Reason To Believe (25 page)

"Yes."

"Not just plain selfishness." She nodded.

He sought her with an anxious look. "I may be like her in some ways, but one thing's for sure, Clara. If my kid goes lookin' and can't find me, it's because I got hit by a truck."

"Is that the story you want me to tell her?"

"It'll be the God's honest truth. I'll always be her father." Then quietly he added, "As long as she wants to claim me."

They rode together without saying much for a while. Anna joined them, and the mood lightened. They played a word game Clara had invented years ago to entertain Anna on the long drives that were par for a life on the Great Plains, where there was no short distance between two points on the map. Then Anna rode off to join Billie, and Ben dropped back to check on the "bronc riders."

As the afternoon wore on, Clara's muscles started protesting the unusual demands she was placing on them. She started checking her watch, as if it might have something to say about wrapping up the day's ride. There were no mile markers, no signs, no familiar landmarks. Just more grass, more hills, more fence line, and an ever-distant horizon.

When Ben rode up beside her again, she hoped he'd come to deliver news of an end in sight. But no such luck.

"We've got riders strung out from here to the wide Missouri," he told her. She responded with a look that said she was well past caring. He smiled. "How're you doin', Clara-bow? You gonna make it?"

"How much farther?"

"Couple miles."

"Can't we take a break?"

"We don't wanna be ridin' too long after dark." He tugged at the brim of his black cowboy hat. The sinking sun was still bright. "You're doin' real good. You and Annie both."

"High praise, coming from a cowboy."

"Damn right." He nodded southward. "Just over that next hill."

She knew better, but she kept watching the top of that hill. By the time she crested it, she felt like blubber in a saucer. Ben knew what shape she was in, and she could feel him keeping an eye on her. But he was stingy with his pity. He caught up to her after they'd left "over the next hill" well behind them.

"How's it goin'?"

"I thought you said the next hill. The next hill is now the last hill, and all I see ahead of us is a stupid stock dam."

"No, I said just over
that
hill. I meant the
next
next hill." He pointed with a gloved hand. "You can't see it from here, but you see that one? It's just beyond that one."

Her lips were stiff with cold. "How far?"

"Two miles. It's just about two more miles."

Two more miles.
He rode off again, and she tried to calculate fence posts per mile, hoofbeats per mile, butt bounces per mile. The sun slipped into the prairie's western pocket, spreading a bright blaze over deep purple buttes, and still the pack of horses trotted along, up one hill and down another. Her face was chill-set and her fingers were getting that way, too. Ben was pressing his luck, riding up beside her wearing a silly smile.

"We've gone over a bunch of hills, Ben Pipestone. When are we going to stop?"

"Pretty soon. Gettin' anxious?"

"I'm past anxious, past exhausted, and past that hill you said—"

"Honey, it's the
next
hill. Right up—" He stood tall in his stirrups and made a vain production of sighting along the rolling fence line. "Well, you can't see it yet, but it's just past those trees."

"Liar." She pouted. "I'm going to stop pretty soon. I'm just going to stop and get down and curl up in a little ball and..."

"And miss supper? There's a nice hot supper waitin' for you, just two miles ahead."

"You said that two miles ago."

"I didn't say supper. I was savin' that part."

"You said two miles!"

"So it must be less than that now. You never could judge distance, Clara-bow."

"Me!"

"You're gonna make it, Clara. I swear to God, we're almost there."

Almost there. Almost there. Almost there.

Just when she'd decided that come the next damn hill, she was going to slide out of the saddle like a sack of meal and get swallowed up in the ditch alongside the road, she saw a yard light.

And Ben was at her side immediately, claiming the credit. "You see that light, Clara-bow?"

"If you tell me that's not where we're going, Ben Pipestone, you are going to regret every dishonest word, every transparent promise, every flimsy—"

He grinned. "What are you gonna do to me?"

"I am going to take your lying lips in my two ice-cold hands and tie them together in a big, fat double knot."

"And then?"

Her lips were too stiff to do anything but sputter. "And then... and then..."

"C'mon, think of something good." He leaned closer. "Hell, I'm frozen stiff, and you're still givin' me one hell of a hard-on."

"I'd hit you, but you're not worth the effort."

"Go ahead, knock yourself out. Or off." With a deep chuckle, he offered her a hand. "I'll catch you."

She groaned miserably. "I can't go any farther."

"Can you make it to the light?"

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Oh, thank God." She caught herself in the middle of a deep sigh of relief. "You wouldn't—"

The riders formed a circle within the circle of light that the big utility pole cast behind the small ranch house.

They could smell the promise of inner warmth. Soup and coffee. Dewey gave thanks for a day of safe travel, for the horses that had brought them to this place, and for Angus Barnes, the white rancher who had provided a place to stay. He'd offered the use of his corrals and stock tanks, the windbreak of his shelter belt, where the support crew had already set up camp, and all the hay and water the horses and riders might need.

They attended to the horses first. Two had pulled up lame, one with a rock wedged against the frog in its front hoof. If they weren't sound by morning, the riders would have to locate a spare mount or sit out a day. Taking care of the horses was the ride's foremost rule.

Some of the riders had pledged to fast during part of the ride. Those who would begin their fast tonight were escorted to a special tent, where Dewey, as spiritual advisor, would offer encouragement and help them renew their commitment. He would eat later, after the fasters had gone to sleep.

