Tall, Dark and Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “And then Tracy said—oh, hi, Uncle Chase.” She grinned, tilting her face up to the light.

  Damn, he loved this kid. He’d been so upset when Pam got pregnant her senior year. She’d been planning to go to college, figuring she’d major in business and come back to keep the books for the farm. Having a baby had put a hold on those dreams, and the loss of the farm had put them forever out of reach—but Annie was worth it. She was smart, she was sweet, and Chase couldn’t imagine his life without her.

  Pam lowered her voice as Annie headed for the stairs. “How’s Lacey?”

  Annie turned and brightened. “Aunt Lacey? Where is she? Sinclair misses her.”

  Chase smiled. “Sinclair does, huh?”

  “Well, me too. She’s, like, my best friend. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”

  Chase choked.

  “Yes, he does,” Pam said. “Uncle Chase definitely appreciates how beautiful Aunt Lacey is. Now go upstairs and change out of your school clothes.”

  Chase leaned back against the counter, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “Lacey’s doing fine. But hey, Cody was sitting with some woman earlier. He said she was someone he knew.”

  “Yeah, I saw her. She came in and asked for him.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, he said he needed to talk to me about it.”

  “Damn, Pam, if he…”

  “He didn’t do anything wrong,” Pam said. “Don’t assume the worst.” She started unloading the grocery bags. Evidently, the café needed milk too, because she’d bought four gallons, half skim and half whole. “Actually, I was wondering if you and Lacey could maybe take Annie for the afternoon. Give me and Cody a chance to be alone.”

  Chase was reluctant to give up his day alone with Lacey, but she’d seemed a little down that morning, and Annie could cheer up a grave digger. “Okay.” He grabbed a gallon of milk in each hand. “I’ll put these away. Go tell Annie to put on her boots.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t mention Lacey though, okay? We don’t need it spread all over that she’s at the ranch.” He grinned. “I’m not sure your daughter can keep a secret with that motormouth of hers.”

  Chapter 35

  “Sinclair is the best dog, Aunt Lacey.” Annie had been talking nonstop since she’d arrived. “He lets me put hats on him and everything. Yesterday I even got him to wear booties, but it didn’t look right because I only had two and he has four feet. I guess the front ones are hands, though. Do you think I should get him mittens?”

  Lacey looked down at the dog, who wore a grim expression, and smiled.

  “Definitely. Sinclair would love mittens.”

  “Yeah, I think so too. I’m so glad you gave him to me, Aunt Lacey. I’ll never, ever forget the day you did that. It was the best day ever.”

  Lacey felt her eyes tear up. At least she’d made a difference to someone in her life. Two someones, really—the dog and the child. It was nice to know she’d always be in Annie’s memory as Aunt Lacey.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Annie was mounted on a pony Chase had led from the barn. She trotted the animal in a tight circle, her posture perfect and her face aglow with happiness. The jolting gait hardly affected her seat at all, while Lacey felt like she bounced a mile into the air and crashed back into the saddle, over and over, whenever Captain broke into anything more than a gentle walk.

  “You’re going to have to teach me to ride better,” she told Annie.

  But when she gathered up the reins and turned the horse toward Chase, she felt surprisingly competent and confident. She’d been reluctant to ride again, but the crash course she’d taken the day before—and it was literally a crash course—had worked. Now that she’d been bucked off, there wasn’t anything left to be afraid of.

  Captain followed the other horses without any direction from Lacey as they trailed along the line of the pasture fence. Chase would occasionally lean out and tap the top strand of barbed wire with a stick he was carrying, and once he got down and tightened a sagging wire. She started to get down and help, but Annie vaulted off her horse before she could even gather up the reins. It was just as well; staying on board saved Lacey the embarrassment of clambering clumsily onto the horse again.

  She took in the gray-green sagebrush and the yucca spikes, the ruddy rocks in the distance and the blue-tinted mountains beyond them. A herd of antelope trotted away, then turned to stare, making a sharp spitting noise that was apparently supposed to be a threat but just sounded absurd. She slipped one hand around the saddle horn, worried Captain might get it into his head that he ought to run into the herd so she could rope a ’lope, but he stayed calm and placid.

