Petticoat Ranch (7 page)

The baby-sitter said, “You just look like our pa.”

The toddler kicked her feet and landed one on his ribs and said, “Papa.”

His knees went from apple jelly to apple cider, and all the girls’ strength didn’t keep him from sagging back to the ground. Through a roaring in his ears, he thought he heard someone, the cook maybe, say matter-of-factly, “We shoulda got him to the house whilst we had the chance.”

He also thought the lady, who smelled so bad, grew a second head that looked like a mule’s head. Now that he thought of it, a mule was what she smelled like. A really filthy, old mule. Maybe one that’d been dead for a while. His last impression was that the mule kicked him in the ribs as he hit the ground, and maybe, just maybe, the mule said vehemently, “You are too our pa! You’ve been raised from the dead and that’s that!”

Then everything went black.

F 
O U R
                  

M
andy knelt beside the unconscious man. “Drat, he’s out cold again. He really took hisself a whack.”

Sophie shoved Hector’s head off her shoulder. “Beth, can you get this ornery beast out of here?”

Elizabeth came around and soothed Hector, who had wandered outside after the storm but now wanted to see what the fuss was about in his house.

Sally fell to her knees beside the man. “He said he doesn’t remember nothin’. Does that mean when you come back to life you don’t bring your memories with you? Your whole life starts over at that moment? Does that mean he don’t remember he’s our pa?”

Sophie sighed at Sally and her resurrection theory. When you came right down to it, it made about as much sense as anything else. “It’s much warmer this morning. The only danger he’s in out here is from Hector stepping on him.”

Beth came back without Hector. “I wouldn’t put it past him, Ma. Unless you want to keep Hector tied up all day, someone’s gonna hafta stay out here.”

“I’m staying,” Sally shouted.

Sophie took charge. “We’ll eat in shifts. You girls go and eat now.”

“I’m not leaving him, Ma!” Sally said adamantly, clearly planning to hold her ground until she died.

“You’ll do as you’re told, young lady!” Sophie gave Sally a stern look
and continued, “I’ll sit out here and nurse Laura while you girls eat. Then I’ll eat while Beth watches him. Sally, it’s your turn to wash the dishes, and there’ll be no shirking. Whoever is with him gets Laura, too, so your hands won’t be idle. We’ll take turns sitting and doing the chores. If he wakes up, come running.”

With a raised eyebrow at her third daughter, she added, “We’re all just as curious as you are Sally, so don’t ask for special treatment.”

“The only trouble with that, Ma,” Mandy said sensibly, “is that you smell so bad, I don’t think Laura will eat. Plus, you’ll stink her up.”

“Yeah, and I already gave her a bath this morning,” Beth added. “I’ve got water hot on the stove for you, Ma, and the washtub set up. Let Mandy and Sally stay here with Laura. I’ll finish breakfast while you bathe. It’s just biscuits. I can bring Mandy and Sally some out here.”

“I promise I’ll do my chores, Ma,” Sally pleaded, “I’ll go as soon as you’re done washing up. I know we all want to spend time with Pa. I won’t hog him.”

When the girls ganged up on her, especially armed with common sense like this, she marveled at them. It was only then, as she thought of the logic of their reasoning, that she realized how much
she
didn’t want to leave. Was it possible that she was harboring resurrection theories of her own? She looked at the unconscious form of her husband who wasn’t her husband, and a sudden twist of longing made her breathing falter. That’s when she knew she had to be the one who went to the house. She needed to get away from him and clear her head. And she took pity on Laura, who was already clean and sweet smelling.

“All right. Sally and Mandy take first shift watching out for him. Holler if he wakes up.” Before she left, she took one last hard look at the man who kept falling back to sleep in her shed. As she turned away from him, she thought of all that lay ahead of her today. There was enough flour left for one more baking of biscuits. They needed food, and she would have to go into the thicket and search for it. She’d hope for a nest of pheasant eggs. If there weren’t any, she’d have to set her
snares and hunt for early-spring greens.

The girls could do a lot, but in the end it all fell on her shoulders, shoulders made strong by hard work and faith. There was Laura to tend and laundry to do after last night’s muddy soaking. That meant hauling water and heating it. And on top of the regular struggle to survive, she now had an injured man to look after. All this came on top of a poor night’s sleep. Her shoulders sagged as she made her way to the house.

Her morning prayers were the same as her night prayers and most of the prayers in between. Tears she would never let fall burned her eyes as she prayed, “Lord, give me the strength to get through another day. I can’t do it on my own. Help me, Lord. Help me, help me, help me.”

Luther awoke with a start and slid into the brush, away from the glowing embers of the fire. He glanced behind him and saw Buff roll out of sight into the woods. The two of them lay silently for a long time. They knew how it worked in the West. Get stupid, get dead. Simple.

