This Calder Sky (Calder Saga 3)

“Your father couldn’t wait any longer. He left a half-hour ago or more,” Nate informed him. “He said, when I found you, I was to tell you he expected you at the house for dinner tonight. And I’d say you had better have a damned good reason for not coming right away.”

“Right,” Chase murmured, his mouth tight. Again the spurs jabbed the bay, sending it forward to stretch into a run with the second stride.

Nate let his eyes follow the rider for a minute before turning his mount toward the distant herd. “He’s got a hard, punishing ride ahead of him, horse.” It was a habit left over from his young fence-riding days when a cowboy’s horse was sometimes the only living thing around to listen. “His butt is going to know it when it gets there. If the ride don’t make it sore, the chewing it’s going to get will finish the job.”

As he reached the trail that intersected the river crossing, something in the open stretch of water caught the cowboy’s eye. He slowed his horse, trying to identify the colored object. At this distance, it looked like some kind of material caught on a rock, a shirt, maybe. A strong sense of curiosity made Nate turn his horse for a closer investigation.

The piece of clothing was on the far side of the ford. Nate crossed over and dismounted to scoop it out of the water. It was a shirt. Nothing wrong with it either that he could tell. The initials, C. C., penned onto the label made him pause.

“Come to think of it,” he murmured again to his horse, “Chase had his jacket buttoned all the way up. The day’s cool, but not that cool.” He wrung the water out of the shirt and stuffed it in a pocket of his saddlebag before swinging into the saddle. “Now, how do you suppose he lost that shirt in the river?”

It puzzled him. And if there was one thing that drove Nate crazy, it was not having all the pieces to a puzzle. It had happened to him once. He’d been snowed in at a line camp one winter for a month and a half, waiting for a warm chinook wind. There had been a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a sailing ship. He’d spent the whole time trying to put it together, only to discover it was two hundred pieces shy when he’d finally counted them. He was a tenacious man; once he had his mind set on something, he wouldn’t let go of it. He still had those eight hundred pieces of that puzzle in a box, figuring that someday he’d find the rest of them and finish that picture.

He turned his horse upstream. When he’d been looking for Chase earlier, he’d only stopped to make a cursory search of the riverbend where the girl had been swimming—and that had been from the opposite bank. Nate decided that a closer inspection might provide him with a few more puzzle pieces.

Following the tracks of two shod horses, he went down the cut in the bank leading to the gravel bar. At the edge of it, he stopped his horse to study the ground. There were horse droppings by the fallen log, which meant one of the horses had probably been tied there. Grass was cropped by a couple of cottonwoods, which meant a second horse had time to graze.

He walked his horse halfway to the blackened fire ring. Branches were poked in the ground around it. About the only reason for them that Nate could come up with had to be to hang clothes on to dry. Studying the man-made indentations on the ground beside the fire and the scuffled gravel, Nate read the story that was written there. Nate took his hat off and put it back on, all in one gesture that indicated his unease at the knowledge.

“Sometimes I get too curious, horse, and find out things that are none of my business.” He laid the left rein along the horse’s neck to turn it, then checked the swing halfway around when he noticed a partially uncoiled lariat nearly hidden by gravel a horse’s hooves had kicked over it.

A good, supple rope was a vital tool of the cowboy, not to be left lying around for the elements to stiffen it. Stepping down, Nate finished rewinding it and tied it to his saddle. He remounted quickly and headed for the gully climbing to the top of the bank, detained long enough from his duties by his obsessive curiosity.

The ranch road running from the east gate was part of an interconnecting web of roads that crisscrossed the vast Triple C range. Some of the roads, like this one, were little more than two parallel ruts worn into the earth by truck tires. The more heavily traveled roads were hard and smooth as cement.

Avoiding the uneven ground of the rutted track, Chase ran his h

orse on the grassy verge next to it. For five miles, he galloped the blood bay, then slowed it to a trot for two to let it blow, and urged it into a ground-eating lope for the next five. After walking it for a mile, he covered the last six miles to the ranch headquarters at a hard gallop, the lathered horse laboring at the end.

