Southern Charms

by Trana Mae Simmons

  “No brothers or uncles or any other males to help you?”

  Ellie bristled. She worked hard, and she resented his attitude. “I’m doing fine. George had a brother, but he died in his teens. And Elvina was an only child.”

  The ranch loomed ahead, and as always, Ellie felt a warm feeling when she saw it. It was home; the only home she had. Had ever had, as far as she knew. It wasn’t Elvina’s fault that she couldn’t bring herself to treat Ellie the same way as she treated Darlene, her own blood daughter. Shoot, sometimes Elvina even got whiny with Darlene.

  “What?” Ellie asked, realizing Shane had said something as the buggy went through the iron gate arching overhead.

  “I said, I guess you were adopted then, since you call Elvina your stepmother.”

  “Yes.” She hesitated, but then, it wasn’t really a secret. And for some reason, it didn’t bother her that much to talk about it with Shane. “I was on one of the orphan trains. George and Elvina had just found out they wouldn’t ever have any other children. Darlene was three, and they wanted more, but Elvina contracted a fever the doctor told her would leave her unable to conceive again. They wanted a companion for Darlene, and there I was. On one of the trains that stopped in Fort Worth.”

  She sighed. “I don’t remember it. Just what George told me once. He said I was the only girl left, and a girl is what they wanted. He thought maybe I’d been overlooked at all the other stops because I was so little. In fact, he thought I was only a year old at first, instead of two, like one of the chaperons told him.”

  Shane remained silent and pulled the horse up to a hitching post. Getting down, he tied the horse and then helped Ellie from the buggy.

  “Don’t worry about the horse,” she told him. “I’ll take it out to the barn and unhitch it.”

  He conceded with a shrug, and she noticed a look of deep concentration on his face. She started to thank him for the ride home, but he interrupted her.

  “Where did the train you were on come from?”

  Puzzled at his continuing interest in her story, Ellie nevertheless saw no reason not to answer him. “George said it had started out in New York City, but it made a couple other stops and picked up children. I’m not sure where I got on the train, because along the way robbers hit it. They stole a payroll from the mail car, and during the resulting fray, the car caught fire. Everything in it, including the papers on all the children, was destroyed.”

  Shane nodded as though deep in thought. When she started toward the door, he fell in beside her. From the way he took his courtesies so seriously, it would be useless to protest that she could very well walk up onto the porch and in the door by herself. Even at the door, he reached around her and opened it before he stepped back.

  The wall sconce Elvina left burning in the entrance foyer threw some light their way, but not enough for Ellie to see Shane’s face clearly. Surely what she sensed was in error. He couldn’t be studying her face as though he had a picture somewhere to compare it to.

  Or—lordy, especially not that! Like he was debating whether or not he might chance a kiss.

  She even thought for a moment that he bent his head, but undoubtedly it was a trick of the shadows. She took a careful step back anyway, although some strange pull followed her. With a jerk, Shane touched his fingertips to his hat brim, then strolled away without saying anything else.

  He unhitched his horse from the back of the buggy and mounted before he seemed to realize he was being unmannerly. Before he appeared to notice Ellie hadn’t gone on inside the house. Halting his horse, he removed his hat completely.

  “Good evening, Ellie,” he called. “Hopefully our next evening together will go more smoothly.”

  “Thank you for escorting me home,” Ellie replied in a bewildered voice.

  “It was my pleasure.”

  Turning his horse, he rode toward the ranch gate, keeping at a gentle walk instead of galloping off, as though perhaps continuing his serious thoughts. Ellie stared after him, trying to figure out his change of attitude. He couldn’t be upset over her adoption, since he showed an obvious interest in that. And he mentioned yet again wanting to see her in the future.

  So why was he so deep in concentration that he forgot those manners of his for even a few seconds?

  At the gate, Shane halted his horse and turned in the saddle to look back. Finding her still standing there, he touched his hat brim once more before urging his horse into a lope and heading through the quiet Texas night back to town.

  “Who was that?”

