Rode Hard, Put Up Wet

by Lola Rebel

  She heard the door open and close, and before she saw Glen Riley coming 'round the corner into the kitchen, she'd already turned to the jar of coffee grounds to brew a pot. She cursed herself for it, but she'd already started, and he'd notice if she stopped. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was making her uncomfortable.

  "Mornin', ma'am."

  Glen waited for her to answer him. He was used to being alone. Waking up alone. Spending most of the day alone. When he'd left the army and taken up card-playing, it had felt new and interesting to be near people. But the room was always empty around him. Nobody to talk to even at the table. They weren't friends, they were people whose money he was planning to take.

  Being near a family like this, even if it wasn't his family, reminded him of a time before he'd joined up. When he'd lived with Ma, Pa, Sarah, and Millie. The memory, more than anything, was what had made him come in. But as he reminisced the silence stretched out uncomfortably until finally Catherine turned around and put a cup of coffee down in front of him.

  "I appreciate it, Missus Howell."

  "That's not my name, Mister Riley."

  Her voice had a hard edge. He'd stepped on something sensitive without meaning to, he realized, and it didn't take long to figure out what had upset her. She didn't continue, and Glen decided it would be smarter to let it go.

  "I figured I'd let you in on what I was fixin' on doing, if you don't mind." She raised her eyebrows as if to tell him to come out with it. "I have the boys on a few extra days past what we expected to take getting here, and we made better time than expected, so they'll be here through the end of the week. I gave 'em instructions to listen to any requests you have, so if you want 'em to help you out—"

  "I'll be fine on my own," she answered. She crossed her arms across the chest of the pretty dress she was wearing. Glen knew she was angry, but he couldn't bring himself to blame her for it.

  "And I figured we could go into town, if you like, and see what we can do about this little dispute. You got a judge around here?"

  After a long moment she nodded, and finally he picked up the coffee. Now that he was pretty sure she wouldn't have spit in it just to spite him. It was damn fine, better than anything he'd brewed for himself.

  It took him a moment to push the thought back out of his mind. Her coffee was strong and well-made, but that was all it was. No need to start drawing up plans for a wedding just yet.

  Three

  Catherine cursed her damn fool pride, watching Glen Riley leave. She needed—well, she needed more than she wanted to think about. The cattle could do to be let out to pasture, but she didn't have the time, and she couldn't afford the help herself.

  Catherine stopped in the children's room and put Ada in charge. She would be back before they knew it, just a quick trip into town. Once she knew the kids understood, she headed to her room. She couldn't go into town in these old clothes.

  The suitcase under her bed came out and Catherine's hand moved to wipe the dust off before she could stop herself. She hadn't worn her church clothes in far too long, she thought. It had been an embarrassment when she'd decided that she didn't need them hanging up any more, but to see how long ago that was…

  She pulled them back out and looked them over. Not too bad, and after all this time. She wasn't sure what kind of hurry they were in, so even though the clothes could use an ironing, she tried not to think about it as she slipped the clothes on, then looked down at herself. She was surprised they still fit as well as they did.

  She hadn't worn the dress since before Ada was born, and Catherine had thought that she had gained some weight in the years since. But the lean years that they'd faced since Billy left had at least given her the happy benefit of fitting into her nice clothes from when she left Baltimore and moved out here with her new husband.

  Glen was waiting outside for her, holding her cup out for her as soon as she came through, and then he thought better of it immediately. "Where should I put this?"

  She took it and turned back through the door, set the cup beside the washing basin, and then she was back out. "You'll have to forgive me, Mister Riley," she started. "I haven't a horse of my own."

  "I can walk," he offered. It wouldn't have been the first long walk he'd taken under a hot sun, but the way she pursed her lips, he got the impression he had said something wrong. Glen had the good taste not to ask what had upset her.

  He understood that she wasn't happy about him being there, and he understood why. She was right to be angry, but that didn't change the situation, and the situation was that he couldn't leave whether he wanted to or not.

  "What, then?" He tried to mask his frustration. He had no real right to be annoyed—she was in a hard position—but here he was, trying to sort out their dispute, and she was too prissy to sit on a horse while he hoofed it alongside? Pretty looks or sad story be damned.

  He'd read her wrong. He had been envisioning her as some kind of tough heroic woman, putting up with all her problems with a hardness that exemplified the West. Perhaps he had put too much on her.

  "I can ride behind, if you take it slow. There's no need for you to walk."

  He adjusted his hat on his head to shield his eyes, and then nodded. He didn't like it, but then he could barely stand being near her. Even being in the same room with her was distracting. He had known better than to make assumptions. Hell, he'd just been berating himself for making them, so to make another in the same breath—Glen let out a breath and stalked off to get his horse.

  He took it slow. He'd need as much time away from Mrs. Howell as he could get before he started to get funny ideas in his head. One of them would have to leave, and it was sad no matter who lost out, but that didn't mean that they could avoid it.

  Especially the way she seemed less and less pleased to see him every time they crossed paths. Given the lukewarm reception she'd had for him when Catherine met him at the door the first time he'd knocked, he couldn't figure how bad it would get before she tried to slit his throat while he slept, and he didn't much want to try and find out.

