Mary Connealy (71 page)

She grieved for another neglected little baby girl.

God, please let me be strong enough to survive this new mess I’ve made of my life. Forgive me for marrying him. Forgive me for being such a fool.

Crooning to Betsy, Belle wished the baby could forgive her. But Betsy would never know what had been taken from her.

Wrenching tears wrung straight out of Belle’s heart, until finally she slept before the slowly dying fire.

S
ilas laughed out loud in the chilly night. He was done.

Well, not all the way done. But close enough he could finally share his idea with his womenfolk. Tell them what he’d been up to for the last month.

Knowing he was hours late for supper, he pushed his horse hard, but the animal was game and rested from lazing the day away while Silas worked. They made good time, and Silas imagined being the hero to his women. Hugs and kisses and all that would come his way when he finally told them about his idea.

He shouldn’t have stayed so long today, but the long month of backbreaking work was worth it. He was overflowing with the pleasure of it. He knew he could never give to Belle what she’d given to him, but it was something.

It was a lot.

It was enough.

He thought about all Belle had given him. Of course there was the vast land holdings and impressive herd of cattle. But there was so much more. All of it more important than the ranch.

The girls.

“I’m a father.” Silas’s horse pricked up its ears when Silas spoke aloud, probably figuring his rider had lost his mind.

Grinning, Silas thought of his pretty, hardworking girls and patted his mount on the neck. “Never gave that much thought before, boy. If I had, I reckon I’d’ve thought of children as a heavy burden and a big responsibility. But I never figured it for the fun. I love being a pa to all those girls. I love hearin’ the word
Pa
from them.” He wouldn’t mind having a dozen more of them. Thinking about Belle having his baby was enough to make him slap his hand on the rump of his horse and gallop every step of the way back to the cabin.

No, there was no comparison to what Belle had brought to this marriage compared to what one penniless, cowardly cowpoke brought, but he knew Belle loved him. He returned that love in full measure. It was more than any man had given her before. He wished he had more, but yes, it was enough.

He rode up to the ranch yard under a high, full moon. The cabin had its feeble glow shining out of the cracks in the front door. Except there wasn’t much light showing—which meant there weren’t as many cracks. That meant the cracks had all been patched. He’d told Belle he’d get to it, but she must not have trusted him to do it. Of course he had no intention of doing it, but still she should have trusted him. Frowning with irritation, he almost let his good mood slip but shoved the crankiness aside as he put his horse up and hurried to the ramshackle house to make his announcement to his girls.

Before he could get there, the door flew open, letting the meager heat out of the cabin.

Sarah called out, “Ma, is that you?”

There was something he’d never heard in his stalwart little Sarah’s voice before. Fear. The cold night air whipped around him, but it was Sarah’s voice that chilled him.

“No, it’s Pa, Sarie. Isn’t your ma in yet?” Silas increased his already-hurried stride. His pleasure evaporated. Belle should have been home hours ago.

“Her horse came in alone.” Sarah’s eyes were shaded by the dark, but Silas could see the furrows in her brow and hear the worry in her voice. “Emma is trying to back-trail him, but it was already almost dark when the horse showed up wearing his saddle and bridle. Emma said he came from the far north where Ma was combing those breaks for any hide-out steers today. Emma headed up there.”

“Your ma was up in that steep timberland? I told her to leave that for me.” Silas forgot his fear for Belle for just a second as he digested this latest bit of proof that Belle didn’t want to move aside as boss and make room for him.

“I reckon she thought she was out of time, Silas.” Sarah sounded matter-of-fact. She obviously didn’t plan on Silas doing that work either. “Snow comes early up here.”

“I know when snow comes,” Silas snapped, annoyed with the way Sarah called him by his first name instead of saying, “Pa.” He looked at his upset little girl more closely. Her worry for her mother was only part of what the little girl was feeling. He detected a note of…resignation. Like the little girl had resigned herself to something, but Silas couldn’t think what. And under that, so slight he hoped he misunderstood it, he got an impression of disdain. “Follow me to the barn while I saddle a fresh horse.”

Sarah trotted to keep up as he rushed toward the barn. “I should have gone with Emma, but she said I should tell you what’d happened. Emma said you might help.”