  Ellie turned to see Elvina standing in the doorway. Small and diminutive, she was more like her stepdaughter in stature than Darlene, who had inherited George Parker’s larger frame. Dressed for bed in her night rail and with her hair braided, she looked closer to the age of a young girl than a fifty-year-old woman. She took extreme care to keep her youthful looks, too. Being up this late was exceptionally unusual for her.

  “It was Rockford’s friend, the one from New York City,” Ellie said. “I—uh—got a headache and didn’t feel like attending the circus, so he brought me on home. Rockford will bring Darlene home later.”

  “You never get headaches, Ellie Parker.”

  “Well, I did tonight,” Ellie lied. A lie was better than trying to explain everything that had happened. Especially going to a man’s hotel suite to repair the damages to her attire. If Elvina found out about that, Ellie would hear about it for weeks.

  “Are you up late for a certain reason, Elvina?” she asked to change the subject. Long ago, in her early formative years, Elvina had taught her to call her by name rather than mother. Or mama, as Ellie had slipped and tried to call her once or twice.

  “I couldn’t sleep. Ellie, I need to know if you’re hiding something from me regarding the ranch’s finances. I’ve been asking you for months now about the new carpet, and you keep putting me off.”

  Ellie frowned at her. Elvina had never shown an interest in the finances before, even when Ellie had to deny her a purchase. Something was going on.

  “It’s tight right now, Elvina,” she said honestly. “Maybe after fall roundup we can—”

  “Maybe?” Elvina cut in. “You’re not sure that we’ll even show a nice profit after roundup?”

  “What’s going on, Elvina?”

  Her stepmother stared at her silently, as though considering what to say next. Then she turned and went back inside the house. “I think I can sleep now. I’m going on to bed.”

  “Elvina!” Ellie glanced at the buggy horse and decided it could wait a while to be put in the barn. Lifting her soiled skirts, she followed Elvina.

  Inside she stared around in surprise. Surely Elvina hadn’t been wandering around the ranch house in the dark, but there were no lights on anywhere other than the foyer sconce. She couldn’t see which way Elvina had gone in the darkness, then caught sight of her stepmother on the stairwell, hurrying upward.

  “Elvina!” she called again.

  By the time Ellie was halfway up the stairwell, she heard Elvina’s bedroom door close with a definitive thud. Sighing in resignation, she stopped and turned back, knowing better than to disturb Elvina in her rooms, as did Darlene. Even George Parker hadn’t entered the mistress of the house’s suite of room next to the master’s without a proper invitation.

  Deciding the buggy horse could wait another few minutes, since Shane had driven the horse easily instead of asking it to exert itself on their drive home, Ellie headed for the study. She knew this house as well as Elvina did, and like her, had no need of lights.

  The downstairs of the grand house George had built for his bride all those years ago contained six rooms, including the kitchen and two parlors, which could be opened into one huge room for entertaining. Upstairs each person had a private bedroom, although she and Darlene had shared a wash room and dressing room. There was a guest room, and the master suite remained unused after George’s death. Elvina was adamant about keeping the entire house clean, so all the rooms
were dusted weekly, but the servants’ rooms on the third floor only opened and cleaned when needed.

  Next to the kitchen, Ellie’s favorite room was her stepfather’s study, which she entered now, heading for one of the wall sconces. The Leaning G still employed kerosene lamps, although some of the houses in town had tied into the gas lines used for street lights. Every once in a while, too, Ellie heard rumors that someone was looking into electricity for their area, but it remained a wishful thought for now.

  Ellie reached for the lamp sitting on the huge walnut desk, jerking her hand back when she encountered the still-warm globe. The lamp had obviously been lit recently. Other than as a place her bills were paid out of, Ellie had never known Elvina to be interested in what went on in the study even when George was still alive. But since no one else was at home, Elvina had to have been in here.

  Ellie carefully checked the globe again, finding it safe enough to handle. She removed it, lit the mantle and replaced the glass. Soothing light chased away the nearby shadows, leaving the corners of the room dim and serene. Ellie didn’t bother with any other lights, since she preferred the more serene atmosphere the lone light attained.

