Lone Calder Star (13 page)

Max laid his spoon aside, his gaze growing hard with impatience and intolerancec. "'The only thing that could be of any possible interest would be who they had the fight with."

"Exactly." Smugness marked the curve of Boone's mouth. "It seems they cornered Echohawk in the parking lot at Tillie's and roughed him up a bit."

Elbows resting on the arms of his wheelchair, Max clasped his hands together and coolly regarded him. "Did you put that idea in their heads?"

The icy contempt in his father's voice suddenly made Boone uneasy and defensive. He lifted one shoulder in a nervous shrug.

"They came up with it themselves. The opportunity was there and they took it. What's wrong with that?" He frowned, confused and not liking the feeling. "They didn't do anything different from what you've wanted done in the past."

"But in the past," Max began, speaking slowly, drawing out each word and coating it with sarcasm, "the target was always some hired man. It was never a Calder!" He issued the last with explosive heat.

The hangover left Boone with a short temper of his own. "I don't see what difference that makes," he fired back. "Echohawk's never laid eyes on any of them before. He can't connect them to us."

"Do you really think he's as stupid as you are?" Max jeered, then waved aside the question in disgust. "Don't bother to answer that."

"What the hell difference does it make what he might suspect?" Boone demanded, his voice raising. "He can't prove a damned thing. He never even called the police. Tandy hung around Tillie's to make sure of that."

"The police are the least of the problem," Max said, dismissing that as a concern. "I can pull enough strings to handle a scuffle outside a bar."

"Then what the hell's your problem?"

Max ignored the question. "You said the boys roughed him up. How bad was he hurt? Or did you even bother to ask?"

"I didn't know I was supposed to care," Boone replied with sarcasm. "But he couldn't have been hurt all that had. Tandy saw him behind the wheel of his pickup, driving out of the lot. Odds are, he got home under his own power."

With that concern eliminated, Max's thoughts went down another road. "I wonder why Echohawk went to Tillie's in the first place," he mused aloud. "Was he hoping to invite the kind of trouble he got? I wonder."

"Now you're giving him credit for being smarter than he is." Boone smiled without humor and downed some more of his hangover cure.

"Am I?" Max countered in open doubt. "Then maybe you can tell me what he was doing there?

And don't give me any nonsense about just stopping in for a beer. Echohawk didn't strike me as the type who goes carousing just because it's Saturday night-like somebody else I won't bother to name."

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Boone reacted to the none-too-subtle dig with more sarcasm.

"He had a drink there, all right, with Dallas."

"Dallas," Max repeated and frowned. "You mean Empty Garner's granddaughter?"

"There's no one else around here named Dallas that I know of," he retorted and drained the tall glass, ice clinking against its sides.

"I wonder how he met her," Max murmured thoughtfully.

"Could have been the cafe, or the feed store or both." As far as Boone was concerned, it didn't really matter.

"She works both places, doesn't she?" Max said in idle recollection. "It's our bad luck that he hooked up with the Garners so soon after he hit town. But it could explain why Echohawk was so quick to look our direction for the source of the Cee Bar's problems. It's odd though," he added on further thought.

"What is?"

"Let me put it this way-Empty will likely go to his grave still nursing a grudge against us, but I thought the girl had let go of the past."

" She met with Echohawk didn't she." Boone reminded him.

"But why at Tillie's? Why at a place where she had to know we would be told about her meeting?"

Boone shrugged. "Maybe she doesn't care if we know."

"If she doesn't, she will," Max stated with a finality that suggested that matter was settled in his mind. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the oatmeal. "As for the three men who jumped Echohawk, right after dinner you can go tell them to pack their bags and head for the feedlot outside pronto. I don't want them showing their faces around here until all their bruises have disappeared."

"If you say so." But Boone regarded it as a needless precaution. "You should know, though, that they're hoping for a bonus."

"I'd say they've already gotten one. They aren't fired. Maybe they'll get the message to do what they're told and nothing more than that." Max scooped more oatmeal into his spoon. "What have you learned about Echohawk's hired man? Is he from the Triple C?"

"I don't know yet."

