He strode over to his own pickup, moving with controlled grace. Tracy sat at the wheel a moment, achingly bereft, feeling used and cast aside.
Damned if she was! She stiffened her spine and started the truck, clamping her teeth tight to keep from crying.
She had started to fall in love with him but she’d put a quick halt to that! Or if it was too late, as she miserably suspected it was, she’d at least keep clear of his demeaning propositions.
As she drove home, she had to admit that he’d been honest. According to his lights, he hadn’t tricked her. She had just been sure that he must care about her for their lovemaking to be so powerful.
Some of that golden, explosive warmth lingered within her, forcing her to admit, in spite of her humiliation, that the only thing she regretted about those ardent, wonderful moments was that they must not be repeated.
VI
The redtails were up there again. Might be some eggs in that relined nest this spring after all. Shea left the pickup by the gate and started to walk the fence along the leased land. He wanted to be sure it was in good condition. The next thing he expected Judd to do was drive cattle into these pastures but claim innocence, say the fences must be down.
Shea’s smile was grim as he thought of how riled Judd would be when he found that his half-brother had a permit designating the lease as an experimental area. The permit left to Shea the decision whether to graze this land.
Though grazing leases were public lands, such leases were attached to ranches and traditionally were sold along with the ranch. A rancher paid so much per head and this lease money went into the state fund for schools and other public facilities. There were about nine million acres of these “trust” lands in Arizona, more than the combined acreage of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Grazing leases also took up some of the over thirty-one million acres of federal land. If one added to that about nineteen million acres owned by Indians, only about seventeen percent of the state was under private ownership.
Take away Phoenix and Tucson and the state was still pretty much frontier with the accompanying mentality. No one worried about what would happen when the water was gone. Developers, ranchers, agribusiness and mines were racing each other to the bottom of the aquifers, though the mines had started using recycled water.
Green, irrigated fields brought no joy to Shea. He got physically sick when he saw water running to waste along the roadsides. The groundwaters between Phoenix and Tucson had been pumped for alfalfa and cotton till the ground was buckling, scarred with cracks twenty feet wide, and it was the same story all over the state’s arable lands. Make a bundle now and for as long as taxpayers foot the bill for bringing in water from far away. Get out when the water’s gone or when it starts costing the grower what it should.
It was the same with the land. Overgrazed since the 1880’s, a hundred years had turned grasslands to desert just as irrigating had sucked the rivers dry. The Socorro had been more careful than most about rotating graze and trimming herds to fit, but even before Patrick’s blindness, Judd had been running more stock than the hundred thousand acres would support.
Shea looked approvingly at the way Boer and Lehman lovegrasses and plains brittlegrass were spreading over the pasture he and Geronimo had cleared laboriously of most mesquites. It took a bulldozer to knock down the trees and drag out their long taproots. But the hardy grasses were thriving despite the sparse rainfall.
A federal study Shea had cooperated with showed that if scrub and mesquite in southern Arizona was replaced with native grasses, the amount of groundwater saved over twenty years would be almost double what would come from the $2.5 billion Central Arizona Project in the same time, even if the heavily overcommitted Colorado River weren’t sucked dry long before that. Revegetation would cost a fraction of that and would last as long as grazing was held to reasonable levels.
If Patrick could see, this grass would convince him. Shea had to hope the looks of the field would eventually penetrate even Judd’s more impervious blindness, but he was braced for trouble when Judd came back from a fruitless chat with the land commissioner.
Judd. Shea frowned. His half-brother had a way with women; he’d give Tracy all the sweet talk and attention she could want. That ought to console her if the hurt in those wide-spaced dark amber eyes had been real.
Probably it had. As real as the tears she’d shed for the trapped ringtail, as real as the fiery sweetness with which she’d met him. A stab of desire went through him, hummed through his blood. In spite of what he’d said to her it hadn’t been plain sex, though she was apparently inexperienced enough to believe him. He gave an involuntary snort. Did she think he went through those shenanigans when all he wanted was relief?
