Roz Denny Fox (3 page)

“It’s Jake, or Jacob, please.”

“Jacob, then,” she said sweetly, extending a hand. “And, if you don’t mind, I’ll take my shotgun before you go.”

Jake let his disgruntled gaze circle the isolated campsite before he silently handed back her gun. “Ben never said what he was digging for. It must be something valuable for a pretty lady like you to bury herself in such a desolate place. Are you aware of how far it is to the nearest ranch house?”

When she said nothing, only clamped her pointed little jaw tighter, Jake went ahead and filled her in before he swung into the saddle. “Your closest neighbor would be the Triple C. Eight miles from here as the crow flies. Closer to twelve if you follow the trail. Our ranch sits practically on the Mexican border.”

Again Hayley said nothing. She simply cocked her head.

“It goes against my grain to leave a lady alone among coyotes and wolves. To say nothing of any two-legged varmints who drift past here, or any illegals jumping the border. Say the word and I’ll help you hitch up that trailer so you can park closer to civilization.”

“I just unhitched, Mr. Cooper, er, Jake.” Hayley enunciated clearly, as if to a child.

“I’m offering you the Triple C’s hospitality, woman.”

“My name is Hayley,” she said pointedly as he’d done with his earlier. “Nice try, but nothing you say is going to frighten me off my claim. You may as well give up. If you have eight miles to travel before sitting down to supper, hadn’t you better take off?” Hayley delivered the advice through a dazzling smile.

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. Stubborn didn’t begin to describe Hayley Ryan. He could just imagine what his dad and his brother, Dillon, who lived with his wife in a separate house on Triple C land, were going to say when he delivered the news about this squatter. He’d hear it from his mom and his sister-in-law, Eden, too, for leaving a defenseless woman to fend for herself. Jake was torn between going home to impart the news or sticking close to look after the little fool.

A sharp pain sliced through his skull. He changed his mind about calling the woman defenseless. She was one tough cookie.

Touching two fingers curtly to the brim of his hat, he wheeled Mojave and rode off the way he’d come. If she didn’t run out of lead for that scatter-gun, she ought to be safe enough by herself—for one night.

W
ADE
C
OOPER
met his son in the barn where Jake had stopped to rub down and feed Mojave. A Border collie Jake had raised from a pup yapped excitedly.

“Sit, Charcoal,” ordered Wade, a lean handsome man in his mid-sixties. Without being asked, he pitched in to help Jake take care of his horse. “Expected you back by suppertime. Why don’t you let me finish here? Go wash up. Your mother saved you a plate in the oven. You know Nell won’t admit to worrying, but she still frets and peeks down the road when she thinks I’m not looking.”

“Yeah, well, I’d have been here sooner, but I ran into a snag.” Jake removed his Stetson and gingerly touched his swollen temple. It still hurt like anything.

“Literally a snag?” Wade stepped closer and frowned at the blood matted in his son’s close-cropped sideburns.

“In more ways than one, I’m afraid.” Jake left nothing out as he replayed his encounter with Hayley Ryan at Ben O’Dell’s claim.

“How ’bout that!” Wade exclaimed. His chin sagged to his chest by the time Jake finished his story. “I feel bad about Ben. Would’ve attended his funeral if I’d known about it. Your brother subscribes to all those papers—Tombstone, Nogales, Tubac. Wonder how he missed O’Dell’s obituary?”

“You’ll have to ask him. Perhaps Eden lined the birdcage with it.” Jake grinned. His brother was sappy in love with his wife. He’d do anything for her. But Dillon really had a hard time liking Eden’s beloved parrot. Coronado talked a blue streak to everyone who walked into the couple’s house—but reserved special treatment for Dillon, screeching at him and biting him every chance he got.

“Quit needling Dillon over that bird. Tell me more about the Ryan woman.”

Jake scowled. “What’s to tell? She’s no bigger than a flea. One of our stiff Baja winds will blow her and that tomfool toy trailer of hers right off the map.”

“That’s not what I meant. Ben led me to believe he’d kept this claim a secret.”

“Hayley Ryan alleges she’s Ben’s granddaughter. But he never mentioned any kin to me. I wonder if she’s trying to pull a fast one. She told me Ben never said a word about our water deal. And asked me if I had something in writing. I thought I’d drive to Tombstone tomorrow and snoop a little.”

“Let Mom and me go,” Wade said. “We’ll drive on to Tucson. Nell’s been badgering me to go before roundup starts. She heard about a new pottery-supply store.”

“Fine by me. I’d just as soon not drive the pickup over that graveled track between here and Arivaca.” Jake hunkered down to pat Charcoal, then let the dog lick his face.

“Probably wouldn’t hurt if you were to ride back out and check on the woman tomorrow. Someone should warn her about the rattlers nesting back in those rocks. Ben tangled with a couple of big ones.”

“It’s a waste of breath trying to scare her off. I brought up wolves, coyotes and mentioned illegals coming through. Didn’t faze her.”

“Hmm. Then turn on the Cooper charm and see if you can work the same deal with her as we set up with Ben.”

Jake snorted and wrinkled his nose.