"Then find out," Max ordered with thinning patience. "I want to know who he is, what he drives, and where he's staying. And I want to know it yesterday!"

"I wish you'd make up your damned mind," Boone muttered, pushing the words through tightly clenched teeth. "First you're telling me to do something about that semi load of hay he's got coming. Now it's the hired man."

Max threw him a scornful look. "What's the matter? Can't you do two things at once?"

The words were a verbal slap. "Of course I can!" Boone asserted in a voice that vibrated with pent-up fury.

"Then do it," Max snapped in return.

Saddle leather creaked, a companion sound to the muffled thud of hooves on hard-packed ground. Overhead, the afternoon sun sat at a high angle, its yellow glare shining in a milk blue sky. An idle breeze wandered over and down the Texas hills, its breath carrying the warmth and faint tang of the gulf shore.

Quint sat easy in the saddle, his hand light on the reins. The bruise along his cheekbone was a colorful swirl of purple and green, but the swelling had gone down. A simple bandage covered the cut above his eyebrow. Other than a lingering puffiness around one corner of his mouth, he looked none the worse for his run-in with the trio in Tillie's parking lot.

A quick drumming of hoofbeats came from his right. Quint glanced that way as Empty Garner flushed two cows out of a draw and sent them trotting after the rest of the herd. Twenty feet
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beyond him was the fence line, every inch of it without cover and empty of cattle.

His job finished, Empty reined his horse away from the cows and took aim on Quint, lifting his mount into a lope to rejoin him. Quint pulled up to wait for him and dug the notepad and pencil out of his pocket to add the last two animals to his tally.

With a short tug on the reins, Empty checked his horse's gait and swung alongside Quint. "Like it or not, that's the last of them in this pasture." He eyed the marks on the notepaper in Quint's hand. "Is the tally the same as the first?"

"Exactly the same." Quint wasn't surprised by that, but he wasn't pleased either as he returned the tally book and pencil to his pocket.

"I didn't figure we'd missed any, but there was always a chance we might have." Empty rested both hands on the saddle horn, one on top of the other, and slanted a knowing look at Quint. "I told you to expect it."

"To be honest, Empty," Quint said, allowing a slight smile to curve his mouth, careful not to let it be too wide and open the cut inside the corner of his mouth, "I would have been shocked if you were wrong."

Empty grunted an acknowledgment and declared, "Rutledge don't miss a trick and that's a fact."

He ran a sidelong glance over the multicoloured bruise high on Quint's chcck. "'Though, I've gut to admit I never figured he'd sic his boys on you so quick.."

"It was my mistake for stopping in there for a beer." But it was Dallas that Quint was thinking about, just as he had countless times in the last two days.

By now she would have heard from Rutledge, either directly or indirectly. Quint could only hope that a warning was all she received. As much as he wanted to make certain she was all right, he knew he had to keep his distance from her.

"Best do your drinking here at the Cee Bar from now on-and damned little of it," Empty advised.

"I've never been much of a drinking man." Quint collected the reins and swung his horse toward the ranch yard.

Empty followed suit, riding parallel with him while automatically running a rancher's assessing eye over the pasture condition. "Good thing you got hay coming. The graze is getting pretty thin."

"I noticed."

"It could be worse, though," Empty continued. "Old Ellis Baxter used to own this section. He was one of those progressive kind, always hot to do what some government expert claimed was right." Empty punctuated the statement with a derisive snort. "It wouldn't have surprised me if Baxter had seeded his whole place with that damned government Love Grass. It's the most worthless stuff ever put on earth. Cattle won't eat it. But that damned Love Grass chokes out all the native grasses. As far as I'm concerned, it's nothing but a fire hazard."

As always, Quint listened when the retired rancher opined on a subject. The old man reminded him of the veteran hands at the Triple C, whose storehouse of knowledge and experience they had always been ready to share with him, from the time he was kneehigh. They had taught him a healthy respect for the old ways, which often turned out to be the best ways.

