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“You know, Jacquelyn, at my age a woman can’t help warming her hands at the fire of the past. But while we should always recall our dead, this world belongs to the living.”
Jacquelyn raised an interrogatory eyebrow, waiting for more. “Yes?” she encouraged.
But Hazel kept her waiting, as if she was mulling possible explanations for the old matriarch’s secret.
Finally she said, “You told me last time that you want to capture the true feel of Jake’s pioneer experience, remember?”
“Of course. I hoped my articles were doing that.”
“Your articles are wonderful, dear. Quite honestly, I expected the usual twaddle and bunkum about grizzled pioneers. But you’ve captured the essence of Jake McCallum better than any other writer who’s tried. And many have.”
Hazel snatched up a copy of last week’s Mystery Gazette from a pedestal stand beside her chair.
“‘Jake McCallum,”’ she read out loud, “‘was a man who went a great distance while others were still debating whether to leave today or tomorrow.”’
The corners of her eyes crinkled deeply when Hazel laughed. “Jacquelyn, you do understand that old rascal’s basic nature. But for your own sake I want you to go that great distance, too. Or at least part of it. The important part.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“I’d like you to actually repeat Jake’s original journey. Not the entire trip, of course. As you already know, his original plan was to travel from his home in St. Louis all the way north to the Yukon to mine for gold.”
Jacquelyn smiled. “Yes. Until he was waylaid in a beautiful Montana valley to help a rancher with some straying cattle, right?”
“Right as rain. Because that rancher had a pretty daughter of marrying age named Libbie. One look at her, and Jake wrote back home that he was settling in Montana. The part of his journey that Jake’s journal mentions most was the hard, but beautiful, five-day ride through the mountains and Eagle Pass to this valley. Called McCallum’s Trace to this day.”
“And that’s the part of the journey you’d like me to make?” Jacquelyn mulled the odd suggestion for a few moments. Well, so what if it was a bit…eccentric of Hazel to suggest it? After all, Jacquelyn didn’t want to be one of those journalists who never left the office to find a story. And it really was an important piece of American history.
“All right,” she finally agreed, her face brightening. “It sounds like fun. My family has a Hummer at the summer lodge here that usually just sits in the garage. I’ll borrow it. I could also—what?”
She broke off, confused at the way Hazel was shaking her head to silence her.
“Jacquelyn, we’re talking about the ‘true feel,’ remember? Your own words. My lands, Jake didn’t cross those high-altitude passes in a Hummer—nor was there a highway, just an old Sioux Indian game trail. That’s still all there is up there.”
Jacquelyn’s jaw dropped slightly, and her eyes widened. “Hazel. You want me to ride across the original trace? Five days on horseback?”
“Well, you do ride, don’t you? I’ve seen you in your fancy riding britches. And there’s horses at your place.”
“Well…yes, I ride. But—”
Hazel dismissed her objections with a careless wave. “I rode that trail myself when I was about your age. Never in winter, of course, as Jake did. In August, just like you’ll be doing. Gets a bit nippy at night, especially up in Eagle Pass. Sure, you might even see some snow, but it’s quite exhilarating.”
“Hazel, you simply don’t understand. I ride, yes. But it’s the English style I learned at boarding school. You know—dressage, preparation for show jumping, things like disciplined turns and reverses, fancy jumps and tricky hurdles. Not trail riding in rugged mountains. Hazel, I—that is, I’ve never even been a Girl Scout. I wouldn’t know the most basic—”
“Oh, all your objections are just pee doodles,” Hazel scoffed, her eyes cutting to an ormolu clock on the mantel. “Because you’re going to have the perfect guide for this little trek.”
“Guide?” Jacquelyn repeated, immediately feeling like a parrot.
“I should say! None other than Mystery’s own world-champion saddle-bronc rider, A. J. Clayburn.”
