“Yahoo!” Crack yelled, taking his hat off and beating it against his trouser leg. That action raised so much dust that some of the riders nearest him had to cough.
“Tell you what, boys,” Tyrone said. “I think maybe before we set down to this meal, we ought to get cleaned up.”
“Hell, I always wash up before I eat,” Crack said. “That’s somethin’ my mama taught me a long time ago.”
“I don’t mean just wash your face and hands,” Tyrone said. “I mean take a bath and put on clean clothes. This here is an occasion, and we need to act like gentlemen.”
“Tyrone is right,” Prew said. “We need to take us a real bath.”
“Hell, I took me a bath no more than two weeks ago,” one of the riders said.
“You’re goin’ to take another one today,” Tyrone said. “That is, if you want to eat with the rest of us.”
“All right, all right, I’ll take me another’n. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me none if you didn’t start sayin’ we had to take a bath ever’ other week, or so.”
Tubs were hauled out, filled with water, and the men, in turn, began washing away the dirt. As Matt and Kitty sat together on the back porch of the big house, they couldn’t see the ranch hands because the tubs were blocked by the bunkhouse, but they could hear the loud laughter and teasing as the men took their baths.
“Damn, Jake, look at that! You were so dirty you done turned that water into mud!” somebody shouted, and the taunt was met with more laughter.
The cook brought out a big pot of beans and several loaves of freshly baked bread to augment the meal. The aroma of the cooking meat continued to fill the entire compound.
“I hope they enjoy it,” Kitty said.
“Are you kidding? Listen to them. They are having the time of their lives,” Matt replied.
“They are one of the reasons I so want this to work,” Kitty said. “I’ve never had a family, Matt. The closest I ever came was at the orphanage, and Captain Mumford was so cruel that any sense of family was eliminated just by the effort of surviving. These men are truly my family. It’s not just for selfish reasons I want to save the ranch. I want to save this family.”
“You are not going to lose this ranch, Katherine. I promise you,” Matt said.
“Matt, after we go to Chicago, sell the horses, and get the money, you will come back with me, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” Matt said. “The way I see it, delivering the horses is only half of the job. The job won’t be finished until the bank has been paid off, and the ranch is in your hands, free and clear.”
“Then what?” Kitty asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What will you do after the bank is paid off, and the ranch is mine, free and clear?”
“All right, here we are,” Prew shouted, coming around from behind the bunkhouse, bathed, and wearing clean clothes. His appearance and shout precluded Matt from answering Kitty’s question.
“Yeah, when do we eat?” Crack asked.
By now, every rider had appeared, freshly scrubbed, all wearing clean, and in some cases, new clothes. Jake was particularly proud of his new yellow shirt, for which he was soliciting compliments.
“Hah, if you ask me, it looks like somethin’ a whore house piano player would be wearin’,” Prew said.
“All right, fellas, come and get it!” the cook called, and there was a rush of all the ranch hands to get plates, and get them filled. Kitty had even bought a barrel of beer, and within minutes, the evening meal had turned into a party.
“The only thing we need now is some women and music,” Crack said. “Iffen we had that, why we could dance and have us a fine time.”
“I’m a woman, and I can dance,” Kitty said. “And Jake, I’ve heard you play the harmonica.”
“No, that won’t do,” Prew said. “Mrs. Wellington, you’re a fine lady. You wouldn’t want to dance with the likes of us.”
“Sure I would,” Kitty said. “Tyrone, you’re the foreman, it’s only right that you get the first dance.”
Tyrone looked shocked at first, then he smiled and nodded. “I’d be right proud to dance with you, Mrs. Wellington,” he said.
There was something in the expression in Tyrone’s face that caught Matt’s attention. Then, he remembered that Tyrone had been foreman here long before Kitty ever arrived. Matt was certain that Tyrone knew about Kitty’s background, and he was equally certain that Kitty knew that he knew.
Jake pulled out his harmonica and began playing, and as he played, the other men stood around clapping and stomping their feet in time to the music.
Because the eating and the partying and the dancing went on until long after nightfall, Matt never did have to answer Kitty’s question.
Sleep did not come easily to Kitty that night. She lay in bed, tossing and turning as she thought about the question she had asked Matt—the question that had gone unanswered. It wasn’t as if he had specifically avoided answering the question, they were interrupted before he could do so. And yet Kitty could not escape the feeling that it was a question he didn’t particularly want to answer.
She couldn’t blame him, especially when she considered what she had been before she had married Tommy. Of course, Tommy had known that she was a whore when he married her, because that was where and how he had met her.
In marrying one of her clients, Kitty had realized the dream of nearly every soiled dove she had ever met. They all dreamed of meeting a man who would marry them and take them away from “the life.”
In Kitty’s case she had been particularly lucky, because the man who took her away from life on the line had not only been a loving and caring husband, he had also been exceptionally wealthy. And, most important, he had never, even once, made her feel guilty about her past.
That was why she told Matt what she had been. She sincerely believed that whatever relationship they were going to have, even if it went no further than the current relationship, would have to be based upon the truth.
Maybe she shouldn’t have told him.
