Summer Chaparral Read online

  Isabel tossed something off in Spanish. Like a trained bear, the brother turned to glare at him. Catarina loosed her own bit of Spanish and the brother started jabbering as well—this was becoming a farce, one with jokes Jace couldn’t understand.

  The crowd, who wore identical expressions of pop-eyed, open-mouthed incredulity, began to part as a slight, dark-haired man—about the same age as Juan, if quite a bit shorter and several dozen pounds lighter—fought his way through.

  “Juan,” he said tiredly, “let him go.”

  Wonder of wonders, Juan’s hand unclamped from Jace’s shoulder. Jace’s fingers tingled as the blood rushed back in. Juan kept glaring and Jace glared right back.

  He might not be willing to start a fight, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose a staring contest.

  The mystery man turned to the sisters. “You all need to leave now. If your parents hear of this, and likely they will”—he flicked a hand toward the crowd—“you’ll all regret it.”

  Isabel sniffed. “We were just about to do that.”

  “Oh, were we?” Catarina sniped.

  The man sighed. “Please. Just go home. Come on, Juan, you know I’m right.” He gave the brother’s shoulder a push.

  Juan sent Jace one last dark look—Jace returned the favor—then headed off, his sisters in tow.

  Catarina glanced back as she trotted away, her gaze part apologetic, part searching. All of it made his heart kick.

  Idiot.

  Time to figure out what came next. He scrubbed at his face, all of him sagging. Beer. That had been the first order of business.

  He went to catch up Spot, only to find the entire town still staring.

  “Show’s over,” he drawled. “Next performance at five.”

  The crowd dissolved with a sharp crack of laughter, everyone fading off to carry on their own business.

  Jace sighed as they left, thinking on that last glance of Catarina’s. And her first one as well, the one that had twisted her expression into something green and bitter.

  He knew that green, bitter something. It had run through him on the Circle T when he’d thought I’d like to go home. But as far north as a man could see would be nothing but the Circle T. The same if one looked south, too.

  That green bitterness had coiled in his gut, driven him to find a map the next day and decide where he was leaving to. His finger had found Bakersfield, traveled through the Tehachapi Pass to Los Angeles. He’d pressed hard on the A of the name, as if he could squash his father under his finger.

  But of course his father was still there, still waiting.

  No, Los Angeles was out. Orange County had plenty of cattle, but was too close to Los Angeles. His finger had gone on to San Diego.

  San Diego was filled with ranches. And was far enough from Los Angeles. But his finger kept going, traveling east, before stopping on a little valley at the foot of the San Jacintos. On a rail line to the packing plants in Colton—he could ship his beef all over California. The green bitterness had faded the longer his finger sat on that little valley.

  The green bitterness had first bloomed when his father had torn young Jace away from the rancho and tried to transplant him into Los Angeles. It had grown and grown, until the moment when he was fifteen, when he knew he had to flee or be consumed by it.

  But the seed of that canker had been planted when Jace was five, sitting with his grandfather on the porch, looking over the Rancho Alvarado, as the old man had promised, “Someday, all of this will be yours.”

  Like most of the old man’s pronouncements, it had been a lie.

  There was a name for that green bitterness—covetousness.

  And look at where covetousness and his wandering finger had led him to.

  He turned to mount up, only to find that the man who’d called off the brother had stuck around. What the hell could he want?

  Jace squared his shoulders, trying to throw off the exhaustion settled on him. “Something you need?” He was out of politeness, all of it having melted away under the heat and his near beating.

  An apologetic smile deepened the creases at the man’s eyes. “Are you all right?”

  Jace nodded warily.

  “I’m sorry for that… incident.” He sounded sincere—not that Jace would be lured into trusting him with only an apology. “Juan can be hotheaded sometimes.”

  “You don’t say?”

  The man stuck his hand out. “Felipe Ortega. I’m foreman at the Rancho Moreno.”

  “Jace Merrill.” The other man’s clasp was tight enough to say friendly—not challenging. “Formerly of the Circle T.”

