Outlaw (4 page)

The left corner of Ten's mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment, but he said nothing.

"When are you leaving?" Carla asked quickly, turning toward her brother, Cash. She didn't know why Diana kept edging farther away from Ten but guessed that she would be embarrassed if it were pointed out. By and large the cowhands were kind men, but their humor was both blunt and unrelenting.

"Right after we play poker tonight," Cash said.

"Poker?" Carla groaned.

"Sure. I thought I'd introduce Dr. Saxton to the joys of seven-card stud."

Smiling politely, Diana looked up from her plate. "Thanks, but I'm really tired. Maybe some other time."

The cowhands laughed as though she had made a joke.

"Guess they teach more than stones and bones at that university," Jervis said when the laughter ended. "Must teach some common sense, too."

Diana looked at Carla, who smiled.

"My brother is, er, well..." Carla's voice faded.

"Cash is damned lucky at cards," Ten said succinctly. "He'll clean you down to the lint in your pockets."

"It's true," said Carla. "His real name is Alexander, but anyone who has ever played cards with him calls him Cash."

"In fact," Luke said, pouring gravy over mounds of food, "I'm one of the few men in living memory ever to beat Cash at poker."

Cash smiled slightly and examined his dinner as though he expected it to get up and walk off the plate.

"Of course," Luke continued, "Cash cheated."

Cash's head snapped up.

"He wanted Carla to spend the summer on the Rocking M," Luke said matter-of-factly. "So he suckered her into betting a summer's worth of cooking. Cash won, of course. Then he turned around and carefully lost his sister's whole summer to me." Luke ran his fingertip from Carla's cheekbone to the corner of her smile before he turned to Cash and said quietly, "I never thanked you for giving Carla to me, but not a day goes by that I don't thank God."

Diana looked at the two big men and the woman who sat wholly at ease between them, smiling, her love for her husband and her brother as vivid as the blue-green of her eyes. The men's love for her was equally obvious, almost tangible. An odd aching closed Diana's throat, making an already difficult dinner impossible to swallow.

"I hope you know how lucky you are," she said to Carla. Without warning, Diana pushed back from the table and stood. "I'm afraid I'm too tired to eat. If you'll excuse me, I'll make it an early night."

"Of course," Carla said. "If you're hungry later, just come in the back way and eat whatever looks good. Ten does it all the time."

"Thanks," Diana said, already turning away, eager to be gone from the room full of men.

Nobody said a word until Diana had been gone long enough to be well beyond range of their voices. Then Luke turned, raised his eyebrows questioningly and looked straight at Ten.

"Are you the burr under her saddle?" Luke asked.

There was absolute silence as all the cowhands leaned forward to hear the answer to the question none of them had the nerve to ask their ramrod.

"She saw me take down Baker," Ten said. "Shocked her, I guess. Then I made her hold Nosy while I cut that boil. Now she thinks I'm a cross between Attila the Hun and Jack the Ripper."

Luke grunted. "Nice work, by the way. Baker, I mean. Nosy, too, I suppose. Carla was worried about that fool kitten. Me, I think we have too darn many cats as it is."

Luke caught the light, slow-motion blow Carla aimed at his shoulder. He brushed a kiss over her captive hand and said, "Honey, from now on put Diana next to you at the table. If the pretty professor moves her chair any farther away from Ten, we'll have to serve her food in the kitchen."

The cowhands burst out laughing. For a few minutes more the talk centered around the overly shy professor with the striking blue eyes and very nicely rounded body. Then food began to disappear in earnest and conversation slowed. After dessert vanished as well, so did the cowhands. Cash went upstairs to pack, leaving Ten, Luke and Carla alone to enjoy a final cup of coffee before the evening's work of kitchen cleanup and bookkeeping began.

Ten rubbed his jaw thoughtfully and was rewarded by the rasp of beard stubble. Undoubtedly that, too, had counted against him with the wary professor. Which was too bad—it had been a long time since a woman had interested him quite as much as the one with the frightened eyes and a body that would tempt a saint.

"How do you want to divide up Baker's work?" Luke asked Ten.

"I can take the leased grazing lands over on the divide, but that leaves the Wildfire Canyon springs without a hand."

"I'll take the grazing lands and have Jervis camp over at Wildfire Canyon during the week and weekends at September Canyon."

"That will make for long days for you," Ten said, glancing quickly at Carla. He knew that Luke had been trying to spend as much time as possible with his wife and new son.

"Your days will be even longer," Luke said. "Starting tomorrow, you're ramrodding the dig at September Canyon."

"Jervis can do it. He gets along with the university types real well. You'd never know it to listen to him, but he taught math in Oregon before he took up ranch work."

"You'd never know it to listen to you, either," retorted Luke, "but I happen to know a certain ramrod who speaks three languages and who still gets calls in the middle of the night from official types who want advice on how to get sticky jobs unstuck."

Ten said nothing.

"But they're just going to have to wait in line," Luke continued. "I've got all the trouble you can handle right in September Canyon."

Without moving, Ten became fully alert. Luke saw the change and smiled thinly.

"You expecting some kind of trouble at the site?" Ten asked.

Luke looked at Carla. "Don't I hear Logan crying?" he asked.

"Why don't you go and check?" Carla offered.

The look Luke gave Carla plainly said he wished she weren't listening to what he was saying to Ten. She looked right back, plainly telling Luke that she wasn't leaving without a good reason. Reluctantly he smiled, but when he turned to Ten the smile faded.

"The sheriff called," Luke said. "There's a ring of pothunters working the Four Corners. They dig during the week and avoid the weekends when there are more people in the back country. They're professional and they're tough."

