Rebellion in the Valley (2 page)

It was Bruce. In both hands, he held tins of
freshly brewed, steaming coffee and offered one of them to his
friend.

“Got an inventory list goin’ yet? Looks like
everyone on the place is writing one - I figure we may as well make
a good trip of it. I got to thinking, and we haven’t done this in a
long while; I guess it’s time,” Bruce paused, running an eye over
the tools hanging on hooks and nails.

Knowing how many years those tools had
provided service, Bruce wondered how he still managed to keep some
of them operational without actually being a danger to use after
all the wear and tear on them. He also knew Duffy’s father handed
most of those old tools down to him, and Bruce would never be
offensive by mentioning the fact that they'd seen better days.

Instead, the man sipped at his coffee and
inquired about how much chicken feed was left in the barrel.

Duffy nodded to the list, picked it up, and
handed it to Bruce for inspection.

“Is this going over-board? I don’t intend on
running you into the poor house,” he teased only half-heartedly. “I
could always chop it down some.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow.

“This ain’t enough; we probably won’t be
headed into town on another trip like this one for at least another
six to eight months, near as I can figure.” His eyes fell to the
dirt floor. “I saw the hole in your fencing gloves last week,
Duffy. You put another pair down on your list - and you best take
those boots in and get them repaired, too.”

Bruce sighed and looked over his shoulder to
make certain of their privacy before he continued.

“You’re one of my oldest friends and a whole
heap of help around here; you can’t take care of this ranch in the
winter if your toes are hanging out of your boots and you can’t
feel your fingers from the frost on ’em. I take care of you, and
then you can take care of me. That’s how it works around here, you
hear me?”

Bruce gave a nod of his head toward Duffy’s
slip of paper as he placed a hand square on his friend’s leather
vest-covered shoulder once again and looked the man square in the
eye.

“You get what you need to carry yourself
through the next few months,” he instructed.

Duffy opened his mouth to say something when
one of the horses reminded the men of feeding time; Epoenah,
Hailee’s treasured mare, bounced her muzzle back and forth and
kicked up a bit of dirt in her stall to show her protest in dipping
into an empty feed bucket.

Bruce finished his business with Duffy and
gulped down the rest of his coffee before setting the empty tin
down on a grain barrel.

“Alright, Girl,” Bruce assured the mare as he
wandered over to her stall with some feed. “I hear ya.”

P

Hailee hadn’t run out of her lemon verbena
just yet, but the glass bottle containing lavender oil had been
empty for a couple of weeks now. That was her going-to-church
scent, and she didn’t like being without her 'smell-em-ups', as her
father called them. They became the first items she wrote down on
her list, followed by a few more toiletries, some fancy writing
paper, and a yard of lace to dress up one of her old bonnets.

The seventeen-year-old beauty stood in front
of her mirror, shifting herself to avoid the morning sun streaming
in and reflecting in her mirror as she ran the abalone shell
hairbrush through a mane of thick blonde curls; she had always been
well pleased with them and wondered on more than one occasion if
Tobias ever noticed her hair. Or anything else about her, for that
matter.

She sure did notice everything about Tobias,
that was for certain. From that mop of wavy hair to those strong
arms she’d seen so many times, right on down to the way the man
walked and carried himself, nothing the man did escaped her
attention...if only Tobias Logan would notice her, she sighed.

Hailee opened her diary and left an entry for
the day. After penning the words, “Hailee Gretchen Logan,” she
finished the page with several small hearts drawn near the name
she'd grown to love before she let out one final breath of air and
closed the book. Slipping it under her pillow, Hailee’s attention
was drawn outside, where she heard familiar laughter coming from
the area of the riding pens.

Standing in the center of one of them stood
Tobias, his hands tossed up over his head. The man seemed to be
having the time of his life with her mare.

“Well, if that’s not an invitation, I don’t
know what is!” she grinned. Hailee yanked her bonnet up and over
her head, having it tied in place before she even reached the
bottom of the staircase.

