The Cowboy's Shadow Part 4

Geographically unsuitable. They would meet a time or two through the summer. By fall the distance would come to seem prohibitive, and they would never see each other again.

Whit should, of course, marry. A st.u.r.dy ranch woman, a widow who had her own mournful past. A wife to fill that house with practical furniture and noisy children. Kids to track mud on the spotless tiles and leave hand prints in the sterile kitchen, raid the refrigerator after school, spreading peanut b.u.t.ter and crackers across...That incongruous Queen Ann table?

Kyla suddenly understood where it had come from, and pity for Whit swelled, bringing her close to tears.

"No need to look at this one," Whit said. The sign on the fence welcomed visitors to Sierra Snows Boys Ranch. Two yellow vans stood in front of a long bunkhouse, and in the corral teenagers unsteadily mounted sway-backed horses. At least two kids cowered behind the fence.

"An old dream," Whit said. "Expose troubled city kids to fresh air and magnificent scenery, and they'll go home reformed."

"You don't believe it?" Kyla asked. Except for the two behind the fence, most of the boys looked perfectly happy.

"No. Being raised in the desert and mountains makes the difference. You learn very young that one misstep can kill you, because you walked behind the casket of a playmate who forgot. By the time you're six or seven, you know it's deadly to play tag around open mine shafts, or climb on sunny rock piles without checking for rattlers. You listen to the old timers who lounge in front of Whiskey Dan's, you shiver a little, have a nightmare or two, after they describe a skeleton in the middle of nowhere, clutching an empty canteen."

The big white house on the corner, the elm and the tree house. Whit had been a privileged kid, the son of the superintendent of the Castor Mine. But because Argentia was small, he'd palled around with the sons of miners, ranchers, and men who loafed in front of the saloon.

The narrow road ended at a highway buzzing with traffic. Trucks, motorhomes and trailers, high four-wheel drives and tiny sedans. A few days in the isolation of Argentia, and she flinched at meeting civilization. Auto repair shops, without a single blocked-up wreck. Western wear, fast food, motels, restaurants. A town totally unlike down-at-the heels Argentia.

"This place looks prosperous," she said.

"Bishop's a tourist town," Whit said. "A million people a year come vacationing in the Sierra." They pa.s.sed an art gallery, a book store, another art gallery.

Kyla craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the paintings on display. Two grocery stores! Maybe she should ask Whit to stop for powdered sugar, for the grocery in Argentia had run out. A very large, very modern motel. Was that what he had in mind? An overnight trip, an anonymous rented room, where neither intruded on the other's reality?

Whit drove straight through town. She must plan ahead. She would ask him to stop on their way back, at the grocery and at a drug store. She would go in, alone.

For what?I forgot my toothbrush, she rehea.r.s.ed, moving her lips only slightly.Be just a minute . Or perhaps the drug store was near the coffee shop, and she could leave him -- "There it is!" he said. A realtor's sign the size of a billboard reared behind a gleaming white fence, and beyond it stood a mobile home. They both gasped when Whit swung through the gate. Behind the mobile stood small building wrapped in tarpaper.

Before White turned off the engine a woman opened the door of the mobile home.

He walked to the bottom of the stairs, between rows of potted geraniums, lifting his hat. He explained their search without reference to illness and death. Heat rose in waves from the stones that paved the garden path. Kyla wished the woman would invite them in.

"Rod Harris," she mused. "Young man?" Whit nodded. "Yes, I think that's the name the realtor said. But we only own a few acres. The rest is leased, and he didn't like that. Nice fellow."

"How much did he nose around? Did he go into that old shack?"

The woman jerked her head back, and frowned, obviously insulted. She wiped her brow, spreading perspiration that made her forehead glisten like polished wax.

"That's no shack, it our son's house. He's fixed it up nice inside, but couldn't afford new siding, which is just as well, since we're selling. But me and my husband can't do the work any more, and with the price of cattle down -" She shrugged. Her fingers worked at the sweat under her nose and m.u.f.fled the rest of the sentence. "I hope your friend finds a place to settle."

"He has," Whit said. "Thanks." Another tip of the hat Kyla jumped into the truck and lifted the skirt of her sundress to let the cool find her legs, then thought better of such a provocative gesture.

"That's that," Whit said. "We'll get the coffee and head home."

Would he ask her ahead of time to go to bed with him? Or would s.e.x be an impulsive act, like the first kiss? Why did she suppose he would bother with a bed? He might decide sagebrush under the full moon was romantic.