"How tough?"

"They roughed up some folks over in Utah. The Park Service isn't making any noise about it, but the back-country rangers are going armed these days. So are the pothunters."

"Want me to leave now for the site?" Ten asked.

"No. One of the sheriffs men is camping out that way, unofficially. But he's got to be back on the road early tomorrow."

Into the dining room came the clear sound of an unhappy baby. Carla put her hand on Luke's shoulder and pressed down, silently telling him not to get up.

"I'll leave before dawn," Ten said, watching Carla hurry from the room.

"The professor won't like that."

"I'll be quiet," Ten said dryly.

"Don't bother. She's going with you. That little Japanese rice burner of hers wouldn't get four miles up the pasture road, much less across Picture Wash to September Canyon."

Ten smiled rather wolfishly. "She's not going to like being trapped in a truck with me. Or are you sending Carla to ride shotgun?"

"Nope," Luke said cheerfully. "She's got two full-time jobs riding herd on me and the baby."

"That's the problem. We've all got too damn many full-time jobs and not enough hands."

"I put the word out at every ranch for three hundred miles," Luke said, stretching his long arms over his head. "All we can do is wait. Jason Ironcloud promised he'd start breaking horses as soon as his sister's husband is out of jail. Until then, he's got to take care of her ranch."

"What's the husband in for—the usual?" Ten asked.

"Drunk and disorderly."

"The usual."

Luke grunted agreement.

Ten rubbed his raspy chin thoughtfully. "Nevada called. He's pulling out of Afghanistan. He'll be home in a few weeks."

Luke glanced sideways at Ten. "Is he still a renegade?"

"All the Blackthorns are wild. It's the Highland Scots blood."

"Yeah. Outlaws to the bone. Like you. You don't make any noise about it, but you go your own way and to hell with what the rest of the world thinks."

Ten said only, "A few years of guerrilla warfare tends to settle down even the wildest kid."

"You should know."

"Yes. I should know."

Luke nodded and said softly, "Hire him."

Ten looked at Luke. "Thanks. I owe you one."

"No way,
compadre.
I should have been the man to shake the kinks out of Baker, not you."

A slight smile crossed the ramrod's face. "My pleasure."

Luke looked thoughtful. "Does Nevada fight the same way you do?"

"Wouldn't surprise me. He was taught by the same people."

"Good. He can trade off guarding September Canyon with you." Luke sighed and rubbed his neck wearily. "You know, there are days I wish Carla had never found those damn ruins. It's costing us thousands of dollars a year in manpower alone just to keep pothunters out."

"We could do what some of the other ranchers have done."

"What's that?"

"Sell some of the artifacts to pay for protecting the ruins."

"The September Canyon ruins are on your part of the ranch," Luke said, his face expressionless. "Is that what you want to do?"

Ten shook his head. "I'll give the land back to you before I sell off artifacts. Or I'll give the land back to the government if neither one of us can afford to protect the ruins. My head knows that ninety-eight percent of those artifacts aren't uniques—universities and museums are full of Anasazi stuff as good or better. Once the excavation has been carefully done, there's no good reason not to get back the cost of the digging by selling off some of the stuff."

"But?" Luke asked.

Ten shrugged. "But my gut keeps telling me that those artifacts belong in the place where they were made and used and broken and mended and used again. It's pure foolishness but that's how I feel about it, and as long as I can afford it, I plan on keeping my foolish ways."

Luke looked at Ten and said quietly, "If my drunken daddy had sold pieces of the Rocking M to anybody but you, I would have been in a world of hurt with no place to call home."

Ten stood and clapped Luke on the shoulder. "It was an even trade,
compadre.
Back then, I was in a world of hurt and looking for a home."

"You've got the home. What about the hurt? Still have that?"

"I got over it a long time ago."

"Then why haven't you married again?"

"A smart dog doesn't have to be taught the same lesson twice," Ten said sardonically. "I'm a hell of a lot smarter than a dog."

"She must have been something."

"Who?"

"Your ex-wife."

Ten shrugged. "She was honest. That's better than most. When the sex wore off she wanted out. By then I was more than willing. Next time I was smarter. I didn't marry just because my blood was running hot. After a few weeks the same thing happened, only this time the girl didn't want to admit it. I shipped out the first chance I got."

"That was a long time ago. You were a wild kid chasing girls who were
no better than they had to be. You're different now."

Ten shook his head, "You got lucky, Luke. I didn't. You learned one thing about women and marriage. I learned another."

Without giving Luke a chance to speak, Ten left the room. Behind him, Luke sat motionless, listening to the sound of Ten's fading footsteps and the soft thump of a closing door.

₄

As the dirt road zigzagged across national forest lease lands and down the steep side of the high, mountainous plateau where the Rocking M ranch buildings were located, the land became more dry and the earth more intensely colored. Gullies became deeper, rocky cliffs more common, and the creeks and rivers widened into broad, often dry washes winding among spectacular stone-walled canyons. Juniper and pinon mixed with sagebrush, giving the air a clean, pungent smell. In deep, protected clefts where tiny springs welled forth, a handful of true pine trees grew next to cottonwoods. Along the canyon bottoms the brash thinned to clumps. Depending on altitude or exposure, juniper, pinon, cedar and big sage grew.

Diana watched the changing landscape intently, seeking the plants that were the hallmark and foundation of Anasazi culture—yucca and pinon, bee plant and goosefoot. On the higher flatlands she also looked for stands of big sage, which grew where the earth had been disturbed and then abandoned by man. Each time another nameless canyon or gully opened up along the rough dirt road, she looked at the unexplored land with a yearning she couldn't disguise.