“To commence your education, doll, this is a forty-four-caliber Smith and Wesson Magnum. It’s the only handgun to bring down big game, uses a two-twenty-grain bullet. I have only four of those in here. The other two are snake shot, number eight, good up to about ten yards for snakes and small varmints.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t kill anything unless it jumps on us.”
“Nothing’s going to do that unless it’s got hydrophobia,” he scoffed.
“Then why kill it?”
“Hell, coyotes and wildcats kill calves!”
“They kill a lot more rabbits and rodents. Our outdoor editor told me five rabbits eat as much as a cow.”
“Coyotes are no damn good.” Judd spat against a rock. “If you don’t care about calves, how about the fawns they put away?”
“Deer are beautiful, but our editor told me their natural enemies have been killed out till they often overrun an area and begin to starve. Then the hunters have to come in and ‘mercifully’ thin them out.”
His golden eyes widened. “You rather they starved?”
“I’d rather people quit messing with natural balance. What happened when they killed out the predators in the Kaibab forest up by the Grand Canyon? Deer multiplied till they starved in droves. That was in 1906 and the country still bears the scars.”
“I suppose you don’t believe in poisoning coyotes!”
“Damn right I don’t! Even if I believed in wholesale extermination of coyotes, which I don’t, you can’t poison them without getting a whole bunch of other animals. Anyhow, coyotes clean up carrion. I imagine a lot of the calves they get were already dead or so feeble they couldn’t make it.”
He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears, ran his hand through his close-clipped hair. She could almost see him deciding to make allowances for her female ignorance. “You’ve been away too long, Tracy. Got brainwashed by city people who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.” He gave her a brief, conciliatory hug. “Come on, let’s amble up to the spring and have lunch.” He laughed and brushed a kiss across her ear. “I’m hungry as a—as a coyote!”
They crossed the stream on boulders rising above the flow, Judd surefooted in spite of the food cooler and blanket he carried, and were in a lovely basin perhaps a mile wide. Enclosed by pine-covered slopes and rose-gold sandstone palisades, the center of the park had better grass than the rest of the ranch, and white-trunked stands of aspens patterned themselves ethereally against somber pines.
A small log cabin stood in a broad clearing, shaded by an immense oak. The log outhouse was tucked discreetly among young aspens. A shed stood by an old corral. There was a hand-pump outside the cabin, and firewood stacked beneath the roof that extended out far enough to form an outside room. She’d forgotten the old line shack, but it struck her at once as a wonderful place to escape the troublous politics of Vashti’s house. Without lying a bit, she could say it was a much better place for photographing wildlife.
“No one seems to be using this,” she said.
“Not for years on a regular basis. This is just a small pocket in the National Forest, a hundred acres, homesteaded for the spring. Can’t run enough cattle to make it worthwhile. Some developers have offered a bundle for it but Dad’s stubborn as a mule when it comes to getting rid of any of the original holdings.”
Tracy wandered over and opened the creaky door. Not so bad as she’d expected. One big room with a wood cookstove, table and chairs, and a small bedroom. The old iron bedstead was intricately scrolled and the springs were in good shape, but there was no mattress. Pegs for clothes, a chest of drawers with a tin-framed Mexican mirror above it.
All the furniture was homemade, rough and sturdy. The shelves in the main room held a few old books and magazines and a supply of canned foods, dishes and cooking utensils. A neatly lettered yellowing sign said in Spanish and English: “Eat if you are hungry, and be welcome. Please cut wood to replace what you use and leave everything in good order.”
By ranch tradition, such signs were in all the line shacks. Shelter and food could save the lives of lost hikers or hunters, but Mexican workers, illegal or legal, probably benefited most.
Judd’s lips thinned. He crumpled the old cardboard and stuck it in the stove. “We ought to stop encouraging drifters and bums, but Patrick won’t hear of locking the shacks and keeping food out of them.”
Tracy glanced around at the neat, though dusty and cobwebbed rooms. “No one seems to be abusing the policy.”
