Calder Pride (14 page)

But knowing what to do and doing it were two very different things. Very little had ever been demanded of her. When Cat considered what she was demanding of herself, the enormity of the task before her was almost overwhelming. She immediately blocked it from her mind before it paralyzed her.

That evening, after the Christmas party had wound down to a close, instead of returning to The Homestead and leaving the cleanup to others, Cat remained behind and helped. The following morning, she was the first one at the barn. By the time the others arrived, she had already begun removing the ornaments from the tree and storing them in their boxes.

It was a small thing, insignificant in many ways. But it was a first step.

The second week of January, the winter’s first blizzard buried the Triple C under eighteen inches of snow. Howling winds piled it into man-sized drifts, obliterating the landscape and creating a wild, storm-tossed ocean of towering white waves that, in places, curled back on themselves. Snow-blocked roads, downed utility lines, frozen water pipes, stranded livestock—emergency situations came at them from every direction.

Cat pitched in wherever she could help, doing whatever needed to be done. When the backup gasoline-driven generator at the South Branch camp went out, she hauled a new one to them, following behind Jim Trumbo on the ranch’s road grader, one of several pieces of heavy equipment used to maintain the miles of roads that interlaced the Triple C. On her return trip to headquarters, she carried spools of elec
tric cable for the ranch’s full-time electrician Mike Garvey and his assistant. As soon as the weather cleared sufficiently to take to the sky, she climbed into one of the single-engine Cessnas and took part in the air search to locate the scattered pockets of stranded livestock. Later, she made endless trips on the tractor, hauling bales from the hay shed to the airstrip, where others waited to load them in planes. When she wasn’t doing that, Cat was at the first-aid center, working with Art Trumbo’s wife, Amy, a registered nurse, treating everything from frostbite and muscle sprains to the not-so-uncommon cold. In addition, she did stints at the cookhouse, serving coffee and late meals to the road and utility crews as well as the working ranch hands. With everyone working equally long hours, no one noticed the amount of time Cat put in, and she did nothing to draw attention to it.

When calving season arrived, it was a time of round-the-clock work in invariably miserable conditions. Cat spent her share of hours in the calving sheds, tramping through the muck and the mire, making sure there was always fresh coffee for the men, now and then pitching in to pull a calf, and taking over the care of the orphaned ones.

Through it all, Cat used her spare time to turn a corner of her bedroom into a nursery. Her old baby crib and changing table were hauled down from the attic. With each trip to town, she brought home a few more items for the baby until she had a supply of little undershirts, socks, sleepsuits, and newborn outfits along with the requisite bibs, rattles, teething rings, baby powder, diapers, and assorted baby items, all of it augmented by purchases Jessy had made.

Morning after morning Cat examined her relatively small melon-sized belly in the mirror and worried when it failed to reach the elephantine girth she thought it should have. Dr. Dan assured her that she
was simply one of those rare women who didn’t get big, and for her not to worry, both she and the baby were fine. Then he encouraged her again to get plenty of exercise.

April rolled around, that changeable time of year when the seasons mixed, with winter’s snow one day and spring’s sunny warmth the next—-the month when the horses were traditionally brought in from winter range. When her father objected to Cat going on the gather, she reminded him of the doctor’s advice to exercise. In the end, he relented, and Cat went along, although she found herself assigned mainly to pasture gates.

But her father wasn’t so easily persuaded when spring roundup time came. The temper Cat had struggled to contain over these last months threatened to erupt in the face of his calm adamancy that she wasn’t going. It glittered in her eyes as she came to an abrupt stop and swung to face him, her gloved hands clenched in rigid fists at her sides.

“Dad, you are being ridiculous.” Her voice vibrated with the effort to keep her anger in check. She waved an impatient hand at Jessy, busy scraping her boots across the mud brush by the front door. “Would you forbid Jessy to go if she was the one who was pregnant?”

“No, her father replied evenly. “I would expect Ty to do that.”

