woman—would change the very air they all breathed. The men smoked, chewed tobacco, spit and cussed wherever and whenever they felt like it. They told off-color jokes and made crude references to females in general, even though most of them were married or had girlfriends and would defend the reputations of their own women to the death, if challenged.
But that was all stuff that Stuart knew, too, Jake thought. Stuart had grown up among cowhands, and there was one thing they both knew they could rely on. Cowboys might be tough talkers and hard as nails with other men, but they were respectful and often shy around a lady. Now, if the lady turned out to be not so ladylike, that was a different story, but the truth was that most cowhands—just like most men in any line of work—took their cue from the woman.
Actually, Jake admitted with a knot of anxiety in his gut, it wasn’t the men he was worried about if Carly really did come to the ranch; it was himself. He liked the status quo. He liked eating in the cookshack with the crew and not having to worry about meals. How would Carly take eating with a bunch of strange men?
Of course, there again Stuart knew the score, and Jake didn’t think it was his place to suggest that his employer’s daughter might not enjoy some of the routines on the ranch.
“When, uh, do you think she’ll be coming?”
“Probably in a week or so. I’ll let you know for sure.”
“Do you want me to meet her plane in Cheyenne?”
“No, I think I’ll hire a helicopter for the trip from Cheyenne to the ranch. I’ll let you know when everything comes together,” Stuart said.
“Yeah, okay,” Jake mumbled. They talked a few more minutes, but when Jake hung up he couldn’t remember what they’d said. He really felt as though the life he had created for himself on this beautiful piece of Wyoming land was slipping away. A rational part of his brain told him not to panic or jump to conclusions. After all, Carly Paxton might be a perfectly nice person who would fit in so smoothly that no one on the ranch would even be aware of her presence.
“Yeah, right,” Jake muttered with a dark scowl on his face. Getting up from the desk he’d been sitting at in the room used as an office in the house, he headed for the front door and stepped outside onto the wide, wraparound porch. This was a favorite after-dark retreat. The crew was somewhere in the vicinity of the bunkhouse—smoking, talking and just hanging around until bedtime—but that building was behind the main house, along with the barns and corrals, the sheds and such. Jake always felt pretty much alone on the front porch, and when the weather was good—as it was now, in late June—he spent a lot of evenings out there. It was a good place to think and to formulate the men’s work schedules. The seasons pretty much determined the cycle of work on cattle ranches, but there were still decisions to be made about which man should be doing what.
Settling himself into a chair, Jake inhaled deeply and attempted to reason away the knot of anxiety in his gut. That exercise raised a question: Who was he now? He was not the same man he’d been after Gloria dumped him, nor was he like the other cowhands on the ranch. He couldn’t compare himself to Stuart, who possessed almost a magical talent for making money and who certainly lived in a much bigger world than Jake did.
The word misfit entered Jake’s mind, and he sighed heavily. He couldn’t deny being a misfit, nor could he deny the bitterness he still felt toward all women because of what one had done to him, even though he kept it fairly well under control. For instance, it was not a subject he had ever discussed with Stuart. In fact, he hadn’t talked about his past with anyone since coming to Wyoming. Wasn’t it rather peculiar that he couldn’t get rid of the bitterness when he’d stopped seeing Gloria so long ago?
Jake thinned his lips. He hated these moments when he tried to analyze himself. Good Lord, he was no worse than any other man on the place. Everyone had problems and not everyone had solutions. He would live through Carly’s visit and, in the meantime, he’d do a little praying that she still wouldn’t like the ranch and her stay would be brief.
Other than worry, what else could he do?
This helicopter ride is by far the best part of today’s trip, Carly thought while gaping at the Wyoming landscape below the aircraft. She had very little memory of the openness, the lack of population, and realized that the things she did remember from childhood visits to the Paxton ranch were from a child’s point of view and possibly contradictory to the reality of this remote part of the world.
Today she was fascinated with the occasional huddles of buildings she saw—obviously other ranches, for the most part few and far between—and the almost traffic-free roads, the immense fields and pastures dwarfing herds of cattle and antelope. The beauty of the distant mountains—the Tetons— actually took her breath, and she felt something sigh within her, a whisper of serenity she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
Carly really hadn’t wanted to come to Wyoming, and had agreed to her father’s suggestion merely to alleviate his concern for her. She had caused him terrible worries in the past year and had decided that a trip to Wyoming was a very small sacrifice for her to make, if it made her dad feel better.
Now, seeing the area for herself, through adult eyes, she realized there was no sacrifice involved. Who would not appreciate the vastness of uncluttered valleys and the grandeur of distant mountains, such as she was viewing? Small wonder that her father had become excited whenever he’d planned a trip to the ranch.
The pilot touched her arm to get her attention. “Your destination is just ahead,” he told her. “We’ll be landing in that field to the right of the house.” The copter began descending.
Carly found the spot the pilot had indicated and the corners of her lips tipped into a little half smile when she found herself nostalgically remembering the large two-story house, with its wraparound porch, and the numerous old shade trees in the yard. Attempting to absorb everything at once, her gaze moved to the barns, sheds and corrals. The lower the copter dropped, the more details she could see.
Then, movement farther out caught her eye, and she spotted two men on horseback, riding hard it seemed, trailing some distance behind a third horse. Were the men trying to catch the riderless horse? For some reason, Carly wanted to know what was happening.
“Could you get closer to those three horses?” she asked the pilot.
“Sure, no problem,” he told her.
The helicopter swung to the right and dropped lower, until it was just above the treetops. Carly could see the two riders look up and knew that the copter had startled them. At almost the same moment she got an unobstructed view of the third horse, the one without a rider.
“Oh, he’s magnificent,” she whispered in awe. The horse was black as coal, and his hide glistened with perspiration in the waning afternoon light. Why on earth were those two men running him so hard? Had he escaped a stall or corral? “What do you think is going on?” she asked the pilot.
“Looks like the men on horseback are trying to rope the third horse. They’re both carrying ropes.”
“Oh, yes, I see that now.” The black horse suddenly disappeared in a heavy stand of timber, and a minute later so did the two men and their mounts. Carly felt a pang of disappointment. She would have liked very much to see the outcome of that chase.
“Okay if we land now?” the pilot asked.
“Yes, of course. Thanks for the detour.”
“No problem at
