by Jan Hudson
Fury rolled over her. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“Because I wanted a chance to talk to you first.”
“Damn you, Sam Garrett. Damn your rotten hide. You ought to know how important this is to me, and here you’ve been reciting pretty speeches while all the time you knew. And if you say ‘I told you so,’ I’ll throttle you. Get out of my way!”
“Where in the hell are you going?” he called after her as she stalked toward the jeep.
“To the jail,” she yelled. “And if you don’t move your truck, I swear I’ll run right over it.”
“I’ll go with you. Maybe I can help.”
She whirled and glared at him. “You stay out of my business. I can handle it myself.”
Sam pulled the Silverado into the clear just as Max came roaring by. She hadn’t missed him by more than inches. He got out and watched her tawdry jeep bounce down the rough road, spitting gravel and kicking up a trail of dust. “Damned fool woman! You’re going to kill yourself,” he shouted after her.
Dowser came running from the other side of the hill. He looked around, then sat at Sam’s feet and whined.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me, boy. Get in.” He held open the door while the Doberman jumped inside. “At least she’s talking to me even if she is yelling. Think that’s a good sign?”
* * *
As Max pulled into a parking place near the jail and got out, a horn honked behind her. Incensed when she turned and saw Sam, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I thought I told you I would handle this.”
He shrugged and grinned. “I just wanted to tell you that you forgot your dog.” Dowser stuck his head out the window and gave a little woof of greeting. “I’m taking him home with me until you come up with the ransom.” With that parting salvo, he drove off.
Max kicked the side of the jeep and uttered a rude oath. Oh well, she’d deal with that later, she thought as she headed for the jail.
Since it was his fifth offense, Max paid nearly two hundred dollars in fines to spring Goose. So far he had cost her a big hunk of the proceeds from the pickup, and they had yet to put a bit to the ground. Sober and contrite, he was quiet as she drove him back to Goodtime Moe’s to pick up his truck.
When she pulled up beside the battered vehicle in the seedy tavern’s empty parking lot, she asked, “Goose, what happened? I was depending on you.”
The old man hung his head. “Well, little lady, I run into a problem. I tried to find me a helper, but most of the ones I knowed real good was dead or too stove up to work anymore. The other ones I offered to hire laughed right in my face. Thought I was pulling their leg, called me a crazy ol’ coot. I couldn’t find nobody. It was then that the miseries come upon me, and I tried to whup ‘em back with Wild Turkey. Never could handle bourbon. Not even the good stuff. I musta got a little rowdy, ‘cause I woke up this morning in the tank. I feel right bad I let you down, you countin’ on me and all.”
Fingers beating an impatient tattoo on the steering wheel, Max thought a moment. “Goose, if I can find someone to help you, could you be ready to start this afternoon?”
“Yes sir-ee bob.” The animation came back to his wrinkled face as he slapped his thigh. “Ol’ Sal’s purrin’ like a kitten and rarin’ to go. I’d be much obliged if you could dig up somebody to lend a hand.”
After practically making him swear in blood to appear at the site, sober and ready to drill, as soon as she could locate an assistant, Max dropped Goose off and stopped by the drilling company where Mary Lou worked. As soon as she heard Max’s problem, the affable yellow-haired woman called a student at the local college who occasionally worked for their company. He had just come in from his morning classes and agreed to help. The young man promised to go by Goose’s house after lunch and help him move the old cable tool rig to the hill.
“That boy’s real dependable,” Mary Lou said. “And strong as an ox. Jim Clay will give you a good day’s work.”
On her way back to the motel, Max dropped by a florist and made arrangements for a small bouquet and a thank you note to be sent to Mary Lou. She considered going to pick up Dowser, but decided to leave him at Sam’s. She hated for the big Doberman to be cooped up in the tiny motel room. He’d be happier romping with Bess and chasing sheep for a day or so, and she knew he’d be well cared for.