What had made him move? The more Luther thought about it, the more he was sure it wasn’t a sound that had awakened him. It was a—a nightmare. But that didn’t quite cover it. Finally, into the darkness, Luther said quietly, “Buff, I’ve a hankerin’ to see the kid.”

There was an extended silence. “That what sent you runnin’ for cover? Ya missed the boy?”

Buff didn’t sound sarcastic, which Luther appreciated. Sheepishly he admitted into the night, “As I lay here, I reckon that’s exactly what woke me.”

Buff came to the fire matter-of-factly. “Movin’ first an’ askin’ questions later keeps body and soul together.”

Buff looked to be settling back in, but Luther knew he could not ignore that call for help. “ ’Twas one o’ them consarned dreams where a fella is fallin’ and lands afore he wakes up.”

“Had ’em,” Buff said.

“Only ’tweren’t me fallin’. It was Clay. An’ it was almighty real. And a call for help. I think the boy’s in trouble.”

“Best check it out.”

Buff put on the coffee while Luther led the horses to the creek for water. Without more than ten words between them, they ate breakfast and broke camp.

As the sun rose to the middle of the sky, Luther spoke for the first time since they’d set out. “Texas is a big state.”

“Clay’s a big man,” Buff said. “He’ll leave tracks.”

Luther nodded. “Blackfeet’re feisty in the spring anyhow. Might’uz well find a differ’nt spot.”

“Yup,” Buff said grimly as he swung his horse into a ground-eating lope aimed at Texas, most likely a thousand miles away or more. “Let’s see if Apaches’re friendlier.”

Sophie bathed the Hector stink off herself and ate her biscuits and jelly, while Beth stood behind her and braided her still-wet hair. She was just getting up from the table when Mandy came tearing into the house.

“He’s awake again!” Mandy dashed away.

Sophie and Beth were hard on her heels.

Sally was kneeling beside the man, talking earnestly to him, when Sophie got to the shed. Sophie heard her say, “And I’m your third daughter, Sally.”

Sophie skidded to a stop and tried to walk sedately into the shed. Her patient turned his eyes toward her and tried to sit up. Sophie forgot to be sedate and dropped to the ground beside him. “Don’t try yet. We shouldn’t have let you get up earlier. It was too soon.”

As if he appreciated being given permission to lie still, he sank flat on the ground.

“Now,” Sophie said calmly, “can you tell us who you are?”

He rubbed his head and didn’t answer for a long moment. Sophie
saw her daughters lean ever closer. Even the practical Mandy seemed to be hoping this man would be their father.

When he didn’t respond, Sophie added, “You rode your horse over a creek bank last night. We heard you fall and got you back up here. This is going to sound strange to you, but once we got you to where we could see you. . .”

Sophie really didn’t know how to say it. “The thing is. . .you look exactly like my husband. And he’s been. . .he’s been. . .” She thought it best to break it to him gently. “The thing is. . .my husband—the girls’ father—is. . . He’s. . .” Sophie could find no gentle way. “He’s dead.”

The man was watching her like a hawk, hanging on every word. What little color he had faded from his poorly washed face. Sophie hated to go on, but there was no solution to this in silence. “I buried him myself two years ago. There can be no mistake. So you can see why the girls and I are. . .” Sophie faltered then went for a Texas-sized understatement, “. . .interested in who you are.”

The man quit rubbing his head. He was staring at her and listening so intently, it was as if every word she spoke was coming straight from the mouth of God. “Earlier you asked me about a name?”

“Clifton Edwards.”

His eyes narrowed, and Sophie leaned closer along with the girls.

“Clifton Edwards. Cliff,” he muttered. “It means something to me.”

He felt himself withdraw from the women as he searched inside himself. Visions flashed one after the other. A towering mountain. A battlefield. A half-naked Blackfoot charging him with blood in his eyes. A star. A silver star pinned on his shirt. When he saw the star, the floodgates opened. He sat upright so quickly Sally almost landed in his lap. “Clifton Edwards. I remember. No, I’m not Clifton Edwards. I’m Clayton McClellen. I’m Cliff ’s brother. His twin brother.”

Sophie gasped at the same time she reached her hand out to support
the man’s unsteady shoulders. “Cliff didn’t have a brother. He didn’t have any family.”

“Yes, he did. We’d been separated for years. My ma couldn’t stand life in the West and went back to her family in Boston. We were young, three or four, but even then I knew I wanted the life we were living in Montana. Pa said Cliff hated it, so Ma took him and left me.”

Sophie shook her head. “But. . .Cliff never said a word about you. Or about a father.”

“Pa died while I was away fighting the war.” Clay tried to make sense of what she said. Could Cliff have been so indifferent to Clay that he wouldn’t even mention his twin brother’s existence? “I guess when he picked my mother over Pa and me, he decided we were dead to him.”