  In fact, everything was calm and placid. With the cool, blue-sky weather and Annie’s cheerful prattling, Lacey was starting to enjoy ranch life so much that she almost wished Captain would kick up his heels and buck her off again, just to jolt her back to reality. She didn’t belong on a ranch—not with Chase, not with anybody. She was scared of horses—other than Captain, anyway—and she didn’t like dirt and she didn’t know a damn thing about cattle. She belonged on horseback like a nun belonged in a strip joint.

  She was jerked out of her reverie when Annie kicked her heels into the pony’s flanks and took off toward the cabin they’d passed the day before. The basic structure was hewn logs, but over the years scrap lumber, old fence posts, and rusting slabs of corrugated metal had been added to the roof and sides. A chipped cement pad lined with cracks from decades of freezing and thawing served as a front doorstep.

  “Annie, get back here.” Chase’s command was loud enough to make Captain toss his head. Lacey grabbed the saddle horn, but the horse settled down.

  Annie kept her seat effortlessly while Sheba seemed to flow in a graceful arc over the narrow stream. “What? I want to explore.” Annie pulled up the horse and turned pleading eyes on Chase. “Look how cool this is. People must have lived here.”

  “That’s Mr. Galt’s land. I’ve told you before never to cross that stream.”

  “Oh.” Annie slouched in the saddle, turning the horse and splashing back through the stream. “I forgot.”

  “You can’t go forgetting that. Mr. Galt’s—well, he’s mean. You know that.”

  “He’s not mean. He’s sad,” Lacey said. “Poor guy.”

  “Yeah, well, that poor guy shot my calf. Pardon me if I don’t join the pity party.”

  “He shot your cow?” Annie looked outraged. “Why? What did he do that for?”

  “It was on his land.” Chase nodded toward the cabin. “Kind of like you.”

  “Oh. Well, that doesn’t mean he has a right to shoot it.”

  “I know that. Unfortunately, Mr. Galt doesn’t, so it’s very, very dangerous for you to go over there.”

  “Sorry.” Annie seemed genuinely contrite, but she recovered fast, bouncing in the saddle and pointing to a cluster of trees in the distance. “Are we going to the woods? That’s on your land, right?” He nodded, and she bounced higher. “You’ll love it, Aunt Lacey. It’s got a little waterfall and everything, and once I found mushrooms there.”

  Chase glanced at Lacey. “Your seat gonna be okay with that much riding?”

  “I think so.” She settled her feet deeper into the stirrups. “Not sure about my thigh muscles, though.”

  “We’ll get off and stretch halfway home.”

  She forgot about her thigh muscles once they entered the woods. The heat of the afternoon sun cooled in the green dappled shadows of the trees, and the trail turned from pale dust and trampled grass to cool dirt sprinkled with a layer of last year’s fallen leaves. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the foliage, casting spotlights on random features of the forest: a tiny pine tree, a tortured root, a fallen log covered with moss. The pasture was flat and featureless and harshly lit, but in the woods there was a sense of hidden magic and possibilities that even made Annie hush with reverence. The unknown lurked beneath the leaves, behind the trees, under the roots. The ranch w
as the real world; this was an enchanted kingdom where anything could happen. If Chase had told her tiny fairies in cowboy hats herded ants in secret glades, she’d have believed him.

  She ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch, then tilted her head back to look up through the interlaced branches to study the jigsaw patterns of yellow and green leaves, blue sky, and pine boughs. She’d felt uneasy on the wide plains, vulnerable and exposed, but this was homey. She could imagine curling up in the roots of an old tree and spending the night like a fairy princess.

  Chase evidently felt good here too. He’d been whistling softly since they entered the woods, some song she didn’t recognize.

  “This is beautiful,” she said. “I feel so safe here, compared to out there.”

  “Out there?”

  “Where it’s so open.”

  Chase snorted.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that a lot of other things feel safe here too. Bears. Mountain lions. Stuff like that.”