Silas looked at her, not breaking his stride. “What do you mean, I
might
help? Of course I’m going to help.”

Sarah shrugged. “We’re used to doing for ourselves.”

Silas bit back an angry retort. “How long ago did the horse show up?” Silas had been unusually late. He’d thought he’d come bursting into this tumbledown house and make his big announcement and be greeted like a conquering hero. Instead, the house held only one scared, disrespectful little girl.

“Hours. Emma’s been gone for hours. She told me which way Ma rode.”

“You can’t go, Sarie. You need to stay here and take care of Betsy. Does she have enough to eat?” He knew the baby still nursed.

Sarah grabbed a lasso and went out of the barn to the yard where the riding stock was corralled. Over her shoulder, she said, “Betsy’s with her.”

“With Emma?” Silas followed her and watched Sarah disobey him and lasso a horse. He clenched his jaw but said nothing. If she wanted to come, she could come.

“No, with Ma.”

Silas had been leaving earlier than Belle most mornings. He hadn’t realized Belle took the baby along. “She takes Betsy with her to work the cattle?”

“Ma has to take her if she’s gonna be gone over a feeding time. How else can she manage?” Sarah led her horse into the barn to where her saddle was kept.

Silas felt a twist of fear as he threw a loop over a fresh horse. Not only was his wife missing, but his baby might be in danger, too. Hopefully the horse had just broken its reins while it was tied up, but anything could happen in the wilderness. His fear bloomed into anger at Belle for putting herself in danger.

He and Sarah were saddled and on the trail in minutes. As they rode out of the yard into the cold night, Silas asked, “Do you know where she was headed exactly? Did she tell you?”

“It weren’t no secret, Silas.” She guided her horse in the direction she’d said Emma went.

Silas caught up and rode alongside his daughter. “Why are you calling me Silas tonight? I thought you were going to call me Pa.”

“You’re not my pa is all.” Sarah didn’t look at him. She just urged her horse a little faster and said over her shoulder, “I forgot that for a while. And I don’t like the name Sarie anymore neither.” She took a narrow trail that headed virtually straight up.

Silas couldn’t ride alongside her, so he trailed behind an eight-year-old girl. The little slip of a thing was more in charge of this Tanner Ranch than he was.

As they pushed hard up a trail that was treacherous even in the light, he worried and fumed and prayed for Belle to be all right so he could yell at her until she stopped thinking she was the head of this family.

He made Sarah stop so he could check for tracks. Belle’s riderless horse had left a clear trail coming home, and Emma’s horse was heading out this same direction. He got on his horse, and Sarah took the lead again.

As the trail ride grew long, Silas turned his mind away from the worry gnawing away like a rat in his gut, knowing panic would do no good. His mind wandered to his news. He’d expected all his girls to be excited.

As they rode, he drew his coat more tightly around his neck against a wind that was increasingly bitter. He tried to set his hurt aside as he thought about his wife and his girls and how happy he was going to make them and how wonderful it was to be part of this family. Then a new idea popped into Silas’s head. He’d grown up around women—too many women. He knew more about women than any man ever should, including very personal
female
things. He’d wished long and hard as a boy that he’d be spared the knowledge of a woman’s ways. No young man wanted to learn such—but he had.

And that led him to his wife and what womanly event
hadn’t
occurred with Belle in their month together. She could be expecting their child.

Silas’s heart thumped hard as a quiet assurance settled on his heart as if whispered by the mouth of God. Belle was going to have his baby.

Belle, lost in this vast, cold night with a baby on her back, doing all the work of a ranch hand with no help because she was too stubborn to step aside and give him a chance. And she was carrying his child.

When he got that woman home, he was going to nail her chaps to a rocking chair and make her stay in the house! Things were going to change around here!

He didn’t care who had built this place up. He was the husband, and it was the Harden Ranch, and Belle could just accept it and obey him, despite ducking the vow to obey with that infernal weak-kneed preacher.

His hands tightened on his reins and his mount sidestepped a bit until Silas brought himself, and his horse, under control. All that yelling would have to wait until he found Belle and made sure she was safe.

