Into The Storm
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He refused her offer of help into the bathroom—shaming enough she’d dragged him in here and undressed him. He braced his hands on the sink before looking into the mirror and then swore.
“You okay in there?”
“Yeah, fine—just got a look at my face.”
He heard her chuckle. “Pretty scary.”
She had cleaned most of the blood off his face and fixed a strip of adhesive tape across the bridge of his nose. He touched it gingerly—probably broken, not for the first time. Two black eyes and a long scrape along his right cheek made him look like the loser in a bar brawl.
By the time he came out fully dressed, he felt closer to normal. Shelby had covered the tank top with a blue plaid flannel shirt and had tamed her hair into a thick braid tied with red yarn.
The morning sun had already reduced last night’s snow to slushy puddles in the graveled parking lot. Jake squinted up and down the row of concrete block units, relieved he didn’t see any familiar vehicles. Bad enough he’d be answering questions about his face without explaining his rig parked outside a hot-pillow joint.
“I threw the floor mat in the back last night,” Shelby said, “and left the windows open a crack to air out the cab.”
Jake shook his head. “Must have been close to a quart of bourbon spilled—I guess I didn’t screw the cap on tight.”
She held out his keys, but he waved them off. “You drive,” he said. “There’s a good little diner about ten miles north—we’ll get breakfast there.”
* * *
A ROUND-CHEEKED WOMAN wearing a snowy apron bustled out to greet them when they entered Rosie’s Kitchen. “Jake, I was so scared for your boy last night, when we watching on the TV. That bull, stepping right on his leg!” She pinched his chin and turned his face right and left. “What, you’re riding bulls, too? Crazy like Tom?”
“Nothing that exciting, Rosie,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “Smacked into my steering wheel.” He nodded toward Shelby. “This lady came along and got my rig out of the ditch.”
“You’re one lucky hombre.” She swatted his chest with her order pad. “Coffee first, while I fix your usual.” She took Shelby’s order for a cheese omelet and returned to the kitchen, yelling in Spanish at a doleful-looking man at the grill—her husband, Martin, Jake told Shelby.
“You want some bacon or sausage with your omelet?” Jake asked.
“I’d love some,” Shelby said, “but I lay off meat for a few days before I start new horses, especially ones that haven’t been around people much. Horses are prey animals. It’s better if I don’t smell like I might want them for my next meal.”
“Where’d you learn that? I never heard it before, but it makes sense.”
“From my granddaddy, and he heard it from his granddaddy. I don’t know if it matters, but what can it hurt?”
“How’d you hear about Ross’s mustangs?”
“I keep a standing ad in Western Horseman,” she said, “but most of my jobs come by word of mouth. The rancher I worked for last in Lubbock knew Mr. Norquist.”
By the time Jake had downed his first cup of coffee and most of his cheese and bean enchilada with green chili, the headache had retreated to a small zone behind his left eye. He slouched on the red leatherette and watched Shelby devour her omelet.
“You being afoot the backside of nowhere, I’m guessing your car broke down,” he said. “Where abouts?”
She grimaced. “Albuquerque. I had to leave it at the Lincoln dealership—they need to find a fuel filler tube for a ’90 Town Car.”
“Whoa, girl! No telling how long that will take! Shouldn’t you have something easier to fix, traveling cross-country between jobs?”
“I expect I should,” she said with a sigh, “but it belonged to my granddaddy. It’s a good road car and big enough to sleep in if I need to. I caught a ride with a trucker who was going to be passing through Durango. The service manager vouched for him—his brother-in-law. Once we got off the Interstate, he changed his mind about the ride being free.” She tightened her lips. “I told him I’d sooner walk.”
“Miserable so-and-so, setting you down miles from nowhere!”
“My choice—better than what he had in mind. Stranger backed me up.”
Jake glanced out the window at the dog sunning himself in the bed of the truck. “Guess somebody with evil intentions might walk soft around a dog that size.”
“He’s meek as a mouse unless he gets worried about me,” she said. “Then, stand back.”
“Funny name for a dog.”
“From my mama’s favorite gospel song.” She sang in a husky contralto. “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger a’traveling through this world of woe.” I found him limping along I-30 in Arkansas just about starved and his paws worn bloody from running on pavement. Somebody must have dumped him off.”
He couldn’t fathom anyone being so heartless, although he’d seen worse. “Some people just aren’t worth killing.”
