Petticoat Ranch (35 page)

“How long have you been in Mosqueros, Miss Calhoun?” Sophie asked. “Is this your first year?”

Miss Calhoun chewed thoroughly and swallowed. “I started with a winter term. I took over when the last teacher married Mr. Badje.”

Sophie remembered the banker’s very young wife and nodded. “How do you like it?”

Miss Calhoun lay her fork down daintily and folded her hands in her lap. “There were far fewer students for the winter term. The school is growing.”

Sophie noticed Miss Calhoun didn’t answer her question. “More people are moving into the area.” Sophie then thought of all the men who had proposed to her two years ago. “There weren’t many women here when we first settled. I know the Reeveses are newcomers.” The minute Sophie mentioned the Reeveses, she regretted it. She remembered the tense expression on Miss Calhoun’s face in church. She was reminded of it because that exact look reappeared.

Miss Calhoun made an effort to answer; then with a sudden fumbling movement that was at odds with her usual manner, she dragged a handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her lips. At first Sophie thought the young woman was trying to physically hold
words inside herself that she thought were better left unsaid. Then she saw that Miss Calhoun was crying. There was no sobbing, but a tear ran down Miss Calhoun’s cheek, and she took an occasional broken breath.

The whole table fell silent. Sophie saw the girls all stare wide-eyed at the sight of the very proper teacher losing her composure. Sophie finally got past her surprise and jumped up from the table. She wrapped her arms around Miss Calhoun’s trembling shoulders. “What is it, Grace? Did something happen? Are the boys too much trouble at school?”

Miss Calhoun didn’t correct Sophie’s use of her name, which told Sophie just how upset she was. Miss Calhoun shook her head slightly, then shrugged, then nodded. At last the trembling subsided. Sophie thought Miss Calhoun cried more neatly than anyone she’d ever seen.

“I’m going to be fired,” Miss Calhoun whispered.

Sophie gasped. She’d heard only good things about how the school was run. “Daniel Reeves doesn’t like the way you handle his children?”

Miss Calhoun shook her head. “It isn’t him. It’s that since those boys have come, everything is in chaos. I don’t seem to be able to make them behave. And now the other boys are beginning to imitate their unruliness, and the girls are being neglected. It’s been pandemonium for two solid weeks. The school board made a surprise inspection on Friday.”

Miss Calhoun’s voice faltered. “They found everything in an uproar, and even though the children settled down once they knew the men were from the board, it was too late. I’m sure I won’t be asked back after this term. And I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Miss Calhoun’s voice broke again, and Sophie heard real fear under the tears.

“It’s taking every cent I have to live,” Miss Calhoun sobbed. “I have no savings and no family to go back to.”

“I’m sure the board understands that it’s not your fault. Anyone would have trouble making those children behave. A new teacher will be in the same situation.”

“I think they’re looking for a man. That’s probably for the best.”
Miss Calhoun made a supreme effort and made a tidy swipe of the handkerchief over her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She squared her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have made such a spectacle of myself.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t get over the shock of crying in public. Then she moved her shoulders restlessly, and Sophie realized Miss Calhoun wanted her to move away.

Sophie obliged and sat back down at the table. Miss Calhoun turned back to her meal.

“You are not going to be fired, Miss Calhoun,” Sophie said. “One unruly family shouldn’t be able to drive out a good teacher. We will figure something out, and we just might start with a visit to Daniel Reeves to insist he take his sons in hand.”

Miss Calhoun looked terrified. “Oh, please don’t do that.”

Sophie reached out to pat Miss Calhoun’s hand, but Miss Calhoun jerked away. She pushed her chair back from the table. “It was wrong of me to bother you with my little problems. I’ve just got to try harder to manage my classroom. This is my problem, and I’ll solve it myself.”

She stood. “Thank you for the meal. I hope the girls can make it to school for the fall term. For who–whoever is the teacher.” Miss Calhoun’s voice broke. “I need to get back.” She turned and ran out of the ranch house.

“Wait, Grace.” Sophie dashed for the front door in time to see Miss Calhoun untie her horse and swing herself up on his back.

“We thought you’d spend the afternoon with us, Miss Calhoun,” Sophie called out to her.

Grace was already guiding her horse away. She called over her shoulder, “Thank you again.”

Sophie heard Clay call out from the side of the house where he sat eating with the other men, “Miss Calhoun, someone needs to ride back with you.”

Miss Calhoun was far enough away she didn’t hear him—or she pretended she didn’t. Sophie suspected it was the latter.

“Luke, Andy, ride with her. Eustace, Miguel, Rio, get ahead of her
and check the trail around her. Hurry.” Clay came around the house.

There must have been horses already saddled, because there were men riding out within seconds. Only then did Sophie breathe a sigh of relief.

“Why’d she leave so fast?” Clay walked up to stand beside Sophie.

“It must have been something I said,” Sophie said weakly.

Clay shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”

Sophie thought of the promises she’d made to God the last two weeks that prevented her from replying scathingly to Clay’s observation. “Clay, you are a lucky man.”

T 
W E N T Y
            

H
e agreed when she told him he was a lucky man, but something about the tone of her voice warned him. “What do you mean by that?” He didn’t find out because Sophie had stormed back into the house.

He shrugged and returned to the men lounging in the shade on the east side of the ranch house telling tall tales.

