Petticoat Ranch (29 page)

“Let’s go down to the house,” Clay said to Adam.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Edwards, sir.”

“I’m not Cliff. Sophie isn’t lying to you.”

“Why, I know as sure as I’m standing here that Sophie would never lie, Mr. Edwards.” Adam followed Clay to his horse, as if he wanted to be handy to catch Sophie when Clay dropped her. “But I’m thinking she might be a bit overset from all this commotion, and it mixed up her thinking. Don’t be mad at her for forgetting you. There’s no call to be
angry with her. I’m sure everything will come back to her real soon.”

Clay hung on to his patience. This was the second time Adam had referred to Cliff ’s temper and that Cliff aimed that temper at his wife and children often enough that Adam was trying to placate him.

“I’ll explain everything to you once we get home.” Clay’s Appaloosa stood with its reins dangling. Clay shifted Sophie around so he could catch the horse. “For right now we need to get my disobedient, little wife home so she can
rest
.”

S 
I X T E E N
           

S
ophie needed to get home all right. But she had no intention of resting or doing anything else Clay told her to do.

And she didn’t like him calling her
disobedient
either!

Before she could tell him so, Clay asked, “Where’d you tie up Hector?”

Sophie got very busy straightening her riding skirt. Clay leaned down so he was in her line of vision. “Do you mean to tell me you climbed all this way on foot? You’re miles from the cabin!” Clay looked like he wanted to explode.

Sophie sighed and braced herself.

Instead of hollering at her, he shook his head with disgust and set her up on his Appaloosa. He was very gentle, considering his clenched jaw and the bright red color of his face.

She would have explained to him that she couldn’t rightly go to bed when she had company, but Clay turned his attention to getting Adam a ride.

“I’ll be glad to walk down this ol’ hill, Mr. Edwards,” Adam said.

Clay swung up behind Sophie and pulled her onto his lap. He growled at Adam, “Call me Clay.”

Adam took a worried look at Sophie, where she lay in her husband’s arms. “Clay it is.”

Sophie saw that Buff and Luther had led four horses out of the woods after they’d tied up the outlaws. Clay’s two friends had full beards
and were dressed in fur and leather. They looked like every mountain man Sophie had ever heard tell of. They’d been throwing a man over each horse, until they noticed Adam was on foot.

Buff unceremoniously tossed Jesse and Percy on the same blue roan and jerked his thumb at the sorrel. “Ride this ’un.”

Adam took a couple of steps toward the now unoccupied horse then stopped. “Let’s toss ’em both on the sorrel, and I’ll ride the roan.”

“What difference does it make which horse you ride, Adam?” Sophie asked.

“The difference is the roan is mine.” Adam strode toward his horse.

For the first time, in the fading light of evening, Sophie got a look at Adam from behind. “What happened to your back?”

Adam grabbed both men by the scruff of the neck, dragged them off the horse, and let them fall to the ground with a little more force than was necessary. He didn’t answer Sophie’s question. He just led the sorrel over beside the men.

Adam didn’t ask for help. Sophie couldn’t remember him ever asking for help. But Sophie could see that Adam was taxing the limits of his strength. Clay’s friends stepped in and loaded the men before Adam could get to them.

Adam went back to the roan, and the horse whickered softly at him, clearly greeting an old friend. Adam petted the horse’s neck. “Missed ya, Blue.”

Then Adam turned to look between Clay and his two friends. “There’s a C-shaped scar under this horse’s belly, and there’s a R
OCKING
M brand on the other side of her. . .the side I haven’t seen yet. She’s my horse. That brand is registered to me.”

None of the men bothered to check out the scar on the horse’s belly, but Sophie could see the R
OCKING
M from where she was sitting. She could also see the look in Adam’s eyes. Cold—bitter cold—and furious.

Adam had endured Cliff ’s constant criticism until the ranch was well started. Then, when he knew Sophie and the girls had a solid roof
over their heads and land and cattle to support them, Adam had left because Cliff had taken his sullen dislike of Adam out on Sophie and the girls. Adam, who was so politely confused over Clay looking like Cliff, was a man of patience and kindness and wisdom. The cold in his eyes didn’t go with any of it.

Buff tugged on the edges of his deerskin coat. “Stolen?”

“Stolen by the men who lynched my three partners, shot me in the back, and laid a whip on me for the first time in my life.”

Sophie gasped.

“Not too many black men could make that claim. But I could.” Adam ran his hand over the gunshot in his side. “Till I ran afoul of this gang.”

Clay’s arms tightened around Sophie, or she might’ve jumped off the horse and gone to Adam right then. Clay whispered to her, “Leave it for now.”

Adam swung up on the roan’s back. “This blanket strapped on the back of this saddle is mine, and the Winchester I carried out of the woods with me belonged to my partner, William. He carved it. I just took it off the sorrel’s saddle a few minutes ago.”

“Reckon that makes it yours.” Luther slipped a foot into his stirrup.

“These four ain’t all the men. Four alone could never have taken us. There were at least twenty.” Adam gave the prisoners a contemptuous glare. “Back-shootin’ cowards, every one of ’em!”

“There were around twenty men in the posse that came after Cliff.” Sophie twisted in Clay’s strong arms to keep her eye on Adam. The look in his eyes frightened her.

Luther settled on his horse. “Four down, sixteen to go. We’d best hang around for a spell, Buff.”

Buff grunted.

Adam turned to Sophie. The icy rage faded from his eyes as he looked between her and Clay. She saw concern plain on his face. She had to hold back a smile.

“Clay is Cliff ’s twin.” Sophie patted her husband on the shoulder
as if that would somehow convince Adam. “He came hunting news of his brother and stayed on to help me when he found out his brother was dead.”

