Argosy Junction Read online

  Argosy Junction

  Chautona Havig

  Copyright 2009 Chautona Havig

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  Twitter: https://twitter.com/ Chautona

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  All Scripture references are from the NASB. NASB passages are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE (registered), Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

  Inside every book is a piece of the author. As much as I strive to let my characters be themselves, pieces of me crawl into my books and make themselves at home. In Noble Pursuits, my favorite dessert graces the table at holidays and celebrations… and I added the recipe to the back of that book.

  In Argosy Junction, the music of my childhood dances across so many of the pages. Even as I wrote, I heard my father’s guitar strings, as he plucked out the plaintive tunes that still wring my heart when I sing them around my own home. So I dedicate this book to the man who made my childhood a memorable and magical one—my father. I thank the Lord every time I’m reminded of how unique those years truly were. The Ballad of Exmoor was written for you, Dad. I wish I could truly do it justice, but even as flawed as it is, I’m proud that I finished it.

  For mom, and all the memories associated with her, I included our old dog, Boozer. That dog was truly the best dog we ever had. She had spunk, personality, and the ability to leap through a window, across the driver’s seat, and into my lap—without fail. Our dog never ate my homework, but she sure did wrinkle it repeatedly.

  I also dedicate this book to Kiersten. The sheep, and all things wooly, were my way of thanking you for being my friend. Lane’s Christmas outfit was also my way of saying thank you for creating that outfit for Jenna. It is, without question, our most favorite outfit!

  Mrs. Montoya’s marvelous food does exist. You’ve never had good Mexican food until you’ve tasted Mrs. Santos’ fabulous cooking. More than a source for great tacos and pico de gallo, she was always good for a laugh, a smile, and help when you were stupid enough to get a crochet needle stuck in your foot. ;)

  Finally, I want to share my deep appreciation for all of my proofreaders. It was a daunting task. Very daunting task…

  The Rockland Chronicles

  Noble Pursuits

  Argosy Junction

  The Aggie Series

  Ready or Not

  For Keeps

  Here We Come

  The Annals of Wynnewood

  Shadows and Secrets

  Cloaked in Secrets

  Beneath the Cloak

  The Not-So-Fairy Tales

  Princess Paisley

  Everard (Coming 2012)

  Contents

  One 6

  Two 12

  Three 26

  Four 32

  Five 34

  Six 41

  Seven 50

  Eight 56

  Nine 71

  Ten 87

  Eleven 97

  Twelve 100

  Thirteen 107

  Fourteen 111

  Fifteen 118

  Sixteen 123

  Seventeen 132

  Eighteen 140

  Nineteen 145

  Twenty 151

  Twenty-One 159

  Twenty-Two 164

  Twenty-Three 168

  Twenty-Four 174

  Twenty-Five 183

  Twenty-Six 188

  Twenty-Seven 192

  The Ballad of Exmoor 195

  Ready or Not 203

  One

  The hiker, clearly a novice, stopped mid-stride as the sight of large horned-sheep with odd black faces captured his attention. While the sun shone overhead, Matt Rushby climbed the pasture fence in an attempt to snap a better picture to show his parents. His feet chafed. The new boots he wore had been amazingly comfortable when he bought them, but now his feet felt battered. He set his camera on the ground beside him and unlaced the stiff hiking boots. Pulling them off, he saw holes in his socks, the edges tinged with blood. Skin was rubbed raw and bleeding on the sides of both feet and the top of his large right toe.

  He stood, wiggling his sore toes and relishing the soothing feeling of cool air on his feet. As he reached for his camera, his eyes grew wide. A large flock of horned sheep was slowly closing in on him. He rose, backing cautiously away from the herd. His feet protested vehemently. Nettles stung, stones pricked, and with each step, he moved farther from his boots.

  The sheep followed as though stalking him. For every step he took backward, the flock advanced toward him—trapped. Eventually, the lambs gamboling nearby gave him an idea. Matt decided to run, hoping to put distance between him and the sheep, compelling the ewes to return to their lambs.

  He turned, already prepared to bolt, and stopped cold. Half a dozen sheep blocked his flight path. In seconds, dozens of bleating horned-sheep surrounded him. Matt glanced at his watch. Twelve-thirty. How long would it be before the sheep ate all the grass around him and moved on to graze elsewhere? How long would he stand encircled by those animals before they ate his new boots? Matt was ignorant enough of sheep that he didn’t know that unlike some unprincipled goats, sheep are singularly uninterested in leather or rubber. Yet, he now knew how intimidating and fearsome sheep look when they are eye level with your belt buckle.

  Feeling helpless and completely trapped, Matt pulled a battered copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets from his jacket pocket, opened to number eighty-five, and then laughed as he read, “My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still—”

  The sheep bleated as he laughed, sending nervous chills up his spine. Their curved horns looked menacing. Matt remembered something about animals sensing or smelling fear, chose to feign nonchalance, and forced his breathing to remain regular. He knew he’d perspire less without his jacket, so he removed it, tying the sleeves around his waist. The animals gazed at him curiously. He dragged his eyes from the circle of sheep and forced himself to read the unfinished sonnet.

