The Humbug Man

by Diana Palmer

  She jumped out of the Bronco, tugging her leather jacket closer against the biting wind. The windchill in these parts was formidable, even in December.

  The front porch was long and rambling, with plenty of chairs, but she didn’t stop to admire the view. She knocked frantically at the front door and only then wondered what she was going to do if he wasn’t home. What if he was gone for the day, or out on business, or…

  The door opened. Tate Hollister eyed her over a cup of steaming coffee, his blue-checked flannel shirt the only bright and welcoming thing about him as he stared down at her.

  “I don’t recall inviting you to lunch,” he said.

  She glared at him. “Blake’s missing,” she said hesitantly. Now that she was here, it was even harder than she’d imagined. He did look like stone, mustache and all.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said imperturbably. “I don’t have him.”

  “He said he’d be gone two hours.” She gnawed her lower lip. “He went down to the ridge to see if the river was frozen. That was four hours ago, and it’s snowing again.” Her soft gray eyes looked up at him helplessly. “I can’t even find tracks.”

  “He’s playing a prank,” he told her easily. “When he’s had enough, he’ll come home.”

  “He’s not,” she argued. “Blake is like me. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. He doesn’t play pranks.”

  “You don’t know much about boys, do you?” he mused.

  She was freezing, and his attitude wasn’t warming her at all. “No, I guess I don’t,” she admitted flatly. “I’ve been too concerned with trying to support us to have much free time to learn, either, and Blake is a handful sometimes.”

  His dark eyes went slowly over her face, as if he hadn’t really looked at it before. Around them, the wind blew and snow peppered the porch, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “He might be hurt,” she said with involuntary softness. “I’m afraid.”

  He pursed his lips, the mustache twitching. “It’s a prank,” he repeated. “But I’ll come. You can wait inside if you like, while I get my coat.”

  She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t want to go in that house. She thought suddenly of the wife and child he’d lost, and her feet froze to the porch. It would be like trespassing.

  “No,” she hesitated. “I’ll…I’ll just wait out here, thanks.”

  He frowned slightly, puzzled, but he shrugged and went off after his coat.

  She was standing by the Bronco when he came out, his torso and lean hips covered by the thick shepherd’s coat, his thick black hair under the wide brim of his black Stetson and what looked like a rifle in one hand. At closer inspection, it was, and she frowned.

  “You can drive if you like…” she began, but he was going the other way. “Where are you going?” she called, running to keep up with him as he went toward the stables down the road from the house.

  “You’re crazy if you think I’m taking a vehicle, even with four-wheel drive, down that ravine,” he said easily. “I’m going out on horseback.”

  “With a rifle? What are you going to do with it?”

  He spared her an impatient glance. “Oh, for God’s sake, woman, I’m not going to shoot the boy.”

  “I didn’t say so,” she faltered.

  He made a sound that refuted that and kept walking while she ran along behind him.

  “You can wait in the house or go home,” he said. He opened the stable door, and she saw a wide alley filled with wood chips with bright, clean stalls on either side, some of which housed horses.

  “He’s my son. I want to come, too.”

  He turned, staring at her. “Can you ride?”

  “Of course I can ride,” she said irritably.

  “Well, well. You aren’t quite the lily I thought you were,” he mused as he went to the tack room.

  And what did that mean, she wondered, but anxiety kept her quiet. He saddled a quiet little chestnut mare for her and a huge buckskin gelding for himself. Snow was falling steadily as they stood outside the stable.

  “Molly won’t toss you, but she has a tendency to scrape people off against tree trunks, so keep your eyes open,” he said as he held the mare for her to mount.

  She swung easily into the saddle, sitting tall, the reins held lightly in her hands.

  He looked up. His dark eyes approved her excellent posture and he smiled. It was the first time she recalled ever seeing him smile, and his face didn’t even break.

