The refrigerator made a cool, companionable sound as she opened and shut it. She carried her glass of lemonade—no ice—to the table and sat down.
“What does Rio do?” she asked.
“Breaks horses.”
Hope tried to match Mason’s laconic description to the complex reality of the man called Rio. “Is that all?”
“If you’re Rio, it’s a good plenty. He’s part horse hisself. Swear to it. Ride anything that grows hair. Gentle about it, too.” Mason stretched his arms over his head with a force that made ligaments and joints shift and pop quietly. “Never knew him to bloody a horse, and he’s rode more than one that had it coming.”
Hope took a sip of the fresh, tart drink and sighed. “He said he was a man who found water. He said to ask you and then decide.”
Though Hope wasn’t looking, she sensed Mason’s sudden and complete attention. Faded green eyes fastened on her with an intensity that somehow reminded her of Rio.
“He liked something about you,” Mason said flatly. Then, seeing her tighten, he added, “Nope, not like that. Oh, you’re plenty of woman and he’s sure enough a hell of a man, but that won’t saddle no broncs for Rio. If he said he’d look for water, it’s because you did something he liked.”
“He was at Turner’s well. All I did was wrestle with that mulish generator.”
Mason looked at Hope. The coltish girl of his memories had grown into a woman as beautiful as her mother had been. But unlike her mother, Hope didn’t care about her own beauty. Nor did she hate the ranch. She was part of it, as deeply rooted in the land as the plants that tapped hidden water far below the desert floor.
Like her older sister, Hope had tousled dark hair and a generous smile that set men to dreaming. But Hope didn’t see it, nor the men she drew. All she saw was the land, and she was willing to work for what she saw. Her sister hadn’t been. Julie had been as pretty as a butterfly—and as useless when there was work to be done. As for Hope’s mother, she simply hated the land too much to work it well.
“Rio liked your grit,” Mason said, nodding to himself. “That’s the only thing he respects. Grit.”
“Well, I’ve plenty of that,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding as she wiped her dusty face with the back of her equally dusty arm. “Can he do it?”
Mason’s eyes narrowed and looked inward. “Honey, if there’s water anywhere on the ranch, Rio will find it.”
“How?”
The old man shrugged. “I heard it said he’s a water witcher, a dowser, grandson of a Zuni shaman. I heard he was a soldier and a mapmaker. I heard he was raised in a Houston skyscraper and on an Indian reservation beyond the Perdidas. I heard he was educated east of the Rockies and knows the West better than any man alive.”
“How much of that do you believe?” Hope asked curiously.
Mason lifted his battered, sweat-stained Stetson and settled it more firmly on his head. “All of it. And I’ll tell you this,” he added, pinning her with a shrewd green glance. “Rio’s smart and quiet and faster than any rattler God ever made. He’s part Indian and all man. He don’t push worth a damn, and he’s pure hell in a fight. I once saw him take apart three yahoos in less time than I could pour a cup of coffee.”
“You make him sound—brutal.”
Mason was eyeing Hope’s lemonade when he sorted out what she hadn’t quite said.
“Like Turner?” he asked bluntly.
She let out a breath. “Yes.”
“Not a chance. Turner’s bone-deep mean. He likes hurting people.”
With difficulty Hope concealed a shudder. She knew that part of Turner’s personality all too well.
“Rio’s easygoing when easy gets it done, and no meaner than he has to be the rest of the time.” Mason rubbed his aching knuckles and looked at her. “Honey, two of those three men Rio whipped had knives. There was a lot of loose talk about how they was going to skin out the breed that thought he was good enough to drink with white folks. Whatever those men got, they had coming, and then some.”
She turned her head quickly, catching the hard look on Mason’s face. “You really like Rio, don’t you?”
“If God had seen fit to give Hazel and me kids,” Mason said evenly, “I’d have died proud to sire a son like Rio.”
For a minute Hope couldn’t find any words to say. She had never heard Mason talk about anyone as he did Rio, not even the near-mythical figures out of his family’s past.