  She glanced around, searching for hulking, furry shapes in the shadows. “Bears?”

  “Yeah, although they’re not that much of a threat as long as you don’t surprise them. That’s why I’ve been whistling. Probably the horses make enough noise, but you can’t be too careful.”

  “And mountain lions?”

  “Whistling won’t help much with them. They’ve been known to attack humans for no reason. I have a friend who has a scar clear across his skull from when he was a kid and one jumped him when his family was hiking.”

  “Yikes.”

  But nothing could spoil Lacey’s good mood. Sitting astride an animal that had induced a panic attack two days ago and steering it through unknown territory made her feel so brave she figured she could conquer anything. She pictured herself in a suit of armor, a woman warrior riding into battle.

  She snapped out of her reverie when Captain stumbled, almost pitching her off as he tripped over a root and nearly fell to his knees. He caught himself, holding one hoof off the ground, and let out a whinny. Chase and Annie stopped and turned, then dismounted when they saw what had happened.

  “Captain tripped.” Lacey climbed down and stroked the horse’s neck. “I think he hurt himself.”

  Captain was agitated, his eyes rolling. Lacey stepped back as he nodded his head and took a few steps backward as if he was afraid of the rock he’d tripped on. Chase’s eyes grew serious as he ran his hand down the horse’s leg.

  “It’s not broken, is it?” Lacey had seen movies where they shot horses with broken legs. She was sure veterinary science had advanced since the days of John Wayne, but it still showed how serious an injury could be.

  “No. But he might have pulled a tendon, or torn it.” He tugged on the horse’s reins, but the animal just tossed his head up and refused to move.

  Chase glanced back the way they’d come. “We’re going to have to go back for the trailer.”

  “And leave him here?” She put one hand on the horse’s neck. “I’ll stay with him.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Chase said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “But you said there were bears and mountain lions.”

  “Which would see Captain as the main course and you as a tasty dessert. I’m only going to be gone an hour or so.”

  “Then I’ll be fine.”

  He sighed. “Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

  She sensed relief in the slump of his shoulders. Finally, she was actually helping. Doing something right.

  Annie stood beside her horse. “I want to stay with Aunt Lacey.”

  “No, you’d better stick with me,” he said. “It’s not safe, hon.”

  “Okay. But Sinclair’s staying.” She pointed a finger at the dog and gave him a stern, no-nonsense glare. “Stay. He’ll protect you, Aunt Lacey.”

  The dog shot his new mistress a rebellious glare, then looked over at Lacey. She could swear his lip curled in disgust, but he lowered his skinny butt to the ground and stayed.

  “You’d better be nice to me,” she said to the dog as Annie and Chase rode out of sight. “Or I’ll feed you to the bears.”

  Chapter 36

  Chase urged Jimbo into a gallop as he emerged from the woods into the bright, flat spread of the pasture. Annie followed suit, her hair flying behind her, riding like she was part of the horse. The kid was going to make a great cowgirl. She’d been running barrels since she was six, and she could already beat a lot of older riders’ times.

  They could get back to the ranch in twenty minutes, but hauling the trailer over the uneven ground was going to take a while. Lacey would be worried if he took too long.

  As he neared the ranch, something unfamiliar caught the light and reflected it back like a mirror. Had to be a car, parked in the turnout. Maybe Cody had come to pick up Annie. It was too early, but sometimes Pam got to missing her daughter and shortened her dates down to nothing. Cody seemed to take it in stride.

  But it couldn’t be the Jeep; the Jeep didn’t shine. There was no chrome on the bumpers—just dull cast steel, and generally even that was coated with mud. If Pam was out here in her own car, it meant she and Cody had had a fight.

  Chase swore. He’d had a bad feeling ever since he’d seen Cody with that woman at the diner. If his friend broke his sister’s heart, he’d kill the guy.

  He rose in the stirrups, keeping his body tilted forward so his center of balance was just ahead of the horse’s. Jimbo’s natural instinct kept him running fast, striving for balance. Behind him, Annie whooped and urged Sheba into a lope.