“It’s asking for trouble,” Judd said flatly. “Let’s go on up to the spring.” As he steered her out of the house, his hand was warm beneath her elbow, and he laughed down at her. “Bring your bikini?”
“Darn it, no,” she groaned. “And that’s a terrific warm spring! I used to luxuriate in that big rock bathtub.”
“Skinny-dipping?”
“What else?”
“Don’t let me stop you,” he challenged. “I’ll even turn my head.”
“Thanks, but I’ll give it a miss today.”
“Cowardy-cat!”
“You bet.”
He put down the cooler and flipped the blanket as they reached the natural stone basin where the spring flowed from a cleft in the rocks, before overflowing and forming the stream that ran down the cañon. Dappled sun played on rocks and water, clinching Tracy’s decision.
If Patrick consented, she was moving over here. She could visit him every day, but be out of range of Vashti’s moods—and Judd’s charm that might sweep her into an affair with him, when it was that maddening, unexplainable half-brother of his that she loved.
She had no intention of capitulating to Shea’s contemptuous terms, but in spite of all he’d said she didn’t want anything to block his way if he decided to move toward her.
Judd made a muffled sound and took her in his arms. Startled, she pushed vainly at his chest but he laughed and set his hand behind her head, holding her as his mouth closed on hers, hard and sure and smiling. Strength drained from her. Molten, heavy blood weighed her down. But she didn’t want to feel this way, not with anyone but Shea.
If he could see them—A flash of gray eyes seared her. She wrested her lips away with a sobbing gasp.
Judd released her. “You leave some guy in Houston? Or are you still shook up over that psycho? If it’s that, doll baby, you can’t freeze up forever.”
“I—” She searched for an explanation that wouldn’t involve his pride, though she swore at doing so. Why should a woman have to apologize if she didn’t care to have sex with a man? She gave a shaky laugh. “I guess it feels like incest, Judd.”
He roared at that, showed the tip of his little finger. “About that much we’re related! Hell, we could get a dispensation from the Pope!”
“All the same,” she said firmly. In control of herself once more, she knelt and began to get out the food.
Judd signed, poured wine into plastic glasses, and said, “That’s not it, cousin. Those electric charges between us sure aren’t incest. It must be what that creep in Houston did.”
It was a better excuse than hers. But he had a cure. “Tracy, sweetheart, the best way to kick that is to erase it with some mighty good lovemaking.”
The way an electric brush rubs off scars? When she said nothing, he handed her a glass, clicked his own to it. “I want you, Tracy. But I’m not a horny kid. I can be patient.” He swallowed his wine in one draught and laughed, teeth very white in his brown face. “To a point.”
VII
Vashti’s first look of relief at Tracy’s decision to move was followed by a narrowing of dark-green eyes. “I can understand your needing more solitude for your work, dear, but way off like that in the wilds! We can find something closer to us. In fact, there’s quite a cozy worker’s cottage empty down behind the swimming-pool wall.”
“Thanks, but to get the sort of wildlife shots I need, I’ll have to be fairly remote.” They were in Patrick’s room, where she’d made the an
nouncement, and now she turned to him, taking his hand. “No one’s using the cabin, Patrick. Won’t it be all right if I do?”
“I’ve sheltered there many a night,” he remembered. “Prettiest place on the whole ranch.” The left side of his mouth tugged up mischievously. “Guess you aren’t scared of those scalp-hunters’ ghosts?”
It was the terror by night, the terror inside, the strangling grip of a man’s hands and cruel body, that still brought her nightmares and woke her with her own screams.
“Those scalpers ceased to be a problem to anyone over one hundred and thirty years ago,” she said.
“But illegals—” protested Vashti. Her lips pinched thinner. “Thanks to you, Patrick, they consider our line shacks Triple-A approved motels!”
He said mildly, “The people who started this ranch came up from Mexico before this area belonged to the United States, and Patrick O’Shea was a refugee from Ireland’s potato famine. Marc Revier fled political tyranny in Germany, Talitha’s Mormon family had been hounded out of the States. Hell, Vashti, only the Indians were here to begin with!”
