Dawn Comes Early (11 page)

Aunt Bessie feigned a wounded look. “Why not?”

“We have nothing in common. We don't even speak the same language,” he said.

Aunt Bessie's mouth turned down in disappointment. “I don't remember her being foreign.” She looked to her sister for confirmation. “Do you suppose she had someone write the note she sent us?”

Aunt Lula-Belle looked as perplexed as her sister. “She didn't look foreign either.”

“Yes, but we only saw her for a moment before Cactus Joe dragged her outside,” Aunt Bessie said.

“She's not a foreigner,” Luke said. Last he heard Boston wasn't a foreign country. “She's one of those book-learning women who talks over your head.”

He was a plain and simple man and he didn't need no ten-dollar words to say what he had to say. Nor did he go around naming things after Greek philosophers.

“Like Louise?” Aunt Bessie asked, her voice edged with dislike.

“No, not like her,” he said gruffly. Louise had run off to Chicago to attend one of those fancy schools. It hurt like crazy when she wrote to tell him she was betrothed to a professor. He cared for Louise, had wanted to marry her. Miss Tenney was little more than a stranger. Not the same thing at all.

Regretting his harshly spoken words, he leaned over and pecked Aunt Bessie on her crinkly cheek. He would always be grateful to her for taking care of him and his brother just as she promised her dying sister she would. She and Uncle Sam treated him and Michael like their own. Apparently, in his aunt's mind at least, finding wives for them was part of her responsibility to her deceased sister, and she had no intention of resting until she had fulfilled that obligation.

“I've got to get to work.” He hated to rush them out the door, but orders were backed up and since Michael had taken off again, he was on his own. He really did need to hire an assistant. “See you Sunday.”

Each Sunday after church he had dinner with his two aunts and uncles. “Maybe I'll ask Miss Chase to join us,” he added, hoping that would please them.

Aunt Bessie's smile did not reach her eyes. “That would be wonderful, dear,” she said, sounding more distracted than happy at the prospect of seeing him with the schoolmaster's daughter.

He watched them go with a fond sigh. He supposed listening to Miss Chase rattle on incessantly, as she tended to do, was a small price to pay to appease his two meddling aunts.

Chapter 8

“Shoot at your own peril,” the ruffian yelled. “Curses on you!” Brandon yelled back.
Bang, bang, bang!

R
uckus was a slave driver. That was the only way to describe him. Every day he greeted Kate with that mournful face of his.

“You're still here, eh?” he asked, as if he'd expected her to sneak away in the dead of night.

That morning, after his usual greeting, he made her saddle up. “Today we're riding the range. Since you haven't fallen off your horse for three days, it's time you did some real ridin'.”

She greeted this news with both jubilation and dismay. Her legs were so sore she'd barely made it down the stairs that morning. Her arms throbbed and her tailbone ached. Even her bruises had bruises. Already her hands were calloused, the nails broken to the quick.

The thought of getting on her horse filled her with dread. On the other hand, Ruckus wasn't big on praise. Letting her ride out on the range was about as close to a compliment as she was likely to get from him, and she intended to prove herself worthy—if it killed her.

She filled her lungs with crisp air and mounted, grimacing against the pain that spread from her inner thighs all the way down to her ankles.

With grim determination she pressed her legs against the sides of her horse and followed Ruckus out of the corral. Stretch, Moose, and Mexican Pete waited a short distance away. None of the three looked happy to see her, Moose least of all.

“Why do we have to take her?” he asked, his lip turned up. “All she does is slow us down and make a mess of things.”

Kate gritted her teeth. She hated the way they talked about her as if she weren't there.

“I'm only doin' what the boss lady says,” Ruckus said. “Now quit your yappin' and move it.”

Moose cast a frown in her direction, pulled his hat as low as his ears would allow, and rode off.

Kate patted her horse. “Come on, Decker. Let's show them.” She kicked her heels into the horse's sides and followed the four men who rode in a straight line, one after another.

Oddly enough, the past intruded less when she was in a saddle. Perhaps it was because nothing about the desert reminded her of Boston and all that had happened there.

As they rode, Stretch spun a tale of a man who fell in the Grand Canyon wearing rubber boots. “He kept bouncing up and down for days. They finally had to shoot him to keep him from starving to death.”

This brought guffaws from the other three men and a chuckle from Kate. The stories told by the hoboes outside her childhood window were never as amusing as Stretch's.

“You ought to be a writer,” she called to him.

Stretch glanced over his shoulder. “Nah. Writers are for people who read. My stories are for everyone.”

“Yeah, but it's sure a lot easier to close a book than turn off your ears,” Ruckus moaned, and Moose laughed.

“Stay behind me,” Ruckus ordered when her horse wandered off the tracks made by the others. “We don't want to disturb no more grass than necessary. And keep your eyes peeled lest you see somethin' strange.”

“Like what?” she called. There wasn't much out here but cactus and sage. What little grass there was didn't seem worth protecting.

“Injured or sick cattle,” he said. “Fire. Rustlers. Broken fences.” He pointed to a rabbit hole. “Everything out here lives in a hole. So, Goldilocks, watch where you're riding.”

She had grown used to his calling her Goldilocks but still grappled with the rather odd ways westerners expressed themselves. She still felt uncomfortable calling Miss Walker the boss lady, though Ruckus insisted it was a sign of respect.

