Dave sat on the top row near the stairs, Jon at his left. Katie sat next to her dad with the kid at the shoulder of her blue shirt, smiling at a 3T ranch hand sitting on her other side.
The ranch hand, grinning like an ape, slouched easily in his seat, his jeans leg tucked into the high, red top of a spurred boot resting on one knee. A dusty black Stetson balanced on his other knee, leaving his head bare to reveal a glaring white forehead, chipmunk colored hair curling over his ears and collar, sideburns to the bottom of his jaws, and a chew of tobacco in his lip.
He couldn't remember the guy's name, but he always swaggered around town like he owned the place. What a stud.
The stud laughed at something Katie said, boldly admiring her dainty features then leaned closer to her, touching her shoulder with his. She smiled.
He bristled, the broken spot on his nose burning. Was there a man alive she wouldn't string along if she could?
As if sensing his gaze on her, she glanced toward the ring, meeting his scowl. Color flooded her cheeks. With a toss of her head, she turned the full force of her smile on the appreciative goon next to her.
"Sold the mare and foal at six-fifty," the auctioneer said. "Six hundred and fifty to the Jasper outfit. Better get this ol' lady some false teeth so she can chew her groceries, Ben."
On the third row, lanky Ben Jasper with flowing white hair and beard under a sweat stained hat, grinned at the auctioneer's reference to the mare's poor condition and advanced age, but made no comment.
"Hey, Howard," the auctioneer said through the microphone, "sold any nags to the unsuspectin' lately?"
"No," he said, turning. "Have you?"
Laughter erupted in the crowd.
"Not since last week," somebody yelled.
The auctioneer laughed good-naturedly, spitting a stream of tobacco juice over the barrier above the ring onto the sandy floor.
A dried up little woman of seventy who worked in the front office approached to stand beside him at the fence, a cigarette dangling from her wrinkled lips, her improbable black hair shining like a lacquered helmet.
He grinned at her then turned to the auctioneer. "I got a nice black horse comin' through after a while, though. Gentle as a kitten. Make a nice pet for Maxine here."
"Watch it, Gil." Her leathery face didn't smile, but she reached over and patted the seat of his jeans fondly. "I'm probably the only girlfriend you got."
He hugged her scrawny shoulders with a laugh. "How'd you know?"
She winked at him. "Lucky guess."
"Max keeps a dragon for a pet," somebody yelled behind them.
Maxine turned an unsmiling glare on the smart mouth as she took a handful of sale slips the ring man held through the fence. "It's a lizard, Einstein."
The crowd laughed. She turned toward the office, and the ring man opened a gate to let in the next horse—a big-rumped blue roan.
"Okay, fellers, different story here…fine horse…you can ride 'im like you stole 'im…" The auctioneer began his sing-song chant. "Who'll give me a thousand…thousand where…"
He turned his gaze back to Katie. Her eyes glinted like ice chips. She turned to dazzle the 3T hand with another smile. The goon was nearly slobbering.
With an effort, he turned away. What business was it of his if she flirted her head off? Lance was the one who ought to worry.
He sat on the bottom row. Fifteen minutes later, his black gelding charged into the building with a snort, ears pinned back in bad temper. Its big, metal shod hooves raised a clatter as it crashed around the ring, sending the ring man scrambling up the fence to safety.
He endured the hazing remarks from the crowd, and finally the auctioneer sold the horse to the Jasper outfit for five hundred dollars. Next, a white-faced cow entered the building and the auctioneer switched gears to sell cattle.
The auction chant wore on through the next hour and every time he glanced at Katie she smiled at the drooling ape too close beside her.
Seething resentfully, he sent her a silent message. Really, Katie? I stopped drinkin', cussin', chewin' and…everything else for you and the Lord. You treat me like horse crap, yet you'll sit there beside that grinnin' son of a…son of a…horse thief with his lip full of chew and his pretty boy hair, flirtin' like you mean it while he shoots pool at the bar every night and—
A shouted warning wrenched him from his tirade. He scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding a liquefied jet of manure shot his way by a nervous cow. Disgusted with the bottom row, with the leering chipmunk beside Katie, and most of all with himself, he stalked out of the barn.
