Marry A Man Who Will Dance

Keller Creek traced a meandering, north-south path through the Triple K when there was water in it.

“Same thing as a river. Cats come out when the sun’s going down. They crouch low in tall grasses to stalk their prey.”

“Do they really eat horses?”

“Sure they do.” He leaned down so his jowly face and bulging brown eyes were level with theirs. “Cats are killers. They eat anything that moves. They’ll jump you from a tree. Had a horse a cougar jumped once. No man ever spread his legs across that mare’s back again.”

Static buzzed on his walkie-talkie. Grabbing it, he barked, “You girls better get. You’ve got that long ride and I’ve got work to do. Cattle rustlers. You be careful going home, you hear? Don’t you get yourselves gobbled up by a cat, you hear!”

Ritz had been watching the sun sink ever lower, wiping the sweat off her lenses, and on the lookout for cats ever since. Every time Buttercup pricked her ears back or snorted, Ritz imagined pointy ears in the high brown grasses. Every time they passed a hole animals had dug to burrow under Benny Blackstone’s high electric game fence, she wondered if a puma could slink under it.

The caged puma and the cool safety of the air-conditioned courthouse were nearly six miles behind them now. So were the frosty colas out of the courthouse soda pop machine. If Ritz didn’t get a drink real soon, her tongue was going to swell and her throat was going to close.

It was really, really hot, hotter than it usually was even in the dead of summer. The grasses that had been fresh and green and sweet smelling in May were already seared brown around the edges. The last of the red and yellow wildflowers were wilted and dusty, and the air smelled a little smoky.

Ritz squinted up at the cloudless sky. A blindingly bright sun broiled them from above while the black asphalt steamed them from below. Their sleeveless, cotton blouses and cutoffs were so wet; they stuck to their bodies like glue. On Jet, the effect was so sexy, the sheriff’s young deputy had eagerly rushed off to buy her a cola. Ritz had thrust out her flat chest and stared at him hopefully, but in the end she’d had to dig in her pockets and plunk in her own quarters.

Ritz’s sunburn made her feel feverish. Her temple throbbed. She was almost glad Jet had mentioned Roque. At least, thinking about his thingy had distracted her from being so scared of cats.

“He must’ve been something running home naked….”

Roque was so dark and handsome and fierce. Even before she’d snuck up on him last night, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. Not that she got to see him much. There was the dumb old feud. He was a Blackstone, and she was a Keller. Their families avoided each other.

Last summer though, she’d seen him once at the hardware store in town buying fencing. She’d stared at him, and he’d taken off his aviator glasses and stared back so intently, she’d grabbed a pair of pliers as if she was interested in them. Only she hadn’t been able to pretend. It was like he smelled her fascination. That single glance before he shoved his glasses back in place had set her heart racing.

It had been weird, the way she hadn’t even looked at those pliers. Just at him. Her hands had begun to shake, and she’d dropped the pliers with a clatter. He’d dashed over, as silently as a cat, and she’d stared at his weird silver-toed boots.

Then Daddy had yelled at her and she’d run. Roque had laughed and thrown the pliers into the pile of stuff the Blackstones were buying.

“His father beats him,” Jet said out of the blue.

“How come?” Ritz asked, remembering the way Roque had swayed, bronzed and shirtless, before the fire.

“He’s crazy. First time he came, the cowboys were working cattle, and he jumped in the pens with the bulls. He set off a string of firecrackers and nearly got himself trampled. Then Caleb jumped in, too. Only he fell. Even though Roque dived under a bull to save him, his daddy beat Roque and would’ve killed him if Pablo hadn’t stopped him. He’s got scars…everywhere.”

Ritz shivered, remembering the purple marks on his back. Just thinking about Roque getting beatings after saving his brother made Ritz feel sorry for him.

To their right, on Keller land, a patch of dense brush was thick with mesquite and live oak. Ahead, she could see their tall white, ranch house with its welcoming shady verandas shimmering in the heat waves. Soon they would be past the Blackstone gate and on their own private road.

On the left, a caliche road meandered from the Blackstone gate across open pasture vanishing into the distant trees.

Ritz shuddered. The gate gave her nightmares. Used to, it had never been locked. Used to, Blackstone Ranch had made up two divisions of the Triple K. Used to, Uncle Buster had been alive and married to Aunt Pam, and Ritz’s cousins, Kate and Carol had lived there.

