Clem peered down and doubt flooded through her. If this was Dexter Scott, he was dusty and younger than she’d thought he’d be. Too young for retirement, too young to be as good as the grapevine said he was. Dark eyebrows arched up, framing hazel eyes that were as clear as a still lake at sunrise. Those eyes weren’t dusty at all. And Clementine found herself staring into them, as if she were staring into the lake, watching flecks of gold sparkle along the water’s edge.
Even though she had a feeling she was talking to him, she shifted in the saddle and said, “I’m looking for Dexter Scott.”
“How’d you get in here?” His voice was gravelly, as if he hadn’t spoken in a very long time. The horse she was riding skittered from side to side, and the cowboy stilled the horse by tugging the reins out of her hands. He did look menacing, his eyebrows coming together in a scowl, his mouth tight.
“Are you Dexter Scott?”
“How did you get in?” Each word was marked by a short staccato. He muffled a groan as he stood up.
“On the road.” Clem repeated. She hated that he had the reins. It made her feel as if she was being held. And she was, by his eyes, by his angry stance.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, his eyes flicking over her, running a lie detector test. Then he shook his head. “Gates are locked.”
Nerves made her laugh. “Not if you know how to get through or climb over.”
“You shut them?”
Clem bristled. Even she knew not to leave gates open. “Of course.”
“I could shoot you, you know. Didn’t you read the sign?”
“You could,” Clem agreed, but patted the shotgun on the saddle in front of her. “If you had your horse, which you don’t. It seems as if I do.”
It occurred to Clem she shouldn’t antagonize this man, so she fished out a tattered brochure from her back pocket and proceeded to read.
“This says you’re an elite cowboy. A cowboy’s cowboy,” she said for emphasis. She stared at him doubtfully. He appeared anything but elite. Knowing that he’d fallen off his horse didn’t give any credence to the brochure.
“Not anymore.” He rubbed the nose of the horse, and moved to stand right next to her leg. “Retired.”
God, he was tall. No wonder the stirrups hung so low. Clem refused to be put off by the definitive bleakness in his voice. She had more than six hundred feral cows roaming around on her father’s ranch. Laboring all through spring and most of the summer, Clem and a crew of six transient cowboys had tried to round them up. Tried was the operative word. Oh, everyone had theories as to why the cows were so hard to catch. Difficult breed. Large size. Formidable horn growth. She had hoped that when the feed in the hills had dried up in the summer heat, these cows would want to come down and graze on her green pastures, but those freaks of nature seemed to find their own feed higher up the mountain range. The more she tracked them, the more impossible the task became, not just because of the rocky terrain but also because each seemed to be larger and more fierce than any cow she’d ever encountered. She’d thought she was purchasing a Charolais-Hereford cross, a hardy, disease-resistant hybrid that could grow to a thousand pounds in a season. She was wrong.
In desperation, she’d had five separate outfits come to the ranch, spy a couple of the cattle, then turn away, saying that it wasn’t worth the money to break their necks in such inhospitable terrain. In each case, the final edicts had been that if she really wanted to solve her problem, the cows needed to be destroyed, especially the bigger ones with horn spreads of nearly six feet. That wasn’t an option to Clem.
Dead cows fetched no money at market, and if she could only get those suckers to market, they’d be rich.
“You should’ve chosen something a little tamer, smaller,” the leader of the first outfit had remarked as he’d climbed back into his beat-up truck.
“Maybe they’re Charolais, got the coloring,” a man in the second had said. “But can’t see no Hereford in them. Maybe longhorn.”
“Gotta have some Brahman. Look at how mean they is,” a third had offered with a shrug.
“Man, look at that horn spread. Think you could have a strain of Belgian Blues.” A member of the fourth had shaken his head in awe. “It’s gold if you don’t mind dying while mining it.”
When the last outfit went, Clem was still left with enormous, renegade cows trampling the land, hiding in the crevasses, growing healthier, heavier and more territorial with each passing day, as disease resistant as the man who’d sold them to her had assured her. Clem had kicked herself a thousand times for not asking about temperament. She’d only seen the potential dollar signs. A swelling sense of pride that maybe this was something that she could do hadn’t helped. Maybe her mother’s faith wasn’t misplaced—no matter what her father thought, no matter what she thought.
It seemed she’d waited a long time to hear her father praise her for something that she’d done. For years, she just had to walk into the room and her father would light up. Somewhere along the way as Daddy’s little girl, she’d learned that she didn’t have to do, anything, simply being was enough. It was a hard lesson to unlearn since she’d gone from the adoration of her father to the adoration of her husband. Claire Wells had tried to warn Clem, tried to get her to realize that she had to rely on herself, but Clem hadn’t listened. She’d gone ahead and married Nick rather than finish college.
Clem understood intellectually what her mother was saying, but she’d liked the fact that Nick loved her the way her father did. It felt right to Clem. Nick had done an exceptional job of taking her father’s place until he decided to leave her for his colleague. Devastation couldn’t begin to describe her feelings. Suddenly, at thirty-two, she faced difficulties that most people dealt with at eighteen. How to live alone, how to be alone.
But with her mother’s help, she realized that there were things she could do. She knew horses. While Nick had been having his affair, she’d been at the stable with Archie, a beautiful chestnut that Nick had given her for their sixth anniversary. She also knew how to rope and brand. But apparently, not how to choose a herd.
“So tell me who’d help me,” she had finally asked. “There’s got to be someone.”
The cowboys she’d found had exchanged glances. One shrugged and another kicked at the dust.
“There is someone,” Clem had said with hope.
“Yep.”
“But, ma’am, you just might want to shoot these, take your losses and get a real job.”
Clem could have laughed at the irony of it all. This was the only real job she was qualified for.
“I have a real job.” Clem had glared at them. “Tell me who can help me.”
A long silence followed while the cowboys eyed each other.
One finally asked the other, “Where’d we last see him?”
“El Paso.”
“He was scouting those crazy horses of his.”
“Ben Thorton still with him?”
“Nope. Heard they split up after…you know. Those Miller brothers, too.”
“Who?” Clem asked again. “Give me a name.”
“Can’t vouch for him.”
“Craziest son of a— Oops, sorry, ma’am.”
“Didn’t they single-handedly clear out the old Russell Saloon?”
“Did