Much Ado About Mavericks

by Jacquie Rogers

  The lawyer handed the will to Ben. He studied it a few minutes, then gave it back. “So Harley Blacker inherits the Bar El and the Circle J if all these stipulations aren’t met?”

  Callison nodded, still trembling. “That’s right.”

  Ben knew something was amiss because his father hated Harley Blacker. Blacker’s son, Peter, was the same age as Ben and they’d gone through grammar school together.

  “How much schooling have you had, Callison?”

  “I went through the tenth grade.”

  “And how many times have you read the Idaho Territorial Estate Law?”

  “Enough.”

  “Not enough. This thing is such a joke, any judge would laugh himself to death.” He turned his attention to Jake, who looked fit to kill. “I’ll see that you get the title to your ranch. You worked for it, you should have it.”

  “Thanks.” She stood. “If you don’t mind, I’m getting back to my chores.” It wouldn’t have mattered if they did mind, because she’d loped halfway out the door before she finished her sentence.

  Ben patted his mother on the shoulder. “Ma, Suzanne, I’m going to challenge this will. When we win, we’ll sell off and you two can split the money. If you want, I can invest it for you. Meantime, as I already said, I’m taking you both to Boston.”

  His mother had a pained expression on her face. “Suzanne can go, but I have all my friends here. I’ll stay.”

  “I’m staying, too!” Suzanne said, jamming her hands on her hips.

  He saw that he had some convincing to do, but when they got to Boston, they’d have a good life. “We’ll work that out in private.” He turned to the lawyer, who busily crammed papers in his satchel. “I’ll take a copy of all those. You did bring copies, didn’t you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Then I’ll take the originals and have copies made for you. Suzanne has excellent handwriting.”

  “I, uh, can’t release these documents until the terms of the will are met. Ezra, er, Mr. Lawrence stipulated that.”

  “So, he expects you to break the law for him, does he, even after he’s dead?”

  “Break the law?”

  “Go ask the district judge. Meantime, we’ll be bringing proceedings against you.” He handed Callison his hat. “Goodbye, Mr. Callison.”

  The lawyer scurried out, leaving Ben with one teary-eyed young woman, and one middle-aged woman angry enough to melt rock.

  He patted his mother on the shoulder. “Let’s not get too worried. I’ve won cases much more complicated than this. Anyone who knows how to read and write can call himself an attorney. Callison might be able to read but he sure can’t write and he most certainly doesn’t understand the intricacies of estate law—none of these stipulations are allowable. That’s why we’re working on establishing a bar. Shysters like him won’t be able to take money from naïve clients anymore.”

  Frowning, Suzanne asked, “So you won’t work the ranch?”

  He shook his head, exasperated. “Now, why would I want to do that? I spent four years at Harvard reading the law and now I enjoy a large and profitable practice in Boston. I don’t have time to play cowhand.”

  She didn’t look the least bit convinced, so he gave her a hug and explained, “Working a ranch doesn’t fit into my plans professionally or personally, Suzanne. I have a senior partnership in the firm waiting for me when I get back, and I can make ten times the money there without killing myself.”

  “And personally?” his mother inquired.

  “The senior partner’s daughter, Patience, is a sweet little thing.” Not at all like Jake. Patience didn’t wrap him up and turn him inside-out. No, Patience was soft-spoken and an exquisite hostess, the kind of wife a leading Boston attorney needed.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Ma, I’m not going to discuss this.”

  “You don’t love her, but she’d be a good wife, then.”

  Ben gritted his teeth and breathed deeply through his nose. “What’s for dinner?”

  Chapter 2

  Jake splashed a ladle of beef stew into her dish, grabbed a biscuit, and plopped on a bench in the farthest corner of the Bar EL bunkhouse. She didn’t feel much like socializing after the mess that had gone on in the house. Hell, she didn’t remember a time when anything good had ever happened in that damned house—which was why she stayed away most of the time.

  At the front of the room, both strays chattered to the cowhands about Ben, Teddy bragging that he was going to teach the greenhorn how to spit. The men all laughed. Only a couple of them had worked at the ranch before Ben had gone East, but they’d made sure the rest of the hands knew exactly why he had been nicknamed ‘Skeeter.’

