Desert Star , livre ebook

Harvest House Publishers - Linda Chaikin

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339 pages

English

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In this captivating sequel to Desert Rose, popular novelist Linda Chaikin takes readers out west for a spirited romance.Callie Halliday glitters as she sweeps across the stage in Virginia City. With her career on the rise, Callie is determined to find a respectable husband. And Rick Delance, a gunfighter with a dangerous reputation, doesn't fit the bill.But when someone breaks into Callie's dressing room and she survives some mishaps, it's obvious someone wants to harm her. Turning to the only man who can protect her, she contacts Rick Delance. As the actress and gunslinger face danger together, will the young woman's heart soften? Will she become a glittering star in the desert...or will she follow her heart?

Sujets

Westerns

Western (genre)

Romance

Western

Informations

Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 janvier 2004
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736945905
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	13 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from or adapted from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chaikin, L. L., 1943-Desert star / Linda Chaikin. p. m. ISBN 978-0-7369-1235-8 (pbk.) 1. Women pioneers—Fiction. 2. Virginia City (Nev.)—Fiction. 3. Actresses—Fiction. 4. Nevada—Fiction. I. Title. PS3553.H2427D48 2004 813' .54—dc22

2003020994

All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior per-mission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

For Steve, my beloved husband. Philippians 1:3

Linda Chaikin is an award-winning writer of more than 20 books, including Desert Roseand the popular A Day to Remember series. ;

Prologue ;

Near Cimarron, New Mexico Territory, 1857

ick Delance sat at the desk in his upstairs room in the spa-LucRien Delance, was a wealthy cattleman, that in no way altered cious hacienda-style ranch house. Although his father, his expectations to see his youngest son enter Harvard Law School two years down the road. Rick drew his dark brows together trying to concentrate on his reading while enduring an aching arm and, at the same time, attempting to ignore his disappointment. Here he was buried in law books when all the action—and trouble, was just beginning. He ought to be out helping his brother, Alex, and the cowhands rounding up the cattle for the big drive east to Abilene. What a time to get laid up with a busted arm! Alex was short-handed some of his best wranglers because some of the hands in the bunkhouse had gotten sick mighty fast. It made no sense. The odd sickness left even a strong man doubled over with pain in his belly, too weak to ride. More of the Triple D hands than he’d care to admit had allowed the fear of cholera to spook them, and some had even slipped away in the night leaving the ranch short-handed. Lucien couldn’t understand the cause of the sickness, nor could anyone else. Curly was sent out yesterday to Fort Craig near Santa Fe to get Doc Kinny, but that would take several days. The sickness sure is peculiar,Rick mused, tapping his pencil on his desk. Ol’ Elmo, the chuck-wagon cookie, hollered he had nothing to do with makin’ the boys sick. “I done tasted ever’thing

6.Linda Chaikin

I cook,” he insisted, hands on hips, “an’ if ’n it were in the goods, I’d be down in the bunkhouse with the rest of them rascals.” Lucien said he’d never come up against anything like this ill-ness. Rick supposed he could take solace in the fact that there was no mystery about his broken arm—except it’d become the subject of a good laugh among the ranch hands. If he hadn’t been so quick to tackle that ornery line-back dun, and get himself thrown, he’d be out on the range now, just when Pa and Alex needed him most. But it did a body no good to sit around mooning about it. He’d wanted that stallion from the very ﬁrst time he’d laid eyes on him, and he still wanted him. He’d try talking nice to him while his arm was healing. Next time when Rick was ready to saddle him, that horse wouldn’t be bucking him! “You and me are going to be friends,” he’d told the horse, “one way or another. Our trav-eling days, boy, are just beginning.” Through the open window he heard the thud of horses’ hooves entering the wide front yard with its two giant pepper trees. Rick got up from his desk and put his law books away. That would be Alex returning from the emergency meeting over at Dan Ferguson’s ranch. Rick wondered how things had went. Had they gotten the cowpunchers they needed for the drive? Out front, below the veranda steps, he heard his father call up to the open window: “Son, come down to the kitchen! Alex is back. Dutch is with him, too.” Dutch was the manager over at the Ferguson ranch. That he’d ridden back with Alex to talk to their father was a hopeful sign for getting extra cowboys to replace some of the Triple D’s who were recovering in the bunkhouse. Rick appreciated the fact that though plans existed to send him East to become a lawyer, his father wanted him to know he would remain an important member of the Triple D by including him in the meetings on ranch business. His father set great store by city-bred education, though Rick didn’t think much of it him-self. Not that he and Alex were unlearned by any means. Their father had left France as an educated young man to emigrate to America and settle in Louisiana. Dreams of gold and tales of the Western Territories however, had lured him to the California gold

