Lone Calder Star (3 page)

"Dallas told me you were looking for work," the man said without preamble. "She said you'd heard the Cee Bar was wanting a hired hand."

Quint leaned back in his chair, giving the appearance of one fully at ease. But there was an instant sharpening of all his senses. "That's right."

"Now, it's no skin off my nose what you do, but if you're open to some friendly advice, you'll forget about that job." Quint cocked his head at a curious angle. "Why's that?"

The cowboy paused over his answer. "Let's just say you wouldn't like working there, and leave it at that." He concluded the statement with a curt bob of his head and moved off to rejoin his buddies.

There was no change in Quint's expression as he digested this tidbit of information, aware that his conversation with the waitress had netted results after all. He thoughtfully sipped his coffee, aware there were two possibilities , that the former ranch man Evans had been something of a tyrant or someone was deliberately creating problems , just as his grandfather had suspected.

Even in these modern times, there were few ranches of any size chat could survive without some hired help. And it was an absolute necessity for one with absentee ownership.

Quint waited until the cowboys had gone and the young waitress had cleaned their table, then made his own way to the cash register. His gaze traveled over her face when she joined him, notiiig its clean, smooth lines.

"Was everything all right?" Her glance briefly made contact with his, but not long enough to renew his fascination with the tan shade of her eyes.

"Fine," Quint replied, conscious of a male interest stirring despite her youth and his better judgment. "The hamburger was a good choice."

"Better than the meat loaf." A smile edged the corners of her mouth.

"I'll take your word for that." He laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. "Your cowboy friend advised against taking that job at the Cee Bar. He said I wouldn't like working there. Do you know why?"

Quint sensed her sudden withdrawal; it was almost a physical thing.

Yet the shrugging lift of her shoulders seemed to be a natural gesture of ignorance. "John Earl usually knows what he's talking about. It would be smart to listen to him." She placed his change on the counter and turned away, adding a perfunctory "Y'all have a good night."

Quint studied the straight, almost stiff, line of her back and considered pursuing the subject. He knew, better than most, that the young were rarely skilled at withholding information for long.

The cook emerged from the kitchen, using the hem of his stained apron to mop up the sweat rolling down his multiple chins.

The corpulent man threw an indifferent look at Quint and waved a fat hand at the waitress.

"Might as well lock up after he leaves and call it a night." He grabbed a glass of ice from the rack and pushed it under the Coke dispenser.

The announcement effectively made it difficult, if not impossible, for Quint to linger and question the young waitress further. He decided it might be for the best. If Rutledge was behind this, then it was better not to involve the girl-even indirectly.

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There were fewer vehicles parked along the street and no traffic moving when Quint left the cafe.

But he scanned the street in both directions, mainly out of habit, as he made his way to the rental car.

Dallas watched him through the cafe's plate-glass window while she gathered up the dirty dishes from his table. She was surprised and a little puzzled when she saw him slide behind the wheel of a late-model sedan. Every self-respecting cowboy she knew drove a pickup-except for the occasional married ones.

Dallas tried to remember whether he'd been wearing a wedding band, but she had no recollection of one. Not that it mattered. It wasn't likely she would see him again anyway.

With her side work finished, Dallas filled out her time card, stuffed her textbooks and papers into a canvas tote bag, called a good night to Tubby Harris, and left by the back door. She wrenched open the driver's side door of an old white pickup, shoved her tote bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in after it.

It was a five-minute drive from the cafe to the old Farrell place on the outskirts of town. Dallas parked the pickup next to the singlewide trailer that had been home for the last eight months.

The outside light was on, the yellow fixture throwing an amber glow over the wooden steps to the trailer's front door.

A blueish light flickere dacross the living room window, a distinctive pattern that said the television was on. Dallas smiled knowing that she would likely find her grandfather snoozing in his recliner.

The smile didn't last, though. Losing the ranch had been hard on her grandfather, but not as hard as finding himself with all this time on his hands and nothing to do with it. Jobs were scarce in Loury, and there were fewer still for a seventy-eight-year-old man.

