A Change of Scenery, page 19
Unable to see his expression, she tensed at his imposing form. Both man and beast towered above her, blocking her way unless she shied into the road or across the open field. Either option could prove foolish, yet what did he intend? Her fingers tightened around her satchel strap.
She slowed her steps until she stood at Doc’s head. The horse whiffled against her shoulder. She rubbed his velvety nose and drank in his scent.
“He’d like to give you a hand.” A hushed snort—from the man, not the horse. “Or should I say hoof.”
“Thank you, but—”
Hard hands clamped about her waist and hoisted her off the ground. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Without warning or asking permission, he swung her up to the saddle.
She gripped the saddle horn, an unfamiliar appendage to one accustomed to riding English. But not as unfamiliar as a man stepping up behind her, seating himself on the saddle’s skirt and hemming her in with one arm around her waist, the other hand taking the reins.
If she didn’t breathe, she’d faint. Even Charles had never dared such a maneuver.
Cale did not hold her so close that she couldn’t breathe, she simply couldn’t breathe because he was so close. Her hat brim crimped against his chest, and after a few steps forward, he pulled it off her head and handed it to her.
“Here. Hold this. Please.”
She complied, strictly from shock at his abrupt manner, though she couldn’t very well toss it aside. It wasn’t hers.
The gelding’s easy gait soon had her relaxed, her leg muscles loosened, her back not as stiff. Cale’s arm pulled gently at her waist until she rested against him, the buttons of his vest pressing into her right shoulder blade. His breath tickled the top of her head. She’d never felt more protected.
A coiled rope lay beneath her right leg, but the heavy fabric of her skirt prevented it from rubbing. Doc seemed unbothered by her boots brushing his ribs, and she could barely make out the swivel of his ears as he listened for his master’s voice while taking heed to what lay ahead.
Time slowed to rhythmic plodding. A silent prayer of thanks ascended for Cale coming upon her when he did.
His chest expanded. “If I see Thorson anytime soon, I’ll be telling him what I think of him leaving you to walk back to the hotel in the dark.”
If such a meeting occurred, she had no doubt that it would not be cordial. She’d heard an edge to Cale’s words before, but she’d never had their intensity vibrate up and down her backbone. The sensation compelled her to defend her boss’s decision. “I’m sure they would have taken me. I just didn’t want to go with them.”
His arm tensed ever so slightly. “Why not?”
She pulled a deep breath and let it escape in a sigh. Truth was easier spoken under cover of darkness rather than while looking into the other person’s eyes. “They were going out for drinks and then to the dance. I don’t enjoy either. Nor do I enjoy pretending to enjoy or forcing myself to fit in where I don’t belong.”
His wordless response skimmed the top of her head, and she wasn’t sure if his derision was aimed at her or her coworkers. She’d never spoken quite so boldly to any man, not even to Charles. Especially not to her father.
Warmth blew close against her hair, as if he’d dipped his head. “You look like a tick under a toadstool in that hat.”
Her turn to huff. He chuckled, and she offered silent thanks that he couldn’t see the smile spreading on her face.
“Where do you want to eat?”
The question caught her off guard more than the toadstool remark.
“I’m sure Clara will have a biscuit or two set aside for me. You needn’t worry that I’ll go hungry.”
Barely lifting the rein against Doc’s neck, Cale turned them to the left and into the electric glow of Main Street after hours. Several establishments were open—the cigar shop, the tea parlor, a billiard hall, the nickelodeon, and a saloon. And the inviting glow of the Hotel Denton beckoned ahead. She sat up, keenly aware of the draft behind her and the absence of Cale’s close support.
He stopped before the hotel’s hitching post, stepped down, and tethered Doc. She flexed her ankle and each muscle in each leg, predicting the outcome of dismounting under her own strength. Without the benefit of stirrups, it might be tricky. She plopped the hat on, gripped the horn, and leaned forward to swing her right leg over the cantle. From her position with the wide hat brim pulled low, she didn’t see Cale reach for her.