“Wha-at? You think I haven’t heard Eden and Nell talk about how all the ranchers’ daughters around here make cow eyes at you? I hear Dillon teasing you about all those single artists in Tubac who’d like to become Mrs. Jacob Cooper.”

“You’re forgetting Hayley Ryan took a potshot at me, Dad.” Jake didn’t tell his father, however, that she’d also cushioned his injured head in her lap. Falling off his horse had been humiliating. But her hands had felt cool against his skin. Jake recalled enjoying the faint scent of apple blossoms when he’d come to. Thinking about it again made him go a little breathless. He took a step back, threw the brush into a box of supplies and led Mojave into a stall.

“What do you suppose Ben hoped to find?” Jake asked Wade, to take his mind off Hayley Ryan.

“Can’t recall the old guy saying. I don’t know if he just needed to escape town life for a month or so every summer, or if he actually found ore.”

“You’d think it’d have to be more than just an escape to drag a guy out to live in primitive conditions every year for some ten years.”

“I figured he was halfheartedly hunting silver. A couple of times he talked like the ore was slowly playing out of his mine near Tombstone. But then, I’m a cattleman through and through. I don’t pretend to know what makes a prospector tick.”

“There
you two are.” Nell Cooper poked her head inside the barn. Still slender at fifty-five, she had smooth skin and warm gray eyes, which contributed to the fact that she didn’t look much older than her sons, Dillon, thirty-five and Jacob, thirty-two. “Goodness, Jacob, what happened to your head?” Very much in command of the Triple C in her role as family caretaker, Nell silenced Charcoal and bustled the men toward the house.

She clucked sympathetically as Jake and Wade alternately explained Jake’s clash with Hayley Ryan.

“Well,” Nell declared as she gently sponged her son’s wound, “that woman sounds crazy. I say leave her alone, Jacob. We used to haul water from the ranch out to some troughs your father and his dad constructed from fifty-gallon barrels. I guess we can do that again.”

Wade and Jake exchanged a very male rolling of the eyes. “After we successfully dickered to use Ben’s spring, it cut our work by half,” Wade reminded his wife. “Not only that, we’re running twice the summer herd now. Jake, Dillon and I can certainly handle one contrary female.”

As Nell got out first-aid supplies, she wore a look that said they should heed her advice and that the matter wasn’t closed by a long shot.

Jake knew that look. “Mom, don’t you be doing anything dumb. You and Dad are going to Tombstone tomorrow to check out the Ryan woman’s story. I’m counting strays that may have drifted up around Pena Blanca Lake. I’ll keep tabs on her when I head out in the morning.”

“You’d better spy on her from a distance,” his mother said as she rubbed antibacterial cream across Jake’s nasty-looking wound. “Her aim might be truer next time.”

Jake sighed. “I told you she was shooting over my head. She stared square into the sun and didn’t see the limb. I peg her as a stubborn female, not a criminal.”

“Jacob Cooper.” Nell wagged a finger. “Now, mind you, I’m not condoning what she did. But I hope you’re not one to be calling her stubborn simply because she’s a woman. If it were a man protecting his claim, you’d give him his due.”

“Now, Mama, I give women their due. What I was trying to say is that Hayley Ryan isn’t all that dangerous.”

“Doesn’t hurt to take it easy until we know more, son,” Wade said, clapping Jake on the shoulder. “I mean, we don’t know anything about her, and we don’t know how old Ben died, now do we?”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Jake threw up his hands and stalked into the kitchen, away from his parents. As they entered the room behind him, he faced them again and ran a hand across his jaw with its three-day growth of beard. He directed his question at Nell. “Look at me. If I rode in and surprised you, and you were camped alone, wouldn’t you pull a gun if you had one?”

Nell studied her second-born son. The love she felt for him shone from her eyes.

“Okay, so it’s not a fair question,” Jake allowed. “All I’m saying is I’m willing to cut her some slack.”

Nell removed a warming plate from the oven and set it on the table, then motioned Jake to have a seat. “You can be respectful without being too trusting, Jacob. Oh, I know, females young and old fall naturally under your spell. At times it’s music to a mother’s ears, even if some of them insult me with their flattery when they’re angling to become my daughter-in-law. But remember, this Hayley Ryan is a total stranger. Just because she appears helpless and vulnerable doesn’t mean she is. Don’t forget the women’s prisons are full of baby-faced stinkers.”

A peal of laughter burst from Jake. His eyes, a shade lighter gray than his mother’s, reflected his mirth. “That must be lecture number ten million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand. Dillon said you quit lecturing him altogether when he married Eden. Is that what I have to do to get you to ease up, Mom? Find me a wife?”

She looked sheepish for a moment, then playfully slapped one of his broad shoulders. “Go ahead, laugh. You’ll understand when you have kids of your own. A mother wants her children’s lives to be perfect. They never get so old that you stop worrying.”

“You worry too much,” Jake told her.

Wade looped his arms around his wife. He pinioned her arms and nuzzled her neck. “Our boys are men, Nell. Time they worried about themselves. In fact, Jake and I were talking yesterday. After the next roundup we thought we’d start clearing that mesa he’s had his eye on. You know, the one overlooking Hell’s Gate.”

