Big Sky Standoff

Chapter Six
“You all right?” Dillon asked as Jack came out of the sheriff’s office.
“Fine,” she said, whipping past him and heading for the truck.
He followed, thinking about what he’d seen in there. Definitely tension between the lawman and Jack. Dillon had never liked that redneck son of a bitch, McCray. He’d seen plenty of guys like him at prison. What he’d witnessed in the office hadn’t made Dillon dislike him any less.
In fact, it had been all he could do not to punch the man. But if Dillon had learned anything it was that you didn’t punch out a sheriff. Especially when you had just gotten a prerelease from prison and were treading on thin ice as it was.
Jack started the pickup as Dillon slid in and slammed the door. She seemed anxious to get out of town. He knew that feeling.
“So what did the bastard do to you?”
She jerked her head around to look at him and almost ran into the car in front of them.
He saw the answer in her expression and swore. “McCray. Oh man.” Dillon had hoped the animosity between them just had to do with work, but he’d known better. He just hadn’t wanted to believe she’d get involved with Claude McCray, and said as much.
“Don’t,” she warned as she gripped the wheel. The light changed and she got the pickup going again. “You and I aren’t getting into this discussion.”
He shook his head. “I’ve made some big mistakes in my life, but Claude McCray?”
She slammed on the brakes so hard the seat belt cut into him. “I will not have this discussion with you,” she said, biting off each word. The driver behind them laid on his horn. Jack didn’t seem to notice. She was clasping the wheel so tightly her knuckles were white, her eyes straight ahead, as if she couldn’t look at him.
“Okay, okay,” Dillon said, realizing this had to be that big regret he’d sensed in her. Jack’s big mistake.
It was so unlike her. She had more sense than to get involved with McCray. Something must have caused it. “When was it?”
“I just said—”
He swore as he remembered something he’d overheard while in the county jail. “You were seeing him when you were chasing me.”
She groaned and got the pickup going again. “Could we please drop this? Can’t you just sit over there and laugh smugly under your breath so I don’t have to hear it?”
She still hadn’t looked at him.
He reached over and touched her arm. Her gaze shifted to him slowly, reluctantly. He looked into her eyes and saw a pain he couldn’t comprehend. No way had McCray broken it off between them. No, from the way the sheriff had been acting, Jack had dumped him.
So what was with this heartache Dillon saw in her eyes?

TOM ROBINSON’S RANCH house was at the end of a narrow, deeply rutted road. The ranch was small, a wedge of land caught between Waters’s huge spread and Reda Harper’s much less extensive one.
The ride north had been pure hell. Though Dillon finally shut up about her and Sheriff McCray, Jack knew he was sitting over there making sport of her entire affair. She hated to think what was going through his mind.
After a few miles, she stole a glance at him. He had his hat down over his eyes, his long legs sprawled out, his hands resting in his lap. To all appearances, he seemed to be sleeping.
Right. He was over there chortling to himself, pleased that he’d stirred her up again. Worse, that he now had something on her. The man was impossible.
She would never figure him out. Earlier, when he’d forced her to look at him, she’d thought she’d seen compassion in his eyes, maybe even understanding.
But how could he understand? She didn’t herself.
Dillon Savage was like no man she’d ever known. When she’d been chasing him before, she’d been shocked to learn that he didn’t fit any profile, let alone that of a cattle rustler. For starters, he was university educated, with degrees in engineering, business and psychology, and he’d graduated at the top of his class.
If that wasn’t enough, he’d inherited a bundle right before he started rustling cattle. He had no reason to commit the crime. Except, she suspected, to flaunt the law.
Dillon stirred as she pulled into Tom Robinson’s yard. She felt the gold good-luck coin in her pocket. She’d almost forgotten that she’d stuck it there, she’d been so upset about McCray—and Dillon.
She knew it might not be a clue. Anyone could have dropped it there at any time. While the coin did look old, that didn’t mean it was. Nor would she put it past Claude McCray to lie about where he’d found it, just to throw her off track. Worse, she suspected it might be fairly common, even something given out by casinos, since Montana had legalized gambling.
If it had belonged to one of the rustlers, any fingerprints on it had been destroyed with McCray handling it.
She sighed and reached into her pocket for the coin, thinking about what McCray had said about luck changing for the person who’d been carrying it.
“I need to ask you something,” she said, turning to Dillon. “I need you to tell me the truth.”
He nodded and grinned. “Did I tell you I never lie?”
“Right.”
