Petticoat Ranch (27 page)

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 his 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.

Sophie gasped. “Be careful.”

The pain of pulling the knife out almost buckled his knees, but he ignored it. There were more important things to do.

“It wasn’t deep. It just caught the skin.” Clay looked at the knife that had hit him. It was razor sharp and thin as a nail. “This is nice. I
reckon I’ve always wanted a knife like this.”