Petticoat Ranch Read online

  “Get some rags and tear them up for a bandage, Beth honey,” Sophie said quietly, wanting to include her daughter.

  Clay was still fuming over the wound and scolding her to beat all.

  Sophie interrupted his tirade as soon as Beth was out of earshot. “So who wants you dead, Clay McClellen?”

  Clay stopped fumbling. They stared at each other for a long moment. Sophie found herself caught in the worry she saw in his eyes. Kind eyes. True, he was being as grouchy as a grizzly bear with a sore tooth, but she could see it was because he cared about her. Something warm inside of Sophie heated up past warm, and she rested her hand on his where he touched her arm.

  With a swift glance at the girls, he whispered, “I don’t think he was after me, Sophie. It would take them awhile to get set up in that grove. Why did they pick that spot? It’s mostly blocked off from the rest of the yard by the barn. I think they were after you.”

  Clay’s hand came up and caressed her cheek. Suddenly he looked dismayed. “I’m sorry.” He pulled his hand away and looked around for the wet cloth Beth had brought when she was preparing to clean the wound.

  “Sorry about what?” Sophie asked, not wanting him to look away.

  “I got blood on your face.” He touched her cheek with the cool cloth, so gently that Sophie forgot the sting in her arm and the bullets that might have caught one of her girls.

  “I’m so sorry, Sophie. I should have been more watchful. They should never have gotten so close to the place.” Clay looked from her cheek where he caressed her with the cloth to her eyes. His eyes flickered to her lips and then to her arm, and he seemed to gather himself. Suddenly brisk, he washed her face, then went back to his ham-handed doctoring. Sophie didn’t mind his rough skill anymore.

  “Who do you. . .” Sophie’s voice was husky—not her normal voice at all. It seemed to sharpen Clay’s attention on her. She cleared her throat. “Who do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know.” Clay tied off the rough bandage. “But it appears someone. . .”

  “I counted five different guns.”

  “There were at least five of them. And it appears they want one, or both of us, dead.”

  Clay and Sophie exchanged long, solemn looks. Their silence was broken by the giggling and chattering of the girls in the background.

  “Well.” Sophie’s jaw tightened. “I’d say that someone is going to be disappointed.”

  Clay nodded in firm agreement.

  Sophie hoped he’d say something complimentary right then. Something along the lines of, “It takes quite a woman to pick out five different gunmen in all that excitement.” Or maybe, “I’m right proud of you for running in to protect the girls and having the house all closed up and safe.” Or maybe even, “That was quite a carpentry job you did on the barn, before I kicked it in.”

  As usual, he failed her.

  “What kind of blamed fool notion got into your head, to go running out of the barn while there were bullets flying. There I had you all tucked away safe, and instead of staying put, like anyone would who had half a brain, you had to go haring off. . .”

  It went on the rest of the day. He even woke up a few times in the night. At first he’d hold her tight and close and long and touch her as if he were desperate to make sure she was alive and well.

  Then he’d start in on his scolding again.

  Adam chafed at the slow pace. He had no money, and no one would be inclined to trust a black man enough to loan him a horse, so he didn’t ask.

  The world was full of food to anyone who would just open his eyes. He unraveled enough thread from his tattered shirt to rig a snare. He caught grouse or rabbit most nights. He fished. There wasn’t much growing yet in the early spring, but he found a few wild strawberries and a steady supply of greens.

  He wouldn’t have minded living like this forever, if it hadn’t been for the voice. He refused to think about his murdered friends. He was afraid the hate would overcome his need to get to Sophie. He kept his mind always on her.

  His back still hurt like fire. The gunshot dragged on his strength, but he didn’t let up on himself. One night, he made himself a soft bed of pine needles under a loblolly and had the best night’s sleep he’d had since he’d been heading for Sophie.

  He awoke with a jerk. He froze, trying to think what had disturbed him. Maybe he’d heard Sophie again. He stared straight up, and looking through the limbs brought memories. Branches. Nooses. Swinging bodies. His friends had been lynched. Adam had been presumed among the dead, and he’d walked away. Guilt wracked him. He should have gone after the killers! He should have hunted them and killed every man jack of them!

