Texas Lucky (26 page)

No, it was more.

So much more.

Curt could not remember enjoying being with anyone more and had even dared, for a time, to think maybe he was falling in love. But the incident with the gila lizard had made him realize it could never work.

Tess was just not meant to live in the West. All fluff and cream and—

He sat up straight, nearly knocking over the half-empty whiskey bottle.

There was nothing fluffy and creamy about her anymore.

Now she was denim and leather.

And he had begun to have a strange feeling that maybe, just maybe, she knew how to use those big guns she was wearing.

Then he frowned to think of the cowpoke called Buck and wondered if he was the reason she had stayed.

Maybe they were even married.

He tried to remember if she’d been wearing a wedding band but couldn’t. He’d been too angry.

Angry to find her in Dallas.

Angry she’d had the good sense and gumption to get Chester Arthur to sign the deed.

And angry to find her with another man.

Oh, hell, what was wrong with him?

He poured another drink and vowed it was his last for the night.

Tomorrow it would all be taken care of. He would find a lawyer, go to court, and a judge would agree the land should be his.

It would all work out.

It had to.

Because the last thing he needed was a skinny little neighbor with a smart mouth who didn’t know beans about ranching.

Chapter Nineteen

Curt tightened his knees, and the horse gathered speed, thundering across the hills.

He threw his head back and let the wind whip his hair and burn his face while a hot autumn sun turned his bare back a deeper bronze.

Curt liked the freedom of riding without a saddle, enabling him to feel the power of the great stallion’s muscles straining and throbbing beneath him.

Through the sagebrush fields he rode, reveling to know that the land was his for as far as the eye could see.

He had done well his first year ranching.

Thanks to that fateful night he’d won so big at roulette, he had been able to buy his vast spread, build a comfortable house for himself, a bunkhouse for his hired hands, barns and storage, and, of course, buy his starter herd of longhorns.

They were hale and hearty and fecund, and he expected the two thousand head to double in size in three years. But, having spent his winnings and needing money to get him through the winter, he had been forced to drive half the herd to market this year.

It was a good life, but lonely, and if not for his three hands—Caleb, Shorty, and Luke, Curt would have no one to talk to but the lazily grazing steers.

The ranch hands were after him to hire a cook, grumbling they were going to wind up munching grass with the steers if he didn’t. Curt had promised he’d see what he could do, though he really didn’t want to spend the money, because he still had a long way to go and a stroke of bad luck could send him to his financial death.

He was also rankled to think how Tess had cheated him out of his land.

That was how he thought of it and always would.

Fifteen thousand acres of prime range with good water.

His, by damn.

Only the judge had ruled different.

Curt had taken Chester Arthur’s IOU to a lawyer the morning after the confrontation with Tess. The lawyer had agreed with him that the IOU should take precedence over Tess’s claim to the land, even though she had the deed and all he had was a piece of paper signed by Arthur.

The lawyer had wanted a hundred dollars to go to court. Curt thought his fee unreasonably high, but with the stakes what they were he decided it was a small price to pay.

It had taken a month for the case to be tried. During that time, he had felt like eating glass whenever he had word of Tess—which was often and easy to come by, because even though ranches were widespread and far apart, cowboys gossiped, and a woman like Tess was big news.

She had gone about her business of getting her ranch started, obviously without giving his claim a second thought, and by the time the court date rolled around, she had started building a cabin and buying cattle.

Just before reaching the crest of a slight hill, Curt finally reined in the stallion, whose sides were heaving and mouth was foam-flecked.

There was no denying he’d felt a surge of longing that morning she walked into the courtroom. He had taunted her for dressing like a man, but she was all female that day, turning every man’s head.

She was wearing a lemon-colored dress, the skirt covered in white lace to match the high collar fluttering around her throat. Her bonnet was tied with a big satin bow, and she was carrying a dainty little parasol.

Buck Higgins had been with her. Curt had learned his last name from Caleb, who always seemed to find out everything about newcomers. And, also according to Caleb, Buck really was Tess’s foreman.

Caleb had had a drink with him one Saturday night at Gilley’s place, which was the closest watering hole to Dallas, and Buck had told him he was planning to marry a girl who lived in Sante Fe as soon as he could afford it.

Maybe it was so. Maybe it wasn’t. But Tess didn’t have a lick of sense to be living under the same roof with a man she wasn’t married to. Curt told himself not to worry about it.

All he wanted from her, by damn, was his land—
which the judge had ruled he was not going to get.

Chester Arthur signing the deed over to Tess was all that counted, according to the judge. It was legal. Done and did. And if he had ruled otherwise, the judge feared it might start a precedence—men would sell their land and then run out, give IOUs, and let everybody fight it out in court.

So Tess had breezed past him when it was all over, head held high. He could tell she had been holding back a triumphant grin.

It had been eating at him ever since.

Stubborn little filly that she was, he was just itching to see how she made it through her first winter. Caleb said it looked like she had bought a starter herd as big as his, and since it was understood one man was needed to tend a thousand head, Buck was going to have his hands full, because Tess sure as hell wouldn’t be much help.

Suddenly a loud cry pierced the stillness.

It was a woman, and Curt leaped back on his horse to gallop to the top of the crest.

What he saw made him laugh out loud.

It was Tess, riding the big quarter horse she called Saber and chasing after a steer that had strayed from the rest of the herd.