  Minutes ticked by, but each one felt like an hour. His feet ached, his lips were parched with cracks in the corners, and his mouth felt like cotton. The sun slowly moved across the sky, but Matt stood still, his heart resolute. He’d stand there until someone found him or he dropped from exhaustion and was trampled by crazed sheep. How ironic, they’d say at his funeral, that he’d survived the dangers of the inner city only to be killed, alone, in the wilds of Montana, by a flock of fluffy, but not-so-white, sheep.

  ~*~*~*~

  From the top of a nearby hill, a horseback rider watched the man in the pasture, curious. The cut of the jeans, the t-shirt, and the lack of hat indicated that the man wasn’t a local. He was a large man, not obese, but tall, broad shouldered, and muscular. His stance, the nervous way he shifted his feet, the camera bag, and now the book in his hands clearly screamed “tourist on the loose.” As he raised his head from his book and glanced around him, his face filled the lenses of the binoculars.

  “Not bad looking if you like the military drill sergeant look,” the observer muttered. “Man, those eyes, though.”

  Just at that moment, the man grinned at something he saw, and suddenly the “drill sergeant look” was much more appealing when accompanied by a bright smile. “Forget the eyes; with a smile like that, who’d see the eyes?”

  With a gentle nudge of the knee and pull of the reins, the
rider turned the horse in the opposite direction and then whirled around in the saddle again. There the man stood, still reading out of the same book, and without taking a step. Did he think the sheep cared what he had to say?

  ~*~*~*~

  The sun set slowly behind the mountain. The sky, a blaze of magnificent colors, would have captivated him if the urge to relieve himself had not dominated every free brain cell. Matt found it difficult to appreciate the beauty around him while nature called. He cringed at the thought, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist it much longer. Sometime in the next ten minutes, he was going to antagonize the nearest sheep, probably the one currently nuzzling his sock, and that would be the trigger for his demise. He sighed, thought of his mother, marveled that he was so cliché as to think of his mother moments before death, and prayed it would be swift.

  A familiar sound broke through the so-called Montana silence. He’d never imagined that the absence of man-made sounds could be so noisy until he’d been forced to stand, an unwilling listener, to rustling grasses, cawing birds, and of course, the constant bleating of sheep. The way one of those birds now circled overhead made him even more nervous than he had been all afternoon. Matt now realized that his romantic idea of a vacation in Montana, a result of too many Louis L’Amour novels in his teens, wasn’t such a good one. He felt betrayed.

  He studied a growing dust cloud and tried to determine if the noise he heard emanated from the cloud. It seemed to reverberate from every corner of the valley, leaving him confused as to the origin. The sheep noticed the sound and made restless movements. Panicked, he waved off the approaching Jeep, but it continued barreling toward him, unchecked.

  Feeling trapped, Matt stumbled along with the sheep as they backed away from the approaching Jeep. A deep voice shouted over the sound of the now crawling vehicle, “Walk toward me, you idiot!”

  Matt hesitated, causing one ewe, to butt him in a tender region. Suddenly, the urge to yield to the call of nature was no longer an option, it was imperative. Dancing from foot to foot, he wove his way through the parting sheep until he reached the door of the vehicle.

  “Thanks for the rescue. I thought I was going to—”

  “Just get in.”

  “I can’t.” Matt’s face turned crimson, and he glanced everywhere but at the face of his feminine rescuer. He’d stared down bullies in schoolyards and talked a man out of pounding his daughter for making out in a stairwell with a gang banger, but he couldn’t confess to this young woman that he had urinary needs.

  “Why the h-eck not? You’ve been standing there for over four hours!”

  He stored away this tidbit of information for a less embarrassing moment, and mumbled, “I’ve gotta—well I need to…”

  Chocolate-colored eyes rolled, as the driver reached beneath her seat and passed him a roll of toilet paper and a plastic sack. “Don’t toss your paper on the pasture. Stick it in here. I’ll be contemplating the meaning of life as I take in the sunset.” As he turned to seek a bit of privacy, she called back to him again.” Hey, if you take long enough, I might have time to find Venus. That wasn’t a request, though.”

  Discussing his bodily functions was more than Matt could stand. He moved to the back of the vehicle wondering who this woman was and how she’d known he was here. Seconds later, he climbed into the truck, stuffing the plastic sack in his jacket pocket as he returned the roll of toilet paper.

  While they drove across the field, Matt glanced at the woman next to him. At first, thanks to an incredibly deep voice, he’d been certain a man was driving the Jeep. “Thanks.”

  The Jeep bounced through the gate and stopped several feet behind it. The young woman swung easily from the vehicle and closed the gate behind them, locking it in the process. She climbed back into the Jeep, zipped down the road, and around the bend. To his surprise, she turned into a grove of trees and climbed out once more. With a look that said, “Don’t move,” she hustled to a path on her right.

