Ransom Canyon (25 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Wilkes

W
ILKES
W
AGNER
STARED
at his aging uncle and wondered which of them had completely lost their mind. Common sense rarely ran in the Wagner family, but Great-Uncle Vern’s suggestion was ridiculous.

“I’ve given it some thought, and this is the only answer, boy,” the crippled-up old cowboy repeated as if Wilkes were ten and not in his midthirties. “Look at it this way—we breed cattle, don’t we? Why not just pick a woman out with all the right traits and mate with her? It shouldn’t take but a few tries before we got at least one offspring to claim the next generation. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance we’ll get a boy on the first delivery.”

“You mean marry some woman, don’t you?” Wilkes was never sure when his uncle was kidding.

“Of course. There’s an order to these kinds of things. You’d need to marry her first, get her pregnant and wait for a son.” The old man lit a pipe that looked as if it might have survived the battle at the Alamo. “Look on the bright side. Half your life is over, anyway. If you’re miserable at marriage, the last thirty or forty years will seem to move slower with a mean woman around the place.”

Wilkes rolled his eyes. He needed another drink. Or better yet, he should give Uncle Vern a few more, and with luck he’d pass out.

To humor the cowboy he asked, “And what would those traits be that I’m looking for in a bride?”

Vern smiled as if he’d won. “Stout. You don’t want one of those thin girls who only eats out of the garden. She’d need to have a little meat on her bones. Ain’t nothing worse than trying to cuddle up to a skinny gal on a cold night. I did that once in Amarillo, and about midnight I decided driving home in a snowstorm would be warmer.”

Wilkes grabbed a pencil off the poker table that had long ago replaced the dining table and started writing on the back of his
Western Horseman
magazine.
Not skinny.

His uncle leaned back in a rocker that had come to the Devil’s Fork Ranch in a covered wagon. “She’ll need to know how to cook and clean and sew, too. Otherwise she’d be wearing out the road to town buying takeout, hiring housekeepers and replacing clothes she’s lost a button on.”

“All that might be hard to find these days.” The only thing the dozen women Wilkes had dated in the past ten years could make for dinner was reservations. He considered them cooks if they knew how to use the microwave for popcorn.

His aging uncle wasn’t paying attention. He was busy thinking. “And she needs to be rich. Not just have money coming to her, but already have it in the bank. You don’t want to count on her father liking you, ’cause if he don’t, he might cut her out of the will. Then you’ll be stuck with a poor wife with rich habits.”

Rich
, Wilkes scribbled.

“And simple.” Uncle Vern lit his pipe. “Ain’t no smart girl ever going to marry you, even if you are good-looking. If she’s got much schooling, she’ll want to sit around and read all day.”

Wilkes had humored his old uncle long enough. Vern was the dumbest and the youngest of seven children, and all his brothers and sisters claimed he’d been dropped on his head one time too many when he was growing up. He had lived on the ranch all of his seventy-seven years. The rule was whoever ran the ranch also had to keep an eye on Vern. Wilkes’s father and grandfather had done it, and now it was Wilkes’s turn.

This crazy idea had to be the worst one yet. He leaned forward until Vern’s whiskey-blurred eyes focused on him. “I’m real busy with the calving right now, Uncle. Do you think you could keep a look out for a possible wife? She shouldn’t be too hard to find. She eats beef, and she’s rich and dumb. She’ll be wearing a homemade dress and probably have freshly made jam dripping down her chin. Oh, I forgot to add that she needs to be easy to impregnate, ’cause I won’t be visiting her often.” Wilkes fought down a laugh. “Only that trait might be hard to prove on sight.”

Vern didn’t get the joke. He rocked back so far that the forward swing shoved him out of the chair and onto his wobbly legs. “I’ll do my best for you. I promise. Might go into Crossroads tomorrow and put up a few signs. I don’t think I’ve been to town since spring.”

Wilkes laughed. “You do that, Uncle Vern.”

The broken-down cowboy headed toward the massive double doors of the ranch house muttering, “I hated to have this talk with you, son, but you ain’t getting nowhere in the breeding department, and ’fore you know it you’ll be past your prime and dead. Who’ll run the ranch?”

