She heard the back door slam and then Jake’s voice. “You guys all straightened out? I sure hope so, because the beef needs painting again.”
Katie scrambled to her feet and grabbed the mop and bucket. “I’m on it,” she said, smearing sauce on the meat with more enthusiasm than expertise.
Jake took the bucket out of her hand. “I’m relieving you of duty,” he said. “Get back inside.”
She kissed his cheek a second time. “Thanks, Jake.”
“My pleasure, sugar.”
Luke laughed. “There she goes getting cute again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LUKE SLEPT BETTER that night than he had since his wreck. His last waking thought was that he still faced a long, hard trail to get back on his feet, but Katie’s sweet sanity had calmed his heart. They would have to deal with the Jerk—maybe that would also be a rough ride—but they’d do it side by side.
Bustle in the kitchen woke him at dawn. He lay awake listening to the women’s voices—Katie’s weaving in and out with Lucy’s chatter and Shelby’s quieter tones. He smiled. Now he was truly home.
He jumped at a bang on his door. “Get out here, you lazy bum!” Lucy, of course. “We need you to take ice out to the barn.”
“In five, Red.”
“Don’t call me Red!”
He pulled on his best shirt and Wranglers in honor of Auntie Rose and joined the uproar in the kitchen. Katie shot him a smile that started his day in fine style before running down the cellar steps. She returned with a bag of ice in her arms and plopped it in his lap. “To the barn, cowboy.”
“And don’t ask her to come with you,” Lucy said. “We need her here.”
Katie shrugged. “Later,” she said.
Luke carried the ice to the barn where his father was draining water from a galvanized watering trough.
“Dump it on,” Jake said, pointing to the side of beef wrapped in heavy plastic. “You can help me stick it back on the spit about an hour before we eat.”
“How are you going to get Auntie Rose here for the surprise?” Luke asked, emptying the ice over the meat.
“We’re taking your lady’s name in vain. We told Auntie Rose today is Katie’s birthday, so teaching her to make fry bread would be a nice gift. All we could think of—she has everybody else’s birthdays memorized.”
“Sneaky. Did you have this all cooked up in advance with Marge?”
“I asked her about closing the Queen when we got there yesterday. She was going to tell Katie, but the details kind of went south when Katie’s—”
“Call him the Jerk, like I do.”
“I’ll never understand how your mouth never got the crap beat out of you,” Jake said.
“I always talked my way out of any outright ruckus. I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Anyway, Oscar’s bringing Auntie Rose over around eleven for Katie’s fry bread lesson. Everyone else is slated to arrive around noon.”
Luke wheeled to the barn door and scanned pink-and-gold clouds heralding the sunrise. “We couldn’t have a better day for it. Maybe some nasty weather day after tomorrow, but we’re good till then.”
“We could hide out here all morning, but I guess we’d better get to the house and get our orders,” Jake said. “Good thing all the calves are on the ground—the cows can take care of themselves for one day.”
Shelby kept everyone busy all morning setting up tables and dragging hay bales for seats to a level meadow behind the old bunkhouse. With luck, Auntie Rose wouldn’t see the preparations when she arrived with Oscar. Luke stowed boxes of plastic plates and utensils under the tables and carried six-packs of soft drinks to the barn, ready to replace the beef in the ice-filled watering trough.
When he rolled through the kitchen, he noticed Shelby and Lucy had deferred to Katie’s catering experience, turning command over to her.
A last flurry of activity cleared the kitchen a few minutes before eleven, and they all sat around the table when the rattle of the cattle guard announced Oscar and Auntie Rose’s arrival.
“How do you plan to keep Auntie Rose from hearing all the vehicles arriving?” Luke asked. “That cattle guard is better than a burglar alarm.”
“No problem.” Shelby turned on the vent fan over the range; its soft roar drowned out all sound from outside. “And we’ll keep her away from the window.”