After Cele had ditched him, he’d left women alone for a while. Then he’d tumbled everyone who seemed agreeable and clean. Probably, when he was drunk, some of them were not so clean. But once he went back to school, he’d been less randy. He’d had arrangements of convenience with several women, which he’d broken off if they seemed to be forgetting their bargain. Since returning to the ranch, he hadn’t bothered to establish a steady source of supply. Geronimo knew some obliging women in Nogales and that had sufficed.
Good, like a meal or drink when a man was hungry or thirsty, but nothing like Tracy. Nothing ever had been, not even with Cele.
That was small wonder. He and Cele had both been kids when they married. After all these years, he felt an ache like that from an old wound. She had been so pretty and new and sweet, so soft and yielding. Too soft and yielding to wait for him. Hadn’t even had the nerve to write. Patrick had done that. Shea hadn’t contested the divorce and he hadn’t the faintest notion where she was now.
Patrick had understood. All too well, for his second wife, Elena, Shea’s mother, had run off with a ranch foreman. Shea had been only three. One day there had been a beautiful, tender woman who hugged him. Then, suddenly, she was gone. It seemed like winter and the house went dark. The ranch women petted Shea and held him on their laps, but he had clambered down and run off to mourn.
Where was she? Why had she left him?
He knew now, of course, that the city-bred girl had detested the ranch and felt neglected by Patrick. She hadn’t been evil. Nor was Cele. Both were sweet, appealing women.
Like Tracy?
Yes. Like Tracy. He could imagine both of them crying over a small trapped animal. But would they have risked themselves to help a stranger? Shea swore.
All right. Give the girl guts. It made her all the more dangerous. She had gotten to him, something he’d thought no woman could do. It was a good thing he’d made her so mad that she’d avoid him. A few more times with her and he’d be lost.
But he ached for her already, groaned under his breath as he remembered the sweetness of her flesh, the warm depths that embraced and held and urged him on, driving him crazy to have all of her, possess her as utterly as she had captured him.
If she came to him, he’d have to have her. The only hope he had was to make her believe it didn’t matter, so that when she left at least she wouldn’t take his soul.
Judd stalked into Patrick’s room after dinner that night, while Tracy was playing and Mary was barbering Patrick’s shaggy white curls.
With neither greeting nor acknowledgment, Judd burst out, “Dad! Did you know Shea’s got himself a range research permit?”
“No,” said Patrick slowly. “That mean you can’t get his lease revoked because he’s not running cattle?”
“That’s what it means. I raised hell but he pulled some pretty high-powered strings and he’s got the right credentials.”
Patrick sighed. “Well, boy, sounds like you better sell some cows.”
“Don’t you care?”
“I care,” snapped Patrick. “But I can’t see! You tell me one thing and Shea says another! You’ll just have to work it out between the two of you.”
Judd’s breath sucked in heavily before he made an obvious effort at self-c
ontrol. Shrugging, he said tightly, “Okay, I’ll work it out.”
Patrick introduced him to Mary, then. Judd gave her the careless, charming smile he seemed to have for all women. “Hope you’ll like it here, Mary. You’re a blessed change from the other nurses.”
She thanked him with a calm, measured glance and went on with her task. Judd turned to Tracy. “Ready for the grand tour tomorrow?”
“You bet.”
He dropped his hand caressingly on her shoulder. “How about a short tour tonight? There’s a moon.”
The vibrant shock that went through her at his touch was followed at once by a kind of shrinking, a revulsion from his bold, sensual appeal. Shea was the only man she wanted; her body felt mute loyalty to him, though he would have laughed at it. She certainly wasn’t going to feel bound to him but she didn’t want to take any moonlit walks with Judd.
Not yet. She begged off. Judd slanted a quizzical frown at her, talked a bit longer to Patrick, and went down for something to eat. When Tracy descended half an hour later, she heard his voice mingling with Vashti’s in the dining room.
