Interstate 80

by Judy Hurd

©2014

The Jag Xj sped past doing eighty, rounding the eighteen-wheeler that buffeted Mason with gritty backwash. He had given up using his thumb and was walking head down, hat pulled far forward, jacket collar up. The Jag pulled off the highway a distance ahead and started backing down the shoulder, wet gravel crunching. He kept walking, saddle slung across one shoulder, duffle dangling off the other. He could just make out the car wore an Illinois plate under the slush pasted to the license. As he came abreast, the passenger window came down a couple inches. He stopped alongside, leaned down to see in.

“Throw the baggage in the trunk,” she said, and the trunk popped open.

Why not, he thought? He hadn’t slept more than a couple hours, sitting in an all-night diner booth. His leg ached, and he was cold and wet, and truckers weren’t being accommodating. The wind blowing across the sagebrush flats had been pelting sand and sleet against him since before daylight.

There was one mid-sized suitcase in the trunk. He flung his duffle around his shoulder onto the top of it. Hefted his well-seasoned NRA saddle alongside, clicked the lid closed. Spray from a passing long hauler blew over him. Mason slapped rain and grit from the curled brim of his hard worn Cyclone hat against his good leg and opened the front passenger door, slid into the leather seat. Warmth washed over him.

The woman was a looker, at least fifteen years his senior but still with a tight, fit body. Dressed in pricey jeans, cashmere sweater and practical boots. Classy lady, he thought as she turned the car back onto the highway. Another long hauler swept past in the inside lane, its backwash wake coating the windshield with grit. Sand and water made a soft swashing sound on the glass. The wipers silently dealt with them.

“Where to?” she asked.

He wasn’t sure, but for better or worse he’d been heading west. Away from what was behind, away from what had changed his life in that other desert land. Back to familiar arid mountains and desert ravines and a father he might hate. Why in hell was he going back? Because he’d never be a serious rodeo contender again, and despite the ache down his leg, he could still sit a saddle and a job of sorts waited.

“West,” Mason answered and laid the seatback out, stretched his legs.

“Anywhere specific west?” she asked.

“Just west, in no particular hurry,” he replied and pulled his cowboy hat over his face.

The Jag’s interior smelled faintly of Chanel. Boney James’s horn flowed from the speakers. The wipers swished half a beat out of time with the music. The heater pumped out warmth that took the edge off the wet cold that aggravated his leg. He soaked in the comfort and luxury of the expensive car and admired the woman’s long legs from under the rolled brim of his old Double G. Before falling asleep, he vaguely wondered why she was picking up strangers off the highway.

 

Slowing of the car woke him. He pushed back his hat and raised the seatback as the Little America Wyoming sign slid past the windows, trucks and fuel pumps filled the front windshield. The Jag coasted to a stop beside a gas pump. The woman clicked open the fuel cover, opened her door, and stepped out. She stretched before opening the back door and picking up a leather jacket from the seat. He watched her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves, pulled the hem round her slim hips, and zipped up the front. Even in the flat light the movement of her left hand was accompanied by flashes of sparkle off an impressive set of rings. She reached into one pocket and pulled out a credit card, inserted it into the pump, retrieved it. Then she walked away.

With a sigh, Mason climbed from the warm car and pulled the fuel nozzle from its cradle and began filling the tank. He looked around for the woman and saw her disappear into the interior shadows of the coffee shop. She did not come back for more than ten minutes. The rain was about half snow. The wind had him shivering in his wet clothes. The icy breeze drove him back into the car, his skin chilled and his hands cold. He laid the receipt on the dash and was contemplating the possibility of hitching a ride with one of the truckers when she tapped on his window. She was sipping from a large Styrofoam cup and carried a second balanced on her palm. He lowered the window.

“I’ve sugar and creamer in my pocket,” she told him.

Mason took the cup with gratitude and shook his head at the condiments, not needing them. He liked her voice. It was brassy without an edge, authoritative but lacking a demanding tone. This woman was past the need in life to impress anyone. She carried herself and spoke with unconscious self-assuredness. He watched her walk around to the driver’s side, dumping the sugar and creamer packets into the trash as she passed. She moved with grace—no frills, no wasted motion, he admired that athletic attribute. If he let himself fantasize, she was the type of woman whose skin would taste of cream under his tongue, the smell of her in his nostrils expensive. He drank from the cup and studiously stared out the windshield. It was fresh coffee, hot, warming away the shivers that chilled his insides.

She climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine, put the car in gear and drove toward the hotel not the exit leading back to Interstate 80.

Payment time, he thought and discovered disappointment.

“I’ve been on the road all night. Need a few hours’ sleep,” she told him and pulled into the space facing number 27. “You’re welcome to share the room and dry out, or you could catch a ride with one of the truckers at the pumps, your choice.”

He looked over at her just as the Jag’s trunk popped and the driver’s door opened. She climbed out and disappeared behind the car. Hell, why not, Mason asked himself? It’s an enticing invitation. He opened his door and climbed out. She was pulling her case from under his duffle. He retrieved his bag.

“Haven’t slept in a bed for a week,” he said. She simply nodded and headed for the door with her case in hand.

It was shadowed and over warm in the room. The woman turned down the wall unit pumping out stale, hot air. She pulled the drapes and the room went from dreary to dark. He stood in the doorway with his duffle, half undecided and watched her trip the light switch and lift her case onto the desktop. It was the typical motel room, two beds covered in cheap quilts topping hard mattresses and flat pillows, a flatscreen TV on the wall, a chair tucked under a desk with a mirror nailed to the wall over it.

She looked across at him. “You choose,” she said, nodding at the beds. “I’m showering then sleeping.” She began to take items from her case.

She carried the items and her steaming cup into the bath and closed the door. He clicked the room door closed with the heel of his boot and flopped his duffle and hat onto the first bed, picked up the TV remote. Sitting on the end of the bed and sipping coffee, he flipped through the channels. The sound of water running in the shower was seductive. He determinedly ignored the image that kept trying to form in his head of a long, naked body behind a curtain.

Stopping at CNN, Mason frowned at the commentator giving statistics from the Middle East where servicemen and women had been putting their lives and limbs on the line far too long in that inhospitable region. In the Afghan theater between 2001 and 2014 there were more than 2300 killed and over 20,000 service personnel wounded, of which he was one. Seven months of healing and therapy, weeks of counseling before the Corps finally turned him out, not so whole or hardy as once, but out. On his own to cope with the loss of what was once a promising beginning. He sighed and rubbed away the ache in his leg. Unstable as it was, at least he still had it. It had been touch and go through the two initial operations. A rod and a series of pins from hip to ankle, he’d pushed himself to stand and walk. But it had taken long, serious counseling for him to admit he’d never rodeo again.

Mason scowled unseeing at the TV screen. What he’d lost was more than a budding fame. He’d lost the one skill he was good at and the independence that went with it, something no amount of counseling was going to make go away. The only remaining skill that could sustain him was livestock. It was there that he butted heads with his father.

“The old man’s lost it,” he said under his breath, recalling his last conversation with his mother. She’d cried when she told him his father said it served him right what happened, running off like he did. Not like I wasn’t an adult, twenty-two years old when I joined the Corps.

The shower went off. He drank from the cup in his hand and paid attention to what was on the screen. After a short space of empty time, the bathroom door opened, and the woman emerged in lounge pants and tee shirt, her hair wet and face without makeup.

“All yours,” she said and dumped a folded stack of clothes on top of her case.

He flicked off the TV and, in the mirror watched her flop the quilt off the unoccupied bed onto the floor.

“Aren’t you putting a lot of trust in someone you don’t know?” he asked.

“Are you untrustworthy?”

He shrugged and finished the coffee, tossed the cup into the wastebasket beside the desk. Pulling his duffle to the floor between his feet, Mason opened it and took out his shaving kit, shoved the duffle to one side. He tugged off one boot with the toe of the other and glanced in the mirror at her. She was lying on her side under the sheet, her head propped on her hand.

“I’m headed to Salt Lake, then tomorrow on to Reno. If you’re still here when I wake, you can do some of the driving,” she said and laid her head down, closed her eyes.

He pulled the other boot off with his stockinged toes and climbed laboriously to his feet, turned out the light and went into the bathroom, closing the door.

God, he thought. All he knew about her was she was driving a car with Illinois plates and wore a set of boulders on her left ring finger. Well, maybe not all he knew. He reckoned she had a fatalistic turn of mind, or she didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened to her. Was that why she was picking up strangers off the highway?

 

Mason’s whole body jerked at the touch of a warm hand on his shoulder. The hand was hurriedly pulled away. He turned on his back and wiped his palms down his face before looking up at her.

“Sorry,” he said.

She nodded while standing over him with her hands on her hips. She was again dressed in jeans, but this time topped it with a man’s shirt tucked into the waistband and the sleeves rolled to her elbows. “You still going west?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he answered.

