Chapter 3
Bart’s a good man. He tries real hard to make this place something, but it just seems the weather and such conspire against him. We been on this land nigh on eight year and still can’t seem to get ahead. If he weren’t so fierce proud of this little bit of the mountains, we might have long since left. But I guess it’s in his blood.
Amanda put down Hattie’s diary and looked out across the meadow. The sun was setting, washing the snow in a soft rose light. The mountains beyond were mauve, and the sky a startling deep blue that was reflected in the stream. Overhead a flock of birds broke the late-afternoon silence, and the trees rustled. The stream gurgled and chattered in never-ending refrain. Amanda listened hard, but she couldn’t hear anything else. Not a thing. This vast, open space, these magnificent mountains, were silent.
It had been so long since she’d been able to enjoy silence. Since she’d been able to take in a really deep breath without fighting the urge to cough. L.A. had been a cacophony of traffic and humanity, and before it her college campus had never seemed to sleep. In the last seven years since leaving home, Amanda had lived in New York and Philadelphia and Boston. And every day in those cities had drained her juices a little more. Every honk and curse and low-flying airplane that had interrupted her sleep had stolen her precious peace where the words were born.
Jake Kendall had been given a rare gift in this place. His ancestors had fought plagues and locusts and Indians and weather of all kinds to preserve it for him, never knowing quite what a precious commodity it was.
Jake said there was nothing romantic about it. Maybe so, but there was something awesome about it. Something magical and mysterious. Amanda had been so long away from the special silence of the mountains that she could see it. She could smell it, taste it, hear it. And until she’d sat on this old porch with the ghosts of Bart and Hattie Kendall to keep her company, she hadn’t even known she’d missed it quite so much.
“God, I hope you cherish this place,” she murmured to the absent Jake as she watched the sun set over his land. “I hope you know just what it is your great-grandparents fought so hard to preserve for you.”
“Jake’s tied to the Diamond K the way a baby’s tucked into a mama’s teat,” Clovis said with a nod of certainty. “He don’t see no reason to go more’n twenty miles from home.”
They were sitting in Stilwell’s, the Lost Ridge claim to diner fame, where Amanda was treating Clovis to an early dinner. It was technically his day off, but as there was a mare overdue for foaling, he wanted to be back in the barn by dark, when mares preferred to do their birthing.
Amanda took a sip of her iced tea and initialed the tape she’d just recorded of Clovis’s memories of his daddy’s days on the trail. “Jake doesn’t even go to the horse auctions or anything?”
“Don’t need to. People come to him. Ranchers, outfitters, some of the top competition riders in the business. They all know where Jake Kendall lives. They want a good cuttin’ horse, stock horse of any kind, that’s the place to go.”
“You’ve been with him for a while.”
Clovis nodded and took another big slug of steaming coffee. “Got tired of hirin’ out. One bunkhouse looks pretty much like another, and I ain’t got family left to speak of.”
“Isn’t his ranch a little smaller than you were used to?”
“Sure. I used to ride range in Montana, Utah, New Mexico. Started in Texas when there was still some room down there, but it’s all fencin’ now. Not many places left you can spend a couple of months in the saddle without seein’ anything but cowboys. Not like in my grandaddy’s day when a mustang really had to cut cattle for a living and a man spent his nights singin’ a herd to sleep.”
Amanda nodded. “I want to get some of your songs on tape later, if you don’t mind.”
“Got no voice to speak of,” he demurred, his complexion coloring a little. “But I’ll give you the words.”
“Clovis,” the waitress demanded, swooping in on them wearing jeans that looked spray painted on and a pink ruffled blouse over much of her well-endowed frame. “You gonna have some pie today, or you just gonna make me broke on coffee refills?”
Clovis grinned with every one of his remaining teeth, his face wrinkling up like old tissue paper at her approach. “Can’t I just sit here watchin’ you sashay around, Lila?”
Her answering smile transformed her makeup-ladened face into sweet affection as she took a pat at what Amanda’s mother would have called her chosen-blond coiffure. “Sure you can. You just gotta pay for it, like everybody else.”
Clovis nodded. “Apple. With cheese.”
Amanda considered the row of half-consumed pies in the case behind the counter and wondered if they’d sit half as heavy as the blue plate special. “Apple,” she conceded with a halfhearted smile.
Lila tip-tapped back along the worn linoleum floor to the matching counter with its red swivel stools and donut plate and thirty-year-old cash register. People spent a fortune in Los Angeles to copy decor like this for trendy burger joints and upscale bars. This was pure small town, from the red Naugahyde booths to the flickering neon sign in the window that proselytized Eat, to the surly short-order cook who thought grease was an herb. The combination didn’t seem to bother the town of Lost Ridge, because the place was full.
Amanda hadn’t been surprised to see every head turn as she followed Clovis into the restaurant. She knew about small towns and strangers. Clovis had taken great delight in setting everybody straight the minute Lila had first shown up by introducing Amanda as a writer-lady friend of Lee’s who’d come to Lost Ridge to learn about the real West. Lee’s recommendation had gone a long way to turn the slightly closed expressions into ones of welcome.
“Doesn’t he see his family?” Amanda demanded suddenly.
Clovis looked up in some confusion. “Who?”
She grinned sheepishly. “Jake. I’m sorry, I was just thinking about what you said about Jake’s not leaving the ranch. His sisters and brother aren’t here anymore. When does he see them?”
“They come here. Ever’ one of ‘em knows better than to ask Jake to set foot on a plane. Jake just ain’t one for travelin’.” The grizzled little man huffed a couple of times, which was evidently his version of a laugh, and smoothed his well-slicked graying hair back yet again. “Why, last time Jake even left town was for Gen’s graduation from doctor school. Kids chipped in to get him a ticket to Chicago, thinkin’ how excited he’d be to see a big city. He damn near walked home, he hated it so much. I think he just made it through the ceremony before he found himself a plane to take.”
Amanda couldn’t help grinning, thinking of the acerbic, closemouthed Jake battling the hustle and bustle of Chicago. It would have been a picture to behold.
Amanda didn’t really pay attention to the sound of the door opening behind her, or the tinkling of the bell that hung over it. She was thinking of what questions she could get away with asking Clovis about his boss. There was so much she wanted to know, and only a certain amount fell beneath the umbrella of research for her books.