Desert Star,7

rush, then on toward Texas. Along the way he’d settled in New Mexico, where he’d staked claim to what was now one of the largest cattle ranches west of the Rio Grande. While Rick had grown up in an all-male culture on the ranch, Lucien had made sure his two sons were well schooled and taught gentlemanly manners. He’d also instructed them himself on everything from the Bible to European literature. Although Rick had learned the ways of a gentleman from his father, he’d learned survival and the raw ways of the West from the plain but daunt-less men he’d become friendly with in the territory, rugged men who had ﬁlled his ears with the ways of the Apache, Comanche, and the Kiowa. As boys, he and Alex had learned to read “sign,” to be able to track man or animal when most folks wouldn’t notice that anything had passed as silently as phantoms in the night. Rick had learned how to find water holes for the cattle drives, what cacti were useful for survival, and which plants were used by the various Indian tribes for medicine. Rick had also picked up many of their views on valor and justice…and how to handle a gun. Rick came down the stairs into the large, square room fur-nished with leather and dark Spanish furniture. He wore a neatly pressed blue-shield style shirt with a row of buttons down each side, a black bandanna kerchief around his neck, black, Spanish style trousers with silver buttons, and polished hand-tooled boots. At sixteen he was already a strong young man who would soon catch up in height with his brother, who was ﬁve years his senior. Rick, with his right arm in a sling, entered the big bright kitchen. His father, Lucien, was there looking more like an old-world aristocrat than the rugged cattleman he’d become. He was tall and somber, with white in his sideburns and a neatly trimmed Prince Albert beard. He’d become a widower at thirty and never remar-ried, taking instead to turning the Triple D into what it was today and ﬁnding his loneliness assuaged in raising his two sons. The Bible, he had told them, was one of the few possessions he’d carried in his carpetbag when he’d ﬁrst come to America. Rick recalled how, when a small boy, he’d watched his father skill-fully remove the small Bible’s worn cover and make a handmade replacement with a cross tooled into the leather. His father made

8.Linda Chaikin

much of the fact that the leather had come from the ﬁrst steer on the Triple D. Rick’s mother, Rosette, had found life hard in the territories. Already of fragile health, she died at twenty-eight, leaving Lucien with two small boys. They had laid her to rest beneath the shade of a willow that grew by a year-round creek. “Well, boys, what do you think we should name this creek where your fair mother rests till our Savior returns for us?” “Angel’s Creek,” Rick had said almost at once. And so it was called. Rick’s memory of his mother was not as clear as Alex’s, but he held images of her as smiling, gentle,and affectionate. He remem-bered sitting on her lap and being hugged. Of course, that wasn’t a memory he shared with the all-male household, though Alex and his father must have had their tender memories, too. They silently determined to tough it out, three men alone, though always together. There was very little rivalry between Rick and Alex. Being ﬁve years apart, it had seldom seemed necessary. His father was talking to Alex now, as Rick entered the kitchen for the meeting. Salvador, the house cook, or “Sal” as they called him, brought in a big urn of coffee. Rick walked to the long table and poured himself a cup, all the while glancing at the stranger who had returned with Alex and Dutch from the meeting at Fer-guson’s ranch. Rick would recognize most of the cowhands working there, and he also knew by sight the men working at Tom Hardy’s ranch. He’d heard talk around the bunkhouse that Hardy had hired some new men out ofwest Texas—several of them with reputations not too comforting. It was a thing with Tom Hardy to butt heads with the Triple D, though he was friendly with the three Delance men. Sometimes Tom was hard to read. He owned the second largest ranch in the Cimarron area, but Rick believed he wanted to be the largest. He wanted rights to Red Creek, which formed one border of Triple D and was considered part of its property. Rick took slow measure of the tall stranger who had an inch in height over his father and Alex, both six-footers themselves. The man had wide shoulders and coal-black hair turned under in a smooth pageboy that reached to his wide muscled neck. He