Again, she nodded. “Meet me in the restaurant. Should I order for us both?”

Mason frowned, not knowing how to say it, but his wallet was very thin. She studied his face then said, “I’ll pay the expenses. You do the driving. Deal?”

He shook his head at her. She scowled at him. “No?” she asked.

“You don’t know me.”

“Lancaster, right?”

Mason looked around for his duffle, knowing his name was printed on it in block letters. “Right,” he said. “Still, a lot of trust.” She shrugged. He studied her face. Large gray eyes stared back. Great face, he thought, strange lady. “OK, I’ll drive you to Reno.”

“Get dressed. I’ll be in the restaurant ordering lunch.”

He picked up his watch off the bedside stand—three hours sleep. “Order coffee,” he said as he sat up and pushed his feet to the floor from under the bedding. Red scaring ran up the inside and outside of his right leg from ankle to knee and upward. The woman saw but didn’t react, only turned, picked up her jacket and walked to the door, opened it. She looked across her shoulder at him sitting on the side of the bed in tee shirt and boxer. “Name’s Mason,” he told her, she gave him a faint, thin smile.

“Twenty minutes, coffee,” she said and went out.

“Shit,” he whispered to himself, wondering what he’d gotten himself into.

 

Mason tossed his hat onto the seat then slid onto the bench in the booth opposite the woman. There was a pot of coffee on the table and a mug, top down on a paper placemat. He turned it over and picked up the pot, poured.

“I ordered you a hot roast beef sandwich.”

“Sounds good,” he said, putting the pot back on the table. “What do I call you?”

“Mrs. Smith will work.”

“If that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll call you. Do I have to watch for trouble coming up behind us?”

She gave him that faint smile he’d seen earlier and shook her head at his insight. “Out front,” she said.

He smiled back and said, “Okay.”

The waitress came, carrying plates up one arm and a thermos in the other hand with Styrofoam cups turned over its cap. She put the thermos in the middle of the table, a salad topped with chicken slices in front of Mrs. Smith and a large platter with sandwich and fries in front of him. “Anything else you need?” she asked him.

“No, thanks,” he said. The girl winked at him and grinned. He watched her walk away with a slight frown on his face. “What was that about?” he wondered aloud.

Mrs. Smith glanced the girl’s way then sipped coffee, watching him checking out the beef between the bread. “I’m considerably older than you are.”

“Yeah,” he said and began eating.

“You’re great looking and people have strange notions about women and age.”

“Older man and younger woman, okay. Older woman and younger man, not so okay.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Seems skewed.”

“That, too.” She smiled and picked up her fork.

 

Mason waited with a bag in each hand while Mrs. Smith laid a folded twenty and the key card on the desk. She flipped off the light and went out after him, closing the door behind them. The Jag trunk lid popped. He set the case in, flopped his duffle on top and shut the lid. Mrs. Smith opened the passenger door and climbed in. Mason slid into the driver’s seat. She had her smart key dangling from her fingers. He took it and pushed the seat back to its limit, tucked the key in his shirt pocket, pressed the break, pushed the ignition button, backed out and headed for the highway.

“There’s all-terrane-tires on the car,” she said.

“That’s good to know,” he answered and turned on the headlights, put his foot down. Mason accelerated along the on-ramp toward the outside lane. A big rig swept past in the inside lane. Dirty slush off the mud flaps sprayed over the Jag as the driver pulled the truck in front of them. A mix of muddy rain and snow covered the windshield and the wipers swept it away. Mason used the turn signal, pulled left and sped past the eighteen-wheeler. He set the cruise control, used one finger to push his hat to the back of his head, settled in for the long drive. Jazz started flowing from the speakers.

He asked, “Got any country?”

“Not on this station,” she told him then hesitated, glancing out the side window at the rolling prairie dotted with clusters of cattle gathered in protected undulations. “We’ll get some CD’s along the way,” she suggested with a laugh in her voice.

“That funny?” he asked.

“Yes, it is, First Sergeant Lancaster. What does that song say? They can take the cowboy out of the country, but they can’t take the country out of the cowboy, though I suspect the Marines do their damnedest.”

“What makes you think I had any stripes?”

“Your saddle has a property tag on it, reads 1^st Stg. M. Lancaster, Camp Legeune, North Carolina. It’s a well-used outfit. You’re a working cowboy.”

“Grew up on a ranch in Nevada.”

“And the leg?”

“Afghanistan,” he said.

“So, it’s back to ranching?”

“For better or worse,” he replied, no inflection in his voice. She turned in her seat and studied his profile. “What?” he said, not looking her direction.

“You had other options?”

“Yeah, I did, but signed on the dotted line anyway.”

“To escape Nevada?”

“Ranch,” he said dispassionately.

“Family business?”

He glanced at her, didn’t answer.

“Okay, interrogation over for now.”

“Is there a tit for tat?” he asked.

“Not yet, but maybe. We’ll stop in Evanston,” she said.

“That’s hardly eighty miles. Thought you had to be in Salt Lake.”

“You want some Garth Brookes or not?”

“You’re dating yourself,” he said and grinned.

 

The snowplows were on the highway before they reached Salt Lake. The glow of the lights under the low clouds made a dome over the city as they drove southwest through the falling snow. Mrs. Smith was on her cell phone to the Grand America Hotel. She was speaking low, hard to hear her words over Keith Urban, but he knew she was ordering a second room. He was feeling a sense of relief for that. Mason had no idea where the hotel was except downtown, but then all the important buildings were downtown.

He was sure the Grand America Hotel wasn’t in the same class as Little America. It had the sound of money, lots of money. Mason held to hope that Mrs. Smith was paying as she’d promised else, he was sleeping in the car. She had forked out more than a hundred dollars for CD’s without a blink, so he felt mostly confident he was sleeping in a bed tonight.

She pocketed her phone. “Get on I-15 and take the 600 South exit,” she said.

Mason followed her directions. Mrs. Smith pointed at a towering building surrounded by low gardens covered in snow. “That monstrosity is the hotel. Turn left on Main.”

He turned then leaned forward and looked up at the building beginning to fill the front window. God, he thought, a room must cost a mint. He sat back and glanced over at Mrs. Smith. She was watching him with that faint, thin smile on her lips.

“I’ll register for us both,” she said, “but we’re not on the same floor. I’ve an appointment at nine in the Gibson Lounge, so you’re on your own. Put dinner on your room and any other expenses. If you smoke, do it outside.”

He scowled at her and said defensively, “Gave up the habit in the hospital.”

“Okay,” she said as an apology and added, “The Garden Café has a nice menu. I’ll meet you there at seven thirty in the morning.”

He let the car coast to a stop near the entrance. A doorman came hurrying out. A dubious expression passed across Mason’s face. He pulled the key from his pocket and hesitated before getting out. What if she doesn’t pay, he thought and looked at the key in his hand.

“I could find the Motel 6.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Smith told him. “I’ve already paid for your room here. Let the man take your duffel.”

He gave her a “we’ll see look.” She laughed as her door was opened by the doorman. Mason popped the trunk, climbed out on his own and handed the key to the valet waiting with his palm out and prejudicial superiority on his face. He held out a parking chit. Mason took it and looked down at the chit in his hand until he could get the I-want-to-knock-that-smirk-off-your-face feeling under control.

Then he walked to the back of the car where a bellman was putting his bag on a rolling cart. He looked across the top of the Jag at Mrs. Smith who was watching him. She shrugged and headed for the brass and glass doors. He shook his head, frowning to himself as he followed, checking behind that the rolling cart was coming.

He stood by the cart with the bellman until Mrs. Smith had registered for the rooms and received the key cards. She walked over and handed Mason one. “Thanks,” he said and picked up his bag off the cart.

“I’ll take care of that for you, sir,” the bellman told him.

“That’s okay,” he said, “just point me in the right direction.”

Mrs. Smith pointed at the elevators and said with a smile in her voice, “Eighteenth floor.”

He nodded and headed in the direction she’d pointed.

 

Damn, he thought, when he pushed open the room’s door. On the far side was a sitting area with windows overlooking the Wasatch Mountains. A king bed occupied the center of the room. He tossed his bag onto the big bed and went left into the bath. He shook his head at the absurdity of it, marble tiles under foot and in the shower. The whole platoon could wash-up in here he told himself and decided he’d give it a try.

Hot from the shower, with a towel wrapped round his hips, Mason sat on the bed and messaged his leg. With strong fingers, he worked the muscles up and down the whole length and stretched his calf, flexed his knee. It ached from the long drive no matter that he’d pushed the Jag’s seat back as far as it would go. He knew the aching would be twice as bad after a long day on a horse.

There was a light tapping on the door and an accented voice sang out, “Housekeeping.”

