Petticoat Ranch (11 page)

So he’d fought until the fighting was done, and after the war, he’d ignored his instinct to return home and headed east to search for his brother. He’d received a telegraph somewhere along on his quest that told him Pa had been killed. Luther had given him all the details he
needed in a four-line telegraph, including that the killers, four of them, were dead and Pa had found a good strike and left it to Clay. Having money didn’t make up for losing his pa. If anything, it made it worse, as if he’d profited from his father’s death.

It had hit Clay hard to realize he was alone in the world, and finding Cliff became twice as important. He’d gone all the way to Boston. Once there it took over a month to find his mother, because it didn’t occur to him that she would have gone back to her maiden name. When at last he found that out and visited her grave, he’d started searching for his brother under the name of Edwards and found out he’d gone to Texas over a decade ago.

Clay had taken the time to track down evidence of Cliff ’s war service, because once he headed for Texas, he didn’t want to have to backtrack to the East if his brother had abandoned Texas as he’d abandoned the mountains. The men who had served with Cliff at Gettysburg knew little about him. They described him as stiff-necked and moody but smart and dedicated to the war effort. A few of them heard him speak of a west Texas ranch.

Clay had, by now, become stubborn to the point of obsession. He had gone to Texas, started in the farthest west corner of the panhandle, and worked his way east. He’d been doggedly at his search for two years when he met up with a Texas Ranger who was all heated up about a gang of vigilantes who had been terrorizing people all along the Pecos River, especially in the area north of Fort Davis.

That’s when Clay had mentioned Cliff Edwards, and the ranger had told him his brother was dead. There was nothing about a wife and four children in the story.

From the obsession with finding Cliff, a new obsession grew: finding his killers. Clay, who had spent time scouting for the army in Wyoming and later in New Mexico before going to fight the war, had volunteered to work with the Texas Rangers this one time to track down Cliff’s killers.

And that had led him here. Clay studied the barn and corral, proud
of the sturdy construction that spoke so well of his brother. Sally skipped along beside him. The other girls were lingering around the yard, maybe a bit shyer than Sally but just as sweet.

He said to the gaggle of girls around his ankles, “The banker said there’s a passle of cattle run wild in the hill country around the ranch, most of ’em ours but some of ’em maverick, so they go to whoever can catch ’em an’ slap on a brand. I’m gonna ride out and see what the property looks like and find the best place to start. I’ll be back at dark. Have your ma get supper.” He settled his Stetson firmly on his head and went to catch up his horse.

“Can I come with you, Uncle Clay?” Sally asked, her hands clutched together as if she were begging.

Clay hadn’t thought of that. He shrugged his shoulders. “I reckon there’s no harm in it. You’ll have to stay out a long time,” he warned. “And you’ll have to ride double with me. I ’spect you’re a mite young to handle your own horse.”

Sally grinned and promised, “I’ll stay out till you’re ready to come home. No matter how late that is, Uncle Clay.”

Clay said, “Okay, you can come on one condition. . .”

“Anything,” Sally said, clapping her hands together joyfully.

“If you come, you gotta call me ‘Pa.’ ” Clay tried to sound stern, but a grin broke out on his face as he said it.

Sally’s eyes got as bright and round as double eagle coins. For a second she looked so awestruck Clay was afraid she was going to swoon or something. Then she said fervently, “I’d be right proud to call you ‘Pa,’ Pa.”

“Can we call you ‘Pa,’ too?” Beth asked.

Clay drawled, “Well, I reckon that’s what I am now, your pa, so I’d say you’d better get to calling me that.”

The girls all giggled and squirmed. Clay lifted Sally up off the ground and plunked her in front of him. He had a fight on his hands to wrestle her skirt and petticoat down around his Appaloosa mare’s sides, and the horse didn’t like it none too well. Clay knew how to handle a
horse though, so after a bit of a battle of wills, Sally was settled in, and they headed out.

“You other girls want to come along on Hector? You older girls can probably make him mind.”

“We’d better help Ma with the moving in,” Mandy said practically.

“But I’d like to come some other time,” Beth said.

“Fine.” Clay wrapped his arm around Sally’s stomach when she twisted around to smile at him.

“We’ll have a good supper waiting for you, Pa.” Mandy giggled when she called him “Pa.”

Clay nodded. “Obliged, darlin’.”

He turned his Appaloosa to the north, toward the rugged foothills where the high plateau country climbed into a spur of the Rockies. Plenty of places for a longhorn to hide in this terrain, but Clay had seen worse growing up in the northern Rockies. This just looked like some rolling hills to him. He rode eagerly out to explore the land that was now his home.

Sally started talking before they were out of the yard. Shocked at first, after years of riding with taciturn soldiers and trappers and cowpokes, Clay got to liking the sound of her little voice. He found he didn’t have to say much to keep her talking. Whatever she said, it all boiled down to one thing: Her pa was a giant of a man who could do no wrong and whom she loved with every ounce of her heart. And now she loved her new pa just as much.

