Lone Calder Star (25 page)

"Issuing threats, are you?" he said with amusement.

"Surely you're not surprised," Dallas countered, acid in her voice. "I learned it from you."

Boone smiled. "But I never make threats I can't carry out. You need to remember that."

It galled her to let Boone have the last word on the subject, but Dallas had no counter to his statement. "Can we get to the point of this meeting," she challenged instead.

"You know you really should be nicer to me," he murmured. "That wasn't part of the deal," she reminded him coolly. "It can always be changed."

When his hand moved toward her cheek, Dallas struck it aside before it could reach its target, her eyes ablaze with temper. "It'll stay just as it is, thank you," she snapped and moved a cautious step back.

Anger flickered in his expression, then faded into something vaguely cunning and determined.

"As smart as you are, you'll change your mindd once you've had time to think about it."

"Don't count on it."

Boone smiled and turned to face the stall, stacked with square bales. "This hay isn't going to last Echohawk up a short hill. He'll have to buy more. The question is, where and from whom? I'll expect a call from you as soon as you know."

"You'll get it," Dallas stated, all too conscious of the bad taste the words left in her mouth.

The sun sat atop the western horizon. The red glare of it poured through the driver's-side window when a dusty and ash coated pickup pulled up at the fence gate. At the cessation of movment, Empty Garner roused himself and groped to locate the door handle on the cab's passenger side.

"Where is the damned thing?" Empty grumbled in annoyance.

Quint took one look at the old man's face, hollow-eyed with fatigue, and threw the gearshift into park. "I'll open the gate."

Empty subsided against the seat back without protest, a statement in itself of his bone-tiredness.

Quint's own legs felt wooden beneath him when he stepped to the ground. As he advanced to the gate, his gaze made an automatic sweep of the charred landscape, empty of any living creature. It was an all-too-familiar sight.

He unlatched the gate and dragged it open wide, then climbed back in the idling pickup.

Without turning his head, Empty sent him a weary look.

"I wouldn't bother to close it if I were you," he said. "No cow's going to venture across all that burned ground to get to it."

"You're probably right," Quint agreed and drove through the opening, but the habit of closing a gate behind him was too deeply ingrained. He stopped the truck, got out, and shut the gate.

When he parked in front of the low ranch house, Empty declared, "It's been a long damned day.

I don't mind telling you I'll be glad to see the end of it."

Quint switched off the engine and reached for the door. "I keep telling myself it could have been worse, but it was bad enough."

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As he swung out of the cab, the door to the kitchen opened and Dallas stepped onto the porch.

A moment ago Quint had been so tired that he felt half drunk, but the sight of her standing there, tall and slim, coppery pale hair catching fire in the sun's waning light, lifted some of the weariness from him.

"There's someone on the phone for you, Quint," she called. "It's Jessy Calder."

"Coming," he said in answer and forced his legs to quicken their pace.

Behind him, Empty called to Dallas, "Did you get the chores done?"

"All done," she confirmed and moved to one side of the doorway, allowing room for Quint to pass.

Once in the kitchen, Quint walked straight to the corner desk and picked up the receiver lying next to the phone. "Hi, Jess. It's Quint." Knowing the conversation could turn into a long one, he sat down in the old wooden office chair.

"You're working late tonight." Her familiar voice sounded in his ear, registering above Empty's grumbling voice as he trooped ahead of Dallas into the house.

"I guess you could say that," Quint replied and let out a sigh. "We've had some trouble here."

"It's the hay, isn't it?" she guessed. "Chase has been worrying about it."

"He had cause," Quint admitted and absently watched when Dallas took her grandfather's jacket and hat from him and hung them on the iron hooks near the door. "It's gone. Burned. Every bit of it. Along with nearly five hundred acres of grass."

" How? When?" The questions came rapid fire.

Quint wasn't surprised that Jessy would seek the facts first. There was a lesson to be learned from the way she dealt with things.