He refused to let her pay for her breakfast and climbed back into the passenger seat. “I could drive,” he said, “but you’re doing fine. This road takes us all the way to Durango. I’ll give you directions to Norquist’s from there.”
He sipped coffee from his travel mug while Shelby maneuvered his rig out of the cramped parking lot and onto Route 550 headed north. The sun shone and he had a full belly; he hadn’t known such uncomplicated pleasure since just after his daughter’s birth, he reckoned, before the sky had started to fall in slow motion. He stretched his legs and leaned back.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHELBY SETTLED BEHIND the wheel. Stranger gave a contented sigh and stretched out on the backseat to chew his red rubber KONG.
She sneaked a glance at Jake and then looked quickly back at the road. No wedding ring, but she could see a tanned-over mark where one had been. His hair had fooled her about his age. Once she had sponged the blood off his face, she pegged him as early forties, possibly good-looking once the bruising and swelling subsided. She’d come to think of his build as cowboy-cut, narrow-hipped and heavily muscled through the chest and shoulders from wrestling calves and bucking sixty-pound bales.
Not that she cared. She had left a man behind in Texas, a nice guy who had mistaken their shared love of horses for a prelude to wedding bells. The ugly scene she’d staged still made her cringe, but she’d made sure he wouldn’t come chasing after her with a ring in his pocket.
Shelby put Texas behind her. Not a cloud marred the morning sky, and last night’s snow lay on the red-gold buttes and bluffs like sugar icing on a layer cake. Silver peaks appeared teasingly to the north, only to disappear as the road dipped to cross a shallow wash or follow a winding valley. Her heart quickened with anticipation. She had crisscrossed the prairie states for more than a decade, with a couple of jobs in California, but somehow her wanderings had never brought her to the spine of the Rockies.
“So there stood Great-Great Grandpa Jacob, eyeball to eyeball with the grizzly and no weapon but his Navy Colt the Yankees let him keep. He got the bear, right through the mouth, but the bear got him, too—fell spang on him and half scalped him on the way down.”
Shelby realized Jake had been talking a blue streak—she’d seen that with concussions, sometimes drowsiness, sometimes running off at the mouth.
“I guess he survived,” she said.
“Only because some Ute girls picking berries found him the next day. My great-great grandma probably never saw a white man before, never mind a redheaded one—”
“You’re part Indian?” She glanced again at his face. Mighty light-skinned, but something about the tilt of his eyes and the shape of his mouth...
“I know I don’t look it,” he said. “I take after old Jacob, redheaded like him before my hair turned. Our ranch backs up to Ute land, so I grew up hunting and fishing and scrapping with my cousins on the rez. My boys have dark hair and brown eyes, but my daughter got the red hair. It looks a lot better on her than it did on me.”
“The lady at the diner said your sons are bull riders?”
“Tom rides bulls, and Luke’s a bullfighter with the Professional Bull Riders tour. I don’t know who takes more risk—Tom riding once, maybe twice a night, or Luke every time the gate opens. I can’t say much—I rode rough stock myself till my wife put her foot down. Of course, the prize money’s better nowadays.” He gave a wry laugh. “In between getting busted up.”
“So now your wife frets about them.”
He looked away. “Annie died coming on two years ago—complications of lupus.”
Before she could respond, they crested the next rise and she caught her breath. The peaks, pure with new snow, reared like a breaking wave frozen against the impossibly blue sky.
“Pretty, huh?” he said. “Always grabs me when I come home this way. Durango’s just ahead. You need anything before we go on to Norquist’s?”
“Not for me, but I’ll need a sack of food for Stranger—I couldn’t carry but enough for a couple days.”
Entering a new town always excited her, like holding a lottery ticket. Maybe this would be the place where she could finally stop running. She never actually counted on winning the jackpot, but she still let herself dream about having a real address and shopping in stores where people would come to know her name.
They passed chain hotels and box stores on the strip before turning onto Main Avenue lined with Victorian storefronts. The shrill hoot of a train whistle startled her. Just off the main street, a steam locomotive chuffed beside a gingerbread station.
“Durango and Silverton Railroad,” Jake said. “That engine shows up in a lot of Western movies. It hauled silver ore down from the mines back in the 1880s and now tourists.”
