A Mating of Hawks (16 page)

“Where is Geronimo?”

“He and Mary went to Nogales. They'll be late.”

“Just when I need him!” Shea frowned. “Well, we'll make do.” Without being asked, he followed her inside, glanced around in reluctant approval. “Looks pretty comfortable.”

“It is,” she said harshly, furious in remembering the times she'd wished him here, sitting down to a meal, reading by the stove at night, but most of all, loving each other or sleeping beneath the blue-and-white quilt.

As if he read her thought, he peered inside the bedroom, turned to her with a spreading grin and maddening confidence. Crossing to her, he set his hands at the front of her robe and opened it to his gaze.

“No,” said Tracy in a voice that shook. “What do you think I am?”

“A woman.” The derisive tone cut like a razor, though his smile was amiable. “That's all right, honey. If you get desperate before I do, you know where to find me.”

“There are other men!” she flamed.

“Sure.” From the doorway, he caressed the Ridgeback. “That's why I gave you Le Moyne.”

Before she could figure that out, he was gone.

Concealed in the blind next morning, trying not to think of Shea, she got pictures of a doe with twin fawns, a dozen javelina and some coatis that came bounding along the stream and, alarmed by something, climbed trees where they perched like a cross between anteater, monkey and raccoon.

Back at the cabin, mollifying the imprisoned Le Moyne with one of her hotcakes, she breakfasted and then spaded the best soil she could find for her garden. The ground was so dry that she wetted it down with the hose in order to get the spade in. It would have to be fenced but that could wait a few days.

Though she had to keep shoving away memories that made her ache with longing, she doggedly planted carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and the garlic and marigolds that were supposed to keep off insects, took a shower and went to see Patrick.

He was amused at her excitement over the little garden. “Sounds great—if you're a rabbit.” He added, in a tone of relief, that Judd had made arrangements to lease land short-term from a neighboring ranch which had switched to raising quarter horses and didn't need so much graze.

“So that's settled.” He tweaked Mary's long black braid as she brought him his tequila. “This one's in love, I bet. She's hardly said a word all morning.”

“I'm not in love,” Mary said belligerently. “That Geronimo!” She blew out her cheeks and expressively let the air escape. “He's got the weirdest old-fashioned ideas!”

“Such as?” queried Patrick.

Mary blushed. “He wants to get married.”

She sounded so annoyed that Tracy laughed and Patrick hooted. “Showing more sense than I thought he had. What's wrong with that, Mary
mía?”

Thrusting her hands in her worn jeans pockets, Mary stared out the window at the mountains. “He doesn't want his wife to work on cars and trucks.” She snorted. “He thinks I should stay in the damned house, cook his meals and have his babies. Hell's bells, Patrick! I can do that and still be a mechanic.”

“Mm-hm,” said Patrick mildly. “How do you feel about him?”

Mary blushed again, looking young and vulnerable. “Even if I was crazy about the big goofus, I wouldn't let him tell me what a woman should be! He can take what I am or look someplace else!”

“‘Little bronco that would not be broken of dancing,'” Patrick quoted with a rueful smile. “Geronimo's a good man, honey.”

“His ideas are moldier than last year's cheese,” she sniffed, turning. “And now,
patrón
, it's time we got you shaved!”

Patrick drooped his movable eyelid at Tracy. “She does that when she wants to shut me up,” he complained. “Sing for us, Tracy, so she can't scold while I'm at her mercy.”

Though she didn't play each time she came, Tracy always brought her guitar. She played while Mary shaved Patrick and trimmed his curly white mane. By then, he was asleep.

The two young women looked at each other. Tracy was sure they were making the same wish: that Patrick would go like that, drifting into sleep lulled by music and gentle hands.

Both stiffened as they heard the click of Vashti's sandals. Barely nodding at either woman, the shapely blonde glided to Patrick and took his hand.

“Dearest,” she said brightly, “that nice Mr. Fricks is here.”

“That damned developer, you mean?”

Vashti winced. “Patrick, love! His company, Vistas Unlimited, does only the most tasteful, quality kind of place. He's got a wonderful idea—”

“I don't want to hear it.”

