Smoketree

CHAPTER Ten



It is a hard thing to realize someone might have reason to shoot at you; it is even harder to realize it has happened. But it took little debate with my emotions, because my intellect recognized the truth.

Harper might have cut the fence himself, earlier, providing a reason for his retreat into the pines. He had carefully ordered me to a specific spot in the trail. The stranger had been there, waiting to give me a scare, one designed to get me off-guard, vulnerable to a rifle shot that would panic my horse into a dangerous plunge down the mountain. He had even chosen the horse.

But it was all so damned impossible.

A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. Slowly I dragged myself from the bed, tightened the belt of my terry-cloth robe and moved to the door. The hot shower had worked some of the soreness from my body, but I was stiff, bruised and scraped in dozens of places.

I opened the door a crack, hoping to discourage the unwanted visitor.

“Kelly,” said Brandon quietly.

I swung the door wider. It was dark now, past dinner—which I had skipped—and the illumination from the light beside my door splashed across his face and brought his gray eyes into sharp, welcome relief.

“I wanted to check on you, ” he said. “The way you took off after you saw the horse—”

“I know.” I interrupted, ducking the issue. I gestured him inside and stepped out of his way. “It was rude of me, but I had to get away. There were too many things I wanted to think about. Plus I needed a shower.” I ran a hand through my damp hair as Brandon entered.

I closed the door tightly as he took a seat in the padded leather armchair. I stayed where I was, leaning against the door, and waited.

“You are all right.” It was half-question, half-observation.

“I’m fine. Stiff and sore, but generally okay. And scared.” He looked around the cabin slowly, as if searching for something. He found it. My bags, set out in the middle of the floor, open and empty, but obviously waiting for something.

Brandon’s eyes came back to me. “You’re leaving.”

“I think it might be a good idea.”

“It was an accident,” he said quietly. “I don’t mean to downplay what happened—I’m sure it was very frightening—but it isn’t reason enough to leave.”

I looked at him levelly. “Someone took a shot at me today.” He stood up. He walked across the room and put both hands on my arms, near the shoulders, and slowly walked me to the bed, where he sat me down. I felt like a puppet in his hands, arms and legs awry and joints too stiff to move without help. But I sat down as he sat me down, and looked up into his kind face.

“I know,” he said. “I’m not dismissing the possibility, or the seriousness. Only the intent.”

“Brandon, if you had been in my place—”

“If I had been in your place, I’d have been scared too, and angry. I’d want to find the man responsible. But it doesn’t mean I’d jump to the conclusion that I was the target.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You were on horseback. You presented an excellent target. Anyone who is any sort of marksman at all can hit that big a target, especially with a rifle.”

“What are you saying?” It came out curtly, and yet I meant it.

“It’s an easy shot, Kelly,” he said gently. “Had this person been shooting at you, you’d very likely be dead.”

“So?”

“So.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets. “Look, you were the one who gave me that song-and-dance about someone trying to force Nathan’s hand to sell Smoketree. You even said it might be that wrangler. Maybe it is.”

I didn’t like hearing my fears confirmed. If Brandon believed Harper was responsible, it made it all the more dangerous. Especially for me. After all, I was the one who had voiced my suspicions.

“You thought it was all a story then, without any foundation.”

“Sure. Originally. It sounded a little far-fetched to me.” He smiled. “Well, maybe you weren’t so far off-base. There have been a string of incidents here, and each one has resulted in damage to the ranch. The barn burned down. That horse was turned loose. Now the guests are being scared off. Without guests, Smoketree is nowhere. It becomes a white elephant. So, Nathan sells it. It’s probably exactly what these land developers want.”

“And Harper’s behind it…”

He shrugged. “Could be. Seems logical. I don’t know. But he’d stand to make a lot of money if the place were sold. Money has been known to make people do strange things.” He grinned. “The root of all evil, and all that.”

I chewed at a ragged thumbnail. “So why don’t you leave?” I asked around the nail. “Why would you stay if that’s what’s going on?”

He shrugged again, one hand clinking the loose change in his pocket. “Nobody’s bothered me.”

“I’m scared, Brandon.”

“I don’t blame you.” His face softened. “Look, it was coincidence. Probably whoever it was with that rifle would have taken a shot at anyone. It just happened to be you.”

“Harper had that rifle,” I declared.

Brandon’s face tightened. "All right. I’ll stop avoiding the subject and name names. Harper had a rifle, and I’m willing to bet it was a bullet from his gun that hit the horse. The horse, Kelly. Not you.”

“I could have been killed!” I said angrily.

“Then what do you want me to do? Accuse him to his face?”

