“No one thinks you are,” Broc assured him, “but having your shoulder put back in its socket hurts. No point in getting broken teeth in the bargain.”
Andy looked as though he was going to refuse. “Take the shirt,” Leo snapped. “I don’t want you spitting out pieces of your teeth. You’re ugly enough already.”
Reluctantly, Andy took the folded sleeve and put it between his teeth.
“Try to relax,” Broc said. “It’ll be easier on both of us.”
It quickly became apparent Andy wasn’t going to relax. Each time Broc touched him or tried to get into position, Andy pulled away.
“Stop it, you fool!” Leo shouted. “He’s just trying to help.”
“How do I know he’s not going to make it worse?” Andy asked. “It already hurts like hell.”
Amanda had never realized Andy was so immature. How were they ever going to make a go of the ranch as long as the only people who’d work for them were teens?
“It’s going to keep on hurting like hell if you don’t get it fixed,” Leo said.
“I want Doc to do it.”
“Damned fool,” Leo muttered. “I’m tired of babysitting you.”
“I’m not a fool,” Andy shot back. “And nobody babysits me.”
“Go hitch up the wagon,” Amanda intervened. “It won’t take long to—”
Amanda had already turned to leave when she heard Andy utter a small grunt. When she looked back, she saw Broc standing behind Andy, Andy’s treasured pearl-handled revolver in his hand. He’d just used the weapon to knock the boy unconscious. Leo stared openmouthed. Eddie muttered a word Amanda was certain he’d gleaned from Gary’s vocabulary. She watched in shocked silence while Broc quickly and efficiently reset Andy’s shoulder.
“He’ll have a headache when he wakes up, but his shoulder won’t hurt so badly. Now I’d better leave,” Broc said when he stood. “He’s not going to be happy with me when he wakes up.”
“How long will it take?” Leo asked, awe and fear in his voice.
“Just a few minutes. I didn’t hit him hard.”
Eddie stared at Andy’s inert form. “I think you killed him,” he said to Broc.
Broc ruffled Eddie’s hair. The boy pulled away. “I didn’t kill him. He won’t even have much of a bruise where I hit him. Let’s go back to the table before all the food gets cold.”
“Stay with him.” Amanda spoke to Leo, but her gaze didn’t leave Broc’s retreating back.
“Who is that man?” Leo asked.
Amanda hardly knew what to say. She didn’t want to admit she’d let a stranger take control of a situation that should have been hers to handle. “He fought in the war. He’s been in California and is on his way back to a ranch here in Texas.”
“He shouldn’t have hit Andy.”
Amanda agreed, but Broc had set Andy’s shoulder in less than a minute, thereby saving him a lot of pain. “Andy was starting to panic. By the time he got to Cactus Bend, he might have been too upset to let the doctor fix his shoulder.”
Leo glanced down at Andy, who appeared to be resting peacefully. “I wish he weren’t such an idiot. I told him Carruthers’s men were just trying to cause trouble.”
“I’ll speak to Carruthers about his men.”
“A lot of good that will do,” Leo scoffed. “He won’t even listen to the sheriff.”
Sheriff Tom Mercer would sympathize with her, promise to talk to the rancher, then probably go off and have a beer with him. The position of sheriff was an elected office, and Carruthers and Sandoval were the biggest landowners in the area. The sheriff wasn’t likely to do anything that would cost him their support. Andy started to stir.
“Let me know if he needs anything.”
“A brain would be helpful.”
Amanda smiled. Leo was young, but he would make a good hand when he got more experience. Andy would probably improve if he had someone who could provide the discipline and give him the training he needed, but she didn’t know of anyone who could do that. Certainly not her brother, when he couldn’t even be depended on to do his own work before running off to the saloon.
She needed an experienced foreman to manage the ranch, but she didn’t have the money to pay one. Until the ranch started making a profit, it would take nearly everything they earned from the saloon to support the family. Their plan to hire the bull out for stud services had come to naught when both Carruthers and Sandoval had refused and convinced—or forced—the rest of the ranchers to do the same.
