Shifting Calder Wind (9 page)
Read Shifting Calder Wind Online
Authors: Janet Dailey
“Why?” Jessy asked, unable to make sense of any of this.
“I’ll let Chase explain it himself when he sees you. Till tomorrow.” Nodding, he touched his hat to her and moved away at an unhurried pace.
Still troubled and doubtful, Jessy watched him a moment, noting that he seemed to be headed toward the rows of parked vehicles that crowded the ranch yard. Briefly she toyed with the idea of having one of the men follow this Laredo Smith when he left, but she suspected he would be watching for that.
Approaching footsteps crunched across a section of gravel. Turning toward the sound, Jessy saw Monte coming toward her, a look of concern furrowing his forehead.
“Where is Trey? Haven’t you found him yet?”
“Yes. He went up to the house to fetch his rope.”
His expression cleared. “I am relieved to hear he is no longer among the missing. You appeared to be in such deep conversation with that cowboy, I thought perhaps you were about to organize a search for Trey.”
“Fortunately, no. He just wanted to talk to me about Chase,” she answered truthfully. “I’d better go talk to the governor before he has to leave.”
As she started for the barn, Jessy threw a last glance after the mysterious Laredo Smith. He had the look of a cowboy and the rolling gait of one, but she remembered the grip of his hand. It hadn’t possessed the distinctive ridging of callus that went along with rope work. In her mind, a cowboy who couldn’t handle a rope wasn’t a cowboy.
Laredo Smith raised more questions than he answered. Chief among them was why would he insist Chase was alive if he wasn’t?
Chapter Five
T
he two-lane highway was the only sign of civilization for miles in any direction. A lone pickup traveled over it while its shadow raced alongside. The morning sun’s strong rays poured into the truck’s passenger window, heating Chase’s shoulder and arm.
he two-lane highway was the only sign of civilization for miles in any direction. A lone pickup traveled over it while its shadow raced alongside. The morning sun’s strong rays poured into the truck’s passenger window, heating Chase’s shoulder and arm.
But he was only distantly aware of the sun’s building warmth as he gazed out the window at the surrounding plains. There was deception in the land’s appearance of flatness, making it easy to overlook the lone buttes and wandering coulees. He waited to feel some tug of home, but other than experiencing an urge to ride across it, he felt no sense of belonging.
Vaguely disgruntled, he glanced at Laredo. “How much farther is it?”
“The gate is coming up on our left,” Laredo replied then checked his watch. “It’s five minutes till. We’ll go a couple more miles and turn around. It should put us there right on time.”
Chase spotted a pair of tall posts with a sign suspended between them, marking the entrance. He was struck by the plainness of it.
“Not very pretentious, is it,” Laredo remarked, as if reading his thoughts. “Nobody can accuse the Calders of being full of themselves.”
“If the ranch is as big as you say, why shout about it? Everybody already knows it.”
A wry smile tugged at Laredo’s mouth. “Judging from some of the tales I heard about you at the funeral yesterday, that sounds like something Chase Calder would say.”
As they drove by the gate, Chase craned his head to look out the rear window and scan the dirt road leading up to the entrance gate. “It doesn’t look like anyone is there yet.”
“Jessy Calder struck me as a cautious woman. My guess is she’ll pick a vantage point and watch from there. I don’t think she will show herself.”
“The question is, how much can she be trusted? She could be on one of those hillocks looking through a rifle scope.” His tone was dryly grim.
“If she is, that will make you literally a sitting target,” Laredo replied with a touch of black humor. “But you are going to need somebody on the inside, and the list of choices was slim.” He went over them again: “Your daughter is strong and a scrapper, but she tends to wear her emotions on her sleeve and, according to some, tends to be impulsive and hot-tempered. Her husband is the local sheriff and ex-treasury agent. As far as I’m concerned that is reason enough to eliminate him. He would want to turn it all into a legal investigation. From what I could gather, virtually all of your ranch hands were born on the place and are supposedly loyal to the core. But it seems you ran the ranch with a lone hand until your son died and you took Jessy into your confidence and began grooming her to take over. I think you made a good choice.” The road ahead of them was empty of traffic. Laredo slowed the truck and made a U-turn in the middle of the highway. “She’s savvy and cool-headed, able to think on her feet. She doesn’t rattle easy, that’s for sure. She definitely impressed me.”
“Good-looking, is she?” Chase threw him a knowing look.
“Let’s just say that your son had good taste.” Laredo spotted the gate ahead of them and slowed the pickup again. “The entrance is coming up. Don’t forget, she will want a good look at your face when we go past it.”