Benny Blackstone had married Aunt Pam just a month after Uncle Buster had died. Bad things had happened behind the gate ever since.

When the gate rattled, Buttercup’s forelegs skewered to the right.

“It’s just a silly old gate, girl,” Ritz said even as she grabbed the mare’s neck and clung.

In Ritz’s nightmares the ten-foot high electric fence that separated the Triple K and Blackstone Ranch had been cut, and the gate was swinging back and forth. Always she was running down the caliche road to find her cousins. Always, she ended up in Campo Santo, the ancient Keller cemetery, standing over two open graves.

Sometimes she’d wake up screaming. Then she’d remember Kate and Carol lived up in San Antonio now with Grandma Keller because Benny Blackstone didn’t want them. He only wanted Aunt Pam, who was beautiful and famous. He only wanted his own boys, even Roque, the bad one he beat.

All of a sudden the lopsided shadow of the Blackstone’s massive gate slanted across the road, swallowing them whole as it did in her nightmare.

Ritz made a strangling sound. Clutching the reins and knotting fingers into Buttercup’s mane, she urged the mare faster.

Wings whooshed above them. Jet clenched Ritz’s waist tighter and then pointed toward the gate. “What’s that?”

Shadows of black wings swept low along the grassy shoulder beside the game fence.

Buttercup pinned her ears back and jerked her head.

“Easy. Easy,” Ritz said as the big black bird made a crash landing on a thick gray stone post.

“It’s just a buzzard. That’s all,” she said to Jet.

“Not that dirty old buzzard, silly!” Jet pointed at a bit of gold glitter beside the fence post. “That! It looks like…a…lock….”

Then the wind played in the tops of oaks and rustled the brown grasses so that the bit of gold vanished.

Jet was about to jump down and run see what it was, when another wild gust of wind swung the gate away from the posts.

“Why, it’s open,” Ritz breathed.

Like in my nightmares.

The metal gate banged back into the loose chain hanging down from a stone pillar with a thud that made the chain rattle and the buzzard take off.

Not one for loud sounds, Buttercup snorted and shot forward. When she started bucking, the girls tumbled backward onto sizzling asphalt.

Jet screeched and sprang to her feet. “Ritz, watch out!”

Dark forelegs crashed dangerously near Ritz’s head. Then the gate swung eerily and Buttercup wheeled away.

Ritz clapped her hands to get Buttercup’s attention before the gate slammed and really spooked her.

“Come here, girl….”

Buttercup’s nose was in the air, and her staring eyes that were ringed with black, rolled. Then the mare bolted straight for the gate. Dark mane flying, tail arched high and snapping like a flag, she went off at an angle. She was through the gate, galloping down the caliche road, stirring up puffs of white dust as she dashed toward the woods that concealed the pond and the forbidden Blackstone Ranch Headquarters.

“We’ll never get her back now,” Ritz said gloomily after she disappeared into the trees.

“Oh, yes, you will.”

“Me?”

“You want to get the ranches back together, don’t you? Hey!” She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s five o’clock. Your horse just ran straight for the pond where Roque skinny-dips.”

Ritz felt a pang of pure misery mix with wild fear as she watched the dust settle on the caliche road while Jet knelt down to search for the bit of gold she’d seen. Ritz’s gaze wandered from the road back to the ugly yellow signs Benny Blackstone’s cowboys had posted on his game fence.

Every time her daddy drove by them, the yellow signs made him madder than spit. He said they mocked him and her—and everything Keller.

No trespassing.

Posted.

Keep Out.

Jet jumped up from the ground, dusting off an open, bronze, hasp lock. “It’s the lock! And a key, too! We can ride inside now…anytime we want to.”

“I don’t want to. Not ever. Daddy would…”

“Daddy doesn’t have to know. What are you so afraid of anyway?” Jet said. “You used to get to play there, didn’t you?”

“Every Sunday,” Ritz admitted.

“After church with your rich cousins.”

“Carol and Kate. We fished for guppies.”

“Right before Daddy and I moved here,” Jet added, that odd, jealous note creeping into her voice.

“They’re not rich anymore, though,” Ritz said softly, to mollify her.

Jet shrugged. “I used to be rich, too. Daddy was famous—”

She was always bragging like that. Maybe because like a lot of people, she felt put down by the Keller name and ranch.

