Savage Land (13 page)

COLEY and Tony had ridden only twenty yards out of the ravine that led to the canyon when Jase appeared leading Coley's horse.

So she had seen him on that ridge after all!

His eyes were afire with blue flames burning their brightest when they rested on Coley. His face darkened like a thundercloud, his scar a jagged white lightning bolt.

'I see Tony rescued you in one piece—or almost,’ he added, his glance flickering over Coley's blouse.

'It tore on the rock,’ she said quickly. A rush of warmth covered her face at his derisive and accusing glance.

'How convenient. Your horse has been trained to stay when the reins hang to the ground. It's called ground-hitching,’ Jase explained with sarcastic preciseness. ‘To tie the reins to the saddle horn is an open invitation for the horse to leave.'

'Coley, you didn't!’ hooted Tony. ‘Of all the green-horn...'

'That's enough!’ Jase interrupted sharply.

Coley felt Tony stiffen behind her before slumping sullenly in the saddle.

'Was that pump working?'

'Yeah, it was,’ Tony mapped. ‘What were you doing? Riding over to check up on me?'

'Did you oil it?’ Jase completely ignored Tony's question and Tony ignored his. ‘I said did you oil it?’ he repeated in a darkly ominous voice.

'No.'

'Then go and do it. Coley, get down from there and put this on,’ he ordered, reaching behind his saddle to untie his ever-present rain slicker.

'You go and check on it!’ Tony fumed. ‘I'm taking Coley back to the ranch.'

'You'll do as you're told,’ Jase stated unequivocally.

Coley slid from the saddle and gratefully took the slicker from Jase's outstretched hand.

'You don't give all the orders around here,’ Tony sneered.

'But I gave this one!'

Tony sat in the saddle, shaking with anger before digging the spurs into his horse and spinning him back in the direction of the canyon. Turning his head over his shoulder, he glared at Jase.

'My day will come,’ he said darkly.

'You and I both know what would happen to this ranch if it ever did. You'd sell it to the first bidder. That's why I'll never let it happen,’ Jase replied sharply.

With a sharp crack of the reins on his horse's rump Tony bounded away. Jase turned slowly to Coley, nearly drowning in the over-sized rain slicker. She couldn't meet his gaze squarely, so she shuffled over to her horse.

'Do you need help getting on?’ he asked flatly.

'I can manage,’ she replied, trying vainly to push back the sleeves so she could mount.

He set his horse off the minute she was in the saddle. His horse was naturally faster gaited than her roan, so the entire ride to the ranch-yard was made with Coley trailing behind. The whole way Coley kept thinking all she had to do was say, ‘Jase, why didn't you come down the hill to help me?’ The words were so simple, why wouldn't they come out? But she knew the answer to that. Tony had implied very dearly that Jase had had cold feet on one other occasion. As much as she wished otherwise, Coley couldn't forget that. At the corral, she pulled her mount to a stop beside his blood bay.

'I'll have one of the boys take care of your horse. You go on up to the house and have Maggie take a look at your hands,’ Jase ordered before reining his horse towards the stables.

Coley watched him glumly before swinging out of the saddle on to the ground. She flipped the reins over the corral fence with a quick heft-hitch, then hurried to the house. No one was in the hallway when she entered, so she went immediately upstairs. She rolled the raincoat up and buried her torn blouse in the wastebasket, replacing it with a fresh one. She didn't feel like going into the details of what had happened. Ashamed of her thoughts against Jase and unwilling to have them spread before anyone else, she chose to make as little of the incident as possible.

On her way downstairs she left the raincoat in Jase's room. It would save having to face him in private.

The following day Coley was walking Misty around the corral when Jase rode up. She was so deep in thought over yesterday's happenings that, at first, she didn't notice him.

'How are your hands?’ he asked, leaning an arm on his saddle horn while studying her intently.

'They're okay,’ Coley replied as she glanced down at them absently. Her heart seemed to be pounding in her throat.

