Read Shifting Calder Wind Online
Authors: Janet Dailey
Shifting Calder Wind (10 page)
“In that case we’ll find out when we get there.” The whinny of a horse punctuated the end of Laredo’s statement. In swift reaction, he came to full alertness, his gaze making a slashing survey of the area outside the pickup.
“That was my horse,” Jessy said in quick assurance. “I picketed him in the hollow beyond the tree.”
“You rode here?” Laredo questioned in surprise. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to take the chance someone would drive by and see a Triple C pickup parked around here. Nothing would start the rumor mill buzzing quicker.” That thought triggered another. “It will take me close to an hour to ride back to where I left the truck and trailer parked. If I try to take you to the line shack this afternoon, there won’t be much daylight left by the time we get there. Do you have a place you can stay tonight?”
“We have a couple motel rooms in Miles City,” Laredo answered. “We left Hattie there to do our laundry.”
“That settles it then. We’ll rendezvous back here tomorrow morning.” Jessy paused to consider the drive they would have to make from Miles City. “Would nine o’clock be too early?”
“We can make it.” Chase didn’t hesitate.
A lazy smile curved Laredo’s mouth. “I think he’s tired of being snuck in and out of motel rooms.”
“I don’t blame him.” There was empathy in the look Jessy gave Chase. Then the practical side of her surfaced. “If there is nothing else, I need to start back. We all have a lot to do before tomorrow morning.”
She was halfway out of the truck when Chase stopped her. “Before you go, I have a question to ask you. What was I doing in Texas? Why did I go there?”
“You said you had a meeting with somebody named Brewster. Tom Brewster, I think it was.” Her recollection of the man’s first name was hazy.
“Who is Brewster? What does he do?”
“To be honest, I don’t know,” Jessy admitted. “To the best of my knowledge, the ranch has never had any dealings with him in the past. In some way he’s involved with cattle, but I don’t know if he’s a buyer, a rancher, a broker or what.”
“Didn’t I tell you why I was going to see him?” Chase probed.
“Just that you wanted to talk to him about some cattle.”
“Am I usually that vague?” Chase frowned in skepticism.
“No,” Jessy admitted with a slight smile. “But you also told me that being away for a few days would give me an opportunity to run the ranch on my own. I thought that was probably your main reason for going to Texas. I know you didn’t give me the impression the trip was of any great importance. I wish now I had asked more questions,” she said with regret.
“Maybe the trip was an excuse to be gone.” Chase was forced to concede that possibility. “But until we can be certain of that, see what you can find out about this man Brewster.” The minute the words were out of his mouth, he withdrew them. “No, we don’t want to tip our hand in case he is an important connection. So don’t ask questions about him, but see if I wrote his address or phone number down somewhere. If I did, get that information to me. In the meantime I’ll figure out the best way to handle it.”
“It’s logical that Chase would have called him from the hotel,” Laredo inserted. “Look through the room charges and write down any phone numbers that you don’t recognize.”
“Logan took care of your bill while they were in Fort Worth. I’m almost positive he gave me the itemized receipt. I’ll see what I can find,” Jessy promised. “Anything else?”
“For now, only one. I’ll need some cash,” Chase told her. “I don’t have a cent on me. I’m not sure exactly how much I owe Laredo and Hattie already, but it’s adding up every day.”
“I’ll bring some money for you tomorrow.” Jessy swung to the ground and retrieved her rifle, then turned back to them, unusually solemn. “I’ll meet you here at nine tomorrow. Be careful.”
“You can count on it.” Chase pulled the passenger door shut. In silence, they swung out of the old cemetery. Not until they were on the road toward Blue Moon did Chase speak again. “You’re right about Jessy. I would hate to learn she can’t be trusted.”
“Me too,” Laredo said. “She’s an easy woman to like.”
“I just hope she doesn’t give you reason to regret letting her know that you are armed.”