“You told me.” Lots of times.

“We lived in a great big house—bigger and newer than yours.”

“Where?”

Jet rushed on. “My mother kept our mansion perfect, too. Not dusty like yours.”

“I don’t live in a mansion!”

Jet was always talking about her perfect mother. But if she was so perfect, where was she?

“So—how come you came here?”

Jet stared at the sky. “Are you going to get your dumb horse or not?”

Jet didn’t talk much about her father or the double-wide mobile home they shared now. Irish was nice, nicer than her own father, but if you saw Irish and Jet together, they never laughed or talked or even looked at each other much.

Jet was her best friend, but Ritz had only been inside her trailer once…to see why Jet hadn’t come to school. The living room had been dark and messy with beer cans and dirty dishes and trash everywhere. Irish had come to the door in a dirty T-shirt and stared down at Ritz. Usually he was neat and polite. Not that day. He’d simply said that Jet was sick and for her to go home.

When Ritz had told her mother, she’d taken the Taylors homemade soup and offered to clean the place for him. But Irish had kept the screen door closed and refused.

Jet stared at the gate and then down the caliche road. “You’d better get Buttercup.”

“I’m not going in there!”

“Roque’s brown all over…even down there. And his thingy is big and thick and long! And…and when he saw me, it stuck out.”

Ritz blushed as she remembered his tall, male body undulating to that wild, Spanish tempo. “He’s disgusting.”

Jet laughed. “He’s hot.”

Ritz turned her back to her friend. What would she do if Buttercup didn’t come back?

At least it felt cooler standing in the shade of the gate. The prevailing southeasterly wind from the bay played across the grasses. Ritz’s damp blouse ballooned with air and little tendrils of her yellow hair blew against her brow and throat.

She was working hard not to think about last night or Cameron or what Roque’s tanned, aroused body might look like when a burst of dark fire flew out of the distant trees.

Buttercup tossed her black mane and galloped straight at her.

Ritz sighed in relief. “I won’t have to go in there after all.”

“Maybe she saw his big thingy!”

“Would you shut up?”

When Buttercup got near the gate, Ritz held out her hand and called her name. A hinge groaned. Then the gate swung back and forth, causing the mare to snort and dance skittishly.

“Hold the gate, Jet, while I go get her.”

The wind shifted and a cooling breeze struck Ritz as she ran onto Blackstone land. Buttercup raced off, hoofs thundering, her black tail high and pluming out. Finally she stopped a hundred yards away and watched Ritz, eyes wary, ears pointed. Then she lowered her head to the grass.

“Why do you even bother calling her?” Jet taunted as she slung a leg over the gate to watch. “She never comes to you.”

Ritz forgot her friend and concentrated on coaxing the mare closer. Only when she finally got the reins and turned to yell in triumph, Jet was gone.

When she raced over to the gate, it was closed and locked. In a panic, Ritz tugged at the lock and rattled the gate. Then Buttercup pinned her ears back.

A tiny pulse pounded in Ritz’s throat. The horse needed water. Oats. There was no telling what the Blackstones might do to her mare if they found her.

Ritz was trapped inside the forbidden kingdom.

If his wide brown shoulders and lean torso had her in to a dither last night, what would happen if she came face-to-face with naked Roque Blackstone?

2

It had been a hellish hour. Ritz had pranced back and forth in front of the gate astride Buttercup, torn between abandoning the mare and staying with her. All her grand dreams of ending the feud were as nothing.

Oh, why couldn’t Mother or Ramón drive by and rescue her?

Ritz was hot and tired and thirsty. So was Buttercup.

Maybe just maybe, Ritz could get out of this trap if she rode all the way down to the beach.

Maybe. The beach was five miles away. Probably another fence would cut her off before she got there.

A red sun hung low in a rosy horizon. With a frown, she pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the caliche road and the oak mott atop the ancient dunes. Tangles of thick, thorny brush—mesquite, huisache and oak and prickly pear trailed down the sides of the dunes. Her gaze wandered over the greenery twisting across the flat pasture following the course of Keller Creek.

Surely Roque wouldn’t still be naked at that pond on the other side of those trees. Not that she’d risk going that far. She’d only go as far as the oak mott, to the edge of the creek, in the hopes that it might still be running even this late in the year.

