by Rain Trueax
"But I don't want you here." She repeated the complaint almost plaintively.
"I'm sorry about that, but I guess I've got something to prove, and I'm not going anywhere until I get it done."
She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. "If you think you can... If you're expecting this to make a difference between us, you're making a terrible mistake."
He pulled on his boots, then rose. "I don't doubt I'm making a mistake, but it won't be the first one, will it?" Reaching for his pack of cigarettes, he pulled one out to light.
"You don't smoke." She stared at the cigarette as though it was a knife he was pointing against his heart.
"Wrong, I do smoke. I had quit a year or so before I met you." He looked at her as he struck a match and lit the cigarette. He took a deep draw, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs. What he needed, he didn't expect the nicotine to provide, but it was the closest he was likely to come.
Helene stared at him in amazement. The man standing in front of her didn't even resemble Phillip. His hair, curling on his neck, was wet and disheveled. His jaw had the rough shading of beard, and his clothing was rumpled. There was a determined glint she'd never seen in his eyes, and now he was smoking a cigarette. Where was the smooth, suave, polished man who'd courted her?
She knew her mind wasn't working at full speed. All her arguments had been sucked out of her at the sight of his powerful, naked body. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves and tried to remember what she'd been about to say, but the words were gone. All she could think about were the muscles in his arms, the long legs, the sculpted beauty of his torso. Maybe there was something to be said for gymnasium formed muscles after all.
Irritated, she wished he'd button up his shirt. She found her eyes and thoughts wandering to speculations about how it would feel to run her fingers along the hard muscular ridge of his chest, to follow the hair that lightly dusted his chest and traced down his flat hard belly toward--When she realized where her thoughts were leading, she glared back at his face.
Phillip was enigmatically watching her through the smoke. "I didn't figure you'd be pleased to see me. Maybe I'm not sure how I feel about seeing you either, but I'm staying."
"This doesn't make sense."
He grinned crookedly. "Right, but then why change a pattern? We wouldn't want to start worrying about logic at this stage of our... uh relationship."
"I don't understand why you'd do this--offer to work at the ranch."
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Maybe I could never resist a dare. So when is dinner?"
"What are you talking about?" she asked, her eyes widening and voice rising.
"Your uncle said the meals went with this deal. So."
"You cannot eat with us. Absolutely not."
He grinned wolfishly, an expression she remembered from the limousine on his handsome face. "Want to bet?"
#
The meal was a quiet one. Phillip sat at one end of the table, eating the simple stew with a gusty appreciation that she'd never seen in him at any of the fancy gourmet restaurants where they'd dined during their courtship.
Amos sat in the middle, his eyes on his plate when they weren't studying first Helene, then Phillip. Hobo sat between Phillip and her uncle, his eyes hopefully switching from the plates and hands of the two men. As her aunt before her, Helene had made it clear it wasn't healthy to feed a dog from the table, but it didn't stop Amos from sneaking the big guy a sample of whatever he was eating. Something which kept Hobo on happy alert throughout the meal.
Helene flatly refused to serve Phillip or her uncle. When she poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, she ignored their upturned faces. She dropped back down on her chair and glared at them. "This situation is intolerable and you both know it," she accused, looking from one masculine face to the other.
Phillip poured his own coffee and returned to sit at the table. "I agree. We can at least be sociable with each other. After all, we are man and wife. Amos is now my uncle." He tilted his head and smiled at her.
"We are not man and wife!"
"Actually, I have the marriage certificate to prove you're wrong."
"Not for long. We are getting an annulment."
He nodded and sipped his coffee. "Mind of I smoke?" he asked, ignoring her statement.
"Yes," she snapped. "If you want to kill yourself with cigarettes, you can do it outside my kitchen."
Phillip smiled faintly but left the cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
Amos took a deep breath. "I maybe caused this here problem, but I think it's all going to work out for the best," he said hopefully.
Helene hmphed and Phillip remained silent. When Amos saw he was getting no response, he said, "Phil, I was thinking maybe you could do some fence work for me tomorrow."
