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There was a burst of applause and shouts of approval among the spectators around the corral arena. Ty swung his attention back to the action. A slim young rider was circling back to retrieve the rope presently being removed from the neck of a sturdy calf.
“Hot damn! Did you see that?” the cowboy on his left exclaimed. “I’ll bet she did that in five seconds flat.”
When the rider turned in the saddle and Ty saw the smiling face, he instantly recognized Jessy Niles. He’d only seen her a few times since he’d worked the calving sheds at South Branch two years ago. She hadn’t changed much, except to grow taller. He realized she was even more of a tomboy now.
As she rode to the corral gate, he looked at the horse she was riding and his interest quickened. The rangy blue-gray buckskin had the unmistakable lines of Cougar breeding, the stallion that had sired some of the best cow horses on the place. Ty was almost certain the grulla was Mouse. He’d been one of the first riders on that horse’s back. Vaguely he recalled it being mentioned that Mouse had been added to the remuda at South Branch.
“Jessy,” Ty called to her as she rode through the gate. Unhooking his leg, he pushed the toe of his boot into the stirrup and waited while she swung the mouse-gray horse around and eased it in beside his horse. “Looks like that was the winning time.”
“I got lucky.” But she was wearing a proud look that seemed natural to her strong features and widely drawn mouth. She smoothed a hand over the horse’s arched neck. “Mouse still doesn’t have this roping business down pat. He’s so quick out of the starting gate that most of the time he runs past the calf. I had to throw my loop in a hurry and hope the calf ran into it. It did.”
“I helped break that horse,” Ty said. “I wondered whose string he was in.”
“He’s in my dad’s string, but he’s been letting me work him this summer.” When she looked at him, Jessy searched his expression to find something that might confirm or deny the rumors she’d been hearing.
In spite of the large size of the Triple C, news and gossip had a way of traversing the distances in a hurry. Everyone took special interest when the topic was a Calder. Most of the time Jessy didn’t care much about listening to gossip about other people’s problems. Even though she recognized the position of the Calders in the ranch hierarchy, she wasn’t particularly interested in their comings and goings—until she had met Ty. Jessy never attempted to reason out why it was so. But Ty was closer to her own age and he was the only member of the Calder family she’d spent much time with. She would have vigorously denied having a crush on him, but all the makings for one were present, even if she did consider the crushes of her contemporaries silly and stupid.
“Why are you leaving here?” Boldly inquisitive and unconscious of it, Jessy questioned him.
“I’m going to college.”
“I know that,” she retorted with calm patience. “But why are you going?” Without taking a breath, Jessy went on. “I know some of the boys have been riding you hard since you came here. You aren’t quitting, are you, Ty?” Her face looked earnest and a little worried.
His smile came slowly, breaking across his strongly cast features. “No, I’m not quitting, Jessy,” he reassured her, amused by this concern from one so young.
Masking her relief, Jessy adjusted the length of rein in her grip. “Well, I just wanted to make sure you were coming back,” she replied with a forced air of nonchalance. “I gotta be finding my dad so we can get these horses loaded in the trailer.” She pulled steadily on the bit to back the mouse-gray horse away from the corral fence. “See ya.”
“See ya,” Ty returned and watched her deftly guide the horse out of the close quarters with a combination of rein and leg movements. It wasn’t fair to call her homely, but Jessy certainly wasn’t a pretty thing either.
“Hey, Ty!” somebody shouted to him. “Your ma’s looking for you!”
Lifting an acknowledging hand in the general direction of the voice, he reined the speckle-faced sorrel away from the fence and walked it toward the open tent in the ranch yard.
The fast-moving airplane laid a shadow on the rolling humps of grassland below. To the west, there was a collection of small, dark squares. They looked like they might be the buildings
of the South Branch camp. Ty strained his eyes to see them, but they were too far away and the plane was traveling too fast. He felt the pull of the land calling to him and smiled faintly when he recalled how Jessy had been worried about whether he was coming back.
There was little to recommend it. He had cursed the bitter cold of winter and bitched about the broiling heat of summer and sworn at the rainless sky and griped about the yellow gumbo that caked his boots when it did rain. But it was home. He had struggled so long and so hard to become a part of it that it was strange to discover that now it felt a part of him.
The plane rushed toward the rimrock country of the Yellowstone River, leaving the southern boundary of the Triple C. Ty turned away from the small window and settled back in his seat, glancing at the older man who was going over the latest drilling reports on the Broken Butte site.
E. J. Dyson was somewhat of a stranger to him. Ty knew very little about him, except that the man and his partner had business dealings with his father. Ty had sat in on a few meetings and had been impressed with the man’s cool reasoning and intelligence, but his personal life was a mystery.
There was a degree of fascination in Ty’s attitude toward Dyson. Undoubtedly he was a power-equal of his father, but Dyson lived in the fast-paced world of jets, corporate conglomerates, and high finance. Not by any stretch of the imagination would Ty describe him as soft or weak, despite his city living. Dyson lacked the physical presence of Chase Calder, but Ty wasn’t fooled by the slightness of the man’s unprepossessing build. Beneath that Texas flash of western clothes, there was a keenly astute businessman.
“That’s finished,” Dyson drawled and flipped the report shut. His mouth twitched a smile in Ty’s direction as he slid the report into one of the pockets of his briefcase, fully aware the boy had been studying him. At his age, Dyson regarded any eighteen-year-old male as a boy.
His own curiosity was better concealed. This offspring of Chase Calder didn’t seem to fit his father’s mold. It had been obvious at the ranch airstrip before they’d taken off this morning that the relationship between father and son was strained. Disagreement between parent and child was somewhat normal, but this situation particularly interested Dyson.
“I’m glad we’re having a smooth flight so far,” he said to open the conversation. “It’s easier to talk when you aren’t bouncing all over the sky.”
“That’s true.”
Words weren’t wasted elaborating on the fact. Ty was closemouthed like his father, Dyson observed. “The day you leave for college is a milestone in any man’s life. It seems there is always a mixture of anticipation and regret.” He subtly attempted to encourage Ty to state his feelings.
“I suppose so.” He almost smiled, acknowledging to Dyson that his guess about mixed feelings was accurate.
“Have you given a thought about what you want to major in?” Dyson tipped his head to one side in a show of interest.
