by BJ James
Her gaze was level, but puzzled and wary. When he stroked her cheek, trailing the back of his knuckles over fine, fragrant skin, she didn’t move away.
“We’ll call her The Lady.”
Hank accepted the name without comment, as if her singular conversation had been only a little time ago. His choice couldn’t have been more perfect for the mare with her quick intelligence, her sure and delicate step.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “For everything, and this.”
She stared up at him, silver eyes catching the gold of the sun. Radiant eyes. She felt no need to remind him the arroyo was his, part of Sunrise Canyon and the Broken Spur. No need to remind him she was the enemy, for in the darkness of his eyes she saw redemption.
Her heart was too full for words, too full for laughter or tears. In the end she simply nodded.
“Yes,” Steve whispered, apropos of nothing and everything. Binding her braid about his hand, he brought her closer, drawing her head to his chest. His heart was soft thunder beneath her cheek as he held her.
In a land of color and light, magic and miracle, with a woman like no other in his arms, he wondered where this moment would take them.
Chapter 11
The corrals and temporary holding pens were blaring sound and feverish turmoil. To the uninitiated it would have been unremitting carnage, chaos with hope of only chaotic results. To one who understood the branding and separating of stock, there was order in the bedlam, credible and efficient, born of habit and instinct.
In the choking, blinding whirl of dust, in desiccating heat, each hand had a job and knew it well. Each job named its skill.
Ropers roped. Flankers and rastlers, working in teams, flanked and wrestled calves and yearlings down. Iron men branded, wielding the white-hot iron with consummate skill. Markers, plying needles and knives, marked, inoculated, castrated.
There were new and more modern methods for some, but Jake was a man who resisted progress. Even more since his strokes.
In the middle of a corral, Hank worked the iron, the stench of blood and burning hair stinging her nose and eyes as much as the sweat that soaked the band of her hat and trickled down her face. Minding the fire, the heated iron, the depth of the brand, she was too focused to know when Jake Benedict propelled his chair from the veranda, bumping over timeworn ruts, halting at the fence nearest her.
“Well,” his voice lifted, with effort, above the noise and commotion. His hands were folded in his lap, his Stetson tilted over his forehead to block out the slant of the morning sun. “I see you deigned to join us today in this little endeavor.”
Swiping a sleeve across her eyes, she looked up from a calf. “Yes, sir,” she agreed. “For a number of years now.”
Jake stiffened at the rejoinder. “I thought maybe you’d stay out on the range this year, since you’ve taken such a liking to it.”
“No.” The iron sizzled, the calf bawled and struggled as she signaled its release.
“Makes a man wonder, seeing as how you’re gone more than home, lately. Maybe we should see about putting in a few conveniences in whatever line shack you’ve taken to camping out in.” Jake was irritable, spoiling for a fight.
“Thanks, Sandy,” Hank murmured in an aside, smoothly relinquishing her station to the foreman, who came to relieve her. Flexing cramped fingers as she walked, she approached the fence. The old-fashioned wheelchair was big and bulky, Jake Benedict was a tall man, and at the moment, his disability did not keep him from holding himself straight and proud. Having inherited none of his massive, rawboned frame, as she leaned a shoulder on a rail, the disparity in their heights was only minimal. “I’m here, Jake.”
“Yes,” her father admitted, the thirst for a battle still stirring his blood. “You’re always here when you’re needed.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” She did not point out that her nights away from the ranch had ended. She was up early, and late to return, but she’d been home each night for days. The reminder would only be wasted, and no improvement of his disposition.
Since his strokes, it was always the same when the ranch itself was busy. When he couldn’t escape the reality of his helplessness, nor what it had done to her life. Hank understood that it was the ambivalence of resentment and guilt that drove him to seek her out, to vent the anger he felt for himself and the fates that put him in the chair.
