The Rancher's Courtship & Lone Wolf's Lady

by Laurie Kingery

  Caroline at last found her voice. “I’ve no claim on the man. I’ve told everyone who would listen I’ve given up on such things. But anyone who’s interested in the twins’ father,” she said, “needs to be aware that he’s planning on moving on to Montana, come spring, along with his herd.” Had she succeeded in sounding disinterested, as she hoped? If only she could convince herself completely.

  At first there was silence, and then Polly cleared her throat. “Oh. I—I see. I...uh, didn’t mean any offense, Caroline. Maybe I ought to become president of the club when Faith’s term is up. Seems like they have first pick of the bachelors. Just look at Milly and Sarah and Prissy—all married now.”

  Faith cleared her throat, clearly embarrassed. She was the hostess, but the red flush on her face betrayed her annoyance. “You can have the presidency now, if you’d like to test that theory, Polly,” she said coolly, then glanced meaningfully at the watch pinned to her dress bodice. “My, look how late it’s gotten, ladies. Perhaps we’d better adjourn for refreshments, and continue our stitching another time.”

  Later, Caroline and Sarah left together.

  “I’m sorry about Polly’s clumsy tongue,” Sarah said as they walked.

  Caroline waved her concern away. “Polly’s always spoken before she thought, but she doesn’t mean any harm,” Caroline said. “I know everyone thinks I have some sort of claim on Jack, but I don’t. I did enjoy meeting Faith’s cousin Louisa, though—” She broke off as she saw that Sarah had stopped suddenly, pointing at a wagon which had just pulled up in front of the doctor’s office.

  “Who can that be?”

  Caroline peered through the darkness at a man helping another down from the back of the wagon. The latter cradled an arm in a makeshift sling, and the two women heard a groan and a muttered swear word escape through gritted teeth.

  “Easy, Wes,” the first man said in a low voice. “You’ll feel a lot better once that arm’s set...”

  Caroline knew that voice. Startled, she nearly stumbled at a dip in the dirt road and couldn’t stifle a small cry as she sought to regain her balance. She saw Jack’s head jerk in their direction. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m the doctor’s wife,” Sarah called out. “Please go on up the steps, gentlemen. I’ll summon my husband and we’ll meet you at the door.”

  Was Jack hurt, too, just more able to walk than his trailhand? Worry flooded her soul. She had to know.

  Chapter Nine

  A second voice came out of the darkness toward Jack and the man he was trying to help. “Jack, it’s Caroline. What happened?”

  He held up the lantern with his free hand. Caroline’s face was pale in the lantern light as she approached, her eyes wide.

  “Wes’s horse spooked at a jackrabbit and threw him,” he said, his eyes drinking in the sight of her. “I think his arm’s broken, maybe a rib, too.” Her coincidental appearance was oddly comforting.

  He transferred his attention to helping Wes up the steps. It was slow going. Wes groaned with every movement, and Jack hoped he wasn’t bleeding inside. It was bad enough to be thrown, but did the no-good nag have to pitch the cowboy against a tree? Of all the rotten luck.

  By the time they reached the last step, with Caroline following behind them, Dr. Walker had come through from the back of the house, opened the door and was lighting a pair of lamps inside his office. Another already burned in the waiting room, casting the physician’s frame into waiting shadow.

  “Bring him on in—easy, now,” Dr. Walker cautioned in his Down East accent. “What happened?”

  As Jack described the accident for the second time in as many minutes, he was aware of Caroline hovering in the background with the doctor’s wife.

  Wes had been laid gently down on a padded examining table, and now the doctor bent over the injured drover, gently probing his wounds. Each place he touched elicited a groan.

  “Cowboy, I’m going to give you a dose of laudanum, and then it won’t hurt as bad,” Dr. Walker said and turned to a row of amber bottles on a low table behind him. He poured a small amount of brown liquid up to a scored mark on the glass, then looked at Jack and Caroline.

