The Rawhide Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

Unless…you wouldn’t rather Dad showed you around?” she asked with a calculating look, and Bess knew she was thinking about that dreadful lie Jude had told her.
    “He can show me around later,” Bess promised the young girl. “Now, how about bed? I’m so sleepy I can hardly stand up.”
    “Where are your things,
señorita,
and I will unpack,” Aggie volunteered.
    “I’m wearing them,” Bess said gaily, opening her coat to disclose the dress underneath. “Jude decided that I could do without clothes, makeup and all those other frivolous things.”
    Aggie scowled. “I will lend you one of my gowns,” she said. “Men, they never think about these things,” she muttered as she went out the door.
    Katy was watching her closely. “Why didn’t you pack a suitcase?” she asked slowly.
    “Because your father picked me up in what I have on and carried me bodily out the door, that’s why,” she said.
    Katy tried to stifle a laugh, but it burst out anyway. “Good night, Bess!” she said, and beat a hasty retreat back to her own room, closing the door quickly. Behind it, there was hysterical laughter.
    * * *
    Bess had forgotten just how big Big Mesquite really was until she walked around the grounds with Katy the next day. The house, which she’d always loved, was very old and very Victorian, with a turret and exquisite gingerbread woodwork. Jude had obviously had it painted not too many months ago, because it was blistering white.
    “I remember summers long ago when I used to swing in that front porch swing,” Bess recalled dreamily, hanging on to a small mimosa tree in the front yard as she stared toward the house. “And your grandmother would make iced tea and big, thick tomato sandwiches and I’d swing and munch.”
    “Did you and Dad used to play together?” Katy asked, all eyes.
    “No, darling,” Bess said, laughing. “Your father was already a grown man when I was barely in my teens. I hardly ever saw him in those days. He was away at college, and then in Vietnam.”
    “Oh, yes, I know all about the war,” Katy said seriously. “Dad’s got an awful—”
    “Katy!” Aggie called out the door. “Deanne wants to talk to you on the telephone!”
    “Okay, Aggie!” Katy moved away from the tree. “Deanne’s my best friend,” she explained. “I won’t be long.”
    “Don’t hurry on my account,” Bess told her. “I’ll just ramble around and look at the stock.”
    “Don’t go close to the corral. Dad’s got Blanket in there,” the young girl cautioned.
    “What a name. Does it belong to a bull?”
    “No, a horse.” Katy laughed. “They call her that because she likes to fall on people—like a blanket.”
    “I’ll watch my step,” Bess promised.
    Katy ran into the house and Bess wandered quietly around the yard in the same jersey dress she’d worn the day before. She had one of Jude’s Windbreakers wrapped around herself to keep out the cold, and she hated the pleasure it gave her to wear something of his. She was really going to have to stop feeling that way. If he ever found out how he affected her, it could be a disaster, in more ways than one.
    As she was thinking about him, he came out of the barn with a halter in his hand, heading straight for Blanket.
    Bess climbed up on the fence and leaned her arms over the top rail. “Going to bounce around a little?” she asked. “Don’t fall off, now.”
    “No, I’m not going to bounce around,” he said curtly. “I’m going to put her on a halter so Bandy can work her.”
    She watched him approach the horse, talking softly and gently to it in a tone she’d never heard him use except, infrequently, with Katy. He moved closer inch by inch, soothing the horse, until he was near enough to ease the halter over the jet black muzzle and lock it in place. He continued to stroke the silky black mane while the horse trembled in the chill air, not from cold but from nervousness.
    Bess didn’t speak. She didn’t dare. Jude would