Cat turned on her brother when he joined them on the porch. “I suppose you agree with him.”

He hesitated, his gaze traveling past her to their father, then back to her. “You shouldn’t be taking unnecessary risks, Cat.”

She propped her hands on her hips and looked from one to the other. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Jessy, talk to them,” she appealed to her sister-in-law. “Explain that I’m not some fragile thing that
needs to be wrapped in cotton.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do any good, Cat.” Amusement gleamed in her hazel eyes. “Men don’t want to believe that.”

“This is positively archaic,” Cat muttered and took her turn at the cast-iron boot scraper when Jessy finished. “I have been riding all along. The exercise is good for me. Dr. Dan—”

“You’ve used that argument before,” her father broke in smoothly. “It won’t work this time. You are too close to term.”

“My due date is almost two weeks away.” Which was stretching the truth a bit. It was more like nine days. “Practically every woman on this ranch has told me the first baby usually comes late. I am not about to sit around twiddling my thumbs for the next two weeks—or more. I’ll go crazy.”

“Just the same, you need to start taking it easy,” her father stated.

“Wait a minute—this is my body and my child. I think I know better than you what I am capable of doing,” Cat declared, angry now and not trying to hide it. “I am not going to do anything that would endanger me or my baby. I have no intention of tearing off across the countryside after some steer. And I am not about to work the branding fires where I might get kicked—”

“That’s right, you won’t. Because you are staying home,” Chase stated.

Too furious to speak, Cat glared at him, but her anger left no mark on him. She recalled all her fine resolutions to control her feelings as he did. Pride and self-will surfaced, cooling her temper in an instant.

“I have no wish to defy you, Father, but I am going on the roundup,” she informed him, matching his direct tone. “Short of locking me in my room,
you can’t stop me. And I wouldn’t advise you to try that, unless you want to see me crawling out of a second-story window.”

The change from blazing anger to cool control was so swift and so complete that it momentarily stunned Chase. But only a flicker of it showed in his eyes. For a long second, he studied this woman before him, clad in boots and hat and a cowboy’s long black duster, splattered with mud. Her dark hair was drawn loosely back from a face devoid of makeup. But her rough man’s clothing couldn’t disguise the womanliness of her or her natural beauty.

In so many ways, Cat was the image of her mother, but not in this. Maggie would have continued to storm and rage at him, and—more than likely—searched for something to throw at him. Now the smoothness of her expression and the steadiness of her gaze showed Chase that Cat was his daughter as well. She was a Calder. This was not a challenge; it was a statement of her intentions, issued as a Calder would do it.

Chase hadn’t thought it possible to love his daughter more than he already did. He saw now, he was wrong. The knowledge of it roughened his voice when he spoke, “If anything happened to you out there, Cat—” He left the rest of it unsaid.

“I understand.” And it showed in the soft curve of her lips and the sudden warmth in her eyes. “But I could as easily fall down the stairs as off a horse.”

There was no more discussion. She was going.

T
he bawl of calves and the bellow of cows filled the wide hollow in the plains where encircling riders kept the herd bunched. The cattle were a cross of Hereford and Angus with enough longhorn thrown in to create a colorful patchwork of rust, black, roan, and brindle. At the far end of the hollow, ground crews waited by branding fires while other riders, working in pairs, walked their horses into the herd and separated the unbranded calves, their ropes snaking out swift and sure to ensnare hind legs and drag them gently to the fire.

Roundups on the ranch had been conducted in this manner for more than a hundred years. The cowboys of the Triple C wouldn’t have it any other way, showing the same disdain for holding pens and squeeze chutes that they did for rattlesnakes and politicians, insisting that the old way was faster and less stressful on man and beast. It was the same reason they gave for sleeping on the hard ground under a big, open sky—unless it rained. Then they grumbled, hunched their shoulders, and cursed the mud that sucked at the feet of anything that walked.

