This Calder Sky by Janet Dailey Page B

carved walnut bar in a corner of the room and unstoppered a decanter of brandy.
    â€œDo you want some in your coffee?” He half-turned to glance at his father.
    â€œNot tonight.” Webb refused and studied his tall, broad-shouldered son. “O’Rourke came to see me today.” Chase had started to set the decanter down, but the statement stopped the movement in mid-action. After an instant’s delay, it was carried through.
    â€œWhat about?” Chase broke the ensuing silence but didn’t turn around.
    Silently, Webb admired the way his son kept himself contained. It wasn’t good if someone could read a person’s thoughts by his expression. An iron hold on the rest of his emotions would come in time. The boy was still young.
    â€œHe claimed you forced your attentions on his daughter,” Webb replied. “Do you deny it?”
    â€œNo.” He continued to face the bar, stirring his coffee.
    Webb liked the bluntness of the answer, its absence of an excuse and lack of any disrespectful reference to the girl. It showed breeding and the assumption of full responsibility for what transpired.
    â€œDid you make any promises that I should know about?”
    Again, it was a straightforward “No.” The immobility was broken by a surge of rippling energy that turned Chase around in tight-lipped anger. “O’Rourke had no right to bring you into this. He should have talked to me.”
    â€œIt’s been settled.”
    â€œSettled? How?” Chase shot the questions at his father, a sharp ring of demand within them.
    â€œI gave him a bill of sale for fifty head of cattle.”
    â€œFifty head. And he accepted that?”
    â€œYes.”
    Chase half-turned his head away, his mouth curling in disgust. “I would have had more respect for the man if he’d tied me to a pole and whipped me. Why didn’t he come over here and beat the hell out of me?”
    â€œIt’s what I would have done in his place. I’m not so sure I shouldn’t do it, anyway,” Webb stated grimly. “It’s natural for a man to sow his wild oats, but he shouldn’t do it in young, virgin fields.”
    â€œThat’s occurred to me more than once these last few days,” Chase agreed on a breath of self-derision. He set the untouched cup of brandy-laced coffee on a side table. “I’m going for a walk and get some air.”

Chapter VII
    The closest town to the Triple C headquarters was a wide spot in the road called Blue Moon. It was a standing joke that the town was so named because something exciting happened there only once in a blue moon. The gas station was also the grocery store and post office. There was a café next to what was once a roadside inn with rooms for travelers, but the inn was now a saloon-bar, called “Jake’s Place,” complete with a private gaming room in the back. The upstairs rooms were where Jake’s “nieces” did their business. The café next door did a good trade, mostly because the owner, Bob Tucker, was reputed to be the best damned cook in the state of Montana.
    In addition to those commercial buildings, there was a combination dry-goods-and-hardware store, an abandoned grain elevator, and a house that had been converted into a clinic where Doc Barlow came twice a week to see his patients. Beyond that, there were half a dozen houses for the thirty-odd residents of Blue Moon.
    A pickup truck marked with the Triple C brand rumbled off the highway and bounced over the rutted ground, churning up a cloud of dust as it was braked to a stop in the parking area between the gasoline-grocery store and the saloon. Buck Haskell swung out of the passenger’s side of the cab, his boots hitting the ground before Chase opened the driver’s door.
    â€œTucker better have some blueberry pie left!” Buck declared. “I’ve been tasting it for the last ten miles.”
    â€œYou’ve