“Oh!” She gripped the hands belting her waist as she rose in the air and descended gently to the street. Those hands remained firm, and she had to tip her head back to see beneath her hat brim. The streetlight hooked the dimple in his cheek. “Do you make a habit of acting unannounced?”
The dimple deepened. “Never had need to.” He released his hold and stepped back, one arm extended as if he expected her to topple.
She adjusted the satchel, straightened her spine, and moved toward the sidewalk, where she stepped up and turned. He was only slightly taller now, but it was easier to look him in the eye as she spoke. “Thank you for the ride home. You and Doc”—she stroked the horse’s handsome head and scratched beneath his forelock—“were a welcome surprise. I must admit, the distance was farther than I remembered from the drive out earlier today.”
Keeping his thoughts to himself, Cale stepped up beside her and offered his arm. With only the slightest hesitation, she tucked her fingers inside his elbow and together they approached the gleaming glass and oak-paneled entrance to the Denton. He opened the door and waited for her to enter—a gentleman in chaps and spurs and dusty boots. One who smelled not of cigars, stuffy libraries, and men’s cologne, but of horses and cattle and hard work.
What would her father have to say about that?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ella walked like she had a rock in her fancy stitched-top boot, and Cale suspected she was holding back for his benefit. Danged if he didn’t want to know what lamed her, but whatever the cause, it pained her more when she was tired or upset.
The way she’d leaned against him on their ride to town told him she wasn’t upset.
But he was. His blood boiled at Thorson leaving her stranded, in spite of what she’d told him, and he’d see to it that he said his piece.
With a nod to the front desk clerk, she hobbled to the stairway, and took hold of the ornate railing that curved to an end like a handle on a pitcher. Then she pulled off her ridiculous hat and gave him a look that made his knees weak. He hooked his thumbs in his belt and spread his stance to keep from buckling right there in front of her.
“Thank you again.” She smiled.
His insides turned to mush, and he tugged his brim. “My pleasure, ma’am.” The phrase made her cheeks go pink, and he’d say it over and over just to get the same response.
But when she pivoted in that way she had, he closed the gap and covered her hand on the railing. “I’d like to buy you supper.”
She turned back, surprise and doubt sparring in her eyes. “Oh, there’s no need.”
He pulled out his winnings and held the roll between two fingers. “This is burnin’ a hole in my pocket. I’m hungry enough to eat my stirrup leathers, and I don’t much care to sit in that fancy dining room all by myself.”
As he’d hoped, she smiled and her shoulders eased. Her glance slid through the dining room entry and returned to his wad of bills. “Don’t you need that money for the ranch?”
Encouraged by her weakened defenses, he offered his arm again. “I doubt you’ll eat enough to rob my heifers.”
They must have struck a handsome pose as they entered, for every slick-haired head turned their way. Either that, or he smelled like a coyote.
The women gawked too, eyeing him from beneath feathers, plumes, and flounces atop their piled-up hair. Cale thought more kindly of Ella’s wide-brimmed toadstool.
She tugged his arm toward a swinging door, and in two steps they stood inside a kitchen that would make Helen’s mouth water. His was already—just from smelling what the cook was pulling from the oven. When she turned around, her dark eyes locked on him with a once-over that left him doubting his welcome.
He doffed his hat.
Ella’s fingers tightened at his elbow. “Clara, this is Cale Hutton of the Rafter-H. He won the roping today at the rodeo and he’s buying me supper.”
Clara set the roasting pan on a large worktable and shoved her fists against her waist. “Lawd, child, I know who he is. But what is his dirty self doing in my kitchen?”
He backed up, but Ella clamped her hand like a vise and laughed out loud. “Don’t be mad at him. I brought him in here to meet you.”
Clara shook her head and picked up a carving knife. A very large knife. “Next thing I know, you’ll have all them moving-picture folk in here, traipsing through my clean kitchen.” She threw him a crusty look. “Well, what you got to say for yourself? Cat got your tongue?”
