Chance McCall (19 page)

Juana frowned, began making the sign of the cross, and answered in a swift flow of Spanish that had Marcus waving in surrender.

“You know my Spanish is not that good, woman. Either slow down, or speak English.” His blue eyes danced as a slight flush spread across her cheeks.

“Sorry. When I’m upset, my native tongue takes over, you know.” She shrugged. “And to answer your question, your guess is as good as mine. She didn’t come to breakfast. She missed lunch. I heard the kitchen door slam a while ago. I suppose she’s out. She doesn’t tell me anything anymore.”

Her expression showed as much concern as he was feeling. They stared silently at each other, unable to get past the door their girl had slammed in their faces. Juana’s face crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as tears began to run, “I’m worried sick about her. What if that man won’t come back? Oh Marcus, what if we lose her too?” She turned and walked away, leaving behind questions with no answers.

Marcus doubled up his fist and slammed it against the wall. The phone rang somewhere in the house, but he was in no mood to answer it. He grabbed his hat from the coat tree, yanked the car keys from the table, and left through the front door.

He knew a couple of people in Tyler who’d been casual acquaintances of Chance’s. Maybe they could tell him something. Maybe one night Chance had inadvertently let something slip about his past that they’d remember. It was worth a try. And it sure as hell beat sitting around this house waiting for Jenny to ignore him. Yet he knew, as he drove toward Tyler, that it was no more than he deserved. He’d ignored her existence for years. He’d just now realized how much.

“If only her mother hadn’t died…Oh hell!” he muttered as he turned onto the main highway. “That’s an excuse and I know it! Jenny’s
my
daughter. And I just stood by and let Chance McCall be the only man in her life who mattered.”

Berating himself was not something he did by habit, but it did make him look at the last twelve years of Jenny’s life anew. He could remember dozens of times he’d noticed Jenny dogging the young man’s footsteps when Chance had first hired on. The many times Marcus, himself, had called upon Chance to step in and care for Jenny, when
he
couldn’t be bothered.

And there were the later years when Jenny had been growing into a woman. The only man she seemed to notice was one who refused to let himself take what she so obviously would have offered.

Marcus stepped on the gas. He didn’t have a choice. By God, he had to find Chance, or he’d not only lose him, he would lose his daughter as well.

The dream last night had been the last straw. Jenny had waited for days for the phone to ring, or a letter to come in the mail. Neither had happened. After that, she’d gone from withdrawal to anger. Anger with herself for waiting, at Chance for making her wait…and anyone else who’d happened to cross her path. The tension in her body was tighter than a six-wire fence.

The lines around her mouth tightened as she neared the stables. “Henry!” Her voice was sharp and strident. He came running. “Saddle Cheyenne,” she ordered.

“Hell no!” His voice was just as sharp. He loved his girl too much to let her get away with this.

She glared. “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

“Dammit girl. You ain’t got no business ridin’ that stallion. Not in the mood you’re in. You need all your wits about you, and yours is gone with our fool foreman.”

Just the mention of Chance sent her resolve into overdrive. She pushed past Henry, yanked a saddle and blanket off a sawhorse, and dragged them toward the stall where the stallion was stabled. The saddle bumped against her legs as she alternately kicked and pulled it along. The saddle blanket itched and smelled of horse. She grabbed at the latch on the stall door.

“Well, hell. If you’re so damned set on doin’ this, let me help.”

Silently, they saddled and bridled the anxious stallion, sidestepping his dancing hooves.

Jenny took the reins out of Henry’s hands, walked toward the doorway leading the saddled horse, and never looked back. An impending sensation of dread overwhelmed Henry as he watched her mount. “Jenny, don’t go,” he pleaded. She wouldn’t answer. “What the hell are you trying to do, anyway? Get yourself killed?”

She turned in the saddle. The look on her face stopped his heart. Her smile was bitter. The laughter lost…and hopeless. She kicked sharply against Cheyenne’s flanks. The horse jumped, nearly bolting out from under her as it leaped forward.

“Goddammit, Jenny, come back!” Henry yelled. It did no good. She and the horse were soon out of sight.