"Thought I'd tackle that mesquite in the south pasture tomorrow," Empty remarked. "You turn your back on that stuff and be

fore you know it, it's taken over the whole pasture. Then you gotta play brush-popper to get the cattle out of it, and I'm too old to he tearing pell-mell through a bunch of scrub. You only need to drive to the coastal plains or over in west Texas to see what a plague mesquite's become. An old-timer once told me that whole area used to be a sea of grass. Now it's damned near a forest of mesquite."

"I heard." In his mind, Quint summoned up an image of the grass ocean that covered the Triple C Ranch in Montana. The image quickly dissipated, scattered by the muted jingle of the cell phone in his jacket pocket. Retrieving it, he flipped it open. "Cee Bar."

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His aunt's familiar voice responded with sharp clarity, "Hello, Quint. It's Jessy."

"Back home, are you?" he guessed. "How was the wedding?"

"Huge and beautiful-everything Laura wanted it to be. I'm just glad it's over and I'm back home where I belong," she stated with conviction. "How are things down there? Laredo mentioned that you'd run across some problems."

Quint brought her up to date on the current status. "I talked to the mechanic this morning. It was sugar in the gas tank. But all the repairs on the pickup should be finished next week sometime. As for finding another feed store to supply us with grain, there's no need to do that until I start running low. We just finished the tally on the cattle and came up twenty-seven head short."

"Stolen, no doubt."

"That's my guess. Since I don't know how many were in any given pasture, I can't even pinpoint where the loss occurred." "Or when," Jessy added.

Quint hesitated only briefly. "You might as well know that I was jumped by three men Saturday night," he said and gave her a thumbnail sketch of the events, omitting any mention of Dallas. "I came out of it with nothing more than a little cut and some bruises, but I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention anything about it to my mother."

She agreed. "But I don't like the sound of this, Quint.,"

"Don't blow it out of proportion like my mom would. We're talking about three cowboys trying to pound home a message. If professionals had delivered it, I'd probably be talking to you from a hospital bed."

"Just the same," Jessy began with an obvious note of concern for his well-being.

"Nothing's changed, Jessy," Quint stated calmly. "There's no one at the Triple C better qualified for this than I am."

"That's true," she said. There was a smile in her voice when she recalled, "When you were a boy, you always finished any job you started. You haven't changed in that. I would feel easier, though, if you had someone there with you. Laredo mentioned that you'd found a hired man to work at the Cee Bar? Is he someone you can trust?"

"Without question."

"That's good then. What about the hay you ordered? Has it arrived?"

"It's supposed to be here Wednesday morning," he told her.

"Good." After a few more questions, Jessy drew their conversation to a close. "Keep me posted on what's happening, especially if you have any further trouble. I won't tell you to be careful. I know you always are."

"Always." Quint smiled. "Tell Mom I'll talk to her tonight."

"I'll tell her," Jessy promised.

Lines of thought creased her forehead as Jessy hung up the phone. The sound of the receiver rocking into its cradle roused the aged Chase Calder from his idle daydreams. More and more these days his mind had a tendency to wander, finding little to hold its attention for any length of time.

Yanked unexpectedly back into the present, Chase struggled to ascertain what that was. Flames leaped and crackled over the logs stacked in the den's massive stone fireplace. Chase was vaguely conscious of the warmth radiating from it and of the warmth of the blanket robe that covered his legs.

Almost belatedly he focused on the tall, slender woman behind the desk, but he was quick to detect the slightly troubled look in her expression. He had an instant recall that she had picked up the phone to call Quint in Texas.

"What's wrong?" Chase couldn't remember hearing Jessy talking to anyone. "Wasn't Quint there?"

"I talked to him," Jessy confirmed, the small lines vanishing from her forehead, her expression again showing the calm, steady composure that served her so well. "He has everything under
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control there."

Chase leaned forward in the wing-backed chair. "You told him about the hay, didn't you?"

Jessy gave him a bewildered look. "The hay? He said it wasn't scheduled to arrive until Wednesday. Was I supposed to tell him something about that?"

Chase sank back in his chair, not at all certain that he had told Jessy of his suspicions. "I can't see Rutledge letting him have it. He'll try something. He'll have to. Quint needs to know that."