The Wildcatter. Peggy Nicholson
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turned to look. The convertible’s passenger door was opening. Someone—a girl—with windblown hair the color of raw copper, of forest fires and wild honey, was getting out. She touched one foot to the ground—but the driver lunged her way, gesturing. He caught her arm, shook his head emphatically.
She hesitated, shrugged…closed her door again.
Her companion put his hand down on the horn and held it there in an ear-splitting, nerve-grating protest. Miguel sighed and cut a wedge of apple, ate it thoughtfully. Looked as if he’d have to go over there and offer to flatten Mr. Mercedes’ nose for him. Not something he wanted to do with a lady present.
On the other hand, maybe it was time she learned her man was not only rude but gutless.
None of your business to teach her, he reminded himself. A rich gringa like that could buy all the lessons in life she needed—or buy her way out of them.
He was saved from choosing. The Mercedes jerked into reverse and roared backward at a reckless speed, its driver taking out his temper on his machine—and his startled passenger, who’d braced herself against the dashboard. What some women put up with. Smiling wryly to himself, Miguel put his truck in gear and followed.
After mounting a final rise, he turned into a wide, dusty barnyard. Several men on horse and afoot gazed off to where the red convertible had reversed all the way to a lone horseman, sitting a big buckskin horse at the far side of the yard. The rider leaned down from his saddle, listened as the driver of the Mercedes gestured wildly—then jabbed his finger at Miguel’s truck.
So that was the man in charge. Not a good beginning, Miguel told himself as he parked alongside a corral and stepped out. But play it as it lays.
“NOPE,” Ben Tankersly drawled, gazing across at the man who’d climbed out of the dusty old pickup. “He’s not one of mine. ’Fraid I can’t fire him for you.” He swallowed his smile and glanced at his daughter. You see what you’ve got here, princess? You want a man who can’t settle his own fights?
Risa’s eyes touched his, then skated away. She stared off into the distance, arms tightly crossed, teeth buried in her lower lip, her cheeks the color of roses. Embarrassed, Tankersly hoped. She damn sure ought to be.
“Fine! Okay! Forget it, then!” Foster stomped on the gas and roared off the way he’d come, raising a cloud of dust.
Moving much too fast for the crowded yard. Ben’s eyes narrowed—the damn fool—then widened as he realized. The car was aimed straight for the stranger, who’d paused halfway across the open space. “You idiot!”
No doubt Foster meant to shame his target, forcing him to scramble for cover. Instead the young man stood, apparently paralyzed. Tankersly sucked in a harsh breath, bracing himself for the impact.
But the stranger took one long graceful stride to the side, whirled—and landed a thumping mule-kick on the driver’s door as the Mercedes shot past.
One of the hands let out a blissful whoop. Tankersly’s pent breath burst out in a guffaw. Stove in his slats for him! Dented his door a good one! The vanquished Mercedes roared out of the yard and off down the hill.
Tankersly’s grin faded. That cowardly fool had his daughter aboard and there he was, trying to sprout wings, running away from his own humiliation. The rancher put the heel of his hand to his heart, rubbed it, then shrugged. Not a thing in the world he could do about it. If Foster didn’t kill her in the next mile or so, maybe Risa would finally see. “That’s not breeding stock,” he muttered, then switched his attention to the oncoming stranger.
He blinked—and felt the dice teeter, then tip over, the way they sometimes did. One final roll and your life turned from empty pockets to can’t lose. Foster was not breeding stock, but this one… Maybe…just maybe… Ben sat and let him come on, sizing him up as he would have any yearling colt, deciding whether to keep or sell him.
And this one looked like a keeper. On his mettle after he’d faced down that attack, his color was high, his eyes direct, fastened on Tankersly. He had that top-stallion strut—good spirits, good body and well-proven pride, combining to give a soft bounce to each stride, though you couldn’t hear his feet hit the ground. With guts, good bone and reflexes. The young man halted beside Ben’s stirrup. “They call me Heydt,” he said, holding out a big brown hand. “Miguel Heydt.”
Something south of the border in his deep voice—just a hint. And in his black Spanish eyes, though his hair was the same bronzy shade as the dark buckskin Ben rode. “Tankersly,” Ben declared himself, squinting down as they shook. Maybe five years older than Risa’s nineteen, he estimated, though Heydt’s eyes made him seem twice her age. Eyes that had seen trouble and sorrow and come through it with just a trace of cool amusement at their corners. Eyes that said, Come what may, I can handle it.
Not like Risa’s pretty boy, whose eyes said, Come what may, I can buy my way free—or talk my way out of it.
Heydt endured another minute of Ben’s appraisal, then he spoke again. “I told him—” he tipped his head toward Joe Wiggly, who was riding up on them “—that I wasn’t interested in haying. I’m looking to cowboy.”
Standing there in a pair of old engineer’s lace-up leather boots! Tankersly snorted. “Not what I need.” If this one didn’t answer to the rein, he wouldn’t do in spite of his looks. Ben had enough trouble this summer without signing on an outlaw. “You’ll buck bales or you can be on your way.”
Heydt nodded impassively, but something was moving at the back of his dark eyes. “When I’m not haying, on my own time can I ride?”
To Ben’s mind, any minute of life not spent in the saddle or in bed with a laughing woman was wasted. Still, his gaze sharpened. With those shoes, Heydt was no cowboy. But neither was he one of those wet-behind-the-ears dreamers who’d yet to find himself—though what kind of fool ever lost himself? Heydt was too old, too toughened, too savvy to be seeking a romantic new career the way some city slickers did every summer, to the locals’ amusement.
So what’s he want? Looking down at those steady eyes in the too-controlled face, Ben knew that asking would get him nowhere. He’d have to wait and see. “Why not,” he agreed with a shrug, though he knew one good reason why not. After a day of haying, even the strongest man nodded asleep at the supper table.
He touched spurs to the buckskin and headed off toward the lower pastures. “Reckon he’ll do,” he told his foreman as he passed him. “Sign him up. And Joe,” he called back over his shoulder, “come evening, if he still wants it, Heydt gets a horse.”
CHAPTER THREE
WHENEVER FEAR or sorrow or confusion nibbled at her courage, Risa Tankersly reached for her camera. Through the lens of her ancient Nikon, somehow the harshness of the world was softened, or at least pushed back to a manageable distance. Framed in the viewfinder, half-perceived patterns became clear. Pain or chaos or uncontrollable events could be frozen into a sixteenth-second snapshot—frozen, reduced to a palm-size glossy rectangle, then tucked away out of sight and mind in one of the manila envelopes where she stored her photos until she felt strong enough to deal with them.
The Nikon had been Risa’s escape hatch from the world since the summer she’d turned thirteen. One of her mother’s last boyfriends, a cameraman with a minor studio, had left it behind when he stormed drunkenly out of their lives one night after a raging exchange with Eva about who should pay the pizza deliveryman. The next morning Risa’s red-eyed and stumbling mother had dumped his camera bag in the trash can along with the rest of his possessions.
When her mother wandered back to bed, Risa had stealthily retrieved it, then hidden it under the T-shirts in her bureau drawer for a month—until Eva’s next lover had come along to erase the last one from mind. Only then had Risa dared to bring out the camera and start—at first timidly, then with growing fascination—to explore the Nikon’s possibilities.
The lovely old Japanese camera, with its scratched case, silken action and merciless,