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For two months, he’d spent night and day with the man, shared meals and chores, yet there’d never been any sharing of confidences. O’Rourke might have learned to tolerate a Calder, but he hadn’t learned to like one. He kept to himself, on rare instances coming to The Homestead to visit Maggie, but always leaving as soon as Ty or his father arrived. There seemed to be a truce of sorts that existed, or, more accurately, a wary neutrality on both sides.
13
It wasn’t considered polite to ride a horse into camp where it might possibly foul the ground where the crew ate. Instead of leaving his horse tied at the picket line with the other mounts, O’Rourke tied his separately, wrapping the reins around the rear bumper of a truck.
Although it didn’t appear to be deliberately done, O’Rourke approached the open end of the traveling cook kitchen always keeping a vehicle between himself and any onlookers, as if shielding himself from prying eyes. Ty no longer believed it was caused by shyness. It seemed more likely a desire to escape being observed. O’Rourke didn’t like people watching him.
“Hello, Culley,” Ty greeted him when he rounded the cook truck.
“Ty.” He nodded, his eyes shifting curiously to Tara. The outdoors had tanned his skin to a brown shade, making the gray in his hair more pronounced and the blackness of his eyes more compelling. O’Rourke was always careful about his appearance, wearing clean clothes and shaving every day. After two years, Ty was convinced his uncle was a little on the strange side, but harmless.
“What brings you down this way?”
“I got tired of cookin’ for myself and remembered how good Tucker’s food tasted.” He looked at Tara again and briefly gripped the point of his hat brim. “Ma’am.”
With a vague reluctance, Ty made the introduction O’Rourke was so obviously seeking. His stare remained fixed on her, which made Ty uneasy.
“You look a lot like my sister,” he said finally.
At a distance, Ty supposed there was a resemblance between Tara and his mother. Both had dark hair and a small build. He wondered if that hadn’t prompted O’Rourke to ride in, believing he had an ally in camp, only to discover he’d been mistaken.
“Think I’ll find out when Tucker’s going to have lunch ready.” O’Rourke backed away at the first opening and ducked around behind the truck.
“It doesn’t seem possible that man is your uncle,” Tara murmured.
“Culley’s had a hard time of it, one way or another,” was all Ty replied. When he heard footsteps, he wasn’t surprised to see his father coming toward them.
“What’s O’Rourke doing here?”
“According to him, he got hungry for Tucker’s cooking.”
With Tara present, his father didn’t pursue the subject. “The crew’s going to break for the noon meal shortly.” He glanced inquisitively at the girl. “Do you want to stay, or would you rather go back to The Homestead for lunch?”
“I’d rather stay here, if I won’t be in the way.”
“You won’t be,” he assured her but shot a curious look at Ty to see if he was of the same mind. Ty made no sign of objection.
“I’ll let Tucker know we’ll be having company for lunch.” Which was another way of saying his father intended to warn the men to watch their language.
A line had already formed at the washbasins when Jessy answered the cook’s call to eat. Her clothes were stiff with dried mud that broke off in crumbles as she walked. Her leg muscles ached from constantly struggling against the sucking mire. She made a halfhearted stab at wiping the gumbolike accumulation off her boots onto the grass, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. She moved up in line.
“We need some clean water!” A cowboy at the basin impatiently bawled out the request. “Half of Montana’s in this one!”
“Yeah!” the rider behind him echoed. “We already had a damned mud bath oncet.”
The dirty water was thrown out as the rotund cook came huffing and heaving with a fresh pail to fill the basin. He was as round as a potbellied stove, but solid as one, too. His neck was lost in the massive shoulders, and his bald head was small, oddly out of proportion with the rest of his body.
“We got a lady with us, boys, so watch your language, or I’ll be knockin’ some heads together,” Tucker warned.
“D’ya hear that? He called our Jessy a lady!”
“How-de-do, ma’am.” One of the cowboys tipped his hat to her in exaggerated courtesy, and Jessy mockingly curtsied back.
“Tucker ain’t talkin’ about her, ya damned fool!” Sid Ramsey declared and batted at the man’s hat. “The lady is that dark-eyed lovely sittin’ over there with Ty.”
Jessy turned to look in the direction Ramsey had indicated, and stared like all the others. She heard the low, suppressed wolf whistles and the murmured comments of flattery and lust the men exchanged to keep their virile images intact among their peers.
But the sight of the raven-haired girl had the opposite effect on Jessy. It didn’t loosen her tongue. Instead, her silence became deeper and deeper. A lot could be read into the indifference Ty was showing the girl sitting beside him, paying her none of the ardent attention the cowboys around Jessy would so willingly have done. Ty barely looked at her. His expression was all closed up, everything shut in. Jessy could only think of one reason why Ty wasn’t smiling and talking freely with a girl as lovely as this one. He’d been hurt by her in the past.