The headquarters of the Triple C resembled a town in miniature. The cluster of structures included the usual ranch buildings of barns, sheds, and a bunkhouse, plus a small warehouse store stocked with all sorts of essential supplies, ranging from hardware and vehicle parts to utility clothing and foodstuffs. The store was also where the mail was collected or distributed, and outside there were gasoline pumps for ranch vehicles. Another building was a first-aid center and semi-dispensary, as well as a kind of animal hospital. A welding shop doubled as a blacksmithy. In addition, there were a half-dozen small homes where the married hands lived, those who weren’t camp men living on one of the distant sections. On the northeast side of the collection of buildings, a long grass strip served as a private landing field for the ranch planes hangared in the accompanying metal shed and for those of invited guests.

The massive two-story main house dominated the entry enclave—it was appropriately referred to as “The Homestead” by the cowboys. Its front entrance faced the south, a wide porch running its length to provide an overview of the other buildings gathered at its feet. Stone chimneys punctuated its slanted roof, few of them used since central heating had been installed some years ago.

Riding into the ranch colony, Chase slowed his foaming horse to a canter and guided it straight to the barns. Before the bay came to a complete stop, he was peeling out of the saddle and looping the reins over the horse’s head to lead it inside. Abe Garvey, a Triple C native relegated to the ranks of stablehand by advancing age, emerged from the interior shadows. Chase identified him with a brief glance as he led the horse into a stall and hooked a stirrup on the saddle horn to loosen the cinch.

“Has the senator’s plane landed?” With both girths freed, he lifted the saddle from the horse’s back and draped it over the stall railing for the time being.

“A half-hour ago, give or take.” The old cowboy moved on about his business while Chase wiped the sweat from the horse with the wet saddle blanket.

The roping horse was too valuable an animal to be put up hot, no matter how long Chase’s father had been waiting for him. No one volunteered to walk the horse down for him, and Chase didn’t ask. A man was responsible for the care of his own mount. Until his father handed over some authority to him, Chase was no different from any other cowboy on the place. That’s the way they treated him, especially the veterans, because they knew in their own way they were training their future leader. Chase had to measure up to their standards as well as his father’s if he wanted to command their respect, as well as their lives.

When the horse was cooled down, Chase turned him into the stall and carried his saddle to the tack room. Abe was sitting on a bench, repairing a broken bridle strap, his arthritically crippled legs tucked under it.

“See that my horse gets an extra measure of grain tonight, Abe,” Chase requested, and the old man merely nodded, not one to speak unless it was required.

Leaving the barn, Chase set out on the long walk across the ranch yard to The Homestead. He’d walked out some of his own stiffness cooling the horse, but he was still bone-tired from the long, jarring ride—his muscles sore and demanding a rest. There was always activity around the headquarters—ranch hands coming and going. Chase nodded to the ones he passed and waved to those in a distance, a gesture that amounted to little more than an upraised arm.

His unwavering course brought him to The Homestead, where he pushed himself up the steps, his spurs clinking in unison with the heavy tread of his boots on the wood-plank floor of the porch. When he crossed the threshold of the front door, he heard the booming voice of the senator coming from the den, to his left. Chase paused in the entry hall, which was an extension of the sprawling living room, sectioned off by the arrangement of the furniture. His glance strayed to the polished oak banister of the staircase emptying into the living room, but he resisted its invitation.

Brushing the worst of the dust from his clothes, he walked to the open doors of the den and removed his hat as he entered the room. Besides the florid-faced and seemingly jovial senator and his father, there were three other men in the room. Two of them Chase recognized from previous visits as aides of the senator, and the third was an influential government official from the state house, George Bidwell.

His arrival naturally made him the focal point of attention, his tardiness earning him a sharp-eyed look of reproval from his father. A sense of protocol directed Chase to the guest of honor.

“Welcome to the Triple C, Senator.” He greeted the politician and submitted to the man’s pumping handshake. “Glad to have you back. I’m sorry I wasn’t on hand to meet your plane when it landed.”

“Your father told us you were detained. Out helping with the roundup, I understand?” The lilting inflection of his stentorian voice made it a question.

“That’s right.”