Details she wanted, and details he provided, everything from his discovery of the fire and the man he'd seen running away to the shot he'd fired and their efforts to check the blaze prior to the arrival of the firefighting crews. Through it all a part of him registered the other activity going on in the kitchen, water gushing from the faucets, Empty standing at the sink, washing his hands, Dallas coIlecting plates and silverware and placing them around the table, the vague hum of their voices.

" Most of the stock managed to escape the fire, but we did find three cows that were cut up pretty bad. They had some burns around the hocks and singed skin. More than likely they went though the barbed wire fence to get away from the flames." Quint rubbed a hand against his forehead and struggled to organise the damages into a coherent list, but nearly thirty-six hours without sleep was having its effect on him. "Right now none of their injuries look to be serious, although one of the cows did abort her calf. The fire weakened nearly all of the wooden posts along the inner fencing," he continued. "So all of it will have to be replaced."

At the stove, Dallas turned the burner down under a pot of corn and strained to catch Quint's words. A chair leg scraped across the floor, cutting across the sound of his voice. She darted an irritated glance at her grandfather when he took a seat at the table. Her annoyance vanished the instant her glance fell on the haggard lines etched in his face.

Yet exhausted as he was, Empty Garner had been a rancher too long, and nighttime had always been when the next day's work was planned. "First thing tomorrow morning we need to get that burned hay out of the corral," he stated. "It's the smell of it that's probably spooking the horses and keeping them from coming back in. We'll need to catch them so we can ride out and check the cattle. It's hard to get close to them in a truck."

Unaware that Dallas had overheard Quint's account of the injured cows, Empty went on to tell her about them, describing the wounds they'd doctored and which salve had been applied on the burns, his forceful, semiloud voice almost completely drowning out Quint's more quietly pitched one. Dallas managed to snag bits of Quint's conversation, something about Rutledge, morning, and bales, enough for Dallas to assume it was about the hay that had been delivered.

But mostly she couldn't piece it together into anything that made sense. There was frustration in that. At the same time a part of her was glad.

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Not until the end of the phone conversation did Empty fall silent and Quint's voice was the only one in the room. "Sounds good, Jess. I'll talk to you then," he said and hung up.

His hand stayed on the receiver for a thoughtful moment. Then he rolled to his feet and went to the sink to wash up, a tired and distracted look to his expression. Dallas busied herself dishing up the evening meal and transferring it to the table, setting the platter of roast beef in front of her grandfather to carve. By the time Quint joined them at the table, all was in readiness.

"So what's the word?" As always, Empty came straight to the point. "Are you going to order more hay from the same outfit that sold you the last bunch?"

"By now Rutledge is bound to have done some arm-twisting to cut off that source." Quint reached for his napkin and absently draped it across his lap.

"You're probably right there." Empty spooned a helping of corn onto his plate. "Likely you'll have to buy it from another outfit."

"We're still talking about it and mulling over a couple ideas. Jessy's going to get back with me tomorrow night. We'll know more then," Quint stated and took the platter of carved beef Dallas passed to him. He slid her an appreciative smile. "Dinner looks good."

"Ah, but can you stay awake long enough to eat it?" she teased lightly, oddly relieved that as yet she had nothing to report.

" Now thers the question." Quint agreed with an easy grin.

Conversation was minimal during the meal as both men centered their attention on the food before them. Dallas suspected she was the only one uneasy with the long stretches of silence. She blamed her meeting with Boone for making it difficult to ignore the reason she was really there.

At meal's end, Quint and Empty leaned back in their chairs and replayed the day's events over a cup of coffee while Dallas transtfered the leftovers to individual containers and stored them in the refrigerator. When she returned to the table to clear off the dirty dishes, Empty heaved a big sigh.

"I think I'm going to call it a day. I'm whopped," he declared.

" The bed's the best place for you," Dallas said. "Not that easy chair."

"And bed is where I'm going, too." He flattened both hands on the table and used them to lever himself out of the chair.

When he shuffled out of the kitchen, Quint stirred. "I'll give you a hand with these dishes."

