Long, Tall Texans--Guy

by Diana Palmer

  Candy was glancing hurriedly at the list. She grimaced. “Mr. Ballenger, we can’t possibly see all these ranches in one day!”

  “I know. We figure it will take a week or so. We’ve booked you into our best motel. The cattlemen’s association will pick up the tab, including meals, so don’t skimp on food.” He frowned, noting her extreme thinness and pallor. “Are you all right?”

  She straightened and smiled with something like deliberation. “I’m just getting over a bad case of flu,” she said slowly. “It’s hard to pick up again.”

  “So it is. Early for the flu.”

  She nodded. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

  Justin hesitated, then shrugged. “Take it easy, just the same. Guy, if you don’t mind, check in with Harry every morning and give him his instructions. I know they’re pretty much cut-and-dried for the next week, but do it just the same.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Guy said lazily. “Well, Miss Marshall, shall we go?”

  “Of course.” She started slowly toward her compact rental car when she noticed that Guy was going in the opposite direction.

  “Mr…. Fenton?” she called, having had to stop and remember his name.

  He turned, his hands still deep in his pockets. “This way,” he said. “We’ll go in one of the ranch trucks. You’ll never get that thing down Bill Gately’s pasture without a broken axle.”

  “Oh.” She stared at the car and then at the big black double-cab pickup truck with the Ballenger logo in red on the door. “I see what you mean.” She went toward the truck in that same, slow gait, a little winded by the time she reached it. She stepped on the running board, displaying a slender, pretty, long leg as her skirt rode up. Catching hold of the handhold just above the door, she pulled herself up and into the seat with a gasp.

  “You’re out of condition,” he murmured. “Bronchitis?”

  She hesitated just a second too long before answering. “Yes. From the flu.”

  “I’ll try to keep you out of feed dust on the tour,” he said, closing the door tight behind her.

  She had to sit and catch her breath before she could struggle into the seat belt. All the while, Guy Fenton sat holding the steering wheel in one gloved hand while he observed her pale complexion and flushed cheeks. She looked unwell.

  “I got out of bed too soon,” she said finally, pushing back a loose strand of dark hair. “I’m fine. Really.” She forced a smile and her big brown eyes softened as she looked at him.

  He almost groaned. Memories hit his heart and made his breath catch. He flicked the key in the ignition and put the truck in gear. “Hang on,” he said tautly. “We’ve had a lot of rain and the roads are a mess.”

  “Muddy, huh?” she asked.

  “Muddy. Some are washed out.”

  “Winter floods,” she mused.

  “El Niño,” he informed her. “It’s played havoc with the West Coast, the East Coast and all points in between. I don’t think I’ve seen this much rain in Texas in my lifetime.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “I moved here three years ago,” he said tersely.

  “Not a native Texan, then.” She nodded.

  He glanced at her. “I didn’t say I wasn’t born in Texas. Just that I wasn’t born in Jacobsville.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked back at the road, his jaw taut. “No need to apologize.”

  She was pulling hard at air, as if she couldn’t get enough in her lungs. She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes for a minute. Her eyebrows drew together, as if she were in pain.

  He put on the brakes and slowed the truck. Her eyes opened, startled.

  “You’re ill,” he said shortly.

  “I’m not,” she protested. “I told you, I’m still weak from the flu. I can handle my job, Mr. Fenton. Please don’t…don’t concern yourself,” she added stiffly. She turned her head and stared out the window at the bleak winter landscape.

  He frowned as he pulled ahead down the rough track that led to the main road. She was prickly when he referred to her health and he’d have bet she was hiding something. He wished he knew what it was.

  * * *

  The first ranch on the agenda was owned by old Bill Gately, on the Victoria road. It wasn’t the showplace of most ranches around Jacobsville, a fact which Guy pointed out to her when they arrived.

  “Bill hasn’t moved with the times,” he told her, his eyes on the road ahead. “He grew up in the thirties, when ranching was still done the old-fashioned way. He doesn’t like the idea of feeding cattle anything supplemental, but when we were able to prove to him the weight-gain ratios we could get, he caved in.” He glanced at her with a wry smile. “Not that he’s completely sold. And he’s going to have trouble with you, I’m afraid.”

  She chuckled. “Women don’t belong in the cattle industry, I gather, and how could the cattlemen’s association be blind enough to let them do publicity—and why do we need publicity, anyway, when every body loves steak?”

  “Pretty good,” he said. “He’ll trot out all those arguments and a few more besides. He’s seventy-five and he can run circles around some of our cowboys.” He glanced at her. “We have it on good authority that he knew Tom Mix personally and once, briefly, had charge of grooming Tony.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said.

  “You know who Tom Mix is?”

  She laughed. “Doesn’t everybody? He was as much a showman as a movie star. I have several of his silent films, and even a talkie.” She shrugged. “I don’t care a lot for most modern films, with the exceptions of anything John Wayne starred in.”

  He navigated a tricky turn and changed gears as they went down what looked like a wet ravine. “See what I meant about this place?” he asked as she held on for dear life while the truck manfully righted itself at the bottom of the sheer drop.

  “I sure do,” she agreed, catching her breath. “What does Mr. Gately drive?”