The dark-green eyes glittered but she swallowed and kept control of her voice. “Patrick, even Judd thinks we should sell off that worn-out area around the old house and highway.”

“Over my dead body!”

“You won't even see Mr. Fricks after he flew down from Phoenix to talk to you?”

“Especially not since he did.” Patrick freed his hand from hers. “You'd better go keep him company so he won't think his trip's been a complete loss. Just be sure he knows I'm not selling.”

Vashti glared speechlessly at her blind husband. Then, her back rigid with anger, she swept past Tracy and clicked down the hall and stairs.

Patrick let out a sighing breath and softly, fervently, swore. Mary, without being asked, brought him a drink. He tossed half of it down, then said reflectively, “I got thrown by a horse once up in the Santa Ritas. Had a bad concussion, lay there a couple of days. When I really came to, a couple of buzzards were sidling around. Smelled like whatever they'd been eating and had those bald red heads. Let me tell you, I sat up in a hurry!”

He glanced toward the mountains he couldn't see. “That's how I feel now,” he said, and finished his drink.

Tracy was fixing supper when she heard a vehicle across the stream. Looking out the window, she saw Vashti's Cadillac and wondered what had induced her to bring the car up the narrow road with its scratching shrubs and branches. A man got out, too, and followed Vashti across the log. They walked toward the hot spring.

Fricks of Vistas Unlimited? It would seem he hadn't gotten Patrick's message. Tracy moved her egg foo yung to the table and, with Le Moyne, sauntered to the spring.

Vashti's eyes flashed a warning as she gave a tight smile and said, “Tracy, dear, this is Hal Fricks. Hal, Tracy is Patrick's adopted daughter. She's living in the line shack while she works on a wildlife picture book. Isn't that quaint?”

Hal Fricks had carefully styled blow-dry hair the same sand color as his eyes, suit and moustache. His tanned skin suggested sunlamps or a lot of time by the swimming pool. He might have been forty. His smile, as he reached for Tracy's unenthusiastic hand, radiated charm.

“Tracy, what a pleasure!” His voice was pitched to virile intimacy. “And what a marvelous spot! I'm sure Vashti has told you of Vistas' plans to share it with a select group who'll respect and appreciate it.”

“Last Spring?” Tracy blinked.

Vashti smoothly interposed. “Patrick was too tired to listen, dear, but the wonderful idea Hal wanted to discuss with him would involve this area as well as the land across the highway.”

“Or we'd even buy this part by itself if Mr. Scott wants to retain the old house section for sentimental reasons.” Fricks's glance was warmly confidential. “With this spring for a spa-like attraction, we could launch our condos here and later spread out.”

Stunned, but not eager to antagonize Patrick's wife, who so obviously still had the power to make him unhappy though she lacked either the will or ability to cheer him, Tracy spoke with care.

“Mr. Fricks, I don't think my great-uncle has the slightest intention of selling any land.”

Fricks's smile stayed in place though he turned questioningly to Vashti. “Isn't Judd his manager?”

“Yes.” Vashti slanted a murderous look at Tracy. “But as I've told you, Hal, my husband is like most strong-willed men of action who suddenly become physically dependent. He sees plots in the most reasonable suggestions.” She smiled dazzlingly, putting her hand on Fricks's arm. “I'm sure he'll come round, but he has to be humored.”

“I can't wait too long to settle on a location,” Fricks warned. “This is superb, but we have firm commitments and there are other possibilities.” Gazing at Tracy, he upped the voltage of his smile. “You must have a lot of influence with your uncle, Tracy. I expect we could give you a condo custom-made to your tastes if you could convince him that it's almost criminal to let such a beautiful place go to waste.”

Outraged, Tracy spun away. “The best you can hope for is that I won't tell him what you just said,” she threw over her shoulder. “And the only reason I won't is because he doesn't need any more trouble! He won't sell to you, Mr. Fricks, so you'd better look elsewhere!”

She didn't look back till she was inside the house. By then, the Cadillac was pulling away. She sank down on the floor by Le Moyne and wept with helpless anger against his neck. Why did Patrick have to be blind and paralyzed? And why didn't Shea help him?