"I can do them myself tonight." Dallas piled the dirty silverware atop the stack of the dinner plates. "You look like you're out on your feet, too."

"I feel a bit like that as well." Quint collected the cups and drink glasses and followed Dallas to the sink. "But you're bound to be as tired as I am."

"Not really. I cheated and grabbed a nap this afternoon." She suddenly found it difficult to respond naturally to Quint, discovering that she was no longer sure why that was. As a consequence, she chose to keep it light. "So, go hit the shower, then the sack, in that order."

"Always looking after someone, aren't you?" His arm brushed hers when he set the items in the sink along with the rest of the dishes. Bone-tired he might be, but not so much that the contact and her nearness didn't stimulate his male impulses.

"It's a habit, I guess." Her easy dismissal of it was delivered with a smile.

"It's one that l like" Quint studied her upturned face and the light sparkle in her sherry-colored eyes. But it was the slightly parted line of her lips that drew him. "But there are a lot of things I like about you."

Turning, he slid his hand onto the opposite curve of her want, drawing her toward him. He ignored the surprise that flashed in her expression and the startled tightening of her body in automatic resistance, fully aware she hadn't anticipated his move and confident she didn't really object.

"More than like," he murmured an instant before his mouth settled onto her lips. They were motionless for an instant, then turned pliant and giving as his enfolding arms gathered her to him.

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The kiss was languid and long, yet never quite losing its gently insistent quality and deepening into something more raw. Then her fingers were there, their pressure light near a corner of his mouth as she pulled her lips away from his, the moist warmth of a tremulous sigh feathering across his skin.

A part of him didn't want the kiss to end, but Quint felt the heaviness of his limbs that warned of flagging strength. When she tipped her head down, he lightly kissed the top of it.

"Good night, Quint," she murmured.

"Good night," he echoed and moved reluctantly toward the door. He was halfway through the living room before he heard water gush from the kitchen sink's faucets.

The noonday sky was clear blue, crisscrossed with slowly dissipating contrails left by high-flying jets. With the sun at its zenith, the temperature hovered at the seventy-degree mark. On the west side of the ranch house, a pair of white sheets and pillowcases flapped in the south breeze.

Another set of sheets, straight from the washing machine, filled the large wicker basket Dallas carried as she crossed to the kitchen door. Pausing, she shifted the basket to the side, propping it on her hip, and reached for the doorknob. She pushed open the creen door, glancing to see Quint and Empty coming up the walk.

" lunch is on the stove," she told them. "Hot beef sandwiches. You're welcome to help yourself or wait until I come back."

The phone rang in a shrill punctuation of her announcement. Automatically she swung away from the door to answer it.

"I'll get it." Quint loped up the porch steps, and Dallas stepped aside to let him through.

With Empty not far behind him, Dallas held the door for him. Ten hours of sleep had removed the shadows from under his eyes and put some of the spring back in his step. Truthfully Dallas hadn't expected him to bounce back so quickly, but she was glad he had.

" Cee Bar Ranch." Quint's voice followed when she stepped onto the porch with the basket.

"Jessy. I didn't expect to hear from you until tonight."

Everything inside her tightened up. For an instant Dallas was torn between staying and going, pretending there was no significance to this call. But she knew better.

She set the wicker basket on the porch's planked flooring and crouched down, going through the motions of rearranging the wet sheets for better balance and using the delay to eavesdrop on Quint's phone call.

"I'm glad you agree with my suggestion, Jessy," he said. "In the long run, I think it'll be the wisest move we can make." There was a rather lengthy pause, and Dallas gripped the basket by its handles while pushing to her feet. "I'll work out all the arrangements on my end. If I run into any snags, I'll let you know."

There was a finality to his voice that signaled further discussion was at an end. Dallas immediately headed down the steps and struck out for the clothesline.

A gusting breeze snapped the sheets already hanging on the first strand of wire stretched between the tall posts. Dallas hauled the basket to an empty stretch of line and set it on the ground near her feet.