by Janet Dailey
Obeying his initial impulse, Culley reined in his mount. It wasn’t that he disliked other people. He simply wasn’t comfortable around them. The small talk that came so easily to others was awkward for him, almost painful.
But to avoid such situations, he had to know the rider’s location and destination so he could head in the opposite direction. It was that desire which prompted him to rein his horse up the sloping rise in the plains. He pulled up when he could see over the top of it.
A pickup and horse trailer were parked along the edge of the dirt ranch road a quarter mile distant. Near the rear of it, a rider swung out of the saddle. The sun’s bright rays glinted on the blond lights in the long tail of hair that hung below the rider’s hat, making it easy for Culley to recognize Jessy Calder.
Culley watched as she unlatched the tailgate to load her horse into the trailer. The more he thought about it the more unusual it seemed for Jessy to be out here alone. There was a time before she married Ty when she had worked for the Triple C as an ordinary cowhand, but with Calder dead, she was running things now.
Knowing that, Culley couldn’t help wondering what she was doing so far from headquarters. That curiosity coupled with the fact that Jessy was one of the few people he felt comfortable around, mostly because she didn’t care whether he talked or not, pushed him forward.
By the time he reached the fence line, Jessy had loaded her horse and fastened the trailer gate. Moving with long, purposeful strides, she headed for the driver’s side of the pickup, so wrapped up in her thoughts that she failed to notice him.
Loathe as he was to be the one making the opening gambit, Culley called out, “Sure didn’t figure on seein’ you out this way.”
Jessy halted with an almost guilty start. An instant later her wide mouth curved in a smile. “Hello, Culley. As for being out here—you know how it goes. I got tired of being cooped up inside and decided I wanted to feel a horse under me again. Now it’s back to work. See ya.” She sketched him a wave and climbed into the truck.
Culley lifted a hand in return and watched the rig pull away. “Her reasons seem sound enough,” he commented to his mount. “But they sure don’t explain why she’d drive an hour from headquarters to go a-ridin’.”
There were times when Culley couldn’t help being nosy, although he never thought of it as snooping. He just wanted that old curiosity to stop nagging him.
As fresh as her tracks were, they were easy to follow. Reading sign, as the old-timers called the ability to identify a person or animal by the track it left, was a self-taught skill for Culley, something he had picked up over the years. One of the first things he had learned was how to tell whether a horse or a cow had left a trail through the grass. It was a difference that was easy to spot, since a cow left the grass stalks bent in the direction it had just come from and a horse laid it down in the direction it was going.
Culley didn’t have to backtrail Jessy very far before he realized that she hadn’t been out for an aimless ride. She’d had a destination, and she had taken the straight route to reach it.
The trail led him directly to the north boundary fence. His sharp eyes noticed a place where the top wire had been mended. He rode closer to it and bent sideways in the saddle to examine it. The bright marks on the metal told him that the wire had been first snipped, then twisted back together again—very recently.
The saddle leather creaked as he straightened to sit erect, puzzled by his discovery. “I gotta tell ya, Brownie,” he muttered to the horse, “it’s one thing to ride all the way out here to fix a break in the fence, an’ it’s a horse of a different color to ride all the way out here, cut the wire, an’ then fix it. Why’d she want’a do that?”
The gelding snorted and swung its nose at a pesky fly nibbling on its shoulder. Absorbed with solving this puzzle, Culley stared blankly at a tuft of brown thread hooked on a barb along the middle wire a long time before he actually noticed it.
“Well now, what’s this?” He swung to the ground and picked it off the wire. There was another piece of thread snubbed on a barb next to the first. Only this one was more like a bit of lint. While Culley pondered the meaning of them, the gelding took advantage of the break to chomp on some grass.
“If I remember right,” he said, thinking back, “there was a brown saddle blanket tied behind the cantle of her saddle.” An answer began to form. “Now a horse ain’t likely to jump what it can’t see—like a single strand of wire. But if a body was to throw a blanket across it, he can see what he needs to clear. ’Course, why would she want’a jump that fence an’ go traipsin’ around the Dugan range?”
Before he concluded that was what Jessy had done, Cully studied the ground on the other side of the fence. As clear as the sky overhead, a pair of fresh gouge marks was visible, revealing the place where her horse had landed.
While he had never been one to respect a boundary fence, Culley would have sworn that Jessy would. One thing was certain—he hadn’t come this far to stop now.
After leading his horse well clear of the fence, he retrieved a pair of wire cutters from his saddlebag. “None of that fence jumpin’ stuff for us,” he said and proceeded to cut through all three wires, careful to avoid their back whip.
Again Jessy’s trail led him in more or less a straight line. It struck him that only one place lay in this direction, and he couldn’t figure out why Jessy would go there.
Short of the old cemetery, Culley found the place where Jessy had left her horse. A pile of horse droppings and short-cropped grass told him that the horse had been left for a time.
Dismounting, he dropped the reins, ground-tying his gelding. Following her foot trail wasn’t as easy as following the horse tracks. But the occasional plain ones he found took him to some brush.
