He nodded, saying nothing, and then led the way to the garage. He was a man of few words but rich emotions. She had seen that often during her early visits to the ranch. Five minutes later they had reached the large red pickup, stowed her suitcase in the back, and were driving slowly out of the parking lot of the Los Angeles International Airport, and Sam suddenly felt as though she were about to be set free. After the confinement of her life in New York, her job, her marriage, and now the confusion of bodies pressing around her on the plane and then in the airport terminal after the trip, finally she was about to go out to open places, to be alone, to think, to see mountains and trees and cattle, and to rediscover a life she had almost forgotten. As she thought of it, a long, slow smile lit up her face.
“You look good, Sam.” He cast an eye at her as they left the airport, and he shifted into fourth gear as they reached the freeway beyond.
But she only smiled and shook her head at him. “Not as good as all that. It's been a long time.” Her voice softened on the words, remembering the last time she had seen him and Caroline Lord. It had been a strange trip, an awkward mingling of past and present. The ranch hadn't been much fun for John. And as they drove along the highway, Sam's mind filled with memories of the last trip. It seemed a thousand years later when she felt the old foreman's hand on her arm, and when she looked around, she realized that the countryside around them had altered radically. There was no evidence of the plastic ugliness of the L.A. suburbs, in fact there were no houses in sight at all, only acres and acres of rolling farmland, the far reaches of large ranches, and uninhabited government preserves. It was beautiful country all around her, and Sam rolled down the window and sniffed the air. “God, it even smells different, doesn't it?”
“Sure does.” He smiled the familiar warm smile and drove on for a while without speaking. “Caroline sure is looking forward to seeing you, Sam. It's been kind of lonely for her ever since Barb died. You know, she talks about you a heck of a lot. I always wondered if you'd come back. I didn't really think so after the last time.” They had left the ranch early, and John had made no secret of the fact that he'd been bored stiff.
“I would have come back, sooner or later. I was always hoping to stop here when I went to L. A. on business, but I never had enough time.”
“And now? You quit your job, Sam?” He had only a vague idea that she had something to do with commercials, but he had no clear picture of what, and he didn't really care. Caroline had told him that it was a good job, it made her happy, and that was all that counted. He knew what her husband did, of course. Everyone in the country knew John Taylor, by face as well as by name. Bill King had never liked him, but he sure as hell knew who he was.
“No, Bill, I didn't quit. I'm on leave.”
“Sick leave?” He looked worried as they drove through the hills.
Sam hesitated for only a moment. “Not really. Kind of a rest cure, I guess.” For a minute she was going to leave it at that and then she decided to tell him. “John and I split up.” He raised a questioning eyebrow But said nothing, and she went on. “Quite a while ago actually. At least it seems like it. It's been three or four months.” A hundred and two days, to be exact. She had counted every one of them. “And I guess they just thought I needed the break at the office.” It sounded lousy to her as she said it, and suddenly she felt panic rise in her as it had that morning when she spoke to Harvey. Were they really firing her and just didn't want to tell her yet? Did they think she couldn't take the pressure? Did they think she'd already cracked up? But when she looked at Bill King, she saw that he was nodding, as though it all made perfect sense to him.
“Sounds right to me, babe.” His voice was reassuring. “It's damn hard to keep on going when you hurt.” He stopped for a moment and then went on. “I found that out years ago when my wife died. I thought I could still handle my job on the ranch I was working on then. But after a week my boss said, ‘Bill, my boy, I'm givin’ you a month's money, you go on home to your folks and come back when the money's gone.' You know, Sam, I was mad as fire when he did it, thought he was telling me that I couldn't handle the job, but he was right. I went to my sister's outside Phoenix, stayed for about six weeks, and when I came back, I was myself again. You can't expect a man nor a woman to keep going all the time. Sometimes you have to give him room for grief.”
