Cowboy PI (26 page)

His abruptness startled her. The brush in her hand froze in midair. She stared at him for a moment before asking simply, “About?”

“Us. This thing between us. It isn’t going to go away. We have to deal with it.”

She lowered the hairbrush and laid it in her lap. “I’m
listening,” she said quietly. But there was a sudden wariness in her soft brown eyes.

“What happened that night in the canyon meant something. For both of us, I’d say. And we should have talked about it then, but we didn’t. I don’t know, maybe the idea of us was something we both needed to get used to. Only now, with the cattle drive winding down, the time is running out. So what happens to us after Alamo Junction?”

That wary look had now become an expression approaching fear. “Are you saying—” She paused to run the tip of her tongue over her lower lip, an action that made him ache. “What are you saying, Roark?”

This wasn’t easy for him, either. He struggled with it. “It’s tearing us up inside, isn’t it, Samantha? What we feel for each other is tearing us up.”

“I don’t know what I feel for you,” she said evasively.

“Damn it, I think you do.” Removing his hat and tossing it to the ground, he plowed a hand through his hair and leaned toward her earnestly. “I think we both know, like it or not, that we’ve fallen in love with each other. And if we haven’t, we’re a long way down the road to it.”

Her fear had become outright panic now. “I can’t do this,” she said, looking as if she was ready to bolt.

But Roark wouldn’t let her run away. “Why?” he demanded.

“You know why.” She caught the lobe of her right ear between her fingers and began tugging at it furiously.

“I want to hear you say it. I want you to tell me you don’t love me.”

“I can’t be in love with you. I
won’t
be. Not with a man who’s ready to throw everything away to bury himself on a ranch with cattle and horses. And you are, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Not with another cowboy,” she said, the alarm growing in her voice.

“Hank Barrie,” he said, unable to help his sudden an
ger. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? What it’s been about all along, your hatred of your grandfather and everything connected with his world, the suffering you’ve lived with since Barrie’s death.”

“I thought you understood. I thought when I told you everything that night—”

“Oh, I understand all right.” There was hurt in her eyes, but Roark didn’t let that stop him. He had been holding back long enough. It was time she learned the truth about her Hank Barrie. “It’s you who doesn’t understand, Samantha. Who needs to hear she’s been grieving for a man who wasn’t entitled to her grief.”

“You don’t know—”

“What? That the guy was a bastard who never deserved you? Because he was, Samantha. That’s right, your Hank Barrie was no stranger to me. Why should that surprise you? The rodeo circuit is a pretty tight scene. And if you’re any part of that scene, even for a few months like I was, then sooner or later you encounter everyone else related to it. As I did, in a Wyoming bar the night before he died.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, begging him not to go on.

Roark ignored her plea, his anger fueled by Samantha’s image of her pure and innocent young cowboy. A lie that had been gnawing at him ever since their night in the canyon.

“Your Barrie was a lesson to me, Samantha. I saw what could happen to a man’s ego after he won a few purses. The glory went right to his head. He was wallowing in it, swaggering over the attention all the rodeo groupies were lavishing on him. He had a redhead with him. His latest girl, they said, laughing because he had slept with all of them and boasted about it. You didn’t know about that, did you, Samantha? You didn’t know about all the drinking, either.”

“It isn’t true.”

“Yeah, it is true. It was the drinking that cost him his life the next day in that competition. He died because he
was no longer sure and steady. That was your Hank Barrie, Samantha. A drunk and a lecher who cheated on you. How many years have you been mourning him and blaming your grandfather—and all he stood for—for taking him away from you?”

Samantha was silent, staring at him with a stricken expression on her face. It was only then that Roark realized what he had done. And hated himself for it. He had wounded her. Wounded her cruelly by robbing her of the memory of a sweet and gentle lover. It didn’t matter the man who was the focus of that memory had never really existed in this form, had in fact betrayed her without remorse. And though she might accept the reality of Hank Barrie now, she would never forgive Roark for confronting her with it.

He had risked a gamble and failed. Samantha could never be his, and he would have to live with that loss for the rest of his life.