Hazel opened up a photo album lying on the pedestal table and passed it over to her visitor. “This is A. J. at the rodeo at the Calgary Stampede, accepting his World Cup. One of the proudest days in Mystery’s recent memory.”
Jacquelyn took in gunmetal-blue eyes as direct as a Remington, an unruly thatch of thick, brown hair that touched his collar. The scornful twist to the mouth irritated her immediately. The handsome man in this photo radiated the easy calm and confidence, bordering on arrogance, of men who were good at handling animals—and thought the talent translated to women, as well.
“You’ve seen him around town, no doubt?” Hazel inquired.
Jacquelyn nodded, still too numb and confused by all this to speak. She had seen him around town, all right. How could anyone miss those metallic eyes and his wide-shouldered, slim-hipped frame? A. J. Clayburn was straight off the cover of a Western novel—but whether the hero or the bad guy, she wasn’t sure. Still, there was no mistaking the living, breathing personification of a great American myth.
But there was no way Hazel could expect her to travel McCallum’s Trace with this man. It was like putting a duck in the desert. He was utterly foreign to Jacquelyn’s genteel, urban world, and vice versa.
Hazel seemed to read some of these thoughts in her visitor’s stunned face.
“Believe me, honey,” she assured, taking the photo album back from her. “You’ll quickly learn to appreciate A.J.’s qualities. He’s what we Western gals like to call an ‘unflighty’ man. Nowadays, of course, that’s not what it once was. I don’t recall any flighty men who took Omaha Beach.”
“Hazel, I just don’t think—”
“Generally,” Hazel nattered on blithely, cutting her off, “when he’s not on the rodeo circuit, you’ll find A.J. perched on the top board of a corral somewhere in the valley.”
“Hazel, honestly, I can’t see me—”
“But he’s not riding this season, you understand. At the year’s first rodeo in Miles City, A.J. caught his spur in a cinch. The horse went over on his leg and crushed it. Now he’s knitting, but it was a bad fall. It’s not clear if the doctors will certify him for the circuit again. Leaves A.J. with some free time to take on guide jobs for me.”
“I’m sorry he’s had an accident. But—”
“Not that he’s pining away and burning any daylight,” Hazel charged on. “Lands no! A.J. stays busy—a little too busy, if you catch my meaning.” She winked. “He’s left a mighty long trail of broken hearts, but still I remember his ma and pa. They were something fierce in love. The kind you don’t see nowadays. A love like the kind I had.” Hazel smiled at her. “Oh, he’ll have a love like that one day. It’s just taken him a while to come around. In the meantime, while his leg’s been healing, he’s helping out his old partner Cas Davis. Cas runs a popular rodeo-riding school in Thompson Falls.”
Hazel finally paused to take a breath.
“I can’t do this,” Jacquelyn blurted out. “I’m sorry. Not only am I unprepared for the ride, but A. J. Clayburn is a stranger to me. I can’t just go camping in the wilderness—”
“He won’t be a stranger in a few minutes,” Hazel assured her, again glancing at the clock. “A.J. will be here any moment now to meet you.”
For a short, panicked moment, Jacquelyn felt her breath catch.
“Meet me?” she repeated foolishly, stunned at this massive loss of control in her very controlled life. Am I a mail-order bride? she almost asked in disbelief.
“Since you’ll be spending so much time alone with A.J.,” Hazel added, “I suppose I should also mention that he has a recently acquired police record.”
Jacquelyn could feel the blood drain from her cheeks. Hazel laughed.
“Steady, dear. He can be rehabilitated. I’m quite sure of it. You’ve heard of Red Lodge, Montana?”
Still shell-shocked, Jacquelyn answered woodenly. “The town where cowboys and rodeo types rendezvous every Fourth of July for a party, right?”
“I suppose you could call that annual riot a party. Anyhow, this year A.J. was arrested for riding his horse into the Snag Bar saloon. Evidently, a deputy or two ‘accidentally ran their jaws into my fist,’ as A.J. put it in court.”