  Whip, the cook, came back with his own supper and pulled up a stool beside her. “Whatcha think about the new owner?”

  “Ain’t the owner, yet.”

  “No?”

  “No, and I ain’t the owner of the Circle J yet, either. The old bastard made it so’s I don’t get clear title ‘till all the terms of the will’s met, and Ben don’t have no notion at all about meeting those terms.”

  “So what’s he plan to do?”

  “Break the will in court.” She slapped her leg. “Now ain’t that just like one of them eastern greenhorns? Buy every damned thing. He said he’d buy the Circle J for me and sell the Bar EL. He don’t give a crap about this here ranch. And he’s gonna take the women back with him.”

  “Take the women?” Whip dropped his spoon back into the bowl. “Are they willing?”

  “You mean is she willing. I know you been sweet on Mrs. Lawrence for a long time now. And I know you wouldn’t even be here if she wasn’t here.”

  Whip pushed his dish aside and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Is she, or ain’t she? I wanna know.”

  Jake saw pain in his eyes and anger in his clenched lips. “Don’t know,” she answered. “You’ll have to ask her. All’s I know is that I don’t think much of a man who don’t meet a challenge head on. I guess the old man was right—Ben ain’t fit to run the Bar EL and he don’t deserve to have it.”

  “He’ll meet the challenge—just on his own terms instead of the old man’s.”

  Jake wondered why he was so prickly about Ben. Then she noticed Fred, the cowhand who’d wanted to be foreman when Ezra had chosen her, inching toward them. She didn’t trust him as far as she could heave a haywagon. He’d made it very clear that he was out to get her job, and had made her life miserable more than once.

  Scooting closer to Whip, she lowered her voice and said, “That’s just what I mean. If Ben was man enough, and I guess he ain’t, he’d meet the old man’s terms. But, no, he’s gonna do some fancy lawyer shit and let us do the dirty work for him.”

  When Fred sat within earshot, she whispered to Whip. “I’m headed to the Circle J.” She smirked. “Or at least what was my ranch. Don’t let Fred know what we was talking about. He ain’t trustworthy.”

  Whip nodded and picked up his bowl. “See you in the morning.”

  Jake told Teddy and Homer to saddle up, then addressed the hands. “We’ll be riding fence tomorrow—all of us. I want you saddled up and ready to go.”

  The men groaned.

  “Any late stragglers is fired on the spot. We got a lot of work to do and not much time to get it done.”

  They quieted right down. Jake looked several of them in the eye and saw no challengers.

  “Slim and Crip, you’ll be bucking out the rough stock from now on to roundup. We need twice as many horses as what we got. Crazy Jim, you help ‘em.”

  “Yippee!” The young man sent her a wide grin. “Does this mean I’m a bronc buster now?”

  “It means you’re helping Slim and Crip tomorrow. Do what they tell you.” She took one more glance around the room. Satisfied that the men understood her orders, she said, “Whip, we’ll have breakfast at dawn.” Not that he didn’t know that, but she didn’t want him to feel left out.

  When she got to the b
arn, Homer had already saddled his pony and was helping Teddy with his. The smaller pony danced around and gave them the usual amount of grief. She’d bought the boy a Welsh pony—only about twelve hands. The smaller horse was easier for him to get on, and he had a shorter distance to fall. But she could’ve sworn that it was the orneriest horse this side of the Mississippi. On the other side, they’d have drowned the little shit. She’d give Teddy another year to grow, then she’d get him a decent mount.

  “Here, boys, let me help.” She urged the pony to take the bit, then she handed the reins to Teddy. “Hold him while I check the cinch.”

  “I kneed him in the gut just like you said,” Homer told her, “but he blowed up anyways.”

  “I know.” She loosened the cinch, then ready to pull the strap, rammed her knee in the pony’s belly. As soon as she heard the animal exhale, she yanked the cinch tight and tied it off. “There you go, Teddy.” She grabbed him under his armpits and plopped him on the saddle. “I’ll get my horse. You two can start for the Circle J if you want to, and I’ll catch up.”