In any case, she was not in any mood to deal with any more of Sam’s brand of persuasion. She was too vulnerable to his tactics. On the hill this morning, she’d been a hair’s breadth away from melting into his arms until he’d told her about Goose. The way things were going so far, she was beginning to doubt herself. Maybe she was chasing rainbows. Maybe she ought to give up the whole crazy idea.
No.
She refused to let a few roadblocks get her down. She was strong, she reminded herself. She could do anything. There was water on Honey Bear’s hill, and she was going to prove it to Sam Garrett if it was the last thing she did.
* * *
By two o’clock, Max was sitting on the boulder tossing blue juniper berries at a prickly pear cactus that clung to a pocked ledge in the rock. Her whole body was zinging with anticipation. This is the day, this is the day, her supercharged brain intoned. We’re going to do it.
It was not long before she heard the old truck lumbering up the hill. Goose was at the wheel herding the vintage vehicle over the rise and into the clearing. Devoid of windshield and fenders flapping, it had tires so thin she could almost see the air. Behind him, caution lights flashing, was a shiny black pickup with a half dozen extra fog and running lamps, a roll bar, and a grille grinning with chrome. Its driver, Max discovered when the old man and the younger one got out and came toward her, was Jim Clay.
“Yes sir-ee bob, me and Jim boy here are gonna make a good team,” Goose said, patting the muscled shoulder of the shy blond giant beside him. “Where you want us to rig up?”
Max pointed out her row of markers and they selected the best spot. “How long do you think it will take, Goose?”
“How deep did you say?”
“Seventy-five to a hundred feet. Probably closer to seventy-five.”
Max noticed that Jim cut his eyes to her in a questioning manner, but when she ignored him, he shrugged as if to say, “As long as I get paid, you’re the boss.”
Goose stroked his grizzled whiskers. “Well, we’ll set ‘er up and get started today. And near as I can figure, we ought to be done before sundown tomorrow.”
Max took a soft drink from the cooler and stepped out of the way so the men could go to work. The pair moved the rig in, leveled it, and raised the derrick, using a cathead and ropes to hoist the tall structure. She was astonished to see that Goose could swing a sledgehammer nearly as well as Jim as they pounded stakes for the guylines into the hard rock. Terrified that the old man was going to keel over with a heart attack from the exertion, she almost intervened, but Jim beat her to it. In his quiet way, the young man eased Goose into another task while he set the stakes.
After what seemed to take forever, with Goose cursing and cajoling and greasing and oiling, the old propane-powered motor coughed to life and everything was made ready to begin the drilling.
The roar of the engine and the pounding, pounding of the spudder echoed over the hills and through the arroyos as the assault on the limestone began. Max watched the young man and the old one lift a huge wooden spool from the bed of Jim’s truck. They set it up near the rig and poked a tattered beach umbrella through its middle to make a table.
Mopping sweat from his bald head with a frayed handkerchief, Goose walked over to Max. “We got ‘er goin’,” he shouted over the racket. “Ain’t much you can do around here, little lady. Me and Jim’s gonna play a little gin while Sal does her work.” He glanced up at the late afternoon sun. “We’ll shut her down about dark and start up about daylight.”
Max hesitated to leave her project, but Goose was right. It was out of her hands now. Promising to see him the n
ext day, she left. As a treat, she detoured by the video store and rented a tape player and two of the most gruesome horror movies she could find. They would keep her mind off the drilling. Maybe they would even keep her mind off Sam.
A hundred times today, she’d caught herself wishing he was on the hill to share the excitement with her. She could close her eyes and imagine the warmth and pressure of his arms around her as she leaned back against his chest, almost hear his husky laughter rumble in her ears. Oh, Sam, she thought with a sigh, why couldn’t you understand? Was she expecting too much of him? Was her pride so important?
Sitting in bed at the Trail’s End, she ate a lonely supper and watched one of the films she’d rented. Not once did her hair rise or heart palpitate. In fact, it was kind of boring.
Before she could begin the next one, the phone rang. When she answered, Sam said, “Dowser and I miss you.”