The kitchen door opened and Auntie Rose entered, resplendent in a purple paisley skirt topped by a turquoise velveteen tunic. An elaborate beaded necklace completed the ensemble. She reached into a shopping bag and handed Shelby a round tin decorated with a star and a picture of the Alamo. “Cookies for my favorite boys,” she said. “I’ll take them out to the barn.”
“I’ll take them, Ma,” Oscar said, following her into the kitchen.
“I’ll go with him,” Luke said. “To make sure Dad gets some.”
Auntie Rose patted his cheek. “You go ahead. I’ll have your young lady making fry bread as good as mine in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
She pulled a voluminous green apron from the same bag and a second one for Katie. “Happy birthday,” she said and smothered her in a hug. “It’s my birthday, too—seventy-five.”
“Really?” Katie avoided Luke’s eyes. “Happy birthday.”
Auntie Rose waited until the door closed behind Oscar. “The family is setting up a surprise party for me at home.” She winked. “Don’t tell Oscar I know.”
Katie shot Luke a look of comic dismay as he left the kitchen.
“Your mom just told Katie there’s a surprise party planned at your ranch,” Luke told Oscar. “I had to get out before I cracked up.”
Oscar snorted. “Pretty hard to sneak anything past Ma. She’ll still get her surprise unless she comes trotting out to the barn when people start arriving.”
Oscar and Jake hoisted the side of beef from its ice bath and skewered it on the spit to finish over fresh coals. Jake cut a long sliver of meat from the last rib and tore it in half for Luke and Oscar to sample. “Another hour should do it, don’t you think?”
Oscar downed his in two bites. “Tastes fine to me now, but it’s your cow and your party.”
“Any idea when Marge is coming?” Luke asked. “You think she’s okay to drive this far with her new knees?”
“You know Marge,” Jake said. “She’ll get here if she has to hitchhike.”
The first guests arrived on horseback. Mike’s parents from the neighboring ranch rode up to the barn and dismounted.
“I told Bob we could ease the parking by riding over,” Donna Farley said, handing the reins of her sorrel mare to her husband. “What can I do to help?”
“I’m about ready set out plates and such,” Luke said and led the way to the impromptu picnic area. “Katie said to make stacks of plates and napkins but leave the knives and forks in their boxes.” He handed Donna two horseshoes he had hung over the back of his wheelchair. “You can weigh them down with these.”
“Did you wash them?” She examined one and rolled her eyes. “Of course not.” She spread a paper napkin on top of the plates before anchoring them with the horseshoe and did the same with the napkins. “Cleaner than picking everything up off the ground after the wind blows them around, I suppose.”
She stood back with her hands on her hips. “Now that I’ve got you cornered, will you please tell me why your sister is torturing my son?”
Luke threw up both hands. “The last I heard from Mike, they agreed to hold off on any decision till after this summer, so I’m staying out of it. I’ve got my own problems.”
She sighed. “I suppose you do. Bob and I met Katie last week when we stopped for lunch at the Queen. She and Marge are pretty funny, like an old-time vaudeville team. So this is a certain thing for you?”
“Certain as death except for one problem—she’s still married. Her lawyer back East is doing his best to hurry up the divorce, but Katie’s an old-fashioned girl. Until she’s single...”
“No hanky-panky. And meanwhile, you burn.”
He wagged his head. “With a blue flame.”
She patted his hand. “You play it her way. Sounds like she’s worth the wait.”
Ghost neighed in his corral as Jo rode up on her bay mare. “Tom sent me over to help,” she said. “He’s doing his part by keeping the kids away—they’d run right in and yell, ‘Surprise!’”
Luke checked his watch. “You could wait near the road and show people where to park. Send them around the front of the house so Auntie Rose won’t see them out the kitchen window. As soon as we get a good crowd, Oscar can go fetch her.”
Jo nodded and kicked her horse into a quick jog toward the main gate. Soon Luke heard vehicles arriving, and the Buck clan plus more of Auntie Rose’s friends began to gather behind the bunkhouse. Donna helped Luke keep them herded away from the back door, no small chore considering the number of children from toddlers to teens.
