Petticoat Ranch Page 18

  Judd slapped the cup out of Eli’s hand, and the boiling liquid splattered over Eli’s pants and shirt. Eli danced away screaming, tearing at his clothes.

  “Tell me whatcha found out,” Judd demanded. “You can rest later.”

  Percy clenched his jaw and Judd waited, almost hoping for a fight. He was keyed up from the long hours of idle waiting. He’d called off the vigilante raids for the time. He didn’t want to leave the area, and he didn’t want to risk being recognized, leaving him and a band of restless outlaws cooling their heels in a rough camp.

  The whiskey had run dry. The coffee was low. The cards were all marked, and some of the dumber ones had gambled all their earnings away and were pushing for another strike. Judd had enjoyed beating a few of them senseless when they pushed him too hard, but he couldn’t do it often. Some of the men had taken off and hadn’t come back. He’d started this with twenty hardened men. Most of them had been with him for two years. Since they’d started stalking McClellen, he was down to a dozen.

  It wasn’t just the restlessness or the fighting that had made the men take off. It was when they’d found out Judd intended to kill Sophie McClellen. There were men who would kill their own father for a chaw of tobacco. Men who would sell out their best friend for the cash on a Wanted poster. Men who would back-shoot a preacher for the contents of a collection plate. But they wouldn’t touch a woman.

  Women were too rare in the West. It was in many a man’s nature to protect a woman, and nothing anyone would say or do could make him go against his nature.

  Eli wasn’t such a man and neither was Harley. Judd had worried about that because Harley was a quiet man who kept to himself a lot. But Judd had mentioned Sophie McClellen being able to put them all in a hangman’s noose, and Harley had stayed put and listened in on the planning.

  Now the first part of the planning was done. Percy was back with his report, and Judd would be hanged if he’d wait while the man had a cup of coffee to hear what he’d learned.

  “He’s got two men standing watch all night in such a way they can see down on the house. McClellen always takes the last shift before sunup. I’ve figured a way to sneak up on him and catch him flat-footed.” Percy wiped the coffee away that had spilled on him.

  “Why sneak up on him?” Judd asked brusquely. “Why not go in guns a’blazin’?”

  Percy shook his head. “We need to do it quiet iffen we can, ’cuz the hands’ll come a’boiling up that hill if there’s any sign of trouble. Since we took those potshots at McClellen t’other day, the whole place is on a hair trigger.”

  Judd noticed Harley move restlessly when Percy mentioned the way they’d tried to dry gulch McClellen.

  Jesse, one of the men who’d come from scouting with Percy, added, “There’s army men among the hands and only a few that’d be called green. Even the green ones are game.”

  “We can’t all go,” Percy said. “Just a small group. Any more and we’d make too much noise.”

  “That whole bunch is mighty salty,” Harley said. “They’ll come up fightin’ sure as anything.”

  Judd grunted. He gazed into the campfire and thought about that land. It was his. He’d claimed it in his belly a long time ago, and he didn’t intend to give it up now. “Get some rest, Percy. I want you and Jesse and two others to go tomorrow night. We’re gonna have this finished. I’m sick of waiting.”

  “I’ll go along, boss,” Harley said quietly.

  “You’re staying here.” The closer they got to their goal and the tougher the McClellen outfit shaped up, the more Judd wanted Harley’s quick gun and cool head at his back. “I don’t want to risk being seen myself and that goes for you, too, Harley. We sit this one out. But I promise you’ll be in on it when we get rid of Mrs. McClellen. I’m gonna enjoy shutting that woman’s mouth for good.”

  Judd felt the restlessness of the men. He shouldn’t have reminded them of what was in store for Sophie McClellen. No one left the campfire though, so they accepted it.

  “Can I have some coffee now, boss?” Percy asked.

  Judd almost sneered, but he controlled himself. By the time he was done training these men, they’d ask his permission before they so much as scratched an itch. “Yeah, have your coffee then get some rest. Tomorrow’s the beginning of taking back what’s mine.”