I looked away from him. “No, I suppose not. It wouldn’t do much good. Besides, there’s no proof.”

“I’m glad you noticed.” Brandon sighed and sat down on the bed next to me. “I know,” he said. “You’re scared. Like I said, I don’t blame you. Maybe you really should go, if it would make you feel better, but I don’t want you to. I’m being horribly selfish, but I want you to stay here for me.”

I touched Brandon’s leg. “Thank you. But you know—”

“I know. No strings. I just want you to stay.”

I smiled at his earnestness. “If you’ll be my bodyguard.”

“They’d have to pry me away. ” He put a finger on my bottom lip, gently touching the swollen cut, and carefully kissed me beside it. “Stop worrying about this dude ranch, Kelly… it isn’t your concern.”

I wanted to agree. I did agree. And yet I knew I wouldn’t stop.

Brandon rose. For a moment he held my right hand locked in his, fingers interlaced. I nodded, and he let me go.



The Olivers were missing at breakfast. Brandon told me they had gone into Flagstaff; John to conduct some long-distance business and Lenore for some shopping. When I pointed out Smoketree was not so backward as to have no phone service, Brandon laughed and said Newton’s business required privacy.

“What does he do again?” I asked over a forkful of scrambled eggs.

“Runs my dad’s munitions plant in Nevada.”

“Guns and bombs and missiles?”

“Plus a lot of other things.” Brandon reached for the pancake syrup. “I’m not sure about all his responsibilities, but he keeps himself pretty busy.”

“What are you two up to? You never did say.”

He splashed the syrup over the stack of pancakes. "Oh, just some deals we’ve talked about before.”

I grinned. “Ah hah, up to something sneaky, are you?”

He nodded, mouth full of pancakes. He tried to maintain a suitably serious expression, but the glint in his eyes gave the game away. “We’re going to blow up the Kremlin,” he admitted.

“No doubt some portion of the great American public will thank you for it.” I dug into my hash browns with relish.

“There’s always somebody somewhere who will approve of what’s done, no matter how foolish it appears,” Brandon observed. “If I’ve learned nothing else about human nature, it’s that some people are just too idealistic for their own good.”

Francesca, in the process of joining us at the table, raised her brows in Brandon’s direction. “Is that true, Brandon? Do you think?”

He nodded. “I know. How do you think the world got into such a mess in the first place? Idealism can pervert the mind.”

I stared at him. “Good heavens, I’ve never heard you talk this way before!”

“Because you never gave me the chance to.” He grinned. “Tucker had your undivided attention.”

Francesca set her plate down and seated herself next to me. “Still, I think there is room for idealism,” she said lightly. “It would be so boring without it.”

“True,” Brandon admitted. His attention turned then from us to the latest arrival, Patrick Rafferty. I nearly dropped my fork as the man sat down next to Brandon.

For a moment I stared at him, completely taken aback by his sudden voluntary sociability. Then, as I noted how his eyes remained focused on Francesca, I realized why. Well, who wouldn’t be smitten? She was gorgeous.

Cass was present also, at the head of the table, but Harper was not in sight. I wondered if he was avoiding me, but thought it unlikely. He hadn’t displayed much guilt before; I doubted he would start now. But I wondered if he would say anything at all about the incident, even if only to protest his innocence.

Footsteps interrupted the meal as it neared a finish and I thought the wrangler had decided to brave the climate after all. But it wasn’t Harper. It was Nathan, and the expression that came over Cass’s face was startling and frightening.

“Uncle Nathan—”

The urgency in her voice, though muted, sliced through the cursory table conversation like a machete. Her fork clattered to her plate and her eyes dilated. She placed both hands flat against the table and pushed to her feet.

Elliot broke off his comments to Francesca, who stared at Cass as the girl moved to her uncle. Brandon turned to look and so did I.

Nathan Reynolds had come into the room softly, silently, as if attempting to avoid notice. He stood stiffly in the center of the room, clutching his hat in both hands as he stared blankly at us all. His face was grayish, aged and apprehensive. He looked very ill.

Cass went directly to him, asking him a question no one else could hear. Nathan acted as if he didn’t hear her either, or couldn’t. She placed both hands on an arm and tugged at it, but he shook his head stolidly and said nothing.

Nathan shifted the hat around and around in his hands, creasing it, ruining the broad brim. His hearty, warm manner and air of relaxation were gone.

He swung his head back and forth like an injured animal as Cass asked him questions. No answer was forthcoming. Finally she managed to urge him toward the private quarters, speaking in a calming manner as one does to a sickly child. She threw a strained look at me over a shoulder.

