Young Logan frowned. 'Dad said for me not to let you ride anywhere alone.'
'But I won't be alone,' Beth said, laughing. 'I'm sure Mr. Helm will take very good care of me.'
I said, 'Stick that carbine back in the scabbard, and I'll do my best to protect her from rustlers and outlaws.'
The boy gave me a look that indicated he didn't think I was very funny. Then he turned on his heel, strode to the horse, rammed the Winchester into place, and came back leading the animal.
'We generally get on from the left, sir,' he said, straight-faced. 'It's just a local custom, but the horses are used to it.'
'Sure,' I said. 'That's a four-speed shift in my truck. Reverse, in case you should need it, is to the left and back. Think you can manage?'
We looked at each other coldly. I was born in Minnesota, but I came west to horse country at an early age. He'd probably been driving old Chevy trucks before he was old enough to smoke.
'I'll manage,' he said.
He turned and walked quickly to the pickup, kicked the starter, released the brake, and took off, throwing gravel from the rear wheels. I looked my new transportation over, and gave it a tentative pat on the nose. It didn't shy away or try to take my arm off, so I figured it was safe to climb aboard, and did so.
The stirrups were too short, and I'd forgotten about the Leica in my hip pocket, which didn't help me fit the saddle comfortably. Beth waited until I was mounted, wheeled her horse, and sent it up the hill with a rush. I gave my beast a couple of kicks and got it into motion, but she had to wait for me at the top.
'There's the ranch,' she said, pointing.
It was in the valley beyond, a rambling collection of peeled-log buildings with enough large windows to qualify as rustic modern. It looked like quite a spread, as we say out West.
'Do you live there all year?' I asked.
'Oh, no,' she said. 'We move into town winters to be near the children's schools. And Larry has a little place in Mexico, too, where we go sometimes… Follow me. We've got to head over this way to intercept the boy. Pete and I came straight down the mountain, but they'll be following the trail.'
She took it fast. Her cross-country riding had improved since I'd seen her last. Undoubtedly this was why she'd decided to bring me to the ranch on horseback, to show off her new skill. Besides, she'd probably guessed I hadn't been on a horse for a year, and a man who's limping and saddle-sore is kind of at a disadvantage in delicate personal negotiations demanding an air of ease and dignity. I don't mean she was a malicious person or a calculating one. After all, we'd known each other for a long time. She was entitled to her little joke.
She led me around the side of the mountain, and pulled up at last in a wooded hollow, through the center of which ran a well-used trail. I checked my horse beside her; and she turned to face me, flushed and breathless from the ride. I thought she looked very attractive, but then, I'd been prejudiced enough on the subject to marry her, once.
'They'll be coming along soon,' she said, 'if they haven't already passed. I told them to head straight for home. There's a man with them, of course, but they ride very well now, both of them.' She laughed. 'We've even had Betsy on a pony. She's crazy to come riding with us, but she's a little small yet. She's barely three, you know.'
'Yes,' I said dryly, 'I know. I happened to be present when she was born, if you'll remember. At least I was in the expectant papas' waiting room.'
She flushed slightly. 'Yes,' she said. 'Of course..
Well, we might as well get down and wait.' She hesitated. 'Besides… besides, there's something I have to tell you.'
I said, 'Yes, I got your note.' When she did not speak at once, I went on idly, 'I don't know as I have much faith in these rustlers of yours, Beth.'
She said quickly, 'Then you don't know much about modem ranching-'
'Oh, rustlers that slip in at night and make off with a beef now and then, sure. But not rustlers that cause your husband to give orders not to let you go riding in broad daylight without an armed escort. What's the trouble?'
She hesitated again. Her mount fidgeted, and she pulled it up sharply. 'Let's get down, shall we?' she said. 'I'm still not enough of a horsewoman to trust these animals completely.'
'Sure.'
I dismounted, and stepped forward to take her horse as she swung from the saddle. It was a funny damn experience, watching her. I mean, it had been a year, and I hadn't exactly spent it as a hermit. Whatever she'd meant to me once, I'd thought I was over it. But now, watching her drop lightly to the ground, I knew I should have stayed away.
She glanced at her watch, and looked up the trail. 'I didn't realize we'd taken so much time. They're probably halfway to the ranch by now. Well, we can wait a few minutes longer and make sure.'
Her voice was unnaturally level, but at least she had one. I wasn't quite sure how I'd sound if I tried to talk. I hadn't stayed away. I was here on a mountainside in Nevada, holding a couple of horses and watching her come forward-tallish, willowy, with big brown eyes and light brown hair under the big Stetson hat. She stopped in front of me.
I said, 'Mrs. Logan.'
My voice sounded about the way I'd expected it would. She glanced at me sharply. 'Matt-'
I said, 'It's a funny thing, Mrs. Logan, but you look just like a girl I used to know… a girl I used to know pretty well, as a matter of fact.'
'Matt,' she said. 'Please! I should never-'
'No,' I said. 'You most certainly shouldn't. But you did.'