  F I F T E E N

  Sophie was an honest woman. She prided herself on it.

  Of course pride was a sin. And didn’t the Bible say a sin was a sin? No difference between ’em? So telling a few lies kept her pride in check and therefore kept her humble.

  Sophie found she couldn’t quite let her mind make peace with that bit of foolishness. So she tried harder.

  While lying was one sin, pride and the lack of humility were two. So she was ahead. She rolled a rock toward the pile and decided she was on to something.

  Then she caught herself. Was a lack of humility the same as pride? Sophie shrugged and lifted the rock in place. If it was, her sins were a tie. Six and one, half a dozen of the other. Or rather, one of one and one of the other since she wasn’t committing six sins after all. Why make things worse than they already were?

  So since one sin was what she didn’t want to do, and the other sin was what she did want to do, she decided to just do as she wanted.

  Anyway, she didn’t really consider finishing up her traps as lying. Yes, Clay had ordered her not to do it, but he’d gotten distracted by the girls’ excitement over the baby before he managed to wring a “Yes, my lord and master” out of her. And since she’d fully intended to refuse to make a promise, it wasn’t her fault the man issued his orders then got sidetracked.

  She would have told him, straight into his teeth, that she was going to go ahead and finish what she started, but she didn’t bother. Silence was just her way of trying to keep her husband happy. She sighed deeply as she heaved another rock onto the stack without disturbing Laura, who was strapped to her back. It seemed like she’d spent her whole life trying to keep one husband or another happy.

  Great! Now she was making it sound like she’d had a dozen of them.

  “It’s not that I don’t think he’ll get to it, girls,” she explained carefully because the girls knew how Clay felt—in fact he’d given them a stern talking-to about taking the load off of Sophie’s shoulders until after the baby came—and more and more they were taking his side in things.

  “It’s that I feel pushed to hurry. I can’t forget the men shooting at us. Those tracks prove they’re nearby, and it’s riding me to have everything in place. I’ve been sitting in the house all week waiting for your pa to get done with the cattle, but it’s driving me crazy. I just can’t sit in the house stitching away on trousers of all things—for myself and you girls—while the whole family is in danger.”

  “I like wearing trousers.” Sally tugged at the full-legged riding skirt. “I think all of Pa’s ideas are good ’uns.”

  Sophie wasn’t about to admit it, but she liked wearing pants herself. She looked down at the brown broadcloth that she’d cut wide enough to look like a skirt. She marveled at how much easier it made everything. “We’ll just fill this one last trap with rocks and then we’ll leave it go. I promise I won’t sneak around anymore after today.”

  Beth snorted as she hefted a rock onto the travois they’d rigged on Hector. “You shouldn’t oughta be out here, Ma. I’ve checked, and there’s none of them varmints standing watch right now, but what if one comes while we’re in the middle of things?”

  “Hector will give us a warning of trouble.” Sophie glanced at the stubborn old mule doubtfully while she rolled another rock in place. She dusted her hands together in satisfaction. “I’d say we only need one more load after this one and we’ll be done.”

  “It’s not just the varmints watching us. I don’t think you should be carrying such heavy loads.” Sally laid her smaller rock on top of the teetering pile. “Those rocks you’re hefting weigh almost as much as I do, and you’d never think of c
arrying me around.”

  “Well, now, Sally honey, if these rocks would sprout a pair of legs like you have, I promise I’d make ’em walk.”

  Elizabeth—the animal lover, the nurse, the little girl who wanted to take care of the whole world—said, “The point is you might get hurt. Or you might hurt the baby. I never thought about lifting heavy loads being dangerous, but Pa says it is.”

  “Beth, your pa doesn’t know the first thing about babies. He’s just worried about me, which is real nice of him, and so he’s trying to take care of me. But he’s just guessing about me not lifting things.”

  “It makes sense to me, Ma,” Beth insisted.

  “Don’t you remember what it was like when Laura was on the way?” Sophie balanced her rock on the load and decided this one was full enough.