Hunkered flat among the summer-brown grass, Jessy adjusted the focus on the binoculars, centering it on the man riding on the passenger side. Shock tingled through her. She lowered the glasses to look without the assistance of their magnification, then raised them again. It was impossible. Yet there was no mistaking those hard, angular features. It was definitely Chase in that truck.
She kept the binoculars trained on him until the pickup was well past her. For a stunned moment she simply lay there. Even though she had come this morning, Jessy had never given any real credence to Laredo Smith’s claim that Chase was still alive. Logic had insisted that it was merely the opening gambit in some sort of scam.
But if that wasn’t Chase in the pickup, then the man was a dead ringer for him.
She scooted backward off the sloped side of the hillock, slipped the binoculars back into their leather case, and ran at a crouch back to where she had left the pickup and horse trailer parked. She scrambled into the cab and reached for the pen and notepad lying on the seat. She was surprised to discover her hands were shaking. She paused and took a deep, steadying breath, then scratched out the message, still dazed by the knowledge it wasn’t the one she had expected to write.
Finished, Jessy tore off the sheet and started up the truck, mentally congratulating herself for having the presence of mind to advise Sally that she might not be back in time for lunch.
When she reached the highway, there was no sign of the blue pickup. Ten minutes, she had told him. Hurriedly she nailed the message to a gatepost and climbed back in the truck. After years of experience with towing trailers, she had no difficulty making the swing to reverse directions and head back down the ranch road with a good five minutes to spare.
The road she was on led straight to the Triple C headquarters, roughly forty miles distant. But Jessy didn’t stay on it. Instead she turned north on the first intersecting road, part of the nearly two hundred miles of roads that connected the far-flung reaches of the ranch.
Almost exactly ten minutes after he had last gone past the gate, Laredo approached it again. This time he pulled into the entrance and stopped, his gaze fastening on the sheet of paper fluttering in the slight morning breeze. Leaving the motor running, he climbed out of the truck and retrieved the message from the gatepost, skimmed it, and swore softly. As he slid behind the steering wheel again, he passed the sheet to Chase.
“The bad news is she has agreed to meet you at the old cemetery north of Blue Moon,” he said, shifting the transmission out of Park. “The good news is we have two hours to find it. You wouldn’t, by chance, remember where it is, would you?”
“No. I thought you said you drove all around Blue Moon yesterday.” Chase frowned at him.
“I did, but I don’t remember seeing any cemetery. It must be off the highway on a side road somewhere. There’s probably a way to reach it without going through town, but I don’t know what it is,” Laredo said grimly. “Now I wish Hattie was with us instead of back at the motel in Miles City washing up our clothes. If you can figure out a way to hunker down in the seat when we get to town, you’d better do it.”
Chase chose instead to slump sideways against the door frame and cover his face with his hat, aware that no one was likely to pay any attention to Laredo’s dozing passenger.
The cemetery didn’t turn out to be all that difficult to find. The site suited all the privacy requirements. It was a secluded location along a seldom-traveled road with no residences close by.
Laredo parked the truck in the graveled turn-in and surveyed the weed-riddled, overgrown cemetery. A pair of lone trees stood watch over the faded tombstones.
“I wonder where she is this time,” Laredo murmured, mainly to himself, then glanced at Chase. “The message said that she wants to see you alone. I guess she still thinks I might have kidnapped you.”
“It’s logical that the possibility would cross her mind.” Chase pushed open the passenger door. “Where do you suppose the O’Rourke family plot is?”
“I’m betting it will be somewhere close to one of those trees. With all the brush growing up around them, it would be a good place to wait out of sight.” He swung out of the truck. “I’d better give you a hand. You may be steadier on your feet, but this ground looks awful rough.”
Just as they moved past the hood of the truck, Jessy stepped from behind a clump of brush, holding a rifle at the ready. “You didn’t tell me he was hurt.” Her gaze briefly bored into Laredo, then shifted its attention to Chase to inspect the bandage on the left side of his head.
“That’s the first mistake you’ve made, Jessy,” Laredo replied. “For all you know, I could be holding a gun on him.”
“You could,” she conceded. “But you would be a dead man if you used it. This rifle is already cocked, and I have shot more than my share of coyotes. One more wouldn’t faze me.”
His mouth quirked in a crooked smile. “You know what? I believe you.”
