Smoketree (14 page)

“Get Harper.”

I opened my mouth to protest, wanting nothing to do with him, but I stopped it at once. Nathan needed help. I was up and moving before anyone else could say a word, and I went through the Lodge at a run. I heard the angry slap of the screen door as I clattered down the porch steps.

I didn’t know where he was. I stopped dead at the foot of the steps, considering a shout to determine his whereabouts, but then I saw him. He was in front of the tack room with a horse tied to the hitch rail, and he was in the process of shoeing the animal.

I ran. He did not see me coming because he was bent over the horse’s right hind leg, back to me as he compared the shape of the shoe to the shape of the hoof. Several nails were clenched between his teeth.

“Harper,” I said.

He turned his head. For a moment he made no further movement, then he shook his head once and looked back at the hoof and shoe. “Figured you’d be down to complain about yesterday.” The words were distorted by the nails, but the tone was clear enough.

“It’s Nathan,” I said, and saw a miraculous transformation.

He spread his legs, let the hoof drop down, threw the shoe toward the tack room and pulled the nails from his mouth, shedding them across the ground. He didn’t even bother to grab his hat, which hung on the end of the rail. He just ran. So did I.

Cass was with her uncle in a large bedroom. She had him seated on the edge of a giant brass bed. He continued to clutch the hat, twisting the brim into a caricature of a proper cowboy hat, and his shoulders were slumped. His grayish pallor had improved somewhat, but he was still far from recovered. I doubted he was able to distinguish the sense in Cass’s words.

Harper went down on one knee before the man. “What is it? I can help. Just tell me what it is.”

Nathan shook his head, still swinging it slowly from side to side in denial of himself more than anything else.

Harper reached out and placed a firm brown hand on Nathan’s knee. “Talk to me, Nathan. ”

Nathan took a shuddering breath and abruptly dropped the hat. Harper picked it up, brushed it off and returned it to the searching hands. He asked again, still as gently, but with a quiet force of command that at last drew an answer.

Nathan sighed. “It’s gone. All of it. Gone. There just isn’t any more.”

“What’s gone?” Harper asked.

Life welled back into Nathan’s eyes as he peered at the kneeling wrangler before him. “There isn’t any more. Nothing left. Everything—gone.” The breath was heavy and the exhalation loud. “All the money…”

I thought at once of Smoketree. Of the accidents. Of the land developers who stood to make such a profit. And Harper. I looked at him, but his face was perfectly blank.

He turned toward me. “There’s a list of emergency numbers by the phone. On it is a Dr. Willis. Call him.”

Brandon met me as I came out of the private quarters and went directly to the phone. I told him what I could as I dialed the number, then spoke to a nurse who said the doctor would be on his way.

I hung up. “A doctor who still makes house calls,” I said to Brandon in disbelief.

He smiled. “Must be an idealistic man.”

I sighed and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Maybe you’d better tell everyone what’s going on. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, except stay out of the way. But I’m sure Nathan doesn’t want pity or sympathy right now.”

“I’ll clear them out,” he promised, and went to do just that.

A few hours later Cass came out on the porch. I sat in the swing, contemplating the charred skeleton of the barn. She stared at it too, but I doubted she saw much. Rigid fingers combed her hair out of her face, and then she glanced down at me. “Thanks for calling the doctor.”

“How is Nathan?”

“Sleeping, for now. Dr. Willis gave him something.” She hooked one boot around the iron frame of the orange sling chair and dragged it over. She dropped into it heavily. “I guess he’ll be okay in a couple of days. But he hates being sick.”

“
Is
he sick? Or is it something else?”

She tilted her head back, eyes closed. The strain leached her young face of its vitality and put circles beneath her eyes. “I guess it was mostly the pressure, and the shock. You know what’s been going on around here. The news about the money really shook him up. He’s got a heart problem—nothing really serious, but he’s not young anymore. The doctor called it a spasm, but he wants Uncle Nathan in for a complete workup. All those expensive tests. Electro-this, echo-that.” She shook her head and rubbed at the lines in her brow.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what was it that went so bad?”

