Texas Homecoming (4 page)

“I’ll leave wrangling horses to Cade,” Owen said. “I’m much better at wrangling females.”

Cade decided he should be the one to try to gain Pilar’s confidence. He didn’t think she would fall for Owen’s blandishments, but women had a habit of taking a shine to the most undependable men. Owen tried to seduce practically every woman he met. Cade often wanted to tell him a little constancy wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“Women like me,” Owen said.

“Stop making a fool of yourself, and let’s talk about finding those horses,” Earl snapped.

“A beautiful woman is much more interesting than wild horses.”

“I agree,” Cade said, “but if you want to leave here with
cash money in your saddlebags, you’d better start thinking about horses.”

“What cash money?” Earl asked, his sharp gaze riveted on his grandson.

“Everybody needs a stake to get started again. I promised them half our profits on the herd if they’d help me round them up, brand them, and take them to market.”

“Four men can’t do all that,” Earl said, his gaze going from one man to the other, “even if they do look like they’d cut a man’s gizzard out.”

“There’re more coming,” Cade said.

“How many?”

“Three or four.”

“That won’t be enough. Them squatters aren’t going to be happy with you taking their beef. They been selling it for tallow and hides.”

“That’s a waste. A three-dollar steer in Texas is worth thirty dollars in St. Louis.”

“What makes you so sure you can get them there?”

“If we don’t, we won’t have any money.”

“It’s hundreds of miles away, and there’s Indians and farmers along the way, not to mention men who’d cut your throat for the fun of it.”

“We wouldn’t mind doing a little bit of that ourselves,” Rafe said.

“The tanning factories are a lot closer,” his grandfather said. “You could even take them to Mexico.”

“We can’t keep selling our stock for hides and tallow.”

“Why not? It’s what I’ve done my whole life.”

“The future of Texas ranching is in selling beef to people in cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They’ve got money, and they’re ready to spend it. All we have to
do is get the cows to a railhead or the coast so they can be shipped.”

“I don’t want my cows on any boats,” Earl said.

“And we need to upgrade our herds. The more meat we can put on our cows, the more money we’ll get for them,” Cade said, ignoring his grandfather’s objections. “I saw bulls in Virginia bred to carry three times as much meat as a longhorn. I mean to buy several of them.”

“I won’t have you coming in here with all kinds of newfangled notions,” Earl said. “There’s nothing wrong with longhorns. They can take care of themselves. We don’t have to baby-sit them through the winter and watch out for wolves.”

“All that’s going to change,” Cade said. “And the ranchers who survive will be the ones doing the changing.”

Cade spent the next twenty minutes arguing with his grandfather, trying to show him why the longhorn wouldn’t be able to compete much longer. He tried to convince him that everyone would soon be upgrading like Richard King, but his grandfather continued to object.

“I’ve seen bulls so heavy they can hardly walk,” Owen said.

“A fat lot of good that’ll do when a wolf comes after them,” Earl said. “You going to be sitting out there in the brush watching over every one of those poky critters?”

“We won’t put the blooded bulls on the range,” Cade said. “We’ll keep them in a pasture and bring the cows to them.”

Earl looked at his grandson as if he’d lost his mind. “I ain’t buying no bull that don’t know how to go about his business by himself.”

Cade had to laugh or get angry. He decided to laugh.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” the old man said. “I
don’t know where you got these newfangled notions, but we’re doing things just the same as always here in Texas, and it’s working just fine.”

“It won’t work for much longer,” Cade said. “Once the Army clears the plains of Indians, there’ll be ranches from Texas to Canada. There’s millions of acres of grass out there just waiting for new herds. Somebody’s going to have to provide them with stock. If we don’t, somebody else will. And they’ll buy from the man who can sell them stock that brings the best price at market.”

“And when did you see these millions of acres of grass,” his grandfather asked. “They got some damned long telescopes back there in Virginia I don’t know nothing about?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Until you’ve seen it, we’ll keep doing things like we always did.”

“I’ve seen the grass,” Rafe said. “In places it’s so high you can hardly see a man on foot. I once saw a herd of buffalo so big it stretched from horizon to horizon. There’s enough grass out there for a million ranches like this.”

Earl’s mouth worked before he finally said, “I never heard of anything so ridiculous.”

Cade felt a spurt of anger. Why was the old fool so stubborn? Why wouldn’t he believe what other people had seen?

Then came understanding. His grandfather felt like he was being pushed aside, not just because he couldn’t do the work any longer but because the world was expanding beyond his experience. He had been young and vigorous when he came to Texas. He had fought in two wars, claimed land from the hated Spanish, even been a local hero. Now he was feeling old and used up, and he didn’t like it.