  Adam swallowed the hatred and remembered why he’d walked away. Sophie. He reached for his side and felt the tender bullet hole. He swore that when he had done whatever Sophie needed doing, he’d find those men and make them pay.

  He lay flat on his back and stared up at the sky through the pine boughs. He had to get to her. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. He wasn’t a superstitious man, and he wasn’t given to notions. Sophie needed help. God had placed it in his heart.

  He hoisted himself to his hands and knees and started to crawl out from under branches that sagged so low to the ground he had to lift them to get past. Just as he reached for one, he heard in the distance the sound that had awakened him. Hoofbeats.

  He held himself as still as a wild hare and listened to silent men, riding fast in the direction he was headed. He slowly, carefully, moved his head, aware that any motion on his part could attract their attention. He saw stirruped feet, he heard creaking saddle leather, but faces were blocked from his line of sight. He didn’t see anything that he could recognize. Then the last few riders went by.

  One of them wore Dinky’s boots.

  They were ridiculous black boots, overloaded with glittering silver trim. Dinky had them special made with money from his first cattle sale. He’d laughed and talked about how he hadn’t owned a single pair of shoes until he’d joined up with the Union army. He’d picked cotton and tended horses barefoot until he was twenty-five years old. The man who owned him thought shoes were above the station of a slave.

  Dinky loved those boots. Adam had scoffed at him and told him his boots would spook the herd, but Dinky, always happy, always finding joy in life, only took those boots off when he slept. Adam looked closely at the last few riders. He saw William’s rifle. It was a .50 caliber Sharps. William, handy with a knife, had carved scroll work in the wooden butt.

  He saw a rawhide rope that had old Moses’s fine braiding about it, and a single pearl-handled pistol that also belonged to the elderly man, who had been the steady one of the foursome.

  Then Adam saw his own blanket rolled up behind another saddle. It could have been another blanket, nothing special about it. But the bloodstains settled it in Adam’s mind. Couldn’t this lynching party even count? They’d stolen the outfits from four men, but they’d only hanged three.

  Adam’s fury built until it was all he could do to stop himself from leaping from cover and begin killing. He’d grab the last one, take his rifle, and empty it into the lot of them, grabbing another rifle from a fallen man when his was empty.

  But he held himself frozen. He’d die with a plan like that. But it would feel good every last second of his life.

  Then he thought of dying that way, in a killing rage, and finally that gave him the strength to hold his hiding place. God had blinded their eyes to the obvious. Maybe he’d survived for some reason of God’s. Maybe he’d done something right to earn him a few more years here on this earth. More likely, he was alive because Sophie needed him.

  Adam let the men go. What other choice did he have? But he counted twenty of them, and he risked his life to see a few faces. Then he noticed the brand. . . .

  J BAR M.

  T W E L V E

  Luther rode steadily into the night, with Buff galloping relentlessly by his side. They could make Texas before they slept, if
they kept up their pace. But the closer Texas got, the bigger it loomed.

  A distant pinpoint of light had them both pulling up.

  “Coffee’d taste almighty good ’bout now, Buff. Whataya say?”

  Buff grunted, and they headed slowly for the light. The fire was miles away. They knew from reading signs, they were riding into the camp of a herd being pushed up the trail rather than into a bunch of outlaws.

  They weren’t afraid of being shot by no-accounts now. They were afraid of being shot by law-abiding men.

  Before they got within shooting range, Luther hollered out, “Hello, the camp!”

  A voice out of the darkness called, “Ride in easy.”

  They heard the clicks of a dozen rifles being cocked.

  Buff and Luther knew how to approach a cow camp, and the drovers knew how to hold their fire until it was needed. Within minutes, the two were settled in with coffee, biscuits, and beans. The fire crackled, and the scent of boiled coffee and mesquite wood soothed Luther’s edgy nerves. He hoped it was working on everyone here. The clink of the coffeepot on the tin cups melded with the soft lowing of a cow out on the range and made Luther feel right at home.