I
T WAS AFTER SUNDOWN
before the outfit learned of the decision about Shep’s death. Sheriff Wilkins sent one of his young deputies to their camp, an indication in itself that his office entertained no serious suspicions.

“Alcohol,” the deputy informed them. “Medical examiner detected a high enough level in his bloodstream to determine that, in his opinion, the cause of death was an accident. No evidence of any injury other than the result of his fall into the canyon. There’ll be the formality of a coroner’s inquest sometime in the near future, but until then—”

“That mean we’re free to go?” Cappy barked.

“No reason to detain you, not when you’ve got those cattle to move.”

“What about this here inquest?”

“It probably won’t be necessary for any of you to appear, but you should be available if you’re called. I’ll need
addresses from all of you. Oh, and we should settle on arrangements for the body to be shipped back to Texas.”

He wrote their addresses in his notebook and never seemed aware that one of their company was missing. Anxious to be underway again, none of them mentioned Ernie Chacon’s absence.

The deputy took Roark aside. “Police photographer asked me to give you this,” he said, handing Roark an envelope. “I don’t know what’s inside, and I don’t want to know.”

Which meant, Roark thought, that Sheriff Wilkins wouldn’t have approved of this action. He accepted the photographs, hoping that when he had a chance to study them, they would offer him some truth about Shep’s death. He and Samantha had revisited the scene this afternoon before their quarrel, and although he had searched the area carefully, he’d found nothing. All he could do now was move on with the cattle while making every effort to protect Samantha.

And that, he knew, meant keeping her at his side, which wasn’t going to be easy considering how she felt about him now. Because, although physically she’d continued throughout the afternoon to stay as close to him as he had earlier commanded, emotionally she was as far away from him as it was possible to get.

Lost in his black mood, it took Roark a moment to realize that the others were gathered around and gazing at him expectantly. They were looking for direction from him, just as they had this morning. The outfit clearly regarded him as their new trail boss. Roark accepted this, realizing that safeguarding Samantha might be easier if he was in control. It was time to get practical.

“If any of you have decided you’ve had enough, now is the time to say it.”

Cappy sniffed in disdain. “And do what? Just walk away and abandon the cows?”

The others were silent, but none of them indicated a desire to quit the drive.

“This isn’t going to be easy, folks,” Roark cautioned them. “We’re two men short, we have to reach those stock cars the day after tomorrow, and we have another rough stretch of country between here and Alamo Junction.” He had already ascertained this from having consulted the maps and detailed notes Shep had left behind. “But I think if we push hard enough, we can still make that deadline.”

No one raised an objection.

“Good. Then in the morning at first light we move longhorns.”

When he and Samantha were alone again, Roark snatched a few moments to look at the photos the police photographer had shot. None of them produced a result. He wasn’t giving up. He would study them more carefully when he had better light and more time.

He and Samantha turned in early that night along with the others who anticipated tomorrow’s challenges. But sleep eluded him. Among all his concerns, Samantha chief among them, was a nagging uneasiness about the ravine back at the Walking W.

He continued to sense the explanation to everything was somewhere in that ravine and that it must be connected with the caves there. At the same time, something didn’t feel altogether right about it. But no matter what angle he examined it from, he couldn’t imagine what it might be.

H
E WAS DESPERATE
. His every effort to destroy the cattle drive, to keep Samantha Howard from winning the Walker ranch, had been defeated by her and that damn Hawke. He could feel the time running out, the prize slipping away from him.
No.
He couldn’t permit that.
Wouldn’t
permit it. Not now, when he was so close. He had to stop her, needed to find another way. Two days. He had two days left, and somehow, somewhere between here and Alamo Junction…

Chapter Twelve

Roark was in a foul mood. He had every reason to be, didn’t he? Damn right he did.

The beleaguered cattle drive alone entitled him to bad humor. What with a terrain even more rugged than he’d expected, the clock ticking on that deadline and a shrunken outfit that frayed tempers over the increased workload, the problems never seemed to quit. Starting with the cook truck.

