Gary’s smug leer... Or another man’s face, hands touching her as she lay helpless. She choked back a whimper and reached for the door handle.
“Ain’t that the way!” Jake said. “No more than a dusting here in the canyon, but the high country will get another foot. Take a peek over your shoulder, Shelby—looks like the gates of hell where you were headed.”
His soft drawl steadied her, and she glanced at the mountains behind them. Blue-black clouds hid the peaks, and swaying curtains of snow grayed the lower slopes.
“Warming up?” He reached to adjust the vents in front of her, and she shrank back reflexively.
“Is there...” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Is there a used car lot in town?”
He glanced at her with a puzzled frown. “Sure, Bert Dawson sells pretty decent vehicles.”
She looked down at the roll of bills she still clutched. Another couple hundred in her pack... “Let me off there, okay?”
Jake steered his rig into a small roadside picnic area and then turned to face her. “Shelby, Bert’s brother is a La Plata County deputy. Bert would take one look at you and be on the phone before you could get two words out. For your protection, mind you. You sure you don’t want to file a complaint?”
She shook her head mutely. It would be her word against Gary’s, and his injury was probably worse than hers. Ross Norquist had said he would support charges, but sending his own son to jail... The police might seize Stranger as a vicious dog; for sure they’d put her name through their computer.
“I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t.”
Jake sat silent for a long moment and then sighed. “If you’re bound to leave, I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but how about we get the colt settled first? I want to get off to a good start with him.”
Because of her, he now had a horse he didn’t want. Her sense of fairness overcame the urge to bolt. “I guess I can do that much.”
“Anyway,” he said, “I’ve got a proposition for you.” He groaned. “That came out wrong! What I mean—I’m offering you a job. You know anything about cattle?”
A job? “Not much,” she said. She had watched branding and castration from the safe vantage point of corral fences. “I can’t rope or anything like that.”
“Can you ride?” he asked with a straight face.
A smile started against her will. He was playing her, teasing her back off the ledge. “Yes, I can ride.”
“Ever used a rifle or a shotgun?”
“Grandpa used to take me duck hunting in the fall. I didn’t much care for it, but I can handle a shotgun. What would I have to shoot?”
“Nothing, I hope. My boys come home between weekend events, but I can’t count on them for much work. One or the other is generally banged up. I need someone at a line camp at the far edge of the ranch. It’s isolated and pretty rough, but there’s a good corral for the colt. You’d have to ride the fence line and keep it up. I’ll have cow and calf pairs up there pretty soon—calving is almost done—so you’d need to keep an eye on them and chase off any varmints you see.”
Reluctantly, she considered his offer. She realized with surprise that she trusted him, as much as she trusted anyone, but the thought of owing him or any man made her shy away like a beaten animal.
“Could we go straight out there? Today, I mean?”
He sat in silence—she liked the way he thought things out before speaking.
“I figured you could stay overnight at the home ranch and we’d head out in the morning,” he said. “Plenty of room—Tom and Luke are on the road, so there’s just me and Lucy home.”
“No! I mean...” She didn’t want to meet his daughter, didn’t want anyone to see her face like this. Gary’s attack shamed her. She should have been smarter or quicker—something.
He glanced at his watch. “Another five, six hours of daylight. We’ll pick up supplies and have you settled in before nightfall—that suit you?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
He pulled back onto the road, and they drove in silence. Now with her course set, Shelby relaxed a little. The scratches burned, and her jaw ached, but she’d been scraped and bruised before; it went with the job. She would deal with the ugliness later as she had in the past, alone.
She watched the changing landscape flow by. West of Durango, silver mountain peaks loomed north of gentle valleys. Cottonwoods studded with early lime-green foliage marked the meandering courses of streams.
Just past the little town of Hesperus, Jake turned south again until he drove under a ranch sign with Cameron’s Pride burned into a weathered plank. The house sat half a mile from the road, and she saw with approval that all the buildings stood tight and square, with no machinery left out in the weather. In a short while, they had the colt, who didn’t seem much stressed by the second trailer ride of his life, confined in a small corral by the barn.
“Lucy won’t be home till late,” Jake said, grabbing Shelby’s pack from the backseat. “You can get cleaned up, and we’ll find some ointment for those scratches and ice for your lip.”
Shelby followed him into the ranch house. For a moment her skin crawled at finding herself alone with a man in a confined area, but she made herself step into the kitchen. Stranger followed and flopped in front of the big fireplace.
The cascade of crimson flowers on a huge Christmas cactus drew her, and she caressed a blossom with one finger.
“You like flowers?” Jake asked.
“I love making things grow,” she said. “That’s what I miss most, I guess, always on the road. I helped my mama in her garden—things grow like crazy in Louisiana.”
Jake stood beside her but left a little distance between them. “It’s tougher here, but my wife had the touch. Flowers, vegetables...” He cleared his throat and poked a finger into the pot. “Needs a little water, you think?”
She touched the soil. “No, it’s good—you’re doing fine.”
He turned to the big fridge and handed her an ice pack from the freezer. “How about you sit with that while I get some lunch together?” He peered back into the fridge. “We’ve got chili, or roast beef for sandwiches.”
She unzipped her jacket and remembered her ruined shirt. “Could I change somewhere?”
“Sorry, I should have said... Bathroom’s just down the hall, and there’s a first aid box—”
“That’s okay—I have stuff.”
In the bathroom, she dug through her pack for a cotton turtleneck and another flannel shirt before looking in the mirror. Her lower lip had ballooned to twice normal size, and blood traced a thin line from the left corner of her mouth. She moved her jaw experimentally—nothing broken and no loose teeth—but chewing would hurt for a few days.
She