He pointed out a red brick storefront sandwiched between a shop displaying leather vests and hats in the window and Burke’s Sundries with T-shirts and postcards in racks on the sidewalk. Ornate gold letters spelled out Silver Queen Saloon and Dance Emporium across the plate-glass window.
“My daughter works there weekends and after school some days. She’s stashing her paychecks for college. At least I hope that’s how she’ll use the money.”
“Isn’t she underage to work at a saloon? Sorry, none of my business.”
“The Queen stopped serving liquor during Prohibition, but folks around here would shoot anybody who tried to change the name. Margie serves the best food in town—in La Plata County, for that matter. Chicken-fried steak and liver with bacon and onions...” He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips.
“No sushi or veggie wraps, I’m guessing.”
Jake laughed. “Not hardly.” He checked his watch. “Too bad she isn’t serving lunch yet, but we could stop for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Margie makes a dried peach pie that’s been written up in the Denver Post—some food show even featured it.”
“I’d better get out to the Norquist ranch.” Spending the whole morning—and the night before—with Jake Cameron had become claustrophobic, too comfortable for her peace of mind.
“Maybe another time,” he said, and directed her to the Farm and Ranch Exchange on the outskirts of town. A rustic log structure anchored an ell, sided with pale shingles, and a steel shed with loading bays.
“Might as well pick up a few things myself,” he said, “as long as I’m here.” He climbed down from the truck.
She entered the store with Stranger at her side, breathing in the comforting smells of leather and molasses feed, saddle soap and new sisal. Hunting and fishing supplies filled the front room, with mounted heads of deer and elk and pronghorns staring sightlessly from the smoke-darkened walls. Garden supplies, hardware and pet products could be found in the next room, according to the sign over a wide archway. She found the proper dog food and followed Jake to the checkout.
A heavy-shouldered man, dark-skinned with a single long braid, stood behind a long counter. “Hey, cousin. Nice win for Tom, but you look like you did about three seconds on Bodacious.”
“Skidded off the road on my way home,” Jake said. “No real harm done.”
“June’s been asking about you.”
“I’m keeping pretty busy with the boys gone so much.” He looked away. “Calving season, you know. Tell her hey for me.”
He nodded toward Shelby. “Meet Shelby Doucette—she’s going to start those mustangs for Ross Norquist. I’m giving her a ride up to his place.”
“Oscar Buck,” the man said, reaching across the counter to shake her hand. “What tribe, sister?”
“Choctaw a long way back,” she said, “crossed with Cajun and a dash of runaway slave.”
“Don’t mind Oscar,” Jake said. “He’s nosy as a pup but not near as smart.”
Oscar grinned as if he’d heard the gibe before.
“Ross will sure be glad to see you,” Oscar said. “He’s caught between Liz wanting to treat those horses like pet ponies and his boy itching to play rodeo with them. Either way, somebody’s bound to get hurt.”
He peered over the counter. “Handsome dog you got there.”
“Stranger, sit,” Shelby said. “Paws.” Stranger sat and placed both front paws on the countertop beside the forty-pound bag of Science Diet Large Breed.
Oscar laughed and extended his hand for the dog to sniff. “Howdy, Stranger. Any friend of Cousin Jake’s is welcome.”
He turned back to Jake. “I stopped for coffee at the Queen yesterday,” he said. “Lucy sure is jacked up about some play she’s in.”
Jake rubbed his forehead. “Mike Farley and the high school drama teacher are all that’s keeping her in school—she’s still set on trying her luck in Hollywood or New York. I hate to think what’ll happen when Mike leaves for Boulder in the fall.” He scribbled a list on the back of an envelope fished from his pocket. “You want to get this up for me? Put the dog food on my account, too.”
“No, thanks!” Shelby dug a roll of bills from her jeans and laid down three twenties. “We pay our own way.”
Jake shrugged. Oscar took the bills and gave her change before tucking the bag under one arm. “Meet you around back.”
“I’ll take it from here,” Jake said, climbing into the driver’s seat. “I don’t want Oscar spreading the tale I wasn’t fit to drive. He’s got a big heart and a bigger mouth.”
Shelby handed him the keys. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Shoot, I felt fine soon as I got some caffeine into my system. I’ve driven that road more times than I care to count, taking my wife down to the University Medical Center. I kind of enjoyed the chance to sit back and look around.”
Oscar heaved a final bag of cattle cake into the back of the truck beside several bales of straw. “I can’t give you a full keg of fence staples till the truck comes in tomorrow,” he said.
