Savage Land (14 page)

'What pearl of wisdom are you thinking of now?’ he mocked lightly. ‘Or did you run out of them this afternoon?'

'I was right, you know,’ Coley replied, tilting her button nose upwards ever so slightly at his words. ‘It takes two to make an argument. You proved that tonight at the table.'

'It wasn't really an argument, more like a difference of opinion,’ Jase answered.

'It was rather a loud difference, then,’ Coley said, accenting ‘loud’ with a trace of censure in her voice which earned her a quiet laugh from Jase.

'And you feel I did the right thing, agreeing to his decision?’ he asked.

'Yes, I do. It's time you two stopped lashing out at each other, trying to draw the first blood. He's an old man, Jase,’ Coley said earnestly. ‘And. he's crippled. He should be pitied and comforted, not quarrelled with.'

'He's a Savage,’ retorted Jase angrily, ‘and no Savage needs pity.'

'All right, compassion then,’ Coley inserted quickly, feeling a little flare of temper herself. ‘As much as you love this ranch, you should understand, of all people, how frustrating it must be to be confined to a wheelchair and not be able to get out and see what's going on. I believe you and your grandfather are equally devoted to this land.'

'The Slash S is Savage Land,’ Jase declared, rising abruptly to his feet to lean against the porch railing and stare out over the darkening land. ‘And as long as there's a Savage alive, I'll never stand by and watch it go to anyone else. I'll do anything to stop it.'

The passionate outburst brought Coley to her feet, moving her towards the straight back and broad shoulders at the rail. She stood silently beside him and laid a hand on the tanned arm that was gripping the wooden rail tensely. At her touch he turned and looked down at her.

'Do you really believe that Ben doesn't feel the same way about this land?’ Coley asked. Her eyes were wide and anxious as she gazed up into his stern face.

Slowly he turned and placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. A softness returned to him as he looked at her.

'Coley, however right you may be,’ his voice was low and husky, ‘you can't wipe away the suspicion and distrust that has accumulated over a period of several years with a few words There are some wounds that take more than a kiss to make them better. They take time. So don't push us too fast.’ Very lightly he turned her around and gently pushed her towards the steps leading down on to the lawn. ‘Now, run along and find out what your brother and Tony are doing.'

Reluctantly Coley stepped off the veranda, gazing back at Jase wistfully. He had lit another cigar and was watching the grey smoke as it drifted lazily in the night air. She turned her head and directed her unwilling feet away from the porch and Jase. She felt no elation or triumph, just a curious sense of suffering as if she had taken over part of his burden. But why was her heart beating so loudly and she was trembling too? Why?

With an impatient hand, Coley wiped away the beads of perspiration that had gathered on her forehead in the hot Texas sun as she fed the last of an apple to her horse. The heat had sapped the enjoyment out of her late afternoon ride, ending it much sooner than was usual. Lethargically she patted the roan's head and moved away, her boots scuffing at the scorched ground as she walked.

She sighed dejectedly as she glanced around the yard. She had thought Jase would he back by now. He had left the morning after their talk on the porch to move the cattle out of the south section. Everything seemed so purposeless without him around, and in this heat, there wasn't anything to do. Briefly Coley considered taking a short swim in the pool, but rejected it just as quickly. It would take more energy to change than she possessed right now. She didn't feel like going up to the house; she was too restless to sit around. So she just maintained her aimless, wandering pace.

Her fingers trailed lazily on the top rail of the fence as she meandered around the corrals glancing disinterestedly at their occupants. In front of her were the reinforced fences marking the Brahma cattle enclosures. A little gleam of curiosity directed her footsteps towards the pens and the heavy plank boards that hid them from her view. She stood on tiptoe to try to peer over the slats, but the fence was too tall. Putting her feet on the bottom ratio Coley hoisted herself up to rest her elbows on the top board.

