Petticoat Ranch Page 11

  Clay stopped his horse to turn and look at her. After a few seconds he said gruffly, “Get back to the house and take care of the children, woman.”

  Sophie laughed again. “Yes, sir!” She gave him a sharp two-fingered salute. She was afraid she’d irritated him, but not very afraid. And when she heard his deep-throated chuckle, she wasn’t afraid at all.

  Sophie tasted him on her lips and wondered how foolish it was to be falling in love with a man she’d only known two days. Somehow it seemed more foolish than marrying him.

  Still, he was her husband. Who better to fall in love with? Then she caught herself. She thought of how much she’d loved Cliff and how much his rejection had hurt.

  Of course she’d respect Clay and work hard at his side and honor him whenever possible. But love? No. She rode away, determined not to ever be such a fool again.

  “What ya mean it’s been sold?” Judd smashed both fists on the banker’s desk so hard he shoved it back against Royce Badje’s paunchy belly.

  Badje stood and pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket to dab at his forehead.

  Judd smelled the fear in the man and enjoyed it. “Who bought it?”

  “R–Really, sir,” Mr. Badje stammered, “b–bank transactions are c–confidential. It isn’t my place to say who—”

  “I want to know who now!” Judd reached for the massive oak desk to wrench it aside so he could get his hands on this pasty-faced city slicker. He wanted to make this man afraid of him. He wanted to crush him under his heel like the bug he was.

  But Judd prided himself on his wiles. He had held back after Cliff died, so as not to draw attention to himself. He had kept his cool, played the game out his own way. Now, he had to do that again. He fought for control of his rage. Finally, he felt capable of straightening away from the desk and lowering himself into the chair, where he’d been sitting so comfortably a moment ago.

  He’d been savoring the moment when he’d impress this overbearing banker with the show of cash he could produce. Instead, the banker had said dismissively that the land Judd had been working two years for belonged to someone else.

  “Just give me a name,” Judd said through clenched jaws. “I heard the owners had abandoned it. So I scouted it. It looked like a right nice piece of property. I might go out and see if the new owner would dicker with me.”

  The stout, little man puffed up, dabbed his forehead again, and with a huff of indignation, returned to his seat. “I can’t give you any details. A banker has a certain position to maintain in a community. . . .”

  Judd leaned forward in his seat and reached for the desk, outwardly just to balance himself while he stood, but he knew the effect he had on milquetoasts like this. He let the full weight of his fury blaze in his eyes.

  Without Judd saying a word, the banker caved. “There is really no reason I shouldn’t say. After all, it is common knowledge who the new owner is.”

  Judd settled back and smiled coldly at the banker. Judd could feel the money burning in his pocket. Thousands of dollars. The full price of the ranch. Two years’ work.

  “Clay McClellen. Twin brother of Cliff Edwards, the former owner. Clay bought the ranch when the Mead brothers missed their payment. He married Edwards’s widow and moved out there just last Saturday.” As if to make up for his unethical telling of the new owner’s name, the banker added with a sniff, “It’s very doubtful, with his ties to the property, Mr. McClellen will want to sell.”

  “Edwards’s widow?” Judd’s fists curled. “I heard she was long gone, living with relatives.”

  “How did you hear that?” Mr. Badje asked. “You’re not from around here.”

  A killing fury made Judd want to put his hands around the banker’s fat neck. After a bitter struggle, he found the self-control to say sharply, “Never mind. If it’s sold, there’s no point in discussing it.”

  He got up from his chair and left the room. He stalked out of the building, already making new plans. He’d played it too safe before. The law had been watching because the sheriff was sweet on Mrs. Edwards. But in the unsettled West, the only real law was strength. Once he owned the Edwards’s place, buying the sheriff, or getting rid of him and handpicking a successor, would be his first order of business.

  He strode down the street of the town he was planning to control. He was tired of waiting around. He’d worked too long and hard to get his hands on that ranch. A twin brother? Where had a twin brother come from? Judd had learned for a fact that Cliff Edwards had no family, except for his wife and a pack of worthless girl children. That had been part of what made the ranch easy pickings for him. Judd didn’t ponder the twin brother’s existence for long. It didn’t matter where he came from; it only mattered that he was here.