During their exchange, Chase studied this tall, boy-slim woman in jeans and a well-worn straw Stetson, noting the high, strong cheekbones and sharp, angular jawline. Laredo’s previous description of her hadn’t conveyed the inner beauty that shone through her strong features. Not the rifle she gripped nor the manly clothes disguised the fact she was all woman.
“Do you still insist on talking to me alone?” Chase challenged smoothly. “Because I wouldn’t be here at all without this man. Laredo saved my life. He is the only person I trust right now.”
Jessy’s hesitation was slight. “If you trust him, then I do.” She engaged the safety on the rifle. “There isn’t anyplace for you to sit out here. Maybe it would be better if we talked in the truck.”
“Good idea.” Chase promptly turned and started back to the pickup, with Laredo at his side.
“For safety’s sake, you might want to leave the rifle outside,” Laredo suggested as he kept a supporting hand on Chase while he climbed into the passenger side.
“I planned on it,” Jessy replied and laid it in the open truck bed.
“And for your information, I do have a gun.” Laredo stepped back from the door to allow Jessy to slide in next to Chase.
She skimmed a glance over his tapered shirt and snug-fitting jeans, identifying all his muscled contours for what they were. “But not on you,” she concluded.
“Yup.” He reached behind his back. When his hand reappeared, there was a thirty-eight in it. Her only show of surprise was a faint widening of her eyes. “Like you, Jessy, I play it cautious.” Using both hands, he returned the gun to its hiding place.
“I won’t be fooled by that a second time.” She stepped onto the running board and pulled herself into the cab.
With the midday temperatures rising, they left both doors open to keep the interior air circulating. Jessy ran a critical eye over Chase, concern clouding her eyes.
“How bad were you hurt?” she asked.
“Bad enough,” Chase answered without elaboration.
“How did it happen? And why don’t you want anyone to know you’re alive?” She had come up with a dozen possible explanations en route to the cemetery, which made her anxious to hear the true one.
“It’s a long story, one I’ll let Laredo tell.”
Privately it irritated her that he chose to defer to Laredo, but she kept her irritation to herself.
Sitting sideways, Laredo leaned forward, draping an arm over the top of the steering wheel, and gave her a bare-bones account of the events that had led up to this moment. When he finished, Jessy stared at Chase, making no attempt at all to mask her shock.
“You really don’t remember who you are? Not even now?”
“My memory doesn’t go back any farther than that parking lot,” Chase told her. “According to Hattie, in most cases like mine, it will return—maybe in a few days or a few months—in bits and pieces or full-blown. Or there may be parts I never remember, especially the time right before I was shot.”
“And Hattie is some friend or relation of yours?” She looked to Laredo for confirmation.
“Something like that.” He nodded.
“But how can you be sure of that when you haven’t seen a doctor?” Jessy reasoned.
“Hattie is a registered nurse. And seeking a doctor is too risky. By law, gunshot wounds have to be reported. I don’t need that kind of trouble.” Chase’s expression warned her that he was firm on that decision.
“But what are you going to do?” Jessy asked, conscious of the myriad of complications his amnesia created.
“That’s where you come into it,” Chase said. “I need a place close by the ranch where I can hole up—either until my memory returns or we figure out who tried to kill me. More importantly it needs to be a place where I don’t have to worry about neighbors or a landlord stopping by. Laredo tells me the Triple C is big—managed in districts. Is there an old house or cabin sitting empty somewhere?”
“I can think of three off the top of my head, but it would be too easy for one of the hands to notice it was occupied. Other than those, there really isn’t anyth—wait a minute.” She stopped, a possibility dawning on her. “There used to be an old line shack up in the high foothills. To the best of my knowledge nobody has been there in years, probably not since my dad and I were up there hunting. I couldn’t have been much more than twelve or thirteen at the time. We don’t even run cattle up there anymore.”
“It sounds perfect,” Chase stated. “How do we get there?”
With the passing of that initial burst of excitement, Jessy turned hesitant. “I can’t even swear that it’s still standing, let alone whether the well still works, or how habitable it might be. There is definitely no running water or electricity.”
“I’ve lived under rougher conditions,” Laredo said with unconcern. “If you can supply me with the necessary tools, lumber, and maybe even a generator, I can make it livable.”
“I’ll figure out a way.” Jessy knew it wouldn’t be easy to do without arousing someone’s suspicions. “I don’t think directions will do you any good. Unless you know where it is, it would be sheer luck if you found it. I’ll have to take you there. Even then the old fire road will only get you within a half mile of it. I can’t remember what the terrain is like to know whether you can drive any closer than that.”
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