The lone inhabitant was at the far end of the pen, but at the sound of Coley climbing on to the fence he had turned to face her. The heat waves shimmered eerily between them as the sun cast a ghostly grey sheen to his hide. The enormous size of the animal glued Coley to the fence, the grotesque hump on his shoulders and the loose, pendulous skin under his throat hypnotizing her into immobility. He took a step forward, then halted to stare at her. His large ears drooped along side his large head, accenting the menacing curve of his horns that curled above them like a demon's horns. But it was his eyes that held her, small and dark and not at all like the warm brown eyes she had always associated with cattle. No, these eyes were haughty and malevolent with their arrogantly sinister gleam. Coley felt the skin crawl up her back with her dawning comprehension.

This was Satan! The bull that had killed Rick and scarred Jason! The colour drained from her face as she stared at the bull with a mounting fear. A nightmare-like feeling washed over her of a desire to flee while her legs remained fixed on the bottom rail. Her mouth was dry as she watched the Brahma lower his head and make one incisive furrow in the sun-scorched earth with his large front hoof. She was too frightened to call out or to move. With an ever-growing terror she watched the signalling hoof ripping the earth in mounting fury.

Was this how Jase had felt? This terror that gripped the mind and body in a stranglehold that forbade them to move? Had he been able to swallow? Had Satan's evil hypnotism frozen him until the horror of Rick's screams broke the trance?

Her fingers tightened their hold on the fence, her knuckles growing white with the fierceness of their grip. Coley's breath came in short, panting sobs as her eyes watched with rounded horror the beginning movements of the bull's charge.

In the next instant she was ripped from the fence, the piercing scream of agonizing fear at last torn from her throat. Roughly her head was pushed against a solid chest where her voice was muffled by a dusty cotton shirt. The familiar scent of cigar smoke clinging to the fabric broke the hysterical cries. The rigid terror that had held her captive was gone and Coley collapsed in Jason's arms. She was safe. He had rescued her and the sobs of relief were welcomed.

The circle of his arms nearly crushed her as he held her ever tighter to him, but Coley didn't care. His own face was pressed against the top of her head and though he was speaking it was too muffled to understand. And then she was being slowly disentangled from his arms as Jase held her away from him. Her long fingers remained resting on his chest as she looked up into his face. It was as drained of colour as hers had been and there was no mask to hide the slowly receding anxiety in his eyes.

'I was so frightened I couldn't move,’ Coley whispered as she leaned slightly towards him with a desire to return to the shelter of his arms.

'You should have been,’ Jase replied huskily, giving her shoulders a sharp shake. ‘You were told to stay away from here.'

Coley looked into his face now, her lips forming the words of explanation, but the icy cold anger in his eyes smothered the words. He had withdrawn from her, back behind his mask.

'Jase, please, don't shut me out,’ she pleaded softly, blinking quickly to hold back the tears.

It was as if he hadn't even heard her speak. ‘I don't want to ever find you anywhere near these pens again,’ he said coldly, releasing her shoulders to stand towering above her. ‘There's an invisible line that runs from the house to the stables and I don't want to ever find you off that path. If I do, you can consider anything outside of the house yard off limits. Do you understand?'

'Yes,’ Coley answered weakly. Her round eyes glanced away from the ice-blue hardness of his gaze. Just for a moment she thought he softened towards her and she added, ‘I'm glad you're back.'

'Go up to the house,’ Jase ordered sharply, and her shoulders sagged under the harshness of his tone.

Slowly she turned and took a few steps in the direction of the house. She hesitated and then looked over her shoulder, trembling under the censure in his cold, rigid expression.

'That was Satan, wasn't it?’ she said quietly. The almost imperceptible distension of his nostrils answered her, although Jase didn't utter a word. He just eyed her coldly and turned away towards the pens.

It was a long walk to the house and though the distance shortened with each step, Coley felt each step she took was widening the distance between her and Jase. She spent a miserable evening in the house despite Danny and Tony's attempts to cheer her up. Later Danny came to her room, but she couldn't bring herself to confide in him. Somehow the simple incident seemed so complicated that she didn't know how to explain it to him without him scoffing at her overactive imagination, so she said nothing.

