wasn’t interested. He went away when he figured I wasn’t kidding, and things began happening.”
“But you didn’t tell Nathan.”
“About that? No. Didn’t want to worry him. He was already having problems enough with cash flow. So, to help him out, I offered to buy half the ranch. It took pretty much what I had left from Abby’s robbery.” He smiled a little, but it barely got under the moustache. “I thought it would take the heat off him, sort of redirect the attention of those developers. Worked, too. They aimed everything at me.”
“How?”
“Those two horses I mentioned were killed before you came? A mare and a stud, and the mare was in foal; they were mine. I’m the one who generally works in the barn, and I run the riding program. Without tack, no one rides. Without feed, the horses don’t eat. We’re just lucky there’s pasturage and pellets; it hurts to lose that much hay.”
“But Harper”—I shook my head—“it was me they shot at.” He turned toward me abruptly, startling Preacher so much the horse moved away. He caught both arms above the elbows and held me tightly. “Damn it, I couldn’t tell you! Don’t you see?”
I gaped at him. “What—”
“I shot Hornet.”
A wave of shock swept through me. “You—”
“I couldn’t tell you before,” he said urgently. “I couldn’t. You already suspected me—if I’d said anything by way of apology you’d have considered the thing intentional. Don’t you see? I couldn’t have convinced you otherwise.”
“I don’t understand—”
His breath hissed between his teeth. “It was a warning shot. I fired it to scare off the man who told you to go home.” He saw the astonishment in my face. “Yes—I knew he was there. I meant the shot to frighten him, so he’d know I wouldn’t stand for any more of their tactics. But Sunny spooked and the shot went wild.” His eyes searched mine. “I didn’t even know Hornet had been creased until we got back to Smoketree. I was scared sick when I saw you’d had to jump from the mare, but I didn’t know it was the bullet that had spooked her. Kelly—” He stopped. He let go of me, as if he couldn’t touch me for fear of saying more than he meant.
I thought about my brief, violent journey down the mountain on a runaway horse, who had had, it turned out, good reason to run away. I was frightened all over again, particularly now that I knew who had triggered the incident, but I couldn’t really blame him. I recalled too well the look on his face when he had reached me halfway down the mountain, and the fear in his voice.
I had only to look at his face now to see what he was feeling, and I didn’t want to hurt him. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“It’s okay,” I said at last. “Besides, it wasn’t any worse than what you faced in the arena aboard a bucking bull.”
He smiled a little. “You forget—I did that by choice. You didn’t have much, thanks to me. ”
“Blame Sunny, then—he made the shot go wild.”
The smile widened. “Fair enough.”
“Won’t you at least alert the police?” My thoughts had gone back to the developers.
“What would they do? There’s no evidence.” He shrugged. “Think about it.”
“So you’ll do nothing.”
“Nothing to do. Of course, if I ever catch them…”
I couldn’t help grinning. “Frontier justice?”
The moustache quirked a little at one end. “Not quite a lynching party,” he said with a straight face, “but I reckon I’d have a brief discussion with them. Before I called in the cavalry.”
I frowned. “You are joking, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “Sounds as if you’re not too sure.”
“Maybe because I’m not.” I sighed. “What do I know about cowboys, after all? Just what I’ve read, or seen in movies. I’m beginning to think that’s not the whole truth.”
“Not even a part of it,” he said flatly. “Nobody understands a cowboy except another cowboy, no matter how much they think they do. And even we're split into little pieces.” He smiled at my frown of incomprehension. “We’re three different breeds of men, Kelly: the ranch cowboy, who makes his living running stock on the spreads that still exist, large and small; the rodeo cowboy, who specializes in roughstock or roping but might come right out of the city without a background in ranch work at all; and the third kind.”
“Which is?” I prodded.
“Drugstore,” he said succinctly. “The kind who puts on a pair of boots, a ten-dollar