He coughed. “No, ma’am.” He coughed again, as sure of himself as Kip under Helen’s glare. “Smells mighty good in here. Ella tells me you’re a fine cook.”
She picked up a sharpening stone and dragged the knife over it, first one side and then the other, staring at his dirty boots.
Ella’s fingers relaxed. “You work too hard, Clara.” She loosed him from her grip and brushed the cook’s cheek with a kiss.
Jealousy beat a path from his toes to his head, and he bit down on a big knot of envy to keep from saying something stupid.
“Humph.” A smile sparked in the woman’s eyes but didn’t infringe upon her mouth. “Go on, you two. Best get your table ’fore they all fill up.”
He dipped his chin and backed away. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Another humph.
Ella giggled like a girl and set him to wondering what it would have been like to go to school with her, like Hugh and Jane had.
Fewer heads turned when they re-entered the dining room, and he cut a trail for the table in the near corner. The waiter approached with a towel over his bent arm and a thin mustache over his straight lips. Cale assisted Ella with her chair, silently blessing his pa for showing him such things, and took the seat across the small table, his back to the wall.
The waiter held out his hand. “May I take your hat, sir?”
“No, you may not.”
Ella’s startled look corrected him. “I mean, no, thank you.”
A sniff pulled the man’s nose higher, and he addressed Ella. “To drink, ma’am?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
“Coffee,” Cale added.
With a quick bend at the waist, the waiter left them and disappeared through the swinging door.
If his brother could see him now, he’d spit a hole through the carpeted floor.
He turned his hat over, slid it under his chair, and leaned forward. “I’ve never laid eyes on Clara. How’d she know who I am?”
Ella laughed, and the sound rippled over him like it had the day they walked the pasture, easing his doubts about eating at the Denton.
“I’ve no idea. All I know for sure is that she knows everything that goes on in this town, who’s involved, and their childhood history.”
He stared at her.
She laughed again, angling away to hang her hat on her chair and set her satchel on the floor. “That’s exactly how I felt at first, but she has a heart as big as her kitchen stove. And just as warm. You’ve nothing to fear.”
That bucked him up and he drew his chin back. “She doesn’t scare me.”
Ella’s eyes twinkled like candles on a Christmas tree, and he suddenly wanted her to spend Christmas with them at the ranch. How in the world was he going to ask her that?
He shoved his hand through his hair, hunting a decent conversation topic, unable to forget how he’d blown things up his last trip to town. He didn’t want to ruin the evening that was turning out to be the best part of the day, his winnings included.
“Did you get many good photographs today?”
“I believe so. Before and during the rodeo.”
The waiter returned with their tea and coffee, the cups even flimsier than his mother’s china. Ella added cream to her tea and lifted the cup to her mouth. Her eyes drifted shut with pleasure, and he had to look away. Into his black coffee. The coffee he might not get to drink if he had to use the silly excuse of a handle. But he’d be hanged if he’d let something like that keep him from enjoying every bit of the meal he was paying for. And gladly. He turned the handle away, wrapped his hand around the cup, careful not to squeeze for fear it’d break, and took a swallow. Wasn’t half bad.
Ella chuckled.
“What?”
“You seem surprised that the coffee is any good.”
If she could read him that well, he was in a heap of trouble. He carefully returned the cup to its matching saucer. “I suppose I am. And it is.”
He pulled the napkin out from under his silverware and wiped his mouth. His ma hadn’t raised no heathen. “Tell me about your pictures.”
Her eyelashes swept down, and her hands dropped to her lap where she likely smoothed her skirt again, looking for what she wanted to say. She wasn’t the only one who could read a person.
“I took pictures of the setting. The way the nearby ridge hung like a backdrop to the rodeo. Also some of the cowboys and the corralled horses.” She glanced up, suddenly shy. “I took one of you on your horse riding in a big circle with the other ropers.”