“Get Harper.”

I opened my mouth to protest, wanting nothing to do with him, but I stopped it at once. Nathan needed help. I was up and moving before anyone else could say a word, and I went through the Lodge at a run. I heard the angry slap of the screen door as I clattered down the porch steps.

I didn’t know where he was. I stopped dead at the foot of the steps, considering a shout to determine his whereabouts, but then I saw him. He was in front of the tack room with a horse tied to the hitch rail, and he was in the process of shoeing the animal.

I ran. He did not see me coming because he was bent over the horse’s right hind leg, back to me as he compared the shape of the shoe to the shape of the hoof. Several nails were clenched between his teeth.

“Harper,” I said.

He turned his head. For a moment he made no further movement, then he shook his head once and looked back at the hoof and shoe. “Figured you’d be down to complain about yesterday.” The words were distorted by the nails, but the tone was clear enough.

“It’s Nathan,” I said, and saw a miraculous transformation.

He spread his legs, let the hoof drop down, threw the shoe toward the tack room and pulled the nails from his mouth, shedding them across the ground. He didn’t even bother to grab his hat, which hung on the end of the rail. He just ran. So did I.

Cass was with her uncle in a large bedroom. She had him seated on the edge of a giant brass bed. He continued to clutch the hat, twisting the brim into a caricature of a proper cowboy hat, and his shoulders were slumped. His grayish pallor had improved somewhat, but he was still far from recovered. I doubted he was able to distinguish the sense in Cass’s words.

Harper went down on one knee before the man. “What is it? I can help. Just tell me what it is.”

Nathan shook his head, still swinging it slowly from side to side in denial of himself more than anything else.

Harper reached out and placed a firm brown hand on Nathan’s knee. “Talk to me, Nathan. ”

Nathan took a shuddering breath and abruptly dropped the hat. Harper picked it up, brushed it off and returned it to the searching hands. He asked again, still as gently, but with a quiet force of command that at last drew an answer.

Nathan sighed. “It’s gone. All of it. Gone. There just isn’t any more.”

“What’s gone?” Harper asked.

Life welled back into Nathan’s eyes as he peered at the kneeling wrangler before him. “There isn’t any more. Nothing left. Everything—gone.” The breath was heavy and the exhalation loud. “All the money…”

I thought at once of Smoketree. Of the accidents. Of the land developers who stood to make such a profit. And Harper. I looked at him, but his face was perfectly blank.

He turned toward me. “There’s a list of emergency numbers by the phone. On it is a Dr. Willis. Call him.”

Brandon met me as I came out of the private quarters and went directly to the phone. I told him what I could as I dialed the number, then spoke to a nurse who said the doctor would be on his way.

I hung up. “A doctor who still makes house calls,” I said to Brandon in disbelief.

He smiled. “Must be an idealistic man.”

I sighed and tucked my hair behind my ears. “Maybe you’d better tell everyone what’s going on. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do, except stay out of the way. But I’m sure Nathan doesn’t want pity or sympathy right now.”

“I’ll clear them out,” he promised, and went to do just that.



A few hours later Cass came out on the porch. I sat in the swing, contemplating the charred skeleton of the barn. She stared at it too, but I doubted she saw much. Rigid fingers combed her hair out of her face, and then she glanced down at me. “Thanks for calling the doctor.”

“How is Nathan?”

“Sleeping, for now. Dr. Willis gave him something.” She hooked one boot around the iron frame of the orange sling chair and dragged it over. She dropped into it heavily. “I guess he’ll be okay in a couple of days. But he hates being sick.”

“Is he sick? Or is it something else?”

She tilted her head back, eyes closed. The strain leached her young face of its vitality and put circles beneath her eyes. “I guess it was mostly the pressure, and the shock. You know what’s been going on around here. The news about the money really shook him up. He’s got a heart problem—nothing really serious, but he’s not young anymore. The doctor called it a spasm, but he wants Uncle Nathan in for a complete workup. All those expensive tests. Electro-this, echo-that.” She shook her head and rubbed at the lines in her brow.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what was it that went so bad?”

“From what Harper got out of him, he invested a lot of money—for him—in a land deal. Some planned community south of here, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. He thought it couldn’t miss. And, of course, it did. They took the money and ran. ”

“How far and how fast?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? They’re just gone, and so’s all the money. He’s not alone, of course, but that doesn’t help him. Or Smoketree.”

I phrased my next question carefully. “If he lost the ranch, what would you do?”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “Me, I’m bound for the circuit. And school, eventually. Smoketree is home, and I’d hate to leave it, but I can’t live my whole life here.”

