Petticoat Ranch (37 page)

“Like a siege,” Sophie said.

Clay caressed her face again. “And like a siege, there’ll be a lot of waiting but not much fighting.”

Sophie leaned into his hand. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

Clay grinned at her. “I wouldn’t be able to go if you hadn’t said that.”

The girls had lined up beside her, and now in a rush, they all said, “Good-bye, Pa. Be careful.”

He gave them each a quick kiss on the forehead. “I will.”

He turned just as Adam came out of the barn, leading two horses. Clay walked to the horse and swung himself up. Adam mounted his roan at the same time. Clay waved and Adam tugged the brim of his hat and they rode away, the deputy leading.

A group of the hands, including Luther, came riding around from the corral and fell into a line behind Clay.

Sophie didn’t see Whitey in amongst them, but then she didn’t see much through her tears. She had a sudden flash of the memory of Cliff riding off to war. It had been the saddest day of her life. He’d come back, but he’d been changed, his youthful charm forever wiped away by the brutality of war.

This was nothing by comparison. Still, Clay’s retreating back brought a wash of tears to her eyes, and she sent him along with a prayer for God to protect him. She prayed it fervently and remembered how Luther and Adam had been tuned in to her prayers. “Yes, Lord,” she murmured, “help him.”

She saw Luther look back over his shoulder and tip his hat to her. She smiled. She pushed back the tears and waved cheerfully. Luther shook his head like he thought she was getting to be a plumb nuisance.

“Nuisance or not, I’m not about to quit praying, Luther.”

He was too far away to hear her, but somehow she thought he’d gotten the message.

Whitey and Buff came around the corner of the cabin just then. Sophie looked at the two of them. They’d been forged in different fires. Buff in the bitter cold mountains, Whitey in the heat and dust of a hundred Texas cattle ranches. But they had been burned down to the same hard iron. Sophie was glad they were here, and at the same time she wished they were with Clay, watching his back.

“I’m posting Andy, Luke, Rio, and Miguel in the hills as lookouts,” Whitey called out to her. “They’ll all have a clear view of the ranch, and they can be down in a five minutes. Buff and me’ll stay up close. It sounds like they’ve got all of Mason’s men treed, but no one really knows how many were riding with him. There could be others skulking about. There are plenty of us to keep watch but not ’nough to do much else. The boss said to tell you we’ll need a meal, ma’am. Iffen you don’t mind feeding us.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Sophie hastened to assure him.

Whitey gave a satisfied jerk of his head. “We’ll eat in shifts.”

Sophie said, “Supper will be ready for the first shift in half an hour.”

“Obliged, ma’am.” Whitey headed back to the bunkhouse.

Buff lagged behind and turned to Sophie when Whitey disappeared around the cabin. “Prepare for the worst an’ you’ve got a right to hope for the best. That’s what we’re doing here, Miz McClellen.”

Sophie smiled at Buff. It was the longest speech she’d ever heard
him give. “I’ll do the same, Mr. Buff.”

Buff ducked his head. “Ah, Miz McClellen, it’s just Buff. There ain’t no mister about it.”

“It’s just Sophie, Buff. You’re my husband’s good friend, and I’d be pleased if you called me that.”

“Ain’t likely I’ll ever call you much’a nothin’.” Buff jerked one shoulder.

Sophie smiled. “Well, just in case you do. . .”

Buff nodded and almost managed a smile, but Sophie thought his face seemed close to cracking. He stopped the smile, grunted at her, then turned and followed Whitey.

T 
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C
lay rode away, trying to make peace with leaving Sophie and the girls. He wanted to stay and watch after them himself, but he also had a powerful urge to help the sheriff clean up the mess that surrounded the McClellen/Edwards ranch.

The group rode to Sawyer Canyon at an easy lope that spared the horses, while making good time. As they drew nearer, Clay’s tension increased. It didn’t help that he rode alongside Adam. The black man wound tighter and tighter until Clay half expected the man to explode. He urged his horse closer to Adam’s. “We’re not going into this looking for revenge.”

“I know that.” Adam’s jaw was so tense it barely moved when he spoke.

The summer breeze sifted the dust being kicked up by the riders ahead of them. “Ever since you heard they had Mason cornered, you’ve had the look of a man ready to go charging in, guns blazing, to get that payback you’ve been wanting.”

Adam looked at Clay.

Clay was stunned by the cold fury in his eyes.

“I didn’t come out here looking to mess up the sheriff ’s standoff,” Adam said. “I know how this is going to go down.”

“And you can live with that?” Clay drew in a long breath, as he silently asked himself the same question. The smell of the Texas dirt and the working horses steadied his temper. “You can sit and wait until
Mason gives himself up?”

“I haven’t led the easiest life, Clay. I was a free black man living in the South before slavery ended.” Adam gave a humorless laugh. “To protect a young girl I love as if she were my own daughter, I put up with a man who used me to survive and hated me for it.”

“My brother?”

Adam didn’t answer. Clay wondered how much Sophie had whitewashed Cliff ’s true nature out of kindness.