"Please stop at a drug store. I forgot my hair brush." Hairbrush? She didn't need a hairbrush. They lasted a long time when you had short hair. She could figure no way to backtrack and say toothbrush.

Whit parked along the curb. "'Spellbinder,'" she read the sign. "This is a bookstore."

"The coffee shop's in the rear," he said. Whit ordered iced French Vanilla for them both, then left her sitting at a table while he selected a half-pound each of French Roast, Costa Rican, Brazil, Sumatra, Kona and cinnamon hazelnut. Two cowboys at the counter debated the best road into an abandoned mining town. Whit handed the man behind the counter a hundred-dollar bill, reminding Kyla of eight-hundred thousand dollars that tumbled out of a progressive slot machine, and what Whit had done with it.

She wished she had not mentioned the drug store. In this small town it would be like this bookstore-coffee shop: cozy and down-home, with regular customers waiting to talk to the pharmacist, a balding man called Doc. He would smirk at a strange woman buying condoms.

Somewhere, going or coming, they had pa.s.sed an impersonal chain store, one of those confusing places where you can buy everything from antibiotics to motor oil if you can find it. Perhaps if she suggested a purchase he needed to make -- "You need a coffee mill," she said the moment Whit joined her at the table. Then she realized to her horror that if he had something to buy, he would come into the store and see -- "That kitchen's got everything built in," he said. "All I've got to do is find the owner's manual."

Kyla drank her coffee and kept her mouth shut. She said nothing about the big, impersonal drug store, but he took her there anyway, and she wondered if he read her mind. Too bad that Whit must sit in the truck, baking in the middle of an asphalt parking lot, but she certainly did not want him along. "Just be a minute," she said, and jumped out before he had set the parking brake.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the first hairbrush she saw, but then noticed one that folded into a neat package. Why not? She could save it for traveling. But look, another, with a little comb that slid into the back. White or blue. Purple! She dug to the back of the display, and had to replace all the ones she had pulled off.

Poor Whit! Absolutely roasting! She dashed to the far side of the store. Condoms would be near the prescription counter, where the pharmacists could keep an eye on impoverished teens with aching loins. She rounded a tall display of humidifiers, and collided with Whit.

She knew his blushes now. This one started at the open collar of his shirt, and rose like the tide. His nose split the stream, the red lapped at his eyes. He cleared his throat twice. "I didn't know there were so many," he said, surveying four feet of display.

"I didn't either. You want to pick?"

"Does it make a difference if they're day-glow green?"

"You've never bought any?"

He bit his lip. "Jenny and I were stupid, innocent kids. Incredibly lucky, too.

She borrowed a diaphragm from a room mate."

He hadn't made love to a woman since Jenny? Kyla rapidly replayed everything Whit had said during that painful drive over the mountains. Incredible, but it must be true. This tall, handsome, virile man had been celibate for six years, a living memorial to the dark-haired vixen.

Ribbed. Extra thin for greater pleasure. Large. Super. Buyingthose must give a man's ego a kick.

"Whit, you decide what you need. Read the packages. I'll pay for my hairbrush and meet you at the truck."

She sat in the heat, sweat tickling her midriff and pooling about the elastic waist of her sundress. She should have asked Whit for the keys, so she could start the engine and the air conditioner. What had been the dimensions of the bulge in his jeans? What if he bought large, not to ma.s.sage his ego, but because he truly needed them?

He tossed a pink bag on the dash. "We both got the same notion up there on the mountain," he said, a partial question. "Well, if it comes to that..." Kyla s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag and stuck it in her purse without looking.

"Heat's not good for rubber," she explained.

"Learn that in med school?"

"Very first lesson."

Chapter Four.

Whit looked for a spot in the shade to park, finally gave up and backed into the dirt of a vacant lot half a block from the high school. He sat in the cab of his pickup, listening to the creaks and pops of the metal as the engine cooled and the cab warmed. This was not really his party. He had worked at the Pollux Mine three summers, while he was in college. Nothing like a regular miner.

But the miners lucky enough to still have jobs at the Castor had a holiday to bid farewell to their friends, and that meant Mark Fetterman would be here. And maybe Kyla would be with him.

If you stay in this truck. You'll be baked as toasty as Kyla's layer cakes. Go in or stay out.

Kyla and Glenda appeared at the corner, walked up the steps, into the gym. Whit slid out of the pickup, and in the shelter of the truck checked that his white shirt had stayed tucked in.