Well-flattened grass showed him where she had stood for a while. It was a place that would have concealed her from sight. It set him to wondering if she had been spying on somebody, or waiting for somebody. Which also made him wonder if Jessy was more of a Calder than he thought.
With no more to learn here, he started to retrace his steps. He was nearly to the thick clump of brush when his conscience prodded him.
Close by was the O’Rourke family plot. It had been such a long time since Culley had been there that he had trouble locating the slab headstones that marked the graves of his parents. Finally he found them, nearly hidden among the tall weeds. He tugged away the taller clumps in front of them and brushed away some of the dirt embedded in the carved lettering.
Straightening, he stepped back and removed his hat. There were no fancy sayings on his mother’s marker, and nothing to identify her as either wife or mother. There was only her name, MARY FRANCES ELIZABETH O’ROURKE, followed by the date of her birth and death. Culley hadn’t been much more than fourteen when she died, but he could still feel the gentle touch of her palm cupped to his cheek.
A smile touched his mouth in remembrance, but it faded when his attention shifted to the grave of his father. The stone was just as plain, with only the name spelled out: ANGUS O’ROURKE. As always, Culley’s strongest memory of his father was that of his death. Some of the old bitterness resurfaced.
“Maybe you did rustle a bunch of Triple C cattle, Pa,” he said. “But that didn’t give old man Calder the right t’ take the law in his own hands and hang ya.”
Before the memory of those long ago days could upset him again, Culley turned away and shoved his hat back on his head. He hesitated, glancing back at the weed-choked plot.
“It ain’t right the way they let this place go to seed,” he said and experienced a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t checked on it before. “I’ll come back t’morrow an’ tidy it up a bit.”
Exploring further, he found some fresh tire tracks and more footprints, a set on either side of the vehicle. Judging from the depth of the impressions, Culley guessed they were made by men. Among them he found one of Jessy’s boot prints. Which meant she must have met up with them.
&nbs
p; Who or why, he still didn’t know and wasn’t likely to find out, either. But at least he had discovered the answers to some of his questions.
Chapter Six
The next morning it took Culley the better part of an hour to search through the barn and tool shed before he finally found the old hand scythe. After that he spent twenty minutes at the grindstone, sharpening its blade.
It was a few minutes past nine o’clock when he finally tossed the scythe into the back of his old pickup and climbed behind the wheel. He drove to the end of the lane and made the turn to head for the old cemetery.
The engine in the old pickup balked when he pushed down on the accelerator. The truck’s top speed was usually between forty and fifty miles an hour. But this morning he had trouble getting it up to thirty-five.
When he saw another pickup traveling toward him, Culley glanced in the rearview mirror, relieved to see there was nobody behind him. He didn’t want to find himself in an accident because some fool tried to pass him.
With his attention once more on the road ahead of him, Culley let his gaze wander to the oncoming pickup. He was quick to recognize the Triple C insignia on its door. He peered at the windshield, trying to identify the driver.
But he didn’t get a good look until the truck went by him. The minute he saw Jessy Calder behind the wheel, he decided she was on her way to the Circle Six to visit Cat.
He wouldn’t have given it another thought if he hadn’t noticed a second pickup following close behind her. Culley saw right away that it had out-of-state license plates. It was rare enough for anyone to travel these roads, let alone a nonresident of Montana.
There appeared to be two, maybe three people traveling in it, but Culley had a good look at only the driver. Right away he felt there was something familiar about him. Then he remembered the cowboy who had talked with Jessy at the Triple C cemetery. It started him wondering if that cowboy might also be the same one she met yesterday.
“But,” Culley said to himself with a frown, “why did she meet him on the sly?”
Located on the jutting shoulder of a rocky foothill, the old line shack was tucked against the slope to take advantage of its shelter from the cold winter winds. The terrain was more stone than soil, studded with brush, stunted pines, and patches of scrawny grass.
A deadfall had prevented them from driving closer than a hundred yards from the site. Jessy felt the tug and stretch of her leg muscles as she made the sloping climb.
When she topped the rise to the foothill’s shoulder, she came to an abrupt stop and simply stared at the dilapidated structure. A sizable section of the roof had collapsed; all the windows were broken, and the door hung drunkenly on its hinges.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.” Jessy glanced at Chase with a mixture of regret and concern. “It’s in worse shape than I thought.”
On the other side of him, Hattie murmured in dismay, “Lordy, this reminds me of where we stayed in Mexico—” She broke off the sentence and threw a worried glance at Laredo as if she had said something she shouldn’t.
“Now, you aren’t looking at it right.” Laredo smiled lazily, hands on his hips, one leg cocked in a relaxed stance. “This place has a skylight, good air flow, and a quaintly rustic touch.”
“Ramshackle, you mean,” Hattie corrected with dry censure.
“You’re forgetting that your house wasn’t in much better shape when you and Ed bought the place. As long as the line shack doesn’t fall over when you lean on it, it can be repaired.” He laid a hand on her shoulder in quiet encouragement and urged her forward. “Let’s go take a closer look.”
“I’ll go look,” Hattie agreed with obvious reservations. “But I’m telling you right now that I’m glad we used the last of our cash to buy that tent. You can bet that’s where I’ll be sleeping tonight.”