“If she was male, we'd call her old man,” he'd said. “That's what-cha get for bein' the biggest toad in the pond.”

She learned that a hat was a lid unless you were from south of the border and then it was a sombrero. A cowboy's rope was a lariat not a lasso, one being the noun and the other a verb. It was Arizony and New Mex, though the men seemed to have too much respect for Texas to call it anything other than its rightful name.

It wasn't just the language of the West that confounded her; the desert that seemed so barren from afar actually teemed with life. Nothing was as it seemed at first glance. Sage that looked purple from a distance was actually gray. Rocks that seemed dull from afar glittered with fool's gold up close. Wildflowers grew in abundance, and what appeared to be endless flatland was actually filled with rocky gullies, rough gulches, and dry riverbeds.

The desert was like a painting whose beauty could only be uncovered upon close observation, and a thrill raced through her with each new discovery.

They rode through wild mesquite and prickly scrub brush. Ruckus had loaned her a pair of chaps to wear, but they were heavy and uncomfortable so she'd left them behind. Now she wished she hadn't.

Range mustangs looked up when they rode by, then calmly resumed grazing. “What beautiful animals,” she called to Ruckus.

Grazing cattle lifted broad white faces, jaws making circular movements as they chewed. Up close the cattle, even with their short legs, looked so much larger than Kate ever imagined.

However, the animals she found most amazing were prairie dogs, which seemed to be everywhere. They stood up on hind legs and made funny little barking sounds, and she couldn't help but laugh at their antics.

Equally amusing were the roadrunners that raced frantically across the desert floor, their legs but a blur beneath their fast-moving bodies.

Ruckus slapped his rope against his chaps to chase a couple of cattle out of a gulch, his movements deliberate and unrushed. The steers scrambled up the incline with low moos.

“The quickest way to move a steer is slow,” he explained. “Otherwise it'll take off in the wrong direction.” After a while he added, “I reckon that's why the Forever Man sometimes takes his time answerin' prayers. He wants to make sure we ain't gonna run off and get lost once we get what we want.”

Having no experience with answered prayers, Kate guided her horse around a prairie dog mound and said nothing.

Ruckus veered off in another direction and stopped to examine the remains of a campfire. He didn't look happy and Kate wondered if it meant trouble.

She was so busy watching him she didn't notice that her horse had strayed away from the trail left by the others. By the time she heard the rattling sound it was too late. Decker reared back on his hind legs, pawing the air with a loud whinny, and Kate hit the ground.

“Oomph!”

Ruckus galloped up, pistol in hand, and shot the snake with a single bullet. “You all right?” he asked, looking down from astride his horse.

“I'm f-fine,” she stammered with a wary glance at the lifeless snake. No doubt she had another batch of fresh bruises, but the rattler could no longer harm her. Moose's sneer made her face burn with humiliation.

Ruckus holstered his gun, rested his arms on his pommel, and stared at her.

She glared back at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He tilted his hat away from his face. “I plumb don't know why God brought you here, but I reckon if he wanted you to be a rancher he'd have built you so you could stay in a saddle.” He shook his head and blew out his breath. “If you can't even ride a horse—”

“I
can
ride a horse,” she yelled. “I just can't ride
that
horse.” Decker was like every other male she ever knew—one moment gentle and the next wild and unpredictable.

“Fallin' off of Decker makes as much sense as fallin' out of a rockin' chair. If you can't ride an old nag, how do you expect to ride a cuttin' horse?”

She had no idea what a cutting horse was, but it sure didn't sound too appealing.

Mexican Pete and Stretch rode back at the sound of gunfire and laughed upon seeing her on the ground.

Mouth clamped shut in annoyance, she stood and brushed herself off. She looked around for her hat, shuddering anew at the sight of the dead snake. Spotting Miss Walker on her horse a distance away, Kate's heart sank. No doubt the woman saw her hit the ground. Again.

Moose rode up with her horse in tow. He didn't laugh. Instead, his lips puckered with exasperation.

“Thank you,” she said, taking Decker by the reins and ignoring Moose's reproachful expression. He shook his head and rode off without a word.

She glared after him before mounting her horse. This time she kept her eyes on the trail in front of her, careful not to stray away from the tracks left by the others.

She caught up to the men watering their horses by a windmill. Ruckus stood in the skimpy shade of the stiltlike tower, hands on his waist.

“We just oiled it last month and listen to it. Sounds like a bunch of rattling chains.”

Kate listened but it didn't sound any different from any of the other windmills they had passed.

Ruckus lifted an oilcan off his saddle. “Who's going up this time?” he called.

While Stretch, Moose, and Mexican Pete argued among themselves, Kate quickly made up her mind. Before any of the others volunteered, she snatched the oilcan from Ruckus, slung it over her shoulder, and started up the ladder.

Ruckus yelled after her, “What in blazes do you think you're doin'? Git down from there. You hear me? Now!”

Ignoring him, she kept going. Teeth gritted against the sting of calloused hands on wooden rungs, she climbed. She would show Miss Walker, Moose, and the others she could do a man's job. She would show them all. Grim determination blocked out all other thoughts as she clambered up, leaving the desert floor below. It seemed to take forever, but she kept climbing and Ruckus kept yelling for her to get down.