Trouble At Lone Spur (22 page)

Equally impervious to his entreaty and to the dampness soaking her, she continued to cry. Huge wrenching sobs shook her body.

Gil gathered her in his arms so gently that the words tumbled out between sobs. She was hardly aware of telling him what had happened.

“Why? Why would he do this?” Gil wiped at her tears with his thumbs. “I’ll see he buys you new plants with his allowance, and by hell, he’ll replant every one. I may paddle his butt. Please, Lizbeth, stop crying.”

“Don’t, Gil. He misses Ben. I know Dusty’s hurting. I don’t think he understands.”

“
I
don’t understand, dammit.”

“I didn’t, either, at first. He needs attention, Gil. Yours. You have to set aside some time to spend with him.” A series of sniffles punctuated her plea.

“Time, Lizbeth?” Gil said bitterly. “Haven’t you noticed that I can’t even find time for you lately?”

She straightened and gazed up at him through tearspiked lashes. “It helps, knowing you want to.”

He ran his hands down her neck and over her back, steadily pulling her against his chest. “I want to, Lizbeth. The world can tell how much I want by looking. The hands see it whenever you walk by. It’s so obvious how I feel I’d be willing to bet the men are tiptoeing around you.”

“Now that you mention it, I have become a wall-flower.”

“I’m sorry we missed the Yeagers’ Valentine bash, honey, but the tornado hit and—”

“I don’t care about parties, Gil. I
have
wondered, though, if you’d come to regret what happened between us in Fort Worth. You’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? I deserve the truth.”

Groaning, he tightened his arms, cradling her head in the rain-soaked curve of his shoulder.

As he drew her close, Liz thought she glimpsed someone peeking around a shutter in the hayloft. She blinked and the face disappeared.

“The truth is, Lizbeth,” Gil said fiercely, “you haunt me day and night. You think I don’t see the weight you’ve lost—working like a slave to keep up your job and Ben’s? Just when things get to where I think I can spare an evening to take you and the kids to town for dinner and a
movie, another bomb drops. Like tomorrow—we’re chasing our killer cougar again.”

“Oh, no, Gil.”

“Can’t be helped. He brought down a yearling last night in the corral behind the weanling barn. Two days before, he took down a steer at the Drag M. We know it’s the same cat. He’s got an old leg injury that shows in his tracks.”

She shuddered and gripped the front of his jacket. “Tomorrow is the start of the kids’ spring break. Will you take the boys with you?”

“Lizbeth, I can’t. The environmentalists are on our case. They don’t want that cougar shot. And, hell, I’m out of tricks to catch him. I have someone coming from the San Antonio Zoo who’s an expert at trapping big cats. This time we’re staying out till we get him. A trip like this is too dangerous for the boys.”

“You’re right, of course. But I’m scheduled to shoe out in the east pasture all week. The twins won’t be thrilled if they have to tag along. Especially Dustin.”

“Too bad for Dustin. I’ll tell him myself, and I’ve got a few more things to say to that young man.”

“Go easy, Gil. I want him to like me.”

“Like you? Why wouldn’t he, the ungrateful kid?” Seeing her distress, Gil relented. “All right. I won’t bust his tail. Neither will I tolerate any monkeyshines while I’m gone. You’re right about my making more time for the boys.
We
need to make time. I want them to see us together. How about if, after we get the cat—well, I mean
if
we get him and they decide to keep him at the zoo—how about we take a couple of days and visit San Antonio? Do you think it’ll make the boys feel important to know we had a hand in finding the cat a home?”

“Maybe. Oh, Gil, that does sound promising. If only Dusty isn’t too unhappy about having me go along.”

“He’d better get happy, then.” Gil pushed her hat back and helped himself to a taste of her lips. One kiss dragged into two, then three. It was some moments before either of them realized how long they’d stood there in the open, exchanging heated kisses.

Fully aroused, Gil swallowed a moan and set her away. “I really came to ask another favor. Will you feed the boys and sleep over at the house until I get back from the hunt? Luke, Rafe and I are hauling some of our vulnerable stock to the Running Z down near Ozona. That’s where they’ll stay between now and the time we capture the cougar. I’m including your two foals, Lizbeth. We’ll leave for the hunt from there.”

Liz rubbed at an uneasy knot in her stomach. “You’ll be careful, won’t you, Gil?”

In answer, he kissed her again. They parted only when Rusty and Melody rode in looking for Dustin.