The next three days were equally miserable as Coley made the picket fence around the house her prison walls. She had no wish to incur Jason's wrath following that imaginary line to the stables. She tried to busy herself helping Aunt Willy in her rose garden and when that failed she would exhaust herself in the pool. But after sitting through the evening meal while Jase repeatedly ignored her and for the fourth time in a row excused himself from the table as soon as everyone was through to go heaven knew where, Coley felt she had reached the end of her tether. A restless despair consumed her as she sat on the porch with her Aunt Willy and Uncle Ben. From deep within the hills came the echoing rumbles of a distant storm, with faraway flashes of lightning.

'Looks like we'll have a summer storm on us before morning,’ Aunt Willy said. ‘I certainly hope it won't be too severe. The last one played havoc with my rose blooms. You seem very upset tonight, Colleen dear. Is anything wrong?'

'No, Aunt Willy,’ she answered quickly. ‘I was just thinking maybe I'd go up to my room, take a quiet bath and get an early night. My nerves are a little on edge—from the storm, I suppose.'

Gratefully for Coley, her aunt accepted the explanation and she sped up the steps and into her room before any more questions were asked that she couldn't answer. The bath did little to soothe her. In fact the stifling stillness of the coming storm made Coley wish she had showered instead of soaking in a tub of scented bubbles and hot water. Pulling the covers to the foot of her bed, she laid her robe on a chair before leaning back on the sticky sheets to stare at the ceiling.

A blinding flash of light followed immediately by an explosion of thunder wakened Coley from her fitful sleep. Her heart was beating at a frantic pace as she sat up in the bed and waited in fear for the last echo of the thunder to roll away. Another bolt of lightning flashed outside her window and she quickly covered her ears with her hands and squinched her eyes shut until the next roll of thunder passed. In the brief lull that followed she hopped from her bed, grabbing her robe as she went by the chair and out of her bedroom door. The darkness of the hallway stopped her as she fumbled for the light switch. Then her fingers stopped their search; she didn't want to waken the others. She groped in the darkness for the stair banister while the intermittent lightning eerily illuminated the interior of the darkened house.

Silently Coley inched down the stairway, flinching at each reverberating roll of thunder. Downstairs at last, she tiptoed through the hall, one hand trailing to rest at her throat where it could immediately reach her mouth and stifle any cry she might make that would awake the rest of the house. The ominous darkness of the rooms beckoned her only to stop her with the sudden, blinding glare of lightning.

The rain had just begun, its rapid pitter-pat racing against the swift tempo of her pulse. Behind her, the grandfather clock chimed the first hour, frightening her with its unexpectedness. She stumbled against the little table in the hallway and valiantly chased after the rocking vase of flowers all the way to the floor where it smashed with unnatural loudness in the silence.

'Who's there?’ came a booming voice from an adjacent room. ‘Willy? Is that you?'

The soft whirr of turning wheels reached Coley just before the beam of a flashlight. With a little smile of relief, she swallowed her heart before turning with trembling legs towards her uncle.

'It's me, Uncle Ben,’ she whispered softly, her voice still in tune with her shaking legs. ‘I knocked over the vase.'

Obligingly, he shone the light down on to the scattered fragments as she swiftly gathered them up.

'What are you doing up?’ he asked gruffly behind the glare of the flashlight.

'The storm woke me,’ Coley replied, placing the broken pieces in the wastebasket.

'Frightened of them, huh?’ Ben snorted, wheeling his chair around, leaving her in blackness. An ominous clap of thunder sent her scurrying after him ‘Couldn't sleep myself.'

Inside his den, the grey-haired man steered his chair over to the curtains and closed them, shutting out the storm. Then wheeling his chair over to the desk, he laid the flashlight down and lit two candles.

'Electricity's out,’ he explained, glancing briefly at Coley's white face before manoeuvring his wheelchair behind the desk. ‘Sit down, girl. Might as well relax and talk to me until this storm blows over.'