Sliding off her gloves, she trucked them in her belt and ducked under a rail. “I’m glad you came down.” She leaned on his shoulder. “The hands always work hard, but they put an extra effort into it when you’re watching. Impressing Jake Benedict ranks right up there with wearing the Benedict star.”
Jake startled her by laughing; it was a deep, natural sound that drew looks of surprise from those hands familiar with his moods. “You’re nearly as good at evading an issue as your mother. You’re not in her class yet, mind you, but you’re getting there.” His smile widened as he reminisced. “But, lordy, when she didn’t want to evade, she put up one hell of a fight.” He touched her hand as it lay over his shoulder. “You’re like her in that, too.”
Hank laughed and tugged the brim of his hat. “I’ll count that as a compliment.”
Resettling himself, he shrugged and blinked, as men uncomfortable with emotion were wont to do. “Was meant as such.” Then, as if the first admission required reinforcement, “It surely was.”
Hank crouched quietly at his feet, poignantly certain that Jake Benedict missed his wife more than he would say. Perhaps more than he knew. Clasping his hand only briefly she smiled up at him, then turned to watch the melee, sharing a moment that was rare between father and daughter.
A half hour later, when Bonita bore down on them wearing an anxious frown, Jake was exhausted by the heat and noise and his own conflict. Though she knew he would go to his grave denying it, Hank saw he was relieved when the small, plump woman scurried away, muttering about heat and sunstroke as she rushed him back to the shaded veranda.
“He’s having a hard time.” His place taken by yet another, Sandy stood a pace behind her, whipcord tough, with worry in his piercing eyes. “It gets harder every year, and this is the worst.”
“Because of my absences?” Hank spoke her own worry.
“No. sis, you can’t take the blame for this one.” The foreman, who had been as much her father as Jake, squeezed her arm reassuringly. “This year, more than ever, he sees his life slipping away, and the days in the chair become more intolerable.”
“He uses the walker in the house. He could use it more.”
“He could,” Sandy agreed. “But, as much as he hates it, he’d rather sit in that damnable chair with his stubborn vanity intact than let the hands see him stumble and stagger around with a metal cage bracketing his legs.”
“Pride!” Hank spat the word as if it were an abomination.
“Benedict pride,” Sandy drawled. “Seems to me you’ve inherited your share, and some from the Neals to boot. Considering the way you’ve been running yourself to a frazzle and all, making up for something you had nothing to do with.”
“The Lawters worked for us.” She wouldn’t insult Sandy by pretending she didn’t understand where he was going with his sly lecture. “Ransome had the crazy idea he should protect me from Steve.” She kept her tone at a normal pitch, certain the bleat and bawl of cattle would insure she wouldn’t be overheard. “Misguided as they were, what they did, they did in our name. For me.” Her mouth curled in loathing. “In my book that lays part of the blame at my door.”
“Then I suggest you read your ‘book’ again. Dammit, sis, there’s enough trouble for each of us to have our share, no need to ask for more.” It hadn’t escaped the wily foreman’s notice that she referred to the newest tenant of Sunrise Canyon by his first name, and real friendly like. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for what a couple of idiots choose to do.”
Refusing debate, she took another course. “If the situation were reversed, what wou
ld you do in my place, Sandy?”
“A moot question. It isn’t reversed, and I’m not in your place.”
“But if you were?”
He looked away, unwilling to meet the challenge in her gaze. Tapping the top rail of the corral, he studied the wood too intently.
“If you felt even remotely responsible, what would you do?”
“Aw, hell!” He turned, eyes like lasers meeting hers. “The same damn thing you’re doing—train his horses and make sure they were the best at the Silverton sale.”
“Yes,” Hank said, pleased and vindicated. “You would.”
“It’s a mite different.”
“Because I’m a woman?” Before he could agree or deny, she rushed on, assuming an all too familiar fighting stance. “That never cut any slack before, why should it now?”