He cursed loud and long, using every bad word he’d ever heard, in every language he’d ever learned. He cursed Marcus for not being here to stop her, and Chance for leaving her without a word. And when he’d run out of breath and curses, he sat down on a stump by the corner of the barn and waited.

The sun moved west as Henry watched. It dropped lower and lower to the horizon with still no sign of Jenny. He couldn’t even look at his watch. Thinking about how much time had passed would make him crazy. Dusk was imminent. Hours had passed, that much he knew. And in his heart, he suspected the worst. Jenny had either had an accident or killed herself. He didn’t know which and couldn’t face either.

He stood up, legs stiff from hours of sitting, and hobbled toward the house. Marcus had to know what had happened. A search party would have to be organized.

“By God! Chance may be gone, but I’m not! If I have to do it myself, I will,” Henry muttered, as he walked into the house without knocking. He was past manners. Juana saw the look on his face and burst into tears.

At first there was only the sun on her face and the wind in her hair…and the power of the horse beneath her as they thundered across the land. She let Cheyenne have his head, doing nothing to direct or control him, content only to maintain a seat in the saddle. With the passing of each minute, desperation gave way to indifference. The pain that had been building for days inside Jenny disappeared, but it left nothing in its place. Her mind was blank, and if Cheyenne had taken it into his head to buck or pivot then, Jenny would have flown out of the saddle and broken her neck, such was the speed of the horse.

A creek was just ahead. Jenny saw it but did nothing to change the direction of the horse’s gallop. Unconsciously, she wrapped the reins around her wrists as her legs gripped the horse’s belly. Its powerful hind legs bunched and kicked, taking the jump, clearing the narrow creek with feet to spare. Jenny came down in the saddle with a jolt but didn’t lose her seat. Salt pooled in her mouth, and she realized she’d bitten her lip. It was of no consequence.

A small thicket of plum bushes and persimmon trees came into view, hanging persistently onto the sloping banks of a shallow pond while their roots grew long and deep toward the only collection of water for miles.

Cheyenne tossed his head, scenting the water, wanting to stop. Jenny yanked sharply at the reins and kicked. The horse reared in protest and spun sideways, but still Jenny hung on. It would have been easy to let go. She would have sailed through the air with ease, flung off by the momentum of the horse’s protests. Yet she rode.

Time passed. Miles disappeared beneath the horse’s hooves. Jenny felt nothing of the blisters that were forming on the palms of her hands from the death grip she had on the reins. She was completely unaware of the scratches on her face and the bits of leaves and twigs that caught in her hair during the narrow misses she had as the horse galloped beneath a scattering of trees.

And then a sound crept into Jenny’s awareness. It jangled, and it heaved. It was the sound of the bridle’s metal parts as Cheyenne sawed crazily at the bit, and the air the horse was trying to pull into its lungs in order to survive. Jenny had pushed it to the limit of its endurance, and still the powerful horse ran, giving what she asked of it, regardless of the consequences. Such was the nature of the beast.

“My God!” She leaned back against the stirrups, using her body weight to stop the big stallion. She had to. There was no feeling left in her arms. The horse came to a sudden and shaking halt. Jenny leaned forward and slid to the ground slowly. She landed on her back, with one rein still wrapped around her wrist too tight to come loose. She couldn’t have been in a more dangerous position, lying weak and helpless, caught beneath the horse that had nearly killed the man she loved. Yet neither she nor the horse was capable of moving.

Cheyenne’s big head hung, one rein trailing in the grass, the other around Jenny’s wrist. His sides heaved as he stared glassy-eyed at the woman at his feet.

She moaned, staring sightlessly up as she opened her mouth, and pulled long, life-giving draughts of air into her lungs. Long minutes passed.

A screeching sound, high and far above her head, made Jenny blink. She looked up. A lone turkey buzzard circled, obviously waiting, hoping that she would never move again. Jenny shivered. What had she been trying to prove?

As suddenly as she asked the question, a voice answered, calling her name.

Jenny
!

It came across the prairie, as plainly as if he were standing at her feet. She caught her breath and began to shake. Chance! All her life she’d leaned on him. Through every crisis her twenty-three years of living had brought. And now, when his world was crumbling around him, she was about to let him down. It took more courage than she thought she possessed, and strength she didn’t know she had left, but she dragged herself to her feet. Somehow she managed to climb back into the saddle, but the loose rein dangled just out of her grasp.

