Broken Spurs

by BJ James

  Moving carefully, Steve began to circle toward a copse of trees. Oddly, he didn’t feel he would need protection, but it never hurt to cover all the options. “Brazen.” Still moving, he plucked his hat from the ground. “You know I see you, and you don’t care.”

  This strange visitor might’ve been carved of stone. Neither horse nor rider moved.

  The horse would be a handsome one, Steve judged. He could see at a glance that it was big for a cow horse. Not even distance could hide that it was powerfully formed and trained to stand, awaiting the next command.

  The rider was another matter, with nothing distinguishable. A mystery.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Steve wondered, half aloud, half to himself. “What do you gain from watching?” He’d reached the edge of the grove of aspen, inches from sanctuary. His fists clenched in a rush of anger, at himself for the defensive move, at the shadowed figure for standing immutable, untouched by his muttered harangue.

  “You want to see? Come down, take a close look, I’ve nothing to hide.” His voice turned guttural, yet never rose above the singsong whisper. “Come down! Or maybe I’ll come up.”

  As if the horseman sensed the turn in Steve’s mood, a slight tug of the reins wheeled his mount around. In a prancing step, eager to run, the horse raced away.

  Echoes of hooves striking stone filtered to the canyon floor, then faded. Steve was alone again. A small breeze rippled his drying hair, the sun burned the tender flesh of the scar at his temple and cheek. He hardly noticed.

  A bird called from the foliage of the aspen. A calf bawled for its mother. Thoughtfully he tapped his hat against his thigh in a cloud of dust. Settling it at its customary angle over his forehead, he listened to the lowing response to the calf’s demand, wondering if his mysterious visitor was such a mystery after all.

  His gaze lifted to the west, to the rim he knew would be deserted. “Scouting the enemy, are you? Wondering if I’m as good as my word?” His lips quirked. “Three days, Benedict,” he promised as the sun dipped below the rim, leaving the canyon in shadow. “Three days and you’ll see.”

  Hank pushed back her chair and reached for her hat. The day was wasting. If she started now, she could ride to the east range and back before sundown.

  “Going somewhere?” Jake Benedict asked grumpily from his position at the head of the table.

  “Thought I’d take a ride over by the old Jordan place.” Standing by her chair, she tossed down her napkin and lifted a glass of iced tea for one more sip. Watching her father over the rim of the crystal goblet, she explained. “Sandy says a couple of heifers grazing there will be dropping calves soon. One looks to have two.”

  “Late for calves,” he commented tersely, giving it the sound of an accusation.

  “Some,” Hank returned mildly, refusing to accept the blame for caprices of nature and a busy bull. Ice and crystal rang in bell-like tones as she set the glass down. One of many enduring customs brought to the Rafter B by her mother was lunch, served promptly at twelve-thirty, with a full complement of crystal and linens, whether there were a dozen at the table, or one. In the hotter months, the delicately minted tea replaced strong and bitter chuck-wagon coffee prevalent at every other meal and in between.

  Customs of a Southern aristocrat, that Jake complained of intemperately, yet they still survived, more than a decade after Camilla Neal Benedict had returned to the South.

  “You should eat more.” Jake groused, taking another tack in his quest for a fight.

  “So should you.”

  “I would, if I was riding the range.” The answer was matter-of-fact, with only a tinge of the bitterness Jake Benedict felt at being trapped in a wheelchair or chained to a walker for four years.

  Hank didn’t remind him that stubborn pride was as much the culprit as the series of strokes that left him with partial paralysis, and interrupted her second year in the school of law at the University of Georgia. In typical Jake Benedict fashion, he’d refused therapy, determined that he would recoup lost strength and agility on his own.

  He had not. Oddly, and at odds with the man he’d been, though he fought the daily battles, he truly hadn’t the heart for it.

  “Maybe I’ll have Bonita pack a snack.” Hank ventured, giving her father the parting shot he needed. “If there’s no trouble with the cattle, maybe Sandy will join me for high tea by the Jordan Oaks.”

  “High teal” Jake snorted as a scowl deepened lines in his weatherworn skin. “Dammit all, you sound just like your mother.”