“All very stirring,” she gibed, “but illegals are overrunning the border from Texas to California, and something’s got to be done about it.”
Patrick hitched his good shoulder. Iron replaced the dogged mildness. “As long as I’m alive, there’ll be shelter and food for those that come this way.” He squeezed Tracy’s hand. “Use the cabin and welcome, honey, but you’ll come see me?”
“Every day, if I can have the use of a vehicle or horse.”
“You’ll have both,” he said. “And any furniture you need. But there’s no electricity. We’ll get that put in, and a phone.”
“Not just yet,” she said. “Let me be sure it’s going to work before anyone goes to a lot of trouble.”
“Very wise,” Vashti approved. “And don’t stay there out of stubbornness, dear, if you find it vilely uncomfortable and lonesome.”
“It sounds like a super place,” Mary said.
“Well, why don’t you help her get settled?” Patrick suggested. “Get the egg off my chin after breakfast in the morning and take the rest of the day off.”
“But—”
Vashti looked irritated but gave a small shrug. “It’s all right, Mary. Concha and I have to manage on your regular days off so one more hardly matters.”
“Concha and I can manage when it comes to that,” Patrick said with a gruffness that didn’t conceal his wince at Vashti’s long-suffering tone. “Go swim and sun, Vashti. Fly to town. Or go to hell!” His voice choked off before he added fiercely, with a glare of his sightless eyes, “I don’t want anyone in this room who doesn’t want to be here!”
“Darling!” Vashti wailed. “I didn’t mean it like that! You—you’ve gotten so touchy and unreasonable!” She bent over him. To Tracy’s astonishment, a few tears splashed on his veined hand. “I—I love you, Patrick. It just kills me to see you like this. If you’re going to start thinking—”
Awkwardly, he patted her hand, “Don’t, baby! I know it’s a hell of a thing for you.”
Exchanging incredulous glances, Tracy and Mary went quietly out. “Maybe I’ve been doing her wrong,” Tracy said.
Mary cocked a dark eyebrow. “That one? Not a chance.”
“She couldn’t have expected this when she married Patrick. She’s a young, vital woman and—”
“She doesn’t spend a minute more than she has to with him and when she touches or kisses him—well, it’s in every line of her! She’d as soon kiss a corpse.”
It was almost what Vashti herself had said. “She could feel that way and still love him,” Tracy argued.
Mary shook her head. “You need a keeper, lady—or a bodyguard. Don’t you know why she wasn’t keen on your using that cabin?”
“It was clear she wasn’t but why it should matter to her is beyond me.”
Mary started to burst out with something, then bit it back. “Anyhow, it sounds like a nifty place. Can I come see you on my days off?”
“I hope you will. We can go to town once in a while if you like. I’ll have to get groceries and stuff.”
“That’ll be fun, too.” A grim look crossed Mary’s frank face. “I sure like your great-uncle, Tracy. He’s one of that old breed like my grandpa, and we won’t get more like them. But that woman drives me up the wall!”
Tracy’s heart sank. “You aren’t planning to quit?”
“I’m crazy about Patrick and the pay’s good,” said Mary cheerily. A wicked glitter lit her eyes. “When she’s more than I can stomach, I start Patrick on his stories. That sends her off like a cow with a twisted tail!”
“Maybe I should feel sorry for Vashti,” Tracy chuckled. “But I’m mighty glad you’re here so I can leave!”
Lathe-thin Roque Sanchez was summoned to move a mattress, rocking chair, desk and several rugs over to the Last Spring cabin. Tracy and Mary followed in the yellow Toyota, which was loaded with food, bedding, books and other gear.
Roque hitched a chain to a big fallen cottonwood and dragged it across the stream to form a crude bridge, hacking off branches so the top was fairly smooth. The women helped him get the mattress across, swept out the cabin and carried over the Toyota’s contents while he unloaded the big truck.
By noon, everything was in the little house, though most awaited permanent locations. Roque, smiling shyly, accepted their invitation to fried chicken, potato salad, minted iced tea and crusty apple pie. He offered to split more wood before leaving, but Tracy assured him that she would only be cooking a meal a day so the present supply should last a while. He showed her how to work the damper, filled the reservoir with water, pumped two steel buckets full and left somewhat reluctantly.