Bickering again. They seemed to have a touchy relationship. Perhaps the dozen years between them didn’t give Vashti enough seniority to command Judd’s deference. Tracy slipped almost stealthily into her room. Vashti was trying to be civil, but this wasn’t a comfortable house to be in. Now that Mary was here, it wasn’t necessary to be under the same roof with Patrick though Tracy wanted to stay close enough to see him daily.
The old ranch house was bursting with people. But there might be some prospector’s cabin, some old line shack. Tomorrow she’d watch for such possibilities. She wanted to stay at Socorro, not only for Patrick’s sake, but till she’d sorted out her own directions.
As she showered, she remembered Shea, felt a wave of remembered ecstasy followed by desolation. If he hadn’t meant it, how could he have been so passionately tender? His urgency had bruised her slightly but she knew that, long after the soreness was gone, she would carry the painful magic of his physical memory in her, no matter how she fought it.
And she must fight. It was tempting to try to adopt his attitude, accept the marvelous sex and quell any personal attachment—or hope that in time he’d begin to love her. But that would violate what she felt. She wanted to laugh with him and talk with him, share thoughts and silences, show her love without fearing a cold glance from those storm-cloud eyes.
He didn’t want that. All they could have was nothing.
Patrick was spinning yarns next morning, assuring Mary that he had a Ph.D. “Post-hole digging!” he chortled. “And let me tell you, you can sure hunt a long time for a mesquite straight enough to make a post!” He turned his face toward Judd’s footfalls as his son came into the room. “Don’t fly so low showing Tracy the ranch that you scare the cattle. Don’t want any new calves to have wings in place of legs!”
“The aerial view will have to come later,” Judd said. “Vashti took the plane. She had an appointment with the hairdresser and some other chores in Tucson.”
“Oh, was that today?” asked Patrick. He winked his good eye at the women. “Let’s hope a little spending spree gets her mind off selling to that damn developer. You taking Tracy in your RV then, Judd?”
He smiled down at her. “Am I?”
“If you have time. Let me get my camera.”
Shortly after, they were on their way, a lunch prepared by Concha in an ice chest, along with a jug of chablis. “I still want you to get the big picture from above,” Judd said, flashing her a white grin. “But today you can see some cattle and we’ll have a pasear over to Last Spring. Nice shady place to have lunch and relax a while.”
“Last Spring?”
“That’s what we’ve started calling it these dry years. Sometimes it’s been the last spring running on the whole darn ranch. It’s the Place of Skulls. You know, that mountain basin in the Santa Ritas where Great-great-great-grandmother Socorro killed that gang of scalp-hunters.” He laughed, shaking his leonine head. With his strong neck resting solidly between broad shoulders, he was Tracy’s idea of a gladiator. “Ranch lore makes her close to a saint but that scalp-hunter yarn makes me wonder!”
“I think it was really Tjúni who killed most of the men,” Tracy said. “Socorro shot only one. Anyway, she couldn’t have just let those men kill Apache women and children! What she and Tjúni did made Mangus their friend.”
Judd laughed again. “Think what they could have done with an M-16!” His amusement faded. “From what Vashti tells me, you should have had a gun day before yesterday.”
He wanted the whole story. When she finished, he struck the wheel in exasperation. “Why didn’t Shea shoot the bastard?”
“Maybe he didn’t have a gun. Anyway, what he did was effective.”
“By the time you get through testifying against him, he’ll get a few years for assault, maybe a few more for assault with a deadly weapon.” Judd snorted. “Then he’ll be out to try his luck again. Triple-Great-grandmother had the right idea.”
“She didn’t have much choice.”
Judd cast Tracy a somber glance. “We don’t either, cousin. The law’s no protection anymore. Especially here on the border, we’re back in the days of the scalp-hunters.”
“Oh, Judd, for goodness’ sake!” She laughed, trying to tease him out of his Nostradamian prophecies. “There’s always been smuggling on the border. I think you’re looking for excitement!”
“Didn’t you get more than you wanted the other morning?”
