CHAPTER 12
They rode north up the valley away from the ranch house. Towering, rocky, snowcapped peaks stood to the west and smaller, tree-covered slopes to the east. The sun was up, casting its golden light over the landscape as it climbed, but the air was still crisp and cool. Denny had never felt more like she was where she was supposed to be, where she belonged.
Smoke started pointing out landmarks.
Denny told him, “I know, Pa. I’ve been here before.”
“Yeah, I know you have, but it doesn’t hurt to refresh your memory.”
“Where was it you had that shoot-out with those rustlers?”
Smoke slanted a look at her. “Where’d you hear about that?”
“I overheard some of the hands talking about it last night at the dinner table.” Denny’s face was solemn as she added, “You lost a man.”
“We did,” Smoke said with a nod. “Sid MacDowell. I don’t think you ever knew him. He signed on after you and Louis were here the last time.”
“I don’t recognize the name. I’m sure he was a good man, though, if he rode for the Sugarloaf. Cal wouldn’t have hired him otherwise, and you wouldn’t have let him stay around the place.”
“He was a fine fella. Young and raw, but a hard worker. He would’ve made a top hand one of these days, if he’d gotten the chance.”
“Did you manage to round up all the rustlers?”
“One got away,” Smoke said. “We don’t know what happened to him. Cal and some of the boys tracked him for a ways, but his trail petered out.”
“I hope he went off somewhere to die.”
The viciousness in his daughter’s voice made Smoke look at her again. “I don’t feel any sympathy for rustlers and killers, but that doesn’t sound like you, Denny.”
“This is still a hard land, isn’t it, Pa?”
“It can be,” Smoke admitted.
“Then if I’m going to live here, I’ve got to be hard sometimes, too.”
After a moment, Smoke nodded. “I don’t reckon I can argue with that. An hombre’s just not used to hearing it come from his daughter, I reckon.”
“Ma fought side by side with you several times, didn’t she?”
“She sure did,” Smoke said.
“Well, any time you need me, I will, too.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Smoke said dryly. “I figure on handling any of the rustling or other lawbreaking problems around here, though. And if it gets too bad, it’ll be Monte Carson’s job to step in as sheriff.”
“Just remember what I said,” Denny declared.
“I’m not likely to forget.”
They continued riding the range all morning, seeing a number of cattle and some of the Sugarloaf crew. Inez had packed sandwiches for them, using some of the roast beef left from supper the night before. Smoke and Denny stopped beside a creek for lunch, washing down the food with cold, sparkling clear water from the stream.
Afterward, Smoke stretched out on the grass underneath a tree and tipped his hat down over his eyes. “I think I’ll doze for a while. I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”
Denny let out an unladylike snort. “You could stay in the saddle longer and work harder than any of those twenty-year-old cowboys, and you know it.”
“Well, it’s a good day for a nap anyway. Reckon you can find something to occupy yourself with for a spell?”
“You trust me to wander around by my lonesome?”
“You know how to use that Winchester carbine you brought along, don’t you?”
“You know I do,” she said.
“Then I don’t suppose you’ll run into any trouble you can’t handle,” Smoke said. “If you do, though, fire three shots in the air. Won’t take me too long to get there, wherever you are.”
Denny nodded. “All right.”
“I really am craving a nap, though,” Smoke said, “so don’t get spooked for no reason.”
Denny blew out a disgusted breath as she walked to her horse. “That’ll be the day.”
She rode on north, following the creek. The buckskin had been cooperative ever since leaving the corral, but she could tell that he was eager to run. When she came to a long, flat stretch beside the stream, she reined in long enough to take her hat off and shake her hair down.
She put the hat back on and tightened the chin strap. “All right, horse. If you’re hankering to stretch your legs, get to it.” With that, she kneed the buckskin into a run.
The horse surged forward, legs flashing as it galloped along the creek bank. Denny’s thick blond hair streamed out behind her from the wind of their speed.
It was an exhilarating ride, but it was over too soon. Denny slowed the buckskin and gradually brought it to a halt. Horse and rider were both breathing harder.
She leaned forward and patted the horse on the shoulder. “You’re a good saddle mount. You just had to figure out who’s boss.”
The buckskin tossed its head as if to argue that point.
Denny laughed. “Oh, you’re just tolerating me, is that it?”
She grew serious as she spotted movement from the corner of her eye. Across the creek, the ground sloped up sharply to a flat ridge where a thick stand of pine grew. Denny wasn’t sure, but she thought she had seen someone up there in those trees. Without being obvious about it, she looked closer. She continued talking softly and stroking and patting the buckskin’s sleek shoulder so that if she really was being spied upon, the lurker wouldn’t realize that she was on to him.
Nothing. Maybe she had seen a bird flitting from branch to branch or a squirrel making a daring leap from one tree to another, she told herself.
Some instinct told her it wasn’t something that innocent. She turned the horse and rode back the direction she had come from, although that made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. She had put her back to the unknown, and she didn’t like it. Even though it was very unlikely anyone would threaten her on her father’s ranch, there was no guarantee of that.
Somebody could be drawing a bead on her. She felt like there was a nice, fat target painted on the middle of her back . . .
“You’re being silly,” she muttered to herself.
