Even the Nights are Better

Carolyn’s slim shoulders relaxed but she waved her hand in a casual gesture, trying to look noncommittal. “I guess so,” she said.

“You’re not fooling me, Carolyn Townsend,” Manny said with amusement, one hand gripping the door handle as he prepared to climb into the driver’s seat. “You’ve completely ignored all my educated warnings, and you’re already emotionally involved.”

“And a good thing for you, too,” Carolyn rejoined tartly, “considering the size of the bill I’m going to be getting for your services this morning, Manuel Hernandez.”

“What a life,” Manny said dolefully. “Everybody grumbles about the vet fees, and yet they all call me at all hours of the day and night, every day of the year. I just can’t win.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Carolyn asked, smiling at him, her tartness dissipating in a warm tide of sympathy for the young man. “Or some breakfast? I was just on my way into the house to cook myself up some scrambled eggs and pancakes.”

Manny shook his head regretfully. “Sounds wonderful, Carolyn, but I’ve got calls waiting back at the office and I really need to grab a couple hours’ sleep. I’ll take a rain check, okay?”

“Okay,” Carolyn said.

The veterinarian shot her another keen glance. “Is there something else? Something you wanted me to check on, maybe?”

“No, no…” Carolyn shook her head and then looked up, her clear sea-blue eyes troubled. “I just wanted to ask you what you knew about this damned dude ranch that’s opening up next door, Manny.”

“The Hole in the Wall?”

“Whatever,” Carolyn said grimly. “I thought at first that was such a stupid name, but maybe it fits after all. The place is going to be a real hole, far as I’m concerned.”

“Now, Carolyn, it’s not that bad,” Manny began in a reasonable tone. “From what I hear, Scott Harris has done a real good job of fixing up the ranch, and he’s planning to run a first-rate operation out there.”

Carolyn shook her head, unconvinced. “Our family neighbored the Kendalls for generations, Manny,” she said, “and that ranch was always a real nice little family business. It was called the Lazy J, and it was just about the nicest neighbor ranch you could ever hope for. Now this city lawyer’s gone and bought it, and God knows what’ll be going on over there at the edge of my property. I just hate it.”

Manny looked at her. “What is it that you hate about it, Carolyn?”

“Everything!” she burst out, her face flushed with emotion. “To begin with, I’ve hated all the construction, months of bulldozers and heavy machinery rumbling around out there bothering my stock. And now that they’re set to open, I hate the thought of a bunch of idiot greenhorns wandering around at the edge of my property leaving gates open and scattering garbage, teasing the bulls and scaring the calves. But most of all, I hate this rumor I’ve heard about the exotic animals.”

Manny looked blank. “Exotic animals?”

“You know,” Carolyn told him impatiently. “Gazelles and wildebeest and all that—exotic African animals brought in and penned up behind fences for city slickers to shoot at. Apparently this man is planning to supplement his income that way. It’s happening all over Texas, Manny, and I find it purely disgusting. The thought of it makes me want to go over to the Hole in the Wall,” she concluded, emphasizing the words with bitter sarcasm, “and shoot something myself. And not some pretty little gazelle, either.”

Manny looked concerned for the first time. “Well, now,” he conceded, “that’s a different thing, Carolyn. I hadn’t heard that particular rumor, but I’ll grant you it does make me uneasy. Not from a moral point of view,” he added, “so much as medical.”

“Medical?” Carolyn echoed.

“Those exotic animals can be a real danger to domestic beef herds. They bring in diseases and parasites that are unknown in North America, and that our native cattle have no resistance to.”

Blood drained from Carolyn’s face, leaving it pale as marble beneath the tan. She stared at the younger man.

“Manny,” she began in a low strained voice, “we spent twenty years here building one of the finest Santa Gertrudis herds in the state. I can’t bear to see everything Frank and I worked for threatened by some…some upstart desk jockey who’s decided he wants to play cowboy!”

She fell silent, her chest heaving, her eyes flashing blue fire, and Manny gave her another concerned look.

“I hate to see you getting so upset, Carolyn,” he said finally. “You know, I’ve met Scott Harris and he seems like a nice reasonable type. Maybe there’s no real truth to all these rumors, and you’re getting worked up over nothing.”

Carolyn collected herself with an effort and forced a smile. “Sorry to sound off at you, Manny,” she said.”It’s not your fault. But,” she added, her voice grim, “I think one of these days I’ll just go on over and have a little chat with this Scott Harris myself. And somehow I really doubt that I’m going to share your good opinion of him.”

At that moment a sleek little pale blue Nissan rolled out of the triple garage behind the house and started down the driveway just beyond where Manny and Carolyn stood talking.

Lori and Beverly were both in the car, Carolyn noted with amusement. Clearly Lori had decided that she wouldn’t lend the younger woman her vehicle, but would give her a ride into town instead. Carolyn grinned privately, forgetting her own concerns for a moment as she thought about the two in the car.

No matter how responsible and mature Beverly was acting these days, she mused, it was going to take a lot to convince Lori that the girl’s transformation was genuine. Lori Porter was Carolyn’s cousin as well as resident accountant and unofficial assistant, but she earned her living by acting as a professional accountant for most of the other ranchers in the district as well. She had lived with the family at the Circle T long enough to have witnessed much of Beverly’s adolescence and young adulthood. Though she usually maintained a discreet silence on the subject, Lori was even more dubious about her young cousin’s motives than Carolyn herself. And she was not likely to be impressed by sporadic good works and noble proclamations from Beverly.