“No problem,” Jake replied. “I’ll send one of the boys to pick it up.”
Jake drove north on Route 550 a dozen miles before turning onto a narrow gravel road, climbing between sandstone walls until the canyon opened into a sheltered valley. Snow still lay along the lane, but new buds shone golden on the willows overhanging a brawling creek. Jake drove past a neat frame house to the cluster of barns and sheds beyond. He tapped his horn, and two men emerged from a long pole barn. The older man, his weathered face furrowed with puzzlement, strode to the truck as Jake ran down his window.
“Howdy, Jake. What brings you—”
“Saved you a trip, Ross. Here’s your horse tamer.”
Norquist bent and peered past Jake. “Shelby Doucette? Dang, girl—you’re mighty welcome here. This yahoo—” he jerked his head at the younger man behind him “—he’s hot to break those horses the old-fashioned way.”
“Reckon we’ll try your way first.” A younger man, tight-muscled under a Blue Seal T-shirt, sauntered forward with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “Since Ma’s set on it. I’m Gary Norquist—just holler when you need help.”
Shelby sighed inwardly—one of those. He would give her no respect as a woman or as a trainer. Jerks like the truck driver were less trouble. She could blow them off with Stranger’s help, but she needed to work around Gary Norquist.
She wished for the hundredth time she looked her age or, even better, as old as she felt. She played down her looks the best she could. Once, she had cut her hair boy-short, but it had grown out in a halo of soft dark curls, making her look maybe fifteen. Skinning it back in a braid at least looked businesslike. She stuck with relaxed jeans and shapeless shirts, rarely wore shorts and didn’t own a dress. Sometimes in her dreams she felt a skirt flutter around her knees and woke with her heart pounding, weeping tears she never shed in her waking hours.
“Thanks, but I work strictly with the horses’ owner. Stranger, to me,” she said without turning her head. She heard a scramble of claws, and the dog sat at her side, ears pricked.
The smirk faded from Gary Norquist’s face.
“You must be Shelby.” A lanky woman with gray-shot auburn hair haphazardly gathered into a bun had come up behind them. “I’m Liz Norquist,” she said, wringing Shelby’s hand. “The boys keep saying horse-breaking is men’s work, but I reckon we’ll show them different. Come, see the horses.” She strode toward a fenced enclosure, her denim skirt flapping around her legs.
Her husband and son fell in behind her, Gary rolling his eyes and muttering. “Come along, Jake,” Ross said. “See what we’ve let ourselves in for.”
“We did like you told us,” Liz said. “Water and good hay, otherwise we’ve let them be.”
Three horses stood at the far end of a long corral. Two mares huddled together while a young stallion possibly two years old stamped and snorted at a little distance. Shelby studied the horses. One of the mares, a red roan, looked close to foaling but in decent shape for wintering on the open range. The younger bay mare clung close to the older horse’s side. The colt stood between the other horses and the humans by the fence.
Ross pointed at the colt in disgust. “I agreed to a couple of mares, and they show up with that! Guess he pushed into the trailer with the others and they couldn’t get him out. Last thing I need around here is a stud making trouble, but he might make a decent cow pony once he’s cut.”
Shelby almost protested at the thought of gelding the colt. He looked like a throwback to Barb ancestors, rose-gray with his reddish baby coat already shading toward silver. His shaggy forelock couldn’t disguise the dished face and delicate ears of a classic Arabian. She sighed. Most owners wouldn’t chance a mare with a stud of undocumented lineage and no guarantee he’d breed true.
Liz jostled her elbow. “When do we start?”
Shelby checked the corral; ample hay lay scattered near the fence, and a stock tank brimmed with water. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “No more hay today—I want them a little hungry.”
She turned to Norquist. “Can you put up a round pen? I won’t need it tomorrow, but soon.”
“We figured you’d want one—got the sections ready.”
“Guess you’re all set,” Jake said. “I’ll get along home.” He dug into his wallet and handed her a battered business card: Cameron’s Pride—Red Angus—Hesperus CO. “Call me if you need a ride to get your car. I still owe you.”
She took the card. She had been at ease with Jake Cameron, almost a sense of homecoming and a quiver of something long forgotten or ruthlessly beaten down. Loneliness swept her as she watched him walk away. She shook it off and stuck his card in her pocket before turning back toward the corral.
