LITMIR.BIZ

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in with his hat brim tipped down and punched the button for the eighth floor. When he reached his room he dropped his hat on the bed and rubbed his face with both hands.

      “God, I’m tired,” he said.

      “Should I leave?”

      He spun on his heel, nearly stumbling as his boot heel caught the bedspread.

      Jo stood just inside the door. “You mentioned finding someplace quiet, but if this isn’t a good time...”

      “Dang, I’m sorry!” Intent on his getaway, he’d completely forgotten about her. “I sure didn’t mean to run out on you. These three-day events get kind of intense—sometimes I just head for the high country. We can talk now. We’ll raid the minibar and you can ask your questions.”

      They took two Bud Lights from the little fridge and settled at the round table by the window.

      “You’ve got a great view of the city,” she said.

      He glanced at the lights below and shrugged. “I guess, but the sun setting over Mesa Verde would look a lot better to me. I like seeing different places, but my favorite view of bright lights is in my rearview mirror.”

      “I’m just the opposite. I love the city—the energy, the variety... I could live there the rest of my life and never be bored.”

      “Bored isn’t a word you’ll ever hear on a ranch—there’s always more work than time.” He took a swig of his beer. “What did you want to ask me?”

      “Stuff I can probably Google for myself. Tell me about your ranch.”

      He leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs. He never minded talking about Cameron’s Pride. “Our family has held the land since 1867 when Jacob Cameron came west after the Civil War. Carpetbaggers cheated him out of his holdings in Virginia so he named his new spread Cameron’s Pride after his plantation back East. He was headed for California, but a grizzly spooked his horse and dang near scalped him—he would have died right there except some Ute girls found him and dragged him back to their camp.”

      He laughed. “He kept his hair—their medicine woman sewed his scalp back on. By the time he was healed up, he’d fallen in love with one of the girls who found him. They rode down to Taos in the dead of winter and got the priest there to marry them so there’d be no question of their sons’ right to the land. We’ve been in the same spot ever since.” If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the log house snug under the cottonwoods with wood smoke rising from the chimney and light streaming from the kitchen windows into the winter night.

      “So you’re part Ute?”

      “Way back,” he said, “but it’s complicated—I can never keep the connections straight. Old Jacob and his wife had three sons. One died young, one married a schoolmarm come West from Kentucky and one married back into the tribe. They also had sons but none of those boys married Ute girls so the bloodline got diluted with more Scotch-Irish and some French—my great-grandfather served in France in World War I and came back with a war bride. Funny thing, one Cameron in every generation shows up with red hair and blue eyes like the first Jacob. My dad’s hair was red till it turned gray early, and my sister got it this go-round.”

      “My mom’s family has a couple branches like that,” Jo said. “My great-uncle married a Japanese woman and his son brought back a Vietnamese bride. My grandfather thought it was a great idea. He raised prize sheep—he always said bringing in new blood improved the flock.”

      Tom laughed. “Something like that. Our ranch backs up to Ute land, so Luke and I grew up hunting and fishing and scrapping with our Ute cousins just like Dad did and his dad and his dad. Jacob’s sons stocked the ranch with stray cattle they drove north from the old Spanish land grants in New Mexico—rustled them, more like it. Now we run Red Angus cow and calf pairs and my stepmother raises ranch horses.”

      “Are ranch horses a special breed?”

      “Just whatever cross produces smart, tough horses good for working cattle,” he said. “Shelby has been breeding quarter horse mares to her mustang stallion and getting some top-notch cutting and rein horses. She’s got this two-year-old bay filly in training right now who’s going to burn up the arena in reining competition.”

      He pulled out his cell phone. “Okay if I make a quick call home? My folks can watch some events live, but the satellite reception is iffy.”

      “I remember—you let them know you and Luke are okay. Please, go ahead.”

      He hit Send and waited, then said, “Hey, Shelby, did you guys...” He laughed. “Me too—I was ducking and weaving for all I was worth. That bull’s mama goes back to Bodacious—I think she passed along all his tricks.”

      He listened for a moment, frowning. “How much do you expect?” More listening while he rubbed the bridge of his nose and jerked his hand away. “Just don’t let Dad...”

      He smiled. “I know you will.” He glanced at Jo. “Yeah, she’s here—she’s getting a triple dose of bull riding this weekend. You guys take care. We’ll be home by Monday morning.”

      “Everything all right?” Jo asked.

      He sighed. “I guess. They’re expecting some snow, and that always worries me when we’re this far from home. My dad had a heart attack last spring during a blizzard—he was just forty-six.”

      Tom still had trouble believing it had happened. Except for the dark time between their mother’s death and Shelby’s arrival, Jake had always been the rock they all looked to for shelter.

      “There’d been a couple days of rain, and then the wind swung around out of the north,” he said. “The western slope of the Rockies got hit with three feet of wet snow right at the beginning of calving season. Dad was out gathering all the heifers into the home pasture where he could get feed to them. My stepmother was pitching down hay for the horses when Dad’s horse came in without him—luckily there was already enough snow on the ground she could track back to where he fell. She got him to the hospital in time, but the storm wiped out half our herd in one weekend, all bred heifers and new calves. At least we didn’t lose any horses—they sheltered in a big shed attached to the barn. Some folks had stock freeze to death right in the corral.”

      “How terrifying for your stepmother, dealing with that all alone.”

      He gave a wry chuckle. “You don’t know Shelby—not much she can’t handle. When my dad met her, she was hitchhiking because she told the guy who gave her a ride she’d rather walk than sleep with him. She jumped ship in the middle of nowhere with snow coming on. She says this won’t be much of a storm, just six inches or so.”

      He’d been able to replace some of the dead cattle with last year’s winnings, but Cameron’s Pride was still drowning in red ink from the blizzard losses, plus Jake’s medical bills. After much soul-searching, Tom had concluded that lightening the financial pressure with his prize money would help his dad more than if he worked at the ranch full-time.

      “You and Luke were on the road when it happened?” Jo said. “You must have been frantic to get home.”

      He nodded. They’d watched Weather Channel coverage of the storm from inside an airport nearly two thousand miles away, unable to get a flight even as far as Albuquerque.

      “When we finally got to Durango, we checked on Dad at the hospital and then headed out to the ranch. The ice and drifts were so bad we had to go in by snowmobile the last ten miles. And then we started looking for our cattle.”

      Bitterness rose in his throat at the memory of finding the cows, most of them raised at Cameron’s Pride, dead with their calves lifeless inside them or frozen at their sides. They’d had to burn the carcasses, and the stench of scorched hair and roasting meat had hung in the valley for days.

      “Is your dad doing okay now?”

      He turned to her with a start; he’d been living so deeply in the past,

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