Rebellion in the Valley (10 page)

Hailee hated to see the dead animal, but she
also realized it meant the loss of more of her father’s sanity; he
had been up the past four nights pacing in front of the window
facing the barn. She knew he wanted to see the cat with his own two
eyes, but the animal had somehow evaded Bruce’s attention.

From a rancher's standpoint, she knew this
had to be unacceptable.

Bruce stared at the dead goat for a few more
seconds before heavy steps trudged him over to the wall where
several larger tools on hooks and heavy nails hung up neatly. He
yanked an old shovel off the nail, turned around without saying
another word and stabbed the shovel into the ground next to the
edge of the darkened pool of blood.

“Let’s get this carcass buried and get on
with the chores at hand, everyone,” Bruce mumbled to nobody in
particular.

Duffy waited until the tail of Bruce’s shadow
left the barn and snapped the shovel up with an angry glare in his
eyes.

“I don’t intend to keep on losin’ animals!
Here,” he almost commanded Tobias. “Take care of this, and I mean
right now!”

Duffy stormed out of the barn, leaving both
Hailee and Tobias stunned. He behaved as if the ranch belonged to
his own person!

Tobias raised one eyebrow in Hailee’s general
direction.

“I wonder what that was all about?” he
snickered with a shake of his head. “Well, I reckon I got me some
chores to take care of before we take off this morning. Wouldn’t
wanna see old Duffman get all riled up, now would we?” he asked
with a scowl on his face.

Hailee patted him on the shoulder and
grinned.

“Ah, don’t pay him any mind; he just takes
his duties too far sometimes because he’s known Daddy for so long.”
She looked over her shoulder and took a couple of steps to make
sure that Duffy was out of ear shot. “Daddy doesn’t know it, but I
don’t like him as much as the other ranch hands.”

Hailee batted her eyes and stepped real close
to Tobias, tilted her face up toward his.

The man felt her warmth breathing across his
chin and lower lip; he swallowed hard, failing to hide his
nervousness from her.

“And I don’t like him near as much as I like
you,” she cooed in whispered tones.

Tobias’ jaw fell.

Hailee giggled.

“Girl, that is exactly what I was talkin’
about! You gotta cut that out!” he told her, although it was only
his head saying the words, and not his heart.

He ran a nervous hand through his dark mop of
hair, swallowed half a dozen words he would have given his left leg
to have spoken, and allowed himself to draw ever so closer to
Hailee. He could smell the lavender in her hair when the breeze
caught in between strands of the blonde curls, and he felt his gut
tighten for the want to reach out and run his fingers through
it.

“Girl just what are we gonna do about this
mess we’re in? I’d like to take you up in my arms right now, but I
can’t do that. And that ain’t right. If a man wants to give his
girl a kiss, he oughtta be able to do it, dag nab it!”

He shook his head. He wasn’t sorry he’d said
it, either.

“You want to kiss me!”

Stepping back before the girl had a chance to
persuade him into anything he probably wouldn’t regret later,
Tobias scooped up the goat and marched out to bury the carcass,
rolling his eyes.

“That girl is gonna be the death of me one
way or another, I just know it!” he mumbled.

From the corner of his eye, Tobias spied
Duffy standing next to the hen house; almost as if he’d perched
himself just far enough away to catch the two of them in some
precarious situation. That, or he was waiting for the barn to
become vacant that or for some unknown reason.

“Hmm, I wonder what he’s up to?” he wondered
aloud, proceeding with the duty of burying the goat’s carcass.

P

Duffy stood at his work bench inside the tack
room, ran a finger along the edge of the meat saw.

The small leather pouch of assorted blades
stared up at him, mocking his indecisiveness when all of a sudden
the flickering from the oil lantern drew his attention back to the
blades and a slow, evil grin spread across his lips as an idea
jumped into that brain of his.

If outward appearances told a story well, the
bitter man approved of the idea he entertained in that head of
his.