Phillip looked up with concern. "What kind of fence work?"
"Just put in a few posts, string some barbed wire, nothing much. I saw a patch of it got stepped down pretty good out in that pasture where we put the cattle. The steers'll find it for sure if we don't get it patched right away."
"Hmmm." Phillip considered for a moment; until he saw Helene's derogatory sneer. "Sure, I ought to be able to handle that."
Helene laughed nastily. "What do you know about fencing? Have you ever even seen a roll of barbed wire?"
Phillip smiled ignoring the accusation.
"You'll end up bungling the job," she prophesied.
Amos rose to Phillip's defense. "The boy is no idiot, Helene. He can handle stringing some wire."
Phillip wasn't so sure about that, but he nodded his agreement. It ought to be easy enough to see how it'd been done other places, then duplicate the process. How complicated could putting up fencing be?
"I'll help you load the supplies in the old truck in the morning," Amos said. "Think you can find that hole?"
"It's in the field we were just at, right?" At Amos's nod, Phillip said, "Then I can find it." He scowled back at Helene's doubtful face. He'd find that hole, patch it, or bury himself on the spot. He was sick and tired of people out here looking at him as though he was a two-year old child who knew nothing. Even his usually strong ego could only take so many people thinking he was a mindless idiot. He glanced at the dog, expecting that all dogs were supposed to look at men adoringly, but the expression he saw was as speculative as that on the two human faces. Oh well, he'd show them... He hoped.
#
Morning on the ranch began at dawn. For Phillip, it began with Curly's loud knock on the bunkhouse door. Without waiting for permission, the older man opened the door, a malicious smile of satisfaction on his narrow wrinkled face as his gaze scanned the sleepy Phillip, who'd barely managed to stumble from bed, eyes slitted open.
"Boss told me to get you fixed up for stringin' wire. You ready?"
It would have been obvious to a blind man that Phillip was not, but he was not about to admit it. Curly gave a harrumph and said he'd be back with the work truck and supplies.
Phillip rubbed his hand over his bristly jaw, reluctantly forgoing shaving. He dressed quickly in old jeans and cotton shirt. Pulling on his boots, he looked up to see Curly was already back with a truck which had probably been pale blue. It was now mostly rust colored. Dents covered fenders and bed, and the engine seemed to die a lingering death when Curly stepped on the brake in front of the bunkhouse.
Outside, as he looked at the truck more carefully, he saw that there was a missing door on the passenger side. Maybe this truck wasn’t more likely to keep going than the even older one down by the barn. He wondered how far the near antique was capable of being driven before it became a permanent part of some junk pile, and if he was driving it when that happened, would he get the blame?
Curly climbed out the cab. "Everything you need's in back." He pointed to a reel of barbed wire, clips, tools, and metal posts. From his back pocket, Curly extracted a pair of cutting pliers. "You ever do fence afore?" he asked as he put them with the other tools.
"No, but how m
uch can there be to it?" Phillip asked yawning and reaching for his cigarettes.
"Not a whole hell of a lot," Curly said with another sly grin. "You ever use a posthole driver?"
The answer was obvious, but Phillip shook his head anyway as he lit the cigarette.
Curly showed him roughly how the piece of modified pipe worked, then added, "Just make sure you tighten 'er up afore you call 'er done. Leave that wire loose, and you might as well of saved yourself the trouble of driving up there." He pointed to an odd metal tool in the bed of the truck. "Ever use one of those?"
"No."
Curly snickered. "Bout what I figured. You're a dude, ain't you." It was not a question but a statement.
"What gave me away?" Phillip asked sarcastically.
"Heck, if you ain't a dude, you oughta to sue your face for damages and get a verdict," Curly cracked, chuckling and slapping his bony knee.
"Very good," Phillip retorted dryly. "You think that one up all by yourself?"
Curly snorted. "Wished I had."
"So, if you didn't, where's your source of great Western lore? Maybe I can get in on some of these one-liners." Or at least look up their meanings.