  As they came to the corner of the fence line, he saw the car clearly. It wasn’t Pam’s Escort. It was a big car, some kind of sedan, black with a vinyl top.

  Nobody he knew.

  He slowed Jimbo and eased him to a stop, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting. He couldn’t tell if anyone was in the car. It might just be a lost tourist or something—but since he hadn’t had a lost tourist show up in the past two years, that didn’t seem likely.

  And the fact that a strange vehicle had turned up three days after the phone call, three days after Lacey moved in—that just didn’t seem like a likely coincidence.

  “Who is that, Uncle Chase?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go home a different way, though.”

  “And sneak up on them?”

  “Kind of.”

  He turned his horse to the right and jogged to the curve of the dirt road that passed his place and petered out somewhere to the east. If Wade Simpson was driving that car, he didn’t want to show up riding straight from the location where they’d left Lacey. He’d arrive by road, and hopefully it wouldn’t occur to anyone to follow the old cattle trail that led to the wooded glade.

  Once they were on the road, the house and barn blocked his view of the car. He slowed Jimbo to a walk, signaling Annie to do the same. As they rounded the curve and descended the slight slope down the hollow that held the ranch, Chase could barely make out two silhouettes behind the sedan’s tinted windshield. The driver was clearly a man, with a Marines-style haircut and ears that protruded like the handles of a jug. The woman beside him had what he supposed was a stylish hairstyle, one that made her head look impossibly large and round in silhouette. It was the one who had been at the café talking to Cody.

  “You go put Sheba away,” he said to Annie. “And groom her. Take your time and do a real good job, okay?”

  She must have sensed his tension because she didn’t protest—just rode straight to the barn, dismounted, and led the horse inside.

  “Howdy.” He led Jimbo to the corral and swung down from the saddle, draping his reins over the fence and loosening the cinch. Unfastening the buckle, he hauled off the saddle and set it on the top rail. “I’ll be with you folks in a moment.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.” The woman stepped out of the car. “We’ll wait.”

  Up close, she was attractive, though not as attractive as Lacey. She had high cheekbones, red hair streaked w
ith blonde, and crystal blue eyes that slanted like a cat’s. Her smile was sweet, but she leaned against the car with a stance that was schoolteacher-strict, with her arms crossed over her chest and her feet crossed at the ankles. He suddenly wondered if he’d done something wrong—thrown a spitball, maybe, or flunked a math test.

  He led Jimbo into the corral and lifted off his bridle, giving the horse a slight slap on the butt to get him through the gate. The woman had started toward the corral, but she seemed clumsy, like she couldn’t navigate the packed dirt driveway. Looking down at her feet, he saw why. She was wearing the weirdest shoes he had ever seen.

  They were tiny and pointed—impossibly pointed. He didn’t see how a human being could cram a full set of toes into the tips. Maybe the woman had cloven hooves. The shoes were shiny red leather for the most part, with black snakeskin tips and black laces that crisscrossed over the top of her foot and continued halfway up her shin, ending in an elaborate multilooped bow at the back of her calves. The heels were high, forcing her to stand on her toes, and he wondered if she had Barbie feet, like the plastic dolls his sister had played with.

  Come to think of it, this woman had probably played with Barbie dolls too. Only the unrealistic expectations of Barbie World could make anyone believe it was a good idea to wear shoes like that. Still, even Barbie wore cowboy boots sometimes. Chase knew this because Pam had forced him to speak for Ken when they were kids. He’d had to congratulate the plastic princess whenever she won the gold cup at the Barbie Horse Show, which had occurred daily the year Pam turned six.

  The woman teetered dangerously and started to tip sideways. Chase darted in and grabbed her arm, but she shook him off and made her own way back to the sedan. What the hell was wrong with the guy behind the wheel? Why didn’t he get out and help his wife, or whoever it was? Chase believed in women’s liberation as much as the next guy, but those shoes made the poor girl a virtual cripple. Woman or not, she needed help. This guy would probably make his own grandma fetch her own firewood in her wheelchair.