“He’s too polite to say so, but I’m sure the Sanchezes all think I’m insane,” Tracy grinned, as she poured more tea from the thermos.
“No more iced tea,” Mary reminded. “And no instant hot water—or cold, for that matter.”
“I will miss a shower.”
“And a toilet?”
Tracy shrugged. “That little log outhouse has a lot of charm. I won’t mind at all while it’s warm. And if I’m still here come autumn; that’ll be time to think about electricity and plumbing.”
She felt silly about putting it into words, but for a time she looked forward to living almost as her ancestresses had. Of course, she had the truck and all the resources of a great ranch half an hour away, but in this nearly untouched basin, it was easy to feel on her own. Mary read her, though, and laughed delightedly.
“Playing pioneer? Tracy, you’re a panic!”
Tracy grinned. “I’ve got one big luxury—that stone bathtub with an unending supply of warm water. What a place to soak! I won’t use soap or shampoo in it, of course, out of respect to the critters that drink from it farther down.”
They washed the windows inside and out and hung the loose-woven natural cotton curtains Concha had volunteered to sew from an Indian bedspread. The braided rug in the main room was colored like autumn leaves, flame, yellow and orange-brown. The rocker had old gold cushions and a footstool to match. Scrubbed shelves were covered with yellow vinyl adhesive, cookware and foodstuffs near the stove, books and a few treasures on the long wall.
The red-tailed hawk carved by James-Fierro was poised on a mesquite gnarl on the highest shelf, commanding the room. Tracy had placed the little blue bird on the bedroom chest beside the old Spanish doll. The oval hooked rug was done in shades of blue and the bed was covered by an old blue-and-white star quilt Great-grandmother Christina had made.
“There!” Mary placed a small hand-blown amber vase filled with dry seed pods and bright fern in the center of the table. “It looks like something right out of a fairy tale—one of those huts Hansel and Gretel or Goldilocks were always poking their noses into!”
“You grew up on those stories?”
Mary wrinkled her pert nose. “Sure. Think I’m disadvantaged or something? But my Ap
ache grandmother told me the ones I liked best. About White-Painted Woman and her son Born-of-the-Water who killed all the monsters.” Mary laughed pridefully. “Her mother was a friend of Lozen, Victorio’s warrior sister and a great medicine woman. And Gran’s uncle was one who stayed in the Mexican Sierra Madre with the Apache Kid and never was caught.”
“Hey, tell Geronimo that! He’s descended from the Kid.”
“Haven’t seen him. Or Shea, either. Patrick won’t say it but I can tell he misses that hardheaded redhead.”
So do I. Tracy turned to hide her face. “Want a revel in the spring before I take you home?”
“That’d be great!”
Mary got a thick towel and took herself off to the immense stone basin a few hundred yards from the cabin. Tracy filled the copper tea kettle, laid a fire ready to be set, and finished distributing her clothes between the curtained pole “closet” Roque had fixed, the chest of drawers and an old leather-bound trunk in the corner.
When Mary returned, glowing from her frolic, long black hair damp, the sun was starting down the western sky. “You sure you don’t want me to stay all night?” Mary asked. “Patrick said I could.”
“Thanks, but I’m sure he misses you already,” Tracy said.
She drove Mary to the house, ran in quickly to tell Patrick how perfect the cabin was. “That’s fine,” he grunted, leveling a warning finger at her. “But you be sure you get over here every day or let me know you’re not coming! Otherwise, I’ll send someone to check.”
With evening coming on, she wasn’t inclined to object to that much mother-henning. “I’ll be over,” she promised, kissed him and thanked Mary again. But when she got downstairs she hesitated.
The gun Judd had given her. Should she take it?
She didn’t approve of a handgun under every pillow, but remembering that terrible night in Houston and the recent encounter with Mary’s attacker, she sighed unhappily, went to her old room and picked up the little automatic.
A Mating of Hawks Page 9
