Lone Calder Star (Calder Saga Book 9) Read online

  Mouth firmly shut, he went back inside the warehouse and met her on her way out, toting another bag of the vitamin and mineral pack. “I’ll take that.” Giving Dallas no chance to object, he relieved her of the sack and shifted it onto his shoulder.

  Strong fingers gripped his arm, checking his swing away from her. She threw a quick, wary look in the direction of the feed store, then said in a low voice that wouldn’t carry, “Get smart. Dump this grain off at the ranch, then climb back in your car and get the hell out of there.”

  “Not a chance.”

  She stepped back, something resembling sadness in the look she gave him. “Like I said, you’re a fool.”

  “Everybody’s entitled to an opinion,” Quint stated and walked out of the warehouse.

  Dallas lingered a moment, half irritated that she had wasted her breath on him. He had already been warned once. She wasn’t sure why she had bothered to do it a second time. He was nothing to her, just a good-looking cowboy new to the area—who had obviously landed on his head a few too many times. But that always seemed to be true of the good-looking ones, she thought wryly.

  But no amount of reasoning could rid her of that heavy feeling she had when she went back into the feed store. When she started toward the computer and the rest of the grain shipment waiting to be added to the inventory, her glance skipped to the dusty windows, catching a glimpse of the cowboy on his way back into the warehouse.

  Her boss Holly Sykes was at his desk, his chair tilted at a precarious angle and the phone pressed to his ear. As loud as the bell in the warehouse was set, Dallas knew she would have heard the ring of any incoming call. Which could only mean Sykes had instigated the phone call. Dallas didn’t think she needed three guesses to figure out who that was. It was bound to be either Max Rutledge or his son Boone.

  That old feeling of resentment left a bitter taste in her mouth when she sat down at the computer and reopened the inventory file. Only half of her attention was on the work before her; the rest was tuned to the one-sided phone conversation.

  “He never blinked an eye when I told him the account was closed,” Holly Sykes declared. “He just pulled out his wallet and said he’d pay cash for it.” There was a lengthy pause while he listened. “No, he didn’t give his name, and I had no call to ask for it with him paying cash.” Another pause followed. “He looked like your ordinary cowboy—tall, dark-haired, on the young side. Didn’t talk like he was from around here.” The third pause was much shorter. “No problem. I figured you’d want to know about this guy.”

  The desk chair screeched noisily as Sykes rocked his considerable bulk forward and hung up the phone. The front door opened and Sykes demanded, “Is there something else you need?”

  Quint paused inside the door. “Do you know of anybody with hay for sale?”

  “Not off the top of my head, but you’re welcome to post a notice on the board over there.” Sykes waved a hand at the bulletin board on the wall by the door. Its surface was already cluttered with a mix of posters advertising the stud services of local stallions and scraps of paper offering to sell anything from vehicles and trailers to dogs and vegetables.

  Quint walked over to the counter. “Do you have some paper I can use?”

  “Get him some, Dallas,” Sykes ordered.

  Feeling oddly reluctant to face the stranger again, Dallas tore a page off the notepad on her desk, walked back to the counter, and handed it to him.

  “Thanks.”

  But there was a coolness in his look that stung. Dallas supposed she deserved it after the things she’d said to him. Yet she found herself missing the easy warmth that had been in his gray eyes all the previous times. She waited at the counter while he jotted his message on the paper, telling herself that the sooner he found out there was nobody around here he could trust, the better off he would be.

  Finished, he walked over to the bulletin board, posted his notice on it, and headed out the door. In big, block letters, he had written: HAY WANTED. Directly below it, he’d put the name of the ranch and its phone number.

  Beyond the windows, dust swirled as the sedan reversed away from the store and swung toward the highway. The minute it turned onto the road, Holly Sykes pushed out of his squeaky chair and walked over to the bulletin board, removed the notice, and retreated again to his desk. He dropped the handwritten message on the desktop and picked up the phone, punched a series of numbers from memory, and lifted the receiver to his ear.