  “Miss Caroline, might I ask you to go to the kitchen and make some coffee?” Dr. Walker said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “We’re going to need some when I’m through, I imagine.”

  “Of course,” Caroline said, appearing relieved to have something to do.

  “Why don’t you go with her, Jack? I’ll give this medicine time to take effect, then have a good look at your drover. Once I’ve done that, I’ll come let you know how he is.”

  “But...won’t you need some help?” Jack asked.

  “Thanks, but my wife can assist me,” Walker murmured, turning back to his patient.

  Jack followed Caroline out the door and into the passageway that led to the kitchen and the rest of the living quarters. He lit the lamp on the kitchen table, then watched while Caroline busied herself brewing coffee on the stove, her movements businesslike and economical, yet at the same time, graceful. It was obvious she had been here before.

  “How did you happen to be out there just now?” he asked. “Were you and Mrs. Walker out for a stroll? It is a fine night, what with the full moon and all.”

  “We were coming home from a Spinsters’ Club meeting.”

  He must have appeared startled, for she added quickly, “Oh, not because either of us is interested in eligible bachelors, of course. The group is working on a quilt for the annual raffle.”

  He nodded, amused that she should be defensive with him about going to a meeting with her matchmaking society—and absurdly pleased at the same time she was not looking for a match for herself. If she ever changed her mind about giving up love, he wanted her to love him alone.

  “Of course, they’re your friends,” he murmured, but Caroline Wallace remained flustered for some reason.

  “Mama felt I should go...she’s watching over the girls, of course.”

  “I didn’t doubt that for a minute, Caroline,” he assured her. “When I agreed to leave Abby and Amelia at your house, I didn’t expect you to spend every waking minute with them. They seem to have made your parents into substitute grandparents.” The Wallaces were the sort of grandparents they should have had, Jack thought.

  She smiled then, and the effect it had on her face made him wish she would smile more often. She was beautiful when she smiled. It softened features that her black clothing rendered severe.

  “When I left she was doing fittings for yet another pair of dresses for them. They’re going to be the best-dressed little girls in all of Texas by the time...by the time they leave Simpson Creek.” Her last few words seemed to sober her. “I—I should be getting home,” she said suddenly. “The coffee will be ready in another few minutes,” she said, nodding toward the pot on the stove. “Cups are in that cabinet to the left.”

  His hand shot out to touch her wrist. “Must you go?” he asked, his action and his words surprising them both.

  Her lovely features registered surprise but not annoyance at his touch.

  “I mean...if you must go I’ll understand, of course, but I was hoping you would keep me company until Dr. Walker is able to tell me how Wes is doing.” He was babbling, he thought, and must sound a plumb fool.

  She sat down but then neither of them seemed to know what to say.

  “Why don’t you tell me how my girls are doing at school?” he suggested at last, picking the most obvious thing that came to his head.

  She shrugged. “Abby and Amelia are continuing to improve at writing their letters, reciting, and doing their sums accurately. Lizzie Halliday, one of the older girls, has taken them under her wing and walks home with them if I must stay after school. Which can be fairly often, since one of the boys gets in trouble on a regular basis...”

  He listened as she told him ab
out Billy Joe Henderson and her suspicions that the boy got into trouble to postpone returning home to fatherly abuse. He remembered Caroline had been conversing with Henderson after church Sunday, and that the red-faced blowhard had been standing a little too close to Caroline.

  It was all too easy to imagine a boy in such a situation preferring to spend the rest of his afternoon with a warm friendly teacher such as Caroline rather than go home to such a father.

  He’d been that boy once. There had been no teacher for Jack to seek refuge with, however. When they were small, he and his brother had been taught at home, and only Pete had been deemed worthy to go on for more formal education. His mother had been as afraid of her husband as Jack was, and then she had died. Had Pete ever told Caroline about their father? Jack doubted it, for Pete had always preferred to dwell on the positive, and once he’d left the house, their father’s tyrannical ways had ceased to impact him very much.

  “I think the town is lucky to have you,” he said.