  As he walked the horse back out he tried to figure out which would be less improper. If she was really going to insist on this, Glen at least didn't want to open himself to any accusation of impropriety. He had kept to himself as best he could, but she needed to know what he was planning, and so he'd gone in.

  Now it had turned into all this. Finally he helped her up into the saddle, then pulled himself up behind her. The saddle was made for straddling, rather than sitting side-saddle, so neither would be comfortable, this way, but at least she'd be… a bit more secure, at least.

  Wrapping his arms around her to get a grip, though, he realized exactly how bad a mistake he had made. Catherine shifted, trying to find the most comfortable position, and spurred the horse into a walk.

  The feeling of his arms wrapped around her waist felt uncomfortable in just the right way. It was just one more thing playing into the little fantasy world that her mind was trying to create all by itself. She didn't want to think about him the way she was.

  She certainly didn't want to enjoy the feeling of a man's arms wrapped around her. Not after she had finally banished the thought of Billy having a change of heart and finally realizing that his wife and children meant more to him than a few lousy dollars.

  Glen Riley would be the same, she knew. It was only a matter of time, and he'd show himself for what he was. He was a gambler, and like all gamblers he would be moving on before too long, and it didn't much matter who he hurt along the way.

  Four

  Catherine's heart was in her throat the whole way back to the ranch, under the setting sun. Underneath it all, she had thought that somehow, it didn't much matter whose name was on the deed. He was her husband, for Pete's sake, and that meant that if it was in his name, it was in her name. The father of her children.

  When she'd realized he wasn't coming back, she'd been hurt. More than hurt, she'd been beside herself,
but she didn't have the comfort of being able to waste time on it. There had been work to do, bills to be paid, whenever she managed to find the money. Catherine scraped together the minutes over the past four years and dealt with it when she could.

  But she hadn't really spent much time thinking about the basic realities of what their separation meant. They had always agreed, privately—the ranch was hers. She'd bought it, but it was legally convenient to put it in Billy's name. How much did a few words, spoken in private, count for?

  Not much, according to Judge Burch. She'd have to vacate the premises. No legal right to stay, he'd said. Glen Riley owned the land, and it was through his good Christian charity that she would be allowed to stay, or not.

  Oh, everyone was plenty sympathetic. Even Glen, who made the strangest expression when the Judge had come back with his verdict. She'd mistaken it for a smile at first, but there wasn't any happiness in his face. Nor in his demeanor. He'd just walked up and taken the bill of sale and the deed, and started making his way to the back.

  Glen's arms being wrapped around the pretty woman in front of him were no sort of comfort. Catherine no doubt thought that she was guarded, that she kept herself closed, but he'd never had much trouble reading people. It was why poker seemed a natural choice of second career while he sipped on what the army had given him for pension.

  More than that, he was good at predicting what people would do, a product of twenty-odd years scouting out in the western territories for the Army. Mostly working alone, it had given him plenty of time—and plenty of motivation—to learn how to guess where the chips fell before he got caught out.

  He had known before he'd walked into the courtroom that he had her dead to rights. She probably had expected him to use it like some sort of bludgeon. Bill seemed to have planted some very strange thoughts in her head about how men acted, but the truth was that he had hoped to discover that there was some sort of legal recourse she could be offered. Some sort of legal way out. But instead—nothing.

  It was past lunch when they finally pulled back up in front of the ranch home front. Garth and Brady were leaning on the paddock fence and talking, and it burned him more than it should have.

  "What, you two couldn't find anything to do? Place is in such great shape that you got time to sit around and dilly-dally around?"

  He could already see gaps in the fence, a ways down, and posts that were hanging wrong. Things he could have fixed himself, given an afternoon. Things he needed to fix.

  Brady turned, his broadly handsome face looking as if to say something, but then he thought better of it. He turned to his partner and jerked his head. "The man's right. Come on…"

  Garth stood still. "What were we supposed to be doin', boss? This here's the woman's place, ain't our place to go fussin' with it if she says not to. Did she give her go-ahead? Cause earlier you were sayin' to leave her things alone."

  Glen didn't like being talked back to one bit, but the younger man had a point. The thought was cut off by Catherine's voice, cold and hard.

  "This is Mr. Riley's property, as I've just been informed by the county Judge. It's his place to do with whatever he likes." Catherine ignored Glen and his help's hands offering to help her down and slipped off the saddle on her own, rubbing the soreness out of her thighs before heading inside.

  The twins just had Ada's clothes, and she had never had as much as Catherine would have liked. Well, that would make it easier to pack up. The only thing that stopped her was the thought of the steers outside.

  Her father could afford to pay the loss, but it represented years of work to get back to the point where she could keep a herd this size. Even if she wasn't treating them like she should, even if she didn't have the men to deal with them, it had meant more to her than it should that she'd been able to raise up a thousand head and have them as fat as they were getting. But they were still underweight.