Gary wanted them to sell the ranch, but her mother would never agree. She had hated depending on income that had come from drinking and gambling. She had dreamed of being a social leader in Cactus Bend, but she believed that was impossible as long as she was associated with the saloon. She’d plagued her husband until he’d bought the ranch. The Lazy T was her claim to respectability, and she would never let it go. Instead, she wanted Amanda to quit working in the saloon. So far Amanda had been unable to make her mother understand that the income from the saloon had been all that kept the ranch afloat. All too often, her mother wouldn’t see what she didn’t want to see.
When Amanda entered the house, Broc, Eddie, and her mother were finishing their meal as though nothing had happened to disturb it.
“How is Andy?” Broc asked when she was seated at the table.
“He’s beginning to revive.”
Broc studied her for a moment. “You don’t think I should have hit him, do you?”
He’d given her a perfect opening. “No, I don’t. Why did you?”
He shrugged. “I saw lots of boys panic during the war. We didn’t have time to deal with it. Besides, it could get them killed. We had to knock that out of them as soon as possible.”
“Did you knock them in the head, too?” Eddie asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Amanda asked.
“Not if you know how to do it.”
“Will you teach me?” Eddie asked.
“No, he will not,” Amanda said. “I don’t want anybody knocking anybody in the head.”
“I can think of several people who could benefit by a good knock on the head,” her mother observed.
Amanda didn’t know how things had come to such a pass. Her mother had never advocated violence. She’d always said it was unladylike. What was it about Broc Kincaid that made her mother and brother think he had the answers to everything?
“I’d like to knock Sammy Loftus in the head,” Eddie said.
Amanda ignored him. Eddie’s long-running feud with Sammy Loftus was well-known by everyone in Cactus Bend.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Broc said to her mother, “but I need to be on my way. Can you recommend a good hotel?”
“There’s only one,” Amanda said.
“It’s of very poor quality,” Mrs. Liscomb observed. “You’ll find the best food at the Open Door.”
“That’s the saloon we used to own,” Eddie told Broc.
“It’s also the name of our old diner,” his mother reminded him.
“I’d like to speak to you after you saddle your horse,” Amanda said to Broc. He looked surprised but left the kitchen without comment.
She wasn’t sure that what she had in mind was a good idea, but it might be the perfect solution to her problems. It was clear her brother liked Broc, but it was equally clear her mother was relieved at the departure of such a severely injured man. She might be impressed by his confidence, but she didn’t approve of unattractive injuries any more than she approved of bad manners.
For her part, Amanda had almost forgotten Broc’s scars. He had such a strong personality, it was hard to think of anything else. The scars were as much a part of him as the perfect side of his face. Somehow they represented the duality she saw in his personality, the kindness he showed to her and the rough way he’d dealt with Andy. She watched him as he emerged from the barn and led his horse toward her. She guessed he was around thirty, but it was
hard to tell. The good side of his face looked very young, but he walked with the confidence of a man who had no fear of what might be asked of him. That was exactly the kind of man she needed to run the ranch, the kind of man who would stand up to Carruthers and Sandoval. Gary would be furious, her mother wouldn’t like it, and it was possible Andy might quit, but she had made up her mind.
“Thanks again for dinner,” Broc said when he reached her. “Now I’d better be going.”
“Wait. I want to ask you something.”
He paused just before mounting his horse, but now that she was on the verge of asking her question, the words seemed to stick in her throat. She would have to justify her decision to her whole family, and she had no way of doing that beyond saying that her instinct made her believe she could trust this stranger. She pushed the words out. “I’d like you to work for us. I want you to be the foreman of the Lazy T.”
Now that she’d gotten the words out, the expected feeling of relief didn’t come. Broc was looking at her in that inscrutable way again, making her uneasy, making her feel she’d done something stupid and he didn’t know how to tell her.