Why all this worry about impressing a woman he hardly knew? Hardly knew, yet the first woman he had wanted for years. After Jenny's death he had made one or two bad tries, had decided his mating impulse was dead, that he would never again feel the urge to walk across a room, strike up a conversation, with thoughts of s.e.x winding through the words like red thread in a rope.

I'm sorry, Jenny. The words had become a preoccupying mantra since he kissed Kyla. As he had selected and paid for the condoms.Jenny, please forgive me.

As he entered the foyer, a kid thrust a slip of orange paper in his hand. The janitor must have let the air conditioning run all night, because stepping across the threshold was like falling into ice water. Whit stood in line to sign a book, like at a wedding or funeral. It would be stored in the archives of the mine, and probably never be opened again. Kyla's signature was halfway up the page, perfectly legible. She had not yet learned a doctor's scrawl.

He paused at the open door, looking over the rows of folding chairs, knowing he searched for Kyla. Sit near her and be obvious? Or keep his distance, as if she didn't matter a pin? He identified the cap of dark ringlets that curled randomly against the nape of her neck. Jenny complained incessantly about the pain of dealing with straight hair. She would be jealous.

I'm sorry, Jenny.

He would lift those tiny curls, follow her hairline with his lips, kiss her ears, her shoulders. Slow and easy, hours of petting before he let things come to a climax. He had hurt Jenny the first time. The days of shame that followed their first intercourse...That he did not want to repeat. Perhaps he should simply give it up, leave Kyla alone. But a second glimpse of the untidy curls changed his mind.

Kip Marshall, the superintendent of the Castor, walked to the podium. Whit decided he had better find a seat before the ceremonies started.

"Boss?" Jim and Vince stood just inside the door, turning their hats in their hands. What were they doing here? Well, nearly everyone else in Argentia had the day off, and his hired hands undoubtedly hungered for free barbecue.

"Good, we caught you before you went inside," Vince said. "You locked Rod's truck and apartment?" Whit nodded. "Well, someone tried to break into both this morning. He climbed through the window, tossed Rod's stuff around, but we surprised him while he was working at the truck lock. He drove off in a light-colored pickup, maybe with dark sides, but it's hard to say. Could have been mud and dust. But he drove like the devil breathed down his neck."

Inside the gym Marshall had begun his welcome speech. "Outside," Whit said.

"What's missing from the Rod's apartment?" he asked when the door swung shut behind them.

"Nothing that I could see," Jim said. "Drawers pulled out of the desk, some of the books off the shelves -- "

"The books damaged?" Rod had collected books on Nevada history, and some of the volumes had been printed more than a century ago.

"I didn't look real close, figuring that's a job for the sheriff. Lots of papers scattered, like maybe the fellow was after money. But Rod didn't keep his ready cash in his desk."

"Wheredid Rod keep his ready cash?" Whit asked. It had slipped his mind that sometimes Rod kept rather large sums of money in his rooms, because he banked in Los Angeles, and brought spending money back from each trip, enough to last several weeks.

Vince smirked. "That statue of a bronc rider in the bedroom. Rod showed me once how the bottom opens. I checked. The robber didn't even move the thing, I could tell from the dust."

"Most likely a kid," Whit said. "School's out. He waited this morning out on the road, saw me take off, you guys head out -- " Not true. A kid would have gone for the bronc rider, a Remington bronze sculpture a foot and a half tall. Not an original, but even a reproduction of that quality brought several hundred dollars at auctions.

"He must not've found what he was looking for," Jim said. "That's why he tried the truck, but breaking into a pickup's a lot harder than climbing through a window."

"Look guys, I'm being impolite if I don't show up at this meeting," Whit said after a moment's thought. The memory of dark ringlets accused him of lying. "You report this to the sheriff. The deputy's probably right outside, waiting to handle the traffic jam when three, four hundred people head for the barbecue."

Jim and Vince nodded, plunged down the steps.

Whit returned to the frigid gym. He leaned against the door frame rather than disrupting everyone by hunting for a chair. Why would anyone break into Rod's apartment and truck? Whit mulled over the question for five minutes, and could not come up with a better explanation than money. Everyone in Argentia, every man, woman and child in the county, knew Rod Harris had money. He made no secret of the fact that he had the cash to buy a ranch.

A light-colored pickup? A very slender clue in a country lousy with pickups, mostly white, at least on top, because white paint stood up best to the desert sun. Dark sides, but as Vince pointed out, that could be mud from driving through a wash. Whit walked back to the gla.s.s door and studied the parking lot.

Completely full, and vehicles lined both sides of the street as well.