Dillon looked at the hand she held toward him, her fingers clasped around something he couldn’t see, her eyes intent on his face.
He felt his stomach clench as she slowly uncurled her fingers. He had no idea what she was going to show him. And even though he suspected it wasn’t going to be good, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw nestled in her palm.
“You recognize it!” she accused, wrapping her fingers back around it as if she wanted to hit him with her fist. “So help me, if you deny it—”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it before. Or at least one like it.”
She was staring at him as if she was surprised he’d actually admitted it. “Who does it belong to?”
“I said I’d seen one like it, I didn’t say—”
“Don’t,” she snapped, scowling at him.
“Easy,” he said, holding up his hands. “A friend of mine used to have one like it, okay? He carried it around for luck. But he’s dead.”
“And you don’t know what happened to his?”
Dillon couldn’t very well miss her sarcasm. “May I look at it?”
She reluctantly opened her hand, as if she thought he might grab it and run.
He plucked the good-luck coin from her warm palm, accidentally brushing his fingertips across her skin, and saw her shudder. But his attention was on the coin as he turned it in his fingers. The small marks were right where he knew they would be, leaving no doubt. His heart began to pound.
“Where did you say you got this?” he asked as he handed it back.
Her gaze burned into him. “I didn’t.”
Dillon could only assume that, since she’d gone to the sheriff about Tom Robinson, McCray had given it to her. Which had to mean that she suspected one of the rustlers who’d attacked Tom had dropped it.
“So who was the deceased friend of yours who had one like it?” she asked, clearly not believing him.
“Halsey Waters. And as for what happened to his coin,” Dillon said, “I personally put it in his suit pocket at his funeral.”
“Halsey Waters? Shade’s oldest son?”
“That’s the one.” Out of the corner of his eye, Dillon saw the ranch house door open and a stocky cowboy step out. Arlen Dubois.
It was turning out to be like old home week, Dillon thought. All the old gang was back in central Montana. Just as they had been for Halsey Waters’s funeral.

ARLEN DUBOIS WAS all cowboy, long and lanky, legs bowed, boots run-down, jeans worn and dirty. He invited them into the house, explaining that he was looking after everything with Tom in the hospital.
Jacklyn watched Arlen take off his hat and nervously rake a hand through short blond curls. His skin was white and lightly freckled where the hat had protected it from the sun. The rest of his face was sunburned red.
He looked from Jacklyn to Dillon and quickly back again. “I’d offer you something to drink…”
“We’re fine,” Jacklyn said, noticing how uncomfortable the cowboy was in the presence of his old friend. Arlen had a slight lisp, buckteeth and a broad open face. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
He shifted on his feet. “Okay.”
“Do you mind if we sit down?” she asked.
Arlen got all flustered, but waved them toward chairs in the small living room. Jacklyn noticed that the fabric was threadbare, and doubted the furnishings had been replaced in Tom’s lifetime.
Arlen turned his hat in his hands as he sat on the edge of one of the chairs.
“You work for Tom Robinson?” she asked.
“Yep, but you already know that. If you think I had anything to do with what happened to Tom—”
“How long have you worked for Mr. Robinson?”
Arlen gave that some thought, scraping at a dirty spot on his hat as he did. “About four years,” he said, without looking up. The same amount of time Dillon Savage had been behind bars.
“You and Mr. Savage here have been friends for a long time, right?”
Arlen started. “What does that have to do with this? If you think I ever stole cattle with him—”
“I was just asking if you were friends.”
Arlen shrugged, avoiding Dillon’s gaze. “We knew each other.”
Yeah, she would just bet. She’d long suspected Dillon hadn’t done the rustling alone. He would have needed help. But would he have involved a man like Arlen Dubois? Word at the bar was that Dubois tended to brag when he had a few drinks in him, although few people believed even half of what he said.
“Have you seen anyone suspicious around the ranch? Before Tom was attacked?” she asked, knowing that most of her questions were a waste of time. She had just wanted to see Arlen and Dillon together.
Dillon seemed cool as a cucumber, like a man who had nothing to hide.
“Nothin’ suspicious,” Arlen said, with a shake of his head.
“You know of anyone who had a grudge against Tom?”
The cowboy shook his head again. “Tom was likable enough.”
Dillon was studying Arlen, and making him even more nervous. Maybe she should have left him in the truck.
“If you think of anything…”
Arlen looked relieved. “Sure,” he said, and rose from his chair. “You ready to ride out to where I found Tom?”
Jacklyn nodded. “One more thing,” she said as she stood and reached into her pocket. “Ever seen this before?”