  Felipe’s eyebrows shot up. “Big spread, that place. What brings you here?”

  Home.

  Jace gave himself a hard inward shake. “I thought I’d strike out on my own. I tried in the valley first, but…”

  “Ah.” Felipe nodded. “And now you’re here. There’s land for certain, and plenty of grazing in the high country.”

  Jace heard an unspoken but at the end. “Jobs?”

  Felipe’s eyes drooped regretfully, but before he could answer a dark-skinned man interrupted.

  “I heard I missed a fight?” he asked eagerly.

  Felipe laughed as he shook the man’s hand. “Hardly. Juan was only giving this one here”—he pointed to Jace—“a rather aggressive welcome.”

  “Dan Harper.” The man held out a hand to Jace. “So you met Juan, did you?”

  Harper’s grip was firm, reassuring. “Jace Merrill. Yes, I met him. He didn’t take a shine to me.”

  Dan shrugged. “Juan gets a head full of steam at times. When it boils off, he’ll be all right again.”

  “He’s looking for a job,” Felipe said. “Know if anyone’s hiring?”

  “The Whitmans don’t need anyone.” Harper pulled on his chin thoughtfully. “The Crivellis might be, but I doubt it. And with five sons, my father isn’t looking for help.”

  A dead end. His hand tightened on Spot’s reins, the hard leather cutting into his palm. He ought to have gone to San Diego instead. Foolish to let his finger do the deciding.

  He didn’t bother to ask Felipe if the Rancho Moreno was hiring. He had some skill at mathematics—three squabbling siblings with the last name Moreno added up to him not getting a job there.

  His grandfather’s words came to him from long ago on that porch. “Mexicans only hire Indians. Never hire Indians, son. They’re lazy and get dead drunk as soon as they get their wages.” The rocker had creaked as he took another swig from his flask. “Of course, Mexicans are lazy too. That’s why this land was meant to be ours.”

  One of Jace’s first lessons on the Circle T had been that laziness knew no hue and one couldn’t predict a man’s appetite for indolence by the color of his skin. Another thing his grandfather had gotten wrong.

  But the old man might have been right about Mexicans only hiring Indians. Jace wasn’t going to ask to find out.

  “No jobs.” He filled his lungs with the sage-scented air. “Is there a saloon?” He could attend to one order of business before he headed back down that road.

  Dan and Felipe exchanged wry glances.

  “We have a very active chapter of the Ladies’ Temperance League,” Felipe explained, his words as dry as the town must be.

  “Of course.” Jace snorted. “And Miss Isabel is no doubt the president.”

  Dan burst out laughing, the sound ringing off the siding of the mercantile. “I see you met her, too.”

  Jace set his hand against Spot’s neck and the gelding pushed his muzzle against Jace’s belly, the whiskers slipping through the fabric of his shirt to tickle his bare skin. This might have been a wasted trip, but he had his horse. And there was always San Diego.

  “Well,” he announced to the other two, “I appreciate the help—”

  “Wait.” Felipe held up a hand. “You’re not headed down the hill now? You don’t want to be out on that road at night.”

  “I don’t see m
uch of a reason to stay.”

  Felipe’s brows pinched with worry. “Have you got a place to sleep tonight? If not… Well, I can’t put you up with me, not after—” He gestured to the water trough. “But maybe I could…” His mustache twitched as he chewed at his lower lip.

  “He can stay with me,” Dan offered. “My sister will be happy to have another mouth to feed. She says we don’t compliment her cooking enough.”

  Jace frowned as leaned into his horse, Spot’s withers firm against his back as the familiar warmth and scent of his companion of many years enveloped him. He’d only just arrived in town, nearly been in a fistfight, and these two were offering him a place to stay?

  It didn’t make sense.

  “Where will you go after?” Felipe asked. As if it were foregone that Jace would stay with Harper.

  “San Diego,” he said shortly.

  “Which rancho?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  Felipe’s frown deepened. “That’s a fair way to go with no real hope of a job.”