The news brought a happy cry from Nell. “Jake. Does this mean you’ve made up your mind to put a ring on some lucky girl’s finger? No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Cayla Burke.” She glanced from her husband to her son and back again. “Granted, Cayla can be a little chatty, but she knows ranching. No?” She pursed her lips. “Who, then? Oh, Jake, not Sierra Mackey. I know Eden said you danced with her three times at the grange dance last month. But she’s…she’s…”

“Well, don’t stop there,” Jake teased. “Sierra’s what?”

Nell gulped. “If she’s your choice, Jake, I don’t want to be critical of her. I’ll support your decision and make her welcome here, of course.”

“I’m not marrying Sierra. Just because I’m ready to have a place of my own doesn’t mean I’ve found a partner. Not that I’m not looking. I am. But I’m holding out for what you and Dad have. And I’ll finish the sentence for you. Sierra is exactly like her mother. Myra drinks too much and she can’t keep her hands off other women’s husbands. I’ve got eyes, Mom.”

“And brains,” Wade said, drawing his wife around for a more complete kiss. “Enough said, Nell,” he muttered. “Let’s retire and let Jacob eat.”

Jake watched them leave arm in arm. An emptiness washed over him. He despaired of ever finding a mate who compared to his mother or to Dillon’s wife, Eden. Both were one-man women. Yet they were strong and independent. His mom was a talented potter. Eden, a silversmith. Her jewelry sold in fine stores all over the world. Underneath, at a very basic level, each loved the land. Jake wouldn’t settle for less.

The ranch was important to him. Many of the women he’d dated over the past five years couldn’t wait to shake the dust of the country off their feet. Jake had known from the time he was five that he never wanted to do anything but raise beeves like his dad. Maybe it wasn’t meant for him to get married, he mused as he polished off the last of the casserole and carried his plate to the dishwasher.

Maybe, unlike his father and brother, he couldn’t have both.

H
ALEY SAT BESIDE
her campfire and toyed with the hasty meal of biscuits and stew she’d fixed after the cowboy had gone. She couldn’t remember a night so dark. There must have been some, she thought. Those times she’d gone prospecting with her grandfather. But back then, his larger-than-life presence had dispelled all the fears a young girl might associate with the darkness.

Hayley wished Jake Cooper hadn’t ridden into her camp. In doing so, he’d reminded her how isolated she was. As melancholy overtook her, Hayley recognized that she’d fallen into the grip of a terrible homesickness.

Not only that, her uninvited visitor’s unsubtle warning had turned the surrounding blackness into a potential place of terror. No stranger to the yip of coyotes, Hayley now gave a start and shivered whenever she heard distant calls.

She’d intended to stoke the fire after doing her dishes and then read one of the Luke Short Westerns she’d brought to spice up lonely evenings. When an owl hooted nearby and she practically jumped out of her skin, Hayley changed her mind about staying up. She scraped her uneaten food into an airtight container to be disposed of later, and banked the fire, instead of feeding it.

She made one last check of the food sacks she’d hung in a tree. Jacob Cooper hadn’t mentioned bears in his list of things she needed to fear, but Hayley would rather be safe than sorry.

Collecting her shotgun and rifle, she retreated into the tiny trailer, where she tossed and turned for hours. One thought she couldn’t shut out: What if Jacob Cooper didn’t belong to any Triple C ranch? What if, even now, he was rounding up pals to jump her claim? Things like that happened with regularity in the books she read. Perhaps she should have stocked some contemporary novels. People didn’t jump claims in the twenty-first century, did they?

It was the newness of the situation, she tried to tell herself, not Jake’s warnings, that had her listening for every whisper of wind through the brush and turning it into a wolf attack or just a plain thief attack.

She’d tried to act brave when Cooper leveled his dire admonitions. Inside she’d been quaking. The man at the recorder’s office yesterday had already informed her that two ranchers in this vicinity had reported jaguars killing their range stock. The friend of Ben’s from whom she’d borrowed the shotgun had painted a more gruesome picture. He’d flatly stated that homeless individuals who wandered the hills would certainly kill her and make off with her pickup and trailer.

Inside, the trailer was hot as sin. At first she wasn’t willing to open either of the small windows, not even if it meant she baked in this tin can. The screens would be no deterrent, she decided, from any man or beast who chose to break in.

She lay on her back in the close confines of the small alcove and laced her hands across her belly. Talking to her baby helped calm her. “This is our only chance to make a go of things, Junior,” she murmured. “Francesca warned me I’d kill us both hauling rocks or blasting ore out of the ground. Hard work never hurt a pregnant woman,” she said, more loudly than she intended. “Gramps said my grandmother took care of my mom, planted and maintained a garden, kept house and helped him haul copper out of his first mine.”

Sweat beaded Hayley’s brow and trickled down her chest. She drew up her nightgown and fanned her legs. “It’s not the hard work I mind.” Her biggest worry was determining the best time to leave here so Dr. Gerrard could deliver her baby. And would she have found anything worthwhile on this claim?