“Speaking of money,” Jessy dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. She handed it to Chase. “This is about all we had left in the petty cash fund. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to account for it yet, but I will.”
“That’s easily handled.” Chase glanced at the bills before stuffing them in his own pocket. “Do you have a slip of paper?”
“I have a tablet back at the truck. Why? What do you have in mind?”
“I’ll write an IOU, sign it, and date it prior to my trip to Texas.”
Jessy nodded in immediate understanding. “That way I won’t have to explain anything.”
When Hattie noticed they weren’t behind her, she stopped and looked back. “Aren’t you coming, Duke?”
“We’ll be right there.” He waved her on and started forward himself.
“Did she call you Duke?” Jessy eyed him curiously.
“They had to call me something when I couldn’t supply them with my own name. Hattie came up with Duke.” He didn’t add that he was more comfortable with that name than he was with Chase Calder. Chase Calder was still a person he didn’t know.
After an initial inspection of the old line cabin, Laredo concluded, “The damage looks worse than it is. Other than some rotten wood in the roof, the rest of the structure looks sound. Somebody built this to last.”
“That’s the only way Calders build things,” Jessy said, echoing a statement her father had once made.
Hattie poked her head inside the door. “There’s enough dirt in here to plant a garden. It will take a week to get it clean enough to live in—and evict all the creepy-crawly things.” She turned away from the door with an expressive little shudder.
“Something tells me if anybody can turn a boar’s nest into a home, it’s you, Hattie,” Chase declared in a voice dry with amusement.
Jessy swung toward him in surprise. “You remembered what we used to call this place.”
“Did I?” Chase was skeptical. “It’s possible, but in cowboy lingo, line cabins were often referred to as boar’s nests.”
“Maybe they were,” Jessy conceded. “But we have two other old line shacks still standing, and this is the only one that went by the name Boar’s Nest.”
“You can do what you please, Duke,” Hattie declared. “But I choose to believe you just recovered your first scrap of memory, even if it is an insignificant piece.”
“While you two argue over who’s right,” Laredo inserted, “Jessy and I are going to unload the trucks so she can get back to the ranch. You might want to give some thought to where you want the tent pitched. Before I tackle fixing the cabin, I plan on clearing away that deadfall so we can drive all the way up here.”
Jessy was impressed by his eminently practical decision. But she didn’t say anything until they were on their way down the hill. “That’s sensible to clear away the deadfall first.”
“I’m glad you approve.” Amusement gleamed in his blue eyes, faintly mocking her. Which annoyed her ever so slightly. “You understand, it’s not that I object to the long walk, but I sure don’t fancy dragging up all the plywood and lumber I’ll need to fix the hole in the roof.”
“That wasn’t approval you heard,” Jessy told him, a coolness in her voice. “It was relief that you seem to have some common sense. You have to remember you are a total stranger as far as I’m concerned.”
“It bothers you that Hattie and I are looking after Chase, doesn’t it,” Laredo guessed.
“I know Chase trusts you,” she replied, deliberately hedging.
“But you don’t.”
She reverted to her usual candor. “Not entirely.”
“I imagine you are wondering if I’m in this for the money, that I might be hoping Chase will make a sizable contribution to my bank account when this is over.” The mockery was there again in his lazy smile.
“It crossed my mind,” she admitted and waited for Laredo to deny it was his motive.
“In the first place, I don’t have a bank account, so any contribution he might offer would have to be in cash,” he replied with a perfectly straight face.
Jessy halted in stunned surpri
se. “You are actually admitting that you are only here for money?”
“What’s wrong with that?” he countered nonchalantly and kept walking. “The Old West is littered with stories of hired guns working for big outfits. In today’s West, they still do, but they give them politically correct names like bodyguard and investigators.” Laredo glanced back at her and grinned. “I disappointed you, didn’t I? You wanted me to say something noble like, I’m here because Chase is a good man.”
“I don’t know what I expected.” But it hadn’t been what she’d heard. She resumed her descent of the hill. “I assume Chase knows this.”
“The man has lost his memory, not his mind,” he chided, and Jessy was irritated with herself for even asking the question. “The idea of me getting paid to look after Chase really bothers you, doesn’t it? Maybe I need to put it in cowboy talk. When I take a rancher’s money, I ride for the brand, and in my job, it usually means come hell or high water. This time it’s more likely to be hell than high water.”
He spoke in a jesting tone, but the hard steel of his eyes was all business. It was a quality Jessy had observed in Logan on rare occasions. But the similarities seemed to stop there.
“So you work as bodyguard for a living.” She struggled to wrap her mind around this thought.
“There you go assuming things. I only said that’s what I was doing now.” Reaching the trucks, Laredo lifted a crate of canned goods from the back of his and hoisted it onto his shoulder, then hauled out the tent sack. He paused. “Any more questions? Because I’m likely to be puffing carrying this up the hill. I may not have enough air for talking.”
“Just one. Is Laredo Smith your real name?”
He gave her a wry look and shook his head in mock amazement. “Do you really think any mother is going to name her son Laredo? I don’t think so. But you keep asking questions. That’s how you learn things.” He started up the hill.