“Just a moment,” he called back and picked up the hotel’s complementary robe and put it on. Tossing the towel onto the bed, Mason padded on bare feet to the door and opened it. A beautiful, young Mexican woman stood on the other side, waiting patiently in her hotel uniform. He knew right away the girl was very conscious he was naked under the robe.

“I’ve come to turn the bed down, sir,” she told him with her gorgeous, black eyes demurely turned away. There was an unnatural shyness about her demeanor, an attitude practiced as a protection. She reminded him of many of the women he’d encountered in Afghanistan, and just as he did for the women of that mid-east nation, he felt angered that a woman should have to prostrate herself to survive. He always preferred women self-reliant, a woman like Mrs. Smith, who would not have survived the middle east culture, whereas this girl might.

“Give me ten minutes,” he told her.

She nodded with relief. “Yes, sir,” she whispered and started along the hall with her cart.

“One thing,” Mason called. The girl stopped and looked across her shoulder his direction with a hint of panic in her expression. She shuffled several more steps from his door. A girl that beautiful has to be careful, he thought with a residual sadness left over from his stint among Muslims. He smiled slightly and asked, “Where’s the Gibson Lounge?”

 

Mason chose a table near the flat screen on the wall. He stretched his legs out and looked around while he waited the barman coming his way. It was an opulent room with comfortable, upholstered armchairs around tables. Sofas were placed strategically for drinks and conversation. A fire burned in the fireplace and a grand piano took center stage at one end.

“What can I get for you, sir?”

“Budweiser.”

“Will that be all?” the man asked.

“That will do it,” Mason told him. The barman nodded and went in search of a Budweiser. Mason let his eyes rove over the room, taking in the people. Mrs. Smith sat at a table across the room with two men and a woman. All of them her age, all expensively dressed and groomed, gold watches and diamond rings, but Mrs. Smith was the eye catcher. She looked fantastic in a simple, black dress that Mason guessed cost more than all the clothes in his duffle.

She hadn’t even glanced his way, but he knew she was acutely aware he had come in. She waited with her hands folded in front of a hi-ball glass. Two open documents lay in the center of the table.

Across its surface from her, the two men had their heads together in an argumentative conversation. One had the all too familiar look of a bully and obviously steaming under the collar. The other, shrewd looking behind a calm front, the hot shot lawyer type appeared to be giving sage advice. The other woman, a handsome woman if forgettable, frowned at no one in particular over the rim of her wine glass. She looked the bored socialite with diamonds on her ears and fingers that didn’t seem to be making her happy. Mason let his eyes continue round the room till they lit on the barman returning with his beer.

Sipping the beer, he finished his survey. There were half dozen tables occupied by couples or small groups of couples. None seemed aware of the others around them. Mason had learned early on in that far away desert to know always who was around him. He suspected Mrs. Smith’s same awareness a natural acuity.

The man who appeared to be giving the advice abruptly said something to Mrs. Smith. She studied the two others at the table then nodded once only. The argumentative man glared at her with his hands balled into fists on the table surface. His face flushed bright red. Mason thought he would have a heart attack. The other man picked up one of the documents, folded it and put it into his inside coat pocket. He got up from his chair and held open the woman’s fur collared coat for her. The bully continued to sit and glare at Mrs. Smith, his anger palatable in the room’s atmosphere.

Mason considered going across and planting himself between Mrs. Smith and Mr. Bully. Mr. Hot Shot swept up the second document and tried to hand it to him. Mr. Bully continued glowering, refusing to acknowledge the effort. His companion made a low-voiced comment and Mr. Bully turned his glare on Mr. Hot Shot. Mason set his beer to one side of his table and slid his chair back.

It was then that the unhappy woman snipped loud enough that heads swung her way. “Really Ernest, grow up.” Then she took the document from Mr. Hot Shot and slapped it on the table in front of Mr. Bully and turned for the door. The lawyer type shook his head and gave Mrs. Smith a sad, tiny smile while hanging his overcoat across his arm then he followed the woman. Mr. Bully shoved his chair back, giving Mrs. Smith one last spiteful sneer before grabbing up his wool navy pea coat and following the couple.

Mason reached for his beer and took a sip, watching Mrs. Smith. She retrieved the document and slipped it into a black clutch in her lap then picked up her drink and took a swallow. She stared at him over its rim for a moment before putting the glass on the table. She seemed unsettled, which Mason interpreted as upset so he figured she didn’t want company. Mrs. Smith pushed her chair away from the table and got up. He expected her to walk past him, but she stopped. He looked up into her face and nodded a polite hello. That faint smile touched her lips if not her eyes then she walked out.

 

The phone rang. Mason groaned and rolled over, fumbled on the bedside table for the receiver.

“Yeah,” he said into it.

“Can we talk?”

“Mrs. Smith?” He picked up his watch and looked at it. It was after one in the morning.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure,” he said, “your room or mine?”

“Mine, 1220.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Mason.”

“Anytime,” he said, rolling to a sitting position with his legs over the bedside. Mason fumbled the receiver back into its cradle. He sat with his head in his hands for two minutes of the fifteen. Yeah, anytime in the daylight, he thought and began rubbing his leg.

Unshaved but dressed in the slacks and shirt he’d worn to the lounge, he knocked on 1220. Mrs. Smith opened the door almost immediately. Mason thought about telling her she should ask who’s there before opening her door at this time of night. She’d flung it wide then walked away in an agitated, restless posture, leaving him to close it behind him.

Mason followed her into the room. It was huge as hotel rooms go. A large sitting room with sofas and chairs and the backdrop of dark sky he knew hid a mountain view. To his right was a bedroom behind a mostly closed door. Mrs. Smith’s tussled hair led him to think she’d tried to sleep but couldn’t. Dressed in the same lounge pants she’d worn at Little America and the same man’s shirt she’d worn the rest of the day, she paced around the furnishings.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked, still wandering around.

“I don’t think so,” he replied, “but you need something.”

She stopped pacing and stared at him. Then she laughed. “Right,” she said and went to the bar and got out a glass.

“What did you think of them?” she asked while pouring.

“Who?”

“Oh, don’t be coy. The people you came to see me meeting.”

“Not happy people.”

“No, not happy.”

“This going to be the tit for tat?”

“Ask,” she said, taking a swallow of the drink.

“Who were they?”

“Not who are you?”

Mason shrugged, sat on the sofa.

“Two of them are, for the lack of any better description, my stepchildren.”

Well, Mason thought and lifted his left hand, waggled the ring finger. “The rocks,” he said, “the shirt say pretty plainly you’re married and in love. They the same man?”

“Yes, the same man,” she said, walking across the room and sitting in a chair opposite the sofa. She pulled her legs up into the chair. “We were married when I was twenty-three. He was fifty-five. We reveled in each other for nearly twenty-five years.”

“But the kids don’t approve a mother their own age?”

“The sad thing is their father was more than seven years younger than their mother.”

“That doesn’t matter to them.”

“Not one whit.”

“Where is mommy?”
“Meg died suddenly of a stroke when Gabe, Gabriel was fifty-two.”

“Sounds like you knew her.”

Mrs. Smith nodded and took a swallow of her drink then put the glass on the

coffee table between them. “Meg and my father shared a practice. They were pediatricians. I’ve known the family most of my life.”

“Your family isn’t any happier about the marriage?”

“Even after all these years, they suffer that May/September hang-up,” she told him, shaking her head in disappointment.

Mason picked up her glass and took a drink. It was bourbon, not his favorite. He preferred scotch. “So, you do know what the cynical smirks are about,” he said and finished the drink.

“I’d get you your own if you’d like,” she offered.

Mason smiled at her. “You weren’t going to finish it.”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

“Reveled, past tense,” he said. “Your husband dead?”

“A month ago,” she admitted, and tears sprang up on her lashes. She hastily brushed them away.

“Why the meeting here?”

“Ernest lives in Las Vegas. Alice and her husband Johnson live here. He’s a very good lawyer.”

Spot on, Mason thought, bully and hot-shot.

He asked, “What was the meeting? A reading of the will?”

“That’s been done. Ernest wants to contest the will. I have my own very good lawyer and a counter offer. Gabe built Meg a beautiful home on Lake Tahoe that we still own…I own.”

“I’m guessing that’s the source of the present argument.”

“That and the ranch,” she said with a sad little smile. “Meg grew up on a ranch outside Reno. I used to stay there summers with Alice and Ernest. When Meg’s father died in nineteen-eighty-seven, it nearly went into foreclosure. Gabe paid off the loan and hired a business manager, so the family wouldn’t lose it.”

“And the stepchildren think all is rightly theirs.”

“Something like,” she admitted.

“So why am I here?” Mason asked.