“We have to build fences,” Cade said. “There’s no way to improve the herds unless we can control the cattle.”

His grandfather exploded. After a scathing attack on anyone foolish enough to want to fence cattle, he launched into the cost of such an operation.

“We won’t fence everything,” Cade said, “just enough to control the breeding. We can do a little each year.”

“You think I’m gonna be dead in a year or two,” the old man shouted. “You think I’m gonna leave this place to you to do with as you like.”

“Things are going to change,” Cade said, out of patience. “We have to change with them or be left behind.”

“You’ve been gone from Texas too long. Wait a couple years. You’ll forget all this nonsense about fat bulls and fences. You’ll see the old ways are best.”

Cade hadn’t expected his grandfather to agree with everything he said, but he hadn’t expected him to be so adamantly against change of any kind. Cade felt hemmed in. He didn’t actually own the ranch. If push came to shove, he had no legal right to dictate how the ranch should be run.

Cade felt a responsibility to the men who’d come with him. He’d promised them a chance to earn money so they could start over. They had to sell their beef for more than the three or four dollars they got for tallow and hides if they were to do any of the things he’d dreamed of. One way or another, he had to bring his grandfather around, but he wanted the old man to understand. Despite the old codger’s miserable temper, Cade loved him.

“Listen to Cade,” Pilar said. “What he says makes a lot of sense.”

Earl rounded on her, bringing his hand down on the table with a smack that reverberated off the walls. “And just what the hell do you think you know about it, missy?”

Chapter Four

“I learned a lot after Laveau left,” Pilar said calmly. “If I hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been anything for the squatters to take.”

“Your place wasn’t nothing but a wreck when the squatters took over,” Earl said.

“I also learned that men are much better at spending money than they are at making it,” she fired back.

The old man’s laugh was harsh, derisive. “There’s not a man alive who’ll believe that men waste more money than women.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe about me,” Pilar said. “I know about the North’s fondness for beef. I know where to find bulls that carry the meat we need to make a profit. I’ll see that Laveau knows, too.”

Pilar swung her gaze from the old man to her plate, but she couldn’t resist a quick glance to see Cade’s response. She told herself she didn’t trust him. That was true. She told herself she didn’t like him.

That wasn’t true.

He was too handsome, too charming when he chose. There weren’t many young, unmarried men in south Texas, but there were none who compared to Cade. She knew that any relationship between them was impossible, wouldn’t have wanted one if he had been willing, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy looking at him. Just because you knew a wild stallion was dangerous didn’t mean you couldn’t admire him.

“You and your bother can do anything you like,” Earl Wheeler said. “You’ll go broke, and we can buy up the rest of your land.”

“You mean you’re not going to take it? What’s wrong? Too old, too tired, or is it because you’re not on the winning side this time?”

“You’d better hurry up and marry that Mexican cousin,” Earl snapped. “If your tongue gets any sharper, won’t nobody have you.”

“I’m not sure I want to get married. A woman has enough burdens without having to carry a husband around on her back.” Pilar pushed her chair back. “Leave everything on the table. I’ll wash up after you’re done.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t leave after you got the food on the table,” Earl flung at her as she left the room. “Then I wouldn’t have my fool grandson insisting you eat with us.” The door banged shut behind her. “I won’t have you falling into her clutches,” Earl said, turning to Cade.

“Do you mind if I fall into them?” Owen asked.

“She’s just like her grandmother, hot-blooded and poisonous. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll steer clear of her.”

“He doesn’t have any sense,” Holt said. “All he has to do is clap eyes on a beautiful woman, and he’s lost.”

“She ain’t beautiful,” Earl said.

Cade didn’t bother to join in Holt and Owen’s efforts to convince his grandfather that Pilar was beautiful. Any male with eyes in his head could see she’d been beautiful from birth. On the outside. On the inside she was just another diViere. Maybe that wasn’t exactly true. He couldn’t imagine Laveau swallowing his pride and working for an enemy to protect his grandmother’s pride. Lareau probably would have expected his grandmother to support him.

“We need to go over our plans for tomorrow,” Cade said, breaking in on his grandfather and Owen.

“What’s there to plan?” Holt asked. “We’re just going to catch up your grandfather’s horses.”

“They might be in the next river bottom,” Cade said, “or halfway across Texas. We don’t have any fences to hold them back.”

“Tell Pilar to put together some food for you,” Earl said. “That ought to give her something to do besides flounce around the place.”

