Heart Of A Cowboy: Creed's Honor / Unforgiven

Tricia promised to head home with supper as soon as possible.

Along with Carolyn and several other volunteers, she waited on the steady stream of customers—it never ceased to amaze her how many people showed up for the event. Many of them, of course, were out-of-towners, staying at River’s Bend, but the locals came in waves, often for both lunch and supper.

At six the last few stragglers wandered out, and Evelyn promptly locked up behind them.

By then, the huge kettles had been emptied, scrubbed and filled with fresh salted water and bags full of dried beans, and while the others sat at the public tables in the front of the community center, relaxing and enjoying a well-earned meal of their own, Tricia stirred spices into the cooking pots.

A few minutes later, Tricia left by the back door, carrying two bulky plastic-lidded bowls full of food, and spotted Carolyn, just getting into her aging compact car.

She made an oddly lonely figure, in the twilight-shadowed parking lot and, on impulse, Tricia called out to her. There was a kind of brave sadness about Carolyn that she hadn’t noticed before.

Smiling, Carolyn turned from her open car door. “I should have thought of that,” she said, with a nod to Tricia’s takeout.

“There’s plenty,” Tricia said. “Why don’t you join Natty and Sasha and me for supper?”

Carolyn hesitated—she looked tired—but then she gave a little nod. “I’d like that,” she said.

“Good,” Tricia said. “Follow me.”

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_f201fe78-dbb3-5c3e-b386-de36905093f4)

THE FOUR OF THEM—Natty, Sasha, Carolyn and Tricia—had enjoyed a lively supper of chili and cornbread, seasoned with plenty of laughter, sitting around Natty’s kitchen table, and Carolyn had stayed to help clear away after the meal.

Natty, explaining that the effects of her afternoon nap had worn off, excused herself from the kitchen and made her way to her bedroom, Winston soft-footing it along behind her, his tail curved like a question mark. Valentino looked almost sad as he watched his feline friend disappear into the hallway without so much as a backward glance.

Sasha, alternately giggling and yawning, asked if she could use the computer upstairs; her parents had taken their laptop to France with them, and though they’d had some problems accessing wireless services in their hotel room, the little girl was certain they must have resolved the trouble by now. She was eager to send an instant message and, hopefully, receive an immediate response, and Tricia didn’t have the heart to point out that since it was after 2:00 a.m. in Paris, Paul and Diana were probably sleeping.

Although she did fine in the daytime, when there was plenty going on to engage her interest, Sasha missed her mom and dad more poignantly after sunset. Tricia well remembered being her goddaughter’s age, how she’d felt for several weeks every September, when she was back in Seattle to start the new school year. With her mother working nights at the hospital, and Mrs. Crosby from downstairs as a babysitter, Tricia had lain in her childhood bed and silently ached for her life in Lonesome Bend, for her dad’s easy companionship, and for Natty’s, and for the fleeting magic of little-girl summers in a small town.

“This is a terrific old house,” Carolyn commented, effectively bringing Tricia back from her mental meanderings. “It has so much character.” She spoke with sincere appreciation, her blue eyes taking in the bay windows, with their lace curtains, the lovely hand-pegged floors, the fine cabinetry, the antique breakfront full of translucent china, every piece an heirloom.

“On Natty’s behalf,” Tricia smiled, “thank you. The house was one of the first to be built, when the town was just getting settled.” Tricia pulled on her jacket, which she’d left draped over the back of her chair earlier, when she and Carolyn had first arrived with their rummage-sale supper, and took Valentino’s leash from the pocket.

The dog’s ears perked up at the sight of it, and he came to Tricia, waiting patiently while she fastened the hook to the loop on his collar.

“I wonder what it would be like,” Carolyn mused, “to have such deep roots in a community.” She spoke in a light tone, but there was some other quality in her voice, something forlorn that made Tricia think of the way Valentino had watched Winston follow Natty out of the room—as if he’d lost his last friend in the world.

What could she say to that? Tricia liked Carolyn tremendously, but even after working with her at the community center all day and then sharing a meal, they were still essentially strangers.

Tricia was quite shy, though she’d made a real effort to overcome the tendency, especially since she’d returned to Lonesome Bend to sell off her dad’s properties and make sure Natty really would be okay on her own, as she claimed. Carolyn, on the other hand, didn’t seem shy at all, but merely—well—private. She was a person with secrets, Tricia was sure, though not necessarily dark ones.

Valentino was anxious to get outside, so Tricia opened the back door, instead of heading for the front, and Carolyn followed. Both women were silent as they walked around the side of the hulking old house, Tricia juggling the leash, Carolyn with her hands thrust into the pockets of her blue nylon jacket.

Carolyn’s car was parked out front, in a pool of light from a streetlamp, and her keys made a jingling sound as she took them from her pocket. “Thanks for inviting me over tonight,” she told Tricia, who was gently restraining Valentino. He wanted to head off down the sidewalk, make the most of his final walk of the day.

“I enjoyed having you here,” Tricia said truthfully. “So did Sasha and Natty.”

Carolyn flashed her warm, wide smile. “I was too tired to stay and eat with the other volunteers after the sale closed for the day, but the prospect of dining alone wasn’t doing much for me, either.”

Valentino began to tug harder at the leash. He needed a little training, Tricia thought. Maybe, when she found a permanent home for him, he could learn to heel instead of crisscrossing in front of her, nearly making her trip.

Tricia chuckled ruefully and shook her head, and Carolyn gave a little laugh, too. “I’ll see you at the community center tomorrow?” Carolyn asked, stepping off the sidewalk and going around to open the driver’s-side door of her car.

