Mary Connealy (13 page)

Red raced out of the barn, took in the situation in a glance, and dived between Cassie and the furiously protective mother. “Drop the pig, Cassie,” he roared.

Harriet slammed, with slashing teeth, into Red’s leg. He rolled and dodged her, kicking at her gaping fangs.

Cassie dropped the piglet, and it ran toward the pen. Harriet whirled away from trying to kill Red and chased after her baby.

Red scrambled to his feet and rushed to the gate Cassie had so casually left open. Apparently the woman had decided she wanted to cuddle a cute but unwilling piglet. He glanced down and saw two long slits in his pant leg. Before he could check for bites, he needed to make sure the gate was secure. When he had it tightly wired shut, he turned, his temper simmering, to brace Cassie about being so reckless. He took one step toward her, and his ankle, still sore from his fall off the horse, almost gave out on him. He caught the gate to keep from falling, then decided to turn his attention to his ankle until he quit wanting to holler at his wife.

Harriet was still woofing, but she was focused on her babies.

Red bent to look for bites. He found several deep scratches on his leg but was relieved to find Harriet hadn’t drawn blood. Animal bites could turn septic, and Red had heard of many a man dying from a bite that wasn’t very serious.

This time he’d have to say something. Cassie couldn’t touch anything on his ranch, ever again. Red turned to look at her and saw her face had gone pure white. His heart clutched and his anger vanished. Could this much fear hurt the baby? He hurried as best he could over to her side, doing his best to hide his limp.

“Are you all right, Cass honey?” Red reached for her face, to study her pallor, then hesitated and wiped his hands on his pants, still filthy from being thrown off Buck, never cleaned after he fought the fire, and now worse from being rolled on the ground by Harriet. Red had a second to think of what could have happened to Cassie if Harriet had gotten to her instead of him.

“Red, Red, I’m sorry—” Her voice broke.

Red didn’t give her another second to talk. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the house, his leg only a distant, nagging ache. He got through the stubborn, heavy door with her still in his arms and settled her in a kitchen chair. He knelt down in front of her. “You’re okay, Cassie.” All he could think of was calming her down before something awful happened. He jumped up and got a dish towel and plunged it into the bucket of water he’d hauled from the cooler this morning. He wrung out the cold water, then dropped back to his knees and bathed her chalky skin.

“You’re fine, Cass. No harm done. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about Harriet. She’s fierce about her babies. No one would ever know a mama pig could be such a dangerous animal.” He felt the worst of the tension drain out of her. Her eyes, fixed wide with horror, dropped closed, and she sagged against him until her head rested on his shoulder.

They stayed like that for long minutes. Her trembling gradually eased and he felt some strength return to her muscles. She slowly raised her head.

Red sighed with relief. Her color was better. He pressed the cool cloth on her cheeks and forehead again. “Are you all right? Do you need to lie down?”

“No, I’m better now.” Cassie shook her head and straightened her spine.

He had to admire that. A mama pig could take the starch out of a mighty steely spine. “You just rest here. Let me go finish the chores. Then I’ll come back and get us some breakfast.”

“No, you shouldn’t have to do that.”

Red shuddered. Then he thought of last night’s supper. Yes, she could cook. If only she’d just agree to do nothing else.

He said, with a calm that took a Herculean effort, “So what’s for breakfast?”

“I’ll fry some eggs if that suits you.”

Red nodded. “Eggs sounds fine. Let me add some wood to the fireplace for you.”

“Thank you,” she said so breathlessly, he felt like he’d offered to slay a dragon.

“I won’t be gone long.” He patted her knee, rose from the floor, stoked the fire, and made it out the door without limping.

He didn’t bother to hide his limp once he was alone. He hobbled around finishing his chores, double-checking the gate as he always did.

He checked the hay pile a dozen times for any smoldering embers. Then he got to thinking about how close she’d snuggled up to him in the night last night. They’d started the night with a solid two feet of space between them, but in the morning he woke with her arms wrapped around his waist as if she craved his warmth. He thought of how her soft hair had fallen out of its braid and spread over his arm and across his chest.

He was far gone thinking about Cassie when he tripped over the basket of eggs Cassie had left sitting by the front door. He fell down and hurt his ankle a little worse.

She rushed to the door to see what the racket was. “Oh Red, I should never have left that basket sitting there. I was almost in the house when I noticed the pigs and went to look at them.”

Red could blame her for everything else that happened this morning, but this one was all his fault. He reassured her he was daydreaming. Not for one second did he consider telling her what he was daydreaming about.

She lost that look she got, like she was afraid of him. She seemed to believe him when he took responsibility for this latest mess, a trifling matter compared to what had gone on earlier. He picked up what was left of the eggs and limped inside with them.

The sun was just fully up and already she’d about ruined him. He’d never survive the week. If he did, it wouldn’t matter. All his animals would be dead, his buildings burned to the ground, and she’d probably find a way to lose all his ranch land and dry up his creek while she was at it.

He tossed split wood on the embers of the fire, determined to take charge of all fire-related chores from this moment forward.

“How did your shirt get torn, Red?”

He looked down. He was more of a wreck than even he’d realized. “I reckon they’re just old and have been torn for a while.” Red was an honest man, but
a while
could be weeks or it could be minutes, and the fact that one of the two outfits of clothing he owned was now halfway to rags, even though it’d been fine when he’d put it on this morning, didn’t mean it hadn’t been “a while.”

“I’ll mend your clothes if you take them off and leave them with me.”

“How about I just wear ’em for the rest of the day, and you can do them tomorrow?” He thought if she had anymore hijinks in mind, maybe he’d better stick to the clothes that were already ruined.

