Petticoat Ranch (23 page)

Royce waited. Seconds ticked by while Esther sipped her coffee. The woman dearly loved to be the center of attention. He nearly squirmed with impatience. Finally, he snapped, “If you know his name maybe you’d like to share the information!”

Esther stiffened, but Sheriff Everett reached across the table and pressed her weathered hand. “It’ll really help me out, Esther. If he hit Rufus and Leo and threatened Royce, you’d be doing a service to this whole town by telling us. Why, I reckon you’d be a true hero.”

Esther turned away from Royce. “Well, of course I’m a-gonna tell ya, Sheriff. There just ’tweren’t no call for Royce to speak to me thatta way.”

Royce could almost see the old hen’s ruffled feathers lay down, and he bit his tongue to keep from saying something that would make her ruffle up again.

At last, apparently satisfied she’d tortured him sufficiently, Esther said, “His name is Judd Mason.”

“Judd Mason,” the sheriff said thoughtfully. “Not a name I’ve ever heard before.”

“Maybe he’s wanted.” Royce rubbed his hands together gleefully. They could lock this thug up and he’d be safe. “You oughta check the name against the W
ANTED
posters.”

“I know my job, Royce.” The sheriff drained his coffee cup and chewed the dregs. “I’ll do that, and I’ll send a telegraph, with his name and description, to the Texas Rangers.”

“We’d best warn the McClellens about him,” Royce added.

“Don’t forget to mention the brand on his horse.” Esther picked up Josiah’s cup and stood from the table.

“You saw the brand?” Josiah leaned toward Esther.

“What was it?” Royce could hear the cell door slamming already. “A brand’s a lot harder to change than a man’s name.”

Esther gave him another snooty look, and Royce thought he’d pushed her too hard—again.

Finally, she deigned to answer, “J B
AR
M.”

T 
H I R T E E N
          

A
dam had learned the hard way to never expect anything but trouble. As he came within a day’s walk of the ranch, he faded back into the high-up country, scouting around to see why Sophie would need help bad enough that God would come, personally, to so lowly a creature as Adam Grant.

As Adam ghosted around in the woods surrounding the ranch, he began to take stock of the situation. He saw Sophie and she seemed fine. He also counted four little girls and couldn’t stop himself from smiling at all the little tykes.

But he saw no sign of Cliff. Instead, another man came and went from the house as if he lived in it. Had Edwards abandoned her? Adam had always expected the man to cut and run back to the safety of the East. But he’d always expected Edwards would take Sophie with him when he went. No man was such a fool that he would have a woman like Sophie for his own and give her up. More likely Edwards was dead. The West could kill a man in a hundred ways, and—if a person was stupid— it could kill in a thousand. Despite his sharp clothes, classy education, and polished manners, Adam had pegged Edwards as stupid from the minute he’d come riding up to the Avery farm in Pennsylvania.

Adam’s fear of what would become of Sophie was why he’d come West with them. Nothing in the two-plus years he’d been with the family, before Edwards drove him off, had changed his mind.

Adam wasn’t close enough to see the new man’s face, but he knew
from the way he moved, the competent way he sat a horse, and the way he held the attention of his cowhands, that it couldn’t be that worthless Cliff Edwards.

While he wondered about Edwards and worried about the voice saying, “Help me,” what really had Adam upset were the tracks. Men were coming and going in the rough country above the ranch. The men were good in the woods—quiet, leaving few signs. Adam hadn’t managed to spot one in person yet, but he started to recognize four different men, usually out in pairs, usually leaving during the nighttime and only scouting during the day.

Sometimes they’d follow the hands, but mainly they seemed to be keeping an eye on Sophie’s man and the ranch house. Sophie’s new man was savvy in the woods himself, and Adam had his hands full keeping from being discovered. He wasn’t ready to come out in the open yet.

Before he could go down to say hello, he had to know why Sophie was being watched.

Sophie knew exactly why she was being watched.

They were coming—coming for Clay.

Well, she wouldn’t have it! She was tired of breaking in new husbands. She was keeping this one!

Sophie hadn’t survived in a confounded bramble bush for two years by being careless. She knew her property. She knew how to track, and she could read signs like the written word.

Clay rode out to check his herd every day, always scolding her to “leave man’s work to men.” Sophie waited until his dust settled, and she and the remaining girls that hadn’t been taken off by Clay to learn how to be boys got to work.

“Ma, I finally landed a rope on a yearling yesterday,” Mandy announced, as she shinnied up to the highest rafter in the barn to settle a basket of rocks on a board.

“Mandy, you didn’t!” Sophie stopped prying up the floorboard she’d spent all day yesterday laying in front of the barn door.

“Pa sure threw hisself a fit when he saw you’d put a wood floor across the barn door, Ma.” Sally had quit pouting because Elizabeth had gotten to go with Clay just as Sophie expected. Now that Clay was gone, there was no reason to fuss about it, because she knew Sophie wouldn’t change her mind regardless of the ruckus.

“Pa and I talked about it again, Sally. I told him it’d keep down the mud, and he came around to my way of thinking once he saw I’d already done the work. His main complaint was that the barn was his territory and he didn’t want me dirtying my hands with such hard labor.”

Mandy giggled.

“I think that’s right nice of him to want to spare you hard work, Ma.” Sally said in stout defense of her beloved father.

“Kinda dumb,” Mandy pointed out. “Since you haul buckets of water from the creek a dozen times a day and chop wood for the fireplace and work over the fire for hours and hunt food and clean it. . .”

