Cowboy PI by Jean Barrett Read Free Book Online

harder.
    “Besides…”
    “What?”
    “You won’t be alone out there in that howling wilderness. I’ll be riding beside you.”
    Not as close as he was now, Samantha hoped, which was too close. She could smell his scent again, and she swore that this time she detected more than just musk and soap. That he bore the odors of leather and horses. Aromas that had poignant associations for her. They set off a warning inside her head.
    He’s not just a PI and a bodyguard. He’s also a cowboy who was your grandfather’s friend. Stay away from him.
    Their driver sounded the horn of the SUV, signaling them that the road was clear again. It wasn’t necessary to snatch her hands away. To her relief, Roark released them.The cattle drive was waiting for her, Samantha remembered as they walked back to the car. She was still nervous about it, but determined. She could do it. She had to do it. If for no other reason, she needed to overcome the ghosts of her past.
     
    N ONE OF THEM QUESTIONED his presence. And Roark wondered about that. Asked himself if any of them around the table suspected his real reason for being here. That he’d been hired to protect Samantha on the drive because of a threat to her. That there was someone who might want her eliminated.
    Just how had the lawyer explained him to the others who had arrived here from Texas ahead of Samantha and him? Had he told them Roark Hawke was joining the outfit simply to help out? Well, that wasn’t so improbable. He was a rancher himself, a neighbor of Joe Walker’s. After all, another neighbor, who was caring for the Walking W in their absence, had sent his son for that same purpose. The young Alex McKenzie was seated on the other side of Samantha.
    Whatever the members of the company supposed, Roark had no intention of enlightening them. They would understand soon enough. For now, it was enough they accepted him as one of them. This they’d readily done when he’d been introduced to them. It had occurred as they’d gathered at the picnic table under the cottonwoods for the last kitchen-prepared supper they would enjoy before they reached Alamo Junction a hundred miles south of here.
    The faces around the table were familiar to Samantha. She had known these people from the Walking W and could share their easy camaraderie. But for Roark, who had been too busy every weekend on his own spread to meet more than a handful of his neighbors, they had yet to emerge as distinct individuals. Observant, which he had to be as a PI, he worked now on their identities as he listened to their exchanges.

    “How much trail you reckon we can cover per day?”
    The question was issued around a chunk of steak, which had replaced the wad of chewing tobacco that had earlier been parked in a corner of the speaker’s mouth. It came from Cappy Davis, whose face was as seamed as bark. He’d been a fixture on the Walking W since his boyhood, which, if his tough old frame was any indication, must have been before the Flood.
    Shep Thomas, the Walking W’s earnest ranch foreman who was serving as the drive’s trail boss, considered the question that had been directed at him. “Anywhere from ten to twenty miles a day. Depends on what we encounter. Most of it is public land, and we have permission to cross that, as well as the private stuff. But I won’t kid you. This country is some of the meanest in the Rockies.”
    Cappy grunted and went back to his steak.
    “Problem is,” Shep continued, cradling his mug of coffee, “we got us a time line. A crucial one. We either deliver the cows to Alamo Junction by the contract date, or those stock cars don’t wait for us. It will call for some hard driving.”
    The man across from Shep, as jocular as the trail boss was sober, treated the outfit to a long, slow whistle. Roark knew he was the Walking W’s horse wrangler in charge of the drive’s remuda, but for a moment he couldn’t recall his name. Brewster? That was it. Dick Brewster.
    “I know