Suppressing a sigh, Dallas slung the tote bag strap over her shoulder and climbed the steps to the front door. The hinge screeched in protest when she pushed the door open.

Instantly the recliner snapped upright and the footrest thudded into place. "Who's there?" her grandfather barked.

"It's just me." Dallas walked on in and halted at the sight of the shotgun gripped in his gnarled hands. "I thought you promised me you'd lock that in the gun cabinet, Empty."

Born Mordecai Thomas Garner, the rancher had been known by his initials M.T since his cradle days. No one recalled who had first mistakenly spelled his name as Empty, but it had stuck.

Everyone in the area knew the big-chested, bandy-legged old man as Empty Garner.

Empty had the grace to shift uncomfortably under her disapproving look. "I had to clean it first," he grumbled in his own defense and motioned to the gun-cleaning kit on the table next to his chair.

She skimmed the tabletop and noted the absence of any shells. "'That's loaded, isn't it?"

"What good is it to have a gun around if it isn't loaded?" he argued, then attempted to change the subject. "What in tarnation are you doing home so early anyway?"

"It's Wednesday. Tubby seldom has many customers on a weeknight." Dallas let her tote bag slide to the floor and crossed to his chair, extending her hand in a demanding fashion. "Give me the shotgun, and I'll lock it up."

His eyes narrowed in sharp temper. "Don't you be giving me orders, little girl. I'm not the youngster around here."

But it wasn't in Dallas to bail: down when she knew she was right. She pointed a rigid finger at the tall gun cabinet on the wall next to the television. "Then you go lock it up before you accidentally shoot somebody."

He glared at her. "How can I when you're standing in my way?" "I could throttle you sometimes," she declared and stalked over to scoop up her tote bag.

Empty Garner levered himself out of the recliner and crossed to the gun cabinet, moving with the side-to-side rocking gait of a man who had spent most of his life in a saddle. "Someday you're going to be sorry you insisted on this," he said to her back as Dallas carried her bag of
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books to the table in the adjoining kitchen. "Especially if Rutledge sends one of his boys prowling around here."

"You don't have to worry about Rutledge." Dallas plunked herself on one of the kitchen chairs, feeling as cranky and out of sorts as her grandfather. Deep down she knew it had nothing to do with the shotgun. "He's after the Cee Bar now."

"How do you know that?" Keys rattled on the metal ring as Empty flipped through them, searching for the one for the gun cabinet.

"John Earl was in the cafe tonight."

Her news caught Empty off guard. His brow furrowed in thought as he stowed the shotgun in the cabinet and locked the door. He shoved the key ring in his pocket and ambled into the kitchen, still mulling over her statement.

"I know John Earl's belt doesn't go through all the loops, but I didn't think he was dumb enough to volunteer something like that."

"He didn't exactly volunteer it," Dallas admitted and pulled her English Lit book out of the tote bag.

"How did it come up then?"

Dallas sighed in exasperation, regretting that she had mentioned anything about it. But once said, she couldn't take it back. And knowing her grandfather, he wouldn't give her a moment's peace until he knew the whole story. She should have remembered that any mention of Rutledge was like a red cape to a Spanish bull.

As concisely as possible, Dallas told him about the stranger looking for work and asking about the job opening at the Cee Bar, followed by John Earl's questioning her conversation with the stranger and his cocky response about the unlikelihood of the stranger getting hired.

"He didn't say it in so many words," Dallas said in conclusion, " But it was obvious that Evans had been run off."

Her grandfather nodded in agreement. "More'n likely he got the fear of Rutledge put into him.

It'd be easy to buy him off after that. By God, I'd give anything to be around when Rutledge gets his comeuppance." Acrimony riddled his voice. "He's played it high and wide too long."

"Nobody's stopped him all these years," Dallas reminded him, stifling her own bitter resentment of the man. "It isn't logical to think any one will."

"You're probably right," he grumbled and watched as she flipped through the pages of the textbook. "I suppose you'll be up half the night studying."

"I have to. Finals start next week."

