Authors: Janet Dailey

Shifting Calder Wind (11 page)

BOOK: Shifting Calder Wind

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With no more to learn here, he started to retrace his steps. He was nearly to the thick clump of brush when his conscience prodded him.

Close by was the O’Rourke family plot. It had been such a long time since Culley had been there that he had trouble locating the slab headstones that marked the graves of his parents. Finally he found them, nearly hidden among the tall weeds. He tugged away the taller clumps in front of them and brushed away some of the dirt embedded in the carved lettering.

Straightening, he stepped back and removed his hat. There were no fancy sayings on his mother’s marker, and nothing to identify her as either wife or mother. There was only her name,
MARY FRANCES ELIZABETH O’ROURKE
, followed by the date of her birth and death. Culley hadn’t been much more than fourteen when she died, but he could still feel the gentle touch of her palm cupped to his cheek.

A smile touched his mouth in remembrance, but it faded when his attention shifted to the grave of his father. The stone was just as plain, with only the name spelled out:
ANGUS O’ROURKE
. As always, Culley’s strongest memory of his father was that of his death. Some of the old bitterness resurfaced.

“Maybe you did rustle a bunch of Triple C cattle, Pa,” he said. “But that didn’t give old man Calder the right t’ take the law in his own hands and hang ya.”

Before the memory of those long ago days could upset him again, Culley turned away and shoved his hat back on his head. He hesitated, glancing back at the weed-choked plot.

“It ain’t right the way they let this place go to seed,” he said and experienced a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t checked on it before. “I’ll come back t’morrow an’ tidy it up a bit.”

Exploring further, he found some fresh tire tracks and more footprints, a set on either side of the vehicle. Judging from the depth of the impressions, Culley guessed they were made by men. Among them he found one of Jessy’s boot prints. Which meant she must have met up with them.

Who or why, he still didn’t know and wasn’t likely to find out, either. But at least he had discovered the answers to some of his questions.

Chapter Six

T
he next morning it took Culley the better part of an hour to search through the barn and tool shed before he finally found the old hand scythe. After that he spent twenty minutes at the grindstone, sharpening its blade.

It was a few minutes past nine o’clock when he finally tossed the scythe into the back of his old pickup and climbed behind the wheel. He drove to the end of the lane and made the turn to head for the old cemetery.

The engine in the old pickup balked when he pushed down on the accelerator. The truck’s top speed was usually between forty and fifty miles an hour. But this morning he had trouble getting it up to thirty-five.

When he saw another pickup traveling toward him, Culley glanced in the rearview mirror, relieved to see there was nobody behind him. He didn’t want to find himself in an accident because some fool tried to pass him.

With his attention once more on the road ahead of him, Culley let his gaze wander to the oncoming pickup. He was quick to recognize the Triple C insignia on its door. He peered at the windshield, trying to identify the driver.

But he didn’t get a good look until the truck went by him. The minute he saw Jessy Calder behind the wheel, he decided she was on her way to the Circle Six to visit Cat.

He wouldn’t have given it another thought if he hadn’t noticed a second pickup following close behind her. Culley saw right away that it had out-of-state license plates. It was rare enough for anyone to travel these roads, let alone a nonresident of Montana.

There appeared to be two, maybe three people traveling in it, but Culley had a good look at only the driver. Right away he felt there was something familiar about him. Then he remembered the cowboy who had talked with Jessy at the Triple C cemetery. It started him wondering if that cowboy might also be the same one she met yesterday.

“But,” Culley said to himself with a frown, “why did she meet him on the sly?”

Located on the jutting shoulder of a rocky foothill, the old line shack was tucked against the slope to take advantage of its shelter from the cold winter winds. The terrain was more stone than soil, studded with brush, stunted pines, and patches of scrawny grass.

A deadfall had prevented them from driving closer than a hundred yards from the site. Jessy felt the tug and stretch of her leg muscles as she made the sloping climb.

When she topped the rise to the foothill’s shoulder, she came to an abrupt stop and simply stared at the dilapidated structure. A sizable section of the roof had collapsed; all the windows were broken, and the door hung drunkenly on its hinges.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.” Jessy glanced at Chase with a mixture of regret and concern. “It’s in worse shape than I thought.”

On the other side of him, Hattie murmured in dismay, “Lordy, this reminds me of where we stayed in Mexico—” She broke off the sentence and threw a worried glance at Laredo as if she had said something she shouldn’t.