“Where did you meet Rio?” she asked finally.
Mason hesitated. He lifted his hat again, settled it with a jerk, and said, “It’s Hazel’s story, really, but she wouldn’t mind me telling you. Her sister’s kids was in trouble, never mind what kind. Rio sorted it out.”
Hope thought quickly, remembering what she knew about Mason’s dead wife. Hazel’s sister had married a half-Indian drifter. The man had vanished after a few years, leaving four children behind. Part-Indian children. It shouldn’t have mattered—but there were still a lot of places where it did.
And Rio had “taken apart” three men who hated Indians.
“I see,” Hope murmured. Then, quietly, “I hope those men learned a lesson.”
“Doubt it. Can’t teach a snake to ice-skate. But you can set your watch by this,” he added with grim satisfaction. “Them three don’t beat up on kids no more.”
Hope decided that she knew all she needed to about the man called Rio: Mason respected him. Whether or not Rio could find water, at least he wasn’t a vulture hoping to pick at the bones of her dreams.
“Thanks.” She stood up suddenly and kissed his gray-stubbled cheek.
“You gonna do it?” he asked.
“Yes.” She started for the phone, then stopped in dismay. “I don’t know how to get hold of him.”
“Don’t worry.” Mason smiled. “You turn around, he’ll be there.”
“But how will he know I want to hire him?”
“Same way the wind knows to blow.”
Hope made an impatient sound.
Mason looked up, green eyes calm and certain. “He’s Rio. He’ll know.”
Three
HOPE PUT HER hands on her hips and made an exasperated sound. “ ‘He’s Rio. He’ll know,’ ” she repeated mockingly. “Big help, Mason.”
Mason just looked at her with wise green eyes.
“If you had pigtails,” she muttered, “I’d pull them right off your stubborn head. I don’t have time to wait for Rio to mysteriously know I want to hire him. I need water and I need it now!”
“You always were a headlong sort of gal,” Mason agreed, smiling to himself. “I might be able to find Rio, for a price.”
“What price?” Then she groaned, thinking of the list of chores that had to be done, chores that they both disliked doing.
“Ice cubes for a week,” he said.
“Done.” She smiled wickedly. “You’re slipping, Mason. I always do the ice cubes.”
“Yeah, but now I won’t feel bad about it.”
She laughed and shook her head, making light burn darkly through her loose curls. “How will you find Rio?”
“Easy. He’s breaking horses for Turner.”
“Oh.”
Hope bit back a curse. She really didn’t want to call the Turner ranch. Since she had come back to the Valley of the Sun to live, John Turner had pursued her relentlessly. The more often she refused him, the more determined he was to have her.
Grimly she nerved herself up for the call she had to make. Though she had outgrown her terror of him, she still despised him for his casual brutality. Just being polite to him was an effort that left her jaw aching. She hid her feelings because she knew that they would only make him more insistent. His arrogance had to be experienced to be believed.
“Has that son of— Has he been bothering you again?” Mason asked, his voice rough.
She shrugged. “Ever since his aunt’s bank gave me a second mortgage on the Valley of the Sun, John seems to think he owns me
.”
“I may be near seventy, but so help me God, I’ll pistol-whip that son of a bitch if he ever touches you again.”
Hope put her hand on Mason’s arm, both restraining and reassuring him. Even while her father was still alive, Mason had protected her as though she was his own daughter. In many ways he was an old-fashioned western man. He believed that if a woman said no, she meant it, and that was the end of the matter.
It was a belief John Turner didn’t share. Like a spoiled child, he was obsessed by whatever he couldn’t have. His father had prevented him from taking Hope eight years ago, but Big Jase Turner had died last winter, leaving no one to put a leash on his only son.
With a reflex that came from many years of practice, she buried the thought of the Turners and her father’s futile dreams of a “good” marriage for his younger daughter. It had all happened a lifetime ago. Both fathers were dead, Hope’s mother was dead, her sister was dead.
