Roz Fox - Trouble at Lone Spur

“Melody Robbins. We’re a family, you and I. And we have Hoot, don’t we? He already sent you a postcard. Honey, I thought you understood why I can’t give you brothers and sisters—because your daddy’s in heaven.” Liz tried a new tack. “You finally got a kitten. And we’ve got our own house. That’s a start, Mel.”

“But I’m gonna be a pumpkin in the Halloween play,” the girl blurted. “Families get to come. Not kittens. Not Hoot. He’s gonna be at the rodeo in Kilgore.”

“I’m afraid you lost me somewhere, honey. How did we get from crawdad hunting with the Spencer twins to your Halloween play?”

“Rusty and Dusty don’t got no mom, and I don’t got no dad. We could be a family. The boys liked your cooking. And their dad loved your cookies.”

“Oh, no!” Liz gasped. She hadn’t had an inkling that such an idea lurked in her daughter’s head. “Melody, baby, you can’t just pick up stray people like you do stray kittens and make them part of your family.”

“Why not?” A tear caught in thick lashes, then trickled down a round cheek.

“Well, because…because…” Liz puffed out her lungs and expelled the drawn breath on a sigh. “Because you just can’t. And whatever you do, promise me you’ll never bring up this subject with Mr. Spencer or his sons.”

“But how will they think of it on their own? Boys only ever think about horses and food and stuff like that.”

“Never, Melody. Is that understood?” Liz pursed her lips.

“All right. But gee whiz.”

“Never!”

“O…kay. But will you make enough sandwiches for them? On your homemade bread? And take the rest of the cupcakes. Please, Mom.”

“Melody Lorraine. I can see the wheels turning. You will not lure the Spencers with food. Where on earth are you getting this nonsense? Certainly not from me.”

“Am I in trouble?” The child sniffled. “You only call me Melody Lorraine when you’re really, really mad.”

Liz threw up her hands. “No, I’m not mad at you. I just want to make sure you know I’m dead serious about this, Mel.”

“All right. But jeez!” With that, she slid off her pony and plunked down on the porch steps to wait, chin in hands.

Thinking it best to let matters drop, Liz went inside and slapped together some sandwiches. She made enough for five people, but she used store-bought bread. The cupcakes needed to be eaten, so she did put them in, as well as a big package of trail mix. If she had her way, she’d feed the Spencers sour green apples. Or maybe not. She liked to cook, and the boys had certainly scarfed down supper last night. Liz didn’t know whether the twins lacked a mother through divorce or through death. Either way, it wasn’t their fault. How could she begrudge lonely children a simple meal? She knew all too well what loneliness was like.

She secured the house, then put the picnic basket and a jug of cold water in the cab of the pickup. Although she gave Melody a head start, she still had to drive slowly. The pony had short legs. That was probably why the Spencers caught up with them well before they reached the river. Markedly subdued, the boys both muttered apologies of sorts.

Dusty and Rusty rode a matched set of well-gaited buckskin geldings. They were small, but not as small as Melody’s Welsh pony. Gil Spencer rode a powerful bay gelding, instead of his injured mare.

The three children met and galloped off in the lead. Gil tipped his hat to Liz and cantered past without saying a word, even though she had her pickup window rolled down. She was so busy admiring the way he sat a horse that she almost broke an axle driving across a rocky arroyo. Darn, but she was a sucker for the way a man—a good rider like Gil Spencer—looked on his horse. He had an easy fluid grace that Liz considered the trademark of a real cowboy. The gelding recognized his mastery, too. He responded to the slightest touch of his rider’s heel or knee.

The boys, now, were learning, and they were perpetual motion in their saddles. She could see daylight between rump and saddle. Liz grinned to herself. Melody was the more polished rider by far. She could handle a bigger horse. Deserved one.

The salary that went with this job was more than adequate to provide for their needs, and maybe there’d be enough left over each month to start saving for a couple of really nice horses.

Speaking of horses, off to her left, ankle-deep in grass, stood thirty or so buckskins, the sleek well-proportioned animals that put Spencer’s name in the horse breeders’ registry. Liz slowed her pickup to a crawl. The land they’d just gone through was barren and dry. These grassy knolls, outlined in a patchwork of fences, had obviously been seeded and irrigated. She’d guess it hadn’t been an easy matter to pump water uphill from the river she could see winding through the stand of cottonwoods far below.

Gil noticed that she’d slowed almost to a stop. Turning, he galloped back. “Is everything okay? You crack the oil pan when you bottomed out back there?”

Just as Liz thought—nothing got by Gil Spencer. For that reason she didn’t make excuses, only laughed. “For a few seconds I wondered that myself. But my pickup’s running fine. I’m just admiring the scenery. Your irrigation setup took some ingenious engineering.”

Gil thumbed back his hat, rested his forearm on the saddle horn and surveyed the pasture all around him. “I’m afraid I see five years of backbreaking work—not to mention buckets of money that both my dad and Ginger accused me of pouring down the drain.”

“Ginger?” She’d noticed a bitter edge in his voice when he said the name. Liz knew someone named Ginger—but no, it was too much of a coincidence to think she’d be one and the same person. Maybe his dad’s second wife? “A wicked stepmother, I presume,” she teased lightly.