Oh, great, Jacquelyn thought, her stomach sinking. So he’s a drunken brawler, too? How lucky can one woman get?
“If you really want the true feel of being with Jake McCallum and along on his ride,” Hazel told the reporter, “you couldn’t be with a more similar man. Just as Jake was, A.J. is fast out of the gate.”
Hazel laughed at the alarm that must have flickered in Jacquelyn’s eyes.
“Dear, relax. It’s just an old saying. Means a man is clear about what he wants and how to get it. Tell me…is it your skin you’re fretting about?”
“My…skin?”
“I’ve always been told you Southern women take special pride in your beautiful complexions. You’re living proof of that.”
“Thank you,” she said politely, but it was obvious that Hazel was only jabbering like this to head off any more objections about her wild idea.
She was on the verge of demanding why it was so important that she make this mountain trek. But just then a two-tone chime sounded within the parlor. Nervous fear made her heart speed up for the next few beats.
“That will be A.J.,” Hazel announced with evident satisfaction. “Donna will let him in.”
The tap of solid boot heels reached their ears as the new arrival moved through the kitchen and dining room. Jacquelyn’s trapped-deer desperation didn’t seem to escape Hazel’s notice—or her sympathy.
“Everything will be just fine, dear, I promise. I won’t sugarcoat the dangers of those mountains. But with a guide like A. J. Clayburn, you’ll be fine.”
“But I really don’t understand why this is necessary. You said you liked my articles—that they were authentic,” Jacquelyn whispered in a rush to beat the footsteps. “Why is this so important? Why?”
Something secret and mysterious glinted in Hazel’s eyes—something born of great ambition, great determination and great love. But her evasive answer only further frustrated Jacquelyn.
“Be patient. Making this journey will change your life, I assure you. Very few have taken it. Well, would you look who’s here, Jacquelyn! Timely, yet! Well, my land, A.J., don’t just stand there gawking, come on in. She doesn’t bite!”
Three
Jacquelyn paid scant attention as Hazel went through the formalities of introducing her to Mystery’s leading rodeo celebrity.
Besides feeling confused, trapped and manipulated, she was almost indignant. Somehow she felt she was being hazed, as cowboys called it when they forced cattle to move where they wanted them to go.
Or more like it, Jacquelyn punned wryly to herself, she was being Hazeled.
“Personally,” Hazel nattered while Jacquelyn gathered her composure a bit, “I’ve become a dyed-in-the-wool home-body in my old age. I subscribe to the theory that a gal should never leave her time zone. But then, if some of us didn’t travel, we wouldn’t have Jacquelyn here summering with us in Mystery, would we, A.J.?”
“I guess that’s so,” the cowboy agreed reluctantly. His tone made it clear he could survive that contingency just fine.
He sat across from the two women in a leather wing chair, an immaculate gray Stetson balanced on his left knee. He wore clean range clothes and a neckerchief. Long, muscular, blue-jeans-clad legs were tucked into hand-stitched, high-heeled boots so pointy they looked like weapons. A. J. Clayburn, Jacquelyn noted reluctantly in a brief appraisal, was every bit as handsome as the photo of him in Hazel’s album.
But, in person, he also projected a sense of…physical readiness—even danger. That was undeniable even though he walked a bit stiff-legged from his recent injury.
Also undeniable was his smug awareness of his own abilities. He certainly would not shine among the old, genteel social circles back in Atlanta’s Peachtree Park, where subtlety and nuance opened doors of opportunity. But Jacquelyn had to grudgingly admit he was the kind of man she would want nearby in a crisis. Though, God knows, she’d want him gone after the trouble was over. Immediately after.
“If you youngsters will excuse me,” Hazel said, rising spryly from her chair, “I need to go upstairs and find some old letters that Jacquelyn requested for her series. You two will want to get acquainted, of course, and discuss your arrangements. I’ll try not to be too long.”
