'What would she have to do?'
'Just be there, help out, be involved.'
Something told him he shouldn't mention riding. He put his hat on and opened the front door. He could see the desperation in Annie's eyes.
'It's cold in here,' he said. 'You ought to get the heating checked out.'
He was about to step out when Grace appeared in the living-room doorway. She didn't look at him. She said something but it was so low he couldn't catch it.
'I'm sorry Grace?'
She shifted uncomfortably, her eyes flicking sideways.
'I said okay. I'll do it.'
And she turned away and went back into the room.
Diane had cooked a turkey and was carving it as if it deserved it. One of the twins tried picking a piece and got his hand slapped. He was supposed to be ferrying the plates over from the sideboard to the table where everyone else was already seated.
'What about the yearlings?' she said. 'I thought that was the whole idea of not doing clinics, so you could work with your own horses for a change.'
'There'll be time for that,' said Tom. He couldn't understand why Diane seemed so riled.
'Who does she think she is, coming out here like that? Just assuming she can force you into it. I think she's got one hell of a nerve. Get off!' She tried to slap the boy again but this time he got away with the meat. Diane raised the carving knife. 'Next time you get this, okay? Frank, don't you think she's got a nerve?'
'Oh hell, I don't know. Seems to me it's up to Tom. Craig, will you pass the corn please?'
Diane made up the last plate for herself and came and sat down. They all went quiet for Frank to say grace.
'Anyway,' Tom went on after it was said, 'Joe here's going to be helping me with the yearlings. That right, Joe?'
'Sure.'
'Not while you're at school you're not,' Diane said. Tom and Joe exchanged a look. No one spoke for a while, everyone just getting on with helping themselves to vegetables and cranberry sauce. Tom hoped Diane would let the matter drop, but she was like a dog with a bone.
'I guess they'll want feeding and all, out here all day long.'
'I don't reckon they'll expect that,' Tom said.
'What, they'll go forty miles into Choteau every time they want a cup of coffee?'
'Tea,' Frank said. Diane shot him an unfriendly look.
'Huh?'
'Tea. She's English. They drink tea. Come on Diane, give the guy a break.'
'Does the girl's leg look funny?' Scott said, through a mouthful of turkey.
'Funny!' Joe shook his head. 'You are one weird kid.'
'No I mean, is it like, made of wood or what?'
'Just eat your food Scott, okay?' Frank said.
They ate in silence for a while. Tom could see Diane's mood hanging above her like a cloud. She was a tall, powerful woman, whose face and spirit had been hardened by the place she lived in. Increasingly as she moved into her mid-forties, she had about her an air of lost opportunity. She'd grown up on a farm near Great Falls and it was Tom who'd first met her. They dated a few times, but he made it clear he wasn't ready to settle down and was anyway so seldom around, that it just petered out. So Diane married the younger brother instead. Tom was fond of her, though sometimes, especially since his mother moved to Great Falls, he found her a touch over-protective. He worried now and again that she gave him more attention than she did Frank. Not that Frank ever seemed to notice.
'When you figuring on branding?' he asked his brother.
'Weekend after next. If the weather picks up.'
On a lot of ranches they left it until later, but Frank branded in April because the boys liked to help and the calves were still small enough for them to handle. They always made an event of it. Friends came over to help and Diane laid on a spread for everyone afterward. It was a tradition Tom's father had begun and one of many Frank kept going. Another was how they still used horses for much of the work other ranchers now used vehicles for. Rounding up cattle on motorcycles wasn't the same somehow.
Tom and Frank had always seen these things the same way. They never disagreed about the way the ranch was run, nor anything else for that matter. This was partly because Tom thought of the place as more Frank's than his. It was Frank who'd stayed here all these years while he traveled, doing his horse clinics. And Frank had always been the better businessman and knew more about cattle than he would ever know. The two of them were close and easy together and Frank was genuinely thrilled about Tom's plans to get more seriously into horse rearing because it meant he'd be around the place more. Though the cattle were mainly Frank's and the horses Tom's, they discussed things and helped each other out whenever they could. Last year, when Tom was off doing a chain of clinics, it was Frank who had supervised the building of an arena and exercise pool that Tom had designed for the horses.
Tom was aware suddenly that one of the twins had asked him a question.
'Sorry, what was that?'
'Is she famous?' It was Scott.
'Is who famous, for heavensakes?' Diane snapped.
'The woman from New York.'
Diane didn't give Tom the chance to answer.
'Have you heard of her?' she asked the boy. He shook his head. 'Well then, she isn't famous is she? Eat your food.'
Chapter Sixteen
The northern edge of Choteau was guarded by a thirteen-and-a-half-foot-tall dinosaur. Pedants knew it to be an Albertasaurus but to everyone else it looked pretty much like a regular T. Rex. It kept watch from the parking lot of the Old Trail Museum and you got to see it just after you passed the sign on Route 89 saying Welcome to Choteau - Nice People, Great Country. Conscious perhaps of the immediate damper this might put on such a welcome, the sculptor had shaped the creature's steak-knife teeth into a knowing grin. The effect was unsettling. You couldn't tell if it wanted to eat you or lick you to death.
Four times a day, for two weeks now, Annie had traversed this reptilian gaze as she drove to and from the Double Divide. They would go out at noon after Grace had done some schoolwork or spent a grueling morning at the physical therapist's. Annie would drop her off at the ranch, come back, hit the phones and the fax, then head out again at about six, as she was doing now, to collect her.
The trip took about forty minutes and she enjoyed it, especially, since the weather had turned, the evening ride. For five days the skies had been clear and they were bigger and bluer than she'd ever known skies could be. After the afternoon frenzy of phone calls to New York, driving out into this landscape was like plunging into an immense, calming pool.
The trip was a long L shape and for the first twenty miles, north along 89, Annie's was often the only car. The plains stretched endlessly away to her right and as the sun arced low, toward the Rockies on her left, the winter-worn grass around her turned to pale gold.
She turned west onto the unmarked gravel road that went in a straight line for another fifteen miles to the ranch and the mountain wall beyond. The Lariat left a cloud of dust behind it that drifted slowly away in the breeze. Curlews strutted on the road in front then glided away at the last moment into the pasture. Annie lowered the visor against the sun's dazzle and felt something inside her quicken.
In the last few days she had started coming out to the ranch a little earlier so that she could watch Tom Booker at work. Not that the real work with Pilgrim had started yet. So far it had been mostly physical therapy, building up the horse's wasted shoulder and leg muscles in the swimming pool. Round and round he swam, with a look in his eyes as if he were being chased by crocodiles. He was staying out on the ranch now, in a stall right by the pool, and the only close contact Tom had so far had with him was getting him in and out of the water. Even so it was dangerous enough.