“Now, you aren’t looking at it right.” Laredo smiled lazily, hands on his hips, one leg cocked in a relaxed stance. “This place has a skylight, good air flow, and a quaintly rustic touch.”

“Ramshackle, you mean,” Hattie corrected with dry censure.

“You’re forgetting that your house wasn’t in much better shape when you and Ed bought the place. As long as the line shack doesn’t fall over when you lean on it, it can be repaired.” He laid a hand on her shoulder in quiet encouragement and urged her forward. “Let’s go take a closer look.”

“I’ll go look,” Hattie agreed with obvious reservations. “But I’m telling you right now that I’m glad we used the last of our cash to buy that tent. You can bet that’s where I’ll be sleeping tonight.”

“Speaking of money,” Jessy dug into her jeans pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. She handed it to Chase. “This is about all we had left in the petty cash fund. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to account for it yet, but I will.”

“That’s easily handled.” Chase glanced at the bills before stuffing them in his own pocket. “Do you have a slip of paper?”

“I have a tablet back at the truck. Why? What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll write an IOU, sign it, and date it prior to my trip to Texas.”

Jessy nodded in immediate understanding. “That way I won’t have to explain anything.”

When Hattie noticed they weren’t behind her, she stopped and looked back. “Aren’t you coming, Duke?”

“We’ll be right there.” He waved her on and started forward himself.

“Did she call you Duke?” Jessy eyed him curiously.

“They had to call me something when I couldn’t supply them with my own name. Hattie came up with Duke.” He didn’t add that he was more comfortable with that name than he was with Chase Calder. Chase Calder was still a person he didn’t know.

After an initial inspection of the old line cabin, Laredo concluded, “The damage looks worse than it is. Other than some rotten wood in the roof, the rest of the structure looks sound. Somebody built this to last.”

“That’s the only way Calders build things,” Jessy said, echoing a statement her father had once made.

Hattie poked her head inside the door. “There’s enough dirt in here to plant a garden. It will take a week to get it clean enough to live in—and evict all the creepy-crawly things.” She turned away from the door with an expressive little shudder.

“Something tells me if anybody can turn a boar’s nest into a home, it’s you, Hattie,” Chase declared in a voice dry with amusement.

Jessy swung toward him in surprise. “You remembered what we used to call this place.”

“Did I?” Chase was skeptical. “It’s possible, but in cowboy lingo, line cabins were often referred to as boar’s nests.”

“Maybe they were,” Jessy conceded. “But we have two other old line shacks still standing, and this is the only one that went by the name Boar’s Nest.”

“You can do what you please, Duke,” Hattie declared. “But I choose to believe you just recovered your first scrap of memory, even if it is an insignificant piece.”

“While you two argue over who’s right,” Laredo inserted, “Jessy and I are going to unload the trucks so she can get back to the ranch. You might want to give some thought to where you want the tent pitched. Before I tackle fixing the cabin, I plan on clearing away that deadfall so we can drive all the way up here.”

Jessy was impressed by his eminently practical decision. But she didn’t say anything until they were on their way down the hill. “That’s sensible to clear away the deadfall first.”

“I’m glad you approve.” Amusement gleamed in his blue eyes, faintly mocking her. Which annoyed her ever so slightly. “You understand, it’s not that I object to the long walk, but I sure don’t fancy dragging up all the plywood and lumber I’ll need to fix the hole in the roof.”

“That wasn’t approval you heard,” Jessy told him, a coolness in her voice. “It was relief that you seem to have some common sense. You have to remember you are a total stranger as far as I’m concerned.”

“It bothers you that Hattie and I are looking after Chase, doesn’t it,” Laredo guessed.

“I know Chase trusts you,” she replied, deliberately hedging.

“But you don’t.”

She reverted to her usual candor. “Not entirely.”

“I imagine you are wondering if I’m in this for the money, that I might be hoping Chase will make a sizable contribution to my bank account when this is over.” The mockery was there again in his lazy smile.

“It crossed my mind,” she admitted and waited for Laredo to deny it was his motive.

“In the first place, I don’t have a bank account, so any contribution he might offer would have to be in cash,” he replied with a perfectly straight face.

Jessy halted in stunned surprise. “You are actually admitting that you are only here for money?”

“What’s wrong with that?” he countered nonchalantly and kept walking. “The Old West is littered with stories of hired guns working for big outfits. In today’s West, they still do, but they give them politically correct names like bodyguard and investigators.” Laredo glanced back at her and grinned. “I disappointed you, didn’t I? You wanted me to say something noble like, I’m here because Chase is a good man.”