“My clothes from yesterday are still dirty. I’ll wash them up today and wear them tomorrow. You can mend these then.”

She smiled timidly, as if she was out of practice. “I’ll wash your clothes, Red.”

“Thanks, Cass. If you have time.” Red tried to think of the possible disasters involved in swishing pants around in water.

She’d smiled bigger, and he couldn’t think of a thing that could go wrong.

She turned to the fireplace, her charred skirt swaying. Cracking eggs into a pan, she hummed as she worked.

She was his wife. She was the most beautiful woman Red had ever seen. She was feeding him and sewing for him and doing his laundry and she’d just asked him to take his clothes off. Red decided if she wanted to kill him, he’d just sit back and thank God for every second of his life until he died.

And just in case there was a chance he wasn’t going to die, he’d make sure she forgot all about his asking her to help outside and stayed strictly in the house.

C
assie spent every minute of every day outside helping.

She was determined to learn everything as fast as she could. When Red didn’t offer to show her what to do, she struggled to figure things out herself. She’d never leave a gate open again. She stayed out of reach of the terrifying mama pig. But she watched, and she did her best to make sense of the mysterious business of ranching.

The first evening as Red came in for dinner, Cassie met him at the door and pointed to the little building built with slender saplings. “Look at how many chickens came back. You were right that they’d come home.” The chickens had wandered in a few at a time all day. Cassie had been careful not to go near them while they moseyed along, scratching for food.

Red pulled his hat off the peg after supper. “I’ll wander the woods some and see if I can find any roosting.” Red was complimentary about the beef steak she’d cooked over the open fire and didn’t complain a bit when he went out around sunset, leaving her alone.

She carefully stayed outside, on watch for his return. She guarded the closed gate to the coop so she could open it for him. He came walking in from the wooded area behind their home with his hands full of chickens. The chickens hung down at his sides. As he drew near her, they all started flapping their wings and squawking violently. Cassie used every ounce of her courage to stay on guard.

He made a lot of trips that evening, working long after dark until he’d gathered quite a few more.

“We got a lot of them back, didn’t we?” She carefully closed the inner gate before she opened the outer one.

Red passed through the gate and locked it for her with a smile. “About half.”

“Already?” That seemed like a good start to her.

“A great start,” he agreed.

They walked side by side into their cave house, and Cassie marveled that Red had never once let his temper loose on her.

She gathered the eggs the next morning with Red right at her side the whole time. She enjoyed his company. “I only got four, Red.” She waited, afraid he’d be angry. This was all her fault.

“They laid them in the woods this once. We’ll get more tomorrow. It’s no great loss, just a day’s gathering.”

She stepped close to him, the four eggs clutched in her hands. “It’ll never happen again. I promise.”

Red stayed close to the house all day. He said he didn’t need to check his herd of cattle too often. Cassie accepted that because Griff, explaining to her that they foraged for food and needed little handling, hadn’t checked his often either. Sometimes not for weeks at a time.

When he did go out riding, he made her promise faithfully to stay inside.

Red’s house was so small and easy to keep tidy, the time hung heavy on her hands if she stayed inside.

One day, when he came back from checking the herd, she was sitting at the kitchen table fidgeting.

As if he read her mind, he asked, “Would you like to explore the cave off the bedroom?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve wondered about it, but I didn’t want to go in without permission.”

Red looked at her a little oddly, and then he shrugged. “Let’s go.”

“There are dead ends down this way.” Red held her hand as they passed through the dark opening in the back bedroom. When the ground was especially uneven, he’d stay close to her side in the narrow passage, with one hand resting on her shoulder. “This part here is really steep. If being so big with the baby makes you feel off balance at all, you’d better not cross this section alone.”

“I’ll never step foot in here without you. I promise.” Cassie thought the tunnel was spooky but found she enjoyed the little thrill of fear she got from walking through it. The tunnel descended quite a ways over its length, and it opened into the rocks right near the creek where Red took Buck and Rosie to water.

Red showed her a deeper spot in the creek where he took baths. The water was bitterly cold and Cassie preferred to warm a basin in the kitchen. But Red promised that if she wanted to bathe, he’d walk her through the tunnel and leave her in privacy to brave the chill.

“See this crack, down low here?” Red knelt and passed his hand into the crevice. “Feel how cold it is. It must have water in the back of it, same as our cooler. We could store cold things in here if the cooler didn’t have enough room.”

Cassie shivered with cold and excitement to know the little details about Red’s cave. She’d have liked to explore some more but didn’t want to impose on Red’s time.

She wasn’t much help around the farmyard, because Red politely but steadfastly refused to give her a chance with milking. She chafed with the memory of Red saying she’d have to help. She knew that’s what he wanted and she was determined to abide by his wishes. He no longer urged her to help outside, but she knew he was just being kind. Whenever she did start a chore, Red would jump in and do it for her. She thought it was sweet of him, but she was determined to learn. She tried her hand at milking a few times when Red had gone off to ride herd and nearly got her head kicked off. But she could tell Rosie just kicked out of cantankerousness. There wasn’t any real meanness in it. By the end of the week she still couldn’t get milk out of Rosie, but she felt like the little cow liked her.

Most of the chickens were back. Red had quit hunting for them at night. The mama sow had…well, Harriet still wanted her dead. And Cassie decided she wanted to learn to ride Buck.

She hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell Red that she’d never been on a horse. With the exception of the terrifying trip to town on her bay to tell Seth and Muriel that Griff had died, and the ride she’d slept through with Red after their wedding, she’d always ridden in carriages. Griff had said it was unseemly for a woman to ride, even sidesaddle.