“You’re tired, sis.” Abandoning one indefensible course, he addressed another. “Burning yourself up, and Jake’s suspicious. I don’t know how much longer I can cover for you.”
“I know.” Covering for her had never been discussed. Hank simply trusted that he would. As Sandy always had, supporting her in what she did, her buffer against the world. No questions, no judgments. “Jake thinks I’ve been spending my time at a line shack, working the herd. Would it be off the mark to think you’re responsible?”
The handsome, graying man shrugged. “He assumed.”
“And you didn’t correct him.”
“Seemed for the best, for both or you.”
A calf escaped a rope, and in the confusion banged into a fence. There was bedlam in the corral. Short-lived, and brought quickly under control, but pointedly reminding that all hands were needed.
“We’d best get back to it.” The rangy foreman climbed the fence. Swinging a leg over, he sat astride the top rail looking down at her. “You gonna take a ride later today?”
“If we finish up here.”
“Mind some company?”
“I’d like some company. Our friend would, too, I suspect.” A grin crinkled her eyes. “He’s bound to be ready for a change of faces.”
“Well, now,” Sandy drawled, slipping with ease into his untutored cowhand persona. “I don’t know if I’d be too sure of that. The boy ain’t a fool, you know.” A chuckle drifted down to Hank. “Truth be told, he ain’t exactly a boy, either. Is he, now?”
Hank ignored the sly teasing with the aplomb taught her by her mother. And for once she was grateful for the red dust that streaked her face, hiding the flush his observation prompted. Unaware of how much she looked like the girl who’d spent most of her young life struggling with priorities, she asked with an artless candor, “You like him, don’t you, Sandy?”
“I surely do, saw he had sand the minute I laid eyes on him.” His voice was kind as he recognized sentiments she wasn’t quite ready to put into words. “I ’spect that makes two of us.”
“Maybe.” Scaling the fence, Hank swung over and dropped to the ground inside the corral.
Sandy climbed down to walk with her to the branding site.
Calves bawled, milling around them. Yearlings bucked and kicked. Red dust churned under hooves and boots, bearing the heat of scorched earth, plastering itself on everyone and everything.
Branding! Misery marked by sweat. Grim, grueling, gratifying. Every man with his work, separate, yet dependent on another. Out of pandemonium, order. Out of teamwork, trust, and truth, the measure of men and a woman.
A far cry from a courtroom, but judge and jury for Hank Benedict.
Iron in hand, ready to work again, she paused, smiling ruefully up at Sandy. “Yeah,” she admitted to him, to herself. “I ’spect it does make two of us.”
“She’s a natural.”
“Yep.” Sandy pushed his Stetson back a notch, and shifted a sprig of hay from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Took to horses like cactus to rain.”
“She’s tired.”
“Can’t argue that.” Catching the hay between thumb and forefinger, squinting at it in a gesture reminiscent of a reformed smoker, the foreman tossed it away. “You do two jobs, you get tired.”
“My point exactly.” Steve turned from the corral where Hank put The Lady through her paces. His dark look settled on Sandy Gannon, the man who knew her far better than he. “And another reason I’m glad you came with her today. Help me convince her she doesn’t have to do this.”
“Can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Steve insisted. “She respects your opinion, and if any man can make her listen to reason, it’s you.”
“If any man can. That’s the key,” the older man explained. “And no man can.”
“Sandy...”
“I tried already.”
“And?”
Sandy pushed his hat back another notch. “You see where she is.” With keen regard, he studied Steve. “I’ll ask you the same question she asked me. In the same circumstance, what would you do?”
Steve considered his answer, even when there was no need. His response was long in coming, and reluctant. “Exactly what she has.”
“Right.”
“It’s different.”
The foreman laughed, wondering if it was just the Western man, or all men, who were steeped in the same arrogance. “I tried that one too. She reminded me in no uncertain terms that being a woman never cut her any slack before. She doesn’t expect it now.”
Steve had no difficulty imagining that particular scene. “So what do I do?”