  “Bet we’re there before you even get out of the barn, Jake!” Teddy kicked his pony into a trot, and Homer followed on his bigger horse.

  Jake chuckled as she ducked through the corral fence, grabbed a handful of Blue’s mane, and leapt on his back. Saddle and bridle could wait for another day. “Let’s whoop ‘em, boy!” She dug her heels into his side. He sailed over the fence and galloped toward the Circle J bunkhouse.

  * * * * *

  Ben raked his fingers through his hair, then paced across the kitchen. “What do you mean, you won’t go? Of course you’ll go.”

  His mother slammed a potholder on the table. “You’re worse than Ezra if you think that.”

  “It won’t do you any good to stay here so you can moan over his grave. Boston is a fine city. You’ll like it.”

  She pointed to the chair. “Sit down.” She waited, arms folded, for him to comply.

  He sent her a glare, then sat. He couldn’t understand why she wasn’t happy with his decision. She’d have all the benefits of civilization for the first time in her life, and now she insisted on being stubborn about it all.

  “You’re wrong on two counts, Ben. First, I don’t like people telling me what I’ll like and what I won’t like. Second, I won’t be moaning over Ezra’s grave—he isn’t buried here. He’s buried in San Francisco.”

  “San Francisco?”

  “Yes.” She lowered her head. “It’s said his heart gave out on him. He’d had heart problems for the last few years.”

  Ben felt contrite about not taking her mourning into consideration. But it was no secret that his parents had never agreed on much of anything. Still, her husband was dead, and Ben decided a more considerate approach would make her understand reason.

  “Why was he in San Francisco?”

  “Business, he said.”

  He put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his knuckles while he thought, but he couldn’t come up with a single reason why his father would have business so far away. Nearly anything could be handled over the wire, or either in Boise City or Silver City. “So you didn’t have a funeral for him?”

  “We had a memorial. He wanted a service in the bunkhouse, according to Mr. Callison. I thought we should have it in the schoolhouse, but Mr. Callison showed us papers where Ezra wrote his wishes. Harley Blacker gave the eulogy.”

  “Harley Blacker? He’s just a rancher.”

  “We didn’t fetch a preacher. I guess a preacher already said words over his grave and he didn’t need any more.”

  That was a matter of opinion. Ben figured his father needed all the preachers’ good words he could get to help him to a better place. “All the letter said was he died on August fifteenth, that I needed to return to settle his affairs, and Jake O'Keefe had to be foreman for a year. I thought that last stipulation was a little strange, but now that I’ve seen her, I know exactly what he was up to.”

  “So you plan to fight this through the courts?”

  He nodded. “I’ve danced to the old man’s tune long enough, Ma. We all have.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m still not going to Boston with you.”

  “And I’m not going to make a damned fool of myself out here.” He shook his head and stood. “I have the money to take care of you and Suzanne. Lots of it. We don’t need this ranch—we don’t even need the money from the sale. The only reason I’m going to court is because that money is rightfully yours.”

  She flicked an imaginary wrinkle from the tablecloth. “You make your decisions, son. I’ll make mine.”

  Ben let out an exasperated sigh, then leaned over and kissed his mother’s cheek. “I’m going to bed. Please think about what I said.”

  He spent a restless night in a short bed with a lumpy mattress. His recurrent dreams about a tall titian-haired woman in britches refused to be supplanted by the petite, blonde Boston socialite he tried to keep in his thoughts. The memory of Patience’s proper kisses dimmed with the vision of Jake and the promise of passion in her full lips, blue eyes, and firm breasts.

  By morning he was determined to shake off his thoughts of the shapely cowhand and get on with his business. First, he’d take stock of his father’s holdings. While not keen on learning to rope at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, he could ride with the best so he knew he wouldn’t make a fool of himself. He splashed cold water on his face, shaved, and dressed in the same attire he’d worn the day before, hoping his mother still had some of the old man’s clothes packed away somewhere—they’d be much more practical for his purpose.