But the only clouds visible this morning were puffy
white ones—the innocent kind that intensified the turquoise blue of the sky. Chase automatically scanned them and, just as automatically, brought his gaze back to the slight-built rider on the herd’s edge, one of the group that kept the cattle bunched for the roping teams. Cat seemed to be fine. She sat relaxed and easy in the saddle, yet fully balanced, ready to turn back any animal that tried to break from the herd. Her black duster was tied behind the saddle, not needed on this warm spring morning. The flannel shirt she wore, of green and black plaid, hung loose, drawing no attention to the small, round belly it covered.

Reassured once more, Chase shifted his weight in the saddle, seeking a more comfortable position, the leather creaking a little, his teeth clenched against the sharp and almost constant arthritic pain in his back and hips, resulting from the injuries he suffered in the plane crash that had taken Maggie’s life. He knew he was lucky even to be able to sit a horse. But two hours in the saddle and he was more stove up than a man half again his age. Judging by the grinding ache, he had almost reached that limit.

He gathered up the chestnut’s reins, thinking to ride back to the motorized cookshack, have some coffee, and stretch the kinks out of his back and legs. The drowsing chestnut, a veteran of countless roundups, heaved a weary sigh of resignation and lifted its head, then paused and swiveled its ears in the direction of an approaching rider. Chase saw him as well and let his hands settle back on the saddle horn when he recognized his son. Ty cantered his horse the last few yards up the sloping side of the grassy bowl and reined in alongside Chase.

“How’s Cat?” Ty pushed his hat back and rested a forearm on his saddle horn while his gaze skimmed the other riders, circling the herd until finally locating his sister.

“She seems to be fine.”

Ty watched her a moment. “The boys aren’t too happy about her being here.”

“Neither am I,” Chase replied, then added somewhat grudgingly, “At the same time, I have to admire her for what she’s doing.”

Ty nodded with equal reluctance. “She set out to pull her own weight and prove how tough she is, and she’s certainly doing that. Although why she is, I don’t know.”

“Because toughness is a quality men respect out here, and Cat knows that.”

“Not in women.”

“In women, too,” Chase stated, with a decisive nod. “We just don’t want them to be less of a woman because of it. That makes for a fine line to walk.”

“A very fine line,” Ty agreed dryly.

Chase smiled at that. “We have always expected more from women—set higher standards for them than we ourselves are willing to meet. It isn’t fair, but it’s a fact.”

“I guess you’re right.” A freshly branded calf, sporting a shiny new ear tag, ran toward the herd, bawling for its mother. Idly Ty observed the reunion. “Arch tells me we’ve got about twenty head of Shamrock cattle in our gather.”

“Sounds like O’Rourke is up to his old tricks of wintering his cows on Calder grass,” Chase remarked in a voice arid with disapproval.

“Probably couldn’t afford the hay to feed them,” Ty guessed. “I swear I don’t know how he makes a living off that ranch.”

“He doesn’t need much, just enough to pay property taxes and put food on his table. He certainly doesn’t spend anything on keeping the place up.” Which was another strike against him, in Chase’s book.

“That’s true enough.” Straightening in the saddle, Ty cast a searching glance toward the cookshack. “I’m surprised he hasn’t shown up here yet, as close an eye as he keeps on Cat.”

“More than likely he’ll ride in around noon—in time to eat.”

Ty nodded at that. “I told Arch to cut the Shamrock stock out and throw them back across his fence as soon as this bunch gets branded.” Automatically, his gaze swung northward in the direction of his uncle’s ranch, then lingered on the pair of riders trotting toward them. “We have company.”

Turning in his saddle, Chase studied the lead rider, a short, wiry man with a narrow face and a full mustache as dark as his hair was white. “Looks like Dode Hensen.” He could think of only one reason his neighbor to the north would be paying them a visit. In the years since he’d had his run-in with the owner of the Circle Six Ranch, the two men hadn’t exchanged two dozen words. This was definitely not a social call.

That thought was confirmed moments later when Dode Hensen rode up to the lip of the grassy bowl and reined in a few yards from them.

