Lone Calder Star (4 page)

about me, Mom."

"I'm not," she said with ease. "I don't think you realize how proud I am that Jessy wanted you to put things back in order at the Cee Bar. It shows that she recognizes you can shoulder that kind of responsibility. I hope you can see that so we won't have to argue anymore about how much of an asset you can be to the Triple C."

"We would just argue about something else," Quint teased.

That drew the expected protest from her. They talked a few minutes more before exchanging final good-byes. Quint hung up and finished his coffee, then unhooked his denim jacket from the chair back and headed out the door.

The instant the screen door banged shut behind him, the rusty red chickens in the yard ran to meet him, clucking noisily. Their clamor was echoed by the eager whickering of the horses in the small fenced pasture next to the barn.

"We all have empty stomachs this morning, don't we?" Quint remarked as the chickens crowded around him, clucking and flapping their wings.

They trailed after him, running to keep up with his long strides as he struck out for the barn. The grain barrel was empty of all but the bottom leavings. He dumped that out for the chickens and looked through the rest of the barn. He found a half dozen eggs, but only one square hay bale.

He used an empty grain bucket for an egg basket and set it out by the barn door. The four horses in the corral broke into eager whickers at the sight of Quint with the bucket. A big bay gelding whinned a shrill protest when he disappeared back inside the barn.

A few seconds later Quint emerged from its shadows, carrying the bale by its twine. Short of the fence, he broke the bale apart and, one by one, tossed its squares into the corral. The landing of the first brought a flurry of flying hooves and bared teeth, but the squabbling soon ended as each horse tore eagerly into its own mound of hay. He watched in grim silence, aware there was too littIe hay to satisfy their empty bellies and that the few patches of grass in the large corral had already been chewed to the roots.

It was one more thing Quint held against the former ranch manager. Walking off the job without telling anyone was bad enough, but leaving without turning the horses loose was something that Quint couldn't easily forgive.

After dragging a hose from the barn and filling the corral's water tank, Quint carried the egg pail to the house and scrambled some eggs. Breakfast finished and washed down with a second cup of coffee, he added his own dirty dishes to the ones still soaking in the sink, stuck the grocery list in his shirt pocket, and plucked the iginion key to the ranch pickup from its hook by the back door.

He wasted thirty minutes trying to get the truck to start before he gave up and climbed behind the wheel of the rental car.

Located well off the more heavily traveled routes, the town of Loury attracted mainly local traffic. Downtown had a deserted feel to it when Quint drove through that morning. The breakfast crowd at the Corner Cafe had already come and gone, and it was too early for the town's old-timers to gather there for coffee and their morning bull session.

The grocery store had seven cars in its lot. Quint bypassed it for the time being and drove straight to the feed store on the east end of town. He pulled into the graveled lot and parked next to two pickups that stood in front of the metal building. When he climbed out of the sedan, his glance flicked to the passenger door panel of the truck beside him, and the sign painted on it that read SYKES FEED & GRAIN. The words were an echo of the board sign above the door.

A chalky white dust coated the front windowpanes, obscuring Quint's view of the interior. But an ingrained caution had him scanning the dim interior for any sign of movement. Upon entering the feed store, he automatically stepped to one side, well clear of the glass door.

Dust motes danced in the few shafts of sunlight that penetrated the windows, and the air had that familiar, musty smell of grain. A grumbling murmur of male voices came from the open doorway that connected the store with its warehouse area.

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Quint glanced in their direction just as a female voice called out a somewhat absent "Be right with you."

Quint was quick to locate the woman. She was seated at a desk well to the rear of the front counter, facing a computer screen, her back to the door. At almost the same instant, he caught the faint, tinny tap of fingers moving rapidly over a keyboard.

He crossed to the counter and idly leaned a hip against it to wait until she was through. After another thirty seconds, she swung her chair around and stood up. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that stopped at midhip. A cap, emblazoned with the name Sykes Feed & Grain, covered her head, its bill casting a shadow on her face.