“I’m willing to give Ernest and Alice one of the properties. My lawyer has advised because of the downturn in agriculture economy in recent years I keep the house on the lake which is worth upwards of three and a half million. The ranch is more than fourteen thousand acres of mountain and high desert grazing, bordered on two sides by the BLM, with twelve hundred head of cattle and a few mustangs. There’s some timber and water even in summer, but there’s concern about the water sustainability. Gabe and I were going to scale down and make it a working dude ranch.”

“Okay, again, so why am I here?”

“You grew up on a ranch. Look it over for me.”

“You’d rather trade the house?”

She studied his face for several seconds then said, “I’m hoping you can tell me if the ranch can recover financial independence after the recent recession.”

“Don’t think I’m qualified,” Mason told her with a frown.

“Then tell me if you think it worth trying. Point out its faults.”

“You’re pinning a lot of hope on a stranger’s know how,” he said.

“You were carrying a saddle across country,” she pointed out. “You have more qualifications than I do.”

 

Mason couldn’t get back to sleep and seven thirty was coming fast. “Damn,” he said and flipped over, looking for a comfortable position for his leg. He’d learned why Mrs. Stanford aka Mrs. Smith had picked him up. It had been in the back of her mind that she wanted to keep the ranch but couldn’t square it with her conscience, knowing little to nothing about running a ranch. When she saw him carrying his saddle, she’d admitted she’d pulled over without hesitation. All that had been on her mind were the plans she and her late husband had been putting together. She’d taken a big risk picking up a stranger, knew it and had taken it anyway.

Mrs. Sanford’s ranch was more than three times the size of the one he’d grown up on, but that could mean better grazing rotation. She’d said there were a year-round creek and several seasonal creeks on the property. Some good conservation techniques might help solve any future water problem, even in dry years. She had also told him she and her husband had had a new house built. They’d planned to convert the old ranch house into guest quarters.

She had looked less wound-up and rudderless as she talked about the plans she and Gabe Sanford had put into motion. She smiled, genuinely smiled, talking about him. That she had been devoted to her husband was very apparent in the excitement she projected speaking of their plans. So, what could he do but say, “Okay, I’ll take a look?”

“I want you to understand,” he had told her at the door, “that what I tell you isn’t any guarantee of success.”

“Fair enough,” she’d said. “See you at seven-thirty,” and she planted a kiss on his cheek before closing the door.

 

They hit the highway around nine thirty, but it was still snowing and, according to the weather service, to continue. Once they left the metro-sprawl, there weren’t any towns that amounted to much west of the Tooele County line. Mrs. Sanford had suggested lunch in Wendover on the western edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats. It’ll be a late lunch, Mason thought, signaling to go around the plow clearing the outside lane only to come up to one clearing the inside lane.

He had been hoping they would make Winnemucca in eight hours. At this rate, Mason figured it unlikely they would get that far. They’d make Elko easy enough if the weather didn’t get any worst and barring any calamities.

The wind kicked up knot by knot. Every truck trailed a cloud of fine snow that blew across all the lanes, obscuring everything out front. He’d be beat by Elko. He just wasn’t so sure they would find a place. It wouldn’t surprise him if the highway department closed the highway. Interstate 80 had some long, lonely stretches travelers weren’t anxious to drive after dark in a winter storm. Competition for the available rooms was going to be fierce he realized as he passed three long haulers in a line at 50mph.

“This is turning into a long day,” Mrs. Sanford said.

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed and wrestled the car against the wind back into the outside lane. Tumbleweeds and snow flew across the highway behind the Jag’s back bumper. Mason looked across the car at Mrs. Sanford. She was watching the wind wipe the landscape bare. She had put the Darius Rucker CD into the player and was tapping one finger against her leg in time to the music. Mason thought it was more the tapping of trying to make up her mind.

Finally, she asked, “Where in Nevada did you grow up?”

Mason said, “Ranch eighteen miles north of a place called Paradise Valley. It’s high and dry country for the most part.”

“I’m guessing Paradise Valley is pretty small,” she said, looking his way.

“Yeah, it is. It’s on the edge of the Santa Rosa’s about thirty-five miles north of Winnemucca.”

“And you were headed there?”

He glanced over at her then back at the highway, keeping an eye on the sedan ahead.

“Look, Mason,” she said, “I’m not trying to pry. Well, yes, I am, but I like you and want to fill in the blanks.”

He thought it over for half a minute. Mrs. Sanford didn’t push. A sexy, confident lady, she looked out her side window at the blowing snow and waited.

“Short version,” he said. “I’d been competing in steer roping since I was eleven. Junior champion three years running and had just won the college title when my mother found out she had breast cancer.”

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Sanford said, turning enough in her seatbelts to watch him.

“Me, too,” he said and changed lanes to pass the sedan barely doing forty. Mrs. Sanford sat quiet. He checked the rear-view mirror and stole a glance at her as he pulled over again. She was wearing a consoling, interested expression.

“Mom’s a survivor,” he told her, “made of stern stuff, but my dad fell apart. He let things go the whole year she was sick. My sister and her husband tried to take up the slack, but they have their own place. Sis was at her wits end, so I left college and went back to help.” He paused then said what he had been feeling a long time. “My old man wasn’t the easiest father to grow up under, but he’d gotten to be a cantankerous old cuss. If I’d say left, he’d say right.”

“Why didn’t you go back to school?”

Mason said matter-of-factly, “Not enough money, lost my scholarship when I went home. I had three semesters to make up and missed the year of competing.”

“A year of competing,” she repeated like a question hanging in the air.

“At the time, being away from the ranch to rodeo wasn’t possible. Anyway,” Mason added, “my horse was getting up in years. He was foaled when I was in the cradle. I wanted to train another, but dad threw a fit. It got to be a real contention between us.”

Mrs. Sanford nodded, that faint smile touching her lips. “Escape was the Marines this time, not college.”

“Yeah,” he said, a laugh somewhere in his voice. “You’re good.”

“You did well for yourself in the Marines. First sergeant stripes.”

“The Marine Corps was a good fit in many ways, but luck just didn’t fall my way in the end.”

“How long were you in the Marines?”

“Got burned eight weeks short of my five years.”

“What I saw weren’t burns.”

“Just a term. IED.”

“My god, Mason!”

“War is hell. It happens,” he said, the heat of anger long cooled to simmer.

In the gale, Mason cruised at fifty around two semis and a short string of cars doing forty. The land going by the Jag’s windows was mostly colorless. The wind whipped snow sideways, rattling it against the car. The sky stretching out front continued low and flat. Slush hissed in the wheel wells and was swept off the windshield only to be replaced. The plows had been through earlier in the day, but snow had built up again, already half a foot deep between the wheel ruts. As the afternoon got colder, the water in the slush began to turn to ice. The wind continued kicking up notch by notch, working itself into a dangerous blow.

They were sixty miles from Elko, and it was nearly three. Mrs. Sanford had used her fancy phone to get the Holiday Inn’s number. She was talking to them now. She held the phone away from her ear and said, “They have one room, two beds. Apparently not many checked out because of the storm. They say it’s the same all over town.”

“I was afraid of that,” Mason said.

“We did it once, but that doesn’t mean you were comfortable with the arrangement.”

“And you took a huge risk.”

She smiled at him. “Wasn’t so sure I cared at the time.”

“Figured.” He smiled back.

“So, take the room?”

“Yeah, storm’s not letting up. It’ll be blacker than sin in an hour.”

 

They were on the second floor and had to carry their luggage up from a parking space way the hell out in Netherland. Snow prints on the carpet marked their trip up the stairs and wet rings followed them down the hall.

Mrs. Sanford used the key card and pushed the door open. It certainly wasn’t the Grand America, but in step with Little America. Housekeeping had turned the heat off and opened the drapes. The room was chilly but nice enough. Mrs. Sanford pushed aside the closet door and set her bag inside. Mason dropped his next to it and slapped his hat on his leg, tossed it on the shelf above the luggage. He went to the heating control and turned it on.

“Don’t let me forget to turn this down,” he called to Mrs. Sanford. She had stepped into the bathroom and stuck her head out. She had a towel in her hand mopping melted snow from her hair. “Okay,” she answered. “Let’s get something to eat, I’m starved. Don’t know why, I certainly haven’t exerted myself in any way.”

 

Mason couldn’t say much for the Holiday Inn’s menu. He decided to stick to the regulars, hamburger and fries, second one for the day. Didn’t have to worry about his waistline, he’d lost so much weight in the hospital. Hadn’t gained half back, might never get it all back. Mrs. Sanford had her regular, soup, salad and coffee.

The waitress carried their order out and began setting it on the table. She was a woman about Mrs. Sanford’s age and kept eyeing her with disapproval. Mrs. Sanford pretended she didn’t notice even when the waitress all but tossed her plates down in front of her, the soup sloshing and splattering drops onto the tablecloth. Lots of practice, Mason thought, and wondered if he’d be so pleasant and polite after years of such scrutiny. She must have been called a gold digger more than once. He wondered if that’s what they were calling him and was shocked at the thought and frowned.