  She could sell them anyway, of course. Catherine heard the screen door open and shut, heard the main door close along with it. She folded up the dress in her hands and put it into her suitcase and picked up another before she heard the boots moving through the house and decided she couldn't ignore him forever. No matter how much she wanted to.

  She came out the door to find Glen down the short hall, squatted down in a way that made his body look good. Every position seemed to, and that was the thing she liked the least about him.

  She had been married once to a man who looked good, a man who liked to gamble, and she'd learned from that mistake. The similarities repeated themselves in her head, whispering that she should be careful, not get too involved with this man outside the childrens' room, but she already knew better.

  He spoke softly. "Y'all doin' alright?"

  She heard Ada's answer that they were doing "just fine, thank you." Catherine smiled to hear the 'thank you' at the end.

  He held his hand out through the door, just the right height for a child. "My name's Glen. I'm gonna be hanging around a little while. Your ma's letting me stay out in the barn. I thought we should get acquainted, long as we're gonna be neighbors."

  "My name's Ada. This's Cole, and Grace."

  "Nice to meet you, Ada. Say—how old are you?" There was a pause, and Catherine could just imagine Ada counting off seven fingers. "Wow, seven? Gee, Ada, you know—"

  He seemed to see Catherine standing there, all of a sudden, and stood back up. Back into the adult world. He wiped his hands on his blue jeans and stepped clear of the door as Catherine walked up. She couldn't help smiling when she saw Ada standing.

  "Mama!" Ada reached up at her. "Pick me up!"

  She was getting big enough, now, that Catherine couldn't help thinking the days where she could pick Ada up and hold her were numbered. That just seemed to make it feel that much more important that she do it now. Catherine reached down and picked her daughter up, planting a soft kiss against her head. Seeing her children grounded her again, set Catherine's head straight.

  There was no reason to rush off for her father's house. It would only upset the children, confuse them, and then she'd have to have the talk she had been putting off far, far too long.

  Catherine remembered all of a sudden that Glen was beside her, that he'd likely come in for a reason. Whatever it was, he wasn't there when she turned back around.

  Five

  Glen guided the calves out of the pen by himself, letting the Garth and Brady do the real work of keeping Catherine's herd in. She hadn't asked him to deal with them, so he wouldn't. It wasn't pride or even spite—they were hers, and it was her right to do what she wanted with them. But if Brady were to be believed, then they'd do better out of the pen.

  He counted them as they went through. Fifty-three head. They'd cost him $7 a head, though if word were to be believed they could have been gotten cheaper if he'd gone south. Almost four-hundred dollars gone, and he wouldn't have anything to show for it for almost a year.

  He needed to learn how to manage them, or he would never manage to survive out here. If he raised them well, he might be able to bring back a herd large enough to think of himself as a real rancher.

  He should've had a rifle, but he had barely a hundred dollars left. Fifty on a Spencer and cartridges would have left him unable to feed himself. Even the next few months would be close.

  Glen felt the itch to find a table. If he were careful and lucky about who he sat down with, he could double that stake by the end of the week. Once he put the hundred back into his pocket and started playing more freely, that money could turn into a good month's pay.

  The numbers for cattle ranching made sense. There wasn't much risk, and he didn't have to worry about the feast-or-famine pace that gambling stuck him with. He had told himself this was what he wanted.

  Settle down. Raise a family. Make a life for himself that wasn't built around wheeling around the territories like a tumbleweed. But there had been years of relative independence, only reporting in every few weeks in the Army and then living on his ability
to take people's money from them.

  So instead of a rifle, he just had the Colt, and he let his hand rest on it. He looked out across the cattle and admired them. He'd given up that old life. There wasn't time to be thinking about going back now that things were tight. He had already expected that, and there was nothing going to change it. Might as well hang on tight and see it through.

  Catherine looked at the money, stacked neatly on the table in front of her. Two hundred, thirty-seven dollars. It would get the four of them through to Autumn, and by then she had hopes that she might get the steers up to weight. That infusion of cash would be enough to get her into another ranch if it came to it.

  But she didn't have that kind of time. She tried to do the math on how much she would make if she sold the steers as they were, underweight. Before the courtroom that morning, she hadn't seen the bill of sale.

  Now that she was thinking about numbers, she realized something that hadn't seemed so important before. The ranch was worth better than four hundred dollars an acre, and it only held a hundred. Forty thousand dollars was so far outside her reach that it bordered on absurd.

  Somehow, her ex-husband had gotten himself nearly fifteen thousand dollars into debt, sitting at a single table in a single night. She closed her eyes and searched for the grace to forget about him. She hadn't found it in her to forgive him, not after what he'd done. She doubted she ever would.

  There was no way she could pay what he was owed for the deed, not without sending word back to her father. He'd insist that she come right back, and then he would give her an earful about what a damned fool she had been to ever trust that no-good Billy Howell. He had the money, but he wouldn't send it.

  He was right about Billy, she had to admit, but that didn't mean that she was ready to hear him tell her about it. And she wasn't ready to give up. She had made it all this time on her own strength, and now that she was so close, she wasn't going to give up at the last moment.