“I’ll see to our provisions,” Cade said.

“That’s what women are for.”

“I’d just as soon do it. We may be gone for as much as a week.”

“They won’t be that far away,” his grandfather said. “As long as the squatters ain’t got them.”

An eerie quiet fell over the kitchen after everyone had gone. Dirty dishes, cracked and mismatched, chipped mugs, tarnished utensils, and a bare wood table made Cade acutely aware of the difference between this slapped-together cabin and the gracious, sprawling hacienda Pilar had known from birth. His own family was little more than squatters from the mountains of Virginia.

Ever since he could remember, his grandpa had ridiculed
the diVieres and everyone like them, called them shiftless, no-account, a rotten layer of society that should be cut away. Cade had been eager to accept his grandfather’s attitude. He’d roared around the county pitting his strength, skill, and daring against the decadent aristocrats. He’d savored his victories—carrying off Pilar had been the sweetest—but he couldn’t escape the nagging fear that he and his family were little more than white trash.

That was what his mother had said when she’d abandoned him.

Then he’d gone to Virginia and discovered an aristocracy that had little to do with wealth or birth. Rather it had to do with nobility of spirit, purity of goals, educated and inquiring minds. He had welcomed that eagerly, seen in it something he wanted to share.

He wanted to be part of that world.

Now looking around the kitchen, he felt scarred, chipped, and cracked himself. He didn’t like that. He wanted more for himself, for his children. He could make the money. He had land, cows, and a willingness to work. He could build a house, buy the furnishings. But something was missing, something he had to have to make it all work.

A wife.

He expelled his breath in a hiss. As a child he’d felt abandoned by a father who died young and a mother who wouldn’t fight to keep him. Men were loyal to death, but women were weak, and love was an untrustworthy emotion. Women had never lasted long in his family, staying only long enough to produce one or two children—always male—before running away. The Wheelers might as well have been a race of men, self-perpetuating and self-influenced.

They needed a woman like Pilar.

That thought startled him. Pilar was an aristocratic woman who represented something he could never have, a level of social refinement he could not attain, wasn’t sure he
wanted
to attain. She was an ornament, beautiful and fragile, meant to belong to someone who could afford to protect her, provide her with an elegant setting. If he’d ever imagined marrying her, it had been a daydream long since forgotten. But things had changed. The woman he found in his home today bore little resemblance to the girl he remembered.

He stepped into the storeroom off the kitchen and started gathering food from the few provisions there.

“What are you doing in the storeroom?”

He looked up from the shelves. He hadn’t heard her enter the kitchen. “I’m putting together some food for the next few days.”

“What are you taking?”

“Some beans, flour, sugar, and coffee. We’ll shoot our meat.”

“I’ve got some dried fruit.”

“I don’t have time to make a pie.”

Her laugh was unexpected. “Can you?”

He smiled in return. “I call it a pie. Owen doesn’t.”

“Where did you learn to cook?” She still didn’t look convinced.

“Over a campfire. I wouldn’t know what to do with a stove.”

He became increasingly aware that they occupied a very small space, that her body was only inches from his. Her long-sleeve dress buttoned under her chin, but it fitted her body like a glove. The glossy surface of the black fabric—it wasn’t homespun or wool, the only two kinds of cloth he
knew—caught the light in a way that subtly emphasized the shape of the body underneath.

“I don’t know much about armies, but I doubt that most leaders do the cooking.”

“Who says I was the leader?”

“When were you anything else?”

It startled him that she would have seen him in that light. He was simply a man who was willing to do what had to be done. “Everybody did what they could. Like you.”

She didn’t appear to like being reminded of her present position. “Take what you want.” She turned away, leaving him with the feeling he’d hurt her. He didn’t understand. She should be proud of surviving on her own. He finished filling his saddlebags with dried peaches. They’d taste good stewed.

“We’ll have to go to town for supplies when we get back,” he said to Pilar when he closed the storeroom door. “Make a list of what you need.”

She didn’t look up from her work of gathering plates, scraping them, and putting them into hot, soapy water. “Do you have any money?”

“I’ll ask for credit.”

“You won’t get it.”

“Then I’ll sell something.”

“What do you have worth selling?”

He knew she was thinking of the ramshackle cabin, the threadbare clothes, the chipped and cracked plates. “I can sell my guns or one of the mares.”

“You’ll need your guns to defend this place, your horses as a foundation for a new herd.”