  Judd shrugged it off. The last brother had proved to be an easy mark, and he’d had no friends to stand up for him after his death. A twin brother would be cut from the same cloth. Judd planned to make short work of him. He stormed down the street and jumped on his mustang. He spurred the mangy critter into a gallop. The night riders weren’t going to get to retire quite as soon as they’d planned.

  Royce Badje straightened his string tie with all the dignity of a very big fish in a small, small pond. “Humph!” He strode out of his office and said to his teller, “I’ll be out for a few minutes.” He lifted his black, flat-brimmed hat off the rack by the front door and, after carefully checking that Mr. Mason wasn’t about, he stormed down to Sheriff Everett’s office. He found the office empty, and at the diner, he learned the sheriff was transporting a prisoner and would be gone for a day or two.

  Royce Badje returned to the bank a very nervous man.

  “Eeeiiyy!”

  The high-pitched scream made the horse Clay was riding crow-hop to the side and rear up until Clay thought he might go over backward.

  Clay hadn’t been unseated by a horse since he was 15, except when he was busting broncs. He didn’t wait to find out if the horse would throw itself on over. He’d known some to do it.

  Clay slipped from the saddle and jumped back from the Appaloosa. The horse snorted and wheeled away from the barn. It charged toward the open field where Clay had just spent the day branding strays.

  Just as Clay dropped from his horse, Laura came charging around the corner of the barn stark naked. Clay flinched when he saw the little cyclone fleeing from her mother. Sophie was hot on Laura’s heels, and she scooped her up before she could get any farther. Clay whirled around and faced away from the bare-bottomed toddler. He felt his cheeks heat up, and he pulled his hat low over his face for fear he might be blushing.

  Sophie had a firm grip on Laura now, and she rested the little firebrand on her hip. “She got away from me, Clay. I’m sorry. Hope you didn’t get hurt when you fell off your horse.” Sophie turned and went back to the house.

  Clay heard her footsteps recede, along with the screaming load of wriggling girl child she was toting. Clay looked up. Four of his men were smirking in his direction.

  Clay knew he needed help to run a ranch this size, and he’d needed it quickly. He had put out the word that he was hiring hands, and cowpokes started to straggle in. He hired several of them immediately. Others, who didn’t measure up, he told to move along.

  One of them, Eustace, a good hand but young, said, “Fell off, did’ja, boss? Them babies can be almighty scary, I reckon.”

  Clay amended his ideas regarding Eustace. Not just young. Young and stupid.

  Two of the men turned their backs and started heading for the bunkhouse. Clay could see their shoulders quivering. It was a wise man who could laugh silently at his boss.

  Eustace wasn’t wise. He cracked up and started chortling until he had to hang on to the fence to keep from falling over. The other man, an oldster named Whitey, who reminded Clay somewhat of his pa, wasn’t having any part of any laughter. He was trying to settle his own horse down. Whitey had ridden up Monday morning hunting work. Clay had liked what he’d seen and hired him on t
he spot. Whitey had worked tirelessly at Clay’s side ever since.

  Clay snapped, “Eustace!”

  Then Clay told the young pup to pick up his pay and clear out. Eustace was laughing too hard to hear himself getting fired.

  Clay planned to do it all over again, but he calmed down before Eustace stopped laughing.

  “Naked babies. On a ranch!” Clay shook his head and muttered as he hunted up more work for himself to do so he could stay outside until maybe that house full of women would be asleep. He didn’t do much more than round up his horse before Sally came out to lend a hand. So he wasn’t going to get to escape them anyway. He was dog tired, saddle sore, and he’d had dirt for his noon meal.

  Sally said something about apple pie, and after she said it, he could smell it, even if it was just his imagination. And Sally kept holding his hand with her soft fingers and looking at him with those adoring blue eyes until he wanted to see the other girls’ eyes. Especially Sophie’s. He gave up and went to the house.

  Clay’s life was better than it had ever been.