Hope was alive.
In surviving, she had learned the difference between a man’s easy promises and the terrifying reality of his lust. But more important than yesterday and lies and a young girl’s screams, today Hope was a woman whose ranch was dying beneath her feet. Next to that fact nothing mattered, certainly not the irretrievable past.
She picked up the receiver and dialed quickly. The housekeeper answered the phone on the second ring.
“Hi, Sally, this is Hope. I’d like to leave a message for one of your hands.”
“I’ll get John,” Sally said quickly.
“No, there’s no need to bother him.”
It was useless. Sally was already gone. Hope closed her eyes and waited for the lord and master of the Turner empire to come to the phone.
Mason’s eyes narrowed as he watched a mask settle over Hope’s face. It had almost broken his heart when he had seen her dropped off by Jase Turner nearly eight years ago. Her face had been pale, bruised, and her expression far too old to belong to a laughing girl who had just turned eighteen.
Sighing, cursing under his breath, Mason rubbed his neck wearily. Thinking about the past always made him feel old and futile. The only good things about those years were Hazel and Hope’s father, Wayne, and they were both dead now. And Hope, of course. She had come out of the past and she was alive. To hear her laughter on a winter morning made everything worth it. He would do whatever it took to make certain that she would never again forget how to laugh.
“Hello, John,” Hope said neutrally. “I told Sally not to bother you.”
“It’s never a bother talking to you, baby doll.”
“I’d like to leave a message for one of your hands. A man called Rio.”
There was a fractional pause. When Turner spoke again, his voice wasn’t nearly so warm. “What do you want with him?”
She waited for a long moment, letting the rude question echo, before she said crisply, “Sorry to disturb you. Good-bye.”
“Wait! Don’t be so stiff-necked. I’m just looking out for your interests. You can’t trust every man, you know.”
Hope thought of water and thirsty cattle and held her tongue. Turner’s arrogance and rocklike insensitivity shouldn’t surprise her anymore.
“This Rio is a drifter and a cocksman,” Turner said baldly.
“I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
Now.
Neither of them said the word, but it was there between them. Hope hadn’t been able to hold her own with a man when she was eighteen, but she could now. For that, she could thank John Turner. For that, she once had wished him and herself dead.
The thought almost made her smile now. It was hard to believe that she had ever been so young and naive.
“I thought you and Mason broke all your horses on your own,” Turner said. “The ones you have left, that is. If you’d just give me the word, baby doll, I’d have you three deep in the best horses money can buy. And if it’s Storm Walker that’s giving you trouble, I’ll be glad to put the spurs to him myself. He’s too damn much horse for a woman.”
With a grimace Hope schooled her voice to show nothing. When she spoke, she ignored his repeated proposal to become Mrs. John Turner. She also ignored his casual reminder that she had only five horses left, and one of them was a stallion that was a double handful of thunder to ride.
“If you see Rio, tell him I called,” she said.
“He won’t be in for several hours, maybe not for days. He’s an independent bastard. You better tell me what you have in mind. He’ll want to know what—”
“He already does,” Hope cut in.
“Wait. Are you coming to the barbecue tomorrow?”
It was an effort to keep her voice civil, but she managed. She needed his water too badly to give way to her temper. “Sorry. There’s just too much to do here.”
“Baby doll, you’re working that pretty ass to the bone. You don’t have to. I’ll take care of you. I want to. You can keep your ranch. Hell, I’ll even pipe water over for you. It’d be my wedding present to—”
“Thanks for passing on my message,” Hope interrupted firmly, stopping the flow of unwanted words.
Turner laughed. “All right. But you’re going to say yes one of these days.”
Silently she hung up and turned to face Mason’s knowing eyes.
“Still after you, huh?” the old man asked.
“It’s just a game with him. If I said yes, he’d take off in the opposite direction like a chaparral cock.”
Mason shook his head slowly. “Don’t you believe it.”