  “He doesn’t,” he informed her. “He goes where he has to go on horseback, and if he needs supplies, he has them brought in.” He grinned. “The grocer in town has a four-wheel drive, or I guess old Bill would starve.”

  “I should think so!”

  He shifted back into high gear. “How did your mother become a rancher?”

  “My dad was one,” she said simply. “When he died, she kept the place going. It was difficult at first. We had ranch hands like your Mr. Gately, who were still living in the last century. But my mother is a law unto herself, and she gathers people in without even trying. People just love her, and they’ll do whatever she asks. She’s not bossy or sharp, but she’s stubborn when she wants her own way.”

  “That’s surprising,” he said. “Most women in positions of authority are more like overbearing generals than women.”

  “Have you known a lot?” she returned.

  He pursed his lips and thought. “I’ve seen plenty in movies.”

  She shook her head. “Most of which are written by men,” she pointed out. “What you get in cinema and even in television is some man’s idea of a woman authority figure. I’ve noticed that not many of them are true to life. Certainly they aren’t like my mother. She can shoot a Winchester, round up cattle and build a fence—but you should see her in a Valentino gown and diamonds.”

  “I get the point.”

  “It’s been a long road for her,” she said. “I’m sorry Dad died when he did, because she’s known nothing but work and business for most of her life. It’s made her hard.” And as cold as ice, she could have added, but didn’t.

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  She shook her head. “Just me.” She turned her head toward him. “How about you?”

  “I have a brother. He’s married and lives in California. And a married sister up in Washington State.”

  “You’ve never married?”

  His face became hard as stone. He shifted the gears again as they approached the rickety old ranch house.
“Never. There’s Bill.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bill Gately was white-headed and walked with a limp, but he was slim and as spry as most men half his age. He shook hands politely with Candy and lifted a bushy eyebrow but made no comment when he was told what her job was.

  “Justin Ballenger said that you wouldn’t mind letting us look over your place,” Candy said. She smiled. “I understand that you’ve made some amazing progress here in the area of old forage grasses.”

  His blue eyes lit up as if plugged into an electrical socket. “Why, so I have, young lady,” he said enthusiastically. He took her by one arm and led her around to the back of the house, explaining the difficulty of planting and cultivating such grasses. “It wouldn’t be feasible on a large scale because it’s too expensive, but I’ve had great success with it and I’m finding ways to bring down the cost with the use of mixing common grasses with cultivated ones. The calves forage on these grasses, on a rest-rotation grazing system, until they’re yearlings, and then I send them over to Justin and Calhoun to have them fed out for market.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve shown some pretty impressive weight gains, too. I should probably let the Ballengers do my marketing as well, but I like to do my own selling, keep my hand in. I only have about a hundred head at a time, anyway, and that’s a small lot for the brothers to want to bother with.”

  “Where do you usually sell your stock?” she asked curiously.

  “To a hamburger chain,” he said and named it. It was a local chain that had started on a shoestring and was now branching out to larger cities.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “I’m really impressed,” she said. “Most hamburger joints were buying all their beef from South America until the news about the dwindling rain forest got out. After that, a number of chain restaurants lost customers because people were upset about South American ranchers cutting down rain forest to make way for pasture for their beef cattle.”

  He grinned. “That’s the very argument I used on them!” he told her with a sweeping gesture. “It worked, too. They’re even starting to advertise their hamburgers as the ones that don’t come from the rain forest, and if they wanted to, they could advertise it as ‘organically grown,’ because I don’t use anything artificial in their diets.”

  She sighed. “Oh, Mr. Gately, if only we could package and sell you! What a marvelous approach to cattle raising.”

  He blushed like a young girl. Later, he got Guy to one side and told him that he’d never met anyone as capable as Candy at publicizing the cattle industry.

  Guy related the story to his companion as they wound down the road toward Jacobsville. The Gately ranch had taken up most of the afternoon, because Candy checked Bill’s research journal for his progress with several other strains of old grasses, like the old buffalo grass, which had largely been destroyed on the Western plains by farmers in the early days of settlement. It had been a productive session.

  “You’re very thorough,” Guy commented.

  She was reading her notes but she looked up at his tone. “Did you expect someone slipshod to do such important work?” she asked.

  He held up a lean, strong hand. “I wasn’t throwing out a challenge,” he told her. “I only meant that you seem pretty good at what you do.”

  She leaned back against the seat with a little sigh. “I take pride in my work,” she confessed. “And it hasn’t been an easy job from the beginning. There are plenty of cattlemen like Mr. Gately, only less easily convinced, who enjoy making me as uncomfortable as possible.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, they make sure I’m escorted past the breeding pastures when the bulls are at work,” she mused, tongue-in-cheek, “and into the barn when the cows are being artificially inseminated. I once had a rancher discuss his cattle weight-gain ratios in front of a stable where a mare was being bred. He had to shout to make himself heard.”

  He whistled. “I’m surprised. I thought most men in this business had a little respect for the opposite sex.”

  “They do, as long as she’s in a kitchen making biscuits.”