Gil sighed and detained his son. “I want a word with both of you boys, Russell. Come along, let’s go find your brother.”

Liz’s heart fluttered as she watched Gil stride off. The knot and now the flutter were reminiscent of warning signals she’d had before—like the time Corbett had called her premonitions silly and climbed on that killer bull anyway. Running, Liz grabbed Gil’s arm. In a rush, all her fears poured out in one long stream.

“Lizbeth.” Gil touched her nose, her cheek, and lastly smoothed the rough pad of his thumb along her bottom lip, over and over. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine—you’ll see.” He bestowed a last reassuring kiss before catching up with his son.

Liz gazed after him through the gray mist, and this time there was no mistaking that someone watched through the upper window of the barn.
Dustin.
Liz recognized his jacket. Now he’d be sure she’d squealed to Gil. If only she’d had a chance to talk with him first. Maybe it was naive, but she still believed that, given time, she and Dusty could arrive at a truce. With Gil away, she’d have to make a point of sitting down with Dustin tonight—to explain again that she wasn’t trying to divide the family or take his dad from him.

“Mom!” Melody yelled from her pony’s back. “I’m going to go put Babycakes away. Then can we eat? I’m hungry.”

“Feed Mittens and get your sleeping bag, kiddo. We’re camping out at the big house tonight. The twins’ dad is going on a short trip.”

“Goody! That’ll be fun.” Melody tossed Liz a gap-toothed grin as she urged her pony into a trot.

“Fun,” Liz muttered, squaring her shoulders against a feeling of impending doom.

That word “fun” mocked her many times during the evening as she suffered Dustin’s silent treatment. It proved impossible to find any time alone with him. And what if she had? He flatly refused to speak to her.

Liz noticed he seemed to have a lot to say to his twin and to Melody. Every time Liz looked up from her chores, those three were huddled—with Dustin doing the talking. “Big whoop,” she heard him say once to some muffled comment his brother made. Their arguing didn’t worry Liz; their intensity did.

“What were you kids talking about this evening?” Liz asked as she tucked Melody into her sleeping bag.

Melody’s eyes grew solemn. “It’s a secret, Mom. I crossed my heart and promised not to tell a soul.”

Liz knew Melody couldn’t be swayed when she’d crossed her heart. But she was confident her daughter wouldn’t be party to anything really bad. Very likely it was nothing and she was. letting her concern for Gil spill over onto the kids’ silly games.

Next morning Liz’s heart was less heavy. A thin sun shone down through patchy clouds. It was the first sunlight in months, and everything seemed brighter. The children were going to accompany her to the east pasture; Gil had done as he’d said and talked with the twins about it.

Apparently he’d made an impression. Not only did Dusty empty his piggy bank into her hands to buy new plants, but they all surprised her when she returned from readying her truck. They’d fixed peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and packed them with apples and cookies in individual knapsacks for the outing.

“Well, look at this,” Liz exclaimed happily. “Keep up this behavior, and we’ll knock off early and go into town for a treat.”

Dustin smiled. He actually smiled at her as he hustled the other two off to the barn to saddle up. By the time all three kids galloped out ahead of her, Liz found herself humming a jaunty tune.

She received another nice surprise when she drove into the east pasture. Dustin rode his buckskin close to her pickup and greeted Liz with a grin very like Gil’s. For a moment the scenery tilted, then Liz happily returned his smile.

“Dad said we’re to ride fence,” Dusty announced.

Liz thought his eagerness a far cry from the boredon he’d claimed the last time they were here. “Fine by me.’ She nodded, then tensed. “You aren’t thinking of head ing south toward the river.” She made it a statement.

“Naw. North.” He pointed.

Liz recalled the promontory overlooking Wind Dancer’s herd. “You kids don’t have any plans to chase wild horses, do you?”

“No way.”

He said it so quickly and sounded so sincere that Liz believed him. “All right.” She finally relaxed. Obviously Gil had made headway. Or maybe it was a condition of his taking them to San Antonio. In any event, why question success?

“Stay within shouting distance.” Liz raised her voice to include the other two, who waited a few feet away. She stood and watched as all three wheeled their horses and cantered off along the northern fence row. Now this was more like it. Liz could hardly wait to tell Gil.

Soon, busy trimming heels and shoeing horses, Liz forgot how long it had been since the trio had checked in. When she took a break from working on a cantankerous horse, she realized the sun had slipped a bit into the west.