  Same for coming up that mountain.

  “Listen,” Felipe continued, looking fretful, “you come out to the Rancho tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  This was too much. There had to be something hidden here, something Jace couldn’t sniff out. No one was this nice. At least, no one he’d ever known. “Why help me? You only just met me.”

  Perhaps the man meant to entangle Jace in obligations—his mouth twisted at the thought.

  “Why not?” Felipe’s shrug held something sad, even as his smile never slipped. “You could use the help.”

  Why not? A simple enough question. Perhaps the man did only want to help.

  “I suppose I could,” Jace muttered, half to himself. Perhaps his finger had chosen wisely after all. “I suppose I could.”

  Chapter Two

  Catarina Moreno fixed two of her siblings with the cold stare she’d learned from her mother.

  “What were the two of you about yesterday afternoon? Of all the ridiculousness…”

  Isabel sent her an even better approximation of their mother’s look. “Ridiculous? You were determined to shame us, talking with that strange man in full view of the entire town.” She went back to drying the breakfast dishes, her thin frame as ramrod stiff as always. No slouching for Isabel. Ever.

  “Talking with a man is hardly scandalous. You brought everyone running when you started yelling.”

  Isabel didn’t answer. Likely because she couldn’t deny it. Besting Isabel in an argument was rare—she’d a first-rate mind, which she used to improve the minds of the pupils she taught in the valley.

  “And you, Juan.” Catarina turned her ire to her younger brother, sitting at the kitchen island, scraping a blade across a whetstone. “If Isabel brought the town running, you gave them all a reason to keep staring. Whatever possessed you?”

  He gestured toward Isabel with the tip of the blade. “She gave me a look like she wanted me to do something. So I did.”

  “I meant for you to take us home,” Isabel said, “not to manhandle a stranger.”

  Juan lowered the whetstone and raised his voice. “And how was I supposed to tell all that from a waggle of your eyebrow?”

  “Do you ever use that lump in your skull,” Isabel asked in wickedly precise tones, “or is it only there to keep your head from floating from your shoulders?”

  Catarina gestured for quiet. “Do Mama and Papa know?”

  Isabel’s hand on the dishtowel went still. “I didn’t tell them.” The towel began its methodical circles again. “Although I should have. Such a dangerous thing, talking to a strange man like that.”

  Catarina rolled her eyes. “We were in the middle of the street in the middle of the day.” Yet, for all her insistence that she’d done nothing wrong… she knew she had.

  She’d watched Laura head back into the mercantile, back to the husband waiting for her, the two of them waiting on their baby, and Catarina’s entire world had gone green. She’d almost spit, her mouth had tasted so bitter.

  What kind of woman envied her best friend’s happiness?

  One as desperate as Catarina, apparently.

  That green sickness had been filling her when she saw that man by the common trough. He’d given her the look she’d been drawing from men ever since she’d turned thirteen and the Lord had given her a bosom for the occasion. Her pride had puffed up like a tortilla on the stove.

  She was not desperate or jealous. She was the most beautiful girl in the county, and she could make men do things. So she’d marched over to that man, determined to make him do something. A stunned smile from him would have been enough to satisfy her.

  Then Isabel had stuck her nose in, Juan had played the fool, and now her parents might hear about her scandalous behavior. Well, scandalous according to their reckoning.

  “Did you tell them?” she demanded of Juan.

  “Of course not.” The knife slid across the stone with a toe-curling scrape. “I don’t want them to know any more than you do.”

  She drummed her fingers against the counter, her index finger finding her worry spot, the gouge she’d put there when she’d dropped a knife some years ago. She gave herself two seconds to rub at it, then pulled her hand away. There was no point in worrying over the incident—what was done was done. And she had chores to parcel out.

  “Isabel, you’ll need to take the laundry to the hot springs.” Crisp. Compelling. Her mother couldn’t have done better.

  Isabel shook her head. “I took it two days ago and I must prepare lessons. The school term starts in a month.”