No.
Whatever was causing Matt’s hesitance in deepening the relationship had nothing to do with her past life. She was sure of that.
She heard the clock strike one before she finally fell asleep.
At half past one in the morning, the Auxiliary Peace Officers approached Coventry on the Snake. Sherman held up his hand to halt the band, then he pointed. The moon was bright, and several horses could be seen bunched together in one field.
“Scraggs, you and Grimes go down and take a look. If there is anyone watching over the herd, take care of them. If no one is watching, come back and let me know,” Sherman ordered.
Sherman, and the other men with him, waited as Scraggs and Grimes checked out the herd. One of the men took out the makings and started to roll a cigarette but Sherman rode over and knocked the makings from his hand.
“You light up a cigarette and you may as well just ride down there and tell them we are here,” Sherman said.
“Sorry, Colonel, I wasn’t thinking,” the man said.
“A man in this business who doesn’t use his head, can easily lose his head,” Sherman said.
“I know. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“You damn well better be. It’s not just yourself you are putting in danger. It’s all of us,” Sherman scolded.
About five minutes after Scraggs and Grimes had ridden down to check the herd, they returned.
“What did you see?” Sherman asked.
“Nothin’, Colonel,” Scraggs reported. “There ain’t nobody down there at all.”
“Are you sure? You mean to tell me there is not one rider watching over the herd?”
“That’s what I’m sayin’ all right. Me’n Grimes rode all the way around. I’m tellin’ you, there ain’t nobody out there watchin’ ’em.”
Sherman smiled and nodded. “Damn, they are making this too easy for us. All right, Scraggs, take Carson, Anderson, a
nd Burnett with you. You four go down to the south end of the field and take the fence down. The rest of you, move on down as quietly as you can, and start driving the herd south, away from the house.”
“How many are we going to take?” Scraggs asked.
“Why, we are going to take all of them, of course,” Sherman replied.
“All of them?”
“At least all of the horses they have gathered here. According to Marcus Kincaid, they were goin’ to gather all the horses they were planning on shipping in one small field. These are all saddle horses, the field isn’t all that big, so this has to them.”
“Hah,” Scraggs said. “And without nobody watchin’ the herd, this here is goin’ to be about the easiest thing we’ve ever done.”
As Scraggs and the men with him rode out to take down the fence, Sherman led the rest of his men into the field with the horses, then spread them out around the herd. Because there were so many of them, the herd was easily moved and within less than five minutes the field was completely empty as the horses moved at a rapid trot away from the main house. Within another ten minutes, the entire herd had passed over a low lying ridge two miles to the south, and nothing remained of where they had been but the un-cropped grass, moving in a gentle, night breeze.
“Prew, Jake, Crack, you boys wake up,” Tyrone said as he walked through the bunkhouse just after dawn.
All he got in response was a few disgruntled groans from the men whose names he had called.
“Come on get up, get up. This day is half over,” he called.
“Damn, Tyrone, don’t you ever sleep?” Crack asked, and a few of the others chuckled.
“Yeah, I sleep when it’s dark, and I’m awake when it’s light. If you hadn’t stayed up till midnight last night, you’d be all rested, and ready to go, now.”
“Midnight? We was all in bed by ten o’clock. You know that, you was right here with us.”
“As far as I’m concerned, ten o’clock is damn near midnight,” Tyrone said. “Now, come on, everybody get up. We have to feed the horses.”
“Can’t they eat grass like every other horse in the world does?” Prew asked, groggily.
“It’s your fault,” Tyrone replied.
“What do you mean, it’s my fault?”
“You’re the one that pointed out to me that there are too many of them put into too small a field.”
“Yeah, but you said there was enough grass for a few days.”
“There probably is, but I think we should get some hay out for them anyway, just in case.”
“Those damn horses live better than we do,” Jake said. “They get their breakfast in bed.”
“You want breakfast in bed?” Tyrone asked. “I’ll be glad to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“Really? Yeah, you do that, I might feel more like gettin’ up this morning.”
“All right, I’ll get you a handful of hay, right now,” Tyrone said, and the others in the bunkhouse laughed.
“Serve that hay with some bacon and eggs, and I might just take you up on it,” Jake said, sitting up and rolling out of bed.
“I have some coffee in the office,” Tyrone said, softening his tone a bit. “You boys can grab yourselves a cup before you come out to the barn. Then, soon as you get the hay out, you can come on back for breakfast.”
“That sure was nice of Miz Wellington to throw us that party last night,” Prew said.
“And to actually dance with us. Who would’a thought a lady like that would dance with regular hands like us?” Crack asked.
“I hear’d tell they was a time when she done more’n just dance with cowboys,” one of the newer hands said.
The laughing banter in the bunkhouse stopped as all the hands looked over toward the speaker.
“You need to watch that mouth of you’rn, Asa,” Prew said.
“What? What did I say? Are you boys sayin’ you don’t know that our boss lady used to be a whore?” Asa chuckled. “Folks say she was the best lookin’ whore in Ketchum.”
“Asa, there’s no need for you to help the boys this morning,” Tyrone said, his voice almost conversational.
