girlishly-“I figure if I stick around here long enough, I'll get to ride Black Beauty again.”
“I hear Tate Jordan didn't take too kindly to it.”
“I don't think he takes too kindly to me on the whole.”
“You been scaring him half to death, Samantha?”
“Hardly. As arrogant as he is, it would take a lot more than me to scare him.”
“I don't think that's the case. But I hear he thinks you can ride. From him that's high praise.”
“I suspected that this morning, but he'd rather die than say so.”
“He's no different than the rest. This is their world, Samantha, not ours. On a ranch a woman is still a second- class citizen, most of the time anyway. They're all kings here.”
“Does that bother you?” Samantha watched her, intrigued, but the older woman visibly softened as she grew pensive, and something very gentle veiled her eyes.
“No, I'like it like that.” Her voice was strangely gentle, and then she smiled up at Samantha and looked almost like a girl. In that flash of a moment it explained everything about Bill King. In his own way he ruled her, and she loved it. She had for many years. She respected his power and his strength and his masculinity, his judgment about the ranch and his way of handling the men. Caroline owned and ran the ranch, but it was Bill King behind her who had always helped run it, who silently held the reins along with her. The ranch hands respected her, but as a woman, a figurehead. It was Bill King who had always made them jump. And Tate Jordan who was making them jump now. There was something terribly macho and animal and appealing about all of it. It was a pull one wanted to resist as a modern woman, yet one couldn't. The lure of that kind of masculinity was almost too strong.
“Do you like Tate Jordan?” It was an odd, direct question, yet Caroline said it in such a naive way that Samantha laughed.
“Like him? I don't think I could.” But that wasn't what Caroline had meant, and she knew it, and now she laughed a little silvery laugh as she sat back in her chair. “He's good at what he does. I suppose I respect him, though he's certainly not an easy man to get along with, and I don't think he much likes me. He's attractive, if that's what you mean, but unapproachable too. He's an odd man, Aunt Caro.” Caroline nodded silently. She had once said almost the same things about Bill King. “What made you ask?” There was certainly nothing between them, nothing Caroline could have sensed or seen as she had watched them all work all day long.
“I don't know. Just a feeling. I get the impression he likes you.” She said it simply, as young girls do.
“I doubt that.” Samantha looked both amused and skeptical. And then she spoke more firmly. “But in any case that's not why I'm here. I'm here to get over being involved with one man. I don't need to cure it by getting involved with another. And certainly no one here.”
“What makes you say that?” Caroline looked at her strangely.
“Because we're all foreigners to each other. I'm a stranger to them, and I suppose in their own way, they're strangers to me. I don't understand their ways any more than they understand mine. No,” she sighed softly, “I'm here to work, Aunt Caro, not play with the cowboys.” Caroline laughed at the words she used and shook her head.
“That's how those things start though. No one ever intends…” For a moment Sam wondered if Caroline was trying to tell her something, if after all this time she was going to admit to an affair with Bill King, but the moment passed quickly, and now Caroline stood up, put the dishes in the sink, and a few minutes later began to turn off the kitchen lights. Lucia-Maria had long since gone home. Samantha was suddenly sorry that she hadn't encouraged Caroline to say more, but she had the impression that Caroline was anxious not to say anything further. Silently a door had already closed.
“You know, the truth of it is, Aunt Caro, that I'm already in love with someone else.”
“Are you?” The older woman instantly stopped what she was doing and looked stunned. She had had no inkling before that Samantha was already involved.
“Yes.”
“Would it be rude to ask who?”
“Not at all.” Samantha smiled at her gently. “I'm very much in love with your Thoroughbred horse.” They both laughed and bid each other good night a few minutes later. And tonight Sam found herself listening for the now familiar opening and closing of the front door. She was certain now that it was Bill King coming to spend the night with Caroline, and she wondered why they hadn't married if this had gone on for as long as she now suspected it had. Maybe they had their reasons. Maybe he already had a wife. She found herself pondering, too, the questions Caroline had asked about Tate Jordan and wondered why Caroline should suspect Samantha of being attracted to him. She wasn't really. If anything, he annoyed her. Or did he? She suddenly found that she was questioning herself. He was brutally handsome, like someone out of a commercial… like someone out of a dream. But he wasn't her kind of dream; tall, dark, and handsome. She smiled to herself, her mind instantly darting back to John Taylor… John with his glorious golden beauty, his long legs, his huge, almost sapphire-colored eyes. They had been so perfect together, so alive, so happy, they had done everything together… everything… except fall in love with Liz Jones. That John had done alone.
At least, she consoled herself as she pulled her mind willfully away from him again, she hadn't been watching the newscast. At least she didn't know how the pregnancy was going or have to listen to Liz thank another thousand viewers for little hand-knit booties and crocheted blankets or “darling little pink hats.” It had been almost unbearable, but she hadn't been able to stop watching the broadcasts while she was still in New York. Even when she worked late, she watched them. It was as though there were an alarm clock buried somewhere in her body that let her know when it was six o'clock and then forced her inexorably toward a television set so she could watch the program. At least here she hadn't thought of it in almost a week. And in another week it would be Christmas, and after she survived that-her first Christmas without John, the first time in eleven years that she wouldn't be with him-then she knew that she'd live. And in the meantime all she had to do was work from morning till night, follow the cowboys, spend twelve hours a day riding Navajo, find those little orphaned babies, and bring them back alive. And day by day, month by month, she'd make it. She was finally beginning to know that she would live. She congratulated herself again on the wise decision to come west as her eyes closed and she drifted off to sleep, and this time along with Liz and John and Harvey Maxwell there were suddenly other people in her dreams too: Caroline trying desperately to tell her something that she could never quite hear; and Josh, laughing, always laughing; and a tall dark-haired man on a beautiful black horse with a white star on its forehead and two white socks. She was riding behind him, bareback, holding tightly to him as they raced along through the night. She was never quite sure where they were going or from where they had come, but she knew that she felt perfectly safe there as they rode along in perfect unison. And as she woke up with her alarm at four thirty, she felt oddly rested, but she couldn't quite remember her dream.
8
Just before they would normally have had their lunchbreak, Tate Jordan gave the signal and the large group of men working together gave a whoop and headed home. Sam was among them, joking with Josh about his wife and children, and being teased by two of the other men. One of them was accusing her of probably having run away from a boyfriend who beat her “and rightly so after listening to you run that big mouth of yours,” but the other one claimed that she was probably the mother of eleven children and too lousy a cook so they threw her out.
“You're all right.” Samantha laughed with the men she was riding with. It had been an easy morning's work and they were all anxious to knock off work early for lunch. It was the twenty-fourth of December, and that night there would be a huge Christmas feast in the main hall, wives and children and even girl friends were invited. It was an annual event, beloved by all. It made them all feel more than ever like a family, linked together and bonded by their love for the ranch. “The truth is that I had fifteen illegitimate children and they all beat me, so I ran away. How's that?”
“What, no boyfriend?” One of the old timers guffawed. “A pretty little palomino like you and no boyfriend, awww come on!” They were all beginning to liken her to a palomino, but she was fond enough of horses and she took it as a compliment. The truth was that she was daily beginning to look more like one. Her long shining hair was whitening in the sun, and her face was getting tanned a rich honey-brown. It was a beautiful combination, and one