Her smile was small and tight. “I don’t. But in a way, it’s true all the same. If he had me, he wouldn’t want me for more than a week or two. That’s just the way he is. He’s always been that way. He’ll die like that.”
“Yeah, and he’ll die considerable before his time if he tries more than sweet-talking you.”
Sudden tears burned behind Hope’s eyes. She wrapped her arms around Mason. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you,” she whispered, hugging him hard. “I love you.”
His large-knuckled hand smoothed her hair while he returned her hug. “You’d have been buried in ice cubes, that’s what.” Then, almost too softly for her to hear, he said, “I love you, honey.” Then he turned her in his arms, swatted her paternally on her rear, and said, “Now, you git before them cows dry up and blow clean to the Perdidas.”
“If Rio calls—”
“Gal, you ain’t been listenin’ to me,” Mason interrupted impatiently. “Rio will find you. He don’t need no help from me, and he sure don’t need no swaggering, yellow-bellied son of a bitch like Turner to point the way.”
Hope gave up. She gulped a fast swallow of lemonade and left Mason to enjoy the spoils of her hasty exit.
He took the glass, emptied it, and called after her from the porch, “Beans and beef at sundown.”
“And salad,” she yelled as she climbed into Behemoth’s dusty cab. “There’s lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, and mushrooms in the refrigerator.”
“Rabbit food! You expect me to fix rab—”
The rest of his outraged words were lost in the roar of Behemoth’s engine. It was no accident. Hope knew that while Mason might occasionally eat, and enjoy, “rabbit food,” he felt it was beneath him actually to prepare it.
He would do it, though, cursing every crisp leaf. And he would enjoy it, both the crisp leaves and the cursing. The ride to town was long, which meant that fresh vegetables were rare at the ranch house.
Smiling, Hope drove past the home pasture where her breeding cattle clustered around the trough, their black coats dulled by dust. Alongside the dirt road there was a narrow pipeline pitted by sand and sun. The well that had once supplied the ranch house’s needs had gone dry more than a quarter of a century ago. Her father had drilled the well deeper and then deeper still, until he struck dense bedrock where earthquakes had taken water-bearing layers of rock and shoved them beneath bone-dry slate. He had cursed and dug another well
several miles away, on the far side of the buried fault.
The new well shared Hope’s name. It was water from the Hope that had been piped down to the ranch house and its outbuildings.
Other, separate wells once had irrigated the nearby pastures and filled the cattle troughs to overflowing. No more, though. The fields were dead and the windmill-driven pumps that had once brought up water were disconnected, lifeless. The water that came out of the wells now wasn’t enough to keep the prime on the pumps, much less supply the needs of the black Angus, the croplands, and the scattered troughs of the range cattle.
The well her father had named Hope wasn’t dry. Not quite. But it couldn’t produce enough water for cattle and the ranch house, too. So she had capped the pipe leading from the Hope to the ranch house, sold off some of the range cattle at a loss, and started hauling water to troughs both at the ranch and farther away.
When even that hadn’t been enough, she had culled more range cattle, selling off pieces of her future in order to survive the endless dry months.
The croplands and ranch-house lawns were long dead, as were all but the oldest, most deeply rooted trees surrounding the buildings. She had been forced to let the vegetable gardens beyond the kitchen die, for she couldn’t feed the plants’ thirst and that of her cattle, too. She hauled water for the house from Turner’s wells and fed it into the cistern buried beneath the ranch yard.
And still it wasn’t enough.
Each day her ranch’s single remaining well sent a little less water up to the thirsty surface of the ground. Each day the cattle needed a little bit more to drink. Each day dawned clear and bright in a barren sky.
It will rain soon, she vowed quietly.
Every drought, even the worst, had an end. All she had to do was survive until the rains came and the temporary water holes filled and the groundwater rose up again to fill the empty wells. Then grass would grow, cattle would breed and fatten and increase in number and size, and the Valley of the Sun would live again.