“You leave her alone, son. Let her do what she has to do.” A pointing finger charged Steve to understand. “Remember, this is as much for herself as it is for you.”
Steve accepted the inevitable. Then, taking up another worry as he put one aside, “What happens when Jake finds out his daughter is aiding and abetting the squatter from Sunrise Canyon?”
In a moment of silence, Hank’s assuring singsong drifted to them. As smoothly as if she’d been performing the tasks for years, The Lady responded to every command. She seemed eager to please the soft spoken rider who never asked more than she was capable of giving.
Watching a horse and rider so in tune was an extraordinary sight. One more confirmation of the mettle of the woman.
Steve had begun to think his question wouldn’t be answered, when Sandy responded thoughtfully, “What she does about you and Jake is her bridge to cross, and she will, in her own way, when she comes to it.”
“Just like that?” Steve was disturbed that this man who had been virtually a part of the Benedict family would dismiss a possible disaster as cavalierly. And disaster it would be, he had no doubt.
“She’s a helluva woman, and a Benedict in the bargain.” Sandy’s tone was unperturbed, but his eyes were as penetrating as a blade of blue steel. “She’s been in the middle before and come out with the best of two worlds. If you’re half the man Charlie thinks you are, maybe she can again.”
“Charlie?” Steve had the feeling he’d missed something, somewhere along the way. Something important. “What does Charlie have to do with any of this?”
“Is this a private conversation,” Hank asked from a pace away. “Or can anyone join in?”
“Sis!” Sandy turned to her. “When did you finish up?”
“Long enough ago that The Lady and Lorelei are bedded down for the night, and the other chores are done. The way you two were going at it, I could’ve shifted the barn off its foundation and you wouldn’t notice.”
Her gloves were tucked in her belt. When the branding had been done, a bath and a change of clothes rid her of the evidence of her work. But neither soap and water nor the fresh, bright blue of her shirt could erase proof of its rigors.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded with fatigue, her smile was strained. The too perfect bearing betrayed how difficult it was to stand at all.
The curse, not quite smothered by the clench of Steve’s lips, was bitterly explicit. Only a flashing look of warning from Sandy kept him from sweeping her into his arms, taking her to his bed
and forcing her to rest. The look and the certainty the foreman was right, that she would fight him, worsening her desperate condition by denying it, kept him still.
He couldn’t make her rest, but he could keep her off the half-wild stallion when she was too wasted to stay in the saddle. “It’s time you called it a day. Get in the truck, I’ll drive you home.”
“I rode in.” She bristled at his peremptory tone. “I’ll ride out, when I choose, and under my own steam.”
“You’re mistaken, Benedict.” Steve moved from the fence to stand squarely in her path. “You’ve run out of choices and steam. Get in the truck.”
“Cody!”
“Stay out of this, Sandy,” Steve snapped without taking his hard stare from Hank. “This discussion is between the lady and me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, there’s nothing between us. Nothing! What I do, when and how, is not and never will be open to discussion!” She was turning aside, moving toward the stream where Black Jack grazed and paced. “Let’s go home, Sandy. The way we came.”
“Dammit, Benedict!” Flaring temper and remembered fear got the best of proper intentions, after all. With an iron grip Steve caught her wrist, wrenching her around and back. She was in his arms, and he was spinning away from Sandy before either could react.
“Cody!” Hank and Sandy spoke in unison, but it was the foreman’s voice that carried the threat.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sandy took a step, pausing only when Steve turned back.
“I’m taking her home, Gannon.” Smoldering black eyes met the arctic chill of blue. “Where you should have kept her today, if you had to hog tie her.”
“I’m the foreman, she’s the boss.” One look at Steve’s face, and Sandy understood the anguish and frustration of a man backed into a corner by his own helplessness, and the impact of contradicting emotions. The man was at war with himself. “She gives the orders,” he said in a tone turned benign. “Not me.”