  “Yeah, it’s Holly Sykes down at the feed store. I need to talk to Mr. Rutledge again.” After receiving an obviously negative response, he said, “That’s all right. Just give him a message for me. Tell him the cowboy came back in, wanting to know where he could buy some hay.”

  The receiver rattled back onto its cradle as Dallas turned from the counter. Holly Sykes wadded the notice into a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket next to his desk. With a self-satisfied smile, he lowered himself into his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell when he finds any hay for sale around here. And I’d bet money on that,” he declared and rocked his chair back.

  A little nudge was all it would take to overbalance the chair and send him flying ass over teakettle. Dallas had to remind herself how much she needed this paycheck. She suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling she wasn’t any different from anyone else in this town. The discovery didn’t set well.

  Paper sacks stuffed with groceries in the rear seat sat atop the bags of grain that Quint hadn’t been able to fit in the sedan’s trunk. More sacks occupied the front passenger seat.

  When he slowed the car to make the turn onto the lane, his glance skipped to the ranch sign, hanging perpendicular to the ground. But it was one of many signs of neglect that he’d noticed about the place. He couldn’t help wondering how much more he would find when he finally ventured farther than the ranch yard and lane.

  Idly, Quint scanned the gentle slope of hills on either side of the winding lane on the off chance he might spot some of the cattle, but there were none to be seen. Considering there was little in the way of graze, other than scrub grass, Quint wasn’t surprised. Years of abuse from overstocking and overgrazing had taken their toll. The land was certainly nothing like the rich grassland of the Calder ranch in Montana with its thick mat of buffalo grass and stands of blue joint. It would require some aggressive land management to turn the Cee Bar into productive rangeland again.

  He rounded a curve in the driveway and the ranch yard opened before him. Automatically Quint pointed the car toward the house, intending to unload the groceries first. But there was something amiss; he sensed it at once and slowed the car.

  The horses weren’t in the corral.

  With a quick whip of the steering wheel, Quint swung the car toward the barn. He braked to a stop in front of it, threw the gearshift into park, and climbed out of the car.

  The instant he took his first stride in the direction of the corral, a male voice barked, “Hold it right there, mister.”

  The voice seemed to be coming from the barn area. Quint made a half turn, and the voice barked again with new harshness, “Damn it, I said hold it right there!”

  In his side vision, Quint could see the double barrels of a shotgun protruding from the opened barn door. But the man holding it was little more than a hatted figure cloaked in the barn’s interior shadows. For the first time in months Quint missed the weight of the Glock he had once carried in a shoulder holster.

  But even if he had been carrying the Glock, he was in no position to argue with a shotgun and Quint knew it.

  “Who are you?” he demanded instead, careful to hold himself motionless.

  “I’m the one holding this shotgun on you, and that’s all you need to know,” the man countered in a cold, hard voice. “Now you just climb back in that car and go tell Rutledge that whatever mischief he was wanting you to do here will have to wait for another time.”

  The man thought he was o
ne of Rutledge’s men. Quick to seize on that slim opening, Quint said, “You’ve made a mistake. “I’m—”

  “No, you’ve made a mistake,” the man broke in, a heat in his voice that warned against further argument. “Now you get back in that car and haul your ass out of here. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  The ominous click of a cocking hammer lent its own emphasis to underscore his words.

  “All right. I’m going,” Quint conceded.

  With deliberate, unhurried movements, Quint retreated to the car and slid behind the wheel. The shotgun barrel followed him every inch of the way, but Quint still couldn’t get a good look at the man holding it.

  Taking his time, Quint reversed the car away from the barn and made a wide, lazy swing toward the lane. All the while his gaze scoured every inch of the yard. Logic told him the man had definitely not arrived at the ranch on foot. His vehicle was parked somewhere. Since the area behind the barn was blocked from his view, it seemed reasonable to assume that was the site.

