station and put in a call to the archaeological office of the National Park Service, in Santa Fe, asking for its director, Ben Schotsky. She had communicated with him for several months by letter and telephone prior to getting the go-ahead on the Renegade Man excavation.

  “Schotsky here,” he said in a reedy voice that used to grate on her. Actually, in her dealings with him, she’d found him to be both fair-minded and helpful.

  She explained the problem to him as concisely as she could, ending by saying, “. . . and C.B.’s responsible for running the cattle out there on Tomahawk Flats. You know yourself, Ben, that any hole I dug couldn’t have been more than five inches deep at the most. There are ruts on the roads deeper than that!”

  “Calm down, Rita-lou. He can’t get away with it, and what’s more, he probably knows it. Call his bluff. This sort of thing goes on all the time. If we have to, we’ll settle out of court. But I doubt it’ll come to that.”

  Feeling somewhat better, she replaced the receiver. Now for C. B. Kingsley.

  Of the remaining 1890s mansions, the three-story Kingsley house was by far the most impressive, with tiny leaded windows overlooking its neighbors. A middle-aged Hispanic woman in a black shirt and white blouse admitted Rita-lou to the foyer. That woman might have been me if I had stayed on, if I hadn’t given my heart to Chap.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Kingsley,” she told the maid. Her courage was failing her fast, and she half hoped that, even though it wasn’t roundup time, C.B. would be staying at the ranch. “Tell him Ms. Randall is cal¬ing.”

  The maid took in Rita-lou’s jeans and sneakers. “I’ll see if he’s busy.”

  After the woman left, Rita-lou looked around, noting that not that much had changed. The hallway and the one room visible from its double doorway were still all chinoiserie and willow-pattern china, lush chintz and rococo plaster, echoing the stamp of Mrs. Kingsley. C.B.’s domain had been the den, and of course the Split P’s ranch house, where it was rumored he had taken his occasional mistresses.

  She thought of C.B., all alone in the big Victorian house since Mildred had died. Rita-lou hoped he was as lonely now as he had once made her. She thought of other things, too. Of upstairs and Chap’s bedroom. Of Chap’s microscope and science fiction novels, where C.B. had wanted football trophies and hunting guns. And of her own small cubicle in the carriage house. She had missed living with Grandpops during those months, and had worried about how he was doing without her to care for him. But then Chap had come to her . .. ,

  Haunted memories, sad memories, of things and times wasted. She pushed them into the closed-off areas of her mind. She thought of that lovely summer when they had talked of a love only two young people could share, a love that had made her cry because he was so gentle. She thought of that long, lonely autumn and winter after she had left Silver City, of her attempt at changing love into indifference, of the transformation of a young, wounded heart into one that could withstand pain.

  The maid soon returned, and Rita-lou expected to be told that C.B. wouldn’t see her. “Mr. Kingsley is waiting for you in the den. Follow me, por favor, se nora.”

  Rita-lou knew where the den was, but she had never done more than peek inside. Her eyes had to adjust to the dimly lit room. At first she didn’t even see C.B., because she was transfixed by his precious trophies mounted all over the redwood-paneled room: a boar’s head; a wild turkey in flight; a pronghorn antelope; a brown bear rug; and, in one corner, a cougar held for eternity in its stalking crouch.

  The painting of Chap at sixteen that hung over the fireplace provided the one touch of warmth in the room. Then she saw C.B. Imposing as ever, he sat in a large leather chair, pushing a ramrod in and out of the barrel of a Winchester 30-30 he held between his knees. He set an open can of bore solvent on the coffee table in front of him and picked up the broken-open rifle. He looked down the cleaned barrel at her. Refusing to be intimidated, she faced him squarely.

  After a moment he raised his head and said, “Thought you’d have left town by now, girl.”

  The Winchester was still pointed at her. “You should know me better, Mr. Kingsley. I don’t give up easily. The stampede two weeks ago last Thursday didn’t scare me away, and nothing else will, either.”

  “Stampede?”

  There was a coiled diamondback rattler mounted on a flat rock sitting on the coffee table. She tugged her gaze away from the snake’s mesmerizing eyes to focus on C.B. again. The lamplight falling on the chair revealed the sallowness of his skin and the hate that throbbed at his temples, where the hair was iron gray. “Don’t feign innocence with me,” she said, her voice as cold as ice. “Your code of honor surpasses a rubber band for flexibility.”