“Calder.” He gave Chase a brisk nod of greeting, his eyes cool, a wad of chewing tobacco making a bulge in his leathered cheek.

“Hensen.” Chase nodded back. “What can we do for you?”

“I’m missing a couple cows. Registered Angus. Thought they might have gotten mixed in with your stuff,” he said, then added, by way of explanation in the event Chase thought it may have been deliberate, “Snow drifted kinda high a time or two this winter. Gets packed hard enough and it’s like a bridge over a fence.”

“That’s been known to happen,” Chase agreed.

“As far as I know, Mr. Hensen,” Ty put in, “we haven’t come across any stock carrying the Circle Six, but you’re welcome to cut the herd and look for yourself.”

“Obliged.” He flicked a hand toward his companion, a boy who looked to be in his late teens. “Junior, take a ride down there and see if my cows are there.”

The boy bobbed his head in quick acknowledgment, then touched a spur to his horse and rode down the slope toward the herd. Ty went with him. Dode Hensen continued to sit his horse, his gaze following the boy. Chase let the silence ride. If there was to be any talking done, he had decided Hensen would start it. But it was clear the man had something on his mind.

Below, the teenager quietly walked his stocky gray gelding into the herd. Hensen turned his head and spat a stream of yellow juice into the grass, his gaze never leaving the rider.

“Don’t want you thinking, Calder, that I threw my cows on your grass,” he said after a long minute.

“That was a long time ago, Hensen,” Chase replied. “A different time, different circumstance.”

“Gotten older, that’s for damned sure.” He shifted in his saddle as if to ease a stiffening ache in his bones. “That’s MacGruder’s youngest boy down there.”

“He’s got his stamp.” Chase took in the boy’s big, muscled chest, dark hair, and blunted, pugnacious features.

“Same as your son’s got yours,” Hensen observed, shifting the tobacco wad in his cheek. “My daughter married herself a lawyer over in Billings a few years back. Got herself a couple kids now. Ma’s been agitating to sell out, move closer so she can spend more time in town, with the grandkids. Don’t
know what I’d do with myself in town, though.”

“It’s a hard decision,” Chase agreed.

“Don’t reckon it’s one I have to make just yet.” He turned and spat again. “Got a few more years of work left in this body.”

Chase nodded, then made a neighborly gesture. “The coffeepot at the cookshack is always full, if you got time for a cup.”

“Another time, maybe.” The old man gathered up the reins to his horse as the MacGruder boy left the herd and rode back toward them. “Don’t look like my cows is in your gather. Reckon I’ll check with O’Rourke, see if they strayed onto the Shamrock. Can’t afford to lose registered stock.”

“Luck to you,” Chase said, fully aware that on a small ranch like the Circle Six, the loss of two cows and their offspring could mean the difference between a good year and a poor one.

“Hope I don’t need it.” The rancher backed his horse a few steps, then swung it away from the bowl and waited for the boy to come alongside him.

Together they set off, heading toward O’Rourke’s place. Chase watched them a moment, then turned his horse toward the cookshack and rode over to get himself a cup of coffee and a much-needed break from the saddle.

At noontime, the clang of the cook’s triangle rang like a clarion above the din of lowing cattle and creaking saddle leather, a welcome sound to Cat. She was more tired from the morning’s work than she wanted to admit, tired enough that she didn’t argue when Ty ordered her to eat with the first shift of riders.

Cat walked her horse to the picket line and dis
mounted, careful to keep her face expressionless and hide her fatigue, but there was nothing she could do about the smudges under her eyes. A line had already formed at the washbasins. Cat joined it to wait her turn and unconsciously pressed both hands to the small of her back, arching a little in effort to ease the dull and persistent ache that seemed to be centered there. The action pushed out her small, rounded belly, making its shape clearly visible beneath the loose shirt she wore.

Arch Goodman noticed it as he wiped his wet hands on a towel. His eyes narrowed on her in blatant disapproval. “This is no place for a woman in your condition. You belong t’home.”