  “Don’t say biscuits around the Hart boys, whatever you do!” he exclaimed. “Rey and Leo are still single, and I could tell you some incredible tales about the lengths they’ve gone to for a biscuit feast since Corrigan and Simon and Cag got married and moved out of the main house!”

  She chuckled. “I’ve heard those all the way back at our main office in Denver,” she confided. “At any cattle convention, somebody’s got a story to tell about the Hart boys. They get more outrageous by the day.”

  “And more exaggerated.”

  “You mean it wasn’t really true that Leo carried a cook bodily out of the Jacobsville café one morning and wouldn’t let her go until she made them a pan of biscuits?”

  “Well, that one was…”

  “And that Rey didn’t hire one of the cooks in Houston to make him four whole trays of uncooked biscuits, which he hired a refrigerated truck to take down to the ranch for them?”

  “Well, yes, he did…”

  “And that when Mrs. Barkley retired from the Jones House restaurant in Victoria, Rey and Leo sent her red roses and truckloads of expensive chocolates for two weeks until she agreed to give up retirement and go work for them last month?”

  “She’s allergic to roses, as it happens,” he murmured dryly, “and she was gaining a lot of weight on those chocolates.”

  “She’s probably allergic to those Hart boys by now, poor soul,” she said with a tiny laugh. “Honestly, I’ve never been around any such people!”

  “You must have characters back home in Montana.”

  She dusted off her skirt. “Sure we do, but only like old Ben who used to hang out with Kid Curry and Butch Cassidy, and served time for being a train robber,” she replied.

  He grinned at her. “Beats stealing a cook.”

  “I don’t know. I understand one of the Hart boys keeps a giant snake. His poor wife!”

  “He had an albino python, but when he married Tess, he gave it to a breeder. He visits Herman occasionally, but he wouldn’t ask Tess to live with it.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Cag is a lot of things. Nice isn’t one of them.” He thought for a minute. “Well, maybe his wife likes him.”

  “No wonder his best friend was a reptile.”

  “You’re sounding a little winded,” he remarked. “That wheat straw in the corral wasn’t too much for you, was it? The wind was blowing pretty hard.”

  She stared at him blankly. “Am I supposed to notice a connection between that and my being breathless?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “Why don’t you use your medicine?”

  She stilled. “What medicine?”

  “Surely you know you’re asthmatic?”

  She kept right on staring at him, her eyes turbulent, although he couldn’t see them. “I don’t—have asthma,” she said after a minute.

  “No? You could have fooled me. You can’t walk ten steps without resting. At your age, that’s pretty unusual.”

  Her jaw clenched and her pretty hands had a stranglehold on her purse as she stared out the window.

  “No comment?” he persisted.

  “Nothing to say,” she returned.

  He would have pursued it, but they were already going down the main street in Jacobsville, barely a block from her hotel.

  “My rental car,” she began.

  “I’ll pick up Slim. He can drive it over here and ride back with me. Got the keys?”

  She handed them to him warily. “I’m perfectly capable of driving. There’s nothing wrong with me!”

  “I’d do it for anyone,” he said, acting puzzled. “You’ve had a long day. I thought you might be tired.”

  “Oh.” She flushed a little as they reached the hotel and he pulled up in front of it. “I see. Well, thank you, then.”

  He parked the truck, got out and went around to help her down from the high cab. She seemed to resent that, too.
/>   He frowned down at her. “What put that chip on your shoulder?” he asked. “You’re overly sensitive about any sort of help.”

  “I can get out of a truck by myself,” she said shortly.

  He shrugged. “I do it for a great-uncle of mine,” he informed her. “He’s not old, but he has arthritis and appreciates a helping hand.”

  She flushed. “You make me sound like a militant feminist!”

  His pleasant tone had been deceptive. The eyes that met hers were ice-cold and completely unfriendly. “You’re about that unappealing, yes,” he said bluntly. “I like a woman who can command respect without acting like a shrew or talking down to men. You don’t like doors opened for you or concern for your health. Fine. I can assure you that I won’t forget again.” His jaw clenched. “My Anita was worth ten of you,” he added roughly. “She was spirited and independent, but she never had to prove she was a man in a dress.”

  “Why didn’t you marry her, then?”

  “She died,” he said, his eyes terrible to look into. He took a slow breath and turned away, weary of the whole thing. “She died,” he said again, almost to himself, as he went back toward the truck.

  “Mr. Fenton…” she called hesitantly, aware that she’d hit a nerve and felt vaguely ashamed of herself.

  He turned and glared at her over the hood of the truck. “I’ll phone the manager of the hotel in the morning and have him tell you where to meet me for the next stop on the tour. You can drive yourself from now on, Ms. Macho.”

  He got into the truck, slammed the door, and took off in a cloud of dust.

  She stared after him with conflicting emotions. It was important to stand on her own two feet, not to be babied or pitied. She’d gone overboard here, though, and she was sorry. He was grieving for his lost love. He must have cared very much. She wondered how the mysterious Anita had died, and why Mr. Fenton looked so tormented when he spoke of her.

  She went into the hotel with slow steps, feeling every step she took, hating her weakness and her inability to do anything to correct it. She reached the desk and smiled forcibly as she asked for her key.