Chasing the Sun (46 page)

“See what?” Foley asked.

“Damn you, he broke my hand! You better do something!”

“You’re probably right,” Foley said and poured himself another shot.

“Aw, quit whining, Blake,” Jack said with weary patience. “Let’s get this done so I can get home before dark.”

“You’re crazy, you sonofabitch! Who the hell are you?”

Jack smiled pleasantly. “I’m Millie’s friend.”

“Who?” Blake looked confused, then caught sight of the woman grinning at them from the corner. “You bitch!”

Jack lashed out, catching Blake on the side of his head with enough force to send him crashing into the bar. “I don’t have time for this.” Turning to face the other men in the room, Jack said loudly, “Anybody willing to help me out here?”

No one moved.

Jack pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and slapped them onto the bar. “There’s at least ten dollars here and most of a bottle of fine rye whiskey. All you have to do to earn it is hold him still.”

Immediately chairs scraped across the wooden floor.

“Sheriff, do something!” Blake cried, scrambling for the door as men descended.

Foley poured another drink.

With so many helpers, they had Blake corralled and pinned to the bar in no time. Once he quit struggling, Jack leaned down and looked directly into the frightened man’s lizard eyes. “Remember the woman and little kid you took out to the Wilkins place a while back?”

Blake gaped up at him, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

“That was my woman,” Jack said. “And my daughter you tried to harm.”

“I didn’t do any—”

Blake’s words ended in a high-pitched shriek as Jack brought the bottle down on the back of his left hand.

After the wailing stopped, Jack waved the helpers away. Putting his hand on Blake’s neck to hold him still, he bent to whisper in his ear. “Now here’s where I give you advice that’ll save your life, so pay attention.” He straightened and waited until Blake stopped whimpering, then said with careful enunciation, “Don’t hit women. This time it was only your hands. Next time it’ll be your balls. You understand?”

Blake made a choking noise.

“Good.” Jack shoved him away. “Now leave.”

Blake reeled for the double doors. After they swung closed behind him, Foley pushed away from the bar. “Have fun?” he asked Jack.

“Not particularly.” Jack could hold his own in a fight—except against Hank—but with his size, and the training he’d received at his brother’s hands and in various ports here and there, it wasn’t that much fun anymore. Too easy.

Foley belched. “Well, I did. Now I gotta go hide from my wife ’til I sober up.” And with a backward wave, he made his way unsteadily toward the door.

“Helluva show,” the barkeep said as he cleared away Foley’s glass.

Jack noticed he was missing two fingers on his right hand. “Jesus, man. What got ahold of you? Apaches?”

“Cougar.” The old man showed pink gums in a big grin. “Got him back, though.”

And in the nick of time, Jack thought, afraid to ask what other parts the poor fellow might have lost. Tossing enough coins on the bar to settle his bill, he nodded his thanks to the barkeep and walked to the table where the city slickers sat watching him with worry on their faces.

“I understand Wilkins Cattle and Mining owes your employee, Stanley Ashford, some money,” Jack said, after he’d introduced himself. “But I figure since he stole the money he loaned us from you in the first place, it’s really the EP&P we owe.” Pulling the packet of cash from his pocket, he dropped it onto the table. “This ought to cover it.”

They blinked at the packet, their eyes as bright and round as shiny new coins.

“I don’t care how you handle it with Ashford,” Jack said. “Hopefully the Apaches have taken care of him by now. But as far as we’re concerned, if you’ll just sign this”—he unfolded the loan paper and spread it open before them—“then we’ll be fair and square and I can be on my way home.”

And ten minutes later, he was.

DAISY DECIDED HANK WAS THE PERFECT ESCORT FOR THE long ride to Redemption, since he didn’t try to engage her in conversation, or talk her out of her melancholy, or offer false assurances that she was doing the right thing.

But after the first hour, the silence she had so appreciated at the onset grew tedious in the extreme. Even Kate grew so bored she fell asleep on her blanket in the back.

And as the miles rolled past to the monotonous clop of the horse’s hooves, with no conversation to distract her, Daisy found herself reliving over and over those hours with Jack from the night before.

She had taken a huge risk. Even now she could be pregnant. And if she had thought making love to Jack would make this parting easier, she was woefully mistaken.

Yet she had no regrets.

Instead, it was her decision to go on without him that brought her the most distress.

Just once,
she thought. If just once she could stand before the flickering lights in a grand hall that had been created solely to glorify music—if she could look out at the expectant faces, hear the lilting strains of the orchestra all around her as she sent her voice soaring to the rafters—then she would be satisfied. She would know the dream could have been a reality, that she could have done it.

Just one chance. That’s all she wanted.

But was it worth giving up Jack?

It was all so unfair.
Damn it all.

“You say something?”

Glancing over, she found Hank studying her with a questioning look in his brown eyes. He had such kind eyes. Wise and watchful, as if she could find all her answers hidden within them if she only knew which questions to ask. “Have you ever had a dream, Hank? A burning drive to be something else, or reach for something else?”

He turned back to the road and thought about for it a while. Then he said almost reluctantly, as if he were revealing a deep secret, “I always wanted to be an inventor.”

She almost snorted. “But you
are
an inventor,” she reminded him.

“No. I’m a tinkerer. There’s a difference.”

Leave it to Hank to be that precise. “So why did you settle for tinkering?”

“Molly.”

“Ah ... so you’re a romantic,” she teased. “You must love her a lot.”

“She’ll do.” The corner of his mouth quirked as he stared at the road ahead. “But mostly I realized it can be more satisfying to watch other people find their dreams than to get too caught up in my own. And tinkering suits me fine.”

Could she do that? Settle for half measures? She’d tried singing in a saloon, and that hadn’t been satisfying at all.