  He watched in the rearview mirror as she climbed the hill and stood surveying the path they’d just taken. The sight was breathtaking. She shielded her eyes against the spring sunset, giving him an excellent view of her profile. If you changed her jeans and flannel shirt for a leather-beaded gown, and braided the dark hair falling from the back of her baseball cap, she could have been a native princess from centuries past.

  Apparently satisfied with what she saw, Matt assumed it was the sheep who now contentedly munched on a fresh patch of grass, the young woman scrambled down the hill again and climbed into the Jeep. They stared at one another as time slipped by unnoticed. Did she think it as strange a feeling as he did? He certainly had never studied someone so openly or in such close proximity.

  She spoke first. “I’m Lane Argosy and,” her voice slipped into an unconscious business-like tone, “You’re not supposed to be on our land. Didn’t the fence give you a hint?”

  Matt smiled at her bluntness.” I just saw this mama sheep and her little um… sheepling— er—lamb. I thought my mother would like to see it, so I climbed over to get a picture.”

  She rolled her eyes, started the Jeep, and backed it onto the dirt road once more. She glanced at his feet.” Where are your shoes?”

  Matt had all but forgotten his feet. He was still mulling over sheep, lambs, indoor plumbing, sonnets, and the incongruity of Lane’s physical hyper-femininity and her deep masculine voice.

  “Well, while I was standing there, my feet hurt, so I pulled off my boots. You could show some pity for my shredded foot…”

  “You hiked all the way up here from Argosy Junction in brand-spankin’ new hiking boots, didn’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged. What’s wrong with that?”

  Lane shook her head and put the Jeep in gear before she replied.” You don’t hike in new boots—ever. You wear boots around the house for a week or three to get them broken in first.”

  “I’ve never owned hiking boots or any other kind of boots, except steel-toed ones for work, but we don’t have to break those in. We just wear them.”

  “Bet you don’t walk in them then,” she muttered. As she reached a fork in the road, she hesitated. “Where are you staying?”

  “Gideon’s.”

  Lane shuddered visibly. Matt wanted to assume he’d imagined it, but the closer they got to town, the more rigid she grew. Trying to ease the tension, he asked, “So you said you knew I’d been out here for four hours. What took you so long?”

  “What made you decide to stand in the center of a herd of sheep for four hours?”

  Matt looked at her incredulously. “Umm… maybe it had something to do with the hundreds of sheep crowding me, just daring me to take a wrong step before they trampled me or gored me with those horns.”

  Her laughter, as deep and throaty as any man’s, rumbled through the Jeep.” Those—” she gasped. “Those are Scottish Blackface sheep. They’re harmless.”

  “They didn’t act harmless. They closed in on me and wouldn’t shoo.”

  She slammed on the brakes, peals of laughter causing tears to course down her cheeks. “Shoo? You shoo a cat—maybe a small dog. You shoe horses—you know; s-h-o-e like metal lucky things on the bottom of hooves? You don’t shoo or s-h-o-e sheep. You shear sheep, but you don’t shoo them. Shoo!” Her monologue sent her off into fresh gales of laughter.

  “Well, I’m glad that you find me so amusing, but it wasn’t so fun standing in the sun for four hours trying not to move, so that vicious sheep didn’t pound me into the terra firma.”

  “What happened to your book? You were reading when I went riding at one.”

  “You saw me reading?”

  Lane nodded flicking her blinker with unnecessary force and tearing onto the highway as though chased by the ferocious sheep. “Yep. I thought it was kind of weird. Tad saw you out there and gave me the binoculars. There you were, just standing in the middle of our pasture, reading. If your book had been black, you would have looked like you were preaching to
your flock.” She snickered at her pun.

  “Why did you wait four more hours to come?”

  “I went riding. How was I supposed to know you’d still be standing in the same spot the whole time?”

  “And those horns aren’t dangerous? That one that got me when you showed up had big ones!”

  With a sigh, Lane reluctantly admitted that if they felt threatened, the sheep might behave aggressively. “But these sheep are used to us mingling in the pasture. They wouldn’t see you as a threat unless you tried to carry off a lamb. The mama might have something to say about that. I imagine they were wondering why you didn’t have food for them.”

  Before Matt could argue further, she pulled into Gideon’s Ranch. A misnomer, the “ranch” was nothing but a dozen little cabins that the Gideon family rented out to tourists and hunters. “Here you are.”

  Matt looked at the gravel driveway and down at his torn socks. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to drop me off in front of number seven? My feet are already protesting.”

  She took a deep breath, as though preparing for a painful task, and drove through the towering entryway. At his cabin door, Matt didn’t know what to do or say. How do you thank someone and apologize at the same time? He extended his hand awkwardly. Hand shaking wasn’t something he did often in his line of work. “I just want to thank you. I know it sounds silly to you, but it feels like you saved my life or something.”

  Lane saw a look of dismay cross his face. “What ?”

  “I left my shoes and my book—” He shook his head as though putting the disappointment out of his mind. “Anyway, I really just wanted to thank you and apologize for causing trouble.”

  She fidgeted as he spoke, her eyes darting around her as though looking for another predator. “No problem. Just don’t climb any more fences. And wear your normal athletic shoes unless you go to climb the mountain.”