Palomino (38 page)

Thank you. She looked at him for a long, quiet time, stirred by his strength and his youthful beauty. You'd better get out of here now or you'll end up spending New Year's Eve with me instead of Mary Jo.

You know something? His voice was deep and sexy. I'd like that.

You would, would you? Her eyes were teasing but she could see that his were not. But she didn't think what she was suddenly feeling was what Jeff needed. He didn't need an older woman, and a cripple yet, on his hands. He was young. He had his whole life in front of him, filled with girls like Mary Jo. But she was suddenly so desperately lonely that she wanted to reach out to him, and before she did something foolish, she wanted him to go. Okay, kiddo, go celebrate New Year's Eve in style. She sat up in her bed and tried a smile.

And you, Sam?

I'm going to take a hot bath, make myself something to eat, and come back to bed. I guess maybe tomorrow I'm going to have to come out of my hole and face the world.

I'm glad to hear it. For a while there you had me scared.

I'm tough, I guess, Jeff. Time does that to you. Time, and heartbreaks, and loss.

Does it? It sure makes you beautiful too.

Go on, Jeff. She looked worried. It's time for you to go

I don't want to leave you, Sam. I want to stay here.

But she shook her head as she looked at him, took his hand, held it to her cheek, and then kissed the fingertips gently as she let it go. You can't stay, Jeff.

Why not?

I won't let you.

You don't believe in ranchers and ranch hands mixing? He bridled like a young stallion and she smiled.

No, nothing like that, love. It's just that my life is behind me now and yours isn't. You don't need something like this.

You're crazy. Do you know how long I've wanted you?

She put a finger to his lips. I don't want you to tell me. It's New Year's Eve, people say things they shouldn't on nights like this. I want us to be friends for a long time, Jeff. Please don't spoil it. And then, with tears in her eyes again, I need you right now. You and Josh, and the children, but especially you and Josh. Don't do anything to change that. I just' I couldn't take it' I need you too much. He held her once again then, kissed the top of her head, and then stood up and looked down at her.

I'll stay if you want me to, Sam.

She looked up into the brilliant green eyes and shook her head. No, babe, it's okay. You go. He nodded slowly then and stood looking at her for one last moment in the doorway, and then she heard his cowboy boots echo in the hallway and the front door close.

Sam? ' Sam? It was six o'clock in the morning on New Year's Day and she was dressed and in her kitchen, making coffee for the first time in three days, when she heard Josh pounding on the door. She smiled to herself. One by one they would all break her door down if she didn't come out now. She still felt the terrible emptiness of Timmie's loss, but she knew that she couldn't let herself go. She owed more than that to the other kids. Slowly she wheeled her chair to the front door and opened it, looking out into the gray light before dawn as Josh stood in his heavy jacket on the front porch.

Hi, Josh. Happy New Year.

He stood there, saying nothing, and she wondered what was wrong. He looked as though he had been crying. You okay? He shook his head and walked slowly into the room. Come and sit down. She had thought that he had come to offer her solace and now she knew that he was in trouble. What is it? She eyed him, her own brow furrowed with worry, and he gazed at her as he fell heavily into a chair and then dropped his head into his hands.

The kids. Jeff and Mary Jo. They went out to some party last night he stopped and swallowed hard and they got drunk as skunks, and then drove home. Sam felt her heart begin to race. She was afraid to ask the next question but he answered it for her. He looked up with an air of great pain and she saw two great big tears creep down his face. They ran into a tree and bounced off into a ravine ' Mary Jo broke both her arms and legs, and tore up her face pretty bad ' Jeff's dead. Sam closed her eyes and reached for his hand, thinking of the boy who had held her only the night before and wondering if she had asked him to stay with her after all, that none of it would ever have happened. But it would have been wrong for her to seduce a boy of twenty-four, she told herself as she thought back over the night before. Wrong? She questioned herself. Wrong? Was it better for him to be dead?

Oh, God ' She opened her eyes and looked at Josh, and then she reached out and held him. Will Mary Jo be okay, Josh? He nodded and then sobbed into Sam's arms.

But I loved that boy too. He had only been with them for a year but it felt like half a lifetime, and now she understood the references he'd had from other ranchers, still wanting him to come back.