That might well be true—but when she reached the next bend in the creek and had gone around it, out of sight of that wooded ridge, she turned the buckskin and rode across the stream. The water was only about a foot deep and the creek bed was rocky, so the horse had no trouble fording it.
Now that she was on the east side of the creek, Denny headed north again. The trees and brush were thicker away from the stream, so she angled into that cover as she rode. She pulled the carbine from its scabbard, levered a shell into its chamber, and rode with the weapon in front of her, across the saddle.
She didn’t get in any hurry. Rushing headlong into trouble was a stupid thing to do. She paralleled the creek and stayed out of sight in the trees as much as possible, stopping now and then to listen intently. She didn’t hear anything, not even the tiny sounds made by birds and small animals, but it was possible they had fallen silent because of her approach.
They might have quieted down because somebody else was skulking around, too, Denny reminded herself. She pushed on until the ground began to rise. She was climbing onto that ridge.
If somebody had been watching her, she hadn’t run into them so far. She wondered again if she had been mistaken, or even just imagined the whole thing. She had come home halfway expecting adventure. Maybe she was trying to manufacture some.
No, she decided, she was too levelheaded for that. At least, she liked to think she was.
The piney growth became denser. Denny reined in and dismounted. Leading the buckskin, she went forward on foot. She reached a spot where she could look down and see the open bank on the far side of the creek where she had let the horse run. It was some forty feet lower than where she stood. It was a perfect place for someone to spy on her, she realized.
She wrapped the buckskin’s reins around a sapling. Holding the carbine in both hands, she eased along the ridge. Her keen eyes searched the ground, looking for any signs of the watcher she suspected. After a few yards, she came to a spot where the carpet of pine needles was disturbed. Some of them had been kicked aside, leaving scuff marks.
Someone had walked up and stood there, she thought. She looked across the creek again and compared her position on the ridge to where she had been earlier and was sure she was standing where she had seen that faint movement.
Somebody had been spying on her! She had no doubt of that now.
The question was . . . who?
She thought about what her father had said about young cowboys and pretty girls. Denny wasn’t afflicted with false modesty. She knew she was an attractive young woman. It was entirely possible one of the Sugarloaf hands had spotted her riding along the creek and decided to get a better look. They might be risking Smoke Jensen’s wrath by sneaking around like that, but they could have decided it was worth it.
Denny wasn’t satisfied with that assumption, though. She hunkered beside the tracks and studied them, trying to see if anything was distinctive about them.
Unfortunately, they were just smudges in the pine needles, without anything to make them recognizable if she ever saw them again.
All right. The lurker must have had a horse up there. She walked back away from the edge of the ridge and searched for signs that a mount had been tied up to wait while its rider peered across the creek at her.
After a few minutes, she found hoofprints and a fresh pile of horse dung about fifty yards back where the trees thinned out somewhat. Again she studied the tracks. Those were more distinct. She was able to make out the markings made by that particular set of horseshoes, and she tried to commit all the telltale nicks and scratches and bent nails to memory.
A frown put lines in her forehead. Whoever had shod this horse hadn’t done a particularly good job of it. If it was a Sugarloaf animal, her father wouldn’t have tolerated such sloppiness. Of course, some cowpokes had their own mounts and didn’t always use ranch stock. Still, it was an indication that the lurker might not have been a member of her father’s crew.
If that was the case, then the hombre probably had no business being on the Sugarloaf—and he sure hadn’t had any cause to be spying on the boss’s daughter.
Denny was pondering whether to try backtracking the sneaky son of a gun when she heard her buckskin whinny. Knowing the animal probably wouldn’t react like that unless some other horse was around, she quickly got to her feet. Her pa might have come along looking for her, or it might be someone else. Was the lurker coming back for some reason? she wondered.
She started in the buckskin’s direction, moving through the trees and brush as quickly as she could and still be relatively quiet about it. She didn’t hear her horse make any other sounds.
She wondered suddenly if some horse thief had come along and stolen the buckskin. That would be a stroke of bad luck. She was several miles from the ranch headquarters, and it would be a long walk in riding boots.
Of course, she could always fire those signal shots Smoke had mentioned, and he or one of the hands would show up to help her.
But damned if she wanted to be one of those helpless females who was always in need of rescuing, she told herself. She’d encountered way too many of them in books and was always annoyed by such characters.
To her relief, the buckskin was still there, she saw a few minutes later. Denny looked around and didn’t see anyone else, man or horse. Maybe some other animal had spooked the buckskin. A prowling bobcat, maybe.
She patted the horse’s shoulder and murmured, “What’s wrong? You smell some varmint?”
As she spoke, she heard a faint rustling in some nearby brush. She stiffened slightly but managed not to show any other reaction. Watching from the corner of her eye as she continued to talk softly to the buckskin, she saw some branches shiver a little. The movement was more than a small animal would have made by rooting around.
A man was hiding over there, she thought, and she had no doubt he had been checking out her mount a few minutes earlier. The thought that she was so close to whoever had been spying on her made her nervous, but it angered her as well. Without putting the carbine back in its sheath, she untied the buckskin’s reins and swung up into the saddle.
Then, without any warning, she sent the horse plunging straight at the brush where the stranger was lurking.