P

Bruce gulped down the last of his coffee,
making certain the men had eaten and were ready; they would
probably not stop until they were ready to bed down for the
night.

Tobias had finished his business and was
about to climb up on Epoenah; Hailee insisted he take her prize
mare on the hunt with him.

He’d already laid the felt pad and blue
Navajo blanket over the horse’s back and chose the saddle with the
darker colored leather accents to match the blanket.

With the leather cinch straps in his hands,
Tobias brought them over the front and back of the saddle with the
natural confidence of a seasoned cowboy, positioning the saddle
with perfection, giving another quick tug to double check the snug
fit before he offered one last unintentional nod of
satisfaction.

Being a horse lover himself, he would have
never allowed Epoenah to become rubbed raw with his weight on an
uneven blanket and half-cocked saddle. But he was especially
careful to mind what he was doing because he knew what that horse
meant to his beloved Hailee.

Tobias grinned as his fingers adjusted the
stirrups; he was reminded of the fact that she was a good six
inches shorter than he was and he could, in fact, rest his chin on
top of her head in a very comfortable standing position. He had
pictured himself doing just that many times over in the past
several months and wondered when he would ever be able to test it
out.

With his left foot in the stirrup, he glanced
around to make sure nobody else was around as he leaned over and
motioned with a nod for her to come toward him.

Tightening his grip on the saddle horn, he
confided, “I left something for you under that flower pot on the
front porch…it’s a letter I wrote,” he told her with a sheepish
wave of his hands. “I never have written a letter to a girl before,
so I don’t know if I did it right or not. I just kinda let my heart
guide the pencil and I almost didn’t leave it at all, but -” he was
cut short when Hailee put a hand on his leg.

“I watched you lay it under the pot. I
thought it was for Daddy, so I just let it sit there!”

Pulling himself upward and swinging his right
leg up and over the saddle in one swift motion, Hailee watched his
muscular arms tensing as he seated himself, hooked his left boot
into the stirrup and looked back down at the pretty girl with the
bonnet strings in one hand.

“Well, it ain’t for your Pa or anyone else,
so you best get to finding it before someone else does.”

She nodded and smiled, anxious to read what
his heart had to say to her.

Tobias yanked on the reins and urged Epoenah
to join the rest of the men gathering by the ranch gate.

Bruce called out to Hailee and motioned for
her to come give him a hug.

“Now you help Richard out in the kitchen and
make sure you keep those eggs gathered up while I’m gone, you hear
me?”

All goodbyes said, the group of seven men
headed out of the ranch gates, a few pots and pans clinking off the
rear of one horse.

Hailee wasted no time in running to the front
porch, where she yanked the flower pot off the railing.

There it was.

Her hand swooped down and snatched the
envelope; she felt the bulge inside and replaced the flower pot
quickly in an effort not to draw any attention to herself.

Noticing the dark clouds gathering off in the
distance, Hailee wondered if it would rain on the men later in the
afternoon. If it did, she knew the men would get both cranky and on
one another’s nerves.

She also knew if Howard J. Duffman became any
crankier, Tobias was more likely than not to set him straight.

Forcing that image from her mind, she found
her place on the wooden rocking chair in the far-left-hand corner
of the porch. Fingers skittered along the bulge as she tried to
guess what it might be.

Hailee closed her eyes and pictured Tobias
writing the letter. Had he spent much time pondering over his
words, or did he just blurt it all out at once? Had he written the
letter early in the morning or at night, by the light of his
lantern?

The young woman’s mind rolled back to earlier
in the morning when he admitted that he wanted to hold her, kiss
her.

Her heart moved with a new kind of warmth at
the thought that someday, he would be able to do just that.

Sealed with a line of glue, Hailee ripped the
top of the envelope off and removed the letter. Once it had been
unfolded, the bulge revealed itself in the form of a cameo on a
delicate double chain.

Her breath paused, causing her chest to
tighten as her fingers dared to touch the face of the unknown
woman; the chain winked in the sunlight.