As she approached the counter, something about the way she walked nagged at Quint. Not until his curious glance encountered her pale brown eyes did recognition strike. It was Dallas, the waitress from the Corner Cafe. Pleasure kicked through him, warm and unexpected. He smiled when she faltered in midstride, revealing her own surprise at seeing him again.

"I thought you would have been long gone." Her mouth curved in a small smile that seemed to say that she was glad he wasn't. " And I thought you'd be in school."

"School!" 'There was a note of increduality in her short, amused laugh.

Then understanding dawned in her expression. "You must have seen me studying. I go to college three nights a week. Second year " I)espite her attempt to sound matter-of-fact, a faint note of pride crept into her voice.

" You're in college?" His initial assessment of her underwent a rapid revision as he added a few more years to her age.

" That's right," Dallas replied, then hesitated, a flicker of regret shadowing her eyes. "If you're here about a job, I can tell you now -they aren't hiring."

" No problem. I'm here to get some grain."

She shot him a quick, curious look, then masked it with an air easy efficiency. "You came to the right place. What do you need?"

"One hundred and fifty pounds each of corn and oats, and a hundred pounds of top dress-whatever you carry in the way of a vitamin and mineral pack," Quint replied, as two men filed into the store from the warehouse.

The taller of the two had a round beer belly and sharp eyes that sized Quint up as a stranger. He threw him a curt nod and mumbled, "Mornin'."

Quint nodded back.

"Cash or charge?" Dallas asked him.

"Put it on the Cee Bar account," Quint told her.

Her head snapped up, her look one of disbelief. Before she could say a word, the big man snapped gruffly, "The Cee Bar

doesn't have an account here."

"Since when?" Quint asked in cool challenge.

The big man hitched his pants higher around his fat belly and swaggered over to the counter, his bulk forcing Dallas to the side.

"Since it got closed," the man replied, matching Quint's tone. Quint didn't hesitate. "In that case, I'll pay cash." He pulled a wallet from of his hip pocket. "You do take cash, don't you?"

Clearly annoyed, the man shifted his glare to Dallas. "What's he wanting?"

She seemed to deliberately avoid any eye contact with Quint as she read off his request.

When she finished the man grunted and turned his narrowed eyes on Quint. "There's nobody here to load it for you. Come back in an hour or so, and we'll see if we can't get you fixed up."

"No problem. I'll load it myself." Retaining an outward calm, Quint flipped open his wallet and said to Dallas, "How much do I owe you?"

For a long tick of seconds, his question was met with a heavy silence. Never once did Quint acknowledge the hard stare the man directed at him. Instead he kept his attention centered on
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the sheaf of bills in his wallet.

Finally the man swung a cold look at Dallas and snapped, "Take his money an' show him where it's at." Off he stalked to the desk area.

Her face was an expressionless mask as she punched the sale into the computerized register, took his money, and handed him back the correct change and a printed receipt. Not once during the entire transaction did she meet his steady gaze.

"This way." Dallas seemed to push the two words through clenched teeth as she pivoted sharply toward the warehouse door.

She crossed the intervening space with quick, stiff strides. Quint followed at a seemingly leisurely pace, conscious of the anger that emanated from her in waves.

"Corn there. Oats here." She pointed to two separate rows of fifty-pound bags stacked on wooden pallets.

"Thanks." He continued past her, dragged the first sack partway off the stack, and hoisted it onto one shoulder. As he turned to carry it out to the car, he saw Dallas manhandling a fifty-pound sack of vitamin and mineral pack onto her shoulder. "I can get that," he said.

"So can I," she retorted.

Quint smiled crookcdly. "You sound like my aunt," he said, knowing it was exactly the sort of thing Jessy would say.

"I hope she's brighter than you are," Dallas stated, without so so much as a glance in his direction as she headed for the wide door that led outside.

But only a deaf person would have missed the caustic sarcasm in her voice. And Quint was far from deaf. He stiffened with a sudden surge of anger and followed her out of the warehouse all the way to his car. He held his tongue long enough to pop the trunk open and dump the sack of corn into it.