"Just remember you need your sleep, too. Studying won't do you any good if your brain's too tired to take it in." With that bit of wisdom delivered, he started to turn away, then swung back, pinning his gaze on her. "Who's tending the stock out at the Cee Bar?"

"Nobody, I guess," Dallas replied absently, already turning her attention to the subject before her.

"It wouldn't bother Rutledge if they went hungry," Empty muttered, unaware that Dallas had already tuned him out. "He'd probably like it if they starved. Then he could report it to the authorities and cause more trouble for the owners."

Dallas made an agreeing sound, without having heard a word he'd said.

"What time you got to be at the feed store in the morning?" he demanded suddenly. "Eight o'clock, isn't it?"

"Eight?" She gave him a blank look, then his question belatedly registered, and Dallas nodded.

"Yes, eight o'clock."

"1'm gonna need to use the truck tomorrow, so I'll take you to work in the morning."

"Fine," she said and went back to her studies.

All was dark, shadows lying thick around the buildings, when Quint pulled into the Cee Bar
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ranch yard. The single-story house stood off by itself, half hidden under the enveloping shade of a live oak. Quint parked the sedan in front of it, retrieved his duffel bag from the trunk, and crossed to the covered porch that ran along the front.

The door was unlocked, making the spare key in his pocket needless. Quint stepped inside and felt along the wall for the light switch. Finding it, he flipped it on. Light spilled from an overhead fixture, illuminating the center area of the living room while leaving its corners in shadow.

His gaze traveled to the old stone fireplace along the wall. Soot from countless fires stained the front of it, revealing its age. Quint wandered over to it, ignoring the creak and groan of the unevenn floorboards when they took his weight.

Idly he ran a hand over the wooden mantelpiece and smiled, recalling the winter holidays he'd spent here when he was eleven, and the many stories his grandfather had told him about the ranch. Quint felt the swirl of history around him.

And it was Calder history. The origins of this ranch and its house dated back to the Civil War era when it had been the home of Seth Calder and his son, Benteen-the same Benteen Calder who had eventually driven a herd of longhorns north to Montana and established the Triple C

Ranch.

Well over a hundred years had passed since a Calder had lived on the Cee Bar. That seemed wrong somehow.

Pushing that thought aside, Quint turned from the fireplace and the past, focusing once again on the job he had come to do.

Wakened by a rooster's crow shortly after dawn, Quint rolled out of the strange bed and padded into the hallway. The floorboards creaked companionably under his bare feet as he made his way to the closet-sized bathroom off the hall. He wasted Iittle time relieving himself and washing the sleep from his eyes. Back in the bedroom, he pulled a clean set of clothes out of his duffel bag and put them on.

leaving the rear bedroom, he headed for the kitchen where he'd left the coffeepot and dirty dishes soaking in a sink full of sudsy bleach water the night before. There was just enough coffee in the canister to make a pot. He spooned some into the basket filter and made a mental note to add coffee to his grocery list as he thoroughly rinsed out the now mold-free glass pot.

After plugging in the coffeemaker, he filled its tank with water and listened to it gurgle to life.

Just as he poured his first cup, the telephone rang. Quint crossed to the wall-mounted phone and Iifted the receiver.

"Cee Bar Ranch."

His mother's familiar voice responded, "I was hoping I wouldn't waken you."

"You didn't," he assured her. "As a matter of fact, i'm drinking coffee and making a grocery list.

The cupboards here are bare." "What are you going to do for breakfast?" she asked with instant concern.

"I'm looking out the window at a bunch of chickens scratching in the yard. There's bound to be some eggs somewhere out there waiting to be gathered."

There was an element of relief in her soft laughter. "Sometimes I forget how resourceful you've always been."

"Now you've been reminded." Affection gentled his voice. "I thought you would have left for Laura's wedding by now."

"We're about to walk out the door, but I wanted to call you first and tell you good-bye."

"Let Laura and Sebastian know I'll be thinking about them."

"I will. And you take care of yourself down there."

It was his own suspicion of trouble coming that made him admonish, "Don't start worrying
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