Roz Denny Fox Read Online Free Page B

stall.
    “What do you suppose Ben hoped to find?” Jake asked Wade, to take his mind off Hayley Ryan.
    “Can’t recall the old guy saying. I don’t know if he just needed to escape town life for a month or so every summer, or if he actually found ore.”
    “You’d think it’d have to be more than just an escape to drag a guy out to live in primitive conditions every year for some ten years.”
    “I figured he was halfheartedly hunting silver. A couple of times he talked like the ore was slowly playing out of his mine near Tombstone. But then, I’m a cattleman through and through. I don’t pretend to know what makes a prospector tick.”
    “There you two are.” Nell Cooper poked her head inside the barn. Still slender at fifty-five, she had smooth skin and warm gray eyes, which contributed to the fact that she didn’t look much older than her sons, Dillon, thirty-five and Jacob, thirty-two. “Goodness, Jacob, what happened to your head?” Very much in command of the Triple C in her role as family caretaker, Nell silenced Charcoal and bustled the men toward the house.
    She clucked sympathetically as Jake and Wade alternately explained Jake’s clash with Hayley Ryan.
    “Well,” Nell declared as she gently sponged her son’s wound, “that woman sounds crazy. I say leave her alone, Jacob. We used to haul water from the ranch out to some troughs your father and his dad constructed from fifty-gallon barrels. I guess we can do that again.”
    Wade and Jake exchanged a very male rolling of the eyes. “After we successfully dickered to use Ben’s spring, it cut our work by half,” Wade reminded his wife. “Not only that, we’re running twice the summer herd now. Jake, Dillon and I can certainly handle one contrary female.”
    As Nell got out first-aid supplies, she wore a look that said they should heed her advice and that the matter wasn’t closed by a long shot.
    Jake knew that look. “Mom, don’t you be doing anything dumb. You and Dad are going to Tombstone tomorrow to check out the Ryan woman’s story. I’m counting strays that may have drifted up around Pena Blanca Lake. I’ll keep tabs on her when I head out in the morning.”
    “You’d better spy on her from a distance,” his mother said as she rubbed antibacterial cream across Jake’s nasty-looking wound. “Her aim might be truer next time.”
    Jake sighed. “I told you she was shooting over my head. She stared square into the sun and didn’t see the limb. I peg her as a stubborn female, not a criminal.”
    “Jacob Cooper.” Nell wagged a finger. “Now, mind you, I’m not condoning what she did. But I hope you’re not one to be calling her stubborn simply because she’s a woman. If it were a man protecting his claim, you’d give him his due.”
    “Now, Mama, I give women their due. What I was trying to say is that Hayley Ryan isn’t all that dangerous.”
    “Doesn’t hurt to take it easy until we know more, son,” Wade said, clapping Jake on the shoulder. “I mean, we don’t know anything about her, and we don’t know how old Ben died, now do we?”
    “Oh, for crying out loud.” Jake threw up his hands and stalked into the kitchen, away from his parents. As they entered the room behind him, he faced them again and ran a hand across his jaw with its three-day growth of beard. He directed his question at Nell. “Look at me. If I rode in and surprised you, and you were camped alone, wouldn’t you pull a gun if you had one?”
    Nell studied her second-born son. The love she felt for him shone from her eyes.
    “Okay, so it’s not a fair question,” Jake allowed. “All I’m saying is I’m willing to cut her some slack.”
    Nell removed a warming plate from the oven and set it on the table, then motioned Jake to have a seat. “You can be respectful without being too trusting, Jacob. Oh, I know, females young and old fall naturally under your spell. At times it’s music to a mother’s ears, even if some of them insult