“I don’t know what I expected.” But it hadn’t been what she’d heard. She resumed her descent of the hill. “I assume Chase knows this.”

“The man has lost his memory, not his mind,” he chided, and Jessy was irritated with herself for even asking the question. “The idea of me getting paid to look after Chase really bothers you, doesn’t it? Maybe I need to put it in cowboy talk. When I take a rancher’s money, I ride for the brand, and in my job, it usually means come hell or high water. This time it’s more likely to be hell than high water.”

He spoke in a jesting tone, but the hard steel of his eyes was all business. It was a quality Jessy had observed in Logan on rare occasions. But the similarities seemed to stop there.

“So you work as bodyguard for a living.” She struggled to wrap her mind around this thought.

“There you go assuming things. I only said that’s what I was doing now.” Reaching the trucks, Laredo lifted a crate of canned goods from the back of his and hoisted it onto his shoulder, then hauled out the tent sack. He paused. “Any more questions? Because I’m likely to be puffing carrying this up the hill. I may not have enough air for talking.”

“Just one. Is Laredo Smith your real name?”

He gave her a wry look and shook his head in mock amazement. “Do you really think any mother is going to name her son Laredo? I don’t think so. But you keep asking questions. That’s how you learn things.” He started up the hill.

“I would learn more if I got straight answers,” Jessy countered, lifting her voice to make certain he heard her. She was almost certain she detected a low chuckle from him.

After two trips, Laredo decided that they had carried up everything they would need that night. The rest of the items were loaded into the back of his truck to be hauled up later after he had cleared away the deadfall.

Preparing to leave, Jessy slid behind the wheel of her pickup. “Tell Chase I’ll see him. I may not be able to make it back tomorrow, but I’ll come as soon as I can slip away again.”

“I’ll do it,” Laredo replied. “By the way, were you able to find anything on that Brewster fellow?”

“Not yet. I did check the hotel bill. There were several local calls on it and a few long-distance ones, but most of those were to the Triple C. I’ll keep trying to find something,” she promised and shifted the pickup into reverse, backing up and making a tight turn to make the bumpy trip back to the old fire road.

When Jessy arrived at the Triple C headquarters nearly two hours later, she was quick to notice Cat’s vehicle parked in front of The Homestead. Trey was on the veranda, demonstrating his rope skills to Quint while Laura sat in one of the rockers, playing with her doll.

The minute Trey saw her pull up to the house, he abandoned his miniature lasso and ran to the steps to meet her. “Hi, Mom. Quint’s here.”

“I see that,” Jessy said and playfully pushed the brim of Trey’s cowboy hat down over his face, then glanced at Quint. “Where’s your mom?”

“Inside with Sally.”

With both arms wrapped tightly around her doll, Laura hopped out of the rocker and scampered to Jessy’s side. “Sally’s cryin’,” Laura declared, attaching a high degree of importance to the news. “She misses Grampa a lot.”

“Grampa’s gonna buy me a horse,” Trey stated and immediately galloped away, tossing his head and whinnying in his best imitation of the animal.

Jessy went straight to the kitchen to let Sally know she was home.

As expected, she found Sally seated in one of the kitchen chairs, a balled-up handkerchief pressed to her mouth in an attempt to smother the sobs that shook her shoulders. Cat was crouched beside the chair, a comforting hand resting on the housekeeper’s arm while tears ran down her own cheeks.

When Sally caught sight of Jessy, she swallowed back her tears and mopped at the wetness on her face. “I’m sorry, Jessy,” she sniffled. “I know I shouldn’t carry on like this in front of the children, but”—her lip quivered—“I miss Chase so much.”

“We all do, Sally.” Cat’s voice trembled with feeling. “But you know he would want us to be strong.”

“I try. I really do,” Sally insisted tearfully. “But when you said you wanted to—” She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth again as if the rest of the sentence was too painful to speak.

“Forget it,” Cat told her. “We won’t clean out his room today. Okay?” she said with quiet encouragement, and Sally nodded in mute agreement. “You look exhausted, Sally. Why don’t you go lie down for a little while?”

“But the twins—” Sally began in protest.

“I’ll watch them for Jessy. You go get some rest,” Cat urged.

“I’ll try.” Sally pushed out of the chair and moved toward the doorway, a pronounced heaviness in her movements.

BOOK: Shifting Calder Wind

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