The Humbug Man (3 page)

“That’s a fact,” Blake said, sipping his cola.

Maggie, lost, glared at both of them. Hollister happened to glance her way and lifted an eyebrow. He came as close to smiling then as he had in six long years. “Something bothering you, Mrs. Jeffries?” he asked in his deep, slow tone.

“She doesn’t know a lot about cattle,” Blake said. “But she’s a whiz at math and accounts payable and organizing things. She’s the top secretary at Skyline Printing Services and a computer expert.”

Maggie shifted restlessly. “Don’t brag about me that way,” she told her son. “I only learned accounting to get out of typesetting. And I learned computer programming to get out of accounting.”

“Most women aren’t good at math.” Hollister’s dark eyes narrowed in his hard face. “My mother could barely count hens.”

“It was always my best subject in school,” Maggie replied. “My dad was a farmer. He kept a tally book, and I was his payroll clerk. He taught me to add columns of figures in my head.”

“Her parents are dead now,” Blake volunteered. “I have three uncles, but they’re spread all over the country and I never see them.”

“A farmer?” Hollister persisted. “What kind of livestock did he have?”

“Cattle and hogs,” she answered. “He had some high pastures, too. Right on the side of the hills, but he did very well. We had Jersey cows and a few Holsteins.”

The tall man finished his coffee. “But you don’t know how to breed cattle?”

“A handful of cows, mostly milk cows, doesn’t qualify anyone to handle several hundred head of beef cattle,” she reminded him. “It’s a totally different proposition. And I was only eighteen when I married Blake’s father and left the country for the city. I’ve forgotten most of what little I knew about the management of it.”

Hollister’s big hands toyed with the empty cup. “I went to school with Bob Jeffries,” he said. “He was a grade behind me.”

She sat very still. “He died in Central America before Blake was born. We’d been married less than six months.” She sighed. “It seems like a dream sometimes. Except for the talking proof sitting there trying to look invisible while he drinks his soda,” she added with a dry grin at Blake.

Blake just grinned back, but he was listening.

“Bob loved danger,” Maggie reminisced, aware of Hollister’s narrow gaze on her face. “He fed on adrenaline. Just after we were married he tried to give it up.” She smiled sadly. “It didn’t work out. For him it was like trying not to breathe.”

“I never knew him,” Blake sighed. He looked up at Hollister. “You aren’t married, are you, Mr. Hollister?”

Hollister stared into the empty coffee cup. “I was.” He put the cup down on the table and turned. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll round up your hands and point them in the right direction.” He put on his coat and cocked his hat over one eye, glancing back at Blake and his mother without smiling. “If I were you, I’d stay inside until this snow lets up. And I’ll have that fence fixed before I let your men come home.”

“Thanks for fixing the generator,” she said, alternately relieved and irritated by his shouldering of her own problems.

He opened the door. “No problem. Good night.”

He was gone in a whirl of wind and snowflakes, and Maggie stared after him feeling oddly empty and alone. How strange to feel that way about a man she disliked.

“He must be divorced,” Maggie said absently.

Blake joined her in the kitchen, draining his can of soft drink. “No, he’s a widower,” he told her. “Grandpa said his whole family was killed in an accident in the Rockies. Mr. Hollister was driving. His wife and son died, and he didn’t.” He shrugged, oblivious to the shock and horror on his mother’s soft face. “Grandpa said that was why he lived like he does, alone and away from everybody. That he was punishing himself because he didn’t die, too. Too bad. He sure is a nice man.”

He glanced at his mother and did a double take at the look on her face. She actually looked interested. And that made him smile, but he was careful not to let her see him doing it.

Chapter Two

W
ith the electrical generator fixed and the snow diminishing, thank God, Maggie spent a day going over the ranch’s financial statement. Blake busied himself with a new computer game while listening to Christmas music on a local country and western radio station. She wondered how Grandfather Jeffries had ever made a go of ranching in the first place, having spent so much on adding new land to his ranch when interest rates were sky-high and spending so little on herd improvement.