“What do you mean, there’s no need?”
“I mean, you don’t work here any more,” Tyrone replied. “So, there’s no need for you to help out. In fact, why don’t you just gather your tack and get on out of here now?”
“You can’t fire me.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Believe me, Asa, Tyrone can fire you.”
Asa looked incredulous over the reaction of all the hands. “I can’t believe this. I tell the truth about something and you want to fire me?”
“Not just want to, Asa. I did fire you,” Tyrone said.
“How’m I goin’ to go? Shanks mare? You know I don’t have no horse of my own. The horse I’m a ridin’ belongs to the ranch.”
“You can ride your horse into town. Just leave it at the livery,” Tyrone said. “We’ll pick it up, later. And, Asa, if I go down to the livery and find out that you didn’t leave the horse, I’ll see that you are hunted down and tried as a horse thief.”
“All right, all right,” Asa said angrily. “I don’t want to work for no damn whore anyway.”
Crack stepped up to Asa then and, without another word, knocked Asa down.
“What the hell was that for?” Asa asked, lying on his back and rubbing his chin.
“I just didn’t want you to leave without somethin’ to remember us by,” Crack said, and the others laughed.
“And, Asa,” Prew said. “If word gets back to us that you’re talkin’ about Mrs. Wellington, I guarantee you, you’ll get a lot more than a punch on the chin.”
“I’ve never seen such a bunch of…”
“A bunch of what?” Jake asked.
Asa rubbed his chin and looked into the glaring faces of the other hands.
“Nothing,” Asa said. “I’m going.”
“Yeah, you do that. And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out,” Crack said.
Chapter Twenty-five
Awakening fairly early this morning, Matt got out of bed and went downstairs, then stepped out onto porch even as a rooster began crowing. To the east, the rising sun was an orange-red ball just clearing the rounded domes of the Bruneau Dunes and touching the Snake River to turn it into a flowing stream of molten gold. He watched as the hands hitched a team to a wagon, then began loading it with hay. It took about ten minutes to load the wagon, then he watched as Jake and Crack started driving down to the field where the saddle horses were gathered for shipment to the army.
He could smell the aroma of bacon and biscuits coming from the cook house, and recalling the season he had worked as a cowboy in Wyoming, he almost wished that he was staying in the bunkhouse with the other men, rather than in the too elegant and too soft bedroom upstairs.
From behind him, he heard Maria, the house cook at work, preparing breakfast. The aroma of brewing coffee drifted out onto the porch, and that caused him to go back inside and step into the kitchen.
“The coffee smells good,” Matt said.
“Señor, if you go into the dining room, I will bring you a cup of coffee,” the cook offered.
Matt chuckled. “Maria, you have a very good way of getting unwanted people out of your kitchen,” he said. “I will get out of your way and, thank you, yes, I would love a cup of coffee.”
“Oh, Señor, now you make me feel bad,” Maria said.
“Do you mean I make you feel bad because you actually do want me to stay in your kitchen?”
“No, Señor. I do want you out of my kitchen,” Maria answered. “But you make me feel bad because you know that I want you out.”
Matt laughed, then went into the dining room to wait for his cup of coffee.
Upstairs, the cock’s crow had awakened Kitty, but she had not yet gotten out of bed. She stretched, then looked at the patterns formed by the shadows cast on the wall by the morning sun as it peeped through the aspen tree tha
t grew just outside her bedroom window. The tree limbs were moving gently in compliance with a soft early morning breeze, and she could track their movement across the wall.
Through the open window, she could hear the men talking, and even though it had been very late when she was finally able to go to sleep last night, she felt a sense of guilt knowing that she was still in bed while the men who worked for her were already at work.
It had now been a little over a month since the last rustlers had hit Coventry, and ten days since Poke Terrell was killed. Clearly, with that evil man gone, and with all shipment horses safely confined in one field, the worst was over. It had been a peaceful ten days, and now, for the first time, Kitty was beginning to feel confident that she was going to get her horses to market in Chicago. Nevertheless she wanted to keep Matt around until the horses had been safely delivered.
The question she had asked Matt last night had been interrupted, and the opportunity to ask it had never repeated itself. This morning, upon reflection, she was glad that she had not been able to ask it again. Deep down inside she knew what the answer would be, she knew that he would tell her that he was going to be moving on, and she didn’t want to actually hear it expressed. She knew inherently that no deeper relationship between them was ever going to happen. Matt Jensen was not the kind of man who could settle down, and it would be like caging a wild bird and if she tried. Besides, if he did settle down, it might very well kill that which she loved most about him.
On the other hand, only two days remained until she could load the horses onto the train. Then she and Matt would share a private car all the way to Chicago. If that was all of Matt Jensen she could get, she would take it with gratitude for the opportunity.
Smiling at that pleasant thought, she got out of bed and dressed to go down to breakfast.
“Well, good morning,” Matt said, lifting his cup of coffee in greeting.
“Good morning yourself,” Kitty answered. “Did you get up with the chickens?”
“What do you mean get up with the chickens?” Matt replied. “Who do you think woke the rooster up this morning?”
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