Curls bouncing under her bonnet, she ran
toward the pen and hollered, “You’re back already? I figured you’d
be gone til later this afternoon.”

Tobias grinned at the sight of her. That girl
did things to his insides that he could never reveal - he’d heard
stories about ranch help who lost not only job and home, but their
reputations as well, messing around with the boss’s daughter.

Still, Tobias could hardly help it. There was
something about Hailee Johnson he wanted - needed - to add to his
personal life. He would just have to find a way around the
boss.

“Who am I kidding?” Tobias asked himself.
“There is no way around the boss, and that girl doesn’t see me as
anything but the help anyhow.” He shook his head to clear out some
of the cobwebs forming in his brain, only to hear Hailee’s voice
again.

“Tobias! Are you in there? I was asking you
about the cat.”

“Oh, yeah. I found the tracks early this
morning - it’s heading east, past that old bunk house. You do know
it's caving in, right? What‘s your Daddy planning on doing with
that thing, anyhow? It’s either gonna need tending to or tearing
down, one or the other. And pretty soon, I’d say.”

He continued to ramble on a bit with Hailee
about ranch business, but his heart refused to focus on anything
other than those incredible blue eyes of hers. Truth be told, the
young man made a regular practice of grabbing at pretty much
anything she talked about, just so he could turn it into another
piece of conversation and he could keep her around for a few
minutes longer. On occasion, he’d wondered if she'd figured him out
yet. But she never let on, if she had.

P

Morning at the Red Bone Ranch turned into
late afternoon before half the day’s work found its end, and at
last Duffy and a couple of men reported the work on the wagons had
finally come to completion.

“
It’s them dang grease worms
every time,” one of the men grumbled. “Sometimes it seems like we
can’t keep on top of these wagons. Something always needs fixed on
one or the other of ‘em.”

One of the men tapped the lid back on the
galvanized metal pail still half-way filled with the Mica Axle
Grease, used to lubricate the wheels. He nodded his agreement.
“Yeah, I know what ya mean. The wind up here in Rosita is always
blowing; it don’t seem like we really get a break from the dirt and
grit. Wish someone would come up with some way to cover up them
hubs.”

After a good couple of days to tend to all
five of the wagons, with having the other ranching duties to tend
to as well, Duffy was just glad they finished the job. But it
wasn’t worth it to hire the wagon work out, either, as a few other
local ranches regularly had the habit of doing.

Bruce held a firm faith in the men at the
ranch and knew they could handle just about anything that came up;
that’s why he hired the men he did. He wanted the most efficient
ranch in the Valley.

Duffy grinned and told his crew they had done
a good job this time - and they would all be standing there having
the same conversation in another six months or so. One of the men
took his hat off and gave Duffy a playful smack on the head with it
to thank him for the reminder.

Chapter 3

H
ailee stood at the foot of her bed and frowned; sleep seemed
the least likely option at the moment, but the girl knew morning
would arrive soon and the next day would be such a long and busy
day. She didn’t want to fall asleep in the wagon, she knew that
much. Especially after overhearing the conversation between Tobias
and her father when they spoke about a certain ranch hand who would
be riding with them in their wagon.

The thought of having him all to herself for
the nine-hour ride into Canon City gave Hailee an inspiration. They
might play a few games to pass the time, like Twenty Questions or
Happy Harriet. She wondered if a round of I Packed My Bag for China
would be too immature; her father always enjoyed that game, but
maybe that was because he played it with his daughter.

She shook her head and frowned again. There
would be no China game, she decided.

Hailee wandered to her mirror and scrunched
up her nose. How could a seventeen-year-old girl-no, she corrected
herself-how could a seventeen-year-old young lady attract the
attention of a twenty-three year old real man, without appearing
pathetic and desperate for his attention?

She stood back from the mirror and gave
herself a good, long look; she saw what she always saw, and that
was the problem. Just an ordinary girl with curly hair and no clue
what to do with boys.