“Yes,” Tricia said, as Valentino yanked her into motion. “See you there.”

“And you’ll be going on the trail ride, too?” Carolyn persisted. “The one at the Creeds’?”

Looking back over a shoulder, Tricia nodded. Carolyn had seemed uncomfortable around Brody Creed earlier, but evidently she was over that now. Possibly, she didn’t expect to see him on the ranch the next day.

“I’m afraid I can’t get out of that,” Tricia responded. “Sasha’s counting on some time in the saddle.”

Carolyn’s face, like her hair, was lit with moonlight. She had, Tricia noticed, the bone structure of a model; she was one of those women who, like Natty, remained beautiful as they aged.

“It’ll be fun,” Carolyn insisted. “You’ll see.”

With that, she got into her car, shut the door and started the engine. The headlights were bright enough to make Tricia blink as the rig drew up alongside her and Valentino. Carolyn gave the horn a little toot and drove away.

It’ll be fun. You’ll see.

Tricia still wasn’t entirely convinced of that. Horses were foreign creatures to her, huge and disturbingly unpredictable, and not only did they shed, they’d been known to bite. Plus, it was a very long fall from their backs to the hard ground and what if she—or worse, Sasha—was not only thrown, but stepped on? Or what if something spooked the horses, and they ran away? She’d seen it happen a hundred times in the vintage Western movies her dad had loved.

Conner Creed’s face rose in her mind in that moment and, somehow, Tricia knew—just knew—that he wouldn’t let anything happen to Sasha, or to her, or to anyone else who might be joining them on the trail ride the next day. She knew less than nothing about horses, it was true, but Conner was an expert. For that matter, so was Sasha, though, of course, she wasn’t as experienced as he was, being only a child.

It didn’t take long to traverse Lonesome Bend from one end to the other, even on foot, and Tricia and Valentino got all the way to the old drive-in theater before Tricia decided they’d walked far enough. Farther on, the road curved dark along the edge of the river, and there was only the glow of the moon to light the way.

While Valentino was occupied in the high grass alongside the collapsing fence, Tricia looked up at the big, ghostly remnant of the outdoor movie screen. It was faced with corrugated metal, the white paint chipping and peeling, and time had bent one rusted corner inward, like a page marked in a book.

The projection house/concession stand was dark, naturally, and the rows of steel poles supporting the individual speakers tilted this way and that, resembling pickets in a broken fence. Or tombstones in a forgotten graveyard.

A shiver went up Tricia’s back, then tripped back down. A graveyard? That, she decided, was an unfair analogy—the Bluebird Drive-in Movie-o-rama had been a happening place in its heyday. The sad old screen had been lit up with light and color and pure Hollywood glamour five nights a week in summer. Her dad must have told her a dozen stories about how thrilling it was to sprawl on the roof or the hood of somebody’s car, or in the bed of a truck, the sky a dark canopy overhead, liberally dappled with stars, while John Wayne headed up a cattle drive, or the Empire struck back, or Rock Hudson and Doris Day fell in love, or James Dean rebelled without a cause—

A lump formed in Tricia’s throat. Her own memories of the drive-in were scented with buttery popcorn from the big machine on the concession counter; she recalled the scratchy sounds of music and dialogue crackling from the cumbersome speakers, designed to hook onto the car windows, and the delicious frustration of waiting for darkness to fall, so the movie could be shown to advantage.

Still, business had already dropped off dramatically by the time Tricia began tagging along to the theater with her dad on those sultry, star-spattered summer nights, and the films were the sort that go straight to DVD or cable now, without ever hitting the big screen in the first place.

“It’s the end of an era,” she remembered Joe McCall saying sadly, one late-August night, when the credits were rolling on the last offering of what would turn out to be the Bluebird’s final season, though Tricia hadn’t known that then. She’d been twelve at the time, not even a teenager, and scheduled to board a flight from Denver to Seattle first thing the next morning.

“The end of an era,” Tricia repeated softly.

Now Valentino was on the move again, making for the bright lights of town, and he pulled her right along with him.

Tricia’s eyes burned, and she had to wipe her cheek once, with the back of one hand. Later, when she was older, and she had her dog, Rusty, and the drive-in was starting to look downright decrepit, she’d been a little ashamed of the place. “Why don’t you sell it?” she’d asked her dad once, when they’d spent a hot afternoon picking up litter, the drive-in being a popular spot for illicit parties, and mowing the grass.

He’d laughed and said times were hard because the Republicans—or had it been the Democrats?—were in office, so nobody was spending much money, particularly when it came to commercial real estate. Then, more seriously, that sadness back in his eyes, Joe had said, “Someday, it’ll be yours—the drive-in, the campground and the rest of it. This is all riverfront property, Tricia—that’s Creed ranch land over on the other side—and when the time is right, you’ll sell it for a good price, and you’ll be glad I held on to it for you.”

Hauled along by Valentino, now determined to go home, it would seem, Tricia glanced back over one shoulder, took in the shadowy form of the big For Sale sign nailed to the front gate next to the rickety ticket booth—the whole scene awash in the orangish shimmer of a harvest moon, partially obscured by clouds now—and sighed. Her dad had been so certain that he was leaving her something of value. If Joe had lived, though, he’d have been very disappointed in the state of his legacy, and maybe in her, too.

Another tug from Valentino’s end of the leash alerted Tricia to the fact that she’d stopped walking again—it was as though the past had somehow reached out, with invisible hands, and held her in place.