A few minutes before noon, a La Plata County Sheriff’s Department SUV rolled up to the barn. A lanky man with salt-and-pepper sideburns climbed out and opened the passenger door. Marge Bowman accepted his hand and stepped down with the air of a queen descending from her coach.
“Hope you don’t mind an extra guest,” she said. “I caught Sheriff Tate trying to break into the Queen this morning for his breakfast burrito, so I invited him to drive me out here.”
Jake shook the sheriff’s hand. “You’re always welcome, Ben. Party’s just about to start.”
He looked at his watch. “Luke, you and Donna round everybody up outside the back door.”
“How many guests did you plan for?” Donna asked.
“Shelby told me around fifty,” Luke said.
“You’ve got way more than that here already,” she said.
“No problem,” Jake said. “Shelby bought plenty of plates and the like. And you can bet people brought food to share, like the loaves and fishes—just you watch.”
Tom rode up with JJ in front of him on the saddle and Missy behind with her arms around his waist. “Where’s Jo?” he asked.
“Directing traffic at the front gate,” Luke said.
Tom lowered JJ to the ground before sliding down after him. “Missy, go fetch your mom.”
Missy scrambled forward into the saddle and kicked Tom’s gelding into a run, her red curls flying as she galloped up the lane.
Tom shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she’s Lucy’s kid.”
A few minutes later, Missy returned at a more sedate pace beside her mother.
“Any idea how many folks came in at the gate?” he asked Jo.
“A hundred and sixteen, and I saw a few more coming across country on horseback.”
“Sounds about right,” Jake said. “Okay, Oscar, time to spring the trap.”
Oscar entered the back door and the crowd fell silent; even the children were quiet and no restive babies fretted.
Auntie Rose stepped out onto the porch, and “Happy birthday!” exploded into the air in the best surprise party tradition. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and then a smile wreathed her face like a rising sun. She hugged Oscar, grinning at her side, then Shelby and Lucy and Katie.
“Oh, you are all so bad to fool an old lady.” She trotted down the steps, her lively steps belying her words, and started hugging everyone within reach.
Lines formed for strips of barbecued beef while Oscar helped the women carry pans of beans and trays of cornbread to the long serving tables. As Jake had predicted, guests had brought posole and succotash, elk stew and chili, salads and cakes and pies and cookies. Someone had set up a deep fryer and was handing out fry bread. Drumming began at the far edge of the meadow.
Auntie Rose sat enthroned under a cottonwood in a chair carried from the tack room and covered with an almost-new saddle blanket. An old TV tray served for a table, although she was too busy receiving birthday wishes to eat more than occasional bites. Children ran shrieking in play with Missy’s bright curls weaving in and out among the darker hair of her Ute cousins.
Luke saw Katie return to the house carrying a big coffee urn to be refilled. He followed, overcome by the need for a few moments alone with her.
No one at the party commented on his wheelchair—the Animas Valley was a small community in population—but he felt conspicuous making his way up the ramp. He paused for a moment and peered through the glass in the door.
Katie sat in a kitchen chair holding a baby, bending over it like a Madonna in a Renaissance painting. One chubby fist reached for a lock of hair escaping from her ponytail. The absorption on her face kindled a fierce desire in Luke to see her holding their child.
She looked up and beckoned. “I’m babysitting one of Auntie Rose’s grandchildren—I think.” She bounced the baby on her knee. “This is Caleb, June Black Horse’s youngest. June’s in the powder room.”
Luke tickled the baby’s chin. “Not Auntie Rose’s blood kin. June was married to Sam Buck before he got killed in a construction accident. Auntie Rose still considers June a daughter, so Caleb here is sort of a foster grandson.”
Katie hoisted Caleb over one shoulder and patted his back until he rewarded her with a loud burp. They both laughed.
“You look like you know what you’re doing,” Luke said.