I dropped the reins. If they were any kind of western horses, they ought to stand ground-hitched, and if they didn't, to hell with them. I reached out and took her by the shoulders, and she started to speak. She started to tell me not to touch her, but it would have sounded very corny, and she didn't say it. She started to tell me that she was happily married to a lovely guy named Logan, to whom she was deeply devoted, but she didn't say that, either.
It was all in her eyes, however, and I suppose I should have had the decency to leave her alone, but it had been a long year without her, and I didn't owe Logan a thing. All he'd ever done for me was marry my wife.
'Matt!' she whispered. 'Please, no-'
I didn't really draw her towards me. At least, if I did, there wasn't any great resistance to overcome. Then she was in my arms, her face upturned, and her big hat fell off to hang down her back by its braided cord.
She was no longer trying to hold me off, quite the contrary. There was a disturbing kind of desperation in the way she clung to me. It wasn't really flattering. I couldn't kid myself she was thinking of me as a lover she'd missed; it was more that I was something solid and familiar and reassuring in a troubled world, and I suppose I should have been a gentleman and offered her an absorbent shoulder and an attentive ear instead of kissing her hard.
This changed the whole nature of the operation, as I had hoped it would. I'll be a rock of refuge if I have to, but only if I have to. Suddenly I wasn't any longer, and we'd known each other much too long and much too well for it to end with a kiss-and that was the moment our two boys picked to come charging down the hill, accompanied by a middle-aged cowboy who should have known better than to run a horse like that. Beth and I had barely time to jump apart and put respectable looks on our faces before they all raced into sight.
Chapter Four
LATER, Beth and I rode sedately down the trail while the boys and their escort ranged ahead. I noted that the man's horse, like the one I was riding, carried a lever-action.30-30 on the saddle.
My reunion with my sons had been undramatic. Matthew, age eight, had said 'Hi, Daddy,' and Warren, age six, had said 'Hi, Daddy,' and they'd both sat there uncomfortably on their ponies wondering if I'd brought them any presents from wherever I'd been, but too polite to ask. Then they'd ridden off, whooping. An extra daddy or two means very little, at that age, when you have a horse to ride.
Presently I heard a small sound from Beth. I glanced at her suspiciously. She kept her face averted as we rode along; then she looked at me quickly, and I saw that she was trying very hard to keep from laughing.
'Yeah, funny,' I said, and grinned.
I mean, we'd been through it all before. It wasn't the first passionate moment in our lives that had been interrupted in this manner-in fact, I sometimes used to wonder how any parents ever managed to achieve more than one child. Somehow, after the first one, at the critical moment there's always a small voice outside the bedroom door telling you to come quick, the cat has just had kittens, the dog has just had pups, cc there's a large brown bug in the bathtub.
My truck was standing in the yard when we rode up. Beth glanced at it with a kind of nostalgia.
'I see the wheels haven't fallen off it yet,' she said.
'Best damn car I ever had,' I said. 'I don't see your station wagon around.'
'It needed a grease job, so Larry took it to town this morning,' she said. 'He'll be back soon. I want you to meet him.'
'Sure,' I said.
'I really do,' she said. 'I think you'll like each other.' My friend, the young rifleman, came around a corner to take the horses. The boys, who'd reached the ranch well ahead of us, were all over him, telling him he had to come meet their real daddy. He was good with them, I saw, in that tolerant, mildly dictatorial way that, coming from someone they respect, someone three times their own age but still not too old to be approachable, goes down well with youngsters. He put them to work, giving them each a horse to lead away and unsaddle, and reminding them not to neglect their own mounts.
Beth said, 'Peter, could you ask Clara to get the baby up and dress her? She's had a long enough nap, and I'm sure her father would like to see her.'
'Yes, ma'am,' young Logan said, and went off.
Beth watched him go. 'He's a nice boy,' she said. 'I suppose it's hardly to be expected that he should be enthusiastic about me. A bomb killed his mother in London during the war. After a lot of knocking around here and there, Larry brought the boy to this country. There were only the two of them for years. Of course, Peter was away at school a good deal of the time, but still, there's a kind of special relationship between a widowed man and an only son… And then I came along, with three children! Naturally he can't help considering us as rivals. It speaks a lot for his character and training that he can be as nice to us as he is.' She shook her head, dismissing the subject. 'Well, I'm going to take a shower. Come on and I'll show you to your room, first.' She hesitated. 'Matt.'
'Yes.'
'It was a mistake. Let's not repeat it.'
'If you say so,' I said politely.
She said, 'It would be all wrong and… and kind of complicated and unpleasant, wouldn't it? I don't know what I was thinking of. I…' She drew a long breath. 'Anyway, here comes Larry.'
A car that I recognized was coming up the road to the ranch. She walked quickly towards the front of the house to meet it. I saw her pause briefly as she realized that the driver was not alone.
I saw a funny, hard look that I didn't recognize come to her face. Then she was going forward again, but not as rapidly as before. I held back, since it seemed advisable to give her time to prepare her new husband for my presence. When I approached, she was talking to him at the side of the station wagon; but it wasn't Lawrence Logan who caught and held my attention first. It was the young girl who'd got out of the car on the other side, and the dog this girl had with her.