Daisy lapsed into thoughtful silence as the horse plodded on, the land around them changing as they climbed higher into the mountains. The trees weren’t as tall now, their limbs stubby and slightly bowed from spending long winter months under a burden of snow. The road, which had dwindled to a narrow trail cut into steep slopes, wound through huge boulders, with rocky walls rising on one side and sudden drop-offs on the other. Aware of the precariousness of their path, Daisy didn’t look down, praying Kate remained asleep and the horse didn’t stumble and Hank stayed calm.

Which, of course, he did. She had never seen Hank anything but calm. She had a feeling she didn’t want to, either.

When they finally cleared the ridge and started down the other side, the road improved somewhat, and Daisy was able to breathe easier and enjoy the incredible views of this magnificent country. It was as wild and rugged as any place she had ever seen and she had to admire the men of this family who worked so hard to tame it. But soon they were back in the trees once more and without the wide-open vistas to distract her, she began fretting again.

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing?” she asked after a while.

Hank was leaning forward, his elbows on his bent knees, the reins loose in his big hands. He smiled but didn’t respond.

Not that she expected him to. Hank was too crafty to fall for such a loaded question.

“Wise man, not to answer.” She gave his strong profile a rueful smile. “No wonder they say you’re the smartest brother.”

He shot her a dazzling grin that would have made her heart falter if she weren’t so in love with his brother. “Not the best looking?”

She laughed. “Sorry. I’d have to give Jack my vote on that.”

His smile faded. He faced forward again. “Don’t underestimate him, Daisy. There’s more to Jack than his face. He’s smarter than he lets on.”

“I’ve noticed. So why does he play at being the carefree gad-about?”

Hank thought it over. Like his wife, he carefully considered before he spoke. Daisy had to wonder if they were as deliberate in the bedroom as they were outside of it. Then she thought of the look she had sometimes seen in Hank’s eyes when he’d glanced at his wife, and the answering blush on Molly’s cheeks, and realized whatever they were doing seemed to suit both of them just fine.

“That was his place in the family,” he finally said. “Brady was the responsible one. I was the tinkerer and workhorse. And since Jack was too young to wrest those jobs from either of us, he took what was left. The prankster and the dreamer.” Hank shrugged. “I might be able to work numbers and figure how something works, but I can get lost in the details. Brady, he sees the bigger picture, like this ranch and what it takes to keep it going. That takes a different kind of smart. But Jack’s a little harder to figure out, since he puts up so many false trails. He may not know yet who he is or what he wants. I think because he’s had to play catch-up to his big brothers all his life, sometimes he forgets why he’s running and where he’s headed. But he’s learning.”

“What would he be running from?”

“Us. The ranch. It’s a heavy burden.”

“Yet you stay.”

He shrugged. “Brady needs reasons for what he does. Since he took over the ranch, Jack and I have been his reasons for working it and us so hard. But he’s got a wife now, and kids, and it won’t be long before he realizes they give him all the purpose he’ll ever need. Then I can leave.”

Daisy tried to imagine the ranch without Hank and Molly and their stepchildren. Jessica would be devastated.

As they turned a bend, Daisy saw a doe in the road ahead, her belly distended with the fawn she would drop soon. For a moment, the deer froze and stared at them with dark, unblinking eyes, then, having made her decision, she bounded into the trees. Daisy wished she could reach her own decisions as easily. She sighed, so confused her stomach was working itself into knots. “I wish I knew if I was doing the right thing.”

“How does it feel to you?”

“Wrong.”

“Well, then.”

“But it feels wrong to give up on singing too.”

“Well, then.”

“‘Well, then’?” She gave a broken laugh. “That’s all the advice you have?”

“You want advice, go to Brady. He’s so overrun with it, if he didn’t give some away from time to time, it would probably send him into a choking fit.”

Laughing, she reached over to pat his muscled arm. “He just worries about you. He’s your big brother.”

“I know.” Hank sighed. “And it’s a curse.”

Twenty-six

JACK BOUNCED BETWEEN FURY AND DISBELIEF AS HE HEADED home in the buggy.

He might not admit it to anyone but himself, but he looked up to his big brothers. Yet even as a kid, he’d felt little more than a tagalong behind them, never smart enough to have anything important to add, or big enough to do his full share of the heavy work, or experienced enough to be given the same amount of responsibility his brothers carried. So after a while he’d quit trying and had gone his own way. But until today, he’d never realized they thought less of him for not fitting the family mold, or considered him so incapable that they wouldn’t even come to him if they needed help.

Even Hank. He’d always known he didn’t measure up to Brady’s idea of what he should be, but he thought Hank had higher regard for him than that.

Apparently not.

Well, now he knew.

And finally knowing exactly how he stood with them would make it a lot easier to move on without feeling guilty about leaving the ranch, or fearing he was letting them down. He could make a clean break. He had Daisy and Kate now. He didn’t need any other family but them. It was time to ride away from this place and never look back.

As he approached the canyon where the horses had been held overnight, he saw Major Billingsly and his men bringing out the three-year-olds. Luckily their earlier two-day jaunt into town had made them trail wise, so they were herding up well. The mares and foals and studs had already left for home. Jack suspected Langley would push straight through this time, rather than drag it out two days.

After exchanging words with the major and adding his signature to the bills of sale, Jack turned the buggy toward home. He was anxious to get there before dark so he could have it out with his brothers, change horses, then load up Daisy and Kate and head back to Val Rosa. It would be late by then, but there should be enough moon that they could see their way. He didn’t want to stay at the ranch any longer than he had to, and he had a feeling once he said his piece, his brothers wouldn’t want him to hang around either.