“What?” Mrs. Sanford asked, seeing his frown.

“Nothing,” he replied.

She tilted her head as if to ask, “Nothing?”

“The gigolo scene, beautiful, older woman, younger man.”

She laughed and the people at the next table looked over then whispered to one another over their meals. “I should be so lucky,” she said, ignoring them and filling her soup spoon. “So, how old are you, Mason?”

He smiled. “Worried, now are we?”

She ate the soup and put her spoon down, waiting.

“Twenty-seven. Be twenty-eight in February.”

She nodded and said, “When I stopped and picked you up, I had no idea if you were twenty or forty. You were carrying a saddle, that’s all that mattered.”

She picked up her spoon again and pointed it at him. “Age is a funny thing,” she said. “We’ve been indoctrinated to believe we can only intimately interact with those of like age. The difference in our years may have been an issue for everyone else, but never was between Gabe and me. We were comfortable in each other and our own skins, so I don’t often notice other couples’ ages. But I must admit, you have me seeing things from a twenty-something’s prospective again. It’s a revelation. Gabe must have felt the same in the beginning.”

“How old are you?” Mason asked, dipping a fry in the spot of catsup on his plate.

“That’s a question you’re not supposed to ask a lady,” Mrs. Sanford said, scooping soup into her spoon. “But since we’re discussing age, I’m forty-seven.”

“Forty-seven isn’t that old. Heard somewhere sixty’s the new forty.”

“Then you’re still a babe in short pants.”

Mason grinned at her. “What a sight that must have been, short pants and an M16.”

“Horrible thought,” she said with a mock frown. She ate the soup then said, “I often wonder at our social perceptions. Take war, we think nothing of sending our young to kill and die and when they return expect them to still be unworldly and naïve, how very shortsighted.”

“You don’t support the war?”

“As you said, war is hell. Add politics and it’s chaos.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Mrs. Sanford put down her spoon and picked up her coffee cup, held it between her hands. “You’re right, I didn’t,” she admitted, looking straight at him. “Agree or not, I support the men and women sent to war, anything and everything they need during and after. Each and every one of you deserves and has my respect.”

“Wow,” Mason said. “That’s a more revealing answer than I’d expected.”

“You’re too damned perceptive. You’d know truth from deception.”

“Wow, again,” Mason said.

“I’m right, but you know that.”

“I also know our critic,” he nodded at the disapproving waitress eyeing them sideways each time she passed near, “has misconstrued our relationship. It’s going nowhere.”

“Does that disappoint you?”

Mason studied her face for a long, long moment then smiled. “Yes and no,” he said and picked up his hamburger.

 

The worst of the storm blew itself out during the wee hours of the night. They didn’t hurry through breakfast, wanting time for the plows to get ahead. It was less than three hundred miles to Reno. They’d be there before midafternoon bar any calamities.

“I made reservations while you were in the shower,” Mrs. Sanford told him. “We have a connecting at Grand Sierra Resort for the next couple nights.”

“There must be something about ‘grand’ that attracts you.”

She laughed, “They’re all grand in Reno to the point of obscene. This one has the least offensive furnishings. I detest TV’s in gilt frames and fake Victorian furniture.”

Mason grinned at her then forked in eggs. Around a mouth full he asked, “When do you want to go to the ranch?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll call the manager this evening to make sure the road is clear.”

“Who’s feeding the stock?”

“There’s a young couple living out there. They’ve been there close to two years, but they want to buy their own place. They made an offer for a piece of the ranch, but with Gabe sick, we never got around to discussing it. Now I’d think they’ve found something else. And frankly I’m relieved.”

“How many acres in hay?”

“We’ve purchased mostly.”

Mason practically choked on his eggs. “Twelve hundred head and you buy, Jesus? There’s water and enough land. Tell me there’s equipment.”

Mrs. Sanford grinned at him, “There’s equipment, or I’m thinking there is.”
“Your caretakers are lazy if they let you purchase.”

“That, too,” she said. “We were caught between a rock and a hard place. Our manager couldn’t find anyone vaguely qualified. He had a hard time getting anyone to commit on short notice. The man we had for years and trusted died suddenly of a heart attack. His wife went to live with their son someplace in California. That’s when Gabe and I decided to move back permanently and started the new house.”

“When was the last time you were there?”
“Two years ago, just before the house was finished. Gabe was feeling tired and losing weight, so we flew back to Chicago. He was hospitalized for tests until he was fed up with them, but he wasn’t getting any better. They diagnosed him with Myeloid Leukemia. We chose the usual treatments. They extended his life, but the chemo was very hard on him, and the leukemia returned seven months later. The end came when he contracted pneumonia. Perhaps that was a blessing,” she said and took a shuddering breath. “I loved him to distraction and will miss him the rest of my life.”

“He wouldn’t like it you become a recluse and pine away.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Until a couple days ago, I was headed in that direction. Now, I’m hoping very much to finish what we started.”

 

Mason dropped onto the sofa in Mrs. Sanford’s suite and began rubbing his leg through his jeans. The afternoon faded toward evening and Reno was a kaleidoscope of color beyond the windows. The Truckee River was a black ribbon under the darkening sky, the Sierras cutouts against the horizon.

He was tired. The wind had been bad, and I-80 had been covered in patches of ice. A semi had nearly jackknifed as the Jag was passing. Grateful the car had great handling and response, Mason stepped on the gas and corrected the car’s inclination to slide sideways. Mrs. Sanford only turned in her belts and looked back over her shoulder as they slipped past the careening trailer.

“He got it straightened,” she’d said, turning back around. “Good driving.”

“Truckers are generally better drivers then most, but he was lucky,” Mason responded.

“I mean you. But the trucker, too,” she’d agreed.

Mason kept working the knots in his calf with his fingers. Mrs. Sanford walked from the bedroom into the sitting room. “Why don’t I call the desk, get a massage therapist up to your room. You look stiff and sore.”

“I’ll live,” he said and kept rubbing.

She walked to the phone and picked it up. She spoke to the desk clerk then hung up. “On his way, so get going. You’ll need a good soak after.”

He shook his head at her extravagance and climbed laboriously to his feet. “Thanks,” he said at the connecting door between their rooms.

“Dinner at seven,” she told him and picked up the phone again.

He nodded and opened the door. He didn’t have the separate sitting room Mrs. Sanford enjoyed, but the room had a fair-sized sitting area at one end and a huge bed in the middle. The tub in the bath had jets. The place was bigger than the apartment he’d shared in college.

Maybe she can afford the hay he thought and pulled his shaving kit from his duffle.

He answered the knock in the hotel robe and let in the therapist. Mason waved the man to the open space across the room and followed him. He’d had therapy of all sorts in the hospital, including massage. He knew he was going to ache, but the end results were worth the pain and stood patiently while the guy set up his table.

“You’re limping pretty good,” the therapist noted from across his shoulder. “Middle East?”

“Yeah,” he said, and got a nod.

While opening his table, therapist said, “Have a friend been in Iraq six months now. His wife practically sits in front of the TV news stations all day. She thinks the worst and cries herself to sleep, poor kid.”

“It’s tough on the families,” Mason said.

“Tougher on you guys. Want the whole show or just the leg?”

“I’m fried. I-80 was a ball buster in the wind. How ‘bout the whole deal?”

 

The tub jets blew out heat that bubbled all round him. Mason had the water over his chest. It felt good. His leg ached, but the kinks were out. The therapist had done a thorough job. Still, he was hoping there was a four-wheel drive on the ranch. He couldn’t hike it and wasn’t certain if there’d be riding stock.

He’d cruised right though Winnemucca, past the turn off for home, hadn’t felt a pang of regret. They’d taken a short lunch break in Golconda along the Humboldt River. Snow covered the surrounding mountains and blew off the desert plains across I-80 unimpeded. January’s a bitch of a month he recalled. February could offer some blue skies with warmer temperatures. March would be blustery again, making everyone anxious for spring.

At this altitude, April would be the best for putting in a hay crop. Have to spray nitrogen, but rye would be good, or sorghum. With fourteen thousand acres, it would pay to plant hay to sell, alfalfa or Timothy. He made a mental note to speak to Mrs. Sanford about maybe selling hay. It would work well for a large dude ranch, since she wanted to add a hospitality aspect.

After rubbing suds round his scalp, he sank into the water, blew breath out that bellowed to the surface while swishing the shampoo from his hair. Mason surfaced and wiped his hands down his face, opened the drain and climbed to his feet.

He put his good leg over the tub first, since it was the easiest to flex and lift, and nearly fell, bashing his rebuilt knee on the side of the tub. He’d been released from rehab less than two months earlier and still suffered occasional instability. Catching himself with his hands on the rim, he leaned on them, one foot in, one foot out and waited for the pain to subside.