Arlen reacted as if she’d held out a rattlesnake. His gaze shot to Dillon’s, then back to the coin. “I might have seen one like it once.”
“Where was that?” she asked.
“I can’t really recall.”
Both of Arlen’s responses were lies.
“Mr. Savage, would you mind waiting for me in the pickup?” she asked.
“Not at all, Ms. Wilde.”
She ground her teeth as she waited for him to close the front door behind him. “Anything you want to tell me, Arlen?”
“About what?” he asked, looking scared.
“Did you happen to be at Halsey Waters’s funeral?”
All the color left his face. “What does that have to do with—”
“Yes or no? Or can’t you remember that, either?”
He had the good grace to flush. “I was there, just like all his other friends.”
She detected something odd in his tone. Today was the first time she’d heard anything about Halsey Waters. But then, she wasn’t from this part of Montana. “How did Halsey die?”
Arlen looked down at his boots. “He was bucked off a wild horse. Broke his neck.”

ALL THE OLD DEMONS that had haunted him came back with a vengeance as Dillon rode out with Arlen and Jacklyn, across rolling hills dotted with cattle and sagebrush. He breathed in the familiar scents as if to punish himself. Or remind himself that even four years in prison couldn’t change a man enough to forget his first love. Or his worst enemy.
The air smelled so good it made him ache. This had once been his country. He knew it even better than the man who owned it.
They followed the fence line as it twisted alongside the creek, the bottomlands thick with chokecherry, willow and dogwood. Jacklyn slowed her horse, waiting for him.
The memories were so sharp and painful he had to look away for fear she would see that this was killing him.
Or worse, that she might glimpse the desire for vengeance burning in his eyes.
“I’ve always wanted to ask you,” she said conversationally. Arlen was riding ahead of them, out of earshot. “Why three university degrees?”
Dillon pretended to give her question some thought, although he doubted that’s what she’d been thinking about. She’d made it clear back at the ranch house that she thought he and Arlen used to rustle cattle together. It hadn’t helped that Arlen had lied through his teeth about the good-luck coin.
Shoving back his hat, Dillon shrugged and said, “I was a rancher’s son. You know how, at that age, you’re so full of yourself. I thought the last thing I wanted to do was ranch. I wanted a job where I got to wear something other than jeans and boots, have an office with a window, make lots of money.”
She glanced over at him, as if wondering if he was serious. “You know, I suspect you often tell people what you think they want to hear.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Nope, that’s the real reason I got three degrees. I was covering my bets.”
She cut her eyes to him as she rode alongside him, their legs almost touching. “Okay, I get the engineering and business degrees. But psychology?”
He wondered what she was really asking. “I’m fascinated by people and what makes them tick. Like you,” he said, smiling at her. “You’re a mystery to me.”
“Let’s not go there.”
“What if I can’t help myself?”
“Mr. Savage—”
He laughed. “Maybe before this is over I’ll get a glimpse of the real Jack Wilde,” he said, her gaze heating him more than the sun beating down from overhead.
He could see that she wished she hadn’t started this conversation when she urged her horse forward, trotting off after Arlen Dubois.
As Dillon stared after her retreating backside, he suspected he and the real Jacklyn Wilde were more alike than she ever wanted to admit—and he said as much when he caught up to her.

JACKLYN PRETENDED NOT TO hear him. His voice had dropped to a low murmur that felt like a whisper across her skin. It vibrated in her chest, making her nipples tighten and warmth rush through her, straight to her center.
Dillon chuckled, as if suspecting only too well what his words did to her.
She cursed her foolishness. She should have known better than to try to egg Dillon Savage on. He was much better at playing head games than she was.
In front of her, Arlen brought his horse up short. She did the same when she noticed the cut barbed wire fence. Dismounting, she handed the cowboy her reins and walked across the soft earth toward the gap.
There was one set of horseshoe tracks in the dirt on the other side of the cut fence, a half-dozen on this side, obliterating Tom’s horse’s prints. Sheriff McCray and his men. She could see where they had ridden all over, trampling any evidence.
But she no longer thought McCray had planted the lucky gold coin. Not after both Dillon’s and Arlen’s reactions. She just didn’t know what a coin belonging to the deceased Halsey Waters had to do with this ring of rustlers. But she suspected Dillon and Arlen did.
Bending down, she noted that there was nothing unique about the trespasser’s horse’s prints. She could see where Tom had followed the man toward the creek bottom.
