Green Calder Grass (Calder Saga 6)

“It sure looks like you’ve got trouble ahead of you, Buck,” he murmured to himself. “It surely does.”

A breeze stirred across The Homestead’s front porch. Jessy felt its soft breath move over her face. Like the rest of the rain-starved plains, it carried the scent of dust. From the corral came a flurry of hoofbeats, followed by a protesting squeal. Jessy paid no attention to the dust kicked up by squabbling horses. Her eyes were on the powdery tan cloud tracking along the road to the Triple C headquarters. Some inner sense told her it was Ty long before she had a clear view of the truck. She pushed out of the high-backed rocker and crossed to the top of the steps to wait for him.

When Ty climbed out of the pickup and headed for the steps, Jessy was quick to detect a heaviness in his movements. She studied the look of stoicism that covered his face, hiding the tension beneath its angular surfaces. Below the thick brush of his mustache, a certain grimness had pulled in the corners of his mouth. He made an effort to turn them up in a smile when he saw her.

“What are you doing out here?” The inflection of his voice was light, but his gaze was quick to make a visual examination.

“Waiting for you,” Jessy replied easily. Up close she could see the troubled darkness within his hooded eyes. On impulse she reached out to slip an arm around his waist, seeking to draw some of that trouble from him and absorb it into herself. “How’d it go?” she asked, suspecting that was the source of his heavy thoughts but giving the question an air of idle interest. “Did you see Buck?”

“I saw him.” Ty draped an arm around her shoulders, fitting her to his side as they moved toward the door. “Naturally he denied he had anything to do with it.”

“You expected as much, though.”

“I know. So how are you feeling? You are supposed to be resting,” he admonished lightly, “not sitting out here waiting for me.”

“That was resting. Besides, being home is the best medicine.” Jessy was careful not to mention the throbbing pain in her head. Its level was one she could tolerate. “How are your ribs after that rough road?”

His mouth twisted in a wry grimace. “Sore as hell,” Ty admitted.

“That’s what I thought.” But she sensed that wasn’t what weighed on his mind.

“We’re a banged-up pair, aren’t we?” Almost the minute his smiling sideways glance touched her face, Ty halted, his mood turning serious. He angled himself toward her and reached up to brush the blunt tips of his fingers over the gauze bandage. “Ever since the accident, I keep remembering my father’s reaction when he learned my mother had been killed in the plane crash.” His low-pitched voice vibrated with rawness. “And those moments right before I told him, when he was so wild and frantic. For one stark, cold second, when you were so limp against me, I knew exactly how he felt. I can’t bear the thought of losing you, Jessy.”

Moved by the dark and tortured look in his eyes, she cupped a hand to the granite line of his jaw. “But you haven’t, Ty. It will take more than a knock on the head to get rid of me.”

“I know.” He managed a brief smile before that somber moodiness returned to claim his expression. “There’s something about this business that gives me a bad feeling. I can’t seem to shake it.”

She wanted to say something to reassure him, but she suddenly felt the cold grip of it, too. It chilled her.

“Whatever comes, we’ll make it through, Ty.” She grabbed hold of that thought and held on. “It may not be easy. But we’ll make it.”

It was that rocklike strength that he relied on. It steadied and calmed him, filled him with a high sense of ease. As long as she was at his side, he could face whatever lay ahead. It was the thought of doing it alone that filled him with dread.

Chapter Eighteen

June was usually the wet month on the vast Montana plains, but nary a drop fell on the Triple C. Day after day, the sun reigned over that big Calder sky, baking the ground to hardpan and fracturing its surface with long cracks. River levels dropped and several of the smaller creeks ran dry, not entirely an unusual occurrence.

Come July, the drought deepened with no relief in sight. The land was now in its second year of receiving rainfall amounts well below average. The effects were visible everywhere.

During his long tenure as head of the Triple C, Chase had lived through many a dry cycle, but he hadn’t seen the land this parched. He remembered the stories his father had told him of the Dust Bowl years when everything was tinder-dry and wind whipped the powdery dirt into walls of fast-moving clouds that hugged the ground, pummeling everything in its path.

Although the ranch had yet to experience the dust storms, its overall condition wasn’t much better and rapidly getting worse. And all the precautions his father had taken years ago to make sure the ranch didn’t suffer as badly again seemed to be failing one by one.

An aging and weary Stumpy Niles slumped in the chair facing the desk, the bearer of more bad news. “That well is drier than a bleached-white bone, Chase. That’s the second one on South Branch in two weeks.”

“We’ll have to move the cattle,” Chase concluded.

Stumpy gave a small harrumph and challenged bleakly, “Where?”

Ty studied the framed map on the wall. “What’s the range like around Hazard Creek?”

“It’s grazed about as low as you dare. If you throw more cattle on it now, you’ll risk killing the roots,” Stumpy replied. “Until it rains and the grass can grow back, you can write it off.”

Water and grass had long been the two most valuable resources on the Triple C. Many a grassland in the West

had been turned into a desert by overgrazing. The Calders had managed to keep their land from suffering that fate through careful husbandry and an awareness that grass was a precious and irreplaceable resource.

Dry years were part of nature’s cycle. And the tactics to survive them had changed little over time.