“I fought for the North,” Adam went on as if Clay hadn’t interrupted. “Many’s the time I stood and fought with men who gave me less respect than they gave their horses. I rode the borders of Indian territory, rounding up longhorn cattle that were three and four generations wild and as mean as any grizzly bear you’ve ever heard tell of.”

Adam subsided for a moment, then he added, with an icy rage that was more frightening for being spoken quietly, “I watched my friends die at the hands of thieving cowards. And I walked barefoot three hundred miles with my back lashed open and a bullet wound in my side. So don’t ask me if I can live with watching a man being hanged when I want him to die by my own hand.”

Adam inhaled deeply. “I’ve found out I can live with purt’ near anything. I know what I want is wrong. I’m a man who walked halfway across an almighty big state because God let me hear a woman’s prayers. I know right and wrong. I know the hate burning in me is sin.”

“And yet,” Clay said, “I can see the fight inside you to control your desire for vengeance.”

“Yeah, I ain’t doing a very good job of covering it up.”

“I have my own need to hurt these men.” Clay tightened his grip on the reins, and his horse whickered in protest. He forced his hand to relax. “They killed my brother and threatened my wife.”

Luther rode up between them at the moment, and even though he’d been lagging toward the back of the line of riders, Clay could see at a glance that Luther knew exactly what they’d been talking about.

“Leave room for God’s wrath.” Luther settled into the loping pace
of his horse. With his wild beard and long hair, his coarse clothing and easy riding style, Luther looked for all the world like he and his horse were a single living creature.

“What’s that mean?” Adam looked sharply at him.

Clay already knew. He’d had it preached to him just a couple of weeks back.

Luther edged his horse in between Clay’s Appaloosa and Adam’s roan. “I think Mason’s got a lot to answer for when he meets his Maker. Nothing you can do to him will begin to match that.”

“But it would make me feel so much better.” Clay knew that wasn’t true even as he said it.

“Leave room for God’s wrath.” Luther dropped back.

“He’s right.” Clay tipped the brim of his hat back on his head with one gloved thumb.

“I know.” Adam looked over his shoulder at Luther. “I’m getting purely sick of that man.”

Clay nodded, and they fell silent.

The sheriff had a man waiting to bring them to the position he had fortified.

“Smart man, the sheriff.” Luther swung down off his spirited bay. “Not a good idea to be riding up to a nervous, trigger-happy posse.”

They were directed to safe positions, well hidden by the jumble of rocks at the mouth of the canyon, and they waited.

It didn’t take long before the wait was driving him crazy, which wasn’t like him. Normally, Clay was a patient man.

“I am a patient woman.” Sophie crossed her arms and tapped her toe. “I am, and no one had better make me wait agreeing with me!”

Mandy said quickly, “We know you’re patient, Ma.”

The other girls nodded, except Laura who had fallen asleep.

“What is keeping those men?” Sophie charged over to the door and
grasped the handle for the tenth time, if she hadn’t lost count.

“Ma, you know Buff and Whitey want us to stay inside.” Beth dashed up beside her and laid her little hand over Sophie’s on the doorknob.

Sophie held on to the knob as if it were a lifeline. At last, through pure force of will, she let it go. “Well, why aren’t they in here by now? I’ve still got men to feed, and I can’t get the dishes cleaned up until they eat. Besides, it is time for you all to be in bed, but when they come trooping through here, they’ll make too much noise.”

Mandy came across the room. “We’ll go on to bed, Ma. It’s only two more of ’em left to eat. Just warn ’em to be quiet. If we do wake up, it’ll be okay. I just hate to leave you to clean up alone.”

Sophie noticed her daughters were acting more grown-up than she was. “I guess you might as well. Maybe I misunderstood. Or maybe the men didn’t want to take the time to come all the way in for supper. Maybe they ate on the trail somehow.”

“I’m sure it’s something like that.” Sally, with Laura snoozing in her arms, walked over with a maternal rock to pat Sophie’s arm.

When Sally reassured her so maturely, something snapped in Sophie. All of a sudden the fear that had been tangled up inside her for weeks merged into one lightning bolt of terror. She knew that terror didn’t come strictly from adding up all that had her worried. That fear was a warning—straight from God. She wasn’t about to second-guess the message she was receiving.

She turned sharply to the girls. “No, it isn’t something like that.”

“Adam, come back,” Clay hissed. He had been so focused on the entrance to the canyon that he hadn’t been watching the men around him. Why would he? They weren’t the threat.

Adam waved one hand behind him as if to swat Clay away like a pesky fly. Adam was a hundred feet away from all of them, using every ounce of cover the terrain provided.

Ranger Mitchell sidled up to Clay, pitching his voice low so the sound wouldn’t carry, “Where is he going?”

Clay said in disbelief, “I noticed him just now.”

Jackson grabbed his hat off his head and slammed it on the ground where he lay on his belly beside Clay. “We have this set up so no one gets hurt. I don’t want a grandstanding fool looking to put notches in his gun, charging those men.”

Clay shook his head and wiped sweat off his brow. They’d been lucky the canyon opened on the east. The sheer bluffs gave the posse some much-needed shade as the sun lowered in the sky, but the day was hot and still, and keeping down to avoid a bullet warmed a man.