  She blinked. “Nonsense. I’m just doing my job,” she said, as if embarrassed by the compliment, and fled to the stove. The coffee had finished brewing. Caroline poured him a cup, then one for herself, and plopped a couple of lumps from a strawberry-shaped sugar bowl into her cup before pushing the sugar across to him.

  They were silent for a few minutes as each sipped their coffee. The only sound was the steady tick-tock of a wall clock by the door. He couldn’t hear anything from the doctor’s examination room beyond, but that was probably a good thing, for it meant the laudanum had taken hold of Wes and the drover was no longer in agony.

  He felt so awkward around Caroline. She was immaculate in her high-necked dress with its attached collar of some sort of gray lacework, not a hair out of place. Jack wished he’d known he was going to see her tonight—he’d have bothered to shave the two-day growth of beard from his cheeks and put on a fresh shirt.

  “How is the bunkhouse coming along?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  He was glad to have something he could talk about. “We should be putting the roof on about the end of the week, if the weather holds. I imagine some of us will continue to sleep outside, till the cold really sets in, though—”

  Dr. Walker entered just then, followed by his wife. Caroline sprang up to pour them coffee.

  “Your man’s going to be hurting for several weeks, but I’ve set the fracture to his wrist and put his shoulder back in its socket. Nothing much you can do about those ribs but let them heal. Fortunately, there’s no sign of serious internal injuries.”

  “Can I take him back to the ranch tonight, Doctor?” Jack asked. “Or should I see about getting a room at the hotel?”

  “You’ll leave him here for the night,” Dr. Walker said. “I have a cot and a spare bedroom set up for the purpose. The very last thing he needs is to go bouncing over those roads right now. He’s going to be sleeping off that laudanum until morning, anyway. You can come claim him then.”

  “Then you’ll come back to the house with me,” Caroline told Jack. “Your daughters will be so happy to wake and find you there.”

  He smiled his thanks to Caroline, then turned back to the doctor. “Thank you, sir. I’ll have to bring your fee next time I’m in town. I leave what cash I have with me with our cook, and in the excitement—”

  Nolan Walker held up a hand. “How about we barter instead? I imagine you might be able to find a side of beef somewhere,” he said with a wink. “I’m partial to a good steak now and then.”

  “Sounds like a bargain to me, Doc,” Jack said, and the two shook hands.

  Caroline told herself she was happy for the girls’ sake that Jack had agreed to come back to her family’s house for the night. But she couldn’t fool herself. The fact was, it felt just purely good to be walking through the darkness at Jack Collier’s side. It gave her a reason to appreciate the light of a nearly full moon filtering through the leaves of the trees in the churchyard, and a reason not to be frightened as their passage scared a black cat in the alleyway between the post office and the undertaker’s and sent it scuttling past her skirts with an unearthly yowl.

  “That’s probably the tomcat responsible for the litter of kittens in our shed,” she commented.

  “You’re probably right,” Jack said. “When the twins showed me the litter, I noticed most of those kittens were black. He’s probably hanging about hoping to convince the mama cat to let him come courting all over again.”

  “Ha! She’s a good mama cat, and too smart to fall for his wiles,” Caroline retorted. “She knows he’ll be charming to her, and then she’ll be left alone in the same situation that brought her to our shed. She’s learned her lesson.”

  Suddenly a chilly gust of wind blew up the alley, and she shivered in spite of the shawl she clutched closer around her. For cats and people courting was wonderful while it lasted, but then, all too often, the man left. Either by dying, as Pete had, or by moving on, as Jack would do. No, it didn’t do to let a man get too close. It only left a woman with memories, or worse.

  But what about her own parents and the happy couples she knew like Sarah and her Nolan, and Milly and her Nick? It didn’t do any good to think of them. Their happy endings were not for her to experience.

  The best she could hope for was a useful, contented life. And she’d be a fool if she let a walk in the moonlight change her mind.