  “I remember we moved into the thicket.” Beth threw the straps over Hector’s head. She chirruped to get him moving to where the fallen log was resting against a brace.

  “Do you remember I carried everything I could out of this house and sneaked down through the thicket on foot to stash it in the shack we moved into? I took two or three trips a night, carrying everything— even the tables and chairs—on my back because the shortcut trail we had to take was too steep for Hector. I did that for most of a month. All while doing the chores around the ranch every day and hunting and cooking for you girls. I worked ten times as hard as I am now, all with Laura getting big in my belly.” Sophie walked along behind Hector, carefully concealing the travois tracks.

  “I know.” Beth shook her head. “You did it, and you and Laura survived it. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t plumb lucky. Now we got Pa here to take care of us, and I say we oughta let him. There’s still plenty for us to do.”

  They reached the braced tree trunk and started piling the rocks behind it. Sally attached the hemp rope to the brace and ran it down the hillside. She covered it with dirt and dead leaves as she went.

  Sophie looked at the booby trap with satisfaction. “We’ve got time for one more load before dark. Then, I’m going to scout higher up the trail and check the spots those men have been watching from, while you girls go down and get the evening meal started. I’ll be back before Pa, but if he shows up, we can honestly say you girls cooked supper and I went for a walk. All honest. All just to suit him.”

  Beth rolled her eyes at Sophie, and Sophie knew her little girl was growing up.

  They loaded rocks one last time, dragged them across the steep, treacherous face of the bluff, and unloaded them. Sophie transferred Laura to Beth’s back, pulled the shotgun out of the saddle boot, and sent the girls home riding Hector.

  As they walked away, Sophie heard Sally say, “It sure is a shame about men having all those muscles.”

  Beth was dusting out the tracks Hector left behind. She looked up from the ground. “Why’s that?”

  Sally’s shoulders slumped, “ ’Cuz we could sure stand to have some help thinking around this place.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Beth replied gloomily.

  Sophie decided she was going to have to quit including the girls in her sneaking. She was teaching them all the wrong lessons. Since she had to keep them with her all the time, she supposed what it amounted to was she was going to have to quit sneaking altogether and rest the way Clay kept telling her to.

  Rest. She had heard that word out of Clay’s mouth so many times she was hearing it in her sleep. In fact, she was quite certain that she’d been awakened last night to the sound of Clay’s voice whispering into her hair, “Rest, rest, rest,” like some kind of chant. She hoped she’d dreamed it. Otherwise, her husband was getting weird.

  It went against the grain, but Sophie knew she had to start minding him better, for the girls’ sake. And she’d do it, just as soon as all this mess with the night riders was settled. As always, when she thought of all her shortcomings as a wife and mother, all she could do was think, Help me, help me, help me.

  As surely as he knew his name and his face and his God, Adam knew it was time.

  “Buff?” Luther jumped to his feet, in front of the hat full of fire in their tiny, concealed camp.

  “Huh?” Buff swigged at his coffee.

  “Put out the fire. We gotta ride.”

  Buff didn’t even ask why.

  “I’ve been watchin’ you fer days, McClellen, an’ now we’re to the end of it.” Percy sidled from the base of one tree to the next. He knew just what trail McClellen always followed. He knew just what time of day to strike. Judd had told them to wait till just before dawn, but Percy was hankering for a whiskey and maybe a kind word from one of the saloon girls. If he could finish this now, he’d have the whole evening ahead with nothing to do. He might not even tell Judd he’d done things his own way, Judd being extra cranky these days.

  McClellen always rode down to his evening meal a little after the other hands. He was easier pickings right now than when he’d be standing watch in the night.

  Percy hunkered down just uphill of where McClellen always appeared, pulled his Arkansas Toothpick out of the knife sheath slung down his back, and checked the razor-sharp edge. Percy could nail a fly, dead center, from twenty feet.

  He could kill McClellen quick and quiet, just like he’d been told. The other three men were lying back, waiting for the morning hours. Percy told ’em to sit tight whilst he did some scouting.