The sound of his voice, lazy and seductive, tripped a flood of feelings deep inside. She almost blurted out, “I miss you, too,” but stopped herself. “I thought he might enjoy some time with Bess and the sheep if you don’t mind. I’ll pick him up on my way out of town Sunday.”
“You’re leaving?”
She swallowed and tried her darnedest to keep the quiver out of her voice. “Yes. Goose started drilling this afternoon, and he thinks we’ll be finished by late tomorrow if everything goes well. I have business in Houston that I need to take care of on Monday.” She didn’t add that with any luck she could pick up the check from Buck Barton and save her house from foreclosure.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Loma’s frying catfish hoping you’ll come.”
“I’ve already eaten,” she said, glancing at the remnants of a TV dinner on the bedside table. “But thank you anyway. And thank Loma for me.”
“Angel, I love you,” he said with an intensity that wrenched her heart like a fist. “I love you more than life. There will never be anyone for me but you. Please come back to me. Give us another chance.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “I’ll be here. Waiting for you.”
Max held the phone to her ear for a long time after he hung up, listening to the taunting buzz, unmindful of the tears running down her cheeks. Someday soon he would find someone else. Someone more worthy of his love than she. Someone with a nice, normal background and a good family. Someone who wasn’t as different as she was or as tied up with monsters and witching sticks.
This pain would all pass. It was for the best.
Chapter 11
It seemed as if Max had gone up and down the hill a dozen times during the day checking on their progress. She’d been there, nervously drinking coffee from a paper cup, when Goose and Jim had started drilling again at daybreak. She’d watched Goose check and adjust the cable with gloved hands fine tuned, after years of experience, to the subtle differences in tension. She’d watched him flush and bail the cuttings from the hole, and she’d listened to the constant pounding of the tool until the noise reverberating in her head made her feel like a punch drunk fighter.
“It’ll be a while yet, little lady,” Goose shouted each time over the clamor, unendingly patient with her anxiety as he reported fifty feet, sixty feet, seventy feet.
The old man had told her they’d been lucky not to hit much flint and the drilling was going especially well, but Max thought the process was taking forever. By the time he hit seventy-five feet and stopped to bail the hole, she was a bundle of nerves. Unable to do more than stare at the pictures, she threw down the magazine she’d bought at the drugstore on one of her myriad trips to town and began to pace. She was unaware of the tall, auburn-haired figure on the next hill, partially concealed by a scrub oak and holding binoculars to his eyes. He was every bit as nervous as she was.
When the pounding began again, Max closed her eyes and prayed to every saint she could think of. And she wasn’t even Catholic. She forced herself to sit down in one of the ragged lawn chairs by the makeshift table and read an article about newly discovered Mayan ruins, but the words might as well have been in Bulgarian for all the sense they made to her.
The shadows were getting long when Jim yelled, “Look at that!”
Max jumped up from her chair as if she’d been shot.”What? What?”
Jim pointed. The string of tools was completely slack.
“What does that mean?”
“Might mean we’ve hit a cave,” Goose said solemnly. “Or,” he added with a wry grin, “it might mean we’ve hit the vein.”
Max held her breath as he ran the bailer down. “Well?” she asked a few minutes later.
“Seventy-eight and a half feet. Water, cool and sweet as any I’ve seen. It’ll pump thirty, thirty-five gallons a minute.” He was grinning from ear to ear.
Max let out a whoop that could be heard in San Antonio. Laughing and dancing around, she hugged Jim, then she hugged Goose and planted a smacking kiss on each of his wrinkled cheeks. “We did it, Goose! By damn we did it!”
The old man looked enormously pleased with himself as Jim chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. Goose shut off the motor and said, “Put your ear to the hole. Mind the grease now,” he cautioned as she ducked between the crossbars of the derrick.
Max didn’t care about the grease. She held her braid with one hand and put her ear to the well. Her eyes grew wide and a look of awe came over her face. “I can hear it, Goose. I can hear the water rushing.”