Wilkes saw it then. The reason his uncle had insisted on drinking tonight and talking. He was afraid he’d outlive Wilkes and there’d be no one to take over Devil’s Fork. Vern had spent his life on the ranch, never worrying about money or where his next meal was coming from. He’d hated school so badly his mother hadn’t made him go after the seventh grade. The thought of leaving home had never crossed his mind. He loved working with horses, living alone and driving his pickup until the odometer circled twice. He was afraid of being left out here on his own.

Walking to the porch, Wilkes watched Uncle Vern limp toward his cabin a hundred yards away. Light from the second-floor windows of the main house spotted the old man’s path. The massive home had been built fifty years ago to hold a dozen kids. It now held one: Wilkes.

Vern had watched his brother, Wilkes’s grandfather, take over the ranch. When he died, Wilkes’s father became the manager. Vern said all he wanted to do was cowboy. The job of boss wouldn’t suit him.

Uncle Vern had been around all of Wilkes’s life, working cattle with the ranch hands, training horses with his father and eating supper every night at the family table. This life was all he knew. All he wanted to know.

Wilkes shook his head as his heart ached for Vern Wagner who’d lived long enough to go from being Wilkes’s hero and teacher, to his friend, to his responsibility. His uncle had taught him to ride, cussed him out when he left the pasture gate open and bought him fireworks every year even when Wilkes’s mother said she wouldn’t allow them on the ranch. The old guy may have danced with a few girls in his day, but he had never married. He was loyal to the family, loyal to the brand.

Wilkes watched the cabin lights flick on. “I better start looking for a fat, rich wife so I can start breeding Vern’s next guardian angel,” he said as he downed the last of his whiskey, knowing he was only half kidding. Then he climbed the stairs and went to the second room off the upstairs balcony. The master bedroom was bigger, but when Wilkes came home to take over the ranch, he hadn’t felt as if he belonged there. He still didn’t. The smaller second bedroom suited him better.

* * *

T
HE
NEXT
MORNING
,
as he drove into town to pick up fencing supplies and eat breakfast with a friend, Wilkes thought about the conversation from the night before. He decided maybe he should start thinking about finding a wife, but it wasn’t exactly a scavenger hunt. Maybe he should make a real list. It’d be pretty much the opposite of Vern’s. He liked long-legged women with midnight hair.

Wilkes walked along the wide main street while he waited for the supplies to be loaded. He noticed a few new stores had opened since he’d last been to town four months ago. The change made the little town look a bit more prosperous.

One empty hull had become a keepsake shop. He imagined the only folks who bought things to set around must be orphans, since every time one of his relatives died he got another crate of treasured family knickknacks. Sometimes he wondered if his great-great-grandparents had hauled their junk from the old country to Texas in a wagon train and not just one wagon. And nowadays, when the family got tired of them, or died off, all the keepsakes came back to the Wagner ranch like ugly buzzards coming home to roost.

Wilkes walked into the new Keepsakes Forever shop hoping he might offer to supply the place. He had a few hundred keepsakes to spare.

Two women in their sixties greeted him when he stepped inside and closed the door. He knew them by last name. The Franklin sisters. He assumed they had first names, too, but years ago, when his mother would point them out to him, she always said simply, “There’s the Franklin sisters. Poor things. Bless their hearts.”

He’d been twenty before he found out why they were
poor things
. Apparently, in the late sixties, they’d both fallen for the same man. A good-looking Gypsy kid with bedroom eyes and the last name of Stanley. He had run off with a girl from another Gypsy family in town, and both the Franklin sisters were brokenhearted. They had sworn over an ocean of tears that he was the only man either would ever love and they would never marry.

Some thought that sad; others just thought it was their escape because the two weren’t likely to marry anyway. By eighteen they both tipped the scales at over two hundred pounds, and at twenty-five they’d gained another fifty or sixty. By thirty they both sported mustaches. Lately, their lips seemed to have disappeared, making the facial hair look like a frown.

Even on a dark night no one would mistake them as pretty.

Wilkes turned to smile at the two ladies. “Morning, Miss Franklin and Miss Franklin.” Even as round and plain as they were, there was something about the ladies that was adorable.

