Petticoat Ranch Page 4

  In a slightly more gentle voice, Sophie said, “Go on now, girls. If he wakes up and can walk, we’ll bring him in the house where it’s warmer.”

  They grumbled, but Sophie had been in charge of this family for a long time. At last they moved away from their patient’s side, and after hesitating in the opening of the little barn, they dashed out into the slashing rain and disappeared into the narrow pathway of the thicket.

  Sophie exchanged a long look with Sally, who could barely tear her eyes away from the man. “It’s not your pa, Sally. I’m sorry, and I know you don’t believe me. We all want it to be him so badly. But it’s not.”

  “But Ma, he’s. . .”

  “Don’t you think I want it to be him?” Sophie interrupted. “Don’t you think I’ve been fishing around inside my head for some way I’m wrong about who I buried that night? It was two years ago. You were only five. It’s possible for you to convince yourself that things were different than they were. But I can’t fool myself.”

  “But, Ma,” Sally wailed. “All you have to do is look at. . .”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Sophie cut her off. “Maybe we’ll find out your pa had a. . .a distant cousin or something. I think, with the way he looks, there has to be some connection between this man and your pa, but it’s not him.” Sophie softened her voice. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s just not him.”

  Sally’s eyes wavered between the man and her ma. She finally whispered, “Okay.”

  And while Sophie knew her daughter believed her, she also knew the hope wouldn’t die. The man stirred. The heavy woolen blanket that covered him slipped down, and goose bumps covered his arms and bare chest.

  Moving slowly, as if in a trance, Sally stretched out beside the man and rested her little body along side of him. Just above a whisper, she said, “I’ll keep you warm.”

  It was as if Sophie saw her daughter falling in love with this stranger right before her eyes. She didn’t know what to do or say to stop it. In the end, when the man shivered again more violently, Sophie decided to leave it until morning. She rubbed the man’s arms and pulled the blanket a bit higher. When that didn’t make the goose bumps go down, she decided Sally had the right idea. She stretched out beside the man and huddled up close to him to share her warmth. She reached her hand across him to touch Sally’s pale, worried face.

  “Would it be so bad to pretend—just for tonight?” Sally asked.

  Sophie smoothed her little girl’s bedraggled hair back off her forehead. Then she felt a sudden easing of her heart. Sophie knew it came from a loving God who had proclaimed worry a waste of time.

  “You’re going to pretend anyway, aren’t you, sweetie?”

  Sally looked a little sheepish. With a shrug of her tiny shoulders that had already borne a lifetime of sadness, she said, “I reckon.”

  “So just enjoy it. It wouldn’t be so bad to pretend we’ve got Pa back—just for tonight.”

  Sophie saw Sally unbend inside. Sophie knew Sally was pretending and feeling guilty over it, and that had lent strength to the fantasy of her father returning from the dead. But talking about it turned it into something less weighty. Almost a game.

  He shivered again. Sally hugged him a little tighter. “Just for tonight.”

  The man’s chills lessened as they held him. Sophie looked across that broad chest and noticed that Sally had fallen asleep with her head cradled on the man’s shoulder.

  Sophie lay awake and felt him begin to make more natural movements, as a person might do in his sleep. The tension that had been riding her since she’d heard his horse’s pounding footsteps so long ago eased.

  And that’s when she remembered her children’s hollow cheekbones and Judd’s cruel, bloodshot eyes. Judd’s viciousness had driven them to this life. The taste of hate burned her tongue.

  It grew in her, like mold in that damp, musty shed, until it filled her and threatened to explode. She shook as she lay there beside the man Judd now wanted to kill. Her eyes stared into the black, drizzling night and saw nothing but hate. Satan gripped her heart, and she gave full sway to her thirst for vengeance. Hate roiled in her heart, guilt ate at her soul, and tears burned in her eyes. Then she forced her burning eyes to close. It was evil to feel like this about one of God’s children.

