Nevada Cowboy Dad. Dorsey Kelley

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СКАЧАТЬ direct sunlight, she found it dark inside, and for a moment could hardly see. The air was cooler and full of the smell of alfalfa hay and animals. She wrapped her arms about her middle and suppressed a shiver. Long banks of stalls with horses inside, a tack room that held halters and bridles and work saddles and a grooming area took up the big barn.

      She found him pulling on heavy work gloves and standing beside stacks of baled hay. “I’ll pay whatever price you ask, Rusty. I need the ranch. I... I need you.”

      At this last he paused and gave her a slow up-anddown perusal. “For what, Lucy?” he asked in a dangerously quiet voice. “What do you need me for?”

      Groping for courage, she deliberately stiffened her spine. “To manage the property, of course. To direct employees, make business decisions, buy livestock—I don’t know. For all of what’s needed. I...I don’t know the first thing about running a cattle ranch.”

      He glanced derisively at her sling-backed pumps. “No kidding.”

      Shivers began to tremble through her. She couldn’t back down now; he had to be made to understand. “I don’t know much about ranching, Rusty. But I do know one thing. The time I spent here was the best of my life. I need this place.” She gestured around. “It sounds crazy, but...I need that big old friendly ranch house. I need the smell of horses, hot from a run. I need familiar people around me. I...need the oak tree in the meadow.”

      As he looked into her eyes she wondered if he understood her. She wondered if he remembered their aftemoon in the tree together—that day so long ago when she’d been weeping because her mother had declared that she found horses boring and cattle smelly. She was getting a divorce as soon as she could hunt down an attorney. She was bored, bored, bored—not least of all with her husband, Howard Sheffield, the “unsophisticated, countrified bumpkin” she had married in a temporary fit of Las Vegas-inspired insanity.

      “We’ll be leaving the Lazy S,” Lucy’s mother had announced to her, “first thing in the morning!”

      The memory sprang alive in Lucy’s mind, of her heartache and then of seeking solace high up in the tree, its shielding branches her only comfort. The scene was so tangible in her mind she fancied she could almost reach out and touch that sunset’s glorious golden colors. Almost touch the kind boy Rusty Sheffield had been.

      She had to keep going forward, stop reliving the past. “I-I’ve got an idea, Rusty, of what we might do here. We could bring in people who want a taste of country life—stressed-out people from the city. They could put on jeans and ride and help move cattle.” As a child she had gained so much here; was it any wonder she wished others to experience the same happiness? “I figure they could stay for a week or two,” she went on with growing enthusiasm, “enjoy this marvelous place. See what it’s like to—”

      “A dude ranch?” He cut through her ardent stream with a disbelieving guffaw. “You mean to turn the Lazy S into a greenhorn hotel?”

      “Well, call it what you will.” She shrugged, trying not to be put off by his discouraging tone. Once she could fully explain, fully define the entire scope of her vision, he would comprehend everything. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this, worked out the details in my mind. I realize the notion is new to you, Rusty, and you need time to digest everything, but it could be like a...a health ranch. We could put in a swimming pool, have yoga classes—”

      “No half-dressed yogi is gonna run around here spouting New-Age manure.” His expression closed her off like the slamming of a door. “We don’t need any damn pool, either. We’re simple folk. If we get hot, we just jump in the creek.” Features stiff, he collected a pair of hay hooks and thrust them into a thick bale. For a disturbing instant she had the crazy notion he’d like to use the hay hooks on her.

      To heft the heavy bale into a wheelbarrow, he braced his feet. “I don’t know how I’ll get out from under this financial mess, but I won’t sell the Lazy S. And it won’t ever become a dude ranch.”

      But why not? she wondered, blinking at him.

      Recognizing a brick wall when she slammed into one, Lucy felt fingers of despair reaching into her heart like tendrils of mist before an ominous fog. Her attorneys had been so sure Rusty would jump at the chance to avoid certain bankruptcy that she had counted on his agreement. And the lawyers, the accountants and the bank officials had all concurred: without her, he would go bankrupt.

      Staring sightlessly at her hands, she supposed she could wait for the foreclosure and simply buy the property from the bank. But that wasn’t how she wanted it. She wanted the Lazy S and Rusty. If only as a business partner.

      Deep inside her soul, a silent bell of loneliness and pain began its familiar, dismal peal. All her life, she’d quit everything she’d started, given in when she should have fought back, accepted “no” when she should have demanded “yes.” The lonely, pealing toll grew in her mind until she could almost feel its grim vibrations.

      Not this time. She crushed the defeating voice inside. This time I’ll stand firm. She swore to it.

      “You’re part of the deal,” she whispered to his back, her throat tight and aching. “Don’t you see? You complete everything.”

      His biceps straining, Rusty lifted the bale into the wheelbarrow and rolled it to the bank of stalls, broke it open and methodically tossed six-inch thick flakes into feeder bins. In the end stall, a hungry buckskin mare whinnied. Rusty didn’t look up at Lucy. “What sort of man was he?”

      She blinked. “Who?”

      “Your husband, Lucy. Was he good to you?”

      The unexpected question blindsided her. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

      “That’s not too personal a question to ask, is it? Was your husband—what was his name?”

      “Kenneth.”

      “Kenneth, then.” He tossed a chunky flake into the next stall. “Was Kenneth a man who treated his woman well? Were you happy with him?”

      “I...I don’t, that is—” She licked her lips, took a deep breath and tried again. “Kenneth had many fine qualities.”

      The narrow-eyed glance he shot over his shoulder sliced straight through her like a shard of broken glass. When they were younger, most of the time he’d barely noticed her. But on the infrequent occasions when he had, she well recalled his piercing, perceptive eyes. Always he’d appeared able to read her innermost thoughts.

      Lucy swallowed and forced her mind back to business. “The ranch, Rusty. If you won’t let me help, how can you keep it? Who else could you turn to?”

      As he faced her, finished with the afternoon feeding, she saw that his skin was drawn taut over his cheekbones; his brown eyes took on a hard glitter. Tension radiated from every line in his body, and she felt his frustration beating at her in waves. Jerkily he stripped off his gloves.

      For a moment he stared at the ground. It was a strangely dejected look for such a confident, strong man. She wondered at it. At last he raised his head.

      “Sell you half,” he ground out.

      “What?” Lucy stared at him dumbly.

      “I’ll sell you half interest. God knows it’s the last thing I want. I thought I could raise capital selling СКАЧАТЬ