  Every cowhand in the group had left his bedroll and joined the newcomers at the fire. A cowboy was always hungry for news and a different voice than the few he heard all day every day for weeks and months on end. And cowboys were a friendly lot. But Luther knew, the cowpokes came to the fire mostly to help with the shooting if there was trouble.

  “Huntin’ work?” the trail boss asked. “We can always use a few more men.”

  “Headin’ to Texas,” Buff replied.

  “Looking for a friend of ours,” Luther added. “Anyone know of a young feller by the name of Clay McClellen?”

  One of the drovers said, “I served with a Clay McClellen during the war. We were with Grant up to Shiloh. Then I got stuck in the siege of Vicksburg and lost track of the major. I remember he was always huntin’ news of his brother.”

  “Cliff,” Buff said.

  Luther nodded. “His twin brother. He hadn’t seen him since they were kids.”

  “That’s right,” the young cowboy said. “There was talk of some soldier in the East that looked just like Major McClellen. He was tryin’ to track him down.”

  “My last job was scouting for the Texas Rangers. I heard of a Clay McClellen workin’ with the Rangers over some trouble with vigilantes in west Texas,” an old-timer said. “There’s been real bad doin’s along the Pecos. Lotta men hung. Good men along with the bad. Heard McClellen hired on to help out.”

  “Why would Clay quit searchin’ for his brother to take a job with the law?” Luther knew Clay wasn’t the type of man to get sidetracked. So if the trail boss had it right, and there weren’t two Clay McClellens, working for the Rangers must have something to do with Cliff.

  “Maybe he just needed to make some money along the trail,” one cowboy said reasonably.

  Luther exchanged a quick glance with Buff. Clay didn’t need money, not with all the gold his pa had left him.

  “Whereabouts in west Texas?” Luther asked.

  The old-timer said, “Vigilante trouble is all over the panhandle and up north almost to Indian territory. The place I heard the name Clay McClellen mentioned was in connection with a little cow town name of Mosqueros.”

  Luther drank the last of his boiling hot, inkblack coffee in a single swallow and wiped his hand across his mouth. “Mosqueros,” he said with some satisfaction. He stood up and headed for his horse.

  “You oughta stay in camp for the night,” one man offered. “You’d be safer in a crowd, and it’s already mighty late.”

  Luther changed his saddle from one of his horses to another they’d picked up along the trail, while Buff did the same. We might as well ride, Luther thought. We’re getting too close to bother with sleep.

  “Whereabouts is Mosqueros?” Luther wasn’t a man who had traveled much in his life. He’d come from the East, like everyone else who was in the West, except the Indians. But he’d headed straight up into the peaks of the Rockies like he was kin to the mountain goats. And he’d stayed.

  Still, he was a man who’d sat at a lot of campfires, and like all Western men, he listened to talk of the world away from his mountain home. He tucked away information about trails he never figured to trek and rivers he had no notion of ever crossing. He knew a sight about Texas, even though he’d never laid a foot in it.

  “If you’re pushing hard,” the trail boss said, “you can be there in four or five days. This herd is out of Lubbock, three days’ ride straight south of here. Mosqueros is another day south.”

  Luther said, “We’ll find it.”

  “Obliged,” Buff called over his shoulder.

  “Five days,” Luther muttered to himself.

  “You got something powerful ridin’ you, Luther.”

  As powerful as the voice of God. “Let’s make it in three,” Luther said as he kicked his horse into a ground-eating lope.

  Clay was on razor’s edge, trying to track down the men who had taken a shot at him and Sophie. All the men were working double time, scouting the hills and standing the night watch. Clay had taken the shift before dawn, so he was tired. As he settled into his chair after the noon meal, he sighed with contentment. Good food. Clean house. Pretty wife. Sweet daughters. He was a lucky man.

  “Sally, you give me back my underclothes,” Beth screamed.

  Sally came running out of her bedroom, with Elizabeth hot on her heels. Beth dove at Sally. Sally dodged out of her reach and darted behind Clay.