  “No hat,” he said then and went back to the tack room again, returning with a beat-up old Stetson, which came down to her ears but did keep the snow off. “Let’s go.” He swung into his own saddle and took the lead. “Keep in my tracks,” he said over his shoulder. “And don’t stray off.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Hollister,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  She averted her eyes from that black stare. “Not a thing.”

  There might have only been the two of them in the world as they rode out through the tall lodgepole pines and aspens, where the snow was less thick, and Maggie thought irrelevantly that this was the best way to see Montana. Not in a car, or on foot. But on the back of a horse, with leather creaking as they rode, and the smell of the fresh mountain air and the bite of the wind and snow on her face. If she hadn’t been so worried about Blake, she might have even been able to appreciate it.

  She was still tense, but somehow she knew that whatever was wrong, Hollister would be able to handle it. She glanced at him curiously, wondering at the sense of security she felt with him, even in an emergency like this one. Which brought her mind back to Blake and to the hundred things that might have happened to him, the least of which was enough to make her nauseous. He was all she had…!

  “I said,” Hollister repeated curtly, “which way did he go when he left the house?”

  She looked up, to see her own cabin just before them. She had to blink twice to get her mind back on track. “Sorry.” She bit her lower lip. “He went there,” she nodded toward the back of the cabin, down the long hill behind.

  He spared her an irritated glance before he urged his mount forward, so much at home in the saddle that he seemed part of the big buckskin. Halfway down the ridge, he held up his hand and swung down, kneeling in the snow to look. He went on foot from there, stopping to examine limbs, his eyes keen and quick as they darted around the mountainous terrain of the forest.

  “He went through there,” he murmured, his eyes narrowed as he studied the downward slope. His head went up, and he listened. Maggie heard it, too—a voice.

  “Blake!” Hollister’s deep tones cut through the wind, carrying, bellowing.

  “Hellllp!”

  The cry was definitely Blake’s, and there was an odd note of fear in it. Maggie almost cried out herself, feeling that piercing cry to her soul.

  Hollister didn’t spare Maggie a glance. He whipped his rifle out of the sheath on his saddle and swung back up onto the horse, wheeling the animal in the direction of the shout.

  Maggie urged her mount after him, terrified. Hollister wasn’t a hysterical man. If he reacted that way, there was a reason. But even as she was thinking it, she heard the sound, and it chilled her to the bone. A sob caught in her throat. She knew the howl of coyotes, but this sound was deeper, richer, more threatening. It was the howl of a wolf…

  Hollister urged his mount down the ridge at a clip Maggie did her best to follow, frustrated that the snow made it such an ordeal to get to Blake.

  With her heart hammering in her throat, blind fear choking her, she held on to the reins and felt her heartbeat shaking her as she heard Blake’s shrill voice.

  Ahead of her, Hollister made his way quickly through another thick stand of aspens, through the thick underbrush, and Maggie, right on the heels of his mount, caught a horrifying glimpse of a small dark head far below, near the ribbon of stream that cut through the snow. Blake! And only a few yards away, stalking, a big sil
ver wolf.

  Maggie felt her heart stop. Her son. Her boy! She saw Hollister swing out of the saddle, heard his voice.

  “Don’t move!” he yelled at Blake and sighted down the rifle barrel with an economy of motion that was as menacing as the wolf itself.

  There was a sudden report, and then another and another, the crack of rifle fire echoing with horrible violence down the ridge and up the next slope, at odds with the pastoral beauty and peace it disturbed.

  “Blake!” Maggie screamed, tears sliding down her cheeks as she swung out of the saddle. There was smoke from the rifle in Hollister’s hands, but even before it cleared, he was down that slope, his big frame absorbing the shock of his steps with grace and ease. Maggie was right behind him.

  “Mr. Hollister! Mom!” Blake cried, his voice excited and high-pitched with pain.

  Through her tears, Maggie could see the unnatural angle that Blake’s left leg was lying at. Broken for sure, she thought sickly, and thanked God for Tate Hollister.

  The man knelt quickly beside the boy, the rifle cast aside as he felt the lower leg, and Blake winced. Maggie got on Blake’s other side, hugging him, shaking with reaction.