  After breakfast, his mother managed to find a shirt, a duster, and a pair of britches. She held the latter up to his waist and shook her head. “I’m afraid these won’t fit you at all. Too large around the waist and too short. Maybe the duster will work.”

  It didn’t. In fact, he could barely get it on at all. His mother smiled. “You’re a good-sized man, Benjamin Lawrence. I always knew you’d get your growth—too bad Ezra was so impatient.”

  “My size was the least part of me that irritated him, Ma, and you know it. There’s not a soul in this county that thinks I’m worth my salt.”

  She shrugged, but the wrinkle in her brow showed her concern. “They will.”

  He doubted it. Jake certainly seemed to have little regard for him. Not that it mattered—about her or anyone else. His expertise in the law was highly sought in Boston. He had no reason to care what the people in Henderson Flats thought, yet deep inside he yearned for their approval.

  “I need boots anyway, so I’m going into town in an hour to buy a couple of sets of clothes. Do you want anything?”

  “I’ll see, but Whip has me pretty well supplied.”

  They continued visiting when Suzanne joined in. One hour stretched into three, and noon came and went. Finally, he knew he’d better hit the road if he wanted to get back before supper. As he approached the barn, he heard boys arguing. Teddy and Homer, he assumed. He chuckled and stepped inside. Not aware of his presence, they continued their heated discussion.

  “He’s too big to be a greenhorn!” Teddy stood, feet apart, glaring at his older friend.

  “Ain’t not, either,” Homer said, arms crossed. “All the hands say he don’t know how to do nothing, and that don’t have a thing to do with how tall he is.”

  Ben flinched, knowing the boys were only reporting what he knew the crew would be saying.

  “He’ll do right, you’ll see.” Teddy wagged his finger at Homer. “We won’t have to find ourselves another job.”

  “Aw, Teddy, how do you come to think that? Jake says he’s gonna sell off this place and hightail it back east to the soft life, and Jake’s never wrong. You know that.”

  “No.” Teddy hung his head and dragged the toe of his boot in the straw. “She ain’t never been wrong yet.”

  Ben slipped back out the door before they saw him. If they’d kicked him in the belly, it wouldn’t have hurt mo
re to hear two little boys who had no confidence in him. But then, why should they? He planned to do exactly what Jake had told them. Maybe Jake would hire the boys for her ranch he intended to buy for her.

  He saw his mother standing on the porch. “Got your shopping list ready?” he asked as he strode toward her.

  “We don’t need a thing today.” She hugged him as he stepped up beside her. “Whip will take me to town next week when Mrs. Hiatt gets her next shipment.”

  He tipped his hat. “All right, see you at supper.” By next week, he hoped he’d have his mother on a train to Boston—and the boys employed by Jake, who’d be happily working her new ranch.

  His conscience salved, Ben hollered “Good afternoon!” before he entered the barn again. The boys stopped sweeping and stared. Ben didn’t let on that he’d heard their earlier conversation. “I’m headed into town. Would you boys mind telling me where all the tack is so I can saddle up a horse?”

  They both pointed to his left. Ben nodded, then said, “And how about a horse? Got a nice, gentle one that won’t throw me?” He had no idea why he made such a remark, other than he knew they expected no less, or no more from him.

  “You can ride my Welsh pony,” Teddy offered. “He’s little so you don’t have far to fall. That’s why Jake bought him for me.”

  “Well, if it ain’t Skeeter!” a big voice boomed from behind him. He’d know that voice anywhere—it was Whip. And, just like old times, Whip had saved him from an embarrassing situation, although Ben cringed every time he heard that humiliating nickname.

  Ben grinned wide and shook Whip’s hand. The old cowhand had knots on his knuckles and was even more bent and bowlegged than Ben remembered, although he was still taller than most men. “Good to see you, Whip!”

  “Same here.” He looked Ben up and down, smiled, then slapped his shoulder. “You was just a scrawny little twig last time I seen you, but you sure did grow into a fine man. Your mama always said you would.” He backed away and stuck his thumbs in his waistband. “So, what brings you to the barn?”