  Clay’s life was worse than it had ever been.

  He couldn’t figure out to have the better without taking the worse along with it, ’cuz they were all mixed together. And better and worse came flocking toward him all the time. He felt like he’d fallen through a hole into another world. A girlish one.

  He spent the night after his fall with Sally sitting on his lap, talking about her hero of a pa. Cliff. He got a chance to referee when Mandy and Beth quarreled about whose turn it was to do the dishes. He was unfortunately handy when Laura twirled around in a circle for too long and threw up on his boots. He got drafted to hold on to slippery Laura while she was given a bath, and he thought his ears would break from the high-pitched toddler giggles. Those giggles were nothing compared to the steady stream of whining when Sophie told them to go to bed. It was a normal night.

  He could have stood all of that, if it hadn’t been for the crying.

  It terrified him and left him feeling helpless and brutish, even if he had nothing to do with their tears. He’d tried everything he could think of to get them to stop. Yelling was the way he related to his pa if there was ever an upset. That didn’t work with the girls. It only made it worse. He’d bought a little cheerfulness one night with a handful of coins, and another night he’d come up with a sack of candy that he’d picked up in town and saved for just this occasion.

  Sophie was horrified when she found out about it and put a stop to the bribery.

  Too bad. It had worked pretty well.

  If he ran, which he did from time to time, they all thought he was going to quit loving them and leave. And there were more tears.

  Once Sally had asked him between broken sobs, “Do you want us to go back to the thicket and leave you alone, Pa?”

  It would have made him crazy except he also got to eat Sophie’s good cooking. And he got hugged by every soft, sweet one of them when they headed off to bed. He liked the smell of Sally’s hair after Sophie had washed it. He sat in the cleanest, prettiest house he’d ever lived in, full of shining surfaces and Texas wildflowers picked fresh every day. He wore clean clothes that had nary a button missing nor the littlest tear left unmended. And he was told, “I love you,” ten times a day.

  His pa had spoken those words to him two or three times in his life, and Clay had said them back as often, or maybe grunted an agreement. Pa loved him, and Clay figured if that ever changed, Pa would have mentioned it. He’d always figured that was enough said. Clay was surprised to know he liked hearing it more often. And he said it back to all of them. If he didn’t, they’d get all teary eyed and scared.

  He said it back to all of them except Sophie, who also never said it to him. He’d caught himself lately wishing she would say it.

  After all, the girls loved him.

  What was she waiting for?

  T E N

  Clay had claimed the brand C BAR for his own, by right of marriage to Cliff’s widow. He’d claimed the cattle along with the brand. When he’d bought Cliff ’s old place, Clay had also used the healthy account in Denver, where Pa had banked gold, to buy up some surrounding property. So he’d expanded his holding considerably.

  Clay rounded up over two hundred head of cattle that first week. Most of them were old, branded to the C BAR, the brand registered to Cliff.

  Anything younger was branded M SLASH M. No one seemed to know what had happened to the Mead brothers, who had registered that brand. Clay knew the code of the West, as it pertained to an abandoned herd: If you caught ’em, you could keep ’em. But Clay was a careful man. He knew local peace officers could be almighty prickly, and Clay didn’t want to antagonize Mosqueros’s sheriff.

  He headed for town Saturday morning to consult with the law. Sheriff Everett was just entering his office, covered with trail dust, and looking like he’d been ridden hard and put up wet.

  Clay tipped his hat to the burly man. “You look like you’ve been over the trail, Josiah. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, if you’ve got the time.”

  With a heavy sigh, the sheriff said, “A cup of coffee would go down mighty good right now, McClellen. I’ve been delivering a bandit to the territorial prison, and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. I’d thought to ride out and say howdy one day soon.”

  The sheriff went inside the jailhouse as he talked and locked his Winchester into a gun rack behind his desk. “Esther has the best coffee in town, because she has the only coffee in town. She starts out in the morning making it black as coal dust, and she keeps it boiling all the day long. We’re lucky it’s still fairly early. By the end of the day it gets mean enough to fight back when you try an’ drink it.”