Her newly acquired control allowed her to smile in a chiding manner. “And deprive my son of the chance to claim he went on his first roundup before he was even born?” Cat spread a hand over her belly, the gesture at once loving and protective. “I don’t think so, Arch.”

Startled by her response, he blinked. There was a warm glint in his eye when he turned away, a glint that silently hinted he rather liked that idea.

“Good answer,” Jessy murmured near her ear, coming up to join her in line. “It’s the kind of brag they like to make about a Calder.”

“It will be a true one,” Cat responded in the same soft undertone that wouldn’t reach beyond her sister-in-law’s hearing.

A space cleared at one of the washbasins. Cat walked over to it, rolled back the sleeves of her shirt and washed her hands, then splashed water on her face. But the refreshing wetness failed to chase away that dull, heavy feeling that plagued her.

Jessy stepped up to the basin next to hers and ran a critical eye over Cat, noting the faint shadows under her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.” But her quick smile wasn’t totally convincing.

When she left the grub line, Cat glanced without interest at the food piled on her plate. For most of her pregnancy, she had been ravenous, devouring everything in sight. It was a surprise to discover she wasn’t the least bit hungry. She blamed it on the tiredness she felt, and wondered if she had the strength to get through the rest of the day, troubled that she might have started something she couldn’t finish.

Cat squared her shoulders, trying to throw off the weariness, and glanced around, looking for some quiet, out-of-the way place to sit. Her father called to her and motioned to the vacant campstool beside him. She hesitated, reluctant to come under the scrutiny of his too-sharp eyes. Just then a slim, narrow-shouldered cowboy stepped from behind one of the stock trailers, his hat pulled low on his forehead, half hiding his face. A wash of relief swept through her when she recognized Culley. Quickly she signaled to her father that she would be joining her uncle, then walked over to him.

“Hi. Did you just get here?”

“A few minutes ago.” Culley turned over a five-gallon bucket and motioned for her to sit down. Cat readily accepted the makeshift seat while he squatted beside her. “Thought you’d be back at The Homestead,” he said.

She shook her head and poked her fork into the potatoes on her plate. “The doctor said I should get plenty of exercise. It’s supposed to make it easier when my time comes.”

Culley supposed that was true. He didn’t know too much about woman things, and he wasn’t comfortable talking about them. He changed the subject. “They took old man Anderson to the hospital yesterday.”

Cat looked up in surprise. “What happened?”

“Fedderson says he had a stroke. They don’t know if he’s gonna make it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” An instant image of Emma Anderson flashed in her mind, along with the memory of the vicious slurs the woman had hurled. Determined to block it, Cat took a quick bite of potato, but it lodged somewhere in her throat.

“Fedderson said Anderson’s been wandering around town like a lost soul all spring. I guess he didn’t know what to do with himself without fields to plow and crops to plant.”

“She’ll probably blame me for that, too.” Cat returned the fork to her plate, leaving it lie there.

Culley gave her a worried look. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I—”

“It’s okay. Really,” she insisted.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” he asked when she set the plate aside.

“I’m not hungry. I had too big a breakfast, I guess,” she lied, then turned to him with a masking smile. “I don’t suppose you’d mind getting me a cup of coffee, would you?”

“Course not.” Straightening, he went to fetch it.

Alone, Cat sagged back against the stock trailer, letting her weary muscles relax. The baby kicked, drawing a wince from her that was quickly followed by a smile. She rubbed a soothing hand over her protruding stomach, seeking to quiet the active infant within. It was good simply to sit and feel the wind on her face, spiced with the smells of men, horses, food, and the rawness of the land.

Culley came back with her coffee. Thanking him, Cat took the metal mug and sipped at the scalding hot drink, not talking, knowing Culley wouldn’t mind. He had never been a man given to idle conversation. Nursing his own cup of coffee, he leaned a
narrow shoulder against a corner of the trailer, content with her company.