  She moved around the desk, studying the journals and papers on the surface as she went. By all means, Elvina had every right to examine the ranch’s books and ask questions about the way things were running. After all, she owned the Leaning G now. What bothered Ellie was the secretiveness Elvina displayed. Ellie had worked on the journals the previous night and hadn’t bothered to put them away. But she did remember closing them and shoving them back on the desk, in order to prop her elbows on the walnut surface and rub her eyes. The most recent journal was closed, but aligned with the edge of the desk, as though someone with short arms like Ellie’s—or Elvina’s—had been studying it.

  Elvina wouldn’t have seen anything she shouldn’t have, and probably some stuff she should be interested in, Ellie mused. George Parker took out a hefty loan against the ranch a few months before he was killed, but even during the drought last summer, Ellie had managed to make the mortgage payment.

  The payment had to be made, but what perturbed Ellie was what George might have used some of the money for. Not all of it had gone back into ranch expenses. There had been the breeding bull and several head of new cows. Ellie assumed, knowing what she did about the ranch, that the spring calf drop had been light on heifers and strong on bulls, which meant a dearth of breeding stock in the near future. And she verified that by checking the spring tally done that year when they rounded up the newborns, branded them and marked their ears.

  Still a thousand dollars had gone into bills Elvina ran up, and Ellie was fairly certain what George did with another missing thousand dollars. She had pushed Shorty once after she took over the books, reminding her foreman of the high-stakes poker game everyone in Fort Worth talked about a month or so before George’s death. Her stepfather’s one indulgence had been his gambling, but she never would have thought him into the bigger games. At least, not with money he needed to keep the ranch solvent.

  Shrugging, Ellie extinguished the lamp. She couldn’t do anything about the mis-used money at this late date, but she decided to at least try to find a time the next day to discuss whatever concerns Elvina had with her. Ellie didn’t believe in secretiveness or underhandedness. Nothing made her dislike a person more than finding out the person had blatantly lied to her or deceived her. She dismissed the thought of her recent lie to Elvina about her headache as a necessary courtesy for her stepmother’s state of mind.

  She went back down the hallway and out onto the front porch just in time to see Shorty unhitching the buggy horse.

  “I was going to take care of him,” she told him.

  “I know you would’ve,” Shorty said. “But I was up anyways. Thought I heard that coyote out by the corral, but if he was around, he took off a’fore I got there.”

  “Well, thanks. Everything else all right?”

  “Right as rain. You have yourself a good time at that there circus? I stayed home so the rest of ‘em could go, and we was glad to see you goin’ off to enjoy yourself, Miss Ellie. You work too hard.”

  Ellie smiled at him through the darkness. What would he do if she told him—she would tell him, just to see his stricken face.

  “I guess if you call being attacked by a lion and nearly drowned by an elephant fun, I had a good time,” she said.

  Moonlight glowed bright enough for Ellie to see Shorty’s jaw drop, and she hid her smile of delight at having jolted him to the point of shock behind her hand. With one deft twist of his wrist, Shorty re-tied the buggy horse and approached the porch.

  “You don’t say?” Shorty said. “Reckon I’d like to hear about that.”

  Ellie laughed and sat down on the steps while Shorty leaned against the hitching rail. Maybe the poor buggy horse would get in its stall sometime tonight.

  A couple times while she related the evening’s activities to Shorty, Ellie found herself looking around her, wondering just where on earth that fairy woman had gone. But she pushed the thought firmly aside. Circuses were famous for illusions, and probably the woman was a gypsy who knew how to work the circus goers’ minds and trick them into believing they saw things impossible to be real.

  She left out that part of her story to Shorty.

  She tried, too, not to ponder how Fatima had worked the illusion in Shane’s hotel suite.