Dragging in a breath, Mason hissed, “Damn!” He took in deepening breaths, one after another and concentrated on straightening. He hadn’t been behind the wheel of a vehicle for any length of time in eight months. It was affecting his leg flexibility. Leaning on the tub with one hand, he reached for a towel with the other and flopped it onto the tub rim. Both hands supporting him, he eased his bad leg out and struggled to sit on the towel. He sat there for minutes with his head down and his arms braced on the tub edge, trying to get control of the pain. Water dripped from his hair onto the tiles between his feet.

The phone rang in the other room. He ignored it. Several minutes later it rang again. This time he carefully stood and wrapped the towel round his waist. But it was beyond him to hurry to the phone. It stopped ringing before he got out of the bathroom.

Mrs. Sanford knocked half a second before she opened the door.

He was standing with his back against the bath door jamb.

She took one look at him and hurried to his side. “Good lord, Mason, you’re white as a sheet,” and she pulled his arm across her shoulders and walked him to the bed. Tossing the coverings back, she turned him to sit on bed then knelt down and put her arms behind his legs above and below the knees. “Lay back,” Mrs. Sanford said and gently lifted his legs as he twisted to lay back.

Mason was afraid she’d turn into a mother hen, but she stood back with her hands on her hips. “What do you need?” she asked.

He gave her a grateful, lopsided smile and told her there was Demerol in his shaving kit on the sink. She turned on her toes and disappeared around the corner. In a few moments, he heard running water. Mason sat up and stretched his hand out, snagged the covers and pulling them up to his hips. Mrs. Sanford came back carrying a small paper envelope with the prescription written on it and a glass of water. She handed them both to him.

“You’re going to be loopy for a while. I’ll order room service.”

Mason swallowed a pill. “You don’t have to do that,” he said and handed back the glass. “Go enjoy dinner.”

“With whom?” she scoffed. “I enjoy loopy people; they make an evening interesting.” She set the glass down and picked up the phone. “Subs or pizza?”

 

Mason struggled into briefs, jeans and a tee while Mrs. Sanford answered her door. He hobbled into her sitting room and lowered himself onto the sofa. Hand lifting his leg, Mason stretched it down the length of the couch. Mrs. Sanford set the box of pizza and six pack of beer on the coffee table and gathered up half a dozen pillows she’d put in the nearby chair. She stuffed them behind his back and under his knees.

He settled back into the pillows and unscrewed the cap off a beer bottle, took a swallow and watched Mrs. Sanford disappear into the bedroom. She came back carrying a cribbage board and deck of cards. “You play?” she asked with that faint smile of hers.

Mason said, “Yeah, I do,” and leaned over to the coffee table and flipped the box lid off the pizza.

Loopy was right. They ate pizza and drank beer. Half the time what he said was incoherent, but he liked that word loopy.

“You shouldn’t be drinking beer with Demerol,” Mrs. Sanford scolded then took a swig from her beer bottle. She laid down a six of diamonds against his nine of spades. “Fifteen,” she grinned and pegged the points.

So, it went for several hours. They started playing cribbage. It dissolved into Old Maid that disintegrated into Go Fish. They laughed and giggled and told naughty tales. Mason felt heavy and drunk after one beer and kept saying, “Name’s Mason, Mrs. Sanford…Mrs. Sanford…Mrs. Sanford.” She finally relented and told him her first name was Geneva. It was a loopy evening. Mason enjoyed it despite the drug induced hang-over the next morning.

 

The road to the ranch hadn’t been plowed. The snow nearly a half foot deep, but there were tracks coming and going over the gravel. Mrs. Sanford was driving. Mason couldn’t square it with his conscience to call her Geneva. She’d told him her husband had called her Gen, but he couldn’t square that in his head either. He felt that was her husband’s property. He stuck to Mrs. Sanford.

Beyond barbed wire fencing that ran beside the road, the land was covered in snow and rolled away toward wooded hills. Mason could make out two ranch houses under tall, bare trees on the terraced front of a low ridge and make out tracks leading around acres of fields sitting idle. Cattle roamed the landscape. It was beautiful even under a flat, gray sky. No wonder Mrs. Sanford preferred this to a big, fancy house. He certainly would. Perhaps he’d suggest a rail fence. Not replace all the wire but at least the last hundred feet of wire that ran along the road toward the ranch, and maybe a western looking entry to announce to potential guests they had arrived.

Mrs. Sanford drove up the gentle slope of the ridge toward the houses where untracked, snow covered drives that led to garages around back of the houses, the barns below the ridge. There was new pole fencing around several large pastures on either side of the approach. Half a dozen horses were standing in the upper one. Mason scrutinized them as they drove past.

Good looking horses, he thought and briefly felt saddened. His old gelding had spent his last years idling on his sister’s place. He had sent money for the old boy’s care until she wrote to tell him his horse had peacefully lain down in the pasture one evening and never got up.

“The two Arabs and two saddle horses belong to the ranch,” Mrs. Sanford said, bringing his thoughts back to the present. “The paddocks are recent. Gabe had them put in.” She pointed ahead, “Looks like Bob’s here, our business manager. When I spoke to him last evening, he’d confessed he’d not been out since last summer. I strongly suggested he make the trip today.”  With the tiniest bit of sarcasm in her voice, Mrs. Sanford added, “Glad to see he made it.”

She parked the Jag on the road behind an older Lincoln Town Car. There was a recent vintage pickup parked in front of the walkway to the house. An aged and rusting Bronco with high suspension and four-wheel-drive and sporting a plow blade out front idled on the road in front of the pickup.

Climbing from the car, Mason frowned at the Bronco and wondered why the road hadn’t been plowed?

They started up the terraced walk that led to a new looking stone and log house with a veranda on three sides. Scattered along the path were young, winter bare trees surrounded by wooden boxes. Mason could see the boxes were intended to hold flowers in spring and summer, but the rest of the yard had yet to be landscaped.

He turned on the veranda and surveyed the view and the rest of the buildings. The Sanford place was hillier than the open plateau of his father’s ranch. No red earth cliffs made a backdrop to this place. Snow burdened confers covered the slopes surrounding this land. He could see the road winding through the hills for quite a long way. It went past the parked cars and trucks and continued to his left toward a huge, sprawling stone house spouting three chimneys. Mrs. Sanford had mentioned the big house was over hundred years old. Then the road dropped casually to the valley floor toward a horse barn and a large pole barn under which was stored haying equipment. It continued on to an early twentieth century, massive stone barn fronting the ridge. The heavy doors of the stone barn were opened inward, a preventive measure against strong winds bashing them on the stone walls, but Mason couldn’t see into the dark interior.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Sanford wanted to know.

He smiled at her. “I see why you want to keep this property.”

She smiled back and opened the front door to the house and let out a gasp.

“What in the world is going on?” she demanded.

A man’s voice pleaded calm. “Geneva, let them explain.”

Mason stepped over the threshold to stand beside the stalled Mrs. Sanford. She was glaring at a young couple then she turned her glare on an older man and said in a low, angry voice, “It had better be a good explanation, Bob.”

Not sure what the problem was, Mason looked around for one. The house had an expensive look that included a huge fireplace in a river rock wall but the room was dressed in sparse, cheap furnishings accented by limp curtains at the windows, but he couldn’t see that as being a problem.

“The old house was so hard to heat,” the younger man said in a defensive tone. “We were told to move in here.”

Got it, Mason thought as Mrs. Sanford’s eyes snapped back in the young man’s direction. “By whom?” she demanded and returned her scowl to the older man, who Mason assumed was the manager. The man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

“Mr. Sanford,” the young woman said, defiance thick in her voice. She’d crossed her arms over her chest in a stubborn stance and stared at Mrs. Sanford.

“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Sanford snapped back. “My husband would have told me.”

“Oh, you’re that Sanford wife,” sneered the girl.

Mrs. Sanford’s eyes narrowed. Oh, oh, Mason thought and came close to taking a step between the two women.

The girl’s husband, a flabbergasted expression on his face, threw his arm across his wife and gently pushed her back. He said to Mrs. Sanford in a conciliatory tone, “Your husband’s son said since his father was ill, he was making the decisions.”

Mrs. Sanford turned back to Bob. “Did you know any of this?”

“I didn’t until twenty minutes ago,” he confessed. “Don’t say it,” he added with his hands out, palms up. “You’d be right, I should have been aware of this. I did not know Ernest had been here. Apparently, he came in midsummer after my last visit.”

“He brought his spoiled brats with him,” the girl complained. Mrs. Sanford frowned at her.

Her husband nodded in agreement and said, “He told us he was taking time from his family vacation at Tahoe to look over the property.”