  Catarina ground her teeth. “I won’t have time to do that as well as harvest the tomatoes and can them.”

  Isabel only shrugged. “I simply can’t do it.”

  She rapped her knuckles hard against the counter to work out her irritation. There was a time when her siblings had jumped at Catarina’s commands. She’d been firmly in charge of all of them, as an elder sister ought to be. Yet, as they’d grown, they’d somehow squirreled out from under her. Juan had gone to run the stockyard in the valley. Isabel had gone there as well to teach school. And Catarina was left behind, still under her mother’s rule.

  And Franny…

  “Where is Franny?” she asked.

  Isabel wiped her hands on her apron. “How should I know?”

  Juan shrugged.

  “She needs to water the chickens and the goats,” Catarina said to herself.

  Isabel hung the apron on the hook by the back door, shaking out the folds as she did. “Sheriff Obregon is coming to dinner tonight,” she said, smoothing the apron one last time.

  “Are you going to call him Sheriff Obregon even after the wedding?” Juan put on a sly falsetto, addressing the stone in his hand. “‘Sheriff Obregon, your supper’s ready; Sheriff Obregon, here’s your firstborn son.’”

  He flicked a glance to Catarina, and she had to clasp her mouth to keep from laughing.

  Isabel gave Juan her schoolmarm glare, her hands curling as if searching for her ruler to slap some palms. Her mouth worked as if she might spit more anger at her brother, but nothing came out. She marched to the doorway, obviously finished with the two of them.

  Catarina put out a hand to halt her. “You won’t tell, will you?” She let her voice go soft, although her instinct was to command. But command Isabel and she pulled away harder than ever.

  Isabel looked at her as if she were stupid, which was how she usually looked at most people. “I won’t have to,” she said coldly. “They’ll hear from everyone else who was there.”

  “My behavior was hardly remarkable enough for that.” But ice moved through her veins regardless—people did love to gossip, and her parents would certainly be displeased by any version they heard. Putting one’s name on all the townspeople’s lips simply wasn’t done.

  Isabel shook her head. “Do you think they don’t talk about you even down in the valley?”

 
Catarina could only stare in response. How was she to answer that? Isabel was no liar, which put the keen edge of truth on her words as they pricked Catarina’s pride.

  Isabel shook her head one last time, then swept from the room.

  Catarina stared at the counter, scarred as it was from years of food preparation, knives and pots leaving their marks behind. She closed her eyes and pinched between them.

  A hand settled against her upper arm. Juan.

  “They mostly talk about how pretty you are,” he offered.

  She let her hand fall and opened her eyes, her mother’s kitchen coming back into view. “Mostly?” She shook her head. “Considering the company you keep down there, I don’t want to know the rest.”

  They’d switched to the mix of English and Spanish they used when alone. Isabel refused to do anything so gauche as to blend the two.

  He squeezed her arm. “Isabel’s always surly when she’s home. Pay her no mind.”

  “She’s right. Our parents could find out. Almost the entire town was watching.”

  “I’ll say it was all my fault,” he offered.

  Dear Juan—he always had been willing to take the brunt of the punishment, even when they were children.

  His smile brightened. “I’m leaving tomorrow anyway.”

  Her answering smile was weakly imploring. “Do you have to go? I like it better when you’re here.”

  Another squeeze. “And I like it better when I’m not.” His hand fell away. “Isabel’s right, though. You keep your escapades well hidden, but one of these days, you’re going to get caught.”

  “I never do anything the other girls don’t do,” she whispered harshly. “Never.” Her fist curled on the counter, the gouges there bumping along the edge of her hand.

  “I know.” He collected up the knife and stone. “But other girls don’t have our parents.”

  No, they didn’t. Other girls had parents who knew it was a new California, one where young ladies had freedoms. Freedom to decide things for themselves, to not be completely under their parents’ rule.

  Her parents still believed in the old California—one where fathers ruled absolutely and young, unmarried ladies lived in purdah.