CHAPTER FIVE
JAKE PULLED THE sack of dog food from his truck and leaned it against the barn. He’d heard a thing or two about Gary Norquist, but Shelby should be safe enough with Stranger at her side. He looked once more at the group by the corral, sighed deeply and got behind the wheel. Maybe she’d call him; more likely Ross and Liz would drive her to Albuquerque and make a weekend of it.
He’d felt pretty decent riding up from Cuba and then driving from Durango. Now his head ached anew and the scrape on his cheekbone burned. He checked his watch—coming on to noon, plenty of time to reach the ranch before Lucy got home from school. At least his beat-up face would give them something to talk about for a minute or two before she left again or shut herself in her room.
Tom and Luke would be home by suppertime. Lucy got along fine with her brothers, using them as a buffer between herself and her father. They didn’t encourage her acting ambitions, but they understood her passion to chase a dream. Weekends were the worst, with the boys on the road, but Lucy’s drama club activities and her job kept her out of the house.
All said, Jake might as well not have a daughter. Somehow the sunny little girl who had been his and Annie’s delight had become a beautiful but sullen stranger who slept under his roof. She seemed to hold some secret grudge against him, but when he asked her outright to tell him what was wrong, she would say only, “You wouldn’t understand, and it’s too late anyway.” He’d hardly had a civil conversation with her since Annie died.
Tire tracks in the snow led from the main road to the log ranch house, the same vehicle in and out after the snow had stopped during the night. Mike must have brought her home in his rig this morning to pick up what she needed for school. Jake’s relief shamed him—hours before he would have to deal with her. Maybe he should just give in, let her drop out of school and see how she liked making her own way in Tinsel Town.
He gritted his teeth. She was going to graduate if he had to drive her to the high school every morning and pick her up in the afternoon. He only hoped Mike could persuade her to follow him to the University of Colorado after her senior year.
He had just backed up to the feed shed to unload when Luke and Tom arrived in Luke’s Explorer. Luke handed Tom a pair of crutches and held the kitchen door open for him to hobble through the back door.
A few minutes later Luke came out dressed in work clothes and rubber paddock boots. He grabbed a fifty-pound bag of cow cake from his father and slung it over his shoulder.
“Just a deep bruise, Doc thinks,” he told Jake. “He said Tom should skip next weekend if he’s got any sense.”
“Yeah, right.” Jake pulled another bag from the truck and turned to face Luke. “Before you ask, I put my rig in a ditch on the way home yesterday. Oscar asked if I drew Bodacious in the short round, but it looks worse than it is,” he said. “And I picked up a hitchhiker along the way—the lady horse trainer Ross Norquist ordered up for Liz’s mustangs. I dropped her off at their ranch.”
“Hitchhiking! In March? What the—”
“She got a ride from Albuquerque with a trucker who figured she should give him something extra for his trouble. She told him she’d rather walk.”
Luke whistled. “Hope she knows how to handle herself. One of these days Gary Norquist needs to get the whuppin’ he deserves.”
“Best kind of defense—she’s got a dog size of a weanling calf.”
Luke pulled a bale of straw toward the tailgate. “What’s this for?”
“Mulch—I thought maybe we’d try to bring the vegetable garden back.” Jake’s eyes flicked toward a weed-choked patch just south of the house. Annie had delighted in her kitchen garden. He and the kids had kept it up even when she could do no more than sit in a lawn chair and supervise. “Maybe Lucy will take an interest.”
Luke slapped Jake’s shoulder. “Maybe, but me and Tom will keep after it if she doesn’t.” He stacked the bales beside the toolshed. “Let’s rustle up some lunch, then I’ll fix that stretch of fence past the creek. Last time I rode out that way it looked like a bull elk sat on it.”
They kicked off their muddy boots before entering the sunlit great room. Jake’s parents had knocked out interior walls to create a living space where the family spent most of their indoor time. A fridge and a massive gas range filled one corner, a round oak table dominated the center of the room, and a scuffed leather couch faced the wide fireplace. Plants Annie had tended lovingly sat along the ledge of a wide west-facing window—geraniums, aloes, a bay laurel and a huge flowering cactus Jake had given her as a tiny plant their first Christmas together. Scarlet blossoms still clung to the cascading stems; Jake harbored an unreasonable anger it should bloom so extravagantly with Annie dead.