Montana Refuge by Alice Sharpe Page B

is she?”
    “Up at the house.”
    “What’s she doing up there?” It was her job to get the chuck wagon rolling way before the rest of them hit the trail.
    “I didn’t ask,” Heidi said. “She just told me to come get you before I laid out the breakfast buffet, so I did.”
    Tyler turned to the doctor. “Before you go inside and tuck into pancakes and bacon, do us all a favor and ride around in the ring for a few minutes to make sure you and Tex get along okay.”
    “Sure,” Dr. Marquis said, casting the horse a suspicious glance. “I’m not much of a heavy eater anyway.”
    Tyler gave additional instructions to one of his men, then left for the house, his gaze straying only once to cabin eight.
    Was Julie gone yet? Lenny had driven off bright and early; presumably, she’d left with him.
    Rapping on the door of his mother’s ground-floor suite, he let himself in and found her seated at the small kitchen table, still dressed in her robe, nursing a cup with a tea bag on the saucer.
    “What’s up?” he asked, looking around for some explanation as to why she wasn’t at work.
    She folded and unfolded her hands. “We may have to send everyone home,” she said.
    “What!”
    “We’ll have to refund their money and pay any travel fees they acquire,” she added. “And we’ll have to cancel the drive.”
    Tyler stared at his mother as though he was looking at a stranger. “We can’t afford to do that,” he said. “Anyway, the cattle need the high meadows for summer feed. What are you talking about?”
    “You and the boys can drive the herd to pasture by yourselves and it won’t take half the time it does with guests.”
    He whipped off his hat. “What’s going on?” He narrowed his eyes and looked closely at her, alarmed by what he saw. Not only wasn’t she dressed for work, but she didn’t look so good, her skin almost as pale as her ivory robe. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Are you sick?”
    She glanced into his eyes and away, then nodded.
    “What is it?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “What are your symptoms?”
    “Don’t you grill me, young man. I’m not dying, I’m just a little under the weather and worn-out.”
    “At the beginning of the season?”
    “The beginning of the tourist season, maybe, but we had a hard winter and the calving was tough this year—on me, I mean.”
    “If you’ve been feeling sickly, then why in the world did we let Mac leave when he did?”
    “His daughter’s baby came early and her husband is off fighting a war. What else could we do? I just thought I could handle things, but it’s become clear to me that I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
    “Since when are you getting old?”
    “Since the birthdays keep piling up.”
    Tyler’s antenna went up again. If he didn’t know better, he’d say his mother was dissembling, which was so unusual it stuck out. Rose Hunt told things as she saw them. There wasn’t a beat-around-the-bush bone in her body.
    And yet hadn’t he noticed yesterday that she was moving a little slowly and hadn’t she been untypically short-tempered the night before? This was the woman who once did a drive with a broken foot, who never quit anything, ever. If she was backing out of an obligation now knowing what it would mean to the ranch—the loss of income and reputation—then she had to be suffering. Since his father’s death, Rose had been like the Rock of Gibraltar, allowing Tyler to manage the ranch as she more or less took care of their guests and the necessary staff at the lodge. She’d danced at his wedding and cried when Julie left.
    If she said she was tired and feeling her age, then at the very least, she was just those things. More likely she was underplaying things rather than exaggerating them. Drat.
    Perhaps he’d been leaning on her too much, asking her to be too stoic. Perhaps without knowing it he’d pushed her past her limits. “I don’t know how we’ll manage to pay everyone back, but your