Eight
The familiar buzz reached Beck before he could find the source of it, and he reined in his gelding to sweep a glance over the morning sky. The sound came closer, louder, steady in the clouds.
“There she is,” Lonnie said, twisting in the saddle to see her.
Sure enough, Jackie’s Piper Cub appeared, yellow distinct against the blue, flying low enough that Beck could see her in the cockpit wearing her headset.
She’d been in the air more often these past weeks.
Word had gotten around after the fire in Muddy Creek’s north pasture about the female pilot at the old Kincaid place who could spot smoke and read country from above as well as any man on horseback.
What had started with a favor here and there had turned into real work, giving her aviation business a strong start.
Patrol flights over the timber. A look at the grasslands after a dry spell.
An early sweep for the Forest Service when the wind came up hard and folks wanted eyes in the sky before trouble had a chance to start.
She’d built herself a life out here in the Sandhills, on Archer rangeland, quicker than Beck had thought possible.
His gaze clung to her as she flew west over the National Forest, as sure in that little Cub as if she belonged in the sky more than she did on earth.
She turned her head toward him and dipped one wing in a clean, easy salute.
Warmth pulled low in Beck’s chest, and he lifted a hand to return the salute.
For one brief instant, the light struck the cockpit glass just right, and the russet in her hair lit up like copper in the sun before she banked west again. In moments, before he wanted it to, the Cub turned small, then so small it disappeared altogether, and the sky fell silent again.
The worry he couldn’t seem to live without lay like mud in his stomach.
He trusted her flying. Trusted her skill more than he’d trust another man at the controls. But knowing about Korea and the crash she’d suffered in her Sentinel kept that worry deep and edgy inside him.
It could happen again.
One engine. One gust. One bad turn of luck. And she could go down.
“She’ll be fine,” Lonnie said, watching him. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“Can’t help but think the worst sometimes.” He gathered the reins in his gloved hands again. “Seeing her up there so high, my mind gets going.”
His brother nodded. “Happens when a woman comes to mean something to a man.”
Beck let the words sink in. The truth of them. “Reckon so.”
He dropped the conversation from there. His family would be blind not to see how his relationship with Jackie was changing him. That she mattered to him. Wouldn’t make much sense to worry about her so much if she didn’t.
With their saddlebags holding tools they’d need to make a fix, he turned his attention back to inspecting the fence, guiding his horse in a lazy walk along the barbed wire, and Lonnie fell in beside him.
Jackie’s place was farther down the ridge, and as it often did, his glance found its way over there.
Down by her hangar, tucked off to the side where no one would have needed to park, stood a dark pickup with a stock rack.
He muttered a curse.
Lonnie shot him a glance. “What’s wrong?”
Beck didn’t know a soul in Halsey who had a pickup that looked like that.
“Clint Varner’s over there,” he said flatly.
“At Jackie’s?” Lonnie leaned forward in the saddle to look harder. “You sure?”
“As sure as I can be. He has no call to be there.”
“Maybe she’s expecting him.”
“She would’ve told me.” He gauged the distance they had to ride to the gate at the corner of the pasture, where the fence met the section-line road. It’d be a fair distance that worked against them, given they were inside the fence, not out on Jackie’s side. “Let’s go.”
They rode their horses hard, eating ground. Wind pulled at Beck’s shirt and hat brim until they made it to the gate, passed through, and backtracked toward the hangar.
But by the time they reached the yard, the truck was gone.
Beck reined in sharply. “Didn’t happen to see the truck leave, did you? Or what direction it was headed?”
Lonnie drew up beside him. “No. Between the cottonwoods and the hangar, I couldn’t see that side of the yard.”
“Me, either.”
The hangar’s doors were closed tight. Jackie’s Willys Jeep sat where it ought to. There was no movement in the yard or anywhere else that Beck could see or feel.
Except the windsock had been ripped into two unusable pieces and moved miserably in the breeze. If it’d been Clint who set out to ruin the marker, he’d done a fair job of it. The pole leaned to one side, like he’d put both hands to it and wrenched.
Lonnie scowled. “He had to have known how important that windsock would be to her.”
“Without it, she can’t see wind direction or speed, or whether it’s safe to land or not.” His jaw tightened. She couldn’t come home soon enough. Or be safe soon enough. “He doesn’t care about the danger she’d be in.”
“He wants her scared.” Lonnie glanced toward the sky.