"Tell you the truth, I changed a word or two, made it fit better, but I got most of it from one of the greatest Western writers ever was."
"Louis L'Amour?" Phillip guessed, naming the only Western author whose name he knew.
"No, dangnabit. Ain't him. He was an upstart, come along later. Not that he weren't a great writer, but I'm talking about William MacLeod Raine."
"Never heard of him."
Curly's mouth dropped. "Never heard of him! Dangnabit, that ain't possible."
Phillip only smiled.
Curly shook his head with disgust. "I got near every book he wrote. He was a ranger hisself. Wrote about the Old West just about the time it was all ending, but that man... he knew his people, knew the men, the country. Maybe he did kind of sissify up the gushy parts, so's to appeal to the ladies, but he wrote dang good stories."
Phillip snorted. Another unrealistic Westerner, dreaming of a past that was dead and gone--and a good thing too. He smoked a moment. "Isn't there anybody out here who doesn't either listen to country-western music or read Western fairy tales?"
"Wal, I don't know why there'd be. Them books was writ about country like this, about men coming in and fighting the Injuns, building ranches, drivin' off rustlers." He shook his head, a look of regret in his eyes. "Ain't never going to see the likes of them days again."
Rather than to say it was a good thing, that the pioneer West had offered a lot of hardships as well as adventurous times, Phillip said, "You know the pulp writers didn't always portray the west the way it really was. A lot of it was made up for Easterners."
Curly sneered. "If even half of it was so, it'd be enough to make a man wish he'd been there. Man could make his fortune in those days." He looked slyly at Phillip. "Shoot men who got uppity with him."
"Or end up on boot hill himself," Phillip said under his breath.
"What'd you say?"
"Not much." He smiled. A wisely unspoken question was how cowboys got any work done if they were constantly reading stories of the old West. Instead he commented, "I wonder if the Indians around here like those Western books so much as you cowboys."
"I've seen plenty of them reading 'em. Like take old John Eagle. He can answer most any question about anything Zane Grey ever wrote. He knows all the books, the characters. You ask it and he's got the answer practically afore you got the question out of your mouth."
"Why?" Phillip's question didn't pertain so much to why the man might read Zane Grey, whoever he was, but more as to why he'd take the time to learn so much about it.
Curly shook his head. "I'll tell you this. Men were men in those days."
"What are they today?" Phillip asked with a humorless grin. This was one question to which he already knew Curly's answer.
"Soft. Don't know how to hammer in a nail straight, ain't never broke a horse, can't work more'n an hour without getting blisters on their soft hands." He sneered derogatorily toward Phillip's own long fingered hands. "I'll tell you this. My pap, he could've still worked rings around any young whippersnapper twenty or thirty years old." He looked derogatorily up at Phillip as he added, "Even when he was seventy."
"Interesting. How'd he ever get work done, if he was always talking about the West?" Phillip asked sardonically.
Curly glared at him. "You makin' fun of me?" he snapped.
Phillip shook his head. "No, just if I'm going to get done before dark, you better tell me about this fencing business." He wasn't interested in trying to change Curly's low opinion of him--which was fortunate because he doubted it would be possible anyway.
Curly gave him a quick demonstration on fastening up wire, then was off to his own chores, whistling Home on the Range.
Already happy, Phillip thought wryly, at the thought of the botched job he expected from the fence repair. Probably already had the jokes thought up.
Phillip took a last long pull on the cigarette as he considered the materials in front of him. He'd not only never used any of them, the only thing that looked remotely familiar was the sledgehammer. Groaning to himself for his stupidity at getting himself into this fix, he looked longingly toward the house. What he really wanted was a cup of hot coffee and maybe some breakfast, but he'd have to face Helene's wrath to get that, and he didn't feel up to that this early in the morning. He threw the cigarette down and ground it into the dirt with his boot.