'Come on. We're going for a ride,’ Jase ordered.

He bent down and swung open the corral gate. Coley trotted her roan over to his side and followed meekly, though apprehensively, as he led the way through the ranch-yard into the pastures. She saw him glance at her curiously with a slightly bitter smile before he urged his horse into a canter.

Thank heaven she didn't have to talk to him yet. She didn't know what to say and she never was any good at talking about trivial things.

Gradually the landscape began to grow more and more familiar. With a mounting breathlessness and tension, Coley realized he was taking her back to the canyon. Sooner than she wanted, the ravine entrance appeared before them. But instead of heading towards it, Jase veered to the left. She glanced at him nervously, longing to ask where he was taking her while dreading to break the tense silence. In the next instant they were climbing the incline of the outer canyon wall, Coley following behind the ramrod-straight back.

At the top he reined his horse in and dismounted, indicating with a gesture that she should do the same. She complied reluctantly. She stood motionless as Jase led his horse across the crest to the inner canyon side. She watched him stop, cup a match to a cheroot before glancing back at her. With a sigh she walked forward. As she drew even with him, her eyes never leaving his still figure, he called out sharply, ‘That's far enough!'

Coley stopped with a jerk, staring first ahead of her, then down. She felt the blood rush from her face. In front of her were the tops of the trees that lined this side of the canyon floor. But just two steps away was a sheer drop of over fifty feet. Then Jase was taking her arm and leading her away from the edge. Calmly he sat her down on the grassy crest, settling down himself two feet away.

Coley swallowed numbly. She should say something. He had obviously known that she had wondered why he hadn't come down yesterday to help her. Despite Tony's implication that Jase was a coward, Coley hadn't accepted that, but, before, she hadn't been able to come up with a logical explanation of why Jase didn't resuce her. Now she knew. He had fifty feet of reasons.

'I know I cleared up one question, but what else is bothering you?’ Jase asked harshly. His blue eyes rested on her face, searching it relentlessly.

'Nothing,’ she replied, none too positively.

'Something happened when I was in San Antoine, didn't it?’ he went on.

Coley plucked a blade of grass nervously and watched it twirl in her fingers. She could feel his determination and she hesitated telling him the reason for her quietness.

'Coley.’ His voice was low and threatening.

'Tony took me into town last Saturday,’ she said finally, glancing at him briefly out of the corner of her eye.

'And?'

'And—’ Coley paused. ‘And he told me how Rick died.’ She flinched as she saw Jason's dark head jerk back as if he'd been struck.

'I see,’ he murmured as he leaned back on one elbow and stared at her with his diamond-sharp gaze.

'I asked him,’ she asserted. An anger grew within her at his withdrawal. ‘I'm grown up. Things don't have to be hidden from me as if I were a child.'

'If you were grown up, Coley, you wouldn't have to keep reminding people,’ Jase smiled cynically. ‘Now that you know, what good has it done you?'

Coley shrugged.

'I don't know,’ she said finally, ‘but I do know that you couldn't be a coward any more than you could be a murderer.'

'Coley, for God's sake, grow up!’ Jase exclaimed angrily. ‘I'm not some knight in tarnished armour who needs a maiden to defend him!'

'You're not trying to make me believe that you could have saved Rick and didn't, are you?’ Coley exclaimed. Painfully hurt by his anger, she jumped to her feet. ‘Because if you are, I'm not going to believe you! I know you're not like that!'

He rose and stood silently behind her. ‘Coley.’ He watched as her slender shoulders shook with her silent sobs. His hands reached forward and drew her stiff back into his arms until his chin rested on her sun-streaked curls. ‘It's true that I want this ranch more than anything in this world.'

With a heartrending sob, she wrenched herself free of his arms and ran to her horse. She was in the saddle and jerking the roan's head around when Jase caught hold of the bridle. She stared down at him, unashamed of the tears that were streaming down her cheeks.

'I told you you'd only be hurt,’ Jase said quietly. His rugged features were set in a hard line and his eyes were bitter.

