“I told you we should have hazed those thirty head back across the fence last week, Pa,” the girl stated calmly.
“And I told you they needed a few more days of good grass, Maggie!” The argument had already been hashed over several times. “Those cows just strayed, that’s all. And we’re just here to cut out our strays, like we always do.”
He reined his horse down to a walk to cross the last few yards to Webb Calder, stopping at a right angle to him. Flashing the man one of his patented smiles, he respectfully touched a finger to the pointed brim of his Stetson.
“Good morning, Mr. Calder.” Angus O’Rourke sounded deliberately cheerful and carefree.
“Angus.” The stone-faced man with the hard eyes simply nodded in response to the greeting.
Irritation rippled through Angus. He was angry with himself for not calling Calder by his first name, and putting them on equal terms. The man had a way of making him feel worthless and a failure. Hell, he was a rancher, too, the same as Calder … in his mind. But Angus hid his bitterness well.
“It’s a fine day, isn’t it?” he remarked with a broad, encompassing sweep of the clear sky. “It’s mornings like this that make you forget the long winter behind you. The meadowlarks out there singing away. Wild-flowers are sprouting up all over, and those little white-faced calves all shiny and new.” It was a few seconds before he realized his prattle was making no impression on Webb Calder. Again, Angus checked his angry pride and hid it behind a smile. “You remember my son, Culley, and my daughter, Maggie.”
Webb Calder acknowledged the boy’s presence with a nod. The black-haired boy paled under the look and mumbled a stiff, “Morning, sir.” Then Calder looked at the girl.
“Shouldn’t you be in school, Maggie?” It was a question that held disapproval.
Actually, her name wasn’t Maggie. It was Mary Frances Elizabeth O’Rourke, the same as that of her mother, who had died four years ago. But having two women in the family with the same name had been too confusing. Somewhere along the line, her father had started calling her Maggie, and it had stuck.
She shrugged a shoulder at the question. “My pa needed me today,” she explained.
The truth was she missed more days of school than she attended. In the spring and fall, her father claimed he needed her to help on the ranch. Maggie had grown to realize that he was too lazy to work as long and as hard as he would have to by himself. The ranch was such a shoestring operation that they couldn’t afford to hire help, so her father took advantage of her free labor.
During the winter, the tractor was broken down half the time, which meant they didn’t have a snow blade to clear the five-mile drive to the road where she could catch the school bus. When her mother was alive, she’d saddled the horses and ridden with Culley and Maggie to the road on those occasions, then met them with the horses when the bus brought them back in the afternoon. But it was always too cold and too much trouble for her father.
Maggie no longer missed going to school. She had outgrown her clothes and had little to wear, except blue jeans and Culley’s old shirts. At fifteen, nearly sixteen, she was very conscious of her appearance. She had tried altering some of her mother’s clothes to fit her, but the results had been poor at best. None of her classmates had actually ridiculed the way she dressed, but Maggie had seen their looks of pity. With all her pride, that had been enough to prompt her into accepting the excuses her father found for her to stay home.
Her mother had been adamant that both of her children receive an education. It was something Maggie remembered vividly, because it was one of the few issues that the otherwise meek woman wouldn’t be swayed from, not by her husband’s anger or his winning charm. So Maggie kept her schoolbooks at home and studied on her own, determined not to fail her mother in this, as her father had failed her so often.
The disapproval that was in Webb Calder’s look just reinforced her determination to keep studying. Maggie made no excuses for what her father was—a weak-willed man filled with empty promises and empty dreams. All the money in the world wouldn’t make her father into the strong man Webb Calder was. It was a hard and bitter thing to recognize about your own father. And Maggie resented Webb Calder for presenting such a stark example of what her father could never be.
Realizing the conversation was going nowhere, Angus O’Rourke turned his gaze to the herd gathered in the hollow of the plains. His face took on the expression of one reluctant to leave good company but had work to be done.
“Well, I see a Shamrock brand or two in the herd.” He collected the reins to back his horse before turning it toward the cattle. “I’ll just cut out my few strays and head them back to their own side of the fence.”
“I’ll have one of my boys help you.” Webb started to raise a hand to signal one of his men.
“We can manage,” Maggie inserted. They may be poor, but she wasn’t short on pride. She’d been taught by her mother never to accept favors unless she could return them someday, and it was ludicrous to think a Calder would ever need a favor from them.
Webb Calder’s hand remained poised midway in the air while he looked silently at her father for confirmation that they wanted no help. “The three of us can handle it,” her father stated to back up her claim, although he would have readily accepted the offer if she hadn’t spoken up.
The hand came down to rest on the saddlehorn. “As you wish, Angus.”
As he turned his horse, Angus flashed Maggie a black look and rode toward the herd. She and Culley trailed after him. Feeling the Triple C riders looking at them, Maggie sat straighter in the saddle, conscious of their overall shabby appearance, from their clothes to their ragged saddle blankets.
From the far side of the herd, Chase watched the motley trio of riders approach. Nate Moore had already passed the old man’s orders around, so he knew one of the three riders was female. Buck let his horse sidle closer to Chase.
“How do you tell which one’s the girl?” Buck’s low voice was riddled with biting mockery.
“It must be the small one.” Chase let a smile drift across his face. “She’s supposed to be the youngest.”
“She’s young, all right,” Buck agreed dryly. “I like my women with a little more age on ’em and more meat on their bones. Crenshaw was telling me this morning that Jake Loman has him a new blonde ‘niece’ working in his bar.”
“That right?” Chase murmured, aware, as everyone was, that Jake’s “nieces” were prostitutes. “That man does have a big family, doesn’t he?”
Buck grinned. “When this roundup is over, you and me are going to have to check her out. She might know some new tricks of the trade.”
“Another week of looking at these cattle, and I’ll be satisfied if all the new girl knows is the old tricks,” Chase replied and turned his horse to head off an errant cow, succeeding in changing its mind about leaving the herd.