Straightening, she cupped her mouth and called, “Melody!” A breeze kicked up a clump of weathered grass, and the geldings in the pasture flicked their ears. No answer floated back on the wind. Liz called again. And again. The last time she heard a faint faraway response—or thought she did. It might have been a bird, but perhaps the kids had just ridden farther than they’d intended. After all, the day was beautiful. And they’d all eaten big breakfasts, so it was unlikely they’d be spurred by hunger to return at exactly noon. If they weren’t back by the time she finished this ornery roan that belonged to Shorty Ledoux, she’d shake out his kinks and go see what had become of her little charges.

She had two shoes nailed when she heard the rapid staccato of hoofbeats sweeping down the ridge. Liz
hadn’t even realized her stomach had clenched until it suddenly unfurled at the sound.

“Mom! Mom!” Melody shouted the moment she got within range. “You hafta come quick.”

Liz glanced up from cooling the third shoe. Melody and Rusty galloped down from the ridge, their horses showing signs of having been run hard. Straightening, Liz shaded her eyes. Poor Babycakes’s sides were heaving. “Melody Lorraine, you know better than to ride your pony into a sweat.”

“You gotta come,” Rusty implored, hauling back on the reins and sliding his long-legged buckskin to a stop beside Liz’s hot forge. “Dusty fell down a hole.”

Liz felt her heart plummet. At least it did until she remembered the catsup blood and the three times since that Dustin Spencer had cried wolf. “Did he now?” she said, deliberately fitting the cooled horseshoe to the roan’s left hind foot.

“A deep hole,” Melody cried, her voice quavering. “Me and Rusty peeked in, but we couldn’t see him.”

Liz paused, reminding herself that they were talking about the boy who’d caused her more bouts of anxiety than she cared to count. “A fence-post hole isn’t that deep, Mel. He’s probably hiding behind a stump having a good laugh.”

Rusty shivered. Fat tears tracked his pale cheeks. “The hole ain’t near the fence. I’m sorry we let Dusty talk us into goin’ after Dad. He never said it’d be so far. Mel and me wanted lunch. Dustin said he’d stop ‘cause we were babies. He got off his horse to look for a good place to eat—and he…he disappeared.”

“Rusty Spencer, you know very well your dad went up to the caverns after that cougar. If you three have decided to play a trick on me, it’s not funny. Cool out those
animals and go sit under a tree until I finish Shorty’s horse.”

The boy scrubbed at his cheeks, but the tears fell faster. Melody, too, began to sniffle. Liz’s blood started to simmer. This behavior of Dustin’s had to stop. How dare he involve the other kids? Any minute now he’d show up; Liz could all but see that cocky smirk he’d fine-tuned to get her goat.

“Now, Russ,” she chided gently, stepping up to heat the final blank, “surely you don’t expect me to believe that even Dustin would cook up a crazy stunt like that after your dad laid down the law yesterday?”

Rusty’s head bobbed. “I told Dusty that Dad would get mad. He said, ‘Big whoop.’ He said Dad wouldn’t send us back to the ranch alone in the dark.”

A chill shot up Lizbeth’s spine. She had heard Dustin make that retort last night—the “big whoop” part. The rational portion of her mind continued to deny that anything had happened to Dusty. It had to be another of his pranks.

But something in Melody’s eyes scared Liz. That, and the fact that Dustin had yet to ride in, crowing over his victory.

As if she wasn’t already beginning to suffer real anguish, Shorty’s horse nipped her thigh. “Damn,” she said, biting back a stronger word just in time. She looked from one stricken face to the other, begging them to be wrong. The sweat popped out on her brow. “Kids,” she said in a shaky voice, “can you find the hole again?”
Please Lord, let it be nothing!
All thought of riding Shorty’s nag fled her mind. She chose, instead, a powerful chestnut whose back was broad and smooth—perfect for riding bareback.

Bestowing a last prayerful look into the distance, Liz grabbed a spare saddle blanket from the truck, clipped her new cell phone to her belt and vaulted aboard the big gelding. Dread gripped her throat as she urged Rusty into the lead. With each rolling hill they crowned, Liz scanned the horizon, expecting Dustin to appear and prove her fears unfounded. She wondered where Gil was right now. Had they captured the cat? Were they headed back to the ranch?
Please! Let them be.

She paused once, berating herself for having let the kids leave her work site. For having believed Dustin’s apparent willingness to ride fence. But that didn’t matter now—she had to find the boy. Resolutely she flipped open the phone and hit one of the numbers Gil had programmed into her phone.