“You don’t have to decide right away,” she said. “You can ask people in town about us. We don’t have a large ranch, so I can’t pay you very much, but you could sleep in the house and eat with us.” She made herself stop talking. She was beginning to sound as if she was begging.
“Just because I can set a shoulder doesn’t mean I know anything about ranching,” Broc said.
“You said you’d worked on a ranch since the end of the war.”
“I have, but I’m just a cowhand like Leo and Andy.”
“I’m sure you know more than those boys. Besides, they need someone like you to organize the work for them, show them how to do it, and make sure it gets done. They’re good boys, but they’re young.”
“What about your brother?”
“Gary is nearly as inexperienced as they are.”
“I mean what would he think about me being put in charge?”
“He wouldn’t like it, but he’d understand why it was necessary.”
“Would your mother agree with him?”
How could he pick out the weak spots in her plan so quickly? “My mother has wanted a ranch ever since she moved to Texas. She won’t care about anything if you can make the ranch pay for itself.”
“I have a job that I’ve been away from for a long time. I have a responsibility to my friends, and I like to live up to my promises.”
She wanted to argue with him, but she couldn’t encourage him to ignore his obligations. She’d offered him the job because she believed he was the kind of man who wouldn’t ignore them.
“Have your brother tie the bull up or put him in a stall when you take cows in or out of his pasture,” Broc advised. “He may look docile, but any bull can be dangerous when there are cows around.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Gary.”
Broc looked like he wanted to say something but changed his mind. “Thanks again. Watch out for your little brother. He’s a good kid.”
“He’s too full of himself, but I know what you mean. Have a safe trip back to your ranch.”
Broc mounted up, nodded his head, and headed down the lane. She told herself it was silly to feel that she’d lost something important. Being foreman wasn’t a job that only he could do. Yet the feeling persisted that no one else would be able to do it the way he could, and that was her loss.
Having had a bath and his supper, Broc stepped out of the diner and looked up and down the street. Like so many cattle towns, nearly every building of importance fronted on the main street. Scattered residences—some with well-kept yards and others with chicken coops and pens containing pigs, cows, or horses—separated the main street from the vast emptiness that was the Texas prairie. Faint trails led outward to the ranches that surrounded the town.
It was not yet dark, and the street was crowded with people shopping, visiting, or hurrying home. Now and again a child would dash between buildings or across the street, but Broc suspected most of them were at home doing their chores and getting ready for supper. That made him think of mealtime on Cade’s ranch. Cade had been his captain during the war and was the friend he now worked for. Despite the efforts of Cade’s grandmother-in-law to orchestrate their meals according to the aristocratic Spanish tradition, Cade’s sons and his free-spirited cowhands turned every meal into a celebration of their overflowing good cheer. When Cade’s grandfather showed up and the two old people started hurling insults at each other, the atmosphere became positively festive. Once, the cowhands had asked why Cade didn’t try to put a stop to it, but he’d said the two old people enjoyed it too much.
Broc missed his friends, but there was a restlessness in him he didn’t quite understand. He had enjoyed his time in California with Rafe, but he’d known his home was back in Texas. Not once did he consider returning to Tennessee. He was determined no one in his family would see him as he was now. They’d been told he had died in the war.
Banishing those unhappy thoughts, Broc turned in the direction of the Open Door Saloon. He wasn’t in the mood to drink, but he needed time to digest what he’d learned when he booked a room at the hotel. Aaron Liscomb had died a year earlier. According to the hotel clerk—who was eager to share everything he knew or suspected—the family didn’t know of the debt hanging over their heads. As far as everyone knew, Liscomb had sold his interest in the saloon and diner to Corby Wilson and used the money to buy the ranch and the bull. It was widely known that Mrs. Liscomb had been encouraging him to do that for years.