“Cheyenne, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as she leaned forward and dug her free fist into the sweaty thickness of his mane. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke. “Take us home, big fellow. Take us home.”

She nudged his sweaty flanks with the toes of her boots, wrapped the mane tightly through her fingers, and stretched out across his neck. Sitting upright was impossible. Hanging on might be more than she could manage, but she was going to try. Somewhere Chance McCall was hurting, and God help the person who tried to stop her from finding him. She didn’t know how to start or where to look, but she was going after him.

Jenny never knew when the Triple T came into view. She only knew that motion ceased. She looked up, saw the stables to her right and the foreman’s quarters to her left. She was home!

Her fingers were numb as she loosed her grip in Cheyenne’s mane. She swung one leg over the saddle horn and kicked the other foot free. Unable to stand, she fell to her knees on the ground.

It took a while, but when she finally could stand, she started toward Chance’s quarters. Staggering weakly, she reached the porch and then turned and stared, wondering why the horse had followed. She looked down at the rein still wrapped around her wrist and would have laughed if she’d had breath enough. He’d had no choice. She’d pulled him with her.

“Now, boy. Now you’re free,” she mumbled as she unwound the rein from her wrist and let it fall into the dust alongside the other one.

She dragged herself up onto the porch, grabbed hold of the doorknob, and turned it. The door swung inward, revealing the long shadows of quickly fading daylight, slashing across the hardwood floor. Jenny’s eyes turned toward the bed in the corner. She stared long and hard at the old metal frame and the blue, patchwork quilt coverlet, and then swallowed. Sheer guts pulled her toward the bed. She managed to get one knee onto the quilt before falling face forward across the bed, arms outflung, legs dangling off the edge, encompassing all she had left of Chance McCall.

The horse stood motionless outside the open door as Jenny cried herself to sleep.

“Damnation, it’s about time you got back,” Henry thundered.

Marcus got out of his car and came face to face with an angry man. His flesh crawled. Instinct warned him it wasn’t ranch business that had sent Henry to the house in a cussing fit.

“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked.

“Well, if you’da been here sooner, you’da known it for yourself. It’s your daughter, that’s what!”

It was just as he’d suspected. “Dammit, Henry, get to the point. What’s—”

“She’s gone. And for all I know, she’s either broke her neck, or laying underneath that fool horse wishing someone would shoot them both!”

“My God!” Marcus whispered. “What in hell are you trying to tell me?”

“I
am
’a tellin’ you! Why don’t you listen?”

Juana burst through the front door, waving her hands at the two men standing toe to toe, as near to blows as they’d ever been in their lives.

“
Pare
! Stop!” she cried. “I could hear you all the way in the back of the house. What is the matter with you two? Has this whole family gone mad?”

Henry turned and spat, then answered. “I ain’t mad yet, but I’m about to be unless someone comes with me to the bunkhouse and organizes a search party.”

Juana gasped as Marcus grabbed Henry by the shoulders.

“Dammit old man, if you don’t spit out what you’ve been trying to say, I’ll shake it out of you.” The panic he’d been trying to suppress was heading for his heart. If Henry didn’t say something and say it soon, he wouldn’t be able to think.

“Jenny rode out hours ago on Cheyenne. She was in one hell of a black mood and I couldn’t stop her. She’s not back. The damned horse ain’t either. Now that tells me one of two things…either she’s—”

“Never mind,” Marcus said. “I get the picture. Come on, Henry. We’ve got to go find her. It’ll be dark soon. How many of the men are still on the ranch?”

“Not near enough,” Henry mumbled, relieved that he’d finally gotten someone’s attention. They headed for the stables.

Marcus couldn’t think past the fear that was crawling up his throat. He’d wasted so many years of Jenny’s life. She’d grown up without him, but he didn’t want to grow old without her.

“Boss!”

Henry’s shout came without warning. Marcus turned and looked, following the direction in which the old wrangler was pointing.
No! Please God! Not Jenny
!