“If she is as square as I think she is, she needs to be alert for that.” He slid a wry grin in Chase’s direction. “Maybe you can teach her the ins and outs of cattle ranching, but I can teach her the skills to stay alive.”
Absently amused and inwardly pleased, Chase ran his glance over the man’s clean profile. “That sounds like you are signing on for the duration.”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Laredo countered, a faint twinkle in his blue eyes.
“Not a one.” Smiling, Chase settled back in the seat, making himself comfortable for the long ride back to Miles City.
The brown horse shuffled along at an easy trot, its rider in no hurry and bound for no particular destination. But Culley O’Rourke’s wanderings rarely had a purpose. The sole exception to that rule involved his niece Cat Calder Echohawk. Ever since his sister had been killed in that plane crash when Cat was still a teenager he had made it his mission to watch over Maggie’s daughter. But on this day Cat was at home, still enveloped in grief over her father’s recent death.
But Calder’s death was no cause for regret as far as Culley was concerned. There was a time when he had been consumed with hatred for the man. The hatred had burned itself out, though, and he had come to tolerate the man’s existence, for Cat’s sake.
Without a doubt, the years had wrought many changes in Culley O’Rourke, most notably in his appearance. His hair that had once been the glistening black of a crow had grayed to the color of a weathered barn board. His once wide shoulders had thinned and appeared permanently bowed in a protective hunch. The nervous, hair-trigger energy that had so often seemed poised on the edge of violence had faded to a constant restlessness.
It was that innate restlessness that pushed him to this endless wandering that knew no boundaries. Long ago the Triple C riders had grown used to seeing him ghosting over the ranch’s vast holdings, invariably fighting shy of any contact.
If his presence drew any comment at all, it was generally something wry like, “Saw ole Crazy Culley today, sloping out of sight behind a hill.” And it was always issued with an amused shake of the head.
Keeping to a swale in the plains and deliberately avoiding sky-lining himself on higher ground, Culley took a roundabout track toward a fence gate. He had yet to decide if he would make use of it or angle off in another direction. It would probably be the latter. Culley had never been one to travel along roads, and there was one on the other side of the fence gate.
The brown gelding pricked its ears, its nose lifting to scent the air. Culley had ridden the horse for too many years not to have learned to correctly read its body language. Something was nearby. By reading the horse’s slight variations, Culley could tell if that thing was a cow, a coyote, or a horse. This time the gelding was reacting to one of its own kind. In this particular area of the Triple C, Culley knew that if there was a horse in the area, ninety percent of the time there would be a rider, too.
Obeying his initial impulse, Culley reined in his mount. It wasn’t that he disliked other people. He simply wasn’t comfortable around them. The small talk that came so easily to others was awkward for him, almost painful.
But to avoid such situations, he had to know the rider’s location and destination so he could head in the opposite direction. It was that desire which prompted him to rein his horse up the sloping rise in the plains. He pulled up when he could see over the top of it.
A pickup and horse trailer were parked along the edge of the dirt ranch road a quarter mile distant. Near the rear of it, a rider swung out of the saddle. The sun’s bright rays glinted on the blond lights in the long tail of hair that hung below the rider’s hat, making it easy for Culley to recognize Jessy Calder.
Culley watched as she unlatched the tailgate to load her horse into the trailer. The more he thought about it the more unusual it seemed for Jessy to be out here alone. There was a time before she married Ty when she had worked for the Triple C as an ordinary cowhand, but with Calder dead, she was running things now.
Knowing that, Culley couldn’t help wondering what she was doing so far from headquarters. That curiosity coupled with the fact that Jessy was one of the few people he felt comfortable around, mostly because she didn’t care whether he talked or not, pushed him forward.
By the time he reached the fence line, Jessy had loaded her horse and fastened the trailer gate. Moving with long, purposeful strides, she headed for the driver’s side of the pickup, so wrapped up in her thoughts that she failed to notice him.