"Would you care to repeat that?" he challenged cooly as he hauled the bag off her shoulder and tossed it on top of the other.

She squared around to face him, her glance raking him with a look of disgust mixed with contempt. "You are an utter fool," she decIared. "John Earl warned you about going to work at the Cee Bar, but you were too stupid to listen. Obviously you don't have the brains God gave a goose."

A fury, hotter than anything Quint had ever known, swept through him. Before he had a chance to unleash any of it, she spun away and struck out for the warehouse, shoulders straight and head high. Quint was slow to follow as he struggled to rein in his temper, unable to recall a time when he had come this close to losing it ,simply because some woman with light brown eyes thought he was a fool.

Mouth firmly shut, he went back inside the warehouse and met her on her way out, toting another bag of the vitamin and mineral pack. "I'll take that." Giving Dallas no chance to object, he relieved her of the sack and shifted it onto his shoulder.

Strong fingers gripped his arm, checking his swing away from Iter. She threw a quick, wary look in the direction of the feed store, then said in a low voice that wouldn't carry, "Get smart. Dump this grain off at the ranch, then climb back in your car and get the hell out of there."

"Not a chance."

She stepped back, something resembling sadness in the look she gave him. "Like l said, you're a fool."

"Everybody's entitled to an opinion," Quint stated and walked out of the warehouse.

Dallas lingered a moment, half irritated that she had wasted her breath on him. He had already been warned once. She wasn't sure why she had bothered to do it a second time. He was nothing to her, just a good-looking cowboy new to the area-who had obviously landed on his head a few too many times. But that always seemed to be true of the good-looking ones, she thought wryly.

But no amount of reasoning could rid her of that heavy feeling she had when she went back into the feed store. When she started toward the computer and the rest of the grain shipment waiting
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to be added to the inventory, her glance skipped to the dusty windows, catching a glimpse of the cowboy on his way back into the warehouse.

Her boss Holly Sykes was at his desk, his chair tilted at a precarious angle and the phone pressed to his ear. As loud as the bell in the warehouse was set, Dallas knew she would have heard the ring of any incoming call. Which could only mean Sykes had instigated the phone call. Dallas didn't think she needed three guesses to figure out who that was. It was bound to be either Max Rutledge or his son Boone.

That old feeling of resentment left a bitter taste in her mouth when she sat down at the computer and reopened the inventory file. Only half of her attention was on the work before her; the rest was tuned to the one-sided phone conversation.

"He never blinked an eye when I told him the account was closed," Holly Sykes declared. "He just pulled out his wallet and said he'd pay cash for it." There was a lengthy pause while he listened. "No, he didn't give his name, and I had no call to ask for it with him paying cash."

Another pause followed. "He looked like your ordinary cowboy-tall, dark-haired, on the young side. Didn't talk like he was from around here." The third pause was much shorter. "No problem. I figured you'd want to know about this guy."

The desk chair screeched noisily as Sykes rocked his considerable bulk forward and hung up the phone. The front door opened and Sykes demanded, "Is there something else you need?"

Quint paused inside the door. "Do you know of anybody with hay for sale?"

"Not off the top of my head, but you're welcome to post a notice on the board over there."

Sykes waved a hand at the bulletin board on the wall by the door. Its surface was already cluttered wIth a mix of posters advertising the stud services of local stalhons and scraps of paper offering to sell anything from vehicles and trailers to dogs and vegetables.

Quint walked over to the counter. "Do you have some paper for me to use?"

"Get him some, Dallas," Sykes ordered.

Feeling oddly reluctant to face the stranger again, Dallas tore a page off the notepad on her desk, walked back to the counter, and handed it to him.

"Thanks."

But there was a coolness in his look that stung. Dallas supposed she deserved it after the things she'd said to him. Yet she found herself missing the easy warmth that had been in his gray eyes all the previous times. She waited at the counter while he jotted his message on the paper, telling herself that the sooner he found out there was nobody around here he could trust, the better off he would be.