  “They’re prettier than mine,” Sally shrieked. “They’ve got lace on the tummy and mine don’t. It’s not fair!”

  Beth circled Clay’s chair.

  A bloodcurdling scream behind his back made Clay jump out of his chair and whirl around just as Beth caught Sally and began pulling up her skirt to take the underclothes back by force. Sally slapped at her sister. Both girls were emitting such high-pitched squeals, Clay thought his ears would bleed. He wanted to shout at them, but he knew they’d cry. He wanted to run out to the bunkhouse, but he knew they’d cry.

  Suddenly, something snapped inside him. All his tightly held self-control around the soft-hearted, little monsters blew away in a blaze of anger. “I—want—quiet!”

  Sally and Elizabeth froze. Their eyes widened.

  “Quiet! Quiet! Quiet!” Out of the corner of his eye, Clay saw Mandy stiffen with fear. Laura, in Mandy’s arms, shoved her fingers in her mouth as if to make herself be quiet. Sophie looked from Clay to the girls fearfully, as if he might start shooting any minute.

  It was all too much. He looked back at Sally and Beth. Their eyes were already filling with tears. He stomped his foot in the perfect picture of a man putting his foot down. “You stop that crying right now,” he stormed. “There are going to be some changes around here.”

  “Pa,” Sally quavered, “don’t you. . .”

  “Don’t you dare ask me if I love you,” Clay roared. “I don’t go lovin’ and stopping lovin’ any time I feel like it. All this means is, I can get purely perturbed with someone I love, and you all might as well know that now!”

  A tear spilled down Beth’s cheek. She nodded as if she were frightened not to agree with him. That just made him madder.

  “Stop that cryin’, both of you. I’m not putting up with any more of this screaming and fighting.”

  “But, Pa,” Beth said, “we weren’t. . .”

  He jabbed his finger at her. “Don’t interrupt me, young lady.”

  Beth clamped her mouth shut and shook her head solemnly as if she would never, ever, even under threat of death, interrupt him again.

  “There is a right and fittin’ way for folks to get along, and you girls aren’t doin’ it to suit me.” Clay crossed his arms and got his fury under control. He pointed at Mandy and said sternly to Beth and Sally, “Get on the other side of the room with Mandy so I can talk to all of you.”
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  The girls hurried to obey. They lined up beside Mandy, who was holding the squirming toddler. Sophie went to stand beside them. “Get over here by me, Sophie. This is for the children, and what I say goes for both of us.”

  Sophie arched an eyebrow at him, but she walked over and turned to face the girls.

  Clay said, “Rule number one: There will be no more crying! No more! None! Never!”

  “But, Pa, what about my. . .” Beth began.

  “I’m not finished yet!” Clay snapped.

  Sophie murmured, “A little child can’t always. . .”

  Clay turned to her. “I said no more, and I meant it. I can’t stand the sound of womenfolk crying, and I want it stopped.”

  Sophie crossed her arms and started tapping her foot. Clay could see she didn’t like minding him. Well, that came as no surprise.

  She remained silent, so he forged ahead. “Rule number two: There will be no more taking things that don’t belong to you, without permission!”

  Beth turned to Sally and wrinkled her nose at her little sister.

  “Rule number three: No more screaming!”

  “Rule number four—”

  “What about Laura. . .” Mandy interjected.

  Clay’s concentration was broken. He was kind of coming up with these rules on the fly, thinking up what would make his home a peaceful one, so he hadn’t rightly decided what to say next anyway. “What about her?”

  Mandy asked, “Can Laura cry? ’Cuz sometimes. . .well, she’s pretty little, and she can’t always. . .”

  “Laura can cry,” Clay decided. “Until she’s three. Then that’s the end of it.”

  “Until she’s three?” Sophie shook her head and stared at Clay as if he’d lost his mind. After an extended silence, she said, “Why three?”

  Clay stared at her while he thought about it. Finally, he said, “She’s a baby till she’s three.”

  He turned back to the girls. “Rule number—”