Loathe as he was to be the one making the opening gambit, Culley called out, “Sure didn’t figure on seein’ you out this way.”
Jessy halted with an almost guilty start. An instant later her wide mouth curved in a smile. “Hello, Culley. As for being out here—you know how it goes. I got tired of being cooped up inside and decided I wanted to feel a horse under me again. Now it’s back to work. See ya.” She sketched him a wave and climbed into the truck.
Culley lifted a hand in return and watched the rig pull away. “Her reasons seem sound enough,” he commented to his mount. “But they sure don’t explain why she’d drive an hour from headquarters to go a-ridin’.”
There were times when Culley couldn’t help being nosy, although he never thought of it as snooping. He just wanted that old curiosity to stop nagging him.
As fresh as her tracks were, they were easy to follow. Reading sign, as the old-timers called the ability to identify a person or animal by the track it left, was a self-taught skill for Culley, something he had picked up over the years. One of the first things he had learned was how to tell whether a horse or a cow had left a trail through the grass. It was a difference that was easy to spot, since a cow left the grass stalks bent in the direction it had just come from and a horse laid it down in the direction it was going.
Culley didn’t have to backtrail Jessy very far before he realized that she hadn’t been out for an aimless ride. She’d had a destination, and she had taken the straight route to reach it.
The trail led him directly to the north boundary fence. His sharp eyes noticed a place where the top wire had been mended. He rode closer to it and bent sideways in the saddle to examine it. The bright marks on the metal told him that the wire had been first snipped, then twisted back together again—very recently.
The saddle leather creaked as he straightened to sit erect, puzzled by his discovery. “I gotta tell ya, Brownie,” he muttered to the horse, “it’s one thing to ride all the way out here to fix a break in the fence, an’ it’s a horse of a different color to ride all the way out here, cut the wire, an’ then fix it. Why’d she want’a do that?”
The gelding snorted and swung its nose at a pesky fly nibbling on its shoulder. Absorbed with solving this puzzle, Culley stared blankly at a tuft of brown thread hooked on a barb along the middle wire a long time before he actually noticed it.
“Well now, what’s this?” He swung to the ground and picked it off the wire. There was another piece of thread snubbed on a barb next to the first. Only this one was more like a bit of lint. While Culley pondered the meaning of them, the gelding took advantage of the break to chomp on some grass.
“If I remember right,” he said, thinking back, “there was a brown saddle blanket tied behind the cantle of her saddle.” An answer began to form. “Now a horse ain’t likely to jump what it can’t see—like a single strand of wire. But if a body was to throw a blanket across it, he can see what he needs to clear. ’Course, why would she want’a jump that fence an’ go traipsin’ around the Dugan range?”
Before he concluded that was what Jessy had done, Cully studied the ground on the other side of the fence. As clear as the sky overhead, a pair of fresh gouge marks was visible, revealing the place where her horse had landed.
While he had never been one to respect a boundary fence, Culley would have sworn that Jessy would. One thing was certain—he hadn’t come this far to stop now.
After leading his horse well clear of the fence, he retrieved a pair of wire cutters from his saddlebag. “None of that fence jumpin’ stuff for us,” he said and proceeded to cut through all three wires, careful to avoid their back whip.
Again Jessy’s trail led him in more or less a straight line. It struck him that only one place lay in this direction, and he couldn’t figure out why Jessy would go there.
Short of the old cemetery, Culley found the place where Jessy had left her horse. A pile of horse droppings and short-cropped grass told him that the horse had been left for a time.
Dismounting, he dropped the reins, ground-tying his gelding. Following her foot trail wasn’t as easy as following the horse tracks. But the occasional plain ones he found took him to some brush.
Well-flattened grass showed him where she had stood for a while. It was a place that would have concealed her from sight. It set him to wondering if she had been spying on somebody, or waiting for somebody. Which also made him wonder if Jessy was more of a Calder than he thought.
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