'Jason Savage, if you really believed all those things you said about yourself, you wouldn't be here now,’ Coley said through clenched teeth. ‘And if you really want this ranch as much as you say you do, then you wouldn't care whose feet you'd have to kiss to get it nor what you'd have to do to prove you didn't let your brother die. But you haven't done either one. So I think you're just too proud. Too proud to go to your grandfather and tell him how you grieve for your brother and how you wish you could have got there sooner, and ... and...'

She couldn't finish. She burst into tears and ended by jerking the roan out of his grasp. Viciously Coley put a heel to the horse's flank and raced down the hill, seeing nothing except the wall of water in front of her eyes.

She was in the ranch-yard unsaddling her horse when Jase finally trotted his horse in. He reined in beside her and watched silently as she fumbled with the cinch in a desperate attempt to ignore him.

'Well?’ she finally said in exasperation, staring at him boldly.

'I was wondering if the thorns were still on my long-stemmed yellow rose.’ His eyes gleamed down at her, bright and questioning.

'Yes, they are,’ Coley replied angrily, pulling the heavy western saddle off the roan and dropping it on the ground.

'You can go ahead and ride alone from now on, as long as you stay within sight of the ranch and don't go near the pens.’ He didn't need to spell out which pens; Coley knew he meant the Brahmas.

Only after he had turned his bay around and headed back out to the pastures did Coley stop to stare wistfully after him. At the dinner table that evening Jase and Ben began bickering about the advisability of moving a herd of stock cattle out of the south section. Jase felt they should wait and Ben said he wanted it done now. Of late, these dinner-table discussions had usually become quite heated as both were stubbornly against giving in to each other. Coley listened to the exchange quite indifferently until Jase happened to glance her way. He stopped almost in mid-sentence as he studied her smug ‘I-told-you-so’ expression before flashing her an amused and intimate smile. Coley tingled tinder its bewitching warmth.

'Ben,’ Jase turned his smile to the gnarled, greyhaired man at the head of the table, ‘if you think I should move them, I will. Would you pass me some more of Maggie's bread?'

His sudden acquiescence startled Ben, but it did not mollify him in the slightest. He turned his scowling face towards Coley, who quickly lowered her gaze to her plate so that he wouldn't see the bubbly brightness on her face. Instead she quickly started a nonsensical conversation with her brother over an imaginary difficulty in bridling her horse. The meal ended with Coley in giggles over some of the ludicrous suggestions proposed by Danny and Tony.

Uncle Ben refused to join them on the porch, insisting that he had things to do in his study. Coley couldn't help thinking that he was doing a bit of childish sulking. Unconsciously she joined Jase on the cushioned porch swing and listened to Danny as he used his persuasive tactics on Tony to help him work on the transmission of his car. In the end Tony gave in, reluctantly, and followed Danny out into the yard, but not with the same amount of enthusiasm that Danny had. Coley leaned back on the swing and gazed at the crimson-kissed clouds of the sunset while listening to the well-modulated voice of Jase as he talked to Aunt Willy about her very favourite subject, her roses.

'I was just mentioning to Colleen the other day that as soon as my tea roses bloom we should have a garden party,’ Aunt Willy chattered, only to be interrupted by the distant shrill of the telephone in the house. ‘My goodness, I wonder who that could be.'

Coley watched with an amused smile as her aunt rose quickly from her chair, unceremoniously tugging at her creeping skirt before dashing into the house after the persistent ring.

At the strike of a match from the man beside her, Coley turned her head to watch him light his familiar cheroot. A black eyebrow raised inquiringly at her. For a minute Coley studied him, admiring the strong, rugged angles of his face, the arrogant boldness of his nose, the soft yet cynical curl of his lips, the smooth, tanned forehead and the arching brows over his brilliant ice-blue eyes. The scar across his cheek seemed natural, a part of him, no longer frightening and ugly. Then the smoke from his cigar drifted between them, blurring her vision, and she turned again towards the sunset.