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“But we want you to come with us,” Quint protested in a half-fretful tone.
“Yes, we’d both like you to come,” Logan added his voice to the request.
Cat resisted their appeal with a smile and a small lift of her chin. “You don’t need me along.”
A quicksilver gleam of amusement glittered in Logan’s eyes. “I think we may have ignored your mother, Quint,” he said in a low aside to him. “Women don’t like to be ignored.”
“It isn’t that at all,” Cat insisted, flushing at his infuriatingly astute observation. “I just don’t happen to be dressed for the river.” She touched the white slacks she wore, using them as an excuse.
“We won’t go where it’s muddy, Mom.”
“We forgot to use the magic word, Quint,” Logan said. “Please will you come with us?”
“Yes, please, Mom.”
Quint’s heartfelt pleas were more than she could ignore. “All right, if it’s that important to you, I’ll come.”
All smiles, Quint grabbed her hand and kept a tight hold on it all the way to the sloping bank of the river. They paused on the high side of the slope, shaded by the patulous branches of a towering cottonwood tree. Overhead, saw-toothed leaves clattered together, stirred by a soft wind.
“Is this where you swim?” Logan asked.
Quint responded with a vigorous nod. “And sometimes we just wade. It feels good when it’s hot, doesn’t it, Mom?”
“It sure does, but the water is a little cool now.”
“It’ll feel good when summer comes, though.” Logan stood in a relaxed stance, one knee bent and his thumbs hooked in the back pockets of his jeans.
“And when you look over there,” Quint pointed across the river, “all that as far as you can see, and even farther, belongs to my grandpa. It’s been Calder land for years and years and years.”
“That’s a long time,” Logan acknowledged. “But don’t forget, your Sioux ancestors roamed this land long before the first Calder ever set foot on it.”
“They did?”
“That’s right. The Sioux as well as the Crow and Blackfoot people, along with some Arapaho and Cheyenne.”
“Gosh,” Quint murmured, plainly impressed. He asked more questions, a child’s kind, about feathered warbonnets, moccasins, and tom-toms.
All the stories Cat had told him about the long cattle drives, the stampedes, and wild prairie fires paled against the colorful and exotic images of war paint and buffalo hunts. She thought of the life she had worked so hard to build for him. Then Logan came along, sharp and lethal as an arrow from a bow, and changed it. Possibly forever.
“Mom, can I go down by the water and look for more rocks?” Quint asked, then explained to Logan, “Sometimes you find some really neat rocks here. I got a whole collection of them.”
“You’ll have to show them to me sometime,” he replied.
“Okay. Can I, Mom?”
“May I,” she said, automatically correcting his grammar. “Go ahead, but just be careful so you don’t fall in.”
“I can swim,” he countered in mild exasperation.
“You can’t if you hit your head and knock yourself out.”
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nbsp; He turned to Logan and lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “Mom worries a lot.”
“Your mother is a wise woman,” Logan said, but Quint gave no indication that he heard him as he scrambled down the slope. “He’s quite a boy, Cat.” Logan’s glance went to her, his eyes warm with approval. “You’ve done a good job of raising him.”
She was pleased by his compliment, and the discovery annoyed her. “I suppose I should regard that as high praise, considering how selfish and spoiled you think I am.”