  Percy had to stifle a chuckle when he thought of how he’d go awalkin’ into camp, calm as you please, and say, “Let’s go to town, boys. I’ve done in McClellen, and we’ve got nothing to do all night but celebrate!”

  He settled in, quiet as a waiting sidewinder.

  Clay enjoyed the ache of his tired muscles. He’d pushed hard today, but he’d gotten the last of the cattle rounded up. He was going to spend tomorrow branding the last of them, and then the next day he’d move them down to the lower range.

  After that, he planned to spend every hour he could squeeze out of a day seeing to the chores his little wife wanted done around the place.

  He grinned when he imagined how it would be when Sophie started getting round with his baby. Something caught hard right around his heart when he pictured another little girl-child to add to his brood of pretty daughters.

  Then he thought of a roughhousing little boy to torment the girls and tag along after his pa, and he liked the thought of that, too. Clay didn’t figure he could lose.

  He began drifting down off the high bluffs toward the ranch house. As he rode along lost in thought, he thanked God for all he’d found when he went hunting for his brother. He thought of all the ways a man could mess up raising his children. The thought scared him almost as much as crying girls did.

  He didn’t make a sound as he prayed, Help me be a good father to these young ’uns, Lord. Help me.

  Sophie eased her way up the hill. The bluff was so steep, it was slow going. She moved silently and slowly over a particularly slippery spot, careful not to set any little stones rolling and make a noise. She got to a level stretch and stood upright for the first time in a while.

  The whole world spun around. She was only vaguely aware of falling forward into a mesquite bush as everything went black.

  Percy froze when he heard brush rustle. It didn’t come from where he expected to see McClellen. If someone else was around, he might not get his killin’ done till breakfast.

  A second passed and then another. The rustling stopped after that one slight sound, and Percy began to ease back from his spot. The sound he’d heard was fabric on brush. It wasn’t a deer. He knew the woods better than that.

  He shifted without making a sound, sliding from hiding place to hiding place. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Someone was out there. Someone was stalking him just like he’d been stalking McClellen. He decided waiting till morning suited him after all.

  He began to rise from his crouched position when he saw McClellen emerge from the trees. Percy had moved farther than he intended, but McClellen sat there on hi
s horse, not looking left nor right. As ripe for plucking as a sleeping goose. Percy pulled his Toothpick out of the sheath hanging in the center of his back, stopped breathing to steady himself, and let fly.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Clay saw movement in the bushes. He straightened his legs to raise himself up higher. A blow hit him hard in the shoulder, and even more than the white hot pain, an instinct for survival sent him crashing to the ground on the downhill side of his horse. Facedown on the ground, he fumbled for his six-shooter, but his right arm wasn’t working. A quick glance told him there was a knife lodged in his shoulder. He reached across with his left hand, but before he could grab his gun, cold steel pressed up against the back of his neck.

  “Don’t move, McClellen. Don’t even twitch.”

  Clay heard the sharp click of the gun’s hammer being pulled back. He recognized it for a rifle, and he knew he was going to die. He braced himself to fight, knowing he didn’t want to die like this, flat on his belly with a gun at his back. He had to reach across the entire length of his body to grapple for the gun. He knew he was going to lose.

  “It’s you who doesn’t want to twitch, old man.” Sophie jacked a shell into the chamber of her rifle.

  The pressure eased on Clay’s neck, and with a single lightning move, he turned and grabbed the outlaw’s gun.

  Clay stood up, holding the gunman’s weapon in his left hand. Sophie stood directly behind the man who’d been fixing to shoot him in the back. Her own weapon jabbed into his dirty neck.

  “Clay, you’re bleeding.” In a voice so sharp it could peel the hide off a grizzly bear, Sophie snapped, “Back away from my husband right now.”

  Worried as she was, Clay watched his wife keep her senses enough to stay out of reach of the man who’d attacked him as she circled to his side.

  Before she could get to him, Clay reached up and pulled the knife out of his arm.