“Maybe it’s less about her than the ground under her feet.”
“Maybe he thinks if he makes the place hard enough on her, she won’t stay.”
“Yeah.” Beck sighed heavily.
Lonnie regarded him. “You tell her about Grandpa’s memorandum yet?”
It’d been Beck’s decision to let his family know about the old note he found in the cigar box. They deserved to know Wade Archer’s wishes, besides, and Beck trusted them to be discreet, leaving it up to him when to inform Jackie.
“No, and I’m not going to just yet. I’ve got no inclination to pull the rug out from under her when she’s got a new life started out here. Happy with it, to boot.”
“Don’t blame you. Your land. Your call. But it could get ugly. Especially since Clint Varner’s messing with her. I reckon Roy Kincaid put some ideas in his father’s head about the east pasture.”
Restless, Beck shifted in the saddle, creaking leather. “Does he still live on that place across the highway?”
“No. After you left for the Army, he bought a scrappy piece of land south of Thedford. They were both living on it until his father died.”
“Know how to get there?”
“Sure do.”
“I’m in the mood for a little visit.”
Grimly, Beck pushed his Stetson lower over his forehead, turned the gelding toward the road, and followed Lonnie’s lead.
Clint’s ranch sat on a tired little acreage that looked like it had been losing a battle with weather and neglect for years.
The house sagged to one side beneath a roof patched more than once, and the barn leaned so hard Beck figured one good Nebraska wind would finish it off.
A warped corral held a few rangy cattle, barely enough for Clint to call himself a rancher.
Rusted machinery lay half-swallowed by grass, and the yard had that trampled, weedy look of a place no one cared about.
Beck had seen hard places before. This one declared defiance, as undisciplined as the man who lived there.
Lonnie reined in beside him. “Place looks worse up close.”
Beck’s gaze slid to the cottonwoods crowding the back edge of the property. Parked, partly screened by trunks and low brush, sat a black pickup with a stock rack. A good sign Clint was home, maybe even saw them ride up.
Sure enough, still wearing his hat, Clint stepped out of the house, letting the door slam shut behind him. With every instinct drawn taut, Beck crossed his wrists over the saddle horn and watched him come.
“Archer,” Clint drawled around an unlit cigarette. “Brought your brother along so you’d feel taller?”
“Stay off of Jackie Sinclair’s place,” Beck said, his tone low.
“Don’t know why you’re worked up over land that ain’t yours. Coming over here telling me what I need to do and not do. Seems to me it’s none of your business.”
“Not kin to sabotage, Varner. She’s innocent of anything you’ve got burning under your hide.”
“Innocent?” Clint emitted a bitter laugh. “Woman’s standing on ground other men are entitled to. Innocent don’t change that.”
There it was. The old bitterness over the Kincaid place. An entitlement Clint or his father never had.
“You cross into her yard again, Varner, and you’ll answer to me for it,” Beck grated.
Clint’s mouth pressed into the cigarette like a crooked snarl.
“Army teach you that?” he taunted. “Make you think you can ride in like you’re better than anyone else and throw your weight where it’s not wanted?”
Beck fought to hold his anger in check. “Army taught me plenty. More than it taught you, by the sound of it.”
For a moment something ugly flashed across Clint’s face, quick and hot. “That right? Maybe the Army just knew what it had in you boys. Some men get polished up and sent home honorable. Some get spat back out and told it was their own doing.”
“And some men spend the rest of their lives blaming everybody else for what they made of themselves.”
“Listen up, Clint.” Lonnie straightened in the saddle, fists clenched over the reins. “Beck took what was handed him and stood up under it. That’s more than you ever managed.”
“Shut up, Lonnie.” Clint’s breathing quickened. His gaze darted onto the open country behind them before returning to Beck. “Must be a comfort coming home to your family name, your spread, folks looking at you like you’re something to admire.”
Beck didn’t need to see again the life Clint had to live out here—the dilapidated house, the patched roof, the leaning barn, the handful of cattle, the machinery rusting where it sat. Poor ground. Poorer prospects. All of it meant to leave a man bitter.
Maybe that was the heart of it.
Clint had just enough to keep count of what he lacked.
And there wasn’t much Beck could do about it, except make Jackie his priority and keep her safe.
“Not going to say it again, Varner,” Beck said, gathering the reins. “Stay off her land.”
Well aware that Clint made no promises, he turned toward home with Lonnie beside him.