They had been on the trail for hours, and only fear was keeping Silas awake. Sarah wasn’t speaking to him—which wasn’t like her. She was a talkative little thing.

They got past the steepest part of the ride, and Silas rode up beside her. “You’re sure she was going to the north timber?”

“You’re a husband.” Sarah didn’t look at him as she pushed her horse faster. “Don’t you ever talk to her? She always tells us where she’s going.”

Silas didn’t like the way he’d been dropped back into the pack of husbands. They all talked about “the husbands” as if they were a group, not worthy of being remembered as individuals. He’d never minded that until all of a sudden he was one of them.

They were overdue for giving the horses a breather anyway, so he reached across and grabbed Sarah’s reins and pulled her horse to a stop.

Sarah stared straight forward.

Silas leaned over and caught her chin and pulled it around so she faced him. “Give your horse a rest for a minute. What’s going on here? Why are you angry with me?”

Sarah stared at him for a long time, and Silas began to believe he’d been speaking in some strange foreign language. “Talk to me, Sarah. If you’re upset with me, say so. Don’t be like this, all moody and rude. Just say what’s on your mind.”

Sarah opened her mouth then closed it again. She inhaled slowly then squared her shoulders. “Ma says it don’t do no good to talk to husbands. She says men are all alike and there ain’t no point trying to change ’em.” Sarah tugged at her reins. “Let’s get back to hunting for Ma. We don’t have time to sit here yammering while Ma might be in trouble.”

Silas didn’t let her go. He’d been handling women long before this little one had made her way onto the earth, and he’d be hornswoggled if the contrary little filly would get the best of him. He knew the twisting and turning routes a woman’s mind could take, and he knew if she was just a few years older, she’d say,
If you don’t know what’s wrong, I’m not going to tell you.

But Sarah was still young for that. Silas thought he could handle her. “You haven’t said anything to me that makes sense, Sarie. Say it plain. What did I do?”

Sarah looked at him with that disdainful expression, but Silas knew Sarah wanted to love him. He’d seen her light up too many times over little compliments or simple kindness. “Say anything that’s in your head. I won’t get mad and I won’t punish you. I love you, and I want to know what I did to hurt you.”

Sarah’s gaze dropped, but Silas still had ahold of her chin so she couldn’t forget he was nagging her.

“I think you do love me.” She looked back at him. “And I don’t reckon you’ve done anything to hurt me. It’s just that…we…I wanted…I hoped you wouldn’t be…lazy like the other husbands.”

“Lazy!” Silas exclaimed, thinking of the long, hard hours he’d been working.

“I thought you’d help us some.” Sarah plowed on with her explanation. “But Ma and Emma did the regular fall chores, even patching the cabin, which you said you’d do.”

“I will do it.” He had no intention of doing it, but that was beside the point. “Winter hasn’t come yet. I had some things I needed to do first.”

“Winter is here.” Sarah shrugged in the bitter cold like she’d heard it all before. “It’s time for everything to be done, and everything
is
done.”

“What do you mean everything is done?”

“We’re ready now for winter if we can just find Ma and get her home safe. It’s just like last year, only last year she didn’t have Betsy, so it was easier. But she said she did it all with the rest of us girls on her back, so it don’t matter. Course the herd was smaller when I was a baby and she was a mite younger.”

“You mean she’s brought all the cattle in from the summer pastures already?” Silas asked incredulously.

“Well, sure. She has to. You know she cut and stacked the hay.”

“But I told her to stop that.” Silas’s stomach twisted with regret. He’d made her promise him. They’d had a big fight over it and…Silas thought back to the night they’d had that set-to. He couldn’t remember her actually promising. He’d demanded that she do it and…he wasn’t sure, but he thought she’d given her word. He’d insisted, ordered her to wait. Then he’d kissed her and her arms had gone around his neck.

No woman as agreeable as Belle could be defying him and lying to him. “I told her I’d do it. She said she only did one small patch that filled in with snow real early. I told her to check the herd and do a tally. I didn’t mean for her to round everything up. And to be ready for winter, she’d have to dredge out the ponds and do some branding. There are longhorns to bring in by herself before everything is done.”