Again Jacquelyn felt dismay pulsing in her temples. Arrangements? Hazel was simply taking over her life, to hell with permission. And now came the lame pretext—she was leaving Jacquelyn virtually trapped with this arrogant, self-inflated rube.
A.J. rose politely while Hazel stood and left the parlor. So far, while Hazel was present, he had spared Jacquelyn the force of those penetrating eyes of his. Indeed, each time his gunmetal gaze touched her it slid quickly away.
As if he resented her presence.
Now that they were alone, however, all that changed. Jacquelyn felt his eyes on her, so probing and intense she felt violated by them.
“Is there a fly on my nose?” she finally asked, heat flooding into her face.
“Nope. Just looking.”
“It’s just looking, maybe, for the first few seconds. But eventually it becomes staring.”
His sardonic mouth twisted into a grin. “’At’s funny.”
“It is?”
“You don’t look like a book. But you sure-god talk like one.”
“Pardon me.” She commented, “I’ll try to sound more obtuse so you won’t feel challenged.”
Her acerbic tone didn’t daunt him at all; probably because he didn’t get the insult. She ached to dismiss him, but beneath his continued scrutiny she felt a flush heat her skin. Nervously she stood up and quickly smoothed her black matte jersey skirt over her thighs. Then she crossed to the wall behind her, covered with paintings and photographs. She could still feel the almost physical force of his stare.
“Mr. Clayburn, Hazel has told me her plan, but I’m afraid I’m not a camper, nor a horse packer. It seems she thinks I’m the best one to write about McCallum Trace, but there’s a fine young college boy interning at the office, and I think he’d be a much more appropriate choice for your—”
“You don’t have to convince me. I’m Mohammed. I can come to the mountain myself.” He jerked his head toward the door where Hazel had gone. “It’s the mountain you got to worry about moving.”
Jacquelyn looked at the empty doorway. The sinking feeling betrayed her cold bravado. The cowboy was, unfortunately, right; truer words and all that. Hazel was the mountain, and Jacquelyn Rousseaux might have an Ivy League education and a trust fund which she eschewed in order to make her own money and be her own woman, but she did not possess a backhoe.
So in the end her battle was with Hazel, not the man stuck in the room with her. Her innate Southern politeness finally won out.
“So…I understand you’re a rodeo champ,” she said, going back to her seat to wait for Hazel.
“That’s old news around here. Heard anything more interesting?”
His insolent, taunting tone made her want to spar with him. Worse was the strange feeling she had whenever his gaze raked over her. She realized she must have been far too long without male companionship because his every glance, his every stare was making her feel exposed and strangely flustered.
“You writing about cowboys, too?” he asked.
In spite of her better judgment, she retorted, “Actually I was thinking about it.” Archly she said, “In researching my articles on Jake McCallum, I read something about Montana cowboys. Is it true y’all are defensive because you’re just imitations of the true Texas cowboys?”
“’Y’all?”’ he repeated, raising one eyebrow.
To her chagrin he was unruffled. Then, to her surprise, he had managed to turn the question to her.
And Hazel seriously thought Jacquelyn would spend five days—not to mention nights—alone with this insulting, boorish hick?
There was no use in continuing the small talk. She turned her attention to an old, nineteenth-century tintype photo of Hazel’s grandmother, Mystery McCallum. Mystery wore a swag-fronted, bustled gown and a tight-laced corset to give her the wasp waist that had been fashionable then.
When A.J. spoke, his voice was so close to her ear that Jacquelyn almost flinched.
“I’ve heard that all those tight lacings sometimes kindled ‘impure desires.’ You being female and all, tell me—is that possible, you think?”
She spun around to face him, stepping back away from his invasion of her personal space. But not before she caught the scent of him—a decidedly masculine aroma of good leather and bay rum aftershave. The smell made her stomach quiver, as if it had some kind of hormonal effect on her, as if it kind of…kind of…turned her on.