“I’m not supposed to hunt anymore,” Sophie reminded her.

“That’s right. I remember. Pa said it was man’s work, ’ceptin’ he never brings in food so what are we supposed to cook?”

“I don’t think he’s keeping track.” Sophie set the three center boards aside and began digging. “He’s waiting for me to tell him I’m running low on something, then he’ll go and fetch us a deer. But he’s powerful busy these days, and I hate to bother him. Besides, I like to hunt as much as the next person. I hate to give it up. His heart’s in the right place. He means to help.”

“So now you don’t just have to hunt food, you’ve got to do it on the sly.” Mandy shook her head in disgust.

Sophie laughed. “Hunting is a sneakin’ business anyway, little girl. It’s no bother. And if I hadn’t been hunting, I’d have never found out we’re being watched. We laid traps during the years your pa was gone to war. Then we had them in the thicket. But I might not have thought to rig anything up in the barn, what with so many men around.”

“You’d’ve thought of it.” Mandy attached the braided hemp rope to the basket handle and threaded it through the notch she’d drilled in the nearest rafter. Then, she carefully eased her way out on the board twenty feet above the ground until she could reach the barn wall. She hooked the rope around a little notch left there from years back.

Sophie laughed again as she dug down to make a man trap out of the entrance to her barn. “I reckon that’s so.”

Mandy dropped the long rope off her shoulder until it fell to within four feet of the barn floor. Sally caught it and, careful not to upset the basket, tucked it behind the door frame so no one could pull it by accident. Mandy nimbly clambered down the barn wall and dropped to the floor.

“Anyway,” Sally reminded her mother, “you’d’ve found out about it ’cuz Pa told you he’d seen tracks.”

“True, true enough.” Sophie nodded. “This pa is a fine tracker.”

They worked companionably together in silence. Laura slept peacefully on a pile of straw in the corner of the barn. The hole got about shoulder deep and Sophie stopped. A man just had to fall far enough for the sharpened, wooden spikes she was going to plant in the bottom to have some poking power.

“Are you gonna tell Pa about the traps, Ma?” Sally wondered.

“I think I’d better.” Sophie laid her hands on the ground and vaulted out of the hole. “I’d hate to catch him by accident.”

“You know he’ll have a fit,” Mandy warned. “He’ll figure it for men’s work.”

Sophie nodded and shrugged, then went to the floorboards she’d split and sanded smooth. “Still, I’d better tell him. So you roped a yearling? Already? Do you think that’s wise?”

“I’d been missing for a week. It was driving me crazy!”

“Still, it took you months to learn it the first time,” Sophie reminded her as she took the chisel to the floorboards. “We don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“It’s all right. I acted all excited and told him what a good teacher
he was. I made sure to miss three or four times, and then make one again. I did that most of the day. But toward the end I started getting right dependable.” Mandy snagged a lariat hanging on the wall and whirled it around her head for a few seconds before she sent it sailing toward a post on one of the stalls. It settled perfectly in place. Mandy snapped the noose to pull it off the post, coiled it again, and lassoed the post, again and again.

“It’s nice of him to work with you, but you have to go slow or he’ll catch on. I just wish you could get on with learning a little faster so you could actually start helping the man.”

“Oh, he’s not going to let me help once I learn.” Mandy replaced the lariat and started whittling on one of the spikes her mother was going to plant.

Sophie straightened from the boards she was cutting halfway through. She stood too suddenly and for a moment the barn spun around. She stepped quickly to the side of the barn and leaned, one arm out straight, until her head cleared. “What do you mean? Why would he teach you then not let you help?”

“It’s men’s work.” Mandy looked up from her whittling and grinned at her mother.

Sophie shook her head and turned one corner of her mouth up in disgust. “Then why, may I ask, is he teaching you?”

Mandy giggled as she dropped her sharpened stick and started on a new one.

“Ah, Ma, don’t let him get you all stirred up.” Sally tugged on the hemp rope she was braiding. “He means well. He wants us to know just in case we ever have need of the skill, but he also keeps promising to take care of all of us forever. And that’s right thoughtful of him.”

“It is thoughtful.” Sophie slid back into her hole and imbedded Mandy’s sticks so they pointed straight up. “But how does that man think we lived without him for two years?”

“It was really more like seven years, Ma. ’Cuz Pa—I mean our first pa, you know—not the one we’ve got now.”

Sophie said snappishly, “I’m not likely to forget the man I was married to for nine years!”

Mandy hastened to point out. “I was just trying to be clear on which pa I was talking about.”

“You make it sound like there’ve been a dozen of them.” Sophie jabbed the spike hard into the ground.

“Sorry.” Mandy went on sharpening. “Anyway, my point was, our first pa wasn’t around much, what with the war and all. We’ve been on our own almost from the first. And here we are, alive and well. How does he think we managed it?”

“I don’t reckon men are supposed to think,” Sally said philosophically, as the pile of hemp rope grew at her feet. “That’s why God gave ’em big muscles.”

Mandy tilted her head sideways for a second. “Makes as much sense as anything else.”

Sophie nodded. “Men do the lifting and women do the thinking. That sounds fair. I suppose God could have planned it that way.” She added, “That’s enough spikes for now.”

Sophie set the last one in place as Mandy laid aside her bowie knife. Sophie hopped out again.

With the girls’ help, Sophie braced the boards that covered the hole much the same way they’d done to the front porch. These were sturdy enough a man could ride a horse across them, but if Sophie tripped the braces, they’d collapse.