“I should. I started babysitting when I was fifteen, and I spent a whole summer on the Maine coast as the nanny for three-month-old twins.”
“I’ve been thinking about your name,” Luke said. “Gabriel, I mean. Sounds like a good name. Gabe Cameron—what do you think?”
June Black Horse entered the kitchen before Katie could answer, flicking her long braid over her shoulder. “You want to keep him? He’s been cross as two sticks since he got his immunizations yesterday. You’ve got him charmed.”
“I’d love to,” Katie said as she handed Caleb to his mother, “but you’d want him back.”
“I reckon we’ll have to rustle up some of our own,” Luke said.
“More babies for Ma to spoil,” June said. “Nothing would make her happier.”
“I’d better start carrying cupcakes up from the cellar while the coffee brews,” Katie said and disappeared down the cellar steps.
Luke glanced out the kitchen window and saw a second sheriff’s department vehicle pull up behind the house. Deputy Bud Seaver drove; a second man sat in the front passenger seat. A quiver of apprehension ran up Luke’s spine, and he shot out the door before Katie returned from the cellar. Jake, Sheriff Tate and Luke converged on the car as it rolled to a stop, with Oscar a few steps behind.
“What’s the problem, Bud?” Sheriff Tate asked.
“Sorry to bother you at the party,” Seaver said, “but we’ve got a complaint somebody’s holding a woman out here against her will.”
“Exerting undue influence,” Brad Garrison said as he climbed out of the car.
Luke was pretty sure he could launch out of the wheelchair and beat the crap out of the Jerk, but that would only make matters worse for Katie.
He gritted his teeth, but Jake smiled. “Feel free to look for the lady.” He waved his arm in an inclusive gesture. “We’ve got over a hundred folks here by last count. How would you like to start? Want me to line everybody up?”
A few more men drifted over: June’s husband, Del Black Horse; Auntie Rose’s tall grandsons, Sammie and Brian; Bob Farley and Mike with Lucy at his heels. The drumming sounded suddenly louder.
Garrison cast a look around the circle. “What is this, some kind of cult?”
Oscar’s grin held the charm of a shark about to snack on an unwa
ry swimmer. “We call it a tribe, mister.”
“No call to get all Western,” Jake said. “Let’s satisfy Mr. Garrison so he can be on his way. Unless he’d like to stay for dessert. How about we search the house first?”
Luke spun his chair in a tight circle and was up the ramp before Jake, Sheriff Tate and Garrison could reach the door. First into the kitchen, he saw no sign of Katie, but four trays of cupcakes sat on the table. He heard steps coming up from the cellar.
To give her at least a moment’s warning, he raised his voice. “We’ve got company, Kathryn.”
Her footsteps halted and then resumed. “We’ve got lots of company.” Katie’s voice was steady. “Can you take this tray when I get to the top? I’ve got three more to bring up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
KATIE BENT ALL her concentration on ascending the stairs without dropping the cupcakes. At the top, she handed the tray to Luke, lowering one eyelid in the tiniest wink to reassure him. Then she turned to face Brad.
“I didn’t know you’d been invited,” she said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. She would not let him spoil Auntie Rose’s big day.
Garrison spoke to Sheriff Tate. “This is my wife, Kathryn Garrison. I believe she’s under undue—”
“I heard you the first time,” Tate said. Katie couldn’t tell if he was ready to laugh or swear. “What about it, Katie? You married to this—” his mouth twitched “—person lodging the complaint?”
“Guilty as charged,” she said. “But only for the time being. How long have you known me, Sheriff?”
He pondered. “A month? Six weeks? Long enough to put on five pounds from your cooking.”
“Do I seem brainwashed?”
“Marge rags on you pretty hard,” he said. “But I notice you give it right back to her.”
The door opened, and Marge stumped into the kitchen with the aid of her cane. “I saw another cop car pull in. What in blazes is going on?” She spotted Brad. “Oh my God, it’s Carrion,” she said in disgust. “I knew I should have brought my .38.”
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