A slight grin slid across her face as she
came to a new conclusion in her mind.

“Tobias isn’t some boy; he’s a grown man! I
bet he’s been looking for an older girl,” Hailee whispered aloud,
“and if I can’t be one, I can at least look like one,” she
continued. Fingers pulled the ribbon from her hair and deposited
the thin green strand into the top drawer of her dresser, giving
the childish accessory a symbolic burial.

The slight grin deepened into sweet
satisfaction, and once Hailee pulled the brush through her hair
once again, she allowed her tresses to fall down around her
shoulders, running a finger through the curls, puffing it up here
and there. Satisfied with how mature she looked all of a sudden,
she decided to practice her most sophisticated facial expressions
in the mirror.

Waving a hand nonchalantly in front of her
mouth, she mouthed a flirty, ‘Why, thank you’, followed by a series
of practice laughing-sessions.

Coming to the conclusion that nobody needed
to see that many teeth when someone laughed, Hailee shook her head
and moved forward to the last maneuver - the art of being taken off
guard by a gentleman.

Tilting her head downward, she paused for
just a moment before jerking her head back up to catch her own look
of surprise reflecting in the mirror.

She rolled her eyes and groaned. “That’s
becoming of a young lady…I look like I was just thrown off a
horse.”

The second attempt provoked another giggle.
“And now I look like the town drunkard.”

After only three minutes of mock
conversations with herself, the girl decided she looked more like a
fool than an older woman and let out a deep breath.

Determined to gain the affection she so
desired from this man, Hailee made the resolve in her mind to come
back from this trip with more than a filled list of trinkets and
toiletries - she intended to return with the heart of the only man
she could imagine herself ever loving as much as she knew that she
loved Tobias Logan.

The last time her father planned a trip into
town, they had been gone for three days. A day traveling to town, a
good day of shopping, and another day traveling back to the ranch …
and the last time they made the journey, Tobias came down with the
flu and found himself unable to go.

Hailee determined to make this next three
days memorable for both of them.

She folded her list and placed it inside her
handbag, double-checking to make certain she’d remembered to put
her heavy paper fan in there. She smiled to herself, remembering
last summer when she and Richard spent a couple of hours making
that thing; he’d taught her the proper way of pressing flowers and
sealing them to be preserved forever between wax, the flowers, and
paper that lived for a week inside one of Richard’s heaviest
cooking recipe books as it readied itself for her use.

Sleepy fingers reached toward a short oak
table in the corner of her room and as they opened her copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the girl settled down on her bed.
A stabbing image of Tobias laughing at the book made its way into
her head, so she stuffed it under the mattress near her diary and
opted for a copy of Poe’s work instead.

Her eyes began to shut halfway down the
second page, and before she knew it, daylight rubbed at her
eyelids.

P

Agog with energy, Hailee found herself
clothed in an instant; brush in hand, she peeked into her mirror
and out of habit, reached for her box of hair ribbons. Just as the
tips of her fingers touched the familiar fabric, she yanked her
hand back as quickly as if a spider had crept in there while she
slept and had spooked her.

“Not today,” she told herself, being reminded
that Tobias was a man, not a school boy.

She made her way to the oak vanity in the
corner of her bedroom to clean her face and get her smile freshened
up.

Her father bought it from the general store
over in the San Luis Valley over the Sangre de Cristo mountain
range when she was only nine years old. Some friends of the family
invited the Johnsons to their wedding over the basin and while
Bruce began to choose which wedding gift to buy them, he couldn’t
help but notice Hailee’s face light up when she stood in front of
that vanity.

As she watched the store owner and her father
struggle to load the vanity in the back of her father’s wagon, she
was confident the new couple would fall in love with their wedding
gift. But when she learned her father purchased the gift for her
instead, Hailee hugged him around the neck, confiding how grown-up
it made her feel.