Clovis smiled with all ten of his remaining teeth, his leathery skin disintegrating into a field of wrinkles. “Distracted, huh, boss? Can’t rightly blame ya. She’s the sweetest lookin’ lady I’ve seen in these parts since that Hollywood actress got lost from the dude ranch up over Jackson Hole way.”
Jake gave the balding, bandy-legged man one of his best glares, knowing perfectly well that it wouldn’t make any difference. “Well, comb your hair. She’s gonna want to talk to you.”
That earned a whistle of appreciation from both men.
“She’s researching some book she’s doing. And if I catch either of you slacking off on your work, you can just go on back to Massachusetts or wherever the hell she’s from with her and try and find a job wrangling there.”
Both men bobbed their heads and grinned identical grins. “Yes, boss.”
That did nothing to improve his temper. “Now, what did you want to say?”
“Besides the fact that that palomino of Bill Nelson’s should have his tail clipped right behind his ears?” Clovis asked with a wry glance over his shoulder to where the stallion continued to voice his displeasure with the worming he’d received. “Sweetpea’s gonna drop that foal tonight. And I’d put money on the fact that Mistral’s about to follow.”
Jake sighed. Another sleepless night. Clovis was a magician with the mares, sensing with amazing precision when they would foal, when they’d receive a stallion and when they were in any kind of trouble. But foaling wasn’t something that was done alone on this ranch.
“All right,” he decided, gazing down toward the shadowy recesses of the long barn where more than one equine nose peaked over the stalls. “José, let’s just work Filbert, Denver Lady and Joker today, then. I don’t think I’m gonna have the energy to do a full load and then play midwife.”
“Maybe that nice Mizz Marlow’d like to watch tonight,” José suggested with suspicious diffidence.
“She would not,” Jake snarled, turning away again. “We’re not running a dude ranch here.”
She’d be gone soon, he kept thinking. Bored with the emptiness of the high plain, the silence of the mountain nights, the stories of men grown old wandering from ranch to ranch. There couldn’t be anything here to interest her. There couldn’t.
Bart Kendall had settled the Diamond K to raise cattle. Two wives, twelve children, three droughts and innumerable Indian raids and range wars later, he had died in his bed and left the place to his eldest and only surviving son, Ezekial.
Amanda had come out to Wyoming to steep herself in the local history, the culture that had evolved over the years since the mountain men and Indians hosted the fur-trading rendezvous back in the 1830s. The book she intended to do would encompass both sides of western history, that of the settlers, the trappers and cattle drovers, and that of the Indians, who had been slowly pushed from their ancestral hunting grounds. A book of contrasts, of a culture growing and one almost withered away.
In a few weeks when the weather was warm enough and the mountains free enough of snow, she’d head up to the Wind River Reservation and meet with the historians and storytellers there. But for now, she wanted to know how the ranches had grown, how the people had survived horrific winters and dry summers. How they’d entertained themselves, and about the legends they’d left behind.
Unbelievably she’d hit paydirt right here at the Diamond K. Records from those first Kendalls. Letters, deeds, diaries, all hoarded away in the attic for posterity and mostly forgotten until Amanda’s request had brought them to the ever-efficient Betty’s mind.
Bart’s first wife, Hattie Simpson Kendall, had been a schoolteacher back East. She’d taught her children and written down her thoughts during those long winters when her husband was gone and her children asleep. She’d recounted stories about lost children, long rainless summers and blizzards, doubts and dreams that, even written by guttering lamplight in a snowbound cabin in the lonely mountains of Wyoming, were universal and unchanging.
Amanda knew her, knew her dreams and her doubts and the private hurts and sorrows that every woman hoards away. She knew that Hattie, who had died at the age of thirty-one in childbirth, was the everywoman of her book. Carefully turning those precious, brittle pages alone in the dining room of the Kendall ranch, Amanda was flooded with the adrenaline of discovery, of insight. For the first time in almost a year, she felt excited.
“What are you doing?”
Still lost in the century-old world of Hattie’s words, Amanda took a moment to even hear the abrupt question. It took her another to look up.
She wondered if Bart had looked anything like his great-grandson did now. Had he been big, powerful, strong enough to cut out his place in a wild land? Had he stunned his wife to silence every time he showed up in the doorway?
“Betty got these down for me,” she finally managed to say, straightening away from the pages. “She said you wouldn’t mind.”
Jake shifted his weight and glared at her, his expression unreadable. He reached up and lifted his hat off his head to brush a forearm back over his forehead. Amanda had been right. His hair was light, a darker blond than his sister’s, thick and just a little curly, creased beneath the constant pressure of the hat.
She shouldn’t stare. She couldn’t help it. She should get up or speak or smile, as she usually did if confronted by a problem. She couldn’t. He seemed to hold her in place with only the force of his eyes.
His shirt was sweat-stained, and his boots muddy. Amanda could smell horses, leather and liniment on him, and thought them the most honest aromas she’d encountered in a very long time. The seductive scents of honest work and accomplishment. The silence between them threatened to stretch into discomfort.
“You have a real treasure here,” Amanda suggested, gesturing to the papers scattered around her on the table. “Most people aren’t lucky enough to have their history so carefully preserved for them.”
He stiffened a little. Hardened. Again, she couldn’t quite read his reaction. He’d resettled his hat so that it protected his eyes. But for the briefest of moments Amanda thought what that hat was hiding was a flash of pain in those chiseled features, a raw grief that had no place in Jake Kendall’s expression. But as quickly as she caught it, it was gone behind the shifting of a jaw, the squint of his eyes.
It didn’t make any sense. And yet, it made Amanda want to stand up, to go to him. She held her place. “With your permission, I’d like to incorporate some of Hattie’s story in my work.”
“You said you did folklore,” he said. “What does that have to do with the ranch?”
Just the tone of his voice overcame her good sense. He didn’t understand, and Amanda had to make him. The possibilities those words had created were already burning in her, and that wasn’t something she could forfeit again.