“It don’t suit me none, Clay, to sit back and let the sheriff handle this.” Whitey pulled out his bowie knife and began whittling on a whip handle he was making from cedar branch. “I say we find out where the rest of the gang is holed up and root ’em out. Let’s get this over an’ done.”

“It’s not just the sheriff, Whitey.” Clay pushed his plate aside and sat on the edge of the porch. He stared at the ground between his splayed knees. “The rangers are working on it, too. They’re good men. They know we’re here if needed, and if we go off hunting on our own, we may get in their way. Our job is to protect this ranch and the women. I don’t want to spread ourselves thin and leave this place unguarded.”

Whitey nodded. The smell of cedar cut the smell of Texas dust kicked up by the departed horse.

“A few of us could go.” Adam sat up straight on the porch steps a few feet down from Clay. His every moved reminded Clay of the wicked cuts on his back. “We’d leave plenty of men back here.”

“Reckon I could scout back up in the hills.” Luther smoothed his full, black beard in a motion Clay could remember from his earliest
childhood. “I saw what direction those varmints come from.”

Clay knew how good Luther and Buff were on a trail. “Waiting pits me against my own instincts. It doesn’t suit me to sit by and wait while someone else takes care of a threat to my family. But I’ve got other instincts telling me to stay close to Sophie and the girls.”

“It’s a fearful thing to hear a man talkin’ ’bout killin’ a woman the way those polecats were.” Buff shook his head.

“It was the cold-bloodedest thing I’d ever heard,” Clay agreed. “And we know those men we caught weren’t ramrodding this operation.”

He looked from one man to the next. Every one of them got his meaning. If those men came for Sophie once, they would come again. Sure, they’d been after Clay, too, but a man learned to look out for himself. A woman was defenseless.

“I still owe those men,” Adam said. “And I mean to pay ’em back every penny.”

Clay heard the depth of rage in Adam’s simple announcement. He looked sideways at the gaunt, scarred man and felt the echo of his own anger. Adam had lost friends. Clay had lost a brother.

“Right now we’ve got to concentrate on the living, Adam,” Clay said. “We make sure no one else is hurt before we start taking old sins outta their hides.”

Clay saw Adam tamp down hard on his anger. Adam rubbed absently at the bullet wound on his side. “I reckon it don’t matter when.”

Clay felt the same way.

“Hating can eat away at a man.” Luther shifted his weight to get more comfortable. His boots scraped across the porch. “It can warp a man until his family don’t recognize him.”

Clay jerked one shoulder in a guilty shrug. “I’m working on it.”

“I wonder if hatin’s what turned Judd Mason into the monster he is?” Luther asked.

“I know the hunger I got in me to hurt him, hurt him bad, and all those he rides with is a powerful sin.” Clay clenched his hands between his spread knees.

The men sat silently and slowly they relaxed to contemplate hate and revenge and the whereabouts of a dangerous man. All but Adam.

After a long while Adam said, “It’s a powerful sin all right.” Quietly he added, “It won’t be my first.”

With Adam, Luther, and Buff working alongside the other men, Clay expected the cattle to all be brought in closer to the ranch house by the end of the day Monday, with plenty of men left for guard duty.

Sophie had tried to get Adam to spend the day being nursed and coddled, but he wouldn’t spare himself any of the hard labor. Clay marveled at Adam’s knowledge of the ranch and his ideas for its development. It was plain to see that Adam loved this place as if it were his own.

Clay laid the last brand on a stray and told the men he was riding up to the house for a spell.

Sheriff Everett came riding into the ranch later on that afternoon. He rode straight into the barn where Clay was hanging up his C B
AR
branding iron. The man was exhausted and carried more trail dust on his clothes than Clay.

“Howdy, Josiah. You look like you’ve had a hard day of it.”

“I’ve spent more time in the saddle than out of it since Saturday. The men we locked up all told the same story, and we rode straight out to the vigilante camp. They’d hightailed it.”

“As long as those men are running loose, Sophie is in danger. You heard what they said about her knowing too much.” Clay took off his hat, and with a dejected pass of his arm, he wiped a coating of sweat off his forehead. He’d worked up a sweat branding, but this wasn’t hard-work sweat. This was fear.

The sheriff swung down off his buckskin, and Clay walked alongside as the sheriff led his horse to the watering trough.

“That was before we caught these men, though.” Everett’s plodding feet sounded almost as loudly as his horse’s hooves. “Now that we have
’em, Mason has a lot longer list of people who can identify him. There’s no point anymore in comin’ after one little woman. And there’s no way he can buy this ranch now, so there’s no reason to go after you. My gut tells me they’ve started running and they won’t stop. I think they’ve quit the country. The rangers are still on their trail.”

They reached the water trough, and Clay stopped and crossed his arms. “It doesn’t set right with me to stand aside while someone else takes care of my problems.”

The sheriff hung his hat on the horse’s saddle horn and dunked his head in the water with a rough splash at the same time his horse was drinking. Everett scrubbed at his face, then came up dripping wet and brushed both hands over his streaming hair until it was pushed straight back. The water soaked his shirt, but the sheriff sighed with pure pleasure. “You’ve more than made yourself clear. I know you’re holding back because the rangers and I asked you to.”

“That’s not the only reason I’m holding back,” Clay said.

The sheriff asked, “Why else?”

Clay ignored him. He wasn’t about to get into a debate about the hate that ate inside him and how he was trying to battle the surge of pleasure he got when he thought of smashing Mason’s face with his bare hands. “I’m not about to relax my guard just because your instincts tell you Mason is on the run.”