He didn't tell her that he had taken three months off twenty-five years later, time off from the Lord ranch, when his son was killed during the early days of Vietnam. For three months he had been so stricken that he had barely been able to talk. It was Caroline who had nursed him out of it, who had listened, who had cared, who had finally come to find him in a bar in Tucson and dragged him home. He had a job to do on the ranch, she had told him, and enough was enough. She barked at him like a drill sergeant and heaped work on him until he thought he would die. She had shouted, yelled, argued, bullied, until finally one day they had almost come to blows out in the south pasture. They had gotten off their horses, and she had swung at him, and he had knocked her right on her ass, and then suddenly she had been laughing at him, and she laughed until the tears ran from her eyes in streams, and he laughed just as hard and knelt beside her to help her up, and it was then that he had kissed her for the first time.
It had been eighteen years ago that August, and he had never loved another woman as he loved her. She was the only woman he had actually ached for, longed for, lusted after, laughed with, worked with, dreamed with, and respected more than he respected any man. But she was a very special kind of woman. Caroline Lord was no ordinary woman. She was a superwoman. She was brilliant and amusing, attractive, kind, compassionate, intelligent. And he had never been able to understand what she wanted with a ranch hand. But she had known her mind from the beginning and never regretted the decision. For almost twenty years now she had secretly been his woman. And she would have made the affair public long before, had he let her. But he felt that her position as mistress of the Lord Ranch was sacred, and although here and there it was suspected, no one had ever known for certain that they were lovers, the only thing anyone knew for certain was that they were friends. Even Samantha had never been sure that there was more between them, though she and Barbara had suspected and often giggled, but they had never really known.
“How's Caroline, Bill?” She looked over at him with a warm smile and saw a special glow come to his eyes.
“Tough as ever. She's tougher than anyone on that ranch.” And older. She was three years older than he. She had been one of the most glamorous and elegant women in Hollywood in her twenties, married to one of the most important directors of her day. The parties they had given were still among the early legends, and the home they had built in the hills above Hollywood was still on some of the tours. It had changed hands often but was still a remarkable edifice, a monument to a bygone era rarely equaled in later years. But at thirty-two Caroline Lord had been widowed, and after that, for her, life in Hollywood had never been the same again. She had stayed on for two more years, but they had been painful and lonely, and then suddenly without explanation she had disappeared. She had spent a year in Europe, and then another six months in New York. It took her another year after that to decide what she really wanted, but as she drove for hours, alone in heir white Lincoln Continental, she suddenly knew where it was she longed to be. Out in the country, in nature, away from the champagne and the parties and the pretense. None of it had had any meaning for her after her husband was gone. All of that was over for her now. She was ready for something very different, a whole new life, a new adventure, and that spring, after looking at every available piece of property in a two-hundred-mile radius of Los Angeles, she bought the ranch.
She paid a fortune for it, hired an adviser and the best ranch hands around. She paid everyone a handsome wage, built them pleasant, cozy quarters, and offered them a kind of warmth and comfort that few men could deny. And in return, she wanted sound advice and good teaching, she wanted to learn how to run the ranch herself one day, and she expected them all to work as hard as she did herself. It was in her first year at the ranch that Bill King found her, took the place in hand, and taught her all he knew himself. He was a foreman of the kind most ranchers would die for, and it was purely by accident that he landed on the Lord Ranch. And even more so that he and Caroline Lord wound up as lovers. All that Samantha knew of Bill's history on the ranch was that he had been there almost since the beginning and had helped make the place a financial success.
Theirs was one of the few California cattle ranches that showed a profit. They bred Angus cattle and sold a few Morgan horses as well. Most of the big ranches were in the Midwest or the Southwest; only a precious few in California had good luck, and many were kept in operation as tax losses by their owners-city dwellers, stockbrokers, lawyers, and movie stars who bought them as a kind of game. But the Lord Ranch was no game, not to Bill King or Caroline Lord, or to the men who worked there, and Samantha also knew that while she stayed there she would be expected to perform certain chores as well. No one came to the ranch just to be lazy. It seemed indecent, considering how hard everyone else worked.
When Sam had called Caroline this time, she had told Sam that at the moment they were short two men and Samantha was welcome to help out. It was going to be a busy vacation for Samantha, of that she was sure. She