  “Broken,” Hollister murmured. “A simple fracture, thank God, not a compound one. What happened?”

  “Lost my footing.” Blake tried to grin. “I came out…to check the river. Gosh, Mr. Hollister, that wolf sure was a beaut. I guess that’s why you didn’t kill him, huh?”

  “Timber wolves are damned near extinct,” Hollister said as he got up and broke two limbs off a tree. “If he hadn’t turned tail, I wouldn’t have had a choice, but I flushed him. I hate killing when I don’t have to. Maggie, I need some cloth to make a splint,” he said as he pulled a folded blanket from its position just behind the saddle on his horse. He wrapped the limbs to make a cradle and then very carefully drew the cradle under Blake’s leg.

  It was the first time he’d ever called her by name, and Maggie couldn’t understand why her heart ran wild. She let go of Blake long enough to hand him the wool scarf around her neck.

  “Will this do?” she asked in a quivering tone, handing the scarf to him while Blake gripped her hand tightly and tried to reassure her that he was all right.

  “Hi, guy,” she said and spoiled her stiff upper lip by bursting into tears.

  “Aw, cut it out, Mom,” Blake muttered. “It’s just a broken leg.”

  “Excuse me,” she said, trying to laugh. “You know how mothers are.”

  Hollister glanced at her, but he didn’t say anything. He whipped out his pocketknife and made a neat slit right down Blake’s boot so that the whole thing was laid bare and easily removed. Then he positioned the sticks he’d broken on either side of Blake’s leg and put his wool bandanna next to Maggie’s. “OK,” he told Blake quietly. “This is going to be rough. I have to straighten that leg and splint it, and it’s going to hurt like hell. Want something to bite on?”

  “Oh, but you can’t—” Maggie was already protesting.

  “Shut up,” he told her, his eyes black and steady and challenging.

  She did, instantly, without an argument, because that hard glare was like a dash of cold water.

  “I’ll be OK,” Blake said through his teeth, nodding. He clenched his hands at his sides and propped himself on them. “Go ahead.”

  Maggie felt tears spurt from her eyes as Hollister worked, his hands deft and sure. Blake cried out just once and almost blacked out when Hollister pulled the leg straight, but the boy never let out another sound, even while the makeshift splint was put on and tied in place. But his face was as white as plaster when Hollister finished.

  “OK?” Hollister asked, and his voice was different. Gentle. Deeper. He smiled at the boy.

  Blake beamed. He managed a grin because it was like a turning point in his relationship with the taciturn rancher. “OK,” he agreed.

  “Here.” Hollister handed his rifle to Maggie. “Wait a minute. Let me put the safety on.” He did that and handed it back. “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot,” he cautioned.

  She glared at him. “I know which end to point, thanks.”

  Tate didn’t smile, but his dark eyes twinkled. He lifted Blake very carefully, but Blake’s breath sucked in at the pain the movement caused. “This is doing it the hard way, I know,” he told Blake as he carried him to the buckskin, “but it can’t be helped. Back in the old days, the Plains Indians made a travois and pulled injured warriors back to camp on it.”

  “A…travois?”

  “That’s right.” Hollister propped Blake on the saddle while he swung into it behind him and turned him over his knees, wonderfully gentle even though Maggie could see the pain in Blake’s young face. “I’ll tell you about it on the way back,” he said, nodding to Maggie who’d managed to get the rifle back into Hollister’s saddle horn before she’d mounted the mare.

  She let Hollister take the lead, wondering at his skill as a woodsman as he led them right back up to the cabin with no fuss or side trips, talking softly to Blake the whole time, his deep voice steady and comforting. It dawned on her then that he wasn’t just making conversation. He was keeping Blake calm so that he didn’t go into shock.