  Chapter 6

  Ellie never heard Darlene come in, but when she glanced in her sister’s room the next morning before dawn, Darlene lay sprawled on her back, a pillow clutched tightly in her grasp. Imagining Darlene thought the pillow Rockford, Ellie didn’t disturb her. Darlene might be rather spoiled, but she did her share as long as it was things she considered suited to her femininity. She always rose later than Ellie however, although never as late as Elvina, who considered anything before ten a.m. a decadent hour.

  Dressed in range attire, a split riding skirt and loose, cotton blouse, Ellie joined the ranch hands for breakfast. She never saw any reason to make herself a solitary breakfast in the ranch house kitchen when the bunkhouse cook fixed heaps of food for the men. Cookie was a great cook, too, and for the most part, Ellie preferred his plain cooking to the fancier dishes Elvina planned for their meals with Birdie, the lone servant they could afford. Their housekeeper/cook took advantage of the late-sleeping mistress, also, arriving sometime before ten and leaving for her own home right after the evening meal.

  After ham, eggs, potatoes and hot cakes, which Ellie would work off long before noon—and after retelling her tale of the lion and elephant—she joined her men in tacking up their chosen mounts for the day. As always, she lassoed Cinder herself and tied the gelding to the corral post next to where her saddle hung.

  After they were all mounted, the men waited for Ellie’s orders.

  “I noticed last week that the pasture where we have the remuda horses was nearly overgrazed,” she told Shorty. “We need to move them.”

  “You and me can handle that,” Shorty agreed. “Dan and Cal can check the north fence. We ain’t rode up that way all month.”

  Ellie nodded and they rode out of the ranch yard, splitting once outside the gate. This time of year she only needed a crew of four, including Shorty and the Cook, Cal and his brother, Danny. During spring and fall roundups, she hired extra hands.

  Her small crew got along well, and she considered herself lucky. She hated firing men, but any troublemaker had to be sent packing, as she had done twice since George died.

  Years before the free range had become only a memory as every rancher fenced and cross-fenced his land with barbed wire. But new chores sprang up due to that, which entailed riding fence and checking pastures to make sure they weren’t overgrazed. Moving cattle or horses if they were.

  By late afternoon, the horses grazed in their new pasture, and Ellie was hot, covered with dust and dirt, and ready to call it a day. She and Shorty headed home, and when they rode over a
small rise that hid the ranch and barn from sight, Ellie groaned under her breath.

  Rockford’s palomino stood in the shade of a cottonwood tree beside the house, a strange horse beside it. Darlene held court in the swing on the porch, while two men served attendance on her, their rears perched on the porch railing. It only took Ellie one glance to ascertain who the man with Rockford was.

  Shane probably heard the horses’ hooves, but Darlene jumped from the swing and waved at Ellie, making sure the men would notice her.

  “Yoo hoo!” Darlene called.

  Ellie wished like diddly her sister would find some other form of getting her attention. Or better yet, ignore her until she could change clothes.

  “Ellie, hurry on to the house! Rockford and Mr. Morgan have come to call, and they’ll stay for dinner.”

  Ellie waved an acknowledgement, but continued on to the barn. But while Rockford stayed on the porch with Darlene, Shane stood and headed down the steps. Surely he wouldn’t come out into the heat when he could wait on the much cooler porch.

  But he did. He strode toward her, and she avoided Shorty’s questioning gaze and kicked Cinder into a lope on around the house and toward the barn. The gelding whinnied in surprise, since it had already put in a hard day’s work and expected to be allowed its rest; but once inside, Cinder headed for his own stall, where Ellie kept her curry comb and hoof picks.

  Even though she had Cinder unsaddled and a gunny sack in hand to rub him down, Ellie knew the minute Shane entered the barn. His presence infiltrated the shadowy gloom and so-familiar smells like a breeze on a hot summer day. Gritting her teeth, she refused to reach up and tidy her hair. If the man had the audacity to visit a working ranch at the end of a work day, he would just have to put up with her appearance the way it was.

  And her smell, too, she realized with a tentative sniff. Had sweat been a bathing liquid, she would be as squeaky clean as she was still sticky and hot. Even the ride back in hadn’t stirred up enough breeze to dry her completely.