X

Wednesday she arrived at the ranch in time to lunch with Patrick. Judd joined them for pecan pie and coffee. Though they'd be spending the afternoon in his plane, he wore his hand-stitched alligator boots and tailored ranch clothes that fitted like second skin to his splendidly proportioned muscular body.

“Lost many calves?” Patrick asked, stirring restlessly.

“Just a couple. And two young heifers didn't make it. Pretty good season.”

“That new graze working out?”

Judd smiled. “Just fine. If you'd let me put some more land in alfalfa—”

“We don't have that kind of water.”

“But Dad—”

“I can see feeding in winter,” Patrick snapped. “But when the herds can't make it through the summer, it's time to thin till they can.”

Square jaw clamping, Judd said, “They'll make it.” He rose in one lithe motion. “Well, Tracy? Ready to see how the old homestead looks from the air?”

“You be careful with her,” Patrick growled. He didn't like airplanes.

Judd grinned down at Tracy as he took her arm. “I'll be careful, Dad—as she wants me to be.” Restored to good humor, Patrick chortled.

Pausing at the top of the stairs, Judd tilted her face up and gave her a quick kiss. “How careful do I have to be?” he asked with mock solemnity.

“As careful as you can, and then some.” She laughed, slipping free to precede him down the stairs. Vashti appeared at the bottom, striking in soft wool-crepe jade tunic and trousers.

“How lovely that you're getting an air tour, Tracy!” she greeted. “May I come along?”

Judd's tone was bland but his tawny eyes pressed at his stepmother. “You've seen it all before, Ti. Patrick's expecting you.”

She didn't protest but her mouth tucked down. Tracy uneasily felt that those green-black eyes were following them, and not with good will.

“You're not very nice to Vashti,” she said as they passed the tennis court.

Judd shrugged. “She crowds.”

It was something more than that, an element of dominance and submission that jarred Tracy as being out of place between a man and his father's wife. “It's dull for her here.”

“Not terribly. She got in hours of swimming and tennis with Hal Fricks before he left this morning. When her stream of company slacks too much, she takes a trip.”

Vashti could undeniably take care of herself. Tracy dropped that subject and asked Judd point blank if he favored selling the land called Last Spring.

“That depends on the offer.”

“But Patrick doesn't want to!”

Judd patted her knee and helped strap her into the seat next to him. “Look, baby, Patrick's still the boss. I'll not buck and pitch with him in no shape to fight back. But he won't live forever.”

“He's only sixty-one.”

“He's blind and paralyzed.” Judd's voice dropped. “Can you want him to go on like that for years?”

She couldn't, wouldn't, answer.

Judd gave her a comforting yet admonitory one-armed hug. “Don't worry about it, sweetheart. Dad'll get his way while he lives, even if it is damn nonsense. After that—well, I'll do what I think is best for the ranch. Hell, I love it just as much as he does!” He laughed as they climbed upward. “Okay, cousin! Settle back and enjoy the empire!”

The vastness astounded her. Over 200,000 acres, including that leased from the government, stretched from the jagged cañon above Last Spring to the Mexican border, broad valleys and plains marked with sandy washes and protected by hills. Apart from the forested region around Last Spring, it was a sere brown-yellow except where live oak groves sheltered cattle and horses, or along the creeks and bigger washes where cottonwoods, sycamores, walnuts and mesquites were leafing into tender green.

The velvet lushness of the irrigated fields seemed an insult to the rest of the parched land. It was all too easy to see the stark barrenness surrounding the old ranch house, but it jarred Tracy less than the sparkling pool and oasis of shrubbery and lawn at the new one.

Windmills pumped into concrete or metal tanks near line shacks. Apart from Shea's, there were two sub-ranches, each a cluster of adobes, outbuildings and corrals.

“What's going on at Stronghold?” Tracy asked as they soared over it. Below, she could see several dozen men going through what seemed to be a tightly controlled gun drill.

“Pardo's training some guys who wanted the real stuff,” Judd said briefly. He pointed as they flew over several ramadas and small adobes. “The El Charco ranch house sort of melted back into the mud when Shea moved over, but he hasn't replaced it. Be damned if they're not all lazing around under that first ramada!” Judd squinted. “There's four of them. Shea's probably sheltering some wetback though God knows what he can find for one to do.”