Arlen Dubois had tracked Tom and found him. At least that was the cowboy’s story. Unfortunately, McCray and his men had destroyed any evidence to prove it.
She swung back into her saddle. “Show me where you found Tom,” she said to Arlen. Turning, she looked back at Dillon. He seemed lost in thought, frowning down at the cut barbed wire.
“Something troubling you?” she asked him.
He seemed to come out of his daze, putting a smile on his face to cover whatever had been bothering him. If he was the leader of the rustlers, then wouldn’t he feel something for a man who might die because of him and his partners in crime?
She followed the trampled tracks in the dust, feeling the hot sun overhead. It wasn’t until she reached the trees and started up the hillside that she turned, and wasn’t surprised to see Arlen and Dillon sitting astride their horses, engaged in what appeared to be a very serious conversation below her.
At the top of the ridge, she found bloodstained earth and scuffed tracks—dozens of boot prints. There was no way to distinguish the trespasser’s. Had that been Sheriff McCray’s intent? To destroy the evidence? Her one chance to maybe find out who the rustlers were? McCray would do it out of spite.
But there was another explanation, she realized. McCray might be covering for someone. Or even involved…
She couldn’t imagine any reason Claude McCray would get involved in rustling. But then, she wasn’t the best judge of character when it came to men, she admitted as she looked down the slope to where Dillon and Arlen were waiting.
By circling the area, she found the trespasser’s tracks, and followed them to where he’d made a second cut in the barbed wire to let himself and his horse onto state grazing land.
Then she headed back to where she’d left the two men. As she approached, she noticed that Dillon had ridden over to a lone tree and was lounging under it, chewing on a piece of dried grass, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his hat tilted down, but his eyes on her. He couldn’t have looked more relaxed. Or more sexy. She couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been talking about with Arlen.
Back at the ranch, she let Dillon unsaddle their horses while she went out to the barn, where Arlen was putting his own horse and tack away. He seemed surprised to see her, obviously hoping that she’d already left.
“Thanks for your help today,” she said, wondering what he would do for a job if Tom Robinson didn’t make it. “Looks like you could use a new pair of boots.”
Arlen looked down in surprise. “These are my lucky boots,” he said bashfully. He lifted one leg to touch the worn leather, and Jack saw how the sole was worn evenly across the bottom.
Lucky boots. Good-luck coin. Cowboys were a superstitious bunch. “You’ll be walking on your socks pretty soon,” she said. “I saw you talking to Dillon. Mind telling me what you two were chatting about?”
Arlen gave a lazy shrug. “Nothin’ in particular. Just talking about prison and Tom and—” he dropped his gaze “—you. Don’t mean to tell you your business, but if I were you, I’d be real careful around him. When he’s smiling is when he’s the most dangerous.”

DILLON WATCHED JACK COME out of the barn, and knew Arlen had said something to upset her.
Dillon had loaded the horses into the trailer and was leaning against the side, waiting for her in the shade. He hadn’t been able to get Halsey’s good-luck coin off his mind.
“Get what you needed?” he asked as Jack walked past him to climb behind the wheel.
He opened his door and slid in.
“I saw you and Arlen talking. Looked pretty serious,” she said, without reaching to start the truck.
“Think we were plotting something?” He laughed.
“You said yourself that the rustlers might work for the ranchers they were stealing cattle from.”
Dillon let out a snort. “Arlen? That cowboy can’t keep his mouth shut. If he was riding with the gang, you’d have already caught them. The guy is a dim bulb.”
Maybe. Or maybe that’s what Dillon wanted her to believe. She looked back at Arlen. He was standing in the shade of the barn, watching them.
Dillon sighed. “I was asking him what he was going to do now. He said even if Tom regains consciousness, his injuries are such that he won’t be running the ranch anymore. Waters has offered Arlen a job.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jacklyn asked, as she heard Dillon curse under his breath.
“Arlen? He’s worthless. Tom just kept him on because no one else would hire him. The only reason Waters would make the offer is so Arlen keeps him informed on everything that’s going on with Tom and the ranch.” At her confused look, Dillon added, “Waters has been trying to buy the Robinson ranch for years.”
“Tom is in no condition to sell his ranch—”
“Tom has a niece back East, his only living relative. In his will, apparently he set it up so if anything happened to him and he couldn’t run the place or he died….”
“You think she’ll sell to Shade Waters.”
“Waters will make sure she does.”
Jacklyn could understand how Shade might want Tom Robinson’s ranch. With it, he would own all the way to the Missouri on this side of the Judith River. The Robinson spread had been the only thing standing in his way.