“Yes, but—”
His hand closed commandingly on hers. “I’m going to teach you to use that gun, Tracy. You need to defend yourself as much as Socorro did.”
Incredulous laughter died in her throat. After what had happened to her in Houston, had almost happened to Mary right here, how could she argue with him?
“You’d like to pretend everything’s nice and safe and civilized,” he persisted. “Preparing for danger, arming against it, makes you admit it’s there.”
That wasn’t all of it. Having a gun, making it part of her thinking, was like changing sides, giving in to the violence she feared and loathed. “Sometimes preparing for it makes it happen,” she said.
“How?”
“Four times as many family members are murdered with handguns every year as are burglars—and that includes the ones police shoot. And how many children accidentally shoot each other?”
“Guns should be respected and kept where kids can’t get them.”
Tracy had to laugh at that, remembering some of the places she had penetrated in a search for Christmas presents. “Now where in the blue-eyed world would that be?”
He shrugged that aside. “Miami police are telling people to get guns. So, privately, do cops in D.C. and Los Angeles. The Arizona director of the Department of Public Safety has said crime is so bad that citizens who feel comfortable with guns should learn to use them and keep them.”
His voice deepened sympathetically. “It’s a hell of a thing, honey, and I wish it weren’t so. But I’d rather you were kind of unhappy with me than running into trouble.”
He changed the subject, asking about her work and life in Houston while telling her about his plans to raise enough alfalfa to keep the cows fed in spite of drouth. “We’re growing some now,” he said, pointing across the valley to fields where a soft hesitant green was darkening the plowed soil. “But to sustain the herds, we’re going to have to produce a lot more.”
Cattle, mostly dark red with white faces, were loitering near a metal water tank by a windmill. Old-fashioned corrals of mesquite poles placed horizontally between uprights were partially shaded by big mesquites and oaks. A salt block was licked to a crescent by patient tongues.
“Most of these go to market this fall,” Judd said. “I’m trying to get another Santa Gertrudis bull, keep breeding to that strain. They’re Hereford enough for good beef and Brahma enough to stand the heat and hustle.”
T
hat breed developed by the famed King Ranch in Texas had spread throughout the world where cattle foraged in arid country. Patrick had bought the first Santa Gertrudis bull and cows. The tough little “black” Mexican cattle and the Texas chinos that Patrick O’Shea had worked with had long ago been culled out to make room for heavier animals that yielded tenderer, fat-marbled meat.
“Not much for them to eat,” she worried, looking around at the closely grazed land.
“There’s plenty away from the tank.” Judd grinned. “They’re just like people—get the easy pickings first.”
They made an irregular loop through the ranch, stopping at several camps where vaqueros were seeing to the calving. In cases where the mother had died, they tried to get a cow who’d lost her calf to accept the orphan by tying the dead calf’s hide around it. The hide could be taken off in a few days after she’d adopted the little waif.
The southern extent of the ranch was the Mexican border, discernible by stone boundary markers and an ordinary fence. Heading north again, the jeep trail was often in sight of fences enclosing considerably better grass. Tracy thought it must be El Charco land, but didn’t want to ask and set Judd off.
“Where do you have this Stronghold school?” she asked.
“I’ll show you this weekend.” Not far from the wash where she’d found the ringtail, Judd took a set of ruts that circled wide around the new ranch house, brought them barely in sight of the old one and crossed the highway.
Driving up a cañon with a sparkling stream of water gurgling over many-colored rocks and detouring boulders, they left desert growth behind them as they gradually ascended the dirt road that wound deeper and higher into the mountains amid pines and tall oaks. Rich chocolatey-red manzanita limbs were beginning to show tiny pink flowers among olive leaves. Giant alligator junipers often showed hopeful green on one part, though the rest might be charred by fire or lightning. Redolent of pine needles, the air was intoxicating.
Abruptly, the road dropped down to the stream and stopped. So did the RV. Judd got a gun and holster out of the back, buckled on the holster, thonging it snug above his knee, then loaded the chamber, grinning at Tracy.
A Mating of Hawks Page 8
