Renegade Man (19 page)

Jonah had been
shirtless, with a damp towel slung over one broad shoulder. At the sight of
each other, they had both slowed their steps and nodded civilly, warily. A
blast-furnace wind out of the southwest had ruffled his wet hair. She had
noticed how the water trickled down the square line of his jaw—and that he
looked haggard. He was working as hard as she was, and, like her, he had
increased his working hours until darkness made it difficult to see. But there
was no getting around the fact that his irregular features were impossibly
handsome.

Feeling
compelled to say something, anything, she had taken one of her verbal potshots
at him. “With all the time you spend in water, I’m surprised you haven’t
shriveled up like a raisin.”

A wicked glint
appeared in his green eyes, and his hands went to the snap of his jeans. “Want
to see for yourself?”

She wanted him.
Oh, how she wanted him. But not on an “ ‘Open the door, lie on the floor,’ said
Barnacle Bill the Sailor” basis.

Ignoring his
taunt, she had lifted her chin and strode on past him. Nevertheless, she had
heard his parting shot, “So long, smart mouth.”

“
Bon voyage
,
Jacques Cousteau!” she had fired back. “And good riddance!”

What she needed
was a shoulder to comfort her, or a reassuringly hearty hug. Soren filled that
bill, but she knew she could never marry him. She had made up her mind to tell
him so when he returned from London. It wasn’t fair to offer him any
encouragement. Their relationship could never go beyond friendship. His kind of
love would smother her.

Disgusted with
her unfruitful day, she stowed the adz, shovel and other tools in her trunk and
laid the tarp over the freshly troweled pit. When she glanced around, Magnum
was gone again. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him.
Probably sometime before noon. When several calls produced no response, she
reluctantly turned her footsteps toward Jonah’s camper.

She found him
wearing his wet suit and knee-deep in the river. He was shoveling the heavy
tailings from one tub into another one that was covered by a screen. Both tubs
were sunk just below the waterline.

At the sight of
her, he paused, leaning wearily on his shovel handle. He watched her approach
with something like suspicion in his eyes. They flicked down past her shorts to
travel the length of her sun-browned legs. When he returned his gaze to her
face, he was scowling. “You wanted something?”

How did he
always manage to make her feel so uncertain of herself? “My dog,*’ she said
curtly. “Have you seen Magnum anywhere?”

His expression
relented somewhat. “He was here around lunchtime. After he sampled a
frankfurter, he took off without even a thank you. I’ve been underwater most of
the time since then.”

So he had been
feeding her dog. He wasn’t quite the tough guy he made himself out to be. In
fact, she realized it was this shy sexiness that had reached through to charm
her. “Well... thanks.”

She could think
of no other place Magnum might have wandered off to, unless he had decided to
visit the hot springs without her. She certainly couldn’t reprimand him for
watering Kingsley’s old
arrasta,
could she?

Feeling Jonah’s
gaze on her back, she used the stepping-stones to the river, then started off
through the dense thickets, skirting the thornier prickly pear and cholla
cactus that dotted the ground.

She couldn’t say
that she actually heard anything at fFirst, but she was drawn off the path that
led to the hot springs by something, maybe her unscientific sixth sense.
Gradually, though, she detected a sound besides the crunching of gravel beneath
her tennis shoes.

When she
identified the noise, a sick feeling of terror filled her, and her skin turned clammy.
She began to run, the mescal and nopal cacti scratching her thighs and calves.
She broke free into a ragged clearing. “Oh, noooo!” she gasped.

Magnum lay there
on his side, looking like one bloody mass. When she knelt beside him, he could
barely lift his head, but his tongue flicked out in a weak signal of
recognition. His eyes, clouded with pain, implored her for succor.

“Oh, fella! What
happened? My poor Magnum!” Her eyes flooded with tears, which then streamed
down her cheeks and onto his blood-matted fur. While she wept, she wailed
unknowingly, “Oh, God! Oh, God! No! No! Oh, dear God, how could this happen?”

Magnum’s eyes
questioned her, but still filled with puzzled suffering.

“My God!”