Carolyn and Manny both waved at the two women as they rolled down the drive out of sight, and Manny climbed behind the wheel of his van.

“Remember that little dog needs a lot of nourishment on a regular basis if he’s going to make it, Carolyn,” he said. “Keep him warm, give him liquids every couple of hours, use those drops I left for you and keep the cast dry. And don’t move him unless you have to. I’ll be back early next week to take the stitches out.”

“Thanks, Manny,” Carolyn said. She waved farewell and watched as he backed out onto the drive, roaring off just behind the two women in the blue Nissan.

She hadn’t even had her breakfast yet, but it seemed she’d already spent hours this morning standing and watching people drive down that same road.

That’s all life really is, when you come right down to it, Carolyn thought with a sudden bleak flood of almost unbearable sorrow. Just standing and watching people drift away from you, watching them disappear around a bend in the road and knowing that you’ll never, ever see them again….

She swallowed a brief anguished sob and then set her jaw firmly, annoyed with herself for this weak and uncharacteristic lapse. With a brisk determined stride, she hurried back into the barn and leaned over the manger to check on the terrier.

The small dog looked up at her approach and thumped his docked tail weakly, setting the silky gray coat quivering with emotion. He was almost dry now and the fluffiness of his coat helped to disguise his pitiful thinness, as well as the gash on his side.

In fact, except for the clean white cast on his hind leg and the clipped area where Manny had inserted a neat row of stitches into the long jagged cut, he looked almost normal. But, studying the little animal closely, Carolyn could see that he was still far from any kind of health and strength. His big dark eyes were glazed with pain, and though he made a gallant attempt he was no longer able to lift his damaged head from the sacking to lick her fingers.

Carolyn swallowed hard and tried to smile at his furry, anxious face.

“Poor little guy,” she murmured. “I guess your breakfast is more important than mine, isn’t it? I won’t try to move you just now. I’ll go back up to the house and fix something for you to eat, and bring it right on down here, okay? That’ll make you feel better, boy. That’ll just be so nice…”

Still murmuring in low soothing tones, she backed away and turned toward the big front doors.

But she’d only gone a few steps when she paused in shock, her hand to her mouth. A shadow flitted past her legs just inches away with a glint of white teeth and eyes in the darkness, a scrabbling of straw and a ragged flash of color swallowed up at once in the dusky stillness of the barn.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed aloud, badly startled. “What was that? Who’s there?” She peered into the dark cavernous shadows of the hay piled next to the door.

“Teresa?” she called. “Is that you? What do you think you’re doing, child, spying on me and scaring me half to death?”

There was no response from the shadows. “Teresa?” she called again. “Are you in there? Is that you?”

The silence was so profound that Carolyn, leaning forward tensely, was almost certain she could hear the child’s shallow frightened breathing. She considered crawling into the cavern between the bales and hauling the little girl out bodily, giving her a good talking-to about her behavior. After a moment, though, she changed her mind and started out the door again.

Teresa Martinez had been living at the ranch for almost four months now, since just before Christmas, and Carolyn had never actually talked to the child. As far as she knew, nobody else had, either. Carolyn had hired the little girl’s mother, Rosa, to help exercise the horses and also cook the meals for the four men that the Circle T employed on a permanent basis.

Rosa Martinez had just moved up from Fort Stockton, she told Carolyn at her employment interview. She was a dark, slim, quiet woman in her late twenties who would probably be quite attractive if she didn’t hold herself under such constant rigid control.

But her personality wasn’t any of Carolyn’s business. As manager of the ranch, Carolyn was only concerned with the woman’s job performance, and that was entirely satisfactory. Rosa Martinez seemed to be as skilled a hand with food as she was with horses. The hired men had never looked so cheerful and well-fed, even though they spent many frustrating hours trying to draw the taciturn Rosa into conversation.

Rosa’s daughter was about nine years old, a wild dark wraith of a child with clouds of tangled black hair and glittering black eyes. She didn’t seem to attend school at all. In response to Carolyn’s worried inquiries, Rosa had said simply, “Teresa, she doesn’t do good at school, and they don’t want her there. Too wild, they say, so I just teach her at home.”

Carolyn frequently wondered if Teresa ever sat still long enough to learn anything. The child seemed to be more wood sprite than little girl, a dark silent flitting presence like a small furtive animal around the ranch. As was the case with Carolyn this morning, people never knew when Teresa might be watching them, or how long she’d been there and what she’d seen. Nobody had ever heard her speak, either, but her unexpected appearances had more than once startled residents of the Circle T.

There were rumors about Rosa and her child, of course. There were rumors about everything and everybody in and around Crystal Creek. They usually originated in the Longhorn Coffee Shop and drifted out across the countryside like an invisible but all-pervasive mist. People talked of some terrible event in Rosa’s past, of a drunken abusive stepfather who had threatened little Teresa’s life and had finally been knifed or shot by Rosa in a panicked attempt to save her child.