  “Thank you.” She was smiling as she set the chair in its place. “I’ll count that a compliment, though we both know it isn’t true.”

  “Is, too, dammit.” His retort sounded like nothing so much as a querulous child.

  “Is not.” Hank was laughing as she laid a hand on his stooped shoulder and leaned to kiss the minute bald spot just beginning to show in the thick thatch of his graying hair. Despite the petulance of illness and his nearly sixty-four years, he was still a man of commanding presence. “We both know that if Mother were here, or if I were truly like her, you’d be scolded for cursing at the table.”

  A quick squeeze of his shoulder, a covert look of regret for what proud, often obscenely arrogant man had lost, and she was crossing to the door.

  “Hey!” Ever the one to have the last word, Jake called after her, “You forgot your tea party. You wouldn’t want to go to the Jordans’ without it.”

  Hank didn’t turn. Acknowledging this last parting shot with a wave and a wiggle of her fingers, she stepped through the door onto veranda. They both knew she wouldn’t be asking Bonita to pack the snack. The small, plump woman so much like her daughter, Concetta, had more than she could handle in taking care of the house, the meals. And Jake, when he would let her.

  In a loose limbed stride, Hank covered the distance between house and barn quickly. She’d spent the morning cooped up in her office, pouring over the ledgers. A necessary evil, but one she liked little. After the enforced imprisonment, she was anxious to get away.

  “Good day, Miss Benedict, ma’am.”

  Startled by the formality of the greeting, she looked up and found the fresh young face of the newest hand grinning up from the stack of saddles and bridles Sandy had given him to repair and clean.

  “Good day, Jeffie,” she replied, wondering how long it would be before he became familiar enough to call her Hank, as most of the other hands did.

  “Going for a ride, ma’am?”

  She nodded, without breaking stride. “To the Jordan place.”

  “To check the new calves?” There was a wistful note in the young voice. Like all the eager, starry-eyed kids from the villages and farms nearby, he’d come to the fabled ranch to be a cowboy riding the range, roping and branding. Certainly, he hadn’t planned on spending his days with saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil.

  Jeffie was beginning as all novice cowhands began on the Rafter B. Before Sandy was through, he would understand completely that a cowboy’s equipment could make or break him. The day might come when it would mean his life.

  Smiling, remembering when she’d spent her days exactly as Jeffie Cade, and as disgustedly, she entered the barn. The scents of hay, oiled leather and horses assailed her. Familiar scents, as much a part of her life now as her beating heart.

  For a number of years, more than six if she counted, her life had been perfume and lace, the courtroom her destiny. Classrooms and books had filled her days, the excitement of learning conquering a restlessness the dryasdust ledgers of the ranch could not. She’d played at being a Southern belle, the strong, gentle sort of woman the Neal women of Savannah had always been. She’d enjoyed every minute, lived it to the fullest, but she couldn’t go back.

  Those years were priceless. She wouldn’t change them, but she wouldn’t go back. The ranch was where she belonged. She’d known and understood four years ago, in that first moment when she’d stepped again onto Arizona soil.

  The Rafter
B was her destiny. She knew it every morning when she crawled, aching and still a little weary, from her solitary bed. She knew it at the end of every taxing day as she drifted into sleep, too tired to dream. She knew it every aggravating and exhilarating moment in between. But never more than now.

  Stables lined the corridor of the barn. Most were empty at this time of day. Still cooped in his stall, Black Jack would be wild to escape, to run. But no worse than she.

  He was waiting for her, nose twitching, body quivering, as eager as a puppy. “Missed me, did you?” Laughing while he nibbled at her shirt pocket, she curled her arms around his massive neck and rested her cheek against his sleek coat.

  Drawing away after a moment, she eyed the horse with mock sternness. “You think you deserve a peace offering?”

  The horse nibbled at her pocket.

  “So do I.” In a practiced routine, she extracted three sugar cubes from her pocket. “An extra one today,” she said, laughing again as the horse snuffled them from her palm. “Because I owe you.”

  “Is he always that gentle, or just with you?” The voice came without warning from a little distance away.