“From what Harper got out of him, he invested a lot of money—for him—in a land deal. Some planned community south of here, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. He thought it couldn’t miss. And, of course, it did. They took the money and ran. ”

“How far and how fast?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? They’re just gone, and so’s all the money. He’s not alone, of course, but that doesn’t help him. Or Smoketree.”

I phrased my next question carefully. “If he lost the ranch, what would you do?”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “Me, I’m bound for the circuit. And school, eventually. Smoketree is home, and I’d hate to leave it, but I can’t live my whole life here.”

“What would Harper do?”

“Oh, him. He’d find something. He could get another wrangling job somewhere, even if it isn’t what he wants to do with his life. Or he could turn trainer. He’s a darn good roper as well as a roughstock rider. I imagine he’d find something to do. But I feel sorry for him.”

“Sorry for
him?
Why?”

“Because rodeo is a disease,” she said flatly. “Once it’s in your blood, it’s there forever. When you’re as good as he was—God, was he good!—everything else is in black and white. Nothing will ever be the same for him.”

“Smoketree earns him a living,” I said neutrally.

She frowned, annoyed, as if she couldn’t comprehend my attitude. “No, no, you don’t understand.” She sat upright in the chair. “Smoketree is special to him, yes—he practically grew up here—but all he ever wanted was to go on the circuit. Now me,
I
know I can’t do it forever. I would like to be a vet someday. So, after a few years on the circuit, I’ll go on to school. But for him, you see, things are a whole lot different.” She hesitated. “If you knew what happened—”

“You mean the injuries and the ex-wife?”

I saw the change in her at once. She drew back a little, staring at me as if she couldn’t believe what she had heard, and her color came and went. Her mouth tightened. I was looking, again, into the face of jealousy.

“Cass—” I began.

“If he talked about her to
you
—”

“We were talking about losses,” I said firmly, because I chose not to dismiss her feelings and friendship so easily. “My loss, and then he told me his. That’s why.” I shook my head. “Don’t imagine there’s anything between us. There isn’t.”

But there was, and I knew it. The man had taken a shot at me, and then he had kissed me.

Cass put her face in her hands. “Oh God, I’m just so tired of it all. I lived through it when Harper and Abby broke up… talk about
hard
.” She sighed and met my eyes. “I’ve known him all my life, and ever since I can remember, I’ve had a crush on him. When he met Abby, I hated her.” She shrugged, smiling ruefully. “I was so jealous, even as a little kid. Heck, I was only six when he married her. So my whole life I competed with her, even if Harper didn’t see it.” Cass sighed and kicked one boot heel against the wooden porch. “Abby saw it. But she said there was no competition.” She faded into pensive silence for a moment. “And then he came back to Smoketree to heal up after the broken back, and there was no more rodeo for him. And no more Harper Young, All-Around World Champion Cowboy, for her.”

I looked at her young, impressionable face, full of promise and heartache and frustration—knowing she would face even more of it. “They were married a while. I doubt the only reason for the breakup was his leaving rodeo.”

“Ten years,” she said reflectively. “Well, I expect you’re right. But the rodeo circuit’s hard on any marriage, especially if only one of you competes.” She shook her head. “Abby wasn’t into horses. She was into cowboys.
Winning
cowboys.” Cass sighed. “I thought, maybe, I’d have a chance after they broke up. I mean, I’m not a kid anymore. Even if Harper doesn’t see it.” She sighed. “But I guess not.”

“No kids?” I asked quietly.

“Abby and Harper? Yeah, they had a little girl. Kerry. But Abby got custody. And since she’s on the circuit with her new husband, Harper doesn’t get to see much of the kid.” Cass shook her head. “It eats him alive, too.”

I sat very still in the swing. “This new husband of Abby’s—does he make a good living?”

Cass smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. “She traded the former World Champion in for the new one.”

“And Kerry?”

“She’s only three,” Cass said quietly. “She’s got a new daddy, now—and her mama likes it that way.” She sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “I heard her tell him once, before she left, that it didn’t matter so much if he couldn’t give her the kind of life she wanted, that she’d make out. But she wasn’t about to let her little girl grow up without the sort of things she deserved.”

“Money,” I said.