Angus Barnes and his two daughters helped Ben and some of the other riders feed the horses. Clara sought the warmth of the campfire, where the children had lined up to be fed first. TJ met her with a cup of soup, a piece of fry bread, and a smile when Clara sighed over the first hot sip of supper. More fires were built around the campsite. Riders and supporters gathered, ate, drank coffee, and shared in the warmth, both from the fire and the companionship. People drifted from fire to fire. There was little talk at first. Everyone was hungry and tired, content simply to stand or sit and stare and move sore muscles as little as possible.

Clara followed TJ to one of the camp stoves in search of more coffee. The blue enamel pot had been drained. TJ dipped in a little water. Clara dug the three-pound can of ground coffee out of the box of supplies that was sitting on the pickup's open tailgate.

"We were talking today, a little bit about..." Clara realized, having heard so little about the woman, that she wasn't sure how to refer to her. "Ben's mother. He's never told me much about her. I know it's been a long time, but—" She peeled the plastic lid off the coffee can. "He can't seem to remember anything specifically good about her. But your father must have loved her. I mean, there must have been something good..." She looked up, peering at her sister-in-law in the smoky shadows cast by a fire blazing several yards away. "Did you get along with her, TJ?"

"Sometimes." TJ rinsed the dregs of old grounds, flinging them into the grass with a quick snap of the wrist. "Stella ran hot and cold. Sometimes she'd make a big fuss over my brother, other times for days she'd act like she didn't even know he was there. She was bored living out in the country. She was a lot younger than my father. She was his second wife, you know."

"Yes, I knew that Ben was her only—"

"My mother died from some kind of an infection after my sister was born," TJ continued as she dipped more water into the pot. "A few years later, along comes Stella. She was pretty. My father was lonesome for a woman. But he's a real upstanding man, you know? He wouldn't just—" She shook her head, an unacceptable notion fluttering off like ash from the campfire.

"So he married her. And then she had Ben, which kinda slowed her down for a while. But then she got tired of staying at home, so she started steppin' out on our father about every other month. Sometimes he'd go find her, bring her back home. Other times he'd wait it out, and she'd come back when she ran out of whatever she'd found out there." She gestured vaguely at the line of trees that formed the shelter belt, the front row illuminated by firelight, the rest, like a tree farm, row on machine-planted row, retreating in darkness. "Then she started taking it out on Ben, so my dad finally just let her go."

Clara peered into the trees, disturbed by the unsettling image of a woman hurting the boy her husband had been. "Ben didn't say that she was mean to him or anything."

"She had a mean tongue, for one thing, but she didn't dare use it on me." TJ took the can from Clara's hands. "Don't tell him I said anything. He doesn't like to think it made any difference to him what she did. And maybe it didn't. He's a pretty tough cowboy." In the midst of measuring coffee grounds she glanced up at Clara. "Isn't he."

"Tough as they come, I'm sure. But I'm not." She shook off her growing concern for Ben as she followed TJ back to the camp stove, walking gingerly. "Oh, God, I am
so
sore."

"Why did you say you were doing all this?"

"For Anna."

"That's right. For Anna." TJ set the pot on the stove and brushed her hands together. "How's my father doing?"

"He stays right out there in front. It's like he has a mission. And Ben—" Clara marveled with a quick
tsk.
"You'd never know this wasn't his idea. It's like he's the wagon master or something."

"Wagon master?" TJ chuckled.

"You know what I mean. He's watching out for the kids and the stragglers, the people like me who were not prepared for this but insisted on doing it anyway." Clara laughed. "Wagon master isn't exactly the right term.
Akicita
might be better."

"Akicita,
hmm? Warrior society. We don't have those anymore, but if we did... my brother?" TJ offered Clara a folding lawn chair, then pulled another one out of the back of the pickup for herself. "I don't know. He's always been a real renegade. My father and him—" She struck her fists together as she sat down in the frayed web of a seat. "Two rams. One old and stubborn, one young and even more stubborn."

"Do you think Ben likes what he's doing now? I mean, finally?" Clara shifted her weight into the half of her seat that still had most of its straps intact, ignoring the aluminum frame's squeaky protest. "You know, he made good money when he was working for the dealership in Bismarck, but he never liked it. It didn't suit him. He'd rather fix up some old wreck that was ready for the junk pile than work on a car that was still under warranty." She gave a small laugh. "He's always at his best when somebody says, 'Yeah, but can you do that blindfolded with your right arm tied behind your back?'"

"That's for sure."

"And he was always—" The memory had suddenly launched itself on her without warning, before she could nip the doleful image in the bud, the one of him looking out there, wishing. Her voice drifted as her mind's eye watched him "—gazing out the window at that little piece of land he wanted to buy someday so he could..." He'd mapped it out on a hundred scraps of paper. The little barn, the corral, the shop. She shook her head and sighed. "It was like he was in a cage. Maybe he wasn't cut out for marriage."

"I don't know if any man is cut out for marriage."

"Do you think women are?"

"Not all of them."

"Who does the cutting?" Clara looked at TJ, who had had a husband once but had dispensed with him after he'd wrecked her car one too many times. "I'd really like to know. I'd like to get over there and get one right off the cutting board. Because, you know, they don't label them, so you never know what you're getting."

"They don't label what?"

Both women turned toward the intruding voice. Tanya Beale, the cowgirl from Oklahoma, emerged from the darkness to join them.

"Men," TJ said. "So you never know what you're getting."

Tanya laughed as she squatted next to the camp stove. "Most of 'em are willing to drop their pants any time you say and show you exactly what you're getting."

"Drop his pants?" TJ leaned forward and gaped at the spindly-legged blond as though she weren't sure what species this one was. "As if that tells you anything about what kind of a husband he's gonna make."