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While the others were speculating about the girl’s identity, Jessy was wondering why the girl was here. Behind all that beauty, there was a clever mind. There was a motive for her being here, and it wasn’t a friendly social call. Jessy stepped up to the basin and dunked her hands into the murky gray water, scrubbing with the rough bar of Lava.
When it came time to eat, instead of loosely scattering around the camp, the hands began clustering in the center with the girl’s campstool as the focal point. Nearly every one of them nodded to her, preening a little under the small smile she gave each of them. A couple of them nudged Ty, trying to prod him into an introduction. He was vaguely irritated by the stir she was creating among the men, even though he’d seen her cause the same kind of sensation many times before. She had the kind of beauty that made a man forget he had good sense. And he was angered at the way the men sniffed around her like a pack of fools, because he saw their weakness in himself.
An introduction couldn’t be avoided, but Ty waited until the last man had left the grub line and found himself a place to sit. There wasn’t any need to call attention to himself to begin, since all of them were waiting expectantly for him to do it.
“All you boys know E. J. Dyson. This is his daughter, Tara Lee.” Ty omitted any reference to his past engagement to her. The regular riders would make the connection anyway. He glanced briefly at Tara. “I won’t bother to tell you the names of this sorry lot of so-called cowboys. All of them think they’re big, bad men, but there’s a couple I oughta warn you about.”
He looked around the suddenly downturned faces, agitation spraying through the ranks at the kind of outrageous remark he might be intending to make about them to this vision of beauty. There was a dead silence.
“Tiny Yates, the guilty-looking one
over there.” Ty pointed him out to her. “He’s a married man, but a lot of the boys claim that he keeps getting their wives mixed up with his.” Notoriously tongue-tied around women, Tiny Yates went red from his neck up. “And Billy Bob Martin beats his dog every time he gets drunk. Liquor makes him downright mean.” Someone choked on his coffee at that accusation. Billy Bob avoided drink like the plague. It only took a couple of beers to have him blubbering like a baby. Crying was a bigger sin than sobriety. “Ramsey struts around like he’s cock of the walk. He’s always crowing the minute the sun peeks up in the morning.”
No one budged, afraid of drawing Ty’s attention. The embarrassed and uneasy silence lay heavily in the air. Tara realized none of the things Ty had said were true, but she couldn’t fathom his reason for making everyone so uncomfortable.
No one lingered over his food. They all ate quickly and began spilling away to dump their dirty dishes in the wreck pan. Ty observed their hasty departures with a faint grin of satisfaction.
“Why did you do that?” Tara murmured.
“It’s taken me a long time to get even with that bunch,” he replied and swilled his coffee.
“Get even for what?” She didn’t know about the merciless hazings he’d endured at the hands of those same men.
“Nothing.” Ty drained the cup. “It was just a joke among friends.”
“Some joke.” Tara thought he’d been unreasonably harsh on them. She’d never seen this side of him and didn’t quite know how to take it.
“It’s a rough brand of humor up here.” He shrugged but didn’t attempt to explain that none of the men bore him any ill will because of the things he’d said about them. Nothing personal had been intended, and they knew it. There was a slow ebb of men back to their horses. Ty flattened a hand on his knee and pushed himself upright against the desire that tugged at him to stay by her side. “Time I was getting back to work.”
“Ty.” She was on her feet, laying a hand on his arm to detain him a minute longer. As he looked down at her, she moved closer. He breathed in the clean scent of her body, its sweetness a soft contrast to the rankness of his own.
“Careful. You’ll get dirty,” he warned to push her away before temptation overwhelmed him.
“Do you think I care?” She laughed but took a step backwards. “Do you mind if I stay and watch the branding this afternoon?”
“Do as you please, Tara. You always have.” Ty was curt, knowing it wouldn’t make any difference if she stayed here or returned to The Homestead. She’d still be on his mind.
“Then I’ll stay.” Shrewdly she had observed the emotion that had sharpened his voice when he’d struggled to contain it.
“A piece of advice. Stay well back and upwind. It’s a dirty, smelly business.”
The afternoon’s work had barely started when Sid Ramsey got two fingers fouled in the rope as he made his dally on a calf and broke both of them, clean as dry twigs snapping. A torrent of blue language rushed from him, a combination of pain and anger at making a fool’s mistake like that.
It took a couple of minutes to get enough slack in the rope to unwind the wrap pinning his fingers to the saddle horn. Hunched over the saddle, Ramsey cradled his hand against his body and rode to the chuck wagon. A roper short, Art Trumbo yanked Jessy off the ground crew and ordered her into a saddle to fill the position.
Shaking out a loop, she adjusted her grip on the rope and walked her horse toward the herd to pick out an unbranded calf. Another horse and rider came alongside her. She glanced sideways at Ty and saw him looking toward the chuck wagon. She knew what drew his attention that way, and it wasn’t Ramsey.
“She’s the one who jilted you, isn’t she?” Jessy looked straight ahead and said what others dared only to think. His mouth tightened, offering no reply. “I expect she wants to patch things up. Are you going to take her back?” She was very cool and very calm, but he gave no sign of having heard her question. “You’re a fool, Ty Calder,” she said and jabbed a spur into her horse, sending it after a calf.
Ramsey rode up to the chuck wagon and swung down. “Hey, Tuck!” he bellowed for the cook. “Bring your black bag! I broke my damned fingers.” He sallied around Tara, an arm hunched against his belly. “Beg pardon, ma’am.”
A witness to his calamity, Tara followed after him, drawn by that curious fascination humans have for one of their kind in pain, attracted and repelled by it at the same time. She stood to one side and watched him gingerly pull off the leather glove, sucking in his breath with a hissing sound.
The forefinger and middle finger were both discolored and starting to swell. Tara drew back slightly, grimacing at the sight. When she glanced at his face, the skin was stretched tautly across his bones, ridging it white.
“You need to go to the hospital and have that X-rayed,” she murmured.
“X-rayed? Hell, I already know it’s broke.” He tossed her a tight grin, scoffing at her suggestion.