His wife grumbled, “He brought his teenagers for horseback riding. The kids snubbed the idea. Weren’t interested, wanted to be boating on the lake instead.”

Her husband gave her a faint smile and nodded. “Mr. Sanford took charge, very forceful man. Told us he was thinking of selling off this property as hundred-acre rancheros. That’s when I wrote your husband with the offer to buy two hundred acres. But we never heard back.”

Mrs. Sanford took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No,” she said, “you didn’t. I should have responded, and I apologize. Gabe was very ill and facing more chemo at the time.” She waved a hand in her business manager’s direction. “I assume Mr. Bingham has by now told you Ernest Sanford has never had nor never will have the authority he claimed. But you’re right. He is loud, and the old house is hard to heat. I should have thought of that myself.”

The girl spoke in a contemptuous tone. “Mr. Sanford was very insistent he owned the ranch and some house on Lake Tahoe. He said you only married his father for his money.”

Mrs. Sanford pressed her lips into a thin line. It was clear to Mason she didn’t think much of the young woman and he didn’t blame her. She said, “Ernest has been saying that for twenty-four years, wishing it were so and knowing it for a lie.

“When Bob hired your husband,” she went on, “he did tell him that Gabe and I had planned to return to Nevada permanently. This house was to be ours, and I have not abandoned that plan. In fact, I’m moving here this spring.”

Both husband and wife swung their eyes Mason’s direction then back to Mrs. Sanford. Not overly surprised at her declaration of moving back, Mason thought, they think we’re an item, and I’m pushing them out. He decided that wouldn’t be so bad a prospect.

Bingham opened his mouth to speak, but Mrs. Sanford turned a sharp eye on him and he closed it. She told the couple, “I’ll help you find new employment, if you wish. I want to confer with Bob then we’ll talk.”

She deliberately slipped her arm through Mason’s, knowing full well she was reinforcing the couple’s misconception. “This is my friend, Mason Lancaster,” she said, “who is looking forward to seeing the ranch.”

The older man stuck his hand out to Mason. “Robert Bingham,” he said. “Call me Bob. This is Jim and Karen Zahn.”

Jim looked openly vexed but manfully stepped up and offered his hand. His wife only gave Mason an unfriendly, half smile.

“I had Jim start the Bronco, warm it up,” Bingham told Mrs. Sanford.

She pasted on her thin smile and said, “Appreciated.” They could all hear its rough grumbling. Then she said to Bingham, “Join us while I take Mason around.”

“Was hoping to be invited,” Bingham said and went to get his jacket from a chair in view across from the entry.

“Crossing the creek might not be possible. The culverts aren’t in. Work on the bridge never got started,” Jim Zahn said, not sounding as if he cared much. Mason figured it another task like the haying the guy had sidestepped, more than likely thinking the boss would never know, living in Chicago.

Mrs. Sanford nodded and thanked Zahn for the information and turned way, opened the door to the veranda. Mason politely nodded to Jim Zahn and followed her out, Bob Bingham right on his heels, pulling on his winter parka.

“What first?” Bingham asked.

“Barns,” Mason answered.

Mrs. Sanford said, “First the big house. I want to get started on plans to convert it to guest quarters. I’ll meet you two at the big barn. Mason, get the lunches from the car then drive the Bronco down,” she ordered as she turned along the road. The two men watched her walking away, pulling her fancy phone with its camera from a jacket pocket.

“Formidable lady,” Bingham remarked, “but then she had to be to keep up with her husband.”

“Bossy, too,” Mason quipped with a grin and headed for the Jag and the lunches.

 

It became apparent to Mason as they drove deeper into the hills the highland woods were steeper than they appeared. A four-wheeler would work over much of the ranch for checking on stock, but they leave heavy track damage. The land would lose its pristine appeal. Mrs. Sanford frowned at that. Mason agreed. He hunted on horseback, but it was the solitude and quiet that drew him. He just wasn’t so sure he’d take a rifle anymore, not after Afghanistan.

It hadn’t been the problem they’d expected crossing the creek where bridge parts waited, water hubcap deep over a gravel bed. Mason thought once upon a time the creek had meandered its way into the Truckee watershed. Now it spilled into a huge holding pond where the stream all but petered out. The smaller ponds, hardly sixty feet across, were fed in spring by the seasonal creeks. There were signs of heavy cattle use, eroding the banks and muddying the water.

Mrs. Sanford said, “Give me an alternative,” and Mason suggested strategically located wells with tanks to replace using the smaller ponds. He explained the well pumps could be wind or solar powered. “Besides,” he added, “tanks have less surface evaporation, good conservation, especially in draught years.” Mrs. Sanford gave him an assessing glance then returned her attention to maneuvering the rough track.

On the drive from the barns, he’d pointed out that the main pond had been used to water hay fields… “but now the cattle are contaminating it.” He suggested returning what was being used for grazing back to fields. Mason outlined his idea of utilizing the flat bottom land for specialty fodder to sell, as well as the winter feed for the ranch. “Much of it has been planted in the past,” he pointed out.

“There is always a strong market for alfalfa. Timothy is generally marketed to racing stables, but it brings a good price. At this altitude, alfalfa is the slower growing crop, but it is the queen of forages. This high up, it can only be cut twice, compared to Timothy and sorghum which can be cut three/four times.”

Bingham said, “You know a lot about this.”

“Yeah,” Mason said, “my old man plants four hundred acres in alfalfa, which by the way is an Arabic word meaning ‘best fodder.’ He also cuts rye grass three times a year for winter feed.”

“I thought it was a cattle ranch.”

“It is. We run about three hundred head most years.”

“That’s the size of herd I’d like to manage,” Mrs. Sanford said.

“Even planting fields, you have the grazing capacity for the cattle you now graze,” Mason told her. “

She smiled at him. “I’d need a good stockman. You have the know-how. You open for the job?”

Mason’s jaw didn’t drop, but Bingham’s did.

“That a firm offer?” Mason asked, looking over his shoulder at Bingham in the rear seat.

“It is, and I’ll sweeten the pot,” Mrs. Sanford said. “We’ll need mounts for guests. You can breed horses for the ranch and for resale, a sixty/forty split, which is more than generous as there’d be no barn or feed costs. I’ll spot you the first mare and breeding fee.”

“Geneva,” Bingham sputtered, “have you thought this through?”

She down shifted for a rutted, steep piece of road, maneuvered it then glanced over at Mason and said, “From the first evening.”

Mason turned in his seat to look at her. She had that faint smile on her lips. “In the Gibson Lounge?” he asked.

She shifted gears again and grinned, “I’d told you the trouble was out front. You weren’t spying, you were acting rear guard.”

He said dead pan, “Thought I was the perceptive one.”

Mrs. Sanford laughed.

 

They unpacked the hotel’s box lunches in the Bronco on the east end of the ridge overlooking the valley meadows. Mason pointed out several prospective places along the road to drop a well. “Take advantage of the access that already exists,” he said. Then he pointed to the thread of gravel that was the main approach to the ranch where snow bellowed behind a car approaching faster than was prudent. “Think company’s coming,” he announced.

“Whoever it is, he’s in a hurry,” Bingham said and took a bite of his ham and cheese.

“Speed is hard on gravel roads especially in snow,” Mason said. “I’d guess he’s not a rancher, drives like an urbanite.”

Mrs. Sanford frowned then looked worried and took her cell phone from her pocket.

“Who is it?” Bingham asked.

“I think it’s trouble,” she said and dialed 911.

“Ernest Sanford,” Mason suggested.

“That’s exactly who I think it is. I think Zahn called him this morning after Bob told him I was going to be at the ranch.”

Bingham frowned and said, “I did call to say we’d be out. Jim hadn’t said a word about calling Ernest when I arrived.”

“I’m guessing he’s going to wish he hadn’t,” Mason said.

Mrs. Sanford spoke into her phone, scowling the while. “There’s a confrontation at the Mile-High Ranch,” she told the 911 operator, “first gravel access off Mountain Pass Road.” Then she disconnected and put the phone back into her pocket, ignoring the operator’s insistence for more information. “I was going to offer Zahn fair severance, now he’ll be lucky to have time to pack,” she said, still scowling.

“Jim didn’t know Ernest had no authority,” Bingham offered.

“He didn’t check with you either,” Mrs. Sanford countered.

“Whose name is on his pay check?” Mason wondered.

“My company’s,” Mrs. Sanford told him, her tone matter of fact.

“That’s right,” Bingham said. “You had told me all the ranch expenses were to come from your company account because Gabe wasn’t feeling up to dealing with it.”

“You have a company?” Mason queried.

“Two,” Bingham told him. “Successful ones.”

Mrs. Sanford watched the car disappear behind a low rise and said, “One now, but I’m not involved except to serve on the board of directors.”

“How successful?” Mason asked. Mrs. Sanford flashed him a portion of her scowl. He raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “Just want to know how deep in shit Ernest is willing to wade.”