  Hank whirled around, puzzled. No one should be here. Not at this hour, not on a busy day. Her sight still hampered by the change from sunlight to shade, she probed the dusky corners of the barn.

  He materialized slowly, long, lean, with heart-lurching familiarity. An easy smile tilted his lips. “Cody!” Stifling a startled gasp, she demanded, “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Ignoring her question, Steve pushed away from a stable gate, coming to his full height. “He looks like a brute, but he purrs like a kitten for you.”

  “How did you get here?” Anger flared, for allowing herself to be taken unaware, for the rush of her pulse. “What do you want?”

  “Does everything and everyone on this ranch purr beneath your hand, Miss Benedict, ma’am?” He took a step closer, still smiling down at her. “Jeffie surely does. I think I would.”

  Taking refuge in routine, and to buy some time, Hank reached for a halter that swung from a hook by the stall. As her fingers closed over the braided leather, she brought it. to her side. “All right.” She drew a calming breath. “We’ll start again. What are you doing here?”

  “Persistent,” Steve mused, his smile never altering. “Like a bulldog that takes hold and won’t let go.” His gaze slid down her, liking the fit of her jeans and shirt as much as he had on the street of Silverton. “Prettiest bulldog I’ve ever seen.”

  Before she could snap back a comment, he laughed softly, delighted by the flash of fury that darkened her eyes to stormy gray. “For the sake of peace,” he drawled, “and to save time...”

  “You’re really into saving time, aren’t you, Cody?” she interjected in scornful sarcasm. “The best way to do that is to take our offer for the canyon. You will, you know, sooner or later, so why not sooner? Make it easier on yourself.”

  Brushing the interruption aside as if he hadn’t heard, he continued as before. “We’ll take your questions from the top. What I’m doing here is waiting for you. I got here on horseback. Jeffie isn’t much of a watchdog, he grinned and waved when I rode in.”

  “He’s new, not Familiar with who belongs here and who doesn’t. But he’ll learn.” Hank bristled, defending the newest hand.

  “I’m sure he will.” Steve deliberately held her gaze. “Considering his teacher.”

  “Sandy will be his teacher, as will several others.” A toss of her head sent the braid tumbling from her shoulder. She glared up at him. “Cut to the chase, Cody. What do you want?”

  “I’m discovering I want a lot of things, Miss Benedict, ma’am,” he answered softly.

  Hank resented the lurch of her heart, a woman’s response to an attractive man. It had been years since any man had made her feel this keening, breathless awareness. She hadn’t allowed it. She wouldn’t now. Drawing herself to her fullest height, with her head at a regal angle, she stared coolly back at him. “I have work to do, and you’re wasting my time. And don’t call me ma’am.”

  “Riding over to the Jordan place?”

  “Exactly.”

  “A neighbor?” Steve didn’t recall Charlie mentioning any ranchers by that name.

  “A section of the Rafter B,” Hank retorted. “If you heard that part of my conversation with Jeffie, you know I’m riding out to check on new calves. I would hardly do that on another ranch.”

  “Hardly.” He understood then that the Jordan place was one of Jake Benedict’s acquisitions. He wondered if every one gobbled up by the land hungry rancher was still called by the name of the luckless past owner. “While you’re out, you might want to check the cattle in the small holding pasture nearest Sunrise Canyon.”

  “We have no cattle in that pasture.”

  “You do now, seventeen head.”

  “You moved our cattle from the canyon!”

  Steve shrugged. “Just saving you time and aggravation.”

  “There you go again, saving me time.” If leather could break, the bridle would have shattered in her palm.

  “It seemed the neighborly thing to do. Just as taking your cattle from my grass when I asked would have been.” He touched her cheek, drawing his finger down the satiny curve of it. “Did you forget, Miss Benedict, ma’am?”

  “I didn’t forget.” Her teeth were clenched with the need to jerk away from his familiar touch. No response was her best defense against the flicker of tension that had nothing to do with anger.

  “Somehow I didn’t think you did.”

  “Good, then we understand each other.” Hank stepped away, giving herself room to breathe.