“What would Harper do?”

“Oh, him. He’d find something. He could get another wrangling job somewhere, even if it isn’t what he wants to do with his life. Or he could turn trainer. He’s a darn good roper as well as a roughstock rider. I imagine he’d find something to do. But I feel sorry for him.”

“Sorry for him? Why?”

“Because rodeo is a disease,” she said flatly. “Once it’s in your blood, it’s there forever. When you’re as good as he was—God, was he good!—everything else is in black and white. Nothing will ever be the same for him.”

“Smoketree earns him a living,” I said neutrally.

She frowned, annoyed, as if she couldn’t comprehend my attitude. “No, no, you don’t understand.” She sat upright in the chair. “Smoketree is special to him, yes—he practically grew up here—but all he ever wanted was to go on the circuit. Now me, I know I can’t do it forever. I would like to be a vet someday. So, after a few years on the circuit, I’ll go on to school. But for him, you see, things are a whole lot different.” She hesitated. “If you knew what happened—”

“You mean the injuries and the ex-wife?”

I saw the change in her at once. She drew back a little, staring at me as if she couldn’t believe what she had heard, and her color came and went. Her mouth tightened. I was looking, again, into the face of jealousy.

“Cass—” I began.

“If he talked about her to you—”

“We were talking about losses,” I said firmly, because I chose not to dismiss her feelings and friendship so easily. “My loss, and then he told me his. That’s why.” I shook my head. “Don’t imagine there’s anything between us. There isn’t.”

But there was, and I knew it. The man had taken a shot at me, and then he had kissed me.

Cass put her face in her hands. “Oh God, I’m just so tired of it all. I lived through it when Harper and Abby broke up… talk about hard.” She sighed and met my eyes. “I’ve known him all my life, and ever since I can remember, I’ve had a crush on him. When he met Abby, I hated her.” She shrugged, smiling ruefully. “I was so jealous, even as a little kid. Heck, I was only six when he married her. So my whole life I competed with her, even if Harper didn’t see it.” Cass sighed and kicked one boot heel against the wooden porch. “Abby saw it. But she said there was no competition.” She faded into pensive silence for a moment. “And then he came back to Smoketree to heal up after the broken back, and there was no more rodeo for him. And no more Harper Young, All-Around World Champion Cowboy, for her.”

I looked at her young, impressionable face, full of promise and heartache and frustration—knowing she would face even more of it. “They were married a while. I doubt the only reason for the breakup was his leaving rodeo.”

“Ten years,” she said reflectively. “Well, I expect you’re right. But the rodeo circuit’s hard on any marriage, especially if only one of you competes.” She shook her head. “Abby wasn’t into horses. She was into cowboys. Winning cowboys.” Cass sighed. “I thought, maybe, I’d have a chance after they broke up. I mean, I’m not a kid anymore. Even if Harper doesn’t see it.” She sighed. “But I guess not.”

“No kids?” I asked quietly.

“Abby and Harper? Yeah, they had a little girl. Kerry. But Abby got custody. And since she’s on the circuit with her new husband, Harper doesn’t get to see much of the kid.” Cass shook her head. “It eats him alive, too.”

I sat very still in the swing. “This new husband of Abby’s—does he make a good living?”

Cass smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it. “She traded the former World Champion in for the new one.”

“And Kerry?”

“She’s only three,” Cass said quietly. “She’s got a new daddy, now—and her mama likes it that way.” She sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “I heard her tell him once, before she left, that it didn’t matter so much if he couldn’t give her the kind of life she wanted, that she’d make out. But she wasn’t about to let her little girl grow up without the sort of things she deserved.”

“Money,” I said.

“Money,” Cass agreed. “Abby raided their joint account, got even more through the courts, then married a guy making better than two hundred grand a year, and that’s not counting endorsements. Harper couldn’t compete with that. I don’t think he’d want to, for Abby—but he just might for Kerry.” There it was. Motive. The sort of motive that could drive even a man with integrity into extortion, sabotage, scare tactics. And I didn’t really blame him.

“Smoketree’s worth a lot of money,” I said quietly.

Cass looked at me oddly a moment. “Of course it is, or those land developers wouldn’t be after it. I mean, look at the location. There’s Snow Crest just over the hill, plus all this land smack in the middle of government acreage. Condominiums would go for big bucks. Someone would stand to make a lot of money.”

“So would Nathan, if he sold.” And Harper. But I didn’t say it.

“Of course,” she agreed. “I don’t doubt we’re talking millions, with the price of land these days.”

Millions. Enough to buy time with a little girl?

Maybe. And it made it all the sadder.