  Quint followed the lane’s curving route until he was certain he was well out of sight of the ranch yard. Leaving the car parked on the shoulder, he slipped between two sagging fence wires and set out across the pasture, intent on circling around to approach the ranch yard from the rear.

  The terrain offered little in the way of cover, forcing Quint to keep to the hillsides. With the barn’s roof peak serving as his guide, he worked his way around to the back. He crept forward for a look. There, parked in the full glare of the morning sun, was an old white pickup, its finish dulled with a coating of road dust and its edges eaten with rust.

  A scan of the area failed to turn up any sign of its driver. With a good forty yards of bare ground to cross, Quint could only hope the man was still in the barn and still watching the lane.

  Alert for any sign of movement, Quint rose in a crouch and took aim on the pickup, the closest cover. With silence more important than speed, he moved as quickly as he dared over the hard-packed ground. He didn’t draw an easy breath until he reached the cab of the pickup.

  He hugged close to its side for a moment, listening. But there was little to be heard beyond the clucking of a chicken and the faraway bellow of a cow. Quint waited a few beats, then left the protection of the pickup for the barn. Pressing close to its rough siding, he listened for any sounds coming from within.

  He caught a faint rustle, but it was impossible to tell if it was made by a human or a chicken. With the rear barn door closed and no windows on this end, Quint had no choice but to edge around to the side. He stopped short of the window frame and removed his hat before stealing a look inside. He glanced first at the open barn door without really expecting the man to still be standing by it.

  For an instant Quint could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the shotgun propped against the door. A hen squawked and scurried into view, disturbed by something or someone on the opposite wall of the barn. Quint ducked down and shifted to the other side of the window. When he peered through its dusty pane, he immediately spotted a hatted figure poking around in the manger of one of the horse stalls, his back to the window. That was all he needed to see.

  Moving away from the window, Quint glided swiftly around the barn door and paused inches from its opening. More faint rustling came from the vicinity of the stalls. Hearing it, Quint stepped inside the barn and almost simultaneously scooped up the shotgun.

  With no hesitation at all, he broke it open, removed its two shells, and snapped it together, no longer caring that the sound betrayed his presence. The rustling noise stopped instantly.

  “You might as well come out of that stall,” Quint called. “I know you’re there.”

  A narrow-hipped man, wearing a lined jacket that gave extra bulk to his torso, stepped out from behind a partitioned stall. The brim of his dark cowboy hat shaded his eyes, but it didn’t conceal the lower half of his age-weathered face or the tufts of gray hair that poked from beneath the sides of his hat. He didn’t say a word, just stood there glaring at Quint.

  “All right,” Quint said, “let’s try this again. Who are you?”

  “Empty.”

  Quint thought he was referring to the shotgun, currently cradled against the crook of his arm. “I know it’s empty. I unloaded it.”

  “No,” the man grumbled irritably. “That’s my name—Mordecai Thomas Garner. M.T. for short.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The old man spunkily cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know that it’s any of your damned business.”

  “I can promise you it is.” Quint smiled and began a leisurely approach to the man. “If you had given me a chance to explain earlier, I would have told you that I don’t work for Rutledge.” He halted a few feet from him and gave the shotgun a toss into the old man’s arms. “I work for the Triple C.”

  Empty Garner clutched the shotgun and stared at Quint for an uncertain instant. “The Triple C—that’s the Montana outfit that owns this place, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Quint confirmed.

  The old man eyed him leerily. “How do I know you’re who you say you are? That car you’re driving has Texas plates.”

  “That’s because I rented it after I flew down here.”

  “That’s what you say,” Empty scoffed, still skeptical.

  “I did give you back your shotgun,” Quint reminded him.

  “You kept the shells, though.”

  Quint smiled. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Neither am I,” the old man retorted and patted the bulging side pocket of his jacket. “I got a bunch more shells right here. If I thought you were lying, I could have this loaded in two seconds.”

  “In that case, you have a decision to make. Because one of us is trespassing and it isn’t me.”