“You’re Dal Maxwell’s grandkid, all right,” the old driller said. “You hit it right on the money. A few yards either way and we coulda missed it.” At the sound of tires crunching on gravel, he glanced up and said, “It looks like we got company.”
When Max saw Buck Barton and a tall, gray-haired woman getting out of a Suburban, she scrambled clear of the derrick and ran toward them, wiping her greasy hands on the seat of her jeans. The gruff old wildcatter introduced her to Olive Barton, Honey Bear.
Max grinned. “I’m glad to finally meet Honey Bear. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The woman returned her smile, her blue eyes twinkling with humor. “And I’ve heard a lot about you. I understand you’re the one who’s going to drill a well on my hill.”
“No, ma’am,” Max said seriously. When Honey Bear’s smile began to fade. Max broke into an even broader grin. “It’s already drilled. We just hit water. All you’ll ever need.”
Buck let out a loud guffaw and hugged his wife under one beefy arm. “Hot damn! I told you I had a feeling about this little gal. Let me get my checkbook.”
* * *
It was already dark when Max put the key in the lock of unit seven and opened the door. Grimy, greasy, and worn to an emotional nub, she dumped her belongings on the table and started for the shower. She was just unlacing her boots when the phone rang. Her first thought was: Sam! She snatched up the receiver before the second ring.
She was disappointed when a man with a nasal twang said, “Max, this is Smith Bullock in Nashville. Glad I finally caught up with you. I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”
When she recognized that it was her agent, she said, “Sorry about that, Mr. Bullock. I’ve been out drilling a water well.”
“To each his own, I suppose,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Say, lady, I’ve got some good news for you. Are you sitting down?”
Max felt her heart skip a beat. “Yes,” she replied, waiting.
“I’ve just sold five of your songs to one of this town’s leading female recording stars for her new album. She went ape over your stuff. And she wants to look at anything else you’ve got.”
When he told her the name of the singer, Max’s mouth dropped open. She was one of Max’s favorites, and almost every album she cut went to platinum. Her mouth dropped even farther when she discovered the “sweet deal” her agent had made for her.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked when Max was too stunned to reply. “Max?”
“I’m here. I’m just in shock. I can’t believe it.”
Smith Bullock laughed. “Believe it, babe. When word gets out about this, you’re going to be in big demand. You’re on your way. When can you have something else to me?”
“Let me have a couple of days for this to sink in, and I’ll get back to you.”
She sat on the side of the sagging mattress and stared at the toes of her dusty boots. She couldn’t believe it. She, Angela Maxwell Strahan, was an honest-to-goodness, bona fide, professional songwriter. Arms outspread, she fell back on the bed with a silly grin pasted on her face. For so long it had only been a dream. Now it was reality.
Say, that was a great line for a song. Only a dream. Or had that been used? She finished pulling off her boots and did a little strutting jig to the bathroom.
The phone was ringing again when she shut the water off. She quickly wrapped her wet hair in a turban and grabbed a second towel as she dashed for the night table.
“Hello,” she answered, holding the phone against her shoulder as she dried off.
“Max, it’s Beth.” Her roommate sniffled and asked, “Did your agent reach you? I gave him the number there.”
“Yes, and you’ll never guess what he wanted.” Max related the story to Beth’s excited squeals and interjections of, “You’re kidding! That’s fantastic!”
“And on top of everything else,” Max said, “we hit water today.” She told Beth about their find. “It must be my lucky day. I don’t see how anything could get any better.” Yes, you do, a little voice in her head said as a picture of laughing green eyes flashed in her mind.
“Well, hold on to your hat, roomie,” Beth said. “I’ve got some more news for you. The real estate agent just called and he has a contract on the house for your asking price.”
“For real?”
“For real. There’s no question of the client’s credit, and the family wants to move in by the first of next month.”
“I can’t believe this. It can’t be happening. Now that I don’t have to sell the house, it’s sold.”