What little she’d gleaned from Hollister about crossbreeding had piqued her curiosity. She wondered if her father-in-law had been trying that angle, or if he’d just raised beef without worrying about bloodlines or grades at auction.

The really big problem, though, wasn’t what the ranch’s past had been. It was what its future was going to be. She hated to sell it. There was something majestic and real about rural Montana. About mountains that touched heaven and trees almost that tall. There was space here, not unlike the Arizona she’d come to love, and there were basic values. Blake would love staying on the ranch, having cattle to raise, and he’d have a heritage to inherit. But how was she going to keep it solvent all by herself? As she’d admitted, she knew nothing about the daily routine of ranching, even about how to breed cattle. The worst thing in the world would be to tackle it without expertise. She’d fall flat on her face and lose everything, and where would she be then?

Blake, noting the lines of worry on her oval face, saved the game he’d been playing and, carefully removing the disks first, cut off the computer. He lowered the volume on the radio and turned to face her.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he asked.

She smiled. “I’m no rancher,” she sighed. “That about sizes it up. This place needs a cattleman, not a vacationing secretary.”

“There’s always—”

“Mr. Hollister,” she bit off with a glittering stare in his direction. “Don’t you know any other words?”

Blake grinned, not at all chastened. “His first name is Tate.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and went back to the figures. “I’ll never be able to make it work.”

“We have a great foreman,” Blake said sensibly. “And that’s mainly all we need.”

“You make it sound so easy,” she replied and smiled wearily at him. Probably at his age everything was easy. It was only when people grew up that life got so complicated. “Well, I’ll think about it,” she promised.

But Blake went to bed that night frowning because she’d had that look on her face. The one that said: I’m quitting while I’m ahead. And at all costs, he couldn’t possibly let her out of these mountains before he got a good chance to bring her and Mr. Hollister together. They were both alone, about the right age, and he doted on them. Why wouldn’t it work? He turned off his light so his mother would think he was sleeping, and before he dropped off to sleep he had the answer.

Maggie made pancakes the next morning, and Blake ate two helpings before he got up from the table, put on his boots and thick parka and announced that he was going to hike down the ridge to the river and see if it was frozen.

“You be careful,” she cautioned as he went out, reminding herself that young boys had to have some independence and that she couldn’t keep him indoors for the rest of his life.

“Sure I will,” he promised. He chuckled. “See you in a couple of hours. I’ve got my watch on, so I’ll know when I’m due back, okay?”

She smiled gently. “Okay.”

But two hours passed, joined by two more, and still he didn’t return. Maggie was frantic. She tried searching, but she didn’t have any idea how to find which way he’d gone. She didn’t trust the men, either. Not with Blake’s life. She grimaced and gritted her teeth and tried to stay calm. There was only one person in the world she did trust to find Blake. In a fever of impatience, she got into the four-wheel-drive Bronco that Blake had talked her into buying in the summer and went quickly down the road to the Hollister place.

The Hollister house was a big rugged retreat, with a varnished wood exterior, all angles and glass. Every possible view had its own window, and judging by the number and size of the chimneys, it must have as many fireplaces. Maggie had never set foot inside it, but she’d seen it often enough from the road.

She jumped out of the Bronco, tugging her leather jacket closer against the biting wind. The windchill in these parts was formidable, even in December.

The front porch was long and rambling, with plenty of chairs, but she didn’t stop to admire the view. She knocked frantically at the front door and only then wondered what she was going to do if he wasn’t home. What if he was gone for the day, or out on business, or…

The door opened. Tate Hollister eyed her over a cup of steaming coffee, his blue-checked flannel shirt the only bright and welcoming thing about him as he stared down at her.

“I don’t recall inviting you to lunch,” he said.

She glared at him. “Blake’s missing,” she said hesitantly. Now that she was here, it was even harder than she’d imagined. He did look like stone, mustache and all.

“Don’t look at me,” he said imperturbably. “I don’t have him.”

“He said he’d be gone two hours.” She gnawed her lower lip. “He went down to the ridge to see if the river was frozen. That was four hours ago, and it’s snowing again.” Her soft gray eyes looked up at him helplessly. “I can’t even find tracks.”