Curt folded his arms across his chest and settled back to watch. He was confident this would prove his theory that when it came to being a real cowboy, Tess Partridge was about as useless as teats on a boar hog.

She rode well. He had to hand her that. In fact, after the race in Dallas he had heard that up till then, she had raced her horse herself and won every time.

So she had learned how to ride. Fine. Lots of women could ride horses. It still didn’t mean she knew what to do on the range. That took a lot of experience, which she hadn’t had, and—

His eyes went wide, and he sat up straight and leaned forward.

Surely he wasn’t seeing right.

Surely she wasn’t…

But wonder of wonders, she
was
.

Tess had pulled a lariat from her saddle and was paying out a big loop. With her left hand, along with the reins, she held the coiled remainder of the rope, letting out extra line as she began to swing the loop with her right, making it wider and wider as she swung higher and higher above her head.

He had to admit, by thunder, that she looked like she knew what she was doing.

Then, stunned, he saw her let go to send the loop flying toward its target.

“I’ll be damned,” he whispered in awe as she made a perfect head catch over the steer’s horns.

Then, with the expert ease of a seasoned wrangler, Tess pulled the slack out of the loop and promptly flipped the rope over the animal’s flank.

Digging her heels in, she sent her horse riding to full speed till she was almost directly parallel to the steer, then turned at an angle away from his path.

The rope did exactly what it was supposed to—flipped the steer’s head back and lifted its hind legs to flip him over and reverse his direction in a violent corkscrew somersault.

Curt found it hard to believe that he had actually witnessed Tess accomplishing what was known as busting a herd quitter. It was hard to do well, because sometimes busting injured an ornery steer or, worse, killed him.

But Tess had done well. The steer, still a bit dazed, scrambled to his feet.

Tess dismounted, removed the loop from his horn, and, with a hard slap on his rump, sent him meekly trotting back to the herd.

She then got back on her horse and rode straight toward the crest…and Curt.

She did not see him at first and slowed when she did. But only momentarily. He could almost hear her sigh of resignation as she urged the horse onward.

As she drew closer, he saw she was scowling.

He could also see that her shirt had come unbuttoned, revealing the swell of her breasts.

Her blue eyes were stormy. “What are you doing on my land?” she demanded.

“Your land?” He laughed. “My, you’re greedy. Isn’t the fifteen thousand acres you stole from me enough?”

“I didn’t steal anything, and you know it—just as you know you’ve crossed the line. You were spying on me just now, too, weren’t you?”

Again, his incredulity made him echo, “Spying? Why would I want to do that? Hell, woman, I’d like to pretend you don’t even exist, so I’m not going to waste my time spying on you…especially when I don’t give a damn what you do…”

“As long as
you
stay off
my
land,” he added tartly. Her hat was tied beneath her chin, and she gave it a shove to let it slide back and hang from her neck.

She was wearing gloves and methodically peeled them off, finger by finger, as she spoke. “Wrong, mister. I rode the border between your land and mine by the deed. It runs to the other side of this crest, so you’re trespassing, and I’m telling you to
git
!”

“You’re wrong, and I can prove it. Follow me.”

Heeling the horse in his flanks, Curt set him into a trot and rode down off the crest and across a long, level span.

Tess, puzzled and annoyed, trailed after him.

He rode up another hillock, then got down off his horse and began walking around, staring down and stabbing at the ground with his toe. Finally, he cried, “Aha! Here’s one. Come look at this.”

Tess dismounted and went to where he was crouched, pointing at the ground.

“Steel pin. I knew there was one here someplace. I walked my land, too, after I
bought
it”—he emphasized the word—“because one day I plan to run a fence to keep poachers off—like you.”

Thoughtfully, Tess looked from where they were standing to the crest they had just left.

“All right,” she conceded finally, “perhaps I’m wrong.”

“No perhaps to it, and sooner or later you’re going to realize you just don’t belong here.”

She slapped the end of the reins in her open palm in agitation. “Why do you keep saying that? You just saw me bust that steer as good as any man.”

“You were lucky.” Actually, she was good. Damn good. But he would never tell her so.

“It wasn’t luck, and you know it.”

“So you can ride and rope. But tell me—do you still scream when you see a lizard?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I just shoot it.”

“Ouch!” He made a face, laughed, and slapped his knee. “How many times have you shot your foot or somebody else’s?”

Dropping the reins, she held her hands to her sides. “Draw.”

She was smiling, but even if she had not been, Curt was hard-pressed to believe she actually meant to try to outdraw him, much less shoot him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked uneasily.

She continued to smile. “Getting ready to go for my guns.”

He burst into laughter. “You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “No. Just damn good with a gun, which I intend to prove.”

“Oh, no.” He raised his arms to indicate he was not about to draw. “I don’t play with guns, Tess. You know me well enough for that.”

“Then watch this.”

She turned in the direction of a saguaro cactus with shoots growing from each side like a human arm.

So fast Curt almost did not see her move, Tess crossed her arms to draw her guns by the butts.

She fired off six bullets from the right and, with amazing precision, shot off one arm of cactus, then flipped up the empty gun, caught it with her left hand at the same time she passed the revolver from that hand to her right, and fired six more shots to pulverize the remaining branch.

Blowing the smoke from each barrel in turn, she holstered her guns before calmly saying, “In case you don’t know, it’s called the
border shift
, used to change shooting hands or shift an unloaded gun from the firing hand without losing time.”