Raising the Stakes

The “huh” held a world of meanin

g. He glanced at Dawn. She’d folded her arms, lifted her chin and her eyes held a glint of irritation, as if she were angry at three people she’d never met for what they’d done to him. It made him want to pull the car over, take her in his arms and kiss her again.

Jesus, he thought, and shifted uneasily in his seat.

“And I wasn’t there. On their ranch. Neither were they, most of the time. We were all away in boarding school…”

Gray frowned and cleared his throat. Great. Another few minutes, he’d be telling her all about his life, and Jonas, and a fortune she just might collect.

“Anyway, it was summertime, so we were all back home. We got together one afternoon and Travis, I think it was, found a dead rattler in one of the paddocks.” He sent his mind back through the years, tugged a thread of memory loose, focused on it as it began to unravel. “It was sort of trampled.”

“Double yuck.”

“Exactly. Well, we looked at it, poked at it, picked it up with a stick, and Travis said Indians used to eat snakes, and one thing led to another, and—”

“And,” Dawn said, with a little smile, “it tasted just like chicken.”

“It tasted like an old boot that had maybe kicked a chicken once, but mostly it tasted like it had spent too much time in a horse paddock.” He chuckled. “But we were only kids.”

“I know. Little boys can be such characters…”

The words seemed to float in the air. Gray looked at her. She was staring straight ahead, hands folded in her lap, a wistful quality to her smile. A little while ago, she’d shown compassion for the child he’d been more than twenty years ago. How could she care about a stranger and not her own child? Was she thinking about her own son now? Questions buzzed inside his head like bees around a hive. The more he saw of Dawn Carter, the less he understood. It made him uneasy. More than that. It made him angry. Maybe it was time to confront her, and to hell with being subtle…

“Look!”

He followed her pointing finger. The place he’d remembered was just ahead, a tin-roofed clutch of falling-down buildings set on a sprawl of gravel. The tires crunched as Gray pulled up to the gas pump and killed the engine.

“Okay. Now all we have to do is hope they have a gas can somewhere and we’re in business.”

They did. A kid with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes filled Gray’s car, then filled a dented red gas can.

“Forty bucks,” the kid said when the tank was full.

Gray looked at the pump. It said he owed twenty-six dollars.

The kid grinned. “That’s life, mister.”

Gray handed him two twenties and was glad Dawn had wandered off in search of what she’d referred to as a rest room. He doubted anybody would want to rest within a mile of this magnificent oasis. He also doubted she’d let him pay for the can and the three gallons of gas it held, and he was right.

“How much do I owe you?” she said, when she found him behind the wheel.

“Nothing.”

“Thank you, but I’d prefer to pay for the gas myself.”

He shrugged “Okay.”

“Great. So, how much do—”

“Dinner.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You owe me that meal we never got to eat.” He made a show of checking his mirror and the road, as if the arrow of blacktop was about to turn into the Indianapolis Speedway.

“That’s out of the question.”

“You’re right,” he said, trying to sound every bit as coolly polite as she did. “You don’t owe me dinner. I didn’t mean to make it sound as if you did. What you owe me is the pleasure of your company at dinner.”