Does he have folks we should call?

I don't know. He blew his nose on a red handkerchief from his pocket and then replaced it with a sigh. I guess we should go through his things. I know his mom was dead, because he said something about it once or twice, but I don't know if he has sisters or brothers or a dad. He never talked about his life much, just about the kids here, and you, and how happy he was around the kids and the horses.

Sam closed her eyes again and took a deep breath. We'd better go through his stuff. Where is he now?

Josh sighed and stood up. I told them to keep him at the hospital, and we'd call and tell them what to do. If his folks are somewhere else, they may want him sent back.

I just hope we find something in his things that tells us who they are. What do we do if he doesn't have anything like that, Josh? This was a new problem for her.

Bury him with Bill and Miss Caro, I guess, or in town.

We can bury him here. He was one of her people now, and he had loved the ranch. It was mad to be talking of burying that boy though, only a few hours before he had been standing in her bedroom doorway, and sitting on a corner of her bed, and holding her in his arms. She forced the memories from her mind, reached for her own jacket on a low peg near the front door, and turned her wheelchair slowly out the door.

Josh looked at the broken window in surprise then and turned to Sam. What happened?

Jeff. He wanted to be sure I was okay last night. He came to see me before they went out.

I had a feeling he'd do that, Sam. He looked at this house for two days and I knew all he could think about was you. Sam nodded and said nothing more until they reached his cabin. For her it was bumpy going, because the paths to the men's cabins didn't need the smoothly paved walks that were everywhere else to allow for the wheelchairs. But Josh pushed her over the bumps and ruts and eased her wheelchair into the comfortable little cabin. She looked around at the unmade bed and moderate chaos that the boy had left, and felt that if they looked hard enough, they would find him. Maybe he would come staggering out of the bathroom with a grin, or poke his head out of the covers, or come wandering in singing a song.' He couldn't be dead ' not Jeff' not that young boy. Josh looked at her with his own look of pain and sat down at the small maple desk and began to pull out papers. There were photographs and letters from friends, souvenirs from old jobs, pictures of girls, programs from rodeos, and everything except what they needed to find now.

Finally Josh came up with something that looked like a little leather billfold and in it he found a card with Jeff's social security number on it, some insurance papers, a couple of lottery tickets, and a slip of paper. On the paper it said, In case I get hurt, please contact my father: Tate Jordan, Grady Ranch, and there was a post-office-box number in Montana.

As Josh looked at it his mouth dropped open and he stared, and then suddenly he remembered' the Bar Three ' why hadn't he thought to ask? Sure, Tate had had a boy over there. He looked up at Sam in disbelief and she frowned at him.

What is it?

There was nothing he could say to her now. He only handed her the slip of paper and walked slowly outside for a breath of air.

Sam stared at the piece of paper for almost half an hour, trying to decide what to do and feeling her heart pound in her chest while she thought of it. She had almost made love to Tate's son the night before what an insane quirk of fate. And now because she hadn't, he was dead, and she had to call his father. But she knew that even if they had made love, he might have gone out drinking and could have died then too. Whatever had happened, there was no changing fate. And now she had to face the problem of what to tell Tate Jordan and how. It was ironic that after all the searching she had done, and all the looking and asking and calling, there it was finally, his address, lying in the palm of her hand. She slipped the piece of paper into her jacket pocket and wheeled outside.

Josh was waiting for her there, leaning against a tree, as the sun rose slowly in the morning sky. What are you going to do, Sam? You going to call him? He knew the truth now, and he hoped to hell she would.

She nodded somberly, We have to. It's only right.

You gonna do it?

No, you are. You're the foreman.

You scared?

No, if it were anyone else, I'd do it, Josh. But I don't want to talk to him. Not now. It had been almost exactly three years since he'd run off.

Maybe you should.

Maybe so. She looked at him sadly. But I'm not going to.

Okay. But when Josh called, they told him that Tate was in Wyoming for the week, at a cattle auction with some of the other hands. No one seemed to know where they were staying or how to reach them, and it meant that Jeff was going to have to be buried, either at the ranch or in town. They couldn't wait a week.

