The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (18 page)

He gave the deep chuckle she had grown to like too much and rubbed a hand down Trixie's neck. "Sounds good. Where are we going?"

"I figured we'd ride up the mountain. The head of Stony Creek's up near the snow line. I don't know how far we'll get. With the thaw the creek's probably full, but I know a good place for a picnic." She patted a pouch behind Polly's saddle. "I brought us a lunch."

"Cool. I've got all day."

Astride Polly, she led the way, following an evident but seldom used trail that climbed from the back of Rondeau property onto national forest and on up Callister Mountain. They passed through a grove of small evergreens, then broke into a wild grass meadow clear of the trees. The morning sun warmed their faces and shoulders, at odds with the spring air's bite on her cheeks.

When the single-file trail played out, John came up and rode alongside her, softly encouraging Trixie. He was gentle with the horses and she appreciated that. Billy had been rough and impatient.

Mental sigh. She had to stop comparing John and Billy. The Bradshaws and the Bledsoes had never competed in the same arena. John might make flattering comments that made her feel special, but she knew an irrefutable fact. They came from two different worlds—-he from Callister's aristocracy, she from the riffraff.

She discarded that depressing thought and turned her attention to the surroundings she loved. A few hardy wildflowers and wild strawberries peeked out from the grass made wet by snowmelt. Small mounds of snow peppered with duff and pine needles still lay in shady spots and shrinking patches of the white stuff glistened like diamonds in the sun. They didn't talk, enjoying instead the call of a bird, the creak of saddle leather, the sounds of shod hoofs striking rock and the soft snorts as the horses cleared their nostrils. The smell of clean, rich earth and new season engulfed them.

They soon reached a rimrock where they stopped and looked down on the Rondeau and Karadimos spreads. "Art's sheep look like Ping-Pong balls against the hillside," Isabelle said, surprised she could enjoy the sight of something that had caused her so much angst.

"Pretty." John, too, gazed down on the valley greening up and opening itself to spring. The reins hung loose in his hand as he rested his forearm on the saddle horn. He looked right and proper sitting there astride Trixie.

"Paul and I used to hang out here," she told him. "We would pretend we were hiding from outlaws." She turned and looked up the mountain, toward a broad granite face, a place she hadn't been since childhood. "There used to be a miner's cabin up there. It was really old, maybe all the way back to the forty-niners. Paul would go up there and hole up for days when we were kids."

"Hunh," John said. "I didn't know there was a cabin up that high. Where is it?" He reached down and patted Trixie's neck.

"Just below the glacier at the foot of that big granite outcropping. Only accessible on foot or horseback. It's about a day's ride from here. The old thing was rickety, but it had a floor. I remember there was a wood cookstove in it. I used to wonder how they got it up there."

She turned John's way. His eyes were shaded by his hat brim, but she saw something in them that had been there several times now, an appraising look that penetrated her walls and sent a skittishness through her. She quickly switched her attention back to the mountainside. "I mean, it's uphill and steep. And the stove is made of cast iron."

"They did a lot back in those days that makes you wonder."

She didn't dare look him in the face again, didn't want to open a Pandora's box of emotions. Instead, she clucked at Polly and moved ahead, deliberately forcing her mind to a flat limestone ledge on the banks of Stony Creek, where they would lunch.

They rode through burgeoning potentilla and the shadows of lodgepole and bull pine, listening to the creek's susurrus amplify to a roar as they drew nearer its rushing water. After a while they reached the edge of the treeline and she spotted her destination. Bathed in sunshine, the rock ledge the size of a flatcar looked as she remembered it from years ago. She pulled up. "Ever been here before?"

"Nope. New territory to me."

"That big rock's where we're going."

After they dismounted, secured the horses and loosened the cinches, she grabbed the lunch. Along with food, she had brought one of those plaid wool blankets Texans took to football games when they thought the temperature might drop below seventy.

John helped her spread the blanket on the sun-warmed ledge, then she unpacked sandwiches made of tuna salad like her mother always made it, with walnuts and chunks of apple and celery. She had also brought potato chips, bottles of water and a few chocolate chip cookies.

Due to the spring runoff, Stony Creek was full bank to bank. A wall of white water crashed down the ancient glacier gouge that was a trickling brook in the summer. They sat down cross-legged, shoulder to shoulder so they could hear each other talk over the roar of the rushing water. John bit into a sandwich so hungrily she was sure he hadn't eaten breakfast.

"Mmm," he said as soon as he swallowed. "I don't know why you say you can't cook."

He had taken off his hat and the sun caught a few weather-bleached strands of his wavy brown hair. He didn't wear grease on his hair and she liked that.

"My mother was a wonderful cook. She tried to teach me, but I didn't learn. If you'll notice, there isn't much here that was actually cooked by me." She sent him a smile over her shoulder. "All I did was sort of throw it together. Ava baked the cookies from one of those frozen packages."

"Tastes good to me. I don't get much homemade food. If it's not fried potatoes, I'm lost when it comes to cooking."

Beside them, white water threw up a fine mist that showed a rainbow in the sunlight. She looked up at the cloudless blue sky, marred only by a white jet trail thousands of feet above them. The sense of peace she had always found in the mountains seeped into her. "You forget about things, you know? Until I got back here, I didn't realize how much this place was a part of me. Billy and I lived in four states, but the sky doesn't look like that in a one of them."

John looked up, too, squinting from the brightness. "It's God's country, all right. You never came back, not even to visit?"

"Just once. For Mom's funeral. We were in Scottsdale then. I flew into Boise on a red-eye, rented a car, drove up here for the funeral, then left town by dark."

"Why such a hurry?"