He curled his fingers into a fist, and paper crackled. He smoothed out the orange sheet. Car wash on Elm Street. Have your vehicle cleaned while you enjoy yourself at the barbecue. Cars $5. Full-sized pickups, $7.

The clue of the pickup could vanish at the car wash. He had better look right now. Whit walked briskly to the nearest white truck, then slowed to a stroll.

What did he think he would find? A note? I was at Plum Sky Ranch this morning.

h.e.l.l, he would have a white pickup himself, except the brown one had been on sale in Carson City.

Had Vince and Jim thought to look for tire tracks and footprints? Whit hoped they had not tramped on the evidence.

Three, four, five white pickups on this side of the street, all in varying degrees of dustiness, two with colored side-panels. He crossed to the other side. Four more, crowded under a cottonwood tree, claiming a slice of shade. All dirty, all with the windows rolled down. Whit walked close enough to peer inside. No evidence of papers that might have been s.n.a.t.c.hed from Rod's desk.

From the corner Whit had a clear view all the way to Main, two blocks away. Jim and Vince leaned on the deputy's car, talking through the window. Maybe he should join them, tell the deputy to look for strange tire tracks and boot prints under the window. On second thought, telling the deputy his job would only alienate him.

The doors of the gym swung open, two men emerged, sunlight sparking reflections from spots of gold on their shirtfronts. Blast it, he had forgotten, they were distributing pins to everyone who had ever worked at the Pollux. He should have stayed at the meeting to collect his.

A boy came down the stairs two at a time, much too young to have been employed anywhere, but he wore a pin, too. Maybe they had souvenirs for the miners' kids.

But this one looked more like an urchin, long hair slicked into a ponytail, a T-shirt advertising a rock group Whit had never heard of. His jeans were clean, but out at one knee. His folks should have seen him better dressed for the meeting.

Whit waited in the narrow strip of shade beside his own pickup, one foot inside, until he saw Kyla on the steps with the Fettermans. Approaching her publicly would only start gossip. Yet, he probably should talk to her, because the burglary of Rod's rooms might have had something to do with hantavirus.

Quit looking for excuses, he told himself. "Kyla," he called from the middle of the street, eyes fixed on her. He stumbled on the curb and nearly went on his face. Great! Just the way to impress a woman! First cry like a baby, then fall down on the street. "I just heard something -- about Rod -- and I think you should know."

Kyla spoke to her sister, making excuses Whit a.s.sumed. Perspiration already beaded her forehead. Her wrists stuck out of her light blue jacket and the pants sagged on her hips. She had not come prepared for a community meeting, and had borrowed the suit from her sister. She would roast at the barbecue.

He said nothing until she climbed into the truck and he had the motor and air conditioner running. He summarized what he knew of the burglary, while admiring the way she pursed her lips in thought.

"I can't see that this has anything to do with hantavirus," she said. Her sharp gaze seemed to strip him. Whit felt exposed. Kyla saw through all his pretense.

But her quick intelligence made her even more desirable.

All the trucks and cars jockeyed for position in a friendly race to the barbecue. Whit decided to let the crowd disperse. Easier driving, and he could spend more time with Kyla.

"My first guess," Kyla said, "would be a woman wants to retrieve love letters, before someone else finds them and pa.s.ses them to her husband. Or tries to blackmail her."

Love letters! He hadn't thought of an illicit romance. What an innocent you are, he jeered to himself. Just because he had never been tempted, because Rod's sister was close to being a nun, he had a.s.sumed...Even thinking about such a thing violated a basic tenet: Don't speak ill of the dead. If Rod had been having an affair with a married woman, best to put a lid it immediately, so there was no gossip.

And," Kyla continued, rather like a remorseless dentist holding a drill, "she left something in the truck that can identify her. You said Rod put question marks and exclamation points on his calendar. No mystery what he meant by those if there's a woman in the picture." She flashed a meaningful grin. Question mark.Can she get away from her husband to see me ? Exclamation point.Wow! That was the best that's ever been ! An adult version of x's and o's.

Whit stirred uncomfortably, engaged the clutch and shifted into reverse. A single mental image of Rod and his woman friend in bed translated, without conscious intent, into carnal thoughts about Kyla. Which wasn't fair to her, or to him, because nothing might come of their friendship.

How do you tell a deputy not to get overly anxious about pursuing a criminal?

Jim came running up, breathing hard. "Are there any footprints in front of Rod's window, where the guy crawled in?" Jim stared at Vince, Vince gaped at Jim. They had not bothered with even elementary investigation.