“Cliff never had no family, Sophie girl.” Adam spoke soothingly as someone who was facing a lunatic with an ax might. “You ’member how he talked about it, what with wanting a son so all-fired bad?”

Clay tensed behind her, but Sophie didn’t think much about what Adam said. Cliff ’s wish for a son had been a lament made long and loud with no care for who might hear. She patted Clay’s arm to get him to relax and continued trying to persuade Adam. “Cliff and Clay were separated when they were very young. Cliff didn’t know he had a brother.”

Adam studied Clay for a long moment. “When I came into the area a few days ago, I scouted the lay of the land. I saw you from a distance. I took you to be other than Mr. Edwards by the way you sat a horse and worked the ranch, and I never got close enough to see different. Then, up close, I decided I’d been mistaken, and Mr. Edwards had just picked up Texas ways at last. But I was right all along. You’re not him.”

Sophie heard a snort from Adam that sounded. . .satisfied. She didn’t want to think about that, so she thought of her husband. He’d been stabbed. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten.

“Let me look at your arm, Clay.”

“Twenty men in a lynch mob chasing after him, and Clay has to stop to get a scratch looked at.” Luther tugged on his reins and the saddle creaked as he pointed his horse down the mountain. “This might be more fun than the Rockies after all.”

Buff chuckled and mounted up.

“With twenty men on our trail?” Adam asked shortly.

There was a second of silence. “Not twenty anymore,” Buff said.

Adam looked at the prisoners hanging across their horses. “Sixteen.”

“Sixteen to four,” Luther said. “That’s only four apiece.”

“Fair fight then.” Adam nodded.

Sophie was tearing at the blood-soaked slit in Clay’s sleeve. Clay
pulled her away from it and started his horse moving ahead of the others. “I’ll keep.”

“Clay, don’t you think we should bandage it?” Sophie tried to squirm around to see the arm Clay was using to support her back. He’d lifted her on the horse and swung on himself, never showing a bit of pain.

Luther started to laugh.

Clay glared over his shoulder, and the laugh turned into a coughing fit. Then Clay squeezed her so tight it got her attention—and cut off her air. “Hush, woman.”

Sophie didn’t know what to make of Clay’s tone. It was very dictatorial for being so quiet. She hadn’t heard him talk like that much lately, not since he’d more or less ordered her to marry him. She considered that his friends might be an undue influence on him. Still, they’d saved her life. She’d have to make allowances.

“We should at least get the bleeding stopped.”

It was Buff ’s turn to cough, and even Adam cleared his throat for a bit too long.

“Sophie McClellen,” Clay said so grimly, it got her undivided attention.

“Yes, Clay?” She was surprised she had such an obedient tone at her disposal.

“If you can’t keep your mouth shut, what’s say we talk about what you were doing up here when I told you to stay in the house and rest!” He’d started out whispering, but by the time he was done, he’d built to a roar.

Sophie looked around to see how Adam and Clay’s friends were taking this. Clay had moved out first, so the others were strung out behind them. Clay’s broad shoulders blocked her view.

She sat up abruptly, ready to put him in his place. He had no right to speak to her—to humiliate her—like this in front of his friends and Adam. And she wasn’t about to lie placidly in his arms while he berated her. Clay didn’t let her go, and they had a very brief tussle that she was doomed to lose from the first instant.

Finally she subsided against his chest, exhausted and slightly dizzy from the effort. She had no intention of letting him talk to her like that, and she had no intention of going down to the house to rest. And she would have made that clear to this tyrant she’d married if she could just keep her heavy eyelids from dropping closed.

“Can we please talk about this later?” She didn’t mean to be pathetic. She had no respect for the tricks she’d seen women use against men. Her girls cried, but she wasn’t prone to it herself. And she didn’t bat her eyelashes or pout or nag. But she saw the anger leave Clay’s expression, replaced with worry.

“Are you all right? You’re not going to pass out again, are you?” His brow furrowed as he studied her face.

That’s when Sophie decided a few women’s wiles might just be the very thing. “I’m dizzy again. You were right, Clay. I need rest. I should never have gone out so far. I’m sorry I disobeyed you.” She looked up at him, and without really meaning to, she was sure she felt her eyelashes bat something fierce. It didn’t take much effort to make tears well up in her eyes. All she had to do was think of Clay’s wounded arm.

“Please don’t shout at me anymore.” Sophie buried her head in Clay’s chest and hugged him tight around the middle.

Clay’s arms closed around her. “I’m sorry I yelled. Just please don’t take such chances again. I’m glad you were there this time.” He tapped on her chin, and she raised her head to look at him. “You saved my life today, Sophie. Maybe Adam and Luther and Buff woulda come in time, but it woulda been a close thing. So I’m glad you were there. But thinking you might be shot by those men. . .” His arms tightened around her. “Sophie, I—I don’t think I could stand it if something happened to you. I want you to quit trying to do so much. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it for you. I want you to take care of yourself. Please promise me.”

Sophie didn’t have to fake any tears. They were just there. She reached up and kissed him. She was fully aware that, while she might fail to tell him the exact, whole, absolute, entire truth on occasion,
giving a promise was something else again. She wasn’t a woman to break her word. Even knowing that, she didn’t hesitate to give it. “I promise, Clay. I’ll only do what chores you say I can do. I know you’ll take care of me.”

Clay looked down at her. He was so worried, so kind. Sophie was ashamed of the sneaking she’d been doing. She was going to have to tell the girls she’d been wrong and see that they didn’t learn any bad lessons from their ma. She was going to turn over a new leaf.

She turned her face up, looked at him squarely, and repeated firmly, “I’m going to do as you ask. I promise.”

She was going to give the sweet man the wife he deserved.