“Money,” Cass agreed. “Abby raided their joint account, got even more through the courts, then married a guy making better than two hundred grand a year, and that’s not counting endorsements. Harper couldn’t compete with that. I don’t think he’d want to, for Abby—but he just might for Kerry.” There it was. Motive. The sort of motive that could drive even a man with integrity into extortion, sabotage, scare tactics. And I didn’t really blame him.

“Smoketree’s worth a lot of money,” I said quietly.

Cass looked at me oddly a moment. “Of course it is, or those land developers wouldn’t be after it. I mean, look at the location. There’s Snow Crest just over the hill, plus all this land smack in the middle of government acreage. Condominiums would go for big bucks. Someone would stand to make a lot of money.”

“So would Nathan, if he sold.”
And Harper
. But I didn’t say it.

“Of course,” she agreed. “I don’t doubt we’re talking millions, with the price of land these days.”

Millions. Enough to buy time with a little girl?

Maybe. And it made it all the sadder. 

The jarring clangor of a triangle jerked me out of a deep sleep. I sat bolt upright, completely disoriented. Not long after dinner I had gone to bed and slept; the clock read one in the morning.

I waited for the upside down sensation of sudden waking to subside. The clanging continued, punctuated by barking dogs. I seriously considered ignoring it all, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep again until I found out what was going on.

But it was the panicked whinnying of a terrified horse that cut through my thoughts like a clarion.

Fire. Again? I dressed hurriedly, jamming feet into bedroom slippers and yanking my jacket on over a sweater and jeans. As I closed my cabin door I fully expected to see leaping flames against the darkness, but there was nothing. Nothing save the continued ringing and the whinnying of a horse.

Cass stood on the porch, white-faced and grim in the electric lighting as she banged on the triangle with a metal wand. I climbed the wide steps next to Elliot Fitch. The fringe of his hair stood up in spikes and his eyes were decidedly fuzzy behind his glasses. He wore a green terrycloth robe, tying and retying the belt as if it gave him something to concentrate on. Francesca came up behind him, clad in a creamy silk dressing-gown.

“Can you stop the noise?” Francesca asked.

“Once everyone is here,” Cass agreed. “Harper said to make certain
everyone
came.”

Lenore Oliver mounted the steps with her husband and stood close to him, one hand set against her forehead to block the yellow light. She wore a heavy caftan, pale green and flowing. Oliver himself was still fully dressed and fully alert, but his eyes narrowed in reaction to the incessant clanging. “We’re all here now,” Lenore said pointedly.

“No,” Cass said flatly. “Mr. Rafferty isn’t here.”

“I’m here.” He melted out of the darkness. He wore brown trousers and a white pajama top, half-hidden beneath a loose burgundy robe. He had left off the horn-rims, and his dark eyes were keenly observant. Research, I thought.

“What is all of this about?” Lenore demanded in the tone of a petulant child.

“Brandon isn’t here yet,” I said suddenly.

But he was. He joined the group a moment later, also fully clothed. He frowned as he moved next to me and rested one hand against my waist. “What’s up?”

Cass turned and faced the small group. She was tight-lipped and pale, speaking in a flat, controlled voice. “The police have already been called, but Harper would like you to go to the pens. Now, please.”

Lenore stiffened at the tone of command. Oliver frowned heavily. “Just what is the reason for this, Miss Reynolds? Why the police? And why drag all of us out in the middle of the night if it is a police matter?”

Cass was not intimidated by John Oliver. “Harper told me to gather all of you together. I’ve done that much. Now you’re to go to the pens. He’s waiting there. I think you’d better go.”

We went, in various stages of irritation and curiosity. Brandon made a few rhetorical comments; Lenore complained; Elliot, more awake now, stuck close to Francesca; John Oliver and Rafferty said absolutely nothing at all.

I was as silent, but it wasn’t for lack of words. I had caught the note of tension in Cass’s voice, particularly when she had mentioned Harper’s name. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt another “accident” had occurred.

Harper stood in front of Preacher’s individual pipe-railed pen adjoining the others. He was fully clothed and rigidly alert, watching all of us with waiting eyes. He didn’t wear his hat, however, and he ignored my searching stare with diligence.

The horse I had heard whinnying was Preacher. He was in his stall, but tied at the far end. He moved restlessly against the halter rope, pawing and tossing his head. I saw a thin line of sweat reaching from ears to shoulder, and more dotting his flanks.