The funeral was simple and painful for all. But it was part of nature, part of life, Sam told the children, and Jeff had been their friend, so it was right that they should bury him together. The local minister said a little piece over the casket, and that day the men buried him next to Caro and Bill, and the children rode out over the hills, each of them carrying a bunch of flowers, which they left on the fresh grave. And afterward they all stood around and sang their favorite songs. It seemed a fitting way to bury someone who had been one of them and had been a friend to many. And as they turned their horses back toward the ranch and cantered over the hills, Samantha watched them, with the sun setting to their right, and their horses' hooves beating softly on the ground, and the air cool around them, and she thought that she had never seen anything as lovely in her life. For a moment she felt as though Jeff were riding alongside them, and in silent tribute to their lost friend, the ranch hands had led out Jeff's horse riderless, with his colorful Western saddle. For some reason it brought back her own memories of Timmie, and once more she felt tears sting her eyes.

And as she wrote to Tate that night from her desk at the big house, it helped her to hold out a hand to him, whatever had passed between them and whatever was no more. She, too, had lost a child now, though he had been hers differently than Jeff had been Tate's, but still she knew the agony of that loss and she felt it again now even more deeply as she wrote to the man she had sought in vain for so long. She found herself wishing, too, that she knew what Jeff had told him. The one thing she didn't want him to know was what had happened to her. But she decided to twist the truth a little and pray that Jeff had not told at all.

Three years doesn't seem like a very long time, she wrote from her kitchen table after the initial paragraph in which she told him the news as simply as she could. But what a great deal has changed here. Caroline and Bill are both gone now, resting next to where we laid Jeff today, in the hills, near their cabin. And the children who share the ranch with me rode out with flowers to leave on Jeff's grave as the men led his horse in the sunset. It was a difficult moment, a beautiful day, a sad loss for us all. The children sang the songs he loved best, and somehow, as we rode back, I had the feeling that he was near us. I hope, Tate, that you always feel him near you. He was a wonderful young man and a dear friend to us all, and the waste of such a young life is a source of disbelief and sorrow and immeasurable pain. I can't help but feel though that he accomplished more in his short lifetime than most of us with so many more years, which we spend so much less well.

I don't know if you were aware, but Caroline had left the ranch, after her death, for a special purpose. She wished it to be made into a special facility for handicapped children, and Josh and I worked for months afterward to get it ready. It was just before we opened our doors to these special children that Jeff joined us, and he had a gift for this kind of work that truly touched the heart. He did things that would take hours to relate but that should make you proud of him, and I will see now if in the slew of photographs we took in the beginning there are any of Jeff, which I will send you. It will undoubtedly give you a clearer idea of what he did here. The ranch is very different from what you once knew.

Certainly none of us had realized that this was Caroline's intention for the ranch, but it has served a worthy purpose, as has your son. I grieve for you in your loss, I wish you well, and we will be sending you all of his things to avoid the need of your making this painful journey. If there is anything that we can do here in this regard, please don't hesitate to contact us. Josh is always here and I'm sure would be happy to help you. She signed it Cordially, Samantha Taylor.

There was no trace in her letter of what had passed between them, and the day after the funeral, Sam had Josh and some of his boys pack up Jeff's things and ship them air express to Tate. And that night she herself went through the ranch albums as promised and carefully took out each of the photographs of Jeff, searched for the corresponding negatives, and the next day went into town with the whole stack. When the pictures came back a week later, she carefully went over them again to make sure that there were none of her, and there weren't, and then she put them in an envelope, without anything else, and mailed them to Tate. For Sam, that ended the chapter of Tate Jordan. She had found him at last. She had had the choice of reaching out to him, of telling him she still loved him, of even asking him to come. But just as she had sent Jeff away that fateful night, because she knew it would be selfish of her to reach out and wrong for the boy, now she turned away again, for her own reasons, and she congratulated herself afterward for what she had done. She didn't belong in Tate's life anymore, not the way she was. And she wondered as she lay in bed that night if she hadn't been crippled if she would have reached out to Tate now. There was no way to know, of course, because if she hadn't been crippled, she wouldn't have had the ranch, wouldn't have known Jeff, wouldn't have ' She drifted off to sleep and was only awakened the next morning by the phone.