He reached for his coffee. “We were just warming up.” Exactly like he was at the moment, though warmer than he cared to be.
“That’s what I thought. I also took some of you chasing the steer.”
“Did you get me catching it?” That was the whole point, wasn’t it?
“Of course. And some right before the wild-horse race.” Her eyes grew bigger and she leaned in. “Do they always bite down on the horse’s ear to make it stand still like that?”
He chuckled. “Pretty much. They are wild horses. They’re not going to just stand there all polite and let some wooly cowboy climb up on their back.”
“Speaking of wooly, that’s one of the pictures I took—the cowboy in the wooly chaps. I also snapped a picture of him before the rodeo, arguing with another cowboy. He didn’t look too happy when he heard the shutter click.”
A vague memory flashed across the back of his mind—
“Your meal, ma’am, sir.”
Mr. Mustache set a steaming plate in front of each of them. Creamy mashed potatoes, sliced roast, glazed carrots. Given the present company and the food before him, every memory he’d ever had vanished into thin air.
A moment later the man returned with a cloth-covered basket and a small bowl of honey.
Ella closed her eyes and inhaled. “Biscuits. Clara’s piece de résistance.”
“Better than Helen’s?” He lifted the cloth and offered the basket to Ella.
“That’s hard to say. They’re both awfully good. But with honey—oh, my.”
A hand slapped down on a nearby table, and Cale and everyone else in the place turned toward the racket. The offender guffawed and hit the table again. “That’d be Old Mose. I was here when Pigg and Anthony brought him in. Biggest bear you ever saw.”
Cale turned back to his meal but pinned his ear on the fella’s conversation.
“Killed three men, they say.”
He glanced at Ella to find her pale as the tablecloth, obviously listening as well. He laid his fork down and reached across the table for her hand. It trembled. “Do you want to leave?”
Her dark eyes were big as the biscuits, but she shook her head. “No. I’m fine. I just . . .”
He lowered his voice. “Just what?” Her hand was soft and cool beneath his fingers, and he stroked the back of it with his thumb.
“I worry about you and the boys at the ranch. If it’s like you say, and that bear is a descendant of this Old Mose—”
“Don’t you worry. We’re takin’ care.” He gave her hand a light squeeze and released it so she could eat. “A lot of it’s just talk. Besides, it’s not all a bear’s doing.”
She waited for him to continue, her glance flicking between him and the table off to his left with the big talker.
“We met today, the Cattlemen’s Association. Before the rodeo. It’s not just a bear, it’s rustlers too. A couple of ranchers are going up to Cripple Creek this week to talk to the butchers. A few others are gonna hunt bear.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That man with the wooly chaps I mentioned? When he was arguing with the other cowboy, I heard him say Cripple Creek.”
Cale froze, his fork of potatoes halfway to his mouth. “You hear anything else?”
She stared at her plate, pulling in her memory, and then looked up at him. “Yes. I thought it was odd at the time, because I know about Cripple Creek, the gambling, and the gold mines. Even a little about the labor wars up there a few years ago.”
His stomach cramped around the food already in it. “But?”
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “I heard a couple of other words that didn’t make sense to me then. I couldn’t catch complete sentences, of course, so nothing really fit together.”
“And?”
“Brands.”
“Brands?”
“Yes. I heard the word brands. And butcher.”
~
The fork hit his plate and Ella flinched. Mashed potatoes had flown off and landed on his saucer, but he didn’t seem to notice.
His big hand balled into a fist, the knuckles whitening, and his jaw clenched. The overall image was remarkably like his brother.
A chill shimmied up her back. She’d ruined a lovely evening.
He caught her eye, and his scowl softened. “I’m sorry.” He scraped the potatoes from the saucer and wiped the cup clean with his napkin. “Just surprised me is all.”
His apology endeared him to her. A rugged man like that, apologizing for his reaction? Her father would never have done such a thing, in spite of all his social graces.