Clay was humbled and proud, and when he found evidence of a large herd of cattle coming to water at several springs, he realized he’d bought himself a fine ranch. All in all, a perfect day. Just maybe the best day of his life.

There never was a worse day landed on the shoulders of a single woman who had walked on the face of this earth!

Sophie tried to tell herself Eve had a worse day when she got herself kicked out of the Garden. And Lot’s wife had to have been unhappy about being turned to salt. That was a long time ago, though. What was happening to Sophie was happening right now—and to her! She would put it up against the worst that had been handed out to anyone.

And the day showed no signs of ending. She’d been insulted for breaking her back keeping her children alive, in a country that chewed hard on regular folks and swallowed weaklings whole.

She’d been married, without really being consulted about it, to a man she didn’t even know. Or so far—like!

She’d been dumped in a house with next to no food and been ordered to make supper.

Well, she’d show that man what she was made of! She made supper by taking Hector out and shooting a whitetail deer. She’d had snares set in the thicket that kept her supplied with pheasant, grouse, and rabbit. But this animal was a lot more to deal with. She knew how to skin and gut a deer, but she had no desire to do it the first night in her new home.

The deer had been the first game she found, and she’d been looking for a long while before she found it. Clay would have been her first choice of shooting targets, but he wasn’t available, so she settled for the deer. Her hunting had proved difficult because, remembering the vigilantes, she had no choice but to take the girls along with her when she went. And that brought her to the worst of it. She was missing a daughter. That ornery man had kidnapped Sally!

What in the world had Clay been thinking, taking Sally with him without asking permission or at least telling Sophie.

And all the girls were calling him “Pa” now. She wanted to scold them and tell them Clay McClellen wasn’t their pa and he never would be. She wanted to say they were showing disrespect to the memory of their real pa by tossing him aside so quickly. But she held back the angry words. It was Clay she wanted to punish, not her girls.

After shooting the deer, she hung it from a handy tree to bleed it
and gutted it where it hung. She then slung it over Hector’s shoulders, got the girls settled on Hector, and walked back to the ranch house, leading the whole bunch of them.

Then she had to find firewood. She didn’t have so much as an ax, so she had to find sticks that were small enough to fit in the fireplace or were thin enough to break. That wasn’t too hard; there was a nice stand of trees near the house. But it took time to get it done.

It was full dark by the time she had venison steaks roasting on a spit in the fireplace. She also was up to her elbows in a bloody deer carcass, cutting it up for jerking.

“Pa’s home,” Beth shrieked with pleasure.

All the girls dashed off to greet him. Sophie saw Clay set a very bedraggled but cheerful Sally on the ground and then ride to the stable, with the girls dancing in his wake.

Sophie ground her teeth together and turned back to her butchering with a vengeance.

Clay came around back with Sally on one hip and Laura on the other. Beth and Mandy were close behind. He studied her and her blood-soaked apron for a long minute. Then he said, “When’s supper gonna be ready?”

Sophie didn’t throw the knife at him by sheer willpower. She said through clenched teeth, “Mandy, check the steaks broiling in the fireplace. Beth, get out those biscuits we brought along.”

“Good. I’m hungry.” Then Clay added with a smile, “You’re sure a pretty sight.”

Sophie looked up, and her grip tightened menacingly on the knife. Clay didn’t seem to notice. “You’re sure making a mess of that buck. Leave it and I’ll finish it later.”

Sophie spoke through gritted teeth. “No thanks!”

Clay shrugged, as if he hadn’t even noticed her outrageously sarcastic tone of voice. “Okay, if you want to do it. Come on in to supper when you’re ready.”

He turned and left her with two more hours of work to do on the
deer! And the sun already fully set! She almost cried, which would have been ridiculous. She never cried. She was so tired and so hungry. She settled for her usual pastime when she was trying to live through the next backbreaking minute. Prayer. The usual prayer. “Give me strength, Lord. Help me, help me, help me.”

Luther kicked at the fire all of a sudden and stood up in a huff. “Best be movin’,” he muttered in disgust. He’d almost let himself relax before the pestering voice started in again.

“You’re sure in an all-fired hurry,” Buff grumbled, bolting the rest of his meal.

“Reckon,” Luther said. It was the first time they’d stopped to eat all day.

Buff sighed until Luther thought the hair on his beard would part. But he didn’t complain.

Luther had never intended to sleep this early anyhow. There was starlight aplenty, and the boy needed ’em.

They’d put a hundred miles behind them today, which was no small trick with a game horse and flat land. But in the mountains it was brutal, and their horses had taken the brunt. They needed the breather.

“Need horses,” Buff said.

Luther just shook his head and wondered why Buff was so consarned chatty. Luther knew what was needed as well as the next man. He clucked his horse into a trot.

S 
E V E N
                 

C
lay tried to wait up for her. She finally came in so late, though, that he’d fallen asleep in his chair. She deliberately slammed the door. He started awake then studied her wet hair for a second before he asked drowsily, “Did you wash up in the creek?”