What kind of wimpy freak had he become that he'd let somebody mess with his girl like—
Not his girl.
He shouldn't have come. If he'd known she'd be here, he wouldn't have.
He got into his truck and slammed the door. He'd take a nap while he waited for his grandfather. Tossing his hat to the seat, he rolled down the window. A balmy, floral scented breeze with faint overtones of manure ruffled his hair. He turned on the radio then settled his head back on the seat.
"And now we've got the Eagles with 'Best of My Love,'" the DJ said.
The slow guitar rhythm of the song started. He scowled and snapped off the radio. Best of my love. What crap. Only an idiot would write a song like that.
And who was he kidding anyway? He would've come faster if he'd known she'd be there. He'd always come. For the next twenty-five years. The next fifty. He, and Lance, and the 3T hand…they'd all come.
He scrubbed his hand impatiently through his hair. There he was over his eyeballs in debt, needing to figure out how he and Dave were going to manage everything and still keep up their other work, including the truck driving job he now had to have to make cash to finance that mess. All that stuff he needed to figure out…and all he could think about was going back in the auction barn and throwing the 3T hand down the stairs.
Katie stepped out of the building with the kid and saw his truck next to her father's. She stopped short. Then, studiously ignoring him, she crossed the parking lot and opened the driver's door of her dad's truck. She laid the baby on the seat to change his diaper.
He regarded her narrowly, his jaw clenched. Then he rolled up his window. Pushing his face against the glass to flatten and distort it, he fixed one eye wide and staring, and then waited.
Diaper job finished, Katie picked up the baby. She slammed the pickup door with a quick sideways glance toward his truck. She started violently, doing a double take.
He stretched his mouth into a flat grin and gave a little wave.
She glared disgustedly at him then rolled her eyes and huffed toward the barn with the kid on her hip, her ponytail twitching like the tail of an angry cat.
He chuckled mirthlessly. Those bad reactions from her might end up almost as satisfying as the good ones.
***
A few days later, nephew Manuel leaned against a gate in the makeshift shearing shed at Sunnyside, an amused smirk twitching his luxuriant black mustache. Gil scowled at him from where he stooped over a squirming ewe reclining on her back against his boot tops, her freshly shorn belly bulging with unborn lambs. He dropped an electric shears from his hand then poured iodine from a bottle onto a long cut on her leg. The ewe struggled with a strangled cry. He released her. She scrambled to her feet to rush outside to the pen where she joined her companions—all voicing loud complaints.
Like a one-hundred-year-old rheumatic, he straightened, lifting his hat to wipe his sweating forehead on the sleeve of his shirt, greasy with lanolin from the wool. He kicked the mangled pile of wool on his boots toward Manuel who shoved upright, a length of brown twine in hand. Ambling to the wool, he tied it into a bundle then shoved it into a long, burlap sack with nineteen other bundles.
Dave leaned on the fence, surveying the motley band in the pen. Ragged tufts of wool sprouted from iodine-orange splotched hides.
He joined Dave. "Only about two-thousand more to go."
Dave groaned.
He had sheared only three ewes before pain in his injured leg forced him to stop.
He pointed. "See that one?" The hysteria-laced bleating of one sheep with a particularly orange belly rose over the others. "He used to be a guy sheep."
Dave stared at the sheep in disbelief and then at him. "You did not."
"I did."
"You cut his…thing…off?"
"I did."
The pain on Dave's face lifted and he threw back his head with a shout of laughter.
"Didn't see it in all that wool," he said, grinning. "Hope he didn't have any plans tonight…"
They abandoned themselves to laughter and off-color speculation about the sheep's love life—or lack of one—and then Dave lifted his glasses to dry his watering eye on his shirt sleeve.
"We're in trouble, dude," Dave said.
He slowly straightened. "That's what I was thinkin'."
***
Later, Marko Bolibar—Manuel's father—not only offered Gil the hire of his shearers, but the use of his shearing barn, as well, but the sheep had to be moved two hundred at a time across the valley to Bolibar's ranch.
