“We’ll see if he needs a haircuttin’ party when he gets home.” He rocked back from the calf, a bloodied knife in his hand, and glanced sharply at Jessy. “You just going to stand there or are you goin’ to slap that iron on this calf?”
Usually no one told her what to do or when to do it. She reddened slightly under the implied criticism and made a quick job of applying the brand.
At home that night, Jessy penned a short letter to Ty, telling him about the spring branding at South Branch. As soon as the niceties were written, she bluntly asked him if he’d grown his hair long and warned him against such foolishness. She phoned The Homestead and got his address, put the letter in an envelope, and mailed it when she returned to school on Monday.
When Ty read the letter from Jessy, he smiled to himself. It was so typical of the kid to cut straight through the rumors and go to the source to find out the answers. He doubted it ever occurred to her that she was being nosy and butting into something that wasn’t any of her affair.
After reading it through again, he folded the letter and pushed it into his hip pocket, reminding himself to look her up when he got back home. The contents of the letter had briefly transported him away from the heat of a May afternoon in Texas back to the cool spring of Montana and the excitement and hubbub of branding time. He forgot the perspiration collecting on his skin as he combed his fingers through his hair, absently checking its length.
A horn honked just to his left, jerking his thoughts to the present. A sports-model convertible had pulled close to the street curb. Tara was behind the wheel, dressed in a smart white tennis outfit with a white band sleeking the hair away from her oval face. His blood quickened as Ty swerved off the sidewalk and crossed the grass to the car, idling at the curb.
“Hop in.” She gave him one of her provocative half-smiles.
Lithely, Ty vaulted over the door and slid his long frame into the bucket seat beside her. The car smoothly accelerated away from the curb and into the light traffic on the campus street. Ty studied her profile and the perfection of her features, something he never tired of doing.
“You were deep in thought when I drove up.” Her remark almost chastised him for not noticing her before she honked.
“I was trying to decide whether I needed a haircut.”
Her glance wandered over his dark hair, rumpled by the breeze blowing over the car’s front windscreen. “It looks fine to me.”
He was conscious of the brevity of her costume and the bareness of her shapely, tanned legs. “Got a tennis date?” Ty guessed, already noticing how cool and refreshed she looked.
“Roger Mathison and I are partners in a mixed-doubles game at four,” she admitted with considerable aplomb. “Are you on your way to the library or the frat house?”
“The library.” He adjusted the ringed notebook on his lap and stared straight ahead, showing no reaction to her admission she had a tennis date with another man.
Nothing had changed between them, not the way he had hoped it would. If he was lucky, he dated her once or twice a month. In the meantime, she dated others while he satisfied his baser urges with a string of nameless girls. As Tara became better known on the Austin campus, the competition for her favor had grown more intense. A date with her became a prize guys bragged about. Ty had lost count of the number of rivals he faced. Some came and went, especially the ones who attempted to dominate and demand more of her attention—a fact Ty had observed early on. So he ate his pride and became one of the regulars.
“Do you have any plans for the summer?” he asked.
“Nothing specific.” She shrugged.
“Your father usually makes one or two trips to Montana in the summer. Why don’t you come along with him?” It would be a chance to have her all to himself, with no competition.
“We’ll see.”
He didn’t push for a more definite answer as she stopped the car in front of the university library. Instead of reaching for the door handle, Ty partially turned in the seat to face her, his arm bridging the backs of the two bucket seats.
His hand cupped the back of her neck and pulled her closer as he leaned to her. There was a certain passivity in the way she let him draw her near, a passivity that bordered on indifference. But she tipped her head for his kiss to show him she did want it. That stirred him, as it was meant to do.
Ty struggled to keep his impulses in check as he kissed her, but his passion crowded through. She responded, yet kept something in reserve, never letting him have all that he wanted from her. Impatient, he pulled back, catching sight of the pale blue vein throbbing in her neck even while she smiled so calmly.
“Come to Montana, at least for a weekend this summer,” he insisted. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a damned long time until September.”
She ran a finger over his lips, the glow in her dark eyes almost laughing. “It’s too soon to be making summer plans,” she chided him playfully. “The semester isn’t even over yet. Now scat, or I’ll be late for my date with Roger.” When Ty reluctantly climbed out of the car, she blew him a careless kiss and drove away.
Tara didn’t visit the ranch that summer. On three separate occasions, E. J. Dyson and his partner, Stricklin, flew to the Triple C, but she didn’t accompany him as she so easily could have done. Twice, Ty called her to renew the invitation. If it hadn’t been for the heavy work load that left him, most nights, too tired to think, he would have gone wild, wondering what she was doing and whom she was with.
Again Ty found himself being razzed by the ranch hands, wanting to know what he’d learned in college. Some of the older veterans were a bit standoffish with him at the beginning of the summer, again relegating some of the dirtier jobs to him to see if he thought college had made him too good for such work. Eventually he was accepted again.
It was the middle of summer before he was assigned to work in the southern end of the ranch and happened to cross paths with the tall and still gangly thirteen-going-on-fourteen-year-old Jessy Niles. By then, he’d forgotten about the letter she’d written him.
6
The cattle guard rattled under the wheels of the car as it rolled onto the eastern limit of the Triple C Ranch. The east gate was an unimposing structure consisting of two high poles supporting a sun-bleached sign that hung across the road between them. It read simply The Calder Cattle Company, with the Triple C brand burned into the wood. There was nothing in sight but the flat high plains, undulating in golden waves of tall grass. It was another thirty miles plus before the main buildings of the ranch headquarters could be seen.
The silence in the car was weighted with brooding. Maggie’s thoughts had turned back to the leave-taking at the airport. When Ty had left to attend his first year of college, she’d been happy for him. But this second time, it was more difficult. She didn’t like being separated from him, even if he did come home every chance he could.