I just can’t walk the path that you tread.
Don’t stand between me and what I can be
’Cause you’re Calder born—and Calder bred.
3
The house seemed unnaturally quiet when Maggie entered it. She paused in the foyer, listening to the midafternoon silence. A smile touched her mouth as she started forward, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floors.
There was a stack of mail on the cherrywood table waiting to be sorted, ranch correspondence separated from the personal mail. She stopped beside it and slipped out of her springweight suede coat, laying it over the back of a living-room chair for the time being. Beneath it, she wore a classically simple dress in a wine-colored watered silk. Its style gave the impression of height to her petite build and discreetly flattered the mature curves of her slender figure.
One of the envelopes was addressed to iy. Her glance flicked curiously to the return address and stayed. A quiver of anticipation darted through her when Maggie saw it was from the Admissions Department of the University of Texas in Austin. She nibbled anxiously at her lower lip, wanting to open it and find out if Ty was being accepted for the fall term. With all her attention focused on the envelope, she didn’t hear Ruth Haskell come in from the kitchen.
“I thought I heard someone but I didn’t know it was you, Maggie. I didn’t think you’d be back till later in the afternoon.” When Ruth’s voice broke the silence, Maggie turned with almost a guilty start, the envelope in hand. Ruth noticed it and apologized with a nervous quickness that had become a part of her speech pattern. “I’m sorry. I meant to sort the mail earlier and leave it in the den, but I was doing something else and didn’t get back to it.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Maggie smiled an assurance at the woman, who had once been housekeeper and cook at The Homestead. Now she came only occasionally to sit with the newest addition to the Calder family when Maggie had to be away.
Like so many others, Ruth was descended from one of the original drovers who had trailed cattle north from Texas to Montana with the first Calder and had stayed on to help build the ranch. It gave the ranch a tradition and a continuity of bonds forged long ago and still remaining strong.
As Maggie studied the woman, she couldn’t help noticing how Ruth was showing her age. Her blond hair had faded to gray, and a network of age lines had withered her face. Her gentle blue eyes had lost their sparkle. Once Ruth had been on the plump side, but nerves had eaten away until she was thin. There was a perpetual tremor in her hands now, agitation making it worse at some times than others.
To those who knew her, as Maggie did, the source of her decline could be traced directly to her son. After last summer’s attempt to kill both Ty and herself as part of a wild plot to obtain control of the ranch, Buck Haskell had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to a long prison term. In the way of these hard-core western people, his name had been dropped from all conversation. Even though Ruth visited him regularly, no one asked about him or even referred to her absences from the ranch. It was part of the tradition of this land, the same as when a person died. No one mentioned the deceased because deep feelings, especially sorrow and grief, were to be kept inside. To do otherwise was to show weakness.
Sometimes Maggie thought it would help Ruth if she could talk about her son, to bring out in the open the sense of failure and guilt she probably felt, as well as the all-forgiving love of a mother for her child. But as much as she pitied Ruth, Maggie had no compassion at all for her son. Because she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive him, she didn’t mention him.
Regretting that she’d let her thoughts take that unpleasant turn, Maggie swung her attention back to the mail and reluctantly set the envelope addressed to Ty apart from the other stacks.
“Is Cathleen upstairs taking her afternoon nap?” she asked Ruth, giving her a quick smile.
“Oh, no, she’s with her daddy.”
Maggie lifted her head, turning to the woman with mild curiosity. “She must not have taken a very long nap.”
“She hasn’t had her nap yet this afternoon,” Ruth informed her anxiously. “Chase left shortly after lunch and took her with him. She cried so when he got ready to go that he just didn’t have the heart to leave her. You know how he dotes on her.”
“I know,” she murmured dryly. Her strong, tough husband was little more than putty in the hands of their two-year-old daughter. “Where did they go?”
“Out to the drilling site in the Broken Butte range. He had some messages to deliver to the rig foreman.” She glanced nervously at the watch hanging loosely around her wrist. “He said he wouldn’t be gone long.”
Maggie sighed and fell to sorting the rest of the mail again. “I’m sure he didn’t intend to be gone this long.”
The front door opened, bringing forth a high-pitched, bubbling giggle. “Duck your head, Cat,” Chase’s voice warned as Maggie turned to see father and daughter enter the house. Cathleen was riding on his shoulders, her little hands crushing the silver-belly felt hat on his head. His hands had a firm hold on her cordur
oy-covered thighs so she wouldn’t fall. When he spied Maggie, his leathery tan features broke into a dazzling smile. “Didn’t I tell you your mother was home?” he said to the raven-haired tot on his shoulders.
As he crossed the foyer to join her in the living room, Maggie’s impatience at him for depriving Cathleen of her afternoon nap faded to a mild exasperation. His face radiated such strength, as if it had been sculpted from the raw elements of this Montana land he loved so much. With Ruth present, Chase didn’t kiss her. Instead, he hooked an arm around the child and swung her off his shoulders and onto his hip as she shrieked with delight.
“Give Momma a kiss,” Chase instructed and watched with satisfaction as the two leaned to each other, their hair equally black, and green eyes the emerald color.
“Look at you.” Maggie surveyed the dark circles of dirt ground into the knees of Cathleen’s corduroy pants and the grime on her ruffled white blouse, not to mention the dirty face and hands. “She looks like she’s been playing in a pigpen.”
“A little dirt won’t hurt her. Besides, it’s good Calder soil,” Chase insisted with a small grin. “It was kinda muddy around the drilling site. She got a kick out of playing in it. You should have seen her before I cleaned her up.”
“I’m glad I didn’t,” she retorted.
“Want down,” Cathleen demanded and gave her father one of those level green looks as she wiggled in his tight hold, determined to be set on the floor.
“Come to Nanna Ruth, Cathleen.” She held out her palsied hands to the child. “We’ll go upstairs and get you washed up.”