Restarting the truck took several minutes as the stubborn vehicle appeared to suspect it had a rank amateur behind the wheel. Before Phillip could pull out of the yard, Amos and Hobo were ambling toward him. Phillip waited, the clank of the engine loud enough to drown out any possibility of extended conversation.
"Want a bite of breakfast?" Amos said when he was close enough.
"No thanks," Phillip lied. "I'll catch something later. I want to get on this. Wouldn't want more of your stock out." He smiled crookedly, wondering if the older man knew his real reason for going hungry.
"Curly explain the work?"
"Yeah." Or close enough.
Amos smiled, his wrinkled face about the only friendly one Phillip had seen at the Rocking H, unless he counted the dog, Hobo. "I know Curly's being a little hard on you," Amos said, "but you know, that's the way of a cowpuncher."
"What do you mean?" Phillip turned off the noisy engine.
"Well, cowpunchers are kind of like little kids. They like to play jokes on each other, and the newest waddy working the outfit takes the brunt of the humor and the work. Curly's just having a little fun with you. Put up with it, and he'll back you against anybody."
"I'm trying."
"I know you are." Amos chuckled. "Curly's the last of a breed. Been a cowboy all his life. Worked for some of the biggest spreads around when he was younger, but you know being a puncher gets tougher as a man gets long in the tooth. Can't do the work the way you once could."
Phillip pulled a fresh cigarette from his pocket and striking a match with his thumbnail, lit it as he waited for the older man to finish his thought. He was rapidly learning that these Western men were slow in getting to their points. If a man rushed in to finish out a sentence, he was apt to miss the gist of what the old-timer was going to say.
"I reckon you know I'm talking about more than Curly here," Amos said after a moment.
Phillip nodded, smoking and waiting for the rest of what he was certain Amos wanted to say. Maybe here would be a clue as to why he'd actually invited Phillip to the ranch.
Smiling and shaking his head, Amos's eyes met Phillip's. "It's a funny thing, out here. I mean, this business of being a man. You spend your life learning how to do things, developing the muscles that let you do your work, then... you get old. And it seems like it happens overnight. Something you could always do--you can't." He stopped and then added sheepishly, "Reckon it sounds to you like I'm whining her
e."
"No. It doesn't," Phillip said. "I think this business of being a man confuses the hell out of me whether old or young."
Amos laughed. "When you put it that way, I reckon maybe you're right. It used to seem simple when I was a kid. Work for the brand. That's what a man did. It's what made him worth something. Me and Curly both, we worked hard. We never stopped to think beyond the next load of hay or the next round-up. I never hardly read a book 'til I was almost fifty and got laid up with a bum knee."
Phillip blew out a puff of smoke. Amos cleared his throat noisily. "About Curly. He'll ride you for awhile, but he'll come around."
Phillip shook his head, not convinced. "I guess I better get to work, or he'll figure me for a loafer."
"I'm taking Helene into town. She wants to apply for a job at the newspaper, and I got to go to the bank. You need anything from the store?"
Maybe a coffee maker if the situation didn't warm up at the house, but he decided not to mention that yet. "No, nothing."
"All right then. Don't forget supper's at the house tonight."
"Helene didn't think much of that idea last night."
Amos grinned. "You don't always give a woman everything she wants. Gets 'em to thinking they're running the show."
Phillip nodded, returning the cigarette to his lips. "I got that lesson the hard way."
"You want to take Hobo with you? He can't go to town with Helene and me, and he sure does love going into the hills."
Phillip looked down at the hopeful face of the dog. When he nodded, Amos lifted his arm, signaling to the big dog that he should jump into the truck through the permanently open door. Hobo quickly established himself on the seat beside Phillip, ears erect and pointed in the direction they were to go. Phillip grinned and turned on the ignition, more than half surprised when it started immediately.
The ranch land was easier to appreciate with a truck than it had been with the horse who'd required his attention to keep in line. Fields stretched up the hill almost to the pine forest. The pasture in question was back behind the first ridge, not visible from the house, and Phillip drove the old truck along the dirt road until he came to the right gate.
