LITMIR.BIZ

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trouble we had with rustlers last winter, I can use a man to take André’s place until he’s well again. I can’t promise you good pay—you could get better almost anywhere else—”

      “This time of year?” Sim leaned against the opposite wall of the stall and chose a fresh bit of straw. “Even the big spreads lay off men in summer.”

      “That may be, but we scrape by at the best of times. Elijah’s here by choice. So is Miriam. Federico lost his wife two years ago, and Miriam looks after his little girl while he’s riding. Bart has a crippled hand that makes it more difficult for him to find work where the owners and foremen can afford to be more fussy about who they hire.”

      “And you can’t.”

      “I’ve been very lucky.”

      “What makes you think an army tracker would make a tolerable cowhand?”

      “You’re good with horses. My guess is that you’ve worked cattle in your day, and done just about everything else that’s required on a small place like ours.”

      “Just about everything else” was right. He’d even tried a few excruciating stretches of legitimate labor, but blacksmithing and bronc-busting hadn’t panned out when he’d needed real money to begin a straight life with Esperanza. The kind of cattle working Sim knew best wouldn’t meet with Tally’s approval.

      But here she was, offering him a way to stay near André and keep looking for the thief who’d taken the map. If her brother hadn’t recovered by the end of the summer, he probably never would. A steady job at Cold Creek would give Sim food and shelter and time to think through what he would do if the map…or, worst case, the treasure…was gone for good.

      He’d seen enough of Cold Creek to know that Tally wasn’t being modest about either its size or prosperity. The land itself was promising, with a spring and a creek that flowed the better part of the year, but she couldn’t lay legal claim to any of it until this part of Arizona was officially surveyed. The main adobe house was serviceable, as were the barn and the few other outbuildings, but they weren’t the work of someone with lofty ambitions for wealth and status. Tally had admitted she’d lost cattle to rustlers, and she probably hadn’t owned many to begin with.

      Those very disadvantages made her stubborn courage all the more remarkable. She knew what she had and planned to make the best of it, no matter the odds against her. There was no doubt in Sim’s mind that she’d always been the boss at Cold Creek.

      Ay, muy loco. He was crazy to seriously consider staying anywhere near a woman who interested him the way Tally did. No good telling himself that he could look at Tally and not feel…not feel something that even Esperanza, with all her purity and goodness…

      Damnation. Tally and Esperanza weren’t alike. Not anything alike. As long as he remembered that, he was safe. As long as he remembered that he had to earn Esperanza the way a man earns his way into heaven.

      If he began to feel trapped, the wolf gave him a way out.

      “Patterson won’t like it,” he said.

      “He’ll accept my decision.” Tally slid down from the partition. “Do you want the job?”

      “I’ll take it, at least through the summer.”

      She hesitated, then offered her hand. He took it, feeling the calluses on her palms and the steadfast strength of her grip.

      “There’s only one other thing,” she said, holding his gaze as firmly as his hand. “Everyone at Cold Creek keeps my secret away from the ranch or around outsiders like the doctor. I’m Tal, André’s brother. That’s the way I started out here, and how I intend to continue.”

      He released her hand, flexing his fingers to relieve the tingle in them. “Call yourself whatever you choose. I’ve got no reason to care one way or another.”

      “I didn’t think so.” She smiled at him the same way she smiled at Elijah and Miriam and probably at everyone who worked for her. “I’ll inform Elijah. Tomorrow night you can sleep in a bunk.”

      Sim nodded and stepped back out of range of her scent and her touch. “Are you going to get some sleep now, boss?”

      “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think I will.”

      She walked out of the barn. Sim leaned against Diablo and breathed in the familiar smell of horseflesh until the stallion’s head drooped and Sim gave himself up to the merciless reckoning of dreams.

      CHAPTER SIX

      DOCTOR JOHANSEN LEFT Cold Creek early the next day. He offered no more hope for André than he had given when he arrived, but at least he admitted to Tally that recovery was possible.

      She paid Johansen out of her very limited stock of cash and devised a schedule so that either she or Miriam remained with André at all times. He continued to lie quietly, sometimes opening his eyes without seeing, at others moaning disjointed syllables that made no sense. Miriam made up a thin gruel that he was able to eat much as a baby would, but Tally worried that his health would fail even more quickly on such a diet.

      The everyday work of running the ranch kept Tally sane after she’d spent several hours at her brother’s bedside. Elijah was well able to manage the spread without her help, but Tally couldn’t have borne day after day inside the house the way Miriam did. She went back to riding the range, working with Federico and Bart as they branded stray and orphaned calves, doctored sickly cattle, and mucked out tanks and water holes.

      Elijah had another task. He hadn’t been pleased when Tally had told him about Sim, but it was his job to show a new hand the ropes. The two men had to accept each other sooner or later, and Tally intended that it be sooner.

      Tally saw little of Sim or Eli for several days. On the third evening both of them appeared in time for supper and assumed their places without ceremony, Elijah in André’s chair and Sim in the foreman’s seat, next to Bart.

      Federico, halfway between scolding his children for bad table manners and describing a recent encounter with a cantankerous cow, fell silent when Sim sat down at the table. Bart grabbed a biscuit and bit into it, risking Miriam’s wrath for eating before grace had been said. Pablito and Dolores, seated at their own miniature table, stared with wide, fascinated eyes at the stranger.

      Miriam behaved as if this were just another ordinary meal. She served up the frijoles, ham and potatoes, and took her chair at Tally’s other side. Her dark eyes met those of every man and woman at the table, coming last to Sim.

      “We will pray,” she said.

      Heads bent and eyes closed, but Sim stared at Tally. She stared back. Miriam said grace, perhaps a bit more loudly than usual. She had an unerring sense for detecting lost souls.

      Tally wasn’t surprised that Sim didn’t pray. She also wasn’t surprised to find that she’d missed him over the past few days, even his sarcasm and double-edged remarks. The night he’d come with the doctor, she’d felt herself driven to speak with him in the barn, and for no good reason except her own loneliness. She’d taken strange comfort from his stolid inability or unwillingness to offer the usual pretty words meant to ease her grief. When he did speak, he meant what he said.

      Here, among the spare comforts of her own home, he looked just as out of place as he had at the Brysons’. His eyes seemed more vivid, his features sharper and somehow feral in the lamplight. She couldn’t begin to read what lay behind his stare or guess what he saw in hers.

      But she knew she hadn’t made a mistake in offering him the job. Elijah had brought him to the table; that was as close a sign of acceptance as Sim was ever likely to get from the former soldier. At least they hadn’t come to blows….

      “Amen,” Miriam said.

      “Amen,” the others echoed. Miriam gave Tally a reproachful glance. Elijah scooped up a spoonful of frijoles. Pablito and Dolores set to their own meals with enthusiasm.

      Tally

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