  He looked faintly amused. His cheek was still pressed against the gunstock. “I hate to spoil your scenario, but I play poker every Thursday night with Sheriff Windham and several others. Right here in my den.”

  Her lips twisted contemptuously. “Oh, I have no doubt of that. But you were responsible, nonetheless. Don’t you understand that there’s nothing you can do to hurt me anymore?”

  Slowly, deliberately, he tightened his finger on the trigger. It clicked loudly in the room. “Don’t be too sure of that, girl.”

  She dug into a pocket of her shoulder bag and tossed a plastic-coated photo on the coffee table. “You never once tried to find out about him in all these years. How could you be so callous?”

  C.B. rested the rifle against the sofa arm and stared mildly down at the photo, then glanced up at her again. “Who is it?”

  “Your grandson, Trace. Damn you, C.B.!”

  For the first time since she had come into the room his detached attitude deserted him. His expression hardened. “I don’t have a grandson.”

  Fury engorged her veins, swelling her heart with rage. She swept up the photo and jammed it back into her purse. Then, before she could stop to think clearly, she grabbed the open can of bore solvent and dumped its contents over the mounted rattler.

  As she strode from the room, his shouted curses and threats followed her. It had been a childish act, she knew, destroying the snake, but it had eased the accumulated frustrations of a lifetime. Outside, she stood in the sunlight, letting its warmth seep through her chilled body. She was shaking. But she wouldn’ back down; she wouldn’t run away from Silver City again.

  What had she expected? That C.B. would want to see his grandson after he saw Trace’s photo? How stupid of her!

  As she turned the Chevy toward Livingston’s Food and Mercantile, tears slid unchecked down her cheeks. She needed to buy her share of the groceries, since supplies were getting low, but with her eyes red and her nose running, she certainly didn’t want to enter the brightly lit new Furr’s Supermarket. And she could count on Livingston’s being relatively empty.

  Unable to see, she wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands, then fumbled in her purse and, after finding a tissue, blew her nose noisily. “You silly woman,” she mumbled.

  Old man Livingston was behind the counter, seeming like a permanent store fixture. “Afternoon, Rita- lou.”

  “Good afternoon,” she murmured, then reached blindly for a shopping cart, an old one that clattered on the uneven linoleum floor. She tried to think of what they needed. Milk and e
ggs, certainly. Cheese, bread, potatoes—

  “Well, hello, Rita-lou.” Nelda, pert and vibrant, stood at an open frozen-food locker.

  Rita-lou managed a weak smile. “How are you, Nelda?”

  “On the run, as usual. Got a 2:30 customer to clip.” She paused, then gestured at her own half-filled shopping cart. “This is a good place to come when you only have two to shop for, isn’t it?”

  Rita-lou understood. Nelda was asking if Jonah and she were living together. “Yes, it is.”

  Nelda canted her head and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’ve been crying.”

  “No. I’ve—I’ve just got an awful cold.”

  Nelda pushed her cart forward until she was abreast of Rita-lou. “Listen, hon,” she said, her eyes searching Rita-lou’s face with sincere sympathy. “Working at the barbershop, I deal with all sorts of men. Day in, day out. I know their types better than I know myself. Jonah’s a man’s man. And every woman would like to have him, including me, if I’m honest. But he’s done a lot of wandering. It’s in his blood. And he’ll wander some more. Men like Soren Gunnerson will settle down. With Soren, you’ve got something you can be sure of.”

  Rita-lou was at a loss for words. “Look... it’s not that way, Nelda.”

  The strawberry blonde bit her lip, then smiled. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have been handing out advice like that. With bartenders and barbers it becomes a habit.” She patted Rita-lou’s hand awkwardly, then headed for the checkout counter.

  Rita-lou hurried through the store, randomly selecting cans and boxes. She wanted only to get back to excavating now; the dig would take her mind off C. B. Kingsley and Jonah and everything else that was wrong. But the Fates weren’t finished with her for the day.

  As Livingston rang up her purchases, he grumbled, “Be sure of? Being sure is for cowards.” He peered steadily at her over his dust-spotted spectacles. “Catch hold of a man you’re sure of, and you’ll rot from boredom. Hhmmph!”