  * * *

  Jack awoke to joyous shrieks as the twins jumped on his bed out on the summer porch at sunrise. They slept in a spare bedroom now, so his coming hadn’t awakened them.

  “Papa! Aunt Caroline said you came to surprise us!” Amelia cried, throwing herself against him and hugging his neck.

  “Why didn’t you tell us when you came last night?” Abby asked, kissing his cheek.

  “I didn’t want to wake you two up, Punkin. Fact is, I didn’t know I was coming myself till I met Miss Caroline at the doctor’s office,” Jack explained. “Mr. Wes needed some fixing up from Doc Walker, and the doctor said he had to stay all night, so Miss Caroline and her parents were kind enough to give me a bed. We thought it might be nice to surprise you girls by having your papa join you for breakfast.”

  “I love surprises,” Abby said. “But Aunt Caroline told me you hafta get washed up and come to breakfast pronto—”

  “That means quick, Papa,” Amelia added. “’Cause we hafta get to school. Papa, I think you should come to school with us.”

  “Yeah, Papa, come to school,” Abby agreed. “We can show you how good we know our letters.”

  “I think Miss Caroline would say it’s how well you know your letters.” There was nothing he’d like better than to watch them being taught by Caroline, Jack thought, but he had to take Wes back to the ranch and probably take over Wes’s share of the chores. They were planning to put on the roof today, and they’d already be a man short.

  He could hear the sounds of sizzling bacon and the older Wallaces talking in the kitchen. “Y’all go get started on your breakfast, and I’ll be along soon as I wash up.”

  Caroline, he saw when he took his place at the table, had gone back to wearing unrelieved black. Too bad—he thought the gray collar of some sort of handmade lacework she’d worn last night had looked pretty. And there was a troubled look to her eyes this morning that told him she hadn’t slept well. Why? He’d thought she seemed happy to have him with her last night when they’d left the house, but something along the way had changed her mood. If he could have managed a minute alone with her, he would have asked her about it, but of course he had to be getting over to the doctor’s office, and Caroline and the twins needed to leave for school.

  “Come, girls, it’s time to say goodbye to your papa and get to the schoolhouse,” Caroline said, gathering up her things.

  “But Papa’s coming with us, aren’t you, Papa?” Amelia said, coming around the table to stand by his side.
>
  “Yeah, Papa’s coming to school,” Abby chimed in, tugging on his sleeve.

  Caroline raised a brow in inquiry. “Are you coming to school today, Jack? Of course you’re welcome, but I thought...”

  “I wish I could, Miss Caroline, but I’m afraid that was wishful thinking on my girls’ part. Punkins, I’ve got to go pick up Mr. Wes and get him back out to the ranch,” he said, gathering the hovering twins into his arms. “Maybe another day I can come to school with you, but not today, I’m afraid.”

  Both his daughters’ lips jutted out in mutinous pouts. “But we didn’t get to spend much time with you, Papa.”

  “Yeah, just breakfast. That’s not long.”

  Caroline flashed Jack a sympathetic look over their heads. “Girls, he’ll be coming back soon. You’ll need to be patient until then.”

  Abby folded her arms tightly over her chest. “Don’t want to wait for ‘soon.’”

  Her sister mirrored her action. “Yeah. We want you to come with us now, Papa.”

  Jack was all too aware of the silence from the Wallaces as they waited to see what he would do. He was there, so they wouldn’t take on the task of disciplining his children.

  He made his voice as stern as he could manage. “That’s enough sass, girls. You mind Miss Caroline now, you hear me? I’ll see you before you know it.”

  Abby’s lip trembled, and he determinedly ignored it and kissed the top of her head, then her sister’s.

  She looked like her mother when she did that, Jack thought, and later wished that he’d remembered that on rare occasions when Lucinda had worn that expression, trouble had usually followed.

  * * *

  He found Wes, his broken arm splinted, drinking coffee and waiting for him in the Walkers’ kitchen. Wes winced when he rose to greet Jack, but all in all, he looked a good deal better than he had last night.