  She wondered what she would have done if Tate hadn’t been around. She’d have done her best, but would it have been good enough? Just the thought of that wolf made her blood run cold. But the man she’d imagined Hollister to be would have killed the wolf without a second thought. Instead, he’d managed to run it away because he didn’t like to kill things unless he had to. Her gray eyes watched his tall form quietly, curiously, and new feelings began to bud inside her.

  “Keep him warm,” he told Maggie after they’d gotten back to the cabin and he’d put Blake carefully on the sofa. “A couple of aspirin wouldn’t come amiss until we can get him into Deer Lodge to the doctor. Keep him talking. It will help him fight off shock. I’ll take the horses home and bring the Bronco back as quick as I can. You left the keys in it, right?”

  She nodded and started to speak, but he was gone before she could get her mouth open.

  “Isn’t he something?” Blake sighed through his pain.

  “He is that,” Maggie agreed. She brushed back his dark hair. “Are you going to make it?”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning. “I’m tough.”

  “I guess you are, at that. I’ll get those aspirin.”

  By the time Hollister got back, Blake was in a little less pain, although he was still groaning a little.

  “I’ll put him on the back seat,” Hollister said, lifting Blake gently. “You’d better sit back there with him. The way the snow’s coming down, we may slide a bit getting down into the valley.”

  “I wish I could thank you enough—” she began.

  “Get the door,” he said tersely, ignoring her efforts to tell him how she felt.

  She sighed softly and did what she was told.

  All the way to Deer Lodge, holding Blake’s head in her lap, she wondered at her new acceptance of Hollister’s rough demeanor. He made her feel feminine. Watching the easy, confident way he handled the Bronco, she recalled the same ease with which he’d repaired the generator, handled the emergency of Blake’s broken leg, routed the wolf and got them down the mountain in deep snow. He was simply amazing. And she was suddenly hurt that he had a past that wouldn’t allow him to lose his heart because it was dawning on her that she wanted it. She wanted to learn everything there was to know about him. She wanted to smooth away the hard lines from that dark face and make him laugh. She wondered if he even knew how to laugh, with all the tragedy he’d known.

  Dr. Peters examined Blake’s leg at the small clinic and set it, commending Hollister’s knowledgeable first aid treatment as he put on a thick plaster cast. He wrote Maggie a prescription for pain pills to give the boy, praised him on his bravery and told him when to come back to have the cast removed.

  Maggie didn’t even think about it until they’d stopped by the pharmacy to ge
t the prescription and were on the way back up the mountain. They’d be back in Tucson when that cast had to come off. She’d have to be back at work, but how could she possibly send Blake back to military school? She frowned, gnawing her lower lip as the thought of leaving the ranch began to make her feel sick.

  “Reaction,” Hollister mused, watching her. She was sitting in the passenger seat now, because Blake had a dose of sedative in him and was almost asleep on the back seat. “Don’t worry. I wish I had a nickel for every broken bone I’ve set over the years. He’ll be fine.”

  “What?” she asked quietly.

  “Now that it’s all over you’re going green, Mrs. Jeffries,” he murmured dryly. He was smoking a cigarette, the acrid smell of it filling the cab as he easily handled the sliding motion of the Bronco on a patch of hard ice and whipped it around the next horrible curve as they wound back up to the cabin.

  “I think I’m entitled,” she said gently and smiled at him.

  His dark eyes studied that smile, intent on her soft mouth, and his thick eyebrows drew together. “Yes,” he said after a minute, dragging his eyes back to the road. “I guess you are.”

  “Don’t you ever smile?” she asked suddenly, the words popping out before she could stop them.

  He didn’t look at her. “Not often. Not anymore.”

  She wanted to say more. She wanted to ask him about the accident. She wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t live in the past. But she didn’t have that right, and she was shocked at her own forwardness. She loved her own privacy. It was odd that she should feel free to infringe on his.

  She blushed as she looked out the window at the distant majesty of the mountains all around, blue and white against the gray sky.

  “Now what is it?” he asked.

  She shifted restlessly. “Nothing.”

  “You colored.”

  He saw too much. “I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done,” she said. “You…make it difficult.”