Still on her
knees, she turned to see, through tear- blurred eyes, Jonah loping through the
brush toward her. “Oh, Jonah, it’s Magnum—he’s been hurt! A wild boar, maybe. I
don’t know. It’s awful.”

She didn’t
realize she was rattling on until Jonah took her by the shoulders and calmed
her with a gentle “Ssshh, Rita-lou.”

He moved her
aside and hunkered on one knee beside the Labrador. He stroked the dog’s head
almost thoughtfully. “It’s all right, boy. It’s all right.” His gaze ran over
the dog. His fingers moved down the animal’s neck to probe at the sticky
patches of fur left around Magnum’s badly lacerated throat. “A wild boar didn’t
do this,” he muttered.

She could only
stare at him uncomprehendingly, too choked with tears for speech.

“That bastard!”
he snarled. He sprang to his feet and began to prowl the clearing, his eyes
searching the dusty ground. All at once he hunched down again and ran his
fingers over the dirt. “That’s a rope burn around Magnum’s neck. And these are
horseshoe imprints—Magnum was dragged through the brush by someone on
horseback.”

“But why would—”
And then she knew. “Kingsley!” she spat. A tidal wave of hatred slammed over
her.

Jonah shook his
head. “I don’t think so. This is Buck Dillard’s work. Maybe Kingsley is behind
it, but those tracks say the horse belonged to Buck.”

He returned to kneel
over Magnum, and then he scooped the dog up in his arms. Magnum whimpered at
the pain, and Jonah said, “It’s going to be okay, boy. We’re going to get you
to the vet.”

A little while
later, Rita-lou sat in the pickup bed with Magnum. All the way to Silver City,
she murmured meaningless phrases to the dog. While they might have been of no
real use to him, they comforted her, at least a little bit.

Jonah was
driving at his usual breakneck speed, and by the time they arrived at the small
red-brick clinic her hair was wind-whipped and her tears had dried, leaving
tracks on her face. Reddish-brown splotches of blood marked her jeans and
shirt.

The veterinarian
was a kindly-looking, plain sort of woman, with brown hair cut bluntly at chin
level. Neither she nor her young male assistant seemed in the least surprised
that Jonah was wearing a wet suit. He stood behind Rita-lou, and the two of
them watched as the woman and her assistant went briskly to work, cleaning the
dirt from the wounds, stitching the worst cuts and applying antiseptic and
salve to the lacerated areas.

Magnum had
always been afraid of the vet, but now he seemed too numb to even notice where
he was. “Oh, Magnum,” Rita-lou whispered, “I’ll never scold you again. You can
chase field mice to your heart’s content. Just get well!”

She continued
stroking him, her tears wetting both her hand and Magnum’s fur. Jonah gripped
her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly, but she couldn’t take the pain in
Magnum’s eyes. It was as if he were pleading with her to do something. She
glanced at the vet.

The woman
offered her an understanding nod as she prepared a syringe. “This should ward
off any infection. Why don’t you leave Magnum here overnight for observation?
I’d like to watch for shock. Now, don’t you worry, Ms. Randall. In a few weeks
he should feel as good as new.”

“Well, I know a
cowhand who’s not going to able to make that claim,” Jonah muttered.

Rita-lou glanced
up at his vicious expression and understood his intention at once. When they
reached the pickup she stopped him, her hand on his bicep. “No, Jonah. I know
what you have in mind, but this is my fight.”

More than that
was bothering her, though. Buck would play dirty if he got the chance; he’d
think nothing of pulling a knife or a gun on an unarmed man. She couldn’t stand
it if anything happened to Jonah. She didn’t want anything to mar that roguish
face, ruin that rakish smile, blight the sparkle in those devilish green eyes.

At that moment,
though, he had the cold eyes and cool hand of a Texas gunslinger. “Sorry,” he
said, “but I’ve just appointed myself head of the Society for Retribution for
Cruelty to Animals.”

A forbidding set
to his mouth, he drove back toward Mimbres Valley. She sat on her side of the
seat, wishing she didn't care for him as much as she did, wishing that somehow
she could dissuade him from taking on Buck.