He knew he was poor, that his family had never owned anything of value, but she didn’t need to be so brutal about it. Then she left the room without explanation, returned
moments later as he was about to leave, and held something out to him. “You can sell this.” A small cameo surrounded by pearls lay in the palm of her hand.

“I can’t. It belongs to you.”

“It hasn’t stopped your grandfather.”

A very unpleasant feeling cannonaded the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean?”

“How do you think we’ve had food when so many people are starving?”

He’d assumed they lived off the land. But he knew that such things as flour, sugar, salt, coffee, and dried or canned fruit and vegetables weren’t lying about ready to be picked up when they were needed.

“My grandmother and I weren’t able to salvage much, but we saved our jewelry. We’ve been selling it piece by piece to stay alive.”

Cade felt humiliated. His family might not have an illustrious background—no titled noblemen, no inherited wealth, no fancy haciendas—but they had pride. The idea of selling a woman’s jewelry, especially a woman who had cooked and kept house for two years without wages, was unthinkable.

“You won’t have to do that anymore,” he said, trying to keep the anger and shame from his voice. “If you’ll give me a list of everything you’ve sold, I’ll buy it back as soon as I sell the herd.” He had considered the possibility of selling a few steers to the tallow factories for some quick and badly needed cash, but now that was out of the question. He needed as much money as possible to pay off this debt. He couldn’t hold up his head knowing his family had been supported by a woman.

Pilar set the cups on a drain board, turned, and directed a speculative look at him. She was clearly judging him,
deciding whether he measured up to the job that lay ahead.

“Pride is a good thing, Cade, but don’t let it stand in the way of common sense. Take the cameo. We can talk about your paying me back when your ranch is safe and your mares are all in foal.” She turned back to her work. “Besides, I’ll be able to buy all the jewelry I want after Laveau comes home.”

Cade crossed the short distance that separated them, took her by the arm, and forced her to face him. “We both know Laveau is like your father. He enjoys being rich, but he won’t do the work it takes to earn the money necessary to support his lifestyle.”

She looked him straight in the eye. “He won’t have to. I will.”

Cade couldn’t imagine the girl he remembered being strong enough to take on such a job. She didn’t have the necessary knowledge. Even if she had, Texas men didn’t take orders from a woman.

“I ran everything after Laveau left,” Pilar said. “I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have a choice. I spent two years paying off debts, getting everything straightened out, but I made one mistake. We’d always been invulnerable, so I cut our crew down to a minimum to save money. When the squatters came, we didn’t have the men to hold them off.”

“What happened to the men you did have?”

“They ran off.”

“Because they didn’t think a woman could tell them what to do?”

Her expression hardened, and she attempted to turn away. He tightened his grip.

“The cowards would have stayed for Laveau, though he didn’t know any more about fighting than a puppy, but they left me without putting up a fight.”

Anger flamed in her eyes. Cade couldn’t tell whether it was from the loss of her heritage or the humiliation of having the men desert her. He also saw shame. He knew how that felt. The shame of losing two-thirds of his troop still cut deep.

“I’m glad you came here. My grandfather is a scrappy, hardheaded, stubborn old bastard. He can fight anything alive, but he would have starved before he could have figured out how to feed himself. Probably would have been too proud to try.”

“I’ve noticed the Wheeler pride,” she said, her eyes hard and dark, “but I’ve never been able to understand its source.”

Cade dropped his hand from her arm. “Your ancestors were just like ours at one time—poor, ambitious, hungry for land and wealth. They took what they wanted without regard for ownership. There’s no difference between your family and mine. We just got started a few hundred years later.”

Pilar turned away from him. “That’s a novel way of explaining your family’s theft.”

“Nothing stays the same for long. The strong grow weak, the weak grow strong. It’s the law of nature. I’ll see that you get your jewelry back. Will you be all right while we’re gone?”

“We were all right for two years. I expect we’ll manage for a few more days.”

She wasn’t giving an inch. She didn’t need him, and she wasn’t about to let him forget it. That was just as well. He didn’t need her, either. He’d be relieved when she went back to her ranch, but he knew that couldn’t happen until Laveau returned. And he intended to hang Laveau for treason.

What would she think of him then?

Did it matter? She already considered him a thief.

But Cade wanted the right to be judged for himself, to start with a clean page unblotted by the past. He wanted people to realize he was no longer a wild, reckless youth ready to do anything just because it was outrageous. He’d proved himself during four years of brutal warfare. He had come home with the intention of building a new life for himself. He wanted everyone to see him in a different light. And part of that transformation was gaining Pilar’s recognition and acceptance.
She
had to look at him with new eyes.