  “You’re mistaken there. You don’t understand me at all. I meant what I said, about the cattle and the Broken Spur.”

  “Moving cattle is one thing. Running a successful horse ranch is quite another.” Dismissing him, as well as his ambition, she opened the door to Black Jack’s stall and led him out. He was a massive stallion, his sleek bulk filled the corridor, making it too small, too close.

  “Horses have been my life,” Steve reminded her, running an appreciative hand over the stallion’s flank.

  “Riding horses has been your life.” Rising on tiptoe, Hank slipped the bridle over Black Jack’s head, expertly, with a minimum of effort. Patting the horse affectionately, she turned back to Steve. “Judging and breeding them is not the same.”

  “Not the same for a broken down rodeo has-been, you mean.”

  “No, Mr. Cody, I mean for anyone. I fly a plane, and I fly it well, but I don’t build them. I wouldn’t presume to think I could.” She reached for the blanket and saddle lying on a shelf by the stall, but he was faster. He made quick work of saddling the horse. Quicker than she could have. In a guarded glance, she saw there was no bravado in the act, no macho condescension. He’d simply reacted with an old-fashioned chivalry he wore well and naturally.

  The saddle was heavy, and Black Jack was tall. Saddling him was a stretch no one else seemed to notice. Or perhaps they wouldn’t allow themselves to notice, because by unspoken agreement, it was what she wanted. She pulled her own weight with no concessions. It could be no other way. Even so, the small gallantry unsettled her, leaving her at a loss.

  “My guess would be that you could. Build an airplane, that is, if you set your mind to it.” He continued to stroke the stallion, but his attention was riveted on her. “I doubt there’s little you can’t do, if you set that stubborn Benedict mind to it. But you don’t offer me the same confidence.”

  “I’ve seen too many operations go down here. Shoestring operations with grandiose expectations, lost from lack of expertise and funds and most of all, dedication.”

  “Lucky for them, there was always Jake Benedict,” Steve observed with a hint of steel in his mild tone. “Jake Benedict, with more acres than a cactus has spines, watching and waiting to take the land off their hands.”

  The remark stung. She’d heard it befor
e, whispered behind shielding hands, with a more vicious twist. “He never took what wasn’t offered and never for less than fair market price.”

  “Everything always had a price, except the one that mattered most.” Steve’s jaw tightened, but there was no change in his voice. “Charlie must have been a burr under his saddle all these years.”

  “Jake wanted Sunrise Canyon,” she admitted levelly, despite the flush that gleamed over her cheeks. “He never stopped hoping the day might come when Charlie would sell.”

  “Then I came instead, with the deed signed and recorded, and no more willing to sell than Charlie.”

  “You will.” Her tone lent more conviction to her prediction than she felt.

  “You sound like a broken record, Miss Benedict, ma’am. I’m beginning to wonder who you’re trying to convince. Does the lady protest too much?”

  The gold in his brown gaze was lost in the shade of the barn, but she knew it was there. The eyes of a playful predator, looking into the mind of his quarry, seeing too much, understanding too much.

  She’d dismissed him as a thrill seeker. A daredevil with a grandiose vision. One who would lack staying power as he grew weary with the demands of the desert and bored with the never-ending routine, the abiding solitude. She’d seen it many times, and expected it again. Lulled by the assumption, she’d underestimated him. She wouldn’t again.

  “My, my.” Clucking her tongue and shaking her head she drawled, “You are a learned man, indeed. First schoolbook French, and now the bard.”

  “Hidden talents.” A subtle shift that could hardly be defined as a move brought his body closer to hers. “There are others.”

  “If I were a gambler, I’d bet on it,” she returned blandly. Through a drift of lowered lashes, she looked at him. She couldn’t avoid looking at him as he blocked her path from the barn. He was still lean, but with an overlay of hardened muscle on his rangy frame. The sickly telltale pallor had darkened to a glow of healthy color that had no tales to tell. His time on the ranch had been good for him, yet all the evidence of his recent ordeal hadn’t faded. It was there in the bracketing lines softened only a little by his lazy smile. And in the haunted wariness of a strong and virile man who found himself at the mercy of factors he couldn’t control.