She nudged Buttercup. Even if it was dry, at least she and Buttercup could rest and cool off in the shade.

As they made their way toward the trees, she couldn’t help remembering less anxious outings when she’d come here with her cousins and Uncle Buster, who had always said this was the prettiest pasture on the Triple K Ranch.

Blackstone Ranch now.

Oh, how she’d loved Uncle Buster. He’d been a lot like her daddy except way more fun.

A yowl from the brush pierced the silence. A little brown rabbit sprang up underfoot. Buttercup reared. Clenching her legs tight and seizing fistfuls of black mane, Ritz held on as the rabbit made a wild dash for it.

Letting out a war whoop, Ritz and Buttercup raced after it.

Crazed with fear, the rabbit dived into a hole.

Buttercup circled, pawing and snorting.

Then Ritz remembered where she was and glanced nervously toward the oak mott.

No sign of a cat…. Nor a tall, dark naked man-boy.

Pressing her calves tighter, she and Buttercup were soon inside the shade of the oak trees. The creek was no more than a narrow trickle of water spilling over rocks and sand and damp brown leaves. Four yellow birds fluttered in the sand near a clump of Spanish dagger, chirping.

The banks were stony, littered with sticks, and thorny with yellow-berried Granjeno, which made for dangerous riding, so Ritz dismounted Buttercup, because she was too precious to her to risk a leg injury.

Quietly, so as not to startle the birds, Ritz grounded the mare. The birds fluttered to the high green branches that arched above like a natural cathedral. Buttercup sunk her muzzle and guzzled sloppily from a little pool. Ritz knelt on the bank, dabbing cool water onto her red face and sunburned arms. She kept thinking about Roque Blackstone and wondering how she’d ever get out.

When she’d cooled off a bit, she just sat there, mesmerized by the guppies flashing in the dark waters. Wishing she had jars to catch them with, she forgot she was trapped in the forbidden kingdom with a naked boy.

Scooping up a handful of water and two guppies, she smiled as they wriggled their tails spraying wet pearls of sunlight. Releasing them, she saw Buttercup a good ways downstream nibbling mesquite beans.

Buttercup was not to be trusted, so Ritz got up to go after her. Then she spied a darling black spider curled up in a white flower. When she peeled back the petals, the spider curled up as small as a pill bug.

“Don’t be afraid, little spider.”

Little legs tickled her ankle. When she brushed at the bug, she saw an amber colored army of ants racing along a miniature highway in the tall brown grasses. Every ant returning to the mound carried a leaf bigger than it was. She fell to her knees to watch them. Every ant coming out of the mound bumped into every ant carrying a leaf.

“Why?” she wondered aloud, spellbound. “Do you have a secret language?”

For a long time, she was aware of nothing but the ants. Then a large animal sneezed. She jumped to her feet.

“Buttercup?”

The yellow birds weren’t singing anymore. The last of the red-gold sunlight flickered in the twisted, wind-skewered branches. An owl went, “whoo, whoo, whoo.”

Where was Buttercup?

Ritz ran in the direction where she’d last seen her. When she stopped to get her breath, she was in a part of the oak mott she’d never been in before. Shrouded eerily with mistletoe, the trees were like dancers frozen in some dark spell.

The owl hooted again.

Sometimes witches took the shape of owls and changed little girls into birds…at least, in one of Ritz’s favorite fairy tales. Ritz shivered.

The trees, the creek—all that had seemed so familiar and wondrous were suddenly strange and terrifying. She was all alone. Without the wind to rattle the palmetto fronds and stir the brown leaves that littered the ground, it was too quiet.

She stared up into the branches looking for cats. Then she remembered the No Trespassing signs, and a pulsebeat pounded in her temple.

This was Blackstone land. Why hadn’t she climbed the gate and run home? She had to get home—fast—really fast, before something really bad happened. She would have to end the feud some other day when she was bigger and braver.

“Buttercup? Where are you—”

There was no answering snicker. The sun went behind a cloud and the glade darkened. Branches moaned in the wind. Leaves rained down and scuttled at her feet.

Then a twig crackled behind her.

Sobbing with fury and terror, she whirled. Sunlight and shadows played across the grass. Alert, triangular, gold ears above the waving brown tips pointed straight at her.

A cat!

Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

Another gust of wind sent more leaves flying. The grass waved. The big ears disappeared.

Oh, my God! Where was he? Her eyes glued to the spot where those ears had been, she pushed her glasses up. Then she stealthily tiptoed backward, moving robotically, one careful little half step at a time because she knew she wasn’t supposed to run. Not from a cat—they liked to chase things.

To a big cat, she’d be no more than a mouse was to Molly, Mother’s gray Persian that was forever catching birds…just to play with them and kill them. A big cat would bite her neck, crunch her bones, toss her around like a rag doll, paralyze her and then drag her off to some tree or hole—

Last year she’d seen a dead little filly over near the beach house that a cat had gotten. There’d been nothing left but bones and strips of hide and a few strands of black mane and tail blowing in the wind.

She conjured this image so vividly, she forgot not to run. With a panicky yell, Ritz twisted and sprinted full out toward the sunny pasture and pond.

Her sneakers flew across fallen branches, logs and rocks, splashing sloppily through the mud and water. When her foot got stuck between two rocks in the slippery ooze, a rattler hissed from the bank. At the sight of those brown coils, she yanked at her ankle with the frenzy of a coyote chewing its leg off to get out of a trap.

Then she was free, sobbing but running wildly. Thorns scratched her legs. Cutoffs weren’t right for such dense brush. Cowboys wore leather leggings and jackets and gauntlet-type gloves.

Her right toe hit a rock wrong, and she pitched forward, hitting the ground so hard, it knocked the breath out of her. Her bleeding palms burned from skidding across gravel and sticker burrs, but she was too stunned and too terrified by what she saw beyond the trees to even whimper.

There he was!

Not naked!

Worse!

Bold as brass, Roque Blackstone stared straight at her, unzipped his fly and shook his big thingy out.

Just like last night, she covered her eyes with her fingers and crouched as still as a mouse and prayed, hoping he hadn’t heard her, hoping he hadn’t really seen her.

Finally her terrible curiosity got the best of her and she peeked through her slitted fingers.

“Oh, my God!”

His skin was as brown as mahogany. He had it pointed at her now and was deliberately spraying a rock not five feet in front of her with a stream of yellow pee.

Adrenaline. Sweat. Sheer terror.

Slowly, when nothing happened, her dreadful curiosity took the ascendancy of her common sense.

She squinted and tried not to see that part of his anatomy. Only somehow that was all she saw. It was big and long and purple-pink. It stuck straight out. At her!

Don’t look at it!

She couldn’t seem to stop.

Like last night, he had the same chiseled face of a prince out of one of her favorite storybooks. Just the sight of his wind-whipped black hair, along with his awe-inspiring muscular chest, his broad shoulders, and his lean, brown, rangy body sent funny little darts zinging through her stomach. And she hadn’t even looked…not really down there. At least not on purpose.

But she had because, truth to tell, she was as fascinated by him as Jet was. Maybe more so.

He shook it after he finished, and then it got hung up in his jeans and he couldn’t zip his fly. She forgot all modesty and observed his deft brown fingers that yanked up and down at the zipper. Suddenly he stopped fiddling with his zipper and stared straight at her.

Hot color scorched her cheeks. Not that she closed her eyes or even blinked. But her glasses fogged. She took them off and wiped them with the grubby tail of her shirt. Then she shoved them onto her nose.

He was big, way bigger than her brother, Steve, but not nearly as big as Cameron. Which was such a relief she hugged herself. Still, he was wild and bad, and it showed somehow on his face. It was like he was a prince under a witch’s spell, or maybe he was a pirate who had walked out of a legend into real life. Or maybe somehow she’d plopped herself inside a storybook and was about to be a princess or a maiden and have a big adventure.

He was a Blackstone. The bad Blackstone brother, who did bad things to girls. He was old—eighteen or so.

He’d even flunked a year.

Holding her breath, Ritz slithered backward, away from him, keeping to her awkward crouch until the trees completely hid her and she could run for home. Then she ran, just like she’d run last night. Even as she felt some weird pull not to.

No sooner had Roque finished unsnarling the blue-white threads from his zipper than a horse snickered in the distance, somewhere off to the south. The sound brought a strange peace to him, especially this evening.

He loved horses. A lot more than he loved people. They connected him somehow to a larger, truer, and very ancient world.