“He’s playing a prank,” he told her easily. “When he’s had enough, he’ll come home.”

“He’s not,” she argued. “Blake is like me. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. He doesn’t play pranks.”

“You don’t know much about boys, do you?” he mused.

She was freezing, and his attitude wasn’t warming her at all. “No, I guess I don’t,” she admitted flatly. “I’ve been too concerned with trying to support us to have much free time to learn, either, and Blake is a handful sometimes.”

His dark eyes went slowly over her face, as if he hadn’t really looked at it before. Around them, the wind blew and snow peppered the porch, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“He might be hurt,” she said with involuntary softness. “I’m afraid.”

He pursed his lips, the mustache twitching. “It’s a prank,” he repeated. “But I’ll come. You can wait inside if you like, while I get my coat.”

She didn’t understand why, but she didn’t want to go in that house. She thought suddenly of the wife and child he’d lost, and her feet froze to the porch. It would be like trespassing.

“No,” she hesitated. “I’ll…I’ll just wait out here, thanks.”

He frowned slightly, puzzled, but he shrugged and went off after his coat.

She was standing by the Bronco when he came out, his torso and lean hips covered by the thick shepherd’s coat, his thick black hair under the wide brim of his black Stetson and what looked like a rifle in one hand. At closer inspection, it was, and she frowned.

“You can drive if you like…” she began, but he was going the other way. “Where are you going?” she called, running to keep up with him as he went toward the stables down the road from the house.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m taking a vehicle, even with four-wheel drive, down that ravine,” he said easily. “I’m going out on horseback.”

“With a rifle? What are you going to do with it?”

He spared her an impatient glance. “Oh, for God’s sake, woman, I’m not going to shoot the boy.”

“I didn’t say so,” she faltered.

He made a sound that refuted that and kept walking while she ran along behind him.

“You can wait in the house or go home,” he said. He opened the stable door, and she saw a wide alley filled with wood chips with bright, clean stalls on either side, some of which housed horses.

“He’s my son. I want to come, too.”

He turned, staring at her. “Can you ride?”

“Of course I can ride,” she said irritably.

“Well, well. You aren’t quite the lily I thought you were,” he mused as he went to the tack room.

And what did that mean, she wondered, but anxiety kept her quiet. He saddled a quiet little chestnut mare for her and a huge buckskin gelding for himself. Snow was falling steadily as they stood outside the stable.

“Molly won’t toss you, but she has a tendency to scrape people off against tree trunks, so keep your eyes open,” he said as he held the mare for her to mount.

She swung easily into the saddle, sitting tall, the reins held lightly in her hands.

He looked up. His dark eyes approved her excellent posture and he smiled. It was the first time she recalled ever seeing him smile, and his face didn’t even break.

“No hat,” he said then and went back to the tack room again, returning with a beat-up old Stetson, which came down to her ears but did keep the snow off. “Let’s go.” He swung into his own saddle and took the lead. “Keep in my tracks,” he said over his shoulder. “And don’t stray off.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hollister,” she muttered under her breath.

“What was that?”

She averted her eyes from that black stare. “Not a thing.”

There might have only been the two of them in the world as they rode out through the tall lodgepole pines and aspens, where the snow was less thick, and Maggie thought irrelevantly that this was the best way to see Montana. Not in a car, or on foot. But on the back of a horse, with leather creaking as they rode, and the smell of the fresh mountain air and the bite of the wind and snow on her face. If she hadn’t been so worried about Blake, she might have even been able to appreciate it.

She was still tense, but somehow she knew that whatever was wrong, Hollister would be able to handle it. She glanced at him curiously, wondering at the sense of security she felt with him, even in an emergency like this one. Which brought her mind back to Blake and to the hundred things that might have happened to him, the least of which was enough to make her nauseous. He was all she had…!

“I said,” Hollister repeated curtly, “which way did he go when he left the house?”

She looked up, to see her own cabin just before them. She had to blink twice to get her mind back on track. “Sorry.” She bit her lower lip. “He went there,” she nodded toward the back of the cabin, down the long hill behind.