That faint, little smile appeared, and Mrs. Sanford said, “He’s very well off, just selfish. Until we started building the house, Ernest hadn’t been out here since his was a teenager and hated every minute of it when he was.”

Mason looked at her. But you loved every minute he thought because he knew she

too had grown up here. He asked, “What about Alice and her husband?”

“Alice received equal to her brother. I don’t think she wants a fight.”

“She didn’t look to happy the other night.”

“She was angry with Ernest.”

“For dragging his attorney brother-in-law into contesting your husband’s will?”

Her little smile widened then shrank. “Johnson Alterman is too savvy to get dragged into anything. He told Ernest to take the deal. Johnson told him I was being very generous, as he was entitled to neither the ranch nor the Tahoe house. Ernest didn’t want to hear that, refused to sign.”

“And Alice?”

“Alice has no interest in either the ranch or Tahoe property. She will do what her husband tells her to do.”

“Don’t suppose Zane thought to purchase land from Ernest?”

Mrs. Sanford frowned at Mason then scowled out the window at the car speeding toward the main complex.

“Are we going down there?” Bingham asked.

Mrs. Sanford took in a deep breath as if she was about to take a dive, and maybe that’s what she was thinking. She let it out slow then folded up her lunch box before putting the Bronco into gear.

 

Ernest Sanford burst out the house door before Mrs. Sanford had the Bronco in park behind a rented Cadillac. He marched down the walk swinging his body like a bull. The most frightening thing was he carried a double-barreled shotgun.

Bingham breathed out, “Jesus Christ!”

Mason agreed with him. “Don’t turn the motor off,” he told Mrs. Sanford. She nodded while staring at her stepson through the windshield.

Jim and Karen Zahn came out as far as the veranda, clinging to one another. Ernest stomped down the line of vehicles and stopped in front of the Bronco with his feet spread wide and the gun in both hands at his chest. His face was flushed, his expression manic.

“This ranch belongs to my family,” Ernest screamed. “My grandparents built it. My mother grew up here. You have no claim, not to the ranch and not to the house.”

“He had to have flown in from Vegas,” Mason said. “The gun must be Zahn’s.”

“He knows how to handle it,” Mrs. Sanford said.

“That’s no help,” Mason said. “How good’s your driving?”

Mrs. Sanford glanced over at him as if to say, “You need to ask?”

“Put this thing in gear, turn the wheel sharp and stomp on the accelerator, head for the barn. You’re going to be exposed. Leave rubber getting there. Bingham, get down.”

“What then?” Mrs. Sanford asked as she put her hand on the gear shift.

“Doors are open, drive in.”

“Get off my property,” Ernest yelled and took a shooting stance.

He was swinging the shotgun up to his shoulder when Mrs. Sanford scooted down, barely able to see over the dashboard, and shifted gears. She stomped on the gas, pushing her foot to the floor, swung the wheel to drive around Ernest rented car. Mason slid his rump forward, his back low in his seat. Bingham dropped off his seat to the floor behind Mason. The Bronco’s wheels spun; gravel smacked the Lincoln parked behind it. The big SUV sped into the middle of the road, rocking on its suspension, wheels kicking up snow with the gravel. The gun boomed as the Bronco shoot blindly forward, gravel pelting the underside. Pellets shattered the rear side window behind Bingham. He yelped but stayed down.

Mrs. Sanford didn’t slow until she hit the brakes as the Bronco passed the barn doors. Dust and hay made a storm in the big, stone building. Mason jumped out and swung the barn doors closed. He yelled, “Put the bumper against the doors.” She backed the SUV until it came against the heavy wood then put the Bronco in park and set the hand brake. “Lower the blade,” Mason called as he dropped a couple stray cinder blocks in front of the rear wheels. Mrs. Sanford did, then climbed out. She inspected the shattered window. Mason said. “He was running for the Caddy.”

“Sheriff should be on his way,” she said. “How you doing, Bob?”

Bingham clawed his way back onto the seat and ran his arm across his forehead then opened his door. “Got shaky legs and glass landed on my back, but I’m in one piece.”

“We better get the side door bolted,” Mason said and headed that way. He called back over his shoulder to Bingham, “Suggest you get out of there.”

Bingham scrambled from the Bronco and followed Mrs. Sanford who was following Mason. Not half a minute later the Cadillac rammed into the barn doors. The heavy planks bucked, some splintered, but the doors held. So, did the Bronco.

“He’s lost his mind,” Bingham yelled and stepped up his pace, passing by Mrs. Sanford.

Mason picked up a screwdriver off the workbench near the oak-plank backdoor. He dropped the simple latch into lock position and jammed the screwdriver through it, so it couldn’t be lifted.

Bingham looked around. “Are you sure the sheriff is coming?” he asked Mrs. Sanford.

She looked to Mason and he nodded. “Tell 911 shots have been fired.” No sooner did he say that than the backdoor rattled in its frame. “Get away from the door,” he warned, grabbing Mrs. Sanford round the waist and pulling her against the stone wall. Bingham dived under the workbench. An instant later the shotgun went off.

“That took out the window over the bench,” Mrs. Sanford whispered, her voice coming out husky.

“You okay?” Mason asked.

“Winded. You’re pretty damned strong.”

Ernest kicked the door and it bounced. He kicked it again then shot holes in it close range with both barrels. The roar vaulted round the stonewalls.

“Damn,” Mrs. Sanford grimaced as she pressed herself to the stone. “See he doesn’t get in the window and don’t get shot doing it,” she told Mason and pulled her phone from her pocket.

They could hear a siren even as Mrs. Sanford was talking into her phone. “More cars on the way,” she called and slid the phone back into her pocket, again ignoring the insistence of the 911 operator.

Ernest’s eyes appeared at the hole blown in the door as Mason dived past it. The door rattled, and Ernest fingers tried to reach the screwdriver to no avail. He kicked the door again. Mason nodded to Mrs. Sanford then popped up for a look out the window. He dropped flat on the floor in front of the workbench just before the shotgun barrel was thrust through the broken glass and fired. The roar close to deafening, the smell of gun powder hung on the air, sinking like dust in the cold.

From under the bench, Bingham’s wide stretched eyes stared at Mason. He gave Bingham a quick grin then jumped up. He grabbed several oil cans off the work surface and tossed them out the window. Ernest fired at them. Mason could hear the gun being cracked for new shells when he pulled the screwdriver out of the latch and yanked open the door. “Mason!” Mrs. Sanford screamed when he threw himself through it.

Ernest pivoted toward the opening door. He slapped in a shell but hadn’t time to snap the stock closed when Mason tackled the older man round the knees. They went down hard into the snow piled against the barn. Ernest huffed heavily under him and tried beating Mason on the back and side with the shotgun. The steel barrel bashed Mason’s bad leg at the knee. He let out a muffled scream but held on.

Suddenly the gun was pulled away. Mason heard the stock being snapped shut.

“Lay still, Ernest, damn it or I’ll shoot you,” Mrs. Sanford shouted.

Mason rolled off Ernest onto his back. Mrs. Sanford was standing to one side with the shotgun tucked under one arm, the other hand on her hip, her feet planted wide.

“Bitch,” Ernest hissed.

“Shut up,” she snarled and lifted the gun and pointed the barrel in his general direction. “Can you get up, Mason?”

“Don’t think so,” he admitted.

“That was a really dumb thing to do,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, shifting back to sit in the snow with his hands wrapped around his knee.

Mrs. Sanford went to his side and knelt down. Ernest started climbing to his feet. “I said lay still, Ernest,” she snarled as she helped Mason shift backward to lie against the snowbank. Then she stood back with the gun across her chest. Ernest growled in his throat and stared daggers at her. His hands balled into fists. Finally, he spat, “I’ll get even.”

“Grow up, Ernest,” Mrs. Sanford snapped. “You’re not a kid in a school yard. Man up.”

The atmosphere was quiet, the siren no longer wailing. A sheriff deputy stuck his head around the corner of the barn then stepped into view.

“Maybe I should take it from here,” he said as he approached and reached the gun from Mrs. Sanford’s hands. Jim Zahn cautiously followed in his wake. “Zahn here said you’re Mrs. Sanford and this is your husband’s son. Said something about a property dispute.”

Mrs. Sanford nodded then knelt by Mason. “We need an ambulance,” she said.

 

Mason laid the crutches on the floor in front of the sofa in Mrs. Sanford’s suite, his leg stretched out over the cushions.

“More Demerol?” she smiled and held up the cribbage board.

Mason laughed. “It’s a loopy evening,” he acknowledged and leaned over and flipped up the pizza box lid. He helped himself. “That job offer valid?” he asked.

She said, “First thing you do is get the windows in the Bronco and over the workbench fixed. Hang new barn doors.”

THE END