  With typical brutal honesty, Sophie admitted to God that she didn’t want to let go of her fury. It was a betrayal of Cliff to forgive. It was ludicrous to love enemies such as these. She forced herself to pray, “Dear Lord, remove this sin from me. Soften my heart. Help me not to hate the way I do.”

  For Sophie it was a flowery prayer. Usually, she had neither the time nor the strength to be eloquent. She was too busy living through whatever life crushed down on her next. So exhausted, cold, and afraid, much the same as any other day, she spoke to God in words that summed up everything, “Help me, Lord. Help me, help me, help me.”

  That plea to God, that futile cry for something she didn’t even want, was on her lips as she fell asleep. “Help me.”

  Help me.

  Adam looked away from the horror before his eyes and glanced into the darkness behind him. He heard someone calling to him.

  “Help me, help me, help me.”

  But there was no one here who needed him. The only ones left were beyond help.

  His friends dangled from a tree. A noose around each neck. All dead. All but him.

  Adam had crawled into the underbrush when the drunk, who was lashing his back with the bullwhip, had stumbled and fallen to his knees and passed out. Adam had tried to regain his feet, but the loss of blood from the gunshot low on his side and the ripped up skin on his back were too much. He got as far as one knee, thinking to go back and save Dinky and the other men he’d been ranching with, when he lost consciousness.

  He awakened to the sound of fading hoofbeats and the triumphant laughter of cowards.

  And his friends, lined up three in a row, each swinging slightly from a tree branch. In the chaos, they must have lost count and thought they had everybody. All black men looked alike to them, Adam thought bitterly. They hadn’t noticed one was missing.

  Adam watched his friends and tried to swallow his terror and his hate. And then he heard the voice.

  Adam looked in the opposite direction of the hanging men. A woman. Adam gained his feet and took a few staggering steps toward the voice. Then he heard it again.

  “Help me, help me, help me.” So familiar. So precious to him. When he’d worked for her daddy, she’d tagged along after him, begging for a turn riding the horses or feeding the cattle, until he’d begun to love her like the child it seemed certain he’d never have. He’d know Sophie’s voice anywhere.

  It wasn’t in any direction he could walk. It was inside his head. A message from her to him sent on the wings of the wind, blown to him by the breath of God. She called to him from Mosqueros, Adam knew that—somehow. Mosqueros, where he’d left her with that fool she’d married. Cliff had made it impossible for him to stay.

  With one last heartrending look at his friends, Adam started out. He didn’t take time to bury them. He couldn’t save the dead, but maybe he could help the living.

  The horses. The herd. Ten years’ work. Gone. All of it gone. Right now that didn’t matter, and it was a good thing it didn’t. If he’d let it matter, he’d have hunted down those men and torn them apart with his bare hands. Sophie’s call, “Help me, help me, help me,” turned him aside from that path—but only for now.

  He took the handkerchief from around his neck, pressed it solidly against the bullet wound in his side, and walked. It was three hundred miles, but what difference did distance make? Sophie needed him. He’d go.

  “Ma, you said you’d wake me!” Mandy’s quiet, scolding voice hissed her awake.

  Sophie moved, then groaned from aching muscles. She tried again to sit up and found she was anchored to a man by one strong arm.

  In the full light of dawn, Sophie tried to take stock of where she wa
s and why she was sleeping with a man.

  Sleeping with a man! With a sudden squeak of surprise, she pulled against the man’s grip—the man she’d just noticed lying beside her. He grunted when she pushed against him, and she remembered everything. Including that he might have some broken ribs. The ribs she was right now being rough with. She subsided immediately and looked sideways at Mandy, standing over her in a snit, with almost two-year-old Laura kicking and wriggling in her arms.

  Sophie tried to get control of herself. She firmly reached for the arm that had found its way around her in the night. Just when she would have unwound it from around her neck, she saw him looking at her.

  He said, “You’re no angel.”

  Sophie opened her mouth to tell him he wasn’t so great himself, but because of his condition, she controlled herself.

  Then Beth came into the shed to announce that breakfast would be ready in five minutes. She looked down at the man. “You’re not our pa.”

  Sally, barely awake and very content to be held close against the man’s side, said, “Yes, he is.”

