got closer, Mr. Jim shook his long red mane and neighed. His vaqueros nodded in deference, and Mr. Jim reared.
“Easy, champ,” North whispered to Mr. Jim.
He flicked the reins and began shouting orders to his men in fluent Spanish right before he galloped into the herd. Then, and only then, as he cut cattle alongside his day-labor cowboys, was he able to forget the impossible Melody Woods.
Because he had to drive in to Corpus Christi, he quit earlier than he had in weeks. Before going to the house, he returned to the barn.
The calf he’d delivered was doing fine, so he made a final stop at that stall occupied by the mama llama and her pitifully skinny baby.
“Jeff,” he shouted.
Jeff came running. Hell, everybody came running when the king yelled.
Everybody except…her.
When the baby llama forgot his shyness for the first time and moved toward him trustingly on shaky legs, North melted. He remembered a skinny little girl on the ground, drying her tears with the back of her hand before throwing herself into his arms.
“How long since my baby camel here ate?” North demanded in an oddly rough voice.
“Three hours. Want me to feed her again?”
“Him. No,” North said, surprising himself as he strode toward the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of fresh milk. “Warm this. I’ll do it.”
“You’re wasting a lot of time on that runt,” Jeff said as North squatted near the fragile newborn.
“I guess I’m a sucker for lost causes.”
Melody had said he had no heart.
The barn phone began to ring as North cradled the llama across his knees and offered him the bottle. As the camel nibbled tentatively, W.T. banged inside the stall with the cordless. The llama shivered and stopped suckling. If anybody had the look of a dimestore cowboy, it was W.T. Scuffed high-heeled boots, wide hat, the shiftless fraud carried himself with more style than anybody on El Dorado.
“Take it easy when you come in here,” North whispered testily.
“Border Patrol. Delfino’s at the gate in his Dodge Ram-charger demandin’ access—”
North grabbed the phone. “Delfino, you’d better be here to tell me you’ve got a lead on the Midnight Bandit. He damn near made off with a truck—”
“No. Some half-starved illegals. Kids. Not ten miles south of your headquarters. From our helicopter. Brush too dense to land.”
“Damn,” North muttered.
Tough as it was in Texas, it was tougher in Mexico. And getting tougher. Ejidos, small Mexican settlements, sprang up along the southern edge of El Dorado almost weekly. The people who lived in them were unemployed. They didn’t have a damned thing to do but watch the goings-on at El Dorado.
North had started wearing his Colt when he worked remote pastures of his ranch. He never knew anymore who or what he might run into on his own land. Anytime he spotted illegals, he called the Border Patrol.
Melody’s voice piped up in his mind. “Americans spend more than four billion dollars a year on pet food. You know what else, Bertie? We don’t spend a fourth of that on food to feed starving people in third world countries.”
Bertie. That was Melody’s special name for the king. If ever there was a sissy nickname—
More and more, intense, desperate men seemed to be making border crossings. Not just men these days. Women and children, who were pitifully unprepared to attack the desert.
Delfino repeated that single word, “Kids.”
Ten miles. Illegals never carried much food or more than a gallon of water. In this heat, on foot, they’d be dead before they reached his headquarters.
North nodded glumly. “Keep an eye out for my bandit, you hear?”
After North hung up, the llama suckled indifferently. Still, North fed the baby camel with a vengeance till the bottle was completely empty. When he was done, he touched his brow to the furry ear. “You’re not going to starve on me, Little Camel. Not if I can help it!”
When North was done, he found Jeff in the tack room. “You gonna take care of Little Camel, here, while I’m gone to Corpus?”
“Corpus?” Jeff shot him a look. “What about Saturday and Maria and me and Tina?”
“Right. Saturday. Maria.” North took his sweat-stained Stetson off, raked brown fingers through his black hair, set his hat back on. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His deep voice lacked enthusiasm.
“We’ll cook ’em steaks, take ’em ridin’ around on the ranch, show off the spread, impress ’em and bed ’em,” Jeff reminded him. “Just like old times…before her.”
“Right. Just like old times.”
Jeff resented Melody more than anybody else on the ranch. North and he had gone to college together, double-dated together. They’d been inseparable until Melody.
“Don’t you worry none about Little Camel, King.”
North showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans with razor-sharp creases, a long-sleeved white shirt and his best boots—his uniform, Melody used to say. Then he stomped out to his white pickup. First thing he saw was his Colt in its holster on the seat.
He was licensed to carry. Quickly wrapping the belt around the holster, he got inside and jammed it into his glove compartment.
Once he left the ranch, the flat, familiar highway was clogged with speeding NAFTA trucks all the way to Robstown where he turned off for Corpus Christi.
The drive through flat, unremarkable countryside was so familiar it soon grew boring. Maybe that’s why he noticed the bumper stickers peeling off the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. One was about beautifying Texas and the need to put a Yankee on a bus.
The other was about Humpty Dumpty being pushed.
North grinned. Melody loved bumper stickers.
Melody. He’d been thinking about her way too much. He should have canceled dinner at the Woodses’.
Too late. Dee Dee was a superb cook. Sam knew everything there was to know about football. North’s own father had died young. Too young. Not that North let himself dwell on that.
Hell, his own mother certainly didn’t dwell on it. She was in Europe blowing her fortune on the immense schloss of a Bavarian count she’d met in Paris.
The Woodses had always made a helluva fuss over North, a helluva lot more of a fuss than Melody or his own mother or even Gran ever had. Besides, he did have appointments with his accountant and cattle buyer in Corpus Christi. A frozen dinner in his bachelor apartment there held no appeal.
But the Woodses were her parents, and he was dating Maria now.