She opened her pocket and allowed the cameo
to be lowered down little by little so the chain wouldn’t become
tangled, then unfolded her letter, noticing the neat
handwriting.

A tight grip on Hailee’s throat caused her
hands to tremble as she began reading:

Dear Hailee, The whole time I’m gone, I’ll
be thinking about you. We’re gonna have to find a way to talk to
your Pa soon enough, but don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of
everything. You’re mine, you know. Sleep well until we see each
other again and know that my heart belongs only to you.

The words were signed
with
, All my love, Tobias.

An entire lifetime of promises summed up
within a few lines of the most open words she had ever heard,
Hailee read the letter another three times before folding it back
up and slipping her man’s vow of love into the envelope.

Before standing up, she took the necklace
from her pocket and laced the chain around her fingers, held it up
to the sun and allowed herself to imagine Tobias clasping the lock
at the nape of her neck and letting her hair fall down around
it.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever
seen; where in the world did he buy it? She hadn’t seen any fine
jewelry stores in Canon City.

P

Richard slumped over the cast iron fry
skillet, pouring the last of the morning’s bacon grease into a tin
can he kept in the back of a handmade cabinet Bruce crafted; the
oak-carved kitchen accessory stood over five feet tall and occupied
a prominent section of Richard’s kitchen.

Tapping the lid down to keep the grease fresh
and inside the container, Richard placed it on a shelf and yanked
the red and white checkered fabric across the wooden rods to put
the morning chores to rest.

Hailee smoothed her pocket, pausing over the
spot where her new treasure lay in secret; if Tobias found a moment
to speak with her father in the next few days, she would be able to
wear it to church!

Thoughts of making an entrance through the
oversized white double doors in her blue frilly dress, a splash of
lavender oil and her new token from the best looking man in the
Valley slowed her down just a bit in the dish-drying task Richard
assigned to her.

She thought about laying the necklace out
across the butcher block for Richard to take a gander at, but
uncertain where his faithfulness to her father would actually begin
or end, opted to excuse herself in order to finish up a couple of
chores in the hen house instead.

“How about you gather those eggs and I’ll
pour us some sweet tea. It’s just you and me for a while, so I
figure we may as well play games all day and stay up late drinking
hot cider. Maybe even make a few wishes on stars while we’re at it.
What do ya say?”

Staring out the window, Richard added,
“Although I probably already know what some of your wishes might
be.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t want to look
him in the eye.

“Yeah. I sure do hope they find that cat and
get back home in a hurry; that’s about the only thing that’s been
on my mind lately,” Hailee openly lied to one of her dearest
friends.

Richard chuckled.

Hailee reluctantly gave him that quick glance
out the corner of her eye.

“He does love you. You know that, don’t
you?”

“Of course he does! I have the best daddy in
the valley. I don’t think there’s anything he wouldn’t do for me
-“

Richard shook his head and cut her off.

“There is no doubt that your father does
adore the ground you walk on, Hailee, but that's not who I’m
talking about here,” he told her as a matter-of-fact.

When her face snapped up and
their eyes met, panic darted straight into her heart;
he knew!
How could
Richard know about the secret she and Tobias worked so hard to keep
hidden? The grip tightened when her mind shifted to the other
question, which took precedence over every thought in her mind
-
did her father know?

He chuckled again and the young woman could
feel her face beginning to blush.

“I don’t know what to say,” Hailee started to
explain.

“Well, for starters, you can tell me what’s
in that pocket of yours.”

She pulled her head back and cocked it to one
side.

“Girl, I haven’t seen anything pawing at
something the way you’ve been pawing at that pocket of yours, not
since those dogs tore away at an old bone I tossed out last month,”
he teased. “So what did Tobias give you that you’re so scared of
showing someone?”

Hailee knew when she’d been caught.

And she had just been caught.

Shaking her head, she brought the necklace
out and held it up so he could take it in his fingers.