Next morning, only a sliver of grey tinted the eastern sky as his headlights flashed on Katie waiting outside the Campbell barn beside Candy, already saddled.
"What the…?" he muttered in puzzlement. Then his jaw tightened. He stopped the truck and scrambled out. "Hey," he said loudly, "I don't know where you think you're goin', but you're not."
She led her horse toward the trailer. Spurs clanking, chaps slapping angrily against his jeans, he strode to meet her where she opened the trailer gate and led Candy into the trailer.
"Katie, unload that horse, or I will."
She ignored him. Candy's hooves thudded hollowly on the board floor as she led the mare to the front beside Lucky.
He followed on the outside of the trailer, staring through the slats. "What'll your boyfriend think about this?"
"About what?"
"You helpin' me."
"I'm helping Dave." She tied Candy's lead rope to a trailer slat. "Not everything's about you."
"What about the shearin' crew? It's none of my business, but with you bein' the world's biggest flirt, good ol' Lance might—"
She turned on him, glaring through the trailer slats with the first show of fire she'd displayed since her mother's death. "Me the world's biggest flirt? You must be kidding. You'll flirt with anybody. Let anybody put their hands all over your rear—"
"My rear? What're you talk—" He stopped with a disbelieving laugh. "Maxine? C'mon, Katie. You had to go home and wash that 3T hand's drool off you—"
"Randy went to school with Dave, and he was not drooling on—"
"Oh, give me a break—"
Dave appeared, leading Karl's big sorrel gelding, Sam. "Fight about this later. It'll be daylight by the time we get over to the camp."
Katie walked quickly back down the trailer while he followed her on the outside.
"Unload your horse."
She stepped from the trailer. "I'm going."
"You think this whole sheep thing's stupid any—" He stopped abruptly, unprepared for the appeal in the gaze she raised.
"Aunt Rachel's already got Chris, Gil, and I haven't got to ride since—" She looked away. "Not for a long time."
Staring at her downturned face, he wanted to yell with frustration. She hadn't got to ride since when? The last time she'd ridden Candy to meet him? And why'd she have to say his name like that? And could she actually be jealous of Maxine? And why—
"Just suit yourself," he snapped, turning away. "You will anyway."
She sat silent and stiff on the seat between him and Dave on the drive across the valley to Sunnyside then just as rays of sunlight turned the dust to gold, the three of them and Manuel pushed the first two hundred ewes out of camp toward the Bolibar shearing shed.
He tried to ignore her hair gleaming thirty feet away across the bobbing flow of sheep, but she had him all rattled. After all that time avoiding him, why had she decided to come today? Getting through a day without her in his face was hard enough, but seeing her all day? Maybe even every day for the next week it'd take to get the shearing done? Why was she messing with him?
He sent her a silent message. "This won't work, you crazy female. I don't want you here. I wish you were anywhere else."
Moving easily with her horse, she held her face to the sun, her eyes closed. Her soft lips curved into a slight smile. The lines of strain, too old for her face, relaxed.
"Liar," she said.
Leaving him with no comeback, silent or otherwise.
The trek across the valley to the shearing barn took two hours. The rest of the morning, he packed bundles of wool into burlap sacks, moved sheep around, and grew more and more irritated.
Dressed in her own clothes, Katie's slender fairness drew the gazes of the dark eyed men in the shearing barn like a magnet. He glanced up a few times over the course of the morning to catch Manuel—who had six kids, for Pete's sake—brushing against her where she stood operating the alley gate. Finally, she let the last group of five ewes in for the shearers. Manuel leaned close to her, saying something against her ear. Her brows snapped together and hot color flooded her face. She jerked away from the older man.
He crossed the shearing floor, the broken spot on his nose burning. "If you touch the Campbell girl again, or even say anything to her," he said to Manuel in an undertone, "I'll knock your teeth down your throat. Comprendes?"
Manuel's eyes smoldered with resentment, but he nodded. A short time later, the two hundred ewes, pink skin showing through startling white and smoothly shorn wool, trailed back to Sunnyside.