That left Broc in a dilemma. Not only would he be the one to tell the family about an unknown debt, he’d be the one trying to collect money they probably didn’t have. If he couldn’t collect it, he’d go to jail and they’d still probably lose their bull.
He was curious whether Amanda could really sing. In the years before the war, he’d gained a fair reputation as a ballad singer. But though audiences might put up with a ruined face in a villain, they wouldn’t pay to see a disfigured singer of romantic ballads and nostalgic songs.
He had accepted long ago that a return to the stage was impossible. He’d learned to like his work on Cade’s ranch. He especially enjoyed working with the men who’d been his comrades during the war. They shared a bond of friendship that men who’d never lived through a war together couldn’t understand. He was lucky in his friends and lucky to be alive, so he threw off his ill humor and headed toward the saloon.
It wasn’t a big saloon, but it was crowded. The room was long and narrow with a low stage at the far end. Lanterns suspended from the ceiling dispensed a yellow glow that struggled to make its way through the haze of cigar smoke. All the tables were occupied, as was most of the space at the bar. But he managed to find a place at the end. If he stood at just the right angle, he could turn the left side of his face away from the crowd. He’d have a hard time attracting the bartender’s attention, but he had an unobstructed view of the whole room. The men ranged in age from what seemed to be teens to men in their twilight years, most still wearing their work clothes. He couldn’t tell whether their high spirits were the result of some specific event or characteristic of every evening.
“What can I get for you?”
The bartender looked too young to be working in a saloon. He also bore an uncanny resemblance to Amanda. In turning, Broc exposed the left side of his face. The bartender recoiled.
“What in hell happened to you?”
“A war wound.”
“From the looks of that, you ought to be dead.”
“I nearly was.” He hated having to talk about his wound, but it was either talk about it or appear morose and unfriendly. “I don’t really want anything to drink. I just came in to hear Amanda Liscomb sing.”
“Then stay in this corner. If she gets a look at that face, she won’t be able to sing a note. Hell, it might even put these cowboys off their feed, and they’ve seen just ab
out everything.”
Encounters like this had convinced Broc to bury himself on Cade’s ranch where no one but his friends would see him. It was ironic that it had been his face that had once propelled him to popularity. Now his face was condemning him to live in obscurity. Broc turned his left side back to the wall and waited. It was less than a minute before he saw Amanda.
She was carrying two plates of food. Several men spoke to her as she passed, some even reached for her, but she avoided the touches and turned off the comments with a smile. He could see why Mrs. Liscomb said working in the saloon wasn’t suitable for a young woman. The men weren’t actually disrespectful, but neither were they treating her the way Broc would have wanted them to treat Amanda had she been his sister. He’d twice gotten into fights on the riverboats with men who tried to get too familiar with one of his sisters. Both men had been forced to apologize.
Amanda delivered the food and moved to a second table, where she collected some empty glasses, then disappeared through a door at the back of the saloon.
“She won’t sing for a while yet.” The bartender was back with a whiskey, which he set down before Broc. “You might as well have something to drink.”
Broc paid for his drink and took a swallow. It wasn’t in the same class with the whiskey he’d had while staying with Rafe, but it was good compared to what he’d had in other saloons. He could see why the Open Door was so popular. Too many saloon owners tried to increase their profits by watering down the beer and serving rotgut whiskey.
Over the next thirty minutes he watched Amanda serve half the tables in the room. The saloon employed two other waitresses, but every man wanted Amanda to wait on him. Broc had no difficulty understanding why. The other two women were plain, past the bloom of youth, and brusque. Amanda was young, beautiful, smiling, and willing to exchange a friendly word with any man in the room. To men who sometimes spent weeks without seeing a woman, that was like a benediction.
“You passing through, or are you looking for a job?”
Broc wasn’t sure why the bartender was interested in him, but the fellow never seemed to take his eyes off him for long. Broc wondered if the man thought he was dangerous just because he had a mangled face. “Just passing through.”
When Love Comes Page 3