She shook her head. "Couldn't stand being here."

She felt the tiny pang that always came when she thought of her mother's death. "That was over ten years ago, before Ava was born. At that time I didn't think there was a chance in hell I'd ever come back. Art Karadimos wanted our land and I figured Pa would eventually lose it to him. I didn't give a thought to inheriting it." She looked at him again. "That's why Art hates us, you know. Because of the land."

"My mom told me. But Mom thinks he doesn't want it anymore."

Isabelle shrugged. "That could be true. The great equalizers caught up with him."

"Equalizers?"

"Age and circumstances beyond his control. He won't be able to bully me and Paul the way he did our parents."

"Scottsdale, huh? I've been there. Cool place. How'd you wind up in Texas?"

"Timing, I guess. We ran into one of those big-shot Texans at a horse show. He had multiple car dealerships and a pile of money. He also had a string of good horses, but they were poorly handled. He knew it. He made us an offer we couldn't refuse, so we trailed along behind him to Weatherford, which, I might add, is a heck of a long way from here."

Her mind struggled to find a comparison between her present surroundings and the flat Texas plains where she had lived for more than ten years. "There isn't a mountain in sight in Weatherford, Texas."

Though she had been home only a few weeks, Texas seemed like something she had imagined. She toyed with a potato chip. "We were too busy to think about Callister most of the time, anyway. We handled a lot of horses. Some of those Texas ranches own dozens of cutting horses." She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. "Weatherford's close to Fort Worth, the be-all, end-all of the cutting world. The NCHA headquarters is there."

"NCHA. That stands for—"

"National Cutting Horse Association."

"I roped in that big rodeo in Fort Worth a few times. Won a little money."

"Did you? I always went to that rodeo. I really liked the animal exhibits. Some of the best-looking cattle I ever saw. I wish I'd run into you."

"I was married then."

His tone had a firmness to it. When she glanced up, he was looking directly at her. She smiled at what he must have assumed. "I only meant, John, that it would have been neat to see someone from home. I felt un-rooted in Texas. With my mountain country ways, I didn't fit into the horse society down there. Those cutting-horse people aren't like the rodeo folks, you know?"

"No, I guess I don't."

"The rodeo's an industry of cowboys. Salt-of-the-earth kind of people. The cutting-horse business is probably more like horse racing than rodeoing. It scares you how much money's involved. Most of the owners are bored and filthy rich. Some are real ranchers, but many don't know much about livestock in general. Some of the owners are celebrities who never got close to a horse until they owned one. Down there, owning a cutting horse is kind of the in thing."

John laughed. "You're right. You don't see too many of those types in rodeos."

"To many of them, the horses are nothing but objects to be used and discarded when they're no longer fun or when they no longer pay off. Assets, they call them, as if the horses aren't living, breathing things. I hated it, but leaving was a hard decision. When you work with animals that are so smart and have so much heart, you can't keep from falling in love with them. It sounds weird, but I kept thinking I was doing the horses a favor by staying around and standing between them and..."

Her voice trailed off as vignettes of her relationships with various horse owners flashed through her mind. The life she had left in Texas, among the rich and famous who indulged their every whim no matter how bizarre, was more than she could describe to someone who hadn't lived it.

"And what? You didn't finish."

"Oh, nothing. It was just another one of my silly ideas. Billy always said I had a head full of them."

"Guess he never had any silly ideas, huh?"

"His ideas couldn't have been called silly, but I could think of a lot of other words."

"So tell me about training a horse to be a cutting champion. Where'd you learn how?"

"There isn't much to tell. I've loved horses for as long as I can remember. I never wanted a dog, but I always wanted a horse. I was lucky enough to hang out with some of the outstanding handlers here and there. I watched and listened and it just came to me." She took a long swig of water. "It's a kind of communication, you know? Almost spiritual. An understanding of something greater than you are."

"Uh-oh. I hope you're not gonna tell me you have one of those secret techniques shrouded in mystery."

"Nothing secret about it. I just think you don't really
train
horses. They already know how to do the things we want them to. They just don't always know when they're supposed to do them. All I do is try to make their lives easier by helping them figure it out. You see, horses are prey animals and they know that. We're predators. As much as they fear us, they want to please us."

She shook her head. "People and horses don't make sense. Owners pay a lot of money for a high-spirited horse. They take possession and control of an animal that would willingly give its life for them, then they don't go to the trouble to understand it. They blame the horse for their own stupidity."

"Guess the horses are lucky to have someone like you."

"I hope so. I'm on their side. I always made that clear to horse owners I worked for. I always told them up front, if it comes to a choice between you and the horse, I'll take the horse every time. I accept all horses as they are, including the ones people think are crazy. Even the knot-headed ones will do what you want if they just know what that is. Didn't you find that to be true with your rope horses?"

"I guess. They were good and smart, but I bought them already trained. The extent of my work with them was trying not to let them pick up bad habits."

"They can do that, but if they know you aren't pleased, they'll try to change. I can tell you this much. If there's a problem with a horse, it's usually on the people end of the relationship."

He finished off his sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. "Want the other half of my sandwich?" she asked him. "I've had enough."

"You don't want it?"

"I ate breakfast." She grinned at him.

He returned a sheepish grin, took the half-sandwich and complimented her again on the tuna salad. When there was nothing left to eat, he lay back, leaned on his elbow and crossed his ankles. Lulled by the warmth and the creek sound, she took off her cap and turned her face up to the sun, relishing the feel of the warmth on her eyelids and pooh-poohing the fact that five thousand new freckles would pop out on her face. She stretched out, too, and closed her eyes, letting her slutty side imagine how it might feel to lie close to her companion.