  Empty thought about that a moment, then ducked his head. “I guess that’d be me then.” When he looked up, there was fire in his eyes again. “But if you’re that Evans fella, you’ve done one helluva poor job of running this place.”

  “I don’t know where Evans is,” Quint admitted. “My name’s Echohawk. Quint Echohawk.”

  “That’s an Indian name.”

  “That’s right. Now would you care to tell me what you’re doing here?” Quint asked in light challenge.

  “I guess you’ve got a right to know,” Empty Garner admitted. “My granddaughter mentioned last night that Rutledge had run off this Evans guy. It got me to thinking about the livestock. I knew Rutledge wouldn’t care one whit if they starved to death. And I was right, too. When I got here, I found the horses in the pen, nosing in the dirt to find the last few scraps of hay, and nothing but nubbins for grass. So I turned them out.”

  “And I have a half dozen bags of grain in my car.” Quint smiled at the irony of it. “Now I have the fun of catching them again.”

  “You won’t have any trouble,” the old rancher declared. “Just rattle some corn in a feed bucket and they’ll come running.”

  “Probably,” Quint agreed, turning away.

  “Where’d you leave your car?”

  He swung back. “Halfway down the lane.”

  Empty Garner responded with a slow nod of comprehension. “When you left, I figured you’d head to the Slash R for reinforcements. Never occurred to me you might sneak back here. That was my mistake.” He paused, his sharp-eyed glance giving Quint the once-over. “My truck’s out back. Why don’t I give you a lift to your car and save you hiking all the way back to it?”

  “That’s a deal.”

  Leaving the gloom and musty odors of the barn, they exited through the rear door and made their way to the white pickup. Empty Garner stowed the shotgun in the gun rack mounted across the cab’s back window and hauled himself behind the steering wheel. Quint climbed into the seat beside him and pulled the creaking door shut.

  At a turn of the ignition key, the engine sputtered, then rumbled to life. The way the old pickup bounced across the rough ground, circling to the front
of the barn, Quint suspected its shocks had given out long ago. The going was a little smoother when they reached the ranch yard.

  Empty nodded in the direction of the pickup parked in front of the barn. “How come you didn’t haul the grain in that truck?”

  “It wouldn’t start.”

  “You’ll probably find that somebody dumped sugar in the gas tank.” There was no humor in the smile that twisted Empty Garner’s mouth. “Don’t bother hiring anybody around here to fix it. They’ll just drag their feet about getting it done, knowing that’s what Rutledge would want them to do. Spend the extra money and get a tow truck to haul it to a garage in the city. While they’re at it, you might as well have them install a lock on the gas tank, or it’ll just happen all over again.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “I’d tell you to get a mean dog, but it wouldn’t do any good. They’d just wait until you were away from the place and either poison it or shoot it.”

  Quint eyed him with growing interest. “I get the feeling you’re talking from experience.”

  There was a tinge of bitterness in the grim set of the old man’s features. “I used to own the Robles Ranch south of here until Rutledge squeezed me out.” He sliced a hard look at Quint. “Mind you, I can’t prove that. Rutledge is too clever to leave any trail that’ll lead back to him. But it was his doing—and him who ended up with my place.”

  “How’d he go about it?” In Quint’s experience, people rarely changed their modus operandi.

  The pickup jolted over a pothole, but Empty Garner didn’t seem to notice as his thoughts turned back. “I guess the trouble started when Fred Barlow quit after being with me nearly ten years. He said he got a job in a big feedlot north of Dallas that would pay him more money, plus give him health benefits and paid housing. I didn’t see Rutledge’s hand in it at the time, but looking back, I know it was there now. After that, everybody I hired kept quitting on me. Some lasted a month or two, but most walked after a few days. Pretty soon I couldn’t get anybody to work for me. Now I grant you, my ranch wasn’t a big spread, but there was more work than I could handle by myself. If it hadn’t been for my granddaughter pitching in like she did, I’d have had to hang it up sooner than I did.”