Both giggled. “How can we help you?” they said at once.

Wilkes didn’t want to seem the village idiot, so he said, “I was looking for a keepsake to give a friend who is visiting.”

“We know just the thing.” Each woman grabbed a box from the stacks behind the counter.

Wilkes didn’t care what was in the boxes. He picked the smallest item and thanked them. Handing them a twenty, he wasn’t surprised to get only coins back. They managed small talk while one sister bagged his purchase.

When they passed him the box, one Miss Franklin started mentioning every relative she had who was still unmarried. “Fran’s newly divorced, you know, but she’s a treasure.”

The other sister chimed in. “Avis is a little older than you, but she’s real pretty, and then you know Molly and Doris. I think you went to school with them. Both were engaged last year, but it didn’t work out.”

The first one picked up her phone. “I could call Molly. She works part-time at the sheriff’s office. I’m sure she’d love to stop by and say hi.”

His one hope was to get out of the store before anyone came in. He’d dated a few of their nieces during high school, and the thought of those girls turning into these women was enough to give him wide-awake nightmares.

When both of them pulled out notepads to jot his phone number on, he said a polite but hasty goodbye and almost ran out the door.

With no thought but to escape, Wilkes darted into the next store. The welcome sign clanged against the door like a gong. The smell of hairspray and bleach almost knocked him back outside.

A beauty shop. Wilkes swore under his breath. Why couldn’t it have been a bookstore, or a Laundromat, or better yet, a bar?

He looked around at women with aluminum foil in their hair and took a step backward.
Alien invasion
came to mind.

The gum-chewing girl with green-striped hair darted around the counter and caught up to him. “May we help you, mister?”

“No thanks,” Wilkes managed. “I was just looking for my aunt.”

One of the aliens in the back called out, “Your last aunt died five years ago, Wilkes Wagner.”

Wilkes pulled his hat down and answered, “Then I guess she’s not here.”

He ignored the laughter and walked out, head high, keepsake box in hand. Thank goodness the next place down the road was a café he knew. Dorothy’s Café had been around for as long as he could remember and the food served was exactly the same. Fried grease with a side of starch. He might be a half hour early to meet his friend, but the café seemed a safe place.

As he sat down at the first booth, he saw a sign across the street that said, Puppy Paradise, Dog Grooming and Training.

No doubt about it, Crossroads, Texas, was growing. Wilkes couldn’t wait to show Uncle Vern the place across the street. Maybe he’d suggest grooming the cattle.

He ordered coffee then opened the box. To his shock, he’d bought a twenty-dollar mug that looked to be the same shape as the one the waitress delivered with his coffee.

Only, the mug in the box was obviously worth far more because it read You Are at the Crossroads of Your Life.

Wilkes laughed. Nothing had changed in his life in almost ten years. It was hard to see a crossroads when he knew he was born with only one way to travel. He had played four years of college football without managing to pick up much education, and he’d served three years in the army, but by twenty-five, he was back home doing what he knew he’d always do. Run the ranch. It wasn’t as though he’d given up on his dreams, he’d never really had any.

His folks weren’t dead. They were simply absentee landlords. Never around to help or fix things, only calling in now and then to check on what he was doing. They must have started packing the day they’d called Wilkes and found out he hadn’t even bothered to look for a job after he got out of the army. He was drifting, and they had the solution to his no-goal, no-direction life.

His mother’s folks were aging and needed help downsizing and selling several small businesses. So Wilkes’s parents moved to Denver knowing Wilkes would run the ranch while they were away.

He’d agreed, thinking they’d be gone a few months. Eight years later his dad looked like an aging hippie and his mother was taking meditation classes. They were going on cruises with Wilkes’s eighty-year-old grandparents and showing no sign of coming back.

Wilkes told himself he didn’t care. After all, he had no plans after the army and loved ranching, though it would have been nice to have a choice.

“Morning, Wilkes,” a low voice said from behind him.

Wilkes turned to see Yancy Grey coming through the door. He was a few years younger than Wilkes but they’d become friends working on a park project together.

“I’m glad you had time to meet me,” Yancy said as he slid his thin frame into the other side of the booth. “I need to ask a favor.”