That afternoon another batch of two hundred made the trip to the barn. Manuel stayed away from Katie, but his dark gaze often lingered on her. Just after sunset, the last ewe scuttled through the gate at Sunnyside.
He found Manuel dismounting Juan's old horse in the darkness. "Go find Dave," he said. "He'll write you a check."
"Qué?"
"You're done here."
Manuel stared at him. "You firing me because of that girl, man?"
"Vamoose, pal."
For a moment, it seemed Manuel might take a swing at him. His fists itched hopefully. He'd love to give Manuel—or almost anybody, as a matter of fact—a good thumping right now. He'd pray for forgiveness later.
But Manuel only stomped away, swearing in Spanish. A few minutes later the taillights of his pickup vanished.
Dave met him as he led Lucky toward the trailer.
"Dude," Dave said angrily. "What'd you do that for?"
He jerked loose Lucky's saddle straps then slung the saddle over his shoulder. "He's a lazy sucker."
Dave followed him toward the pickup. "I know, but he was better than nothin'."
He dumped his saddle over the pickup bed. "We'll find somebody else tomorrow."
"Sure," Dave said sarcastically. "No problem with what we pay."
"You want him around with his filthy hands all over your sister?"
"She won't be here all the time, dude. If we're gonna be partners, you've gotta talk to me about this stuff. You can't just go shootin' off like this."
Katie stepped around the back of the trailer, headed toward them. He walked away from Dave then loaded Lucky.
A minute later, he headed back to the truck where Katie stood. Avoiding her gaze, he coiled his lead rope. "Ready to go eat?"
"I need to get back and fix Dad's supper."
"Oh, let ol' money bags buy you a burger, Katie," Dave said testily. "You're the only help we got now, and that's pretty much all the pay you'll get."
At the Lone Tree Café, the three of them silently wolfed down cheeseburgers. Afterward, Katie headed toward the restroom. He stretched out his legs on the booth.
"She can handle Manuel, dude," Dave said in a calmer tone, following his gaze after her. "She wasn't raised in a houseful of boys for nothin'."
He shook a toothpick from th
e container on the table then picked his teeth in silence.
"Seriously." Dave gave him a knowing look. "She don't fight fair…if you know what I mean."
He chuckled grimly. Oh, yeah. She definitely hit below the belt. "It's a done deal. We'll find somebody else."
***
Dave stayed at camp with the sheep that night. The next morning before daylight, Gil found him heavy eyed and harassed in the lambing shed, two lambs in his arms.
"At least fifty of the ewes we moved yesterday lambed last night," Dave said, brushing past him on his way to a makeshift pen of hay bales. The lambs' frantic mother followed on his heels. "Go get Katie. Bring Tim, too. He'll have to help 'til we get somethin' figured out."
Just after sunrise, Tim rode at the head of the band of sheep while he brought up the tail. Katie reined in her mare, waiting for him to approach on Lucky.
"Where's Manuel?" she asked.
He didn't stop. "Probably still in bed."
She urged Candy into step beside him. "You fired him, didn't you?"
"Why would I do that?"
She held his gaze then ducked her head. "Thank you," she said softly.
His heart jumped and an unaccustomed flush of pleasure burned his cheeks, but he nudged Lucky into a trot.
"Not everything's about you," he said over his shoulder.
***
Throughout the next week, Dave stayed at camp, attending the tidal wave of new lambs while Gil, along with Katie, his grandfather, and sometimes Tim moved sheep back and forth across the valley to the shearing shed.
He only spoke to Katie as necessary while they worked together. She didn't seek out his company, but she didn't avoid him like she had for months, either. Her silent presence kept him in turmoil, chafing at him like a horse hair he couldn't spit off his tongue.
He still couldn't figure out why she was there. Probably, female like, she couldn't stand it he'd almost come to grips with living without her.
Well, he wouldn't let her wreck him again. As soon as the shearing finished he'd tell her to get lost. He would.
The shearing finished. She kept showing up most days. Long hours in the saddle and even longer nights in the lambing pens left him dead on his feet and unable to think clearly. That must be why he couldn't figure out how to tell her to get lost. As soon as he could think again, he would.
The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) Page 25
