“Thank you, Gil.”
“Will you be riding out again today?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” she replied, removing her rifle from its scabbard.
“I’ve eaten enough dust for one day.”
“Bueno.”
Slinging her saddlebags over one shoulder, she patted Samson’s hindquar-ters as the range boss led him away to the stable. The house lay in the opposite direction, and Rayna headed for the nearest entrance, through the walled garden that sheltered the hacienda’s western exposure. The iron gate creaked a scratchy welcome as she slipped inside and moved across the flagstone patio toward the house.
The magnificent old two-story home had been constructed in the Spanish style over sixty years ago. Shady galerías encircled it on both floors inside and out, and each room had doors that led to the exterior galleries and interior courtyard.
The stucco hacienda had a long and colorful history, having survived Mexico’s revolt against Spain and the American incursion that subsequently wrested the territory from Mexico. What mattered to Rayna, though, was that Rancho Verde was the only home she had ever known. She loved the house and the lush green Rio Grande valley that sheltered it. She loved the mountains and deserts beyond the valley, too. It was a harsh land that could be cruel and unrelenting, but it was her home.
Her mother had insisted that she and her sister, Skylar, received a proper education back east, so Rayna had seen other parts of the country—places where water was never scarce, neighbors were plentiful, and the greatest danger to life and limb was being run over by a runaway carriage on a cobble-stone street. Her brush with civilization had done nothing to change her opinion of Rancho Verde. It was the most beautiful place on earth.
The house was quiet when Rayna slipped through the arcade that connected the patio with the courtyard. Through the open doors of the dining room on the other side of the enclosure she spotted one of the servants laying the table for supper, and she heard muted voices drifted down from the upper floor. Anxious to tell her father about the bonanza she’d corralled, she headed across the courtyard to the study. The desk was littered with open ledgers, but Raymond Templeton was nowhere to be seen.
Disappointed, Rayna ejected the shells from her Winchester, placed it in the polished gun case by the door, and returned her cache of ammunition to the drawer below the rack. She performed the ritual with the ease of someone who had been well trained in the proper care of weapons, as indeed she had 8
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been. Rayna had been working the ranch alongside her father for as long as she could remember, and only a fool roamed the countryside unarmed.
That chore completed, she returned to the courtyard and dashed up the nearest staircase with her usual abandon.
“Unless you’re trying to escape a stampede, I suggest you slow down, dear.”
Her mother’s quietly spoken admonition brought Rayna up short, and she turned. Collie Templeton was approaching the stairs with an armload of fresh linens. “No stampede, Mother. I was just trying to see how quickly I could get into my room and out of these dusty clothes.”
Collie gave her daughter a once-over as she started up the stairs. “In this instance I could almost approve of your haste. Did you have trouble with Samson again?”
“How did you know?”
Collie’s blue eyes, so much like her daughter’s, glittered with amusement.
“Marie spotted you walking in.”
Rayna groaned. “Marie and everyone else on the ranch. I told Gil to get rid of that new blacksmith. He’s absolutely worthless.” She extended her arms.
“Here, let me help you with those.”
“Not until you’ve had a bath, young lady,” she replied sternly, shifting her bundle out of Rayna’s reach. “Consuelo would skin you alive if she had to wash these over again.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” Rayna argued good-naturedly as she turned and strolled with her mother down the gallery. “She’s been threatening that for years and hasn’t caught me yet.”
“Lord knows you’ve given us both enough excuses—muddy boots, soiled gowns, disgraceful tattered Levi’s that no woman should ever be caught dead—”
“Yes, yes, Mother, I know,” she said, silencing her with a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m a wretched hoyden, the bane of your existence, and the most unrefined lady in the entire territory of New Mexico.”
Collie sighed with exasperation. “You don’t have to sound so proud of it.”
Rayna chuckled as she stripped off her gloves. “Mother, you’ve been trying to domesticate me for twenty-four years and haven’t succeeded yet. When are you going to face the fact that I’ll never be anything but the son you and father always wanted? Skylar is the domestic one.”
Collie wished she could debate the issue. She loved both her children dearly, but they were as different as night and day. Skylar was quiet and shy.
She had mastered the fine art of running a household and was in all ways a dutiful daughter. Rayna, on the other hand, was stubborn, headstrong, and willful. She had inherited her father’s business sense, and her only desire was to someday assume the responsibility of running Rancho Verde. If Raymond 9
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Templeton had ever once discouraged his daughter from such an unladylike pursuit, Collie hadn’t been within earshot when he’d done it.
“Marie is preparing your bathwater, dear,” she said, resigned to the knowledge that nothing she could say would change her daughter’s deportment. “I may not be able to domesticate you, but I can at least make certain you don’t appear at the dinner table smelling like a horse stall.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Tugging at the strip of rawhide that held her blond hair into a tight queue, Rayna glanced into her sister’s room and found it devoid of life. “Where’s Skylar?”
A small frown furrowed Collie’s brow, but she kept her voice carefully neutral. “I believe she went out to the Mescalero encampment.”
Rayna wasn’t fooled by her mother’s even tone. “Why does that upset you?
She’s always felt a special connection with the Apaches at Rancho Verde.”
“I know that, dear. But she’s spending more and more time with them lately. She goes out to the encampment every day now.”
“Really?” Rayna stopped in front of her bedroom door.
“You didn’t know?” Collie asked. Usually Rayna knew far more about what her sister thought and did then either of her parents. Since the day Raymond had brought Skylar home, the two girls had been virtually inseparable.
“No, I didn’t,” she replied, her own brow furrowed with worry now. It wasn’t like Skylar to keep things from her.
“I believe Gatana is teaching her some sort of ceremony.”
Her voice was laced with sadness, and Rayna finally realized what was upsetting her. Collie felt betrayed because she feared that all the advantages she’d given Skylar hadn’t been enough for her adopted daughter. She had loved her and protected her as best she could from the inevitable prejudice the girl had faced. She had seen to it that she received an excellent education back east that had broadened Skylar’s horizons far beyond the scope of most other young women in New Mexico, white or Apache.
Unfortunately a connection to her heritage was the one thing Collie couldn’t give her daughter, but it was the one thing Skylar seemed to want most.
Rayna searched for something to say that would lift her mother’s spirits, but she couldn’t think of anything. She knew that Skylar loved her adopted family, but there was a certain sadness in her that seemed to be growing stronger every day. Rayna thought she understood it, but she knew she could never explain it to the woman who had raised Skylar with the same love and devotion she’d bestowed on her flesh-and-blood daughter.