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After following the cattle and the pushing riders outside of the pen, she reined her mount around to the fence where two men sat on the top rail and stepped down. Reaching under the stirrup, she loosened the cinch to give her horse a breather.
“You’ve got ’em all, Arch,” she informed her camp foreman in a terse fashion, then bobbed the rolled brim of her dusty hat in the direction of the older man, weathered and cracked with age. “H’lo, Nate.”
“Jessy.” He returned her nod of greeting. Nate Moore was the bachelor sage of the ranch. His bones were too stiff and brittle to tolerate the abuse of a saddle anymore, but his eyes hadn’t failed him. And his eye for cattle made him the undisputed authority on livestock breeding on the Triple C Ranch. Since he couldn’t ride the range anymore except in a pickup, he was always on hand whenever there was a gather on any part of the ranch to take a close-up look at the breeding stock.
“We’ll hold ’em here overnight and drive ’em onto Shamrock grass in the morning,” Arch Goodman decreed and pushed off the fence rail to hop to the ground, heading off to advise the other riders of his plans.
Nate stayed on his perch. “O’Rourke’s gettin’ back a better herd than he left.” He took cigarette papers and a tobacco pouch from his vest pocket. Most of the old-timers still rolled their own smokes, but it was a trial for Nate, whose finger joints were enlarged and stiff.
“That’s true enough.” Jessy observed his awkward attempt to shake tobacco into the paper trough. “I’ll do that for you.”
He passed her the makings and watched her deftly shake the right amount of tobacco out. “Guess young Ty is at O’Rourke’s helpin’ him salvage something out of those tumbledown buildings on the place.”
“I heard that.” She caught the tobacco string between her teeth and pulled the pouch shut.
“That engagement of his sure didn’t last long. It’s off, ya know.”
“Heard that, too.” She rolled the paper around the tobacco and ran the long edge of the paper across her tongue to lick it shut.
“Jilted him, I understand,” Nate observed. Jessy passed him up the handmade cigarette and he raked a match head along the underside of his thigh to light it. “Can’t say I think much of a woman who’d give her word, then call it back.”
“She probably had her reasons.” She still felt raw inside at the way she’d been used by Ty, knowingly or not. And, in all honesty, Jessy couldn’t say she was sorry at the way he’d been treated by his ladylove. There was a certain sweet revenge in it.
“Sidin’ with her, are ya?” Nate observed while he cupped the flame to the cigarette and puffed it to life.
“Just sticking up for my own kind.” She shrugged a shoulder.
“There are kinds—an’ then, there are kinds.” He stared off a ways, contemplating the vastness of the sky. “Most ranchers het all het up about bavin’ the best breedin’ bull an’ spend whatever it takes to get top quality . . . then put him to servicin’ inferior cows. Now, if you want a good calf”—Nate pulled his gaze back to look at her with equal thoughtfulness —“ya gotta have a good momma. A lotta folks that claim to be experts don’t realize a calf gets a lot more from his momma than from the bull that covers her. A rancher’s money is better spent on a good cow than a bull. It’s the female what counts, an’ don’t let anybody tell you differently.”
“I’ll remember that.” It seemed odd to hear such advice when she’d been reared in such a male-dominated society, and especially coming from Nate Moore, a bachelor all his life. He should have been entrenched in the old views toward women.
“Heard ya got put on full time,” Nate remarked.
“Yeah. ’Course, Dad didn’t think it would look right if I worked under him, so he farmed me off to Arch.” There had been hesitation before she was given the position of a regular hand, but no one could fault her ability, and everyone had pretty well gotten used to having her working on the range with them.
But Jessy also knew she was on trial. If being a woman caused any problems with quarreling among men too long away from the company of a female, she knew she’d get stuck in some tamer job at the barns or commissary. She had scoffed when her father hinted she had the kind of looks men might fight over, until he had explained that a face gets prettier when a man’s desperate. And she was bitterly reminded that a man could be so desperate as to imagine she was someone else.
“It looks like they’re getting ready to load up the horses.” Jessy noticed the other riders congregating around the stock trailer and picked up the reins to her horse. “See ya around, Nate.”
As she led the sorrel away, Nate gingerly maneuvered his stiff bones off the fence rail. He took a last drag on the cigarette, studied it, then glanced after the tall girl. “She rolls a damned fine smoke,” he murmured to no one in particular.
III
Loving is something like dreaming
When it comes to the woman you wed,
So why does your mind keep turning
To one who’s Calder born—and
Calder bred.
12
This is the most frustrating damned thing” Chase muttered under his breath, and the saddle leather creaked as he momentarily put weight on the stirrups to shift his position in the seat.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie’s attention strayed from the seeming chaos of the branding area to her husband. She had seen no cause for the impatience that ridged his jaw and hardened his eyes. He flashed her a look of ill-concealed disgust.