  “He is?” Beth asked in wonder.

  “I am?” The man pulled his arm out from under Sophie, and her head dropped with a thud on the hard, packed hay.

  Sally spoke securely from her little nest of warmth and comfort. “He’s our pa. I’ve thought it over and decided God sent him back to us. Why not? He rosed Lazarus from the dead. Jesus can do anything, and God knows we need a pa.”

  Sophie sat up and looked from Sally to the man to see what he’d have to say about being declared resurrected and gifted with four children and a wife.

  He was no help at all.

  “I’ve been raised from the dead?” He spoke as if he had trouble accepting it but was willing to take Sally at her word.

  “He’s not raised from the dead, Sally.”

  “Why not?”

  “It just doesn’t happen, honey. Pa’s gone, and that’s that.”

  “It does too happen.” Sally’s voice rose. “What about Lazarus? God can do anything!”

  “Yes,” Sophie said. “God can do anything. But He just—He just— doesn’t. . .do things like this. . .very often.”

  Mandy said smugly to Sally, “Why do you think it was a big deal to raise Lazarus up? It’s ’cuz it doesn’t get done very much.”

  “So that means I’m dead?” He rubbed his forehead. “Or I was at one time?”

  Sophie felt kind of sorry for the poor, injured man. “No, you’ve never been dead.” Then she thought of a way to solve the whole problem. “Who are you?”

  All of them froze.

  Sophie waited patiently.

  Sally held her breath, hoped etched on her face.

  Beth and Mandy exchanged wondering glances.

  Laura. . .well, Laura tried to put her foot in her mouth and look at Hector at the same time.

  “Didn’t you just say my name was Lazarus?”

  Sally patted his chest. “No, that’s someone else who was raised from the dead, like you.”

  The man said uncertainly, “I—I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything. Except. . .except last night I woke up in heaven.”

  The minute he said that, he knew it was the wrong thing to say, because these females were who he’d seen there. So he must not have been in heaven at all. He must have been right here.

  Another reason it was the wrong thing to say was it made the lady mad.

  “You’re not helping a bit.” She crossed her arms and glared.

  He shifted his weight and groaned from the pain, and the lady looked satisfied. No, she was definitely not an angel.

  The girl who’d announced breakfast said, “Let’s go eat. We’ll talk this out in the house where it’s warm.”

  The lady stood slowly. He heard her knees cracking. The little girl in his arms seemed content to stay where she was. The lady rounded him, reached down, snagged the little girl, and pulled her gently but firmly to her feet. Then she bent over him and put her arm under his shoulders. “You took quite a fall last night. Let’s see if we can get you up.”

  He leaned on her as he tried to get to his feet. His chest was in agony. His head felt like it was full of angry gold miners, trying to chisel their way out. His knees seemed to have the consistency of apple jelly. He wobbled once, and the lady put her arm around his waist and helped him balance. All three of the girls reached for him. He was surrounded by swirling skirts and gentle hands and the sweet sounds of someone worrying about him. He reveled in it, until he thought his heart might break from the pleasure. Maybe he was in heaven. Or maybe the angels had been allowed to come back to earth with him.

  The oldest girl, the one with the baby in her arms, caught him around the waist on the side the lady wasn’t on. The little one—he remembered she’d wept over him in the night, and he wanted to hug her close and thank her for caring so much—she wrapped her arms around his middle and clung to him, as if she’d bear every ounce of his weight if he needed her to. Her head hit him right at his belly. She turned her worried face up and looked at him with pure love in her eyes.

  The other one, the cook, rested her hands on his shoulders from behind and said with a voice that instilled confidence, “Steady there, mister. You’ll be all right in a minute. Let us help you.”

  They all smelled wonderful. Sweet and pretty, except—he hated to find a sour note in what was one of the sweetest moments of his life—the lady was really rank. He tuned out that unpleasant discovery when she started fussing at the girls to be gentle with his ribs and the cuts and bruises. He looked down at his body and was stunned at the wreckage. He looked like he’d. . .he’d. . .