“If my chuck wagon stays, then I stay with it,” Ramona stubbornly insisted when Roark had suggested they temporarily abandon the pickup, arguing that the trail ahead of them was too difficult for it and that they could pack enough food supplies for two days on the horses.

Roark had relented in the end, not wanting to leave Ramona behind, especially with her son a loose cannon somewhere out there in the wilderness. In fact, he intended to keep both her and the rest of the outfit at close range at all times. So the battered cook truck with its missing driver’s door—or, as Dick began to call it, the Doorless Wonder—went with them. But the vehicle was a pain in the backside, especially on the tough grades they frequently encountered.

And then there was the worry of Ernie Chacon himself. Was he gone for good or shadowing them again? Although Roark maintained a constant vigilance, he never spotted
any sign of Ernie. But his concern intensified when Wendell reached him on his cell phone late in the afternoon of their first day back with the herd.

“Chacon may not have a record in Purgatory like he does in Austin,” Wendell reported, “but that’s only because charges weren’t pressed. I found out from talking to the desk clerk at the Western Museum that Ernie assaulted the guy when he refused to let him in to see the director.”

It was clear by now that Ernie had an obsession about his father. One sufficient enough, Roark wondered, to make him willing to go to any lengths to please the man? Even kill to win his recognition? It was a chilling possibility, especially since Roark had had another opportunity to examine those police photographs. This time something registered with him about one of the three books taken from his saddlebag.

The first book, of course, had been shredded along the path to the canyon rim. The second had landed on its spine several feet away from Shep’s body. The third had ended up by Shep’s arm. Or, to be exact about it, lying at an angle across the top of his arm. But if it had fallen with him into the canyon, maybe while he still clutched it, it should have landed
under
his arm. Even if he had released it in his fall, it should have ended up under him or beside him, not on top. To Roark, it was an indication the book had been thrown into the canyon after Shep. Nothing conclusive, certainly, but enough to go back to Sheriff Wilkins after the cattle were delivered and convince him to reopen his investigation.

Meanwhile, Roark knew he couldn’t relax his guard for a millisecond. Maybe Ernie wasn’t a murderer, but someone was, although Wendell had been unable so far to learn anything incriminating about the others in the outfit.

Roark had no better luck with the new batch of photographs he collected from Willow Creek’s copy center that evening. Wendell had dutifully shot every wall throughout the length of the ravine, many of them at close range,
including those in the caves, but Roark was unable to spot anything unusual. Either the ravine had no secret to reveal, or he wasn’t seeing it. Still, there was something about the photos that bothered him, something that added to his frustration.

But who was he kidding? It wasn’t the ravine, the tensions of the drive, a potentially explosive Ernie Chacon or his worries about the others in the outfit that had him in a vile mood on this morning of their second day back on the trail. The woman who rode close beside him at his insistence was responsible for that.

Samantha had barely spoken to him since he had told her the truth about Hank Barrie. She was unfailingly polite, responded whenever it was necessary, and remained as cool and detached as their proximity would permit, rejecting any of his efforts to discuss their conflict. And with the two of them practically joined at the hip, and her enticing presence bombarding his senses, Roark was miserable.

He didn’t know whether to be relieved or reluctant when, soon after midday, they reached the high, stony ridge that put them within sight of their destination.

Just on its other side was a dry bowl into which the first of the cattle, led by Cappy, were already pouring. At its far end, the curving trail lost itself in an expanse of evergreen forest that blanketed the mountainside. They would climb that trail up through the pass that was their last barrier. Alamo Junction waited down on the other side. It was almost over. The cattle drive would end at the stock cars, and Samantha, having qualified for her inheritance, could walk away from him and never look back.

Knowing he would go crazy if he thought about that, Roark turned to more practical matters. “I wish we could stop long enough down there to find water for them,” he said to Dick, who had joined him on the flank of the ridge, “but I don’t want to risk it. The contract specifies that we have the herd at the rail line before five o’clock, and while
we still have more than enough time to make it, that pass won’t be—”