  “Just the way I like it.” Clay’s boots rang hollow, his spurs adding a sharp metallic ring, as the two men walked down the creaking board sidewalks of Mosqueros.

  The sheriff pushed the diner’s door open, and the smell of burnt coffee nearly took the skin off the inside of Clay’s nose.

  “Just coffee, Esther.” A small puff of dirt rose up around the sheriff as he lowered himself onto a bench.

  The dirt had a better scent than the food, to Clay’s way of thinking.

  Esther brought them both a cup of coffee. “I’ve got huckleberry pie.”

  “That sounds—”

  “Not today, Esther,” the sheriff cut Clay off. “We’re in a hurry.”

  Esther harrumphed at them, as if it were a personal insult, and stalked away from the table.

  The sheriff chuckled softly. “You’ll be wanting to thank me later for saving you from Esther’s huckleberry pie.”

  “I’ve never had a bad piece of pie,” Clay protested.

  “The woman doesn’t believe in a heavy hand with the sugar.”

  “I’ll eat a tart pie over none, any day.” Clay wrapped his hands around the lightweight tin coffee cup, enjoying the warmth, even though the day was already heating up.

  “And whatever berries she’s using are none too ripe, undercooked, and I’ll be surprised if they’re even huckleberries.” The sheriff shuddered. “I’ve yet to see a huckleberry bush out here.”

  “Still, now she’s offended.” Clay regretted that.

  “I’ve never been able to figure out how she can leave the berries raw and burn the piecrust at the same time.” The sheriff looked up from his coffee with an obviously mystified expression. “It just don’t stand to reason. I once broke a tooth on her piecrust.”

  “It was probably a pit. A pit can get in any pie. These things happen to even the most careful cook. . . .”

  “It wasn’t a pit. It was a button.”

  “A button?”

  “Off her shoe,” the sheriff added darkly. “When I complained, she came and acted as close to happy as Esther ever gets, thanked me, took the button, then sat down. She pulled off an almighty bad-smellin’ boot and sat beside me whilst she sewed it back on.”

  Clay lapsed into silence. He finally said quietly,
“I’ll just go ahead and thank you now.”

  The sheriff nodded. “Now, what did you want to see me about?”

  “I’ve been finding strays from the Mead brothers’ herd mixed in with Cliff ’s brand. I wondered if you have any idea how to reach them.”

  The sheriff took a long drink of coffee, and Clay saw him shudder all the way to his toes. “No one seems to know why they took off. I’m suspicious for a living, and the only thing that makes sense is that something happened to them.”

  “A lot of ways to get yourself lost in the West,” Clay observed.

  “I know that. And the Meads weren’t neither one of ’em a ball of fire, if ya know what I mean. They weren’t the hardest workers, and they weren’t the smartest managers I’ve come across.”

  Clay thought of the deterioration he saw in the buildings and knew the truth of what the sheriff said.

  “Still, they were getting by. Keeping their land payments up, if only by the skin of their teeth.”

  “You think they ran into outlaws or renegade Indians?” Clay speculated.

  “I reckon it’s something like that. Truth to tell, I’ve been assuming they’re both dead almost from the first. But no bodies have turned up. They were a two-man outfit, so no cowhands were out there with them to come and report them missing. We only decided they’d taken off when Royce Badje reported their payment didn’t come into the bank. They could’ve been gone a month before we noticed ’em missing.”

  “Do they have any family?” Clay sipped at the vile excuse for coffee in front of him. “Those cattle I’m rounding up should go to their heirs.”

  Sheriff Everett swallowed the last of his coffee and chewed on the dregs thoughtfully before he said, “How many head?”

  Clay fished something solid out of his cup and wiped it on his pants. He didn’t look close. He didn’t want to know what it was. “Forty-five last count. We’re not done shagging ’em out of the hills.”

  Clay watched Sheriff Everett swish his cup around to liquefy the solid black goo separating at the bottom, then take a healthy swig while holding his breath. “They had a sight more’n that. Maybe a couple hundred head. They were so scattered when I went out to look around, I couldn’t be sure if any had been stolen or not, but it sounds like they have been.”