At the cutoff to
Tomahawk Flats, she said, “Don’t bother to take me back to my car. I’m going
with you.”

“Like hell.”

“I’ll just
follow you to the ranch house in my own car, so you might as well let me ride
along with you.”

He shot her a
blistering look, but she noticed with relief that he grudgingly passed by the
turnoff to the flats.

The entrance to
the Split P was marked by a white wrought-iron arch with a centered
stainless-steel P, its stem separated from its loop. A fifteen-mile drive took
them to the two-story limestone ranch house, with its outbuildings and corrals.
Inside one corral a vaquero astride a quarter horse worked a frisky calf. Jonah
braked his pickup in front of a creaking windmill where several other
road-roughened pickups, Jeeps and other vehicles were parked.

“You wait here,”
he told her.

Her chin lifted
at a stubborn angle. “I’m going with you.”

“That’s
w-r-o-n-g, wrong!” he spelled out. “Try it and you’ll be the first one I deck.”

“Don’t pull your
caveman tactics with me, Jonah Jones!”

He ignored her
and stalked to the front door. Without bothering to knock, he shoved it open
and entered. “Buck!” she heard him shout. “Get your ass down here!”

She wasn’t waiting
another second. She flung open the pickup door and ran to the ranch house
doorway. The place hadn’t changed any from her childhood impressions:
smoke-blackened rafters; grease- splotched stone floors; a mismatched array of
worn furniture. Her assessment of the room was fleeting, because her gaze was
drawn straight to the hat rack on the wall beside her. A rope was looped over
one peg. Blood, dried, but bright enough to indicate it was recent, crimsoned
the lariat.

Jonah grabbed
it, looped it over one shoulder and took the wooden stairs two at a time. Above
him, Buck appeared on the landing. Sleepily he rubbed his eyes with the heels
of his hands. “Hellfire! Can’t a man get a nap around—”

“I’m inviting
you to a party, Dillard.” Jonah’s face was about as inviting as a clenched
fist. “A lynching party!” In one stride he took the three remaining steps.

“Hey, now, just
a minute,” Buck began, taken by surprise and backing off a pace.

Jonah didn’t
give him a chance to finish. He grabbed the cowhand by his rawhide vest. Then,
after hauling Buck down the steps, Jonah shoved him past her and outside, where
he sent Buck sprawling in the dust. “Ever been pulled behind a pickup, you
bastard?”

“Jonah, no!” she
cried.

Buck came up in
a crouch—right into the lariat’s noose. Jonah jerked the rope, and the Kingsley
foreman stumbled onto his hands and knees. “The party begins now,” Jonah said,
tying the other end of the rope hard and fast around the ball of his pickup’s
trailer hitch.

Enraged, Buck
struggled to his feet, but Jonah yanked the lariat again, and Buck floundered
back to the dirt.

Rita-lou ran
across to Jonah and grabbed his arm. “No,” she pleaded, hanging on as he tried
to shrug her off. “You’ll kill him.”

“My God, Jones,”
Buck blubbered. “You can’t be serious!” Sweat made rivers down his
dust-streaked cheeks and sheened his high white forehead.

Jonah’s look was
fierce. “About as serious as you were when you put your twine on this lady’s
dog.”

“God, man,
listen to what she’s saying! You’ll kill me for sure!”

Jonah rubbed his
beard-shadowed jaw as if he were considering what the cowhand had said. After a
long, tense moment he replied thoughtfully, “I don’t have to drag you till
you’re dead, Buck. Just till your hide is peeled off.”

Rita-lou’s
fingers dug into Jonah’s arm. “Don’t do this! You won’t be any better than Buck
is if you do.” Jonah spared a glance at her upturned face, then returned his
attention to the man groveling in the dust. “Course,” he drawled, “if the lady
here is willing to accept an apology...”

“Sure! Anything!
Hey, look, Rita-lou, I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

“It’s Ms.
Randall to you,” Jonah said, his tone and look threatening. “Try again.”

Buck’s balding
head bobbed in acknowledgement. “That’s right, Miz Randall. I’m real sorry.”