  The lady said, “You fell over a creek bank.”

  He looked at his battered chest. “That sounds about right.”

  “You don’t remember?” the lady asked.

  The wiggling little worm of worry in his brain was growing into a coiled, sixteen-foot prairie rattler of panic in his gut. The truth was, he couldn’t remember anything. Not how he came to be in this place. Not where he’d come from or where he was going to. Not even his name!

  He looked between all these pretty women, in their gingham and calico, with their soft kindness, and said, “I don’t remember anything, ma’am.”

  “Sophie,” she supplied.

  “Sophie.” Suddenly, that name was the only solid thing that existed in a wildly out-of-control world, and he was determined to hold on to it. “I—I don’t know why. . .” He faltered from admitting anything more. It seemed like a weakness to admit he had no memory, and it went against some instinct within him to admit to any weakness.

  “So you’re not Clifton Edwards?” the lady—Sophie—asked. There was a strange tone to her voice when she asked it, and he looked hard at her. He could tell from her tone that “no” was the right answer. But Clifton Edwards? Something about the name touched a chord inside of him.

  “Clifton Edwards.” He whispered the name aloud and tried to focus on what exactly bothered him about the name. The image of a face, a little boy’s face, flashed in his mind. He didn’t know who the boy was. He saw an older man, stooped with age. He saw a naked man—or nearly naked—leap up from the grass and raise a tomahawk in the air. An Indian. Blackfoot. He knew that. Then the parade of pictures faded. He absently reached his hand up to rub his aching head. He flinched from the stabbing agony of his ribs when he moved his arm. His stomach twisted and surged, and then the fact that he seemed to have no memories made the world spin.

  “You fell a long way,” Sophie said. “You took two hard blows to the head. Hard enough to leave big bumps and knock you senseless for hours. I reckon you’ll be okay when you’ve had some rest.”

  “Don’t any of you know who I am?” His voice sounded like it came from outside of himself. He saw a dead man lying on the ground in front of him. The vision widened. Ten dead men. A hundred. Blood everywhere. Bodies dressed in blue and gray. Severed limbs and the screams of the wounded. The smell. War. S
ickening. Brutal. He wished he could forget it all. Forever.

  From a great distance the lady answered his question, “No.”

  The littlest one said, “You’re our pa.”

  The cook said, “You’re not our pa.”

  The baby-sitter said, “You just look like our pa.”

  The toddler kicked her feet and landed one on his ribs and said, “Papa.”

  His knees went from apple jelly to apple cider, and all the girls’ strength didn’t keep him from sagging back to the ground. Through a roaring in his ears, he thought he heard someone, the cook maybe, say matter-of-factly, “We shoulda got him to the house whilst we had the chance.”

  He also thought the lady, who smelled so bad, grew a second head that looked like a mule’s head. Now that he thought of it, a mule was what she smelled like. A really filthy, old mule. Maybe one that’d been dead for a while. His last impression was that the mule kicked him in the ribs as he hit the ground, and maybe, just maybe, the mule said vehemently, “You are too our pa! You’ve been raised from the dead and that’s that!”

  Then everything went black.

  F O U R

  Mandy knelt beside the unconscious man. “Drat, he’s out cold again. He really took hisself a whack.”

  Sophie shoved Hector’s head off her shoulder. “Beth, can you get this ornery beast out of here?”

  Elizabeth came around and soothed Hector, who had wandered outside after the storm but now wanted to see what the fuss was about in his house.

  Sally fell to her knees beside the man. “He said he doesn’t remember nothin’. Does that mean when you come back to life you don’t bring your memories with you? Your whole life starts over at that moment? Does that mean he don’t remember he’s our pa?”

  Sophie sighed at Sally and her resurrection theory. When you came right down to it, it made about as much sense as anything else. “It’s much warmer this morning. The only danger he’s in out here is from Hector stepping on him.”

  Beth came back without Hector. “I wouldn’t put it past him, Ma. Unless you want to keep Hector tied up all day, someone’s gonna hafta stay out here.”