His eyes glittered angrily. “You presume wrong,” he said, surprising the gelding when he choked up on the reins and wheeled him on a dime. Sod, damp from a recent watering, flew from the gelding’s sharp heels and stuck to the pickup’s windshield as Spencer cantered off. In the field the horses stopped eating and whinnied nervously. Liz sat in her idling pickup. “What in heaven’s name was that all about?” she wondered aloud. Obviously it’d been a mistake to tease him about Ginger—whoever she was. But if Gil Spencer thought his terse remark would end her curiosity, he didn’t know human nature very well. Although not prone to gossip, Liz did like to know what made people tick. She was intrigued by the little mysteries of life; she was also patient and content to bide her time.

Catching up to the children, Liz insisted Melody join her in the fenced-off pasture where three geldings grazed. No matter how cleverly the boys and her daughter cajoled her, Liz had no intention of allowing Melody out of her sight.

“I should be able to shoe two of those horses before lunch. Melody and I will meet you fellows at the crawdad hole. We’ll share our sandwiches if you point out where you’ll be.”

Gil had dismounted to check a fence post nearby. “We don’t expect you to feed us,” he said. “But you’re more than welcome to join us at the river. See that tall weeping birch?” Liz turned the way he pointed. “My grandfather planted two of them as seedlings,” he added. “Grandmother wanted to build a home there when the trees got big enough for shade.”

“What happened to change her mind?” Liz asked, assuming they built the Spencer ranch house.

“First big rain, and the river flooded the valley.”

“Oh. Did it wash out the second tree? I only see one.”

“It died when I was a boy, during the seven-year drought. Granddad packed water all the way out here from the house, and still he lost one. Even though they’d given up the idea of building here, they still planned to be buried at the foot of those old trees.”

“So, are they? Buried under that tree, I mean?”

Gil shook his head and stared down at the solid gold key chain he’d absently pulled from his pocket—a gold spur linked by the arch of a golden horseshoe. Diamonds winked from the spur’s rowels. His grandfather had entrusted Gil, rather than his own son, with the keepsake. He’d made Gil promise to look after the ranch he so loved—as if he knew his only son wouldn’t. To Gil, the key chain symbolized the heart and soul of the Lone Spur. “It’s almost impossible to bury someone on private property,” he said in a low voice.

“Yes. Corbett’s rodeo buddies wanted him buried beneath that chute. I was relieved when the funeral home refused.” Brushing a sudden tear from her eye, Liz hurriedly pressed a hand to Melody’s shoulder. “Come along,” she urged softly, “I have work to do. Run and tell the boys you’ll see them later.”

Gil watched the woman gather her tools and stride toward the horses to be shod. Tears? At this late date? He couldn’t say why it annoyed him to see proof that she grieved for her husband, that she’d loved him.

It more than annoyed him, it made him damned uncomfortable. Because Lizbeth Robbins didn’t seem to fit his image of rodeos and their hangers-on.

And, thanks to his wife, he knew plenty about those.

AFTER LIZ FINISHED checking the hooves of all three horses, she started with the one that was hardest to fit. Rafe had told her cold-shoeing was the only method the previous farrier used. It was certainly cheaper to use ready-mades, but Liz had been taught by an old-timer who believed that a foot shod properly and at regular intervals would remain sound for the life of a horse. Forming a shoe to fit exactly corrected a multitude of problems and extended the animal’s work life.

Liz slipped a lariat over the first horse and led him to a big oak tree. Its spreading branches provided shade and a relatively clean work space. From the notations Rafe had made on her clipboard—indicating each animal’s identifying features and markings—she determined that this horse was called Sand Digger. Back at her pickup, Liz wrote his name on a three-by-five card, dated it and briefly listed what she intended to do. Then she placed the card in a recipe box, which would eventually include every horse she worked on, with the cards filed in date order. She believed in shoeing at six-week intervals, eight at the most, unless the animal threw a shoe. Good records were something else Hoot had insisted on, and another thing the Lone Spur’s former farrier apparently hadn’t felt was important. She was virtually working blind on these animals.

Gil trotted up just as Liz fired her forge. “Starting lunch?”

She slipped on her apron and gloves. “It’s barely nine-thirty. Don’t tell me your breakfast has worn off already?”

His gaze slid from its inspection of her trim figure to where his sons were energetically throwing a football. “I’d barely poured my coffee when our breakfast conversation turned to bats. Food was forgotten.” He glanced at Melody, who played quietly in the pickup’s cab with a family of plastic dolls. “Is she always so placid?”

Liz looked up from gathering her nippers, blade and rasp. Laughter bubbled spontaneously. “Rarely. She’s trying to impress me so she can go catch crawdads later. Beneath that sweet exterior lies a total tomboy. You’ll see.”

Gil adjusted his hat. “That’s good. Maybe my sons’ll learn some respect. They seem to equate female with inferior.”

“Imagine that,” Liz said dryly. Then before he could take exception, she turned and made her way back to Sand Digger. Thanks to her sixth-sense antennae that were attuned to Spencer, Liz knew the moment he dismounted and followed her. Ignoring him, she arranged her tools carefully, then walked Sand Digger in a circle to check his gait. She reminded herself that a lot of owners preferred to watch their horses being shod. But for some reason it grated on her nerves to have Gil Spencer hunkered down beneath the tree, relaxed as you please. Evidently he hadn’t spied on his other farriers. If he had, his animals might be in better shape. Sand Digger favored his right front foot. On closer inspection, Liz discovered that the last nails had been driven in crookedly.