“Well, if that’s not an invitation, I don’t know what is!” she grinned. Hailee yanked her bonnet up and over her head, having it tied in place before she even reached the bottom of the staircase.
Curls bouncing under her bonnet, she ran toward the pen and hollered, “You’re back already? I figured you’d be gone til later this afternoon.”
Tobias grinned at the sight of her. That girl did things to his insides that he could never reveal - he’d heard stories about ranch help who lost not only job and home, but their reputations as well, messing around with the boss’s daughter.
Still, Tobias could hardly help it. There was something about Hailee Johnson he wanted - needed - to add to his personal life. He would just have to find a way around the boss.
“Who am I kidding?” Tobias asked himself. “There is no way around the boss, and that girl doesn’t see me as anything but the help anyhow.” He shook his head to clear out some of the cobwebs forming in his brain, only to hear Hailee’s voice again.
“Tobias! Are you in there? I was asking you about the cat.”
“Oh, yeah. I found the tracks early this morning - it’s heading east, past that old bunk house. You do know it's caving in, right? What‘s your Daddy planning on doing with that thing, anyhow? It’s either gonna need tending to or tearing down, one or the other. And pretty soon, I’d say.”
He continued to ramble on a bit with Hailee about ranch business, but his heart refused to focus on anything other than those incredible blue eyes of hers. Truth be told, the young man made a regular practice of grabbing at pretty much anything she talked about, just so he could turn it into another piece of conversation and he could keep her around for a few minutes longer. On occasion, he’d wondered if she'd figured him out yet. But she never let on, if she had.
P
Morning at the Red Bone Ranch turned into late afternoon before half the day’s work found its end, and at last Duffy and a couple of men reported the work on the wagons had finally come to completion.
“It’s them dang grease worms every time,” one of the men grumbled. “Sometimes it seems like we can’t keep on top of these wagons. Something always needs fixed on one or the other of ‘em.”
One of the men tapped the lid back on the galvanized metal pail still half-way filled with the Mica Axle Grease, used to lubricate the wheels. He nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I know what ya mean. The wind up here in Rosita is always blowing; it don’t seem like we really get a break from the dirt and grit. Wish someone would come up with some way to cover up them hubs.”
After a good couple of days to tend to all five of the wagons, with having the other ranching duties to tend to as well, Duffy was just glad they finished the job. But it wasn’t worth it to hire the wagon work out, either, as a few other local ranches regularly had the habit of doing.
Bruce held a firm faith in the men at the ranch and knew they could handle just about anything that came up; that’s why he hired the men he did. He wanted the most efficient ranch in the Valley.
Duffy grinned and told his crew they had done a good job this time - and they would all be standing there having the same conversation in another six months or so. One of the men took his hat off and gave Duffy a playful smack on the head with it to thank him for the reminder.
Chapter 3
Hailee stood at the foot of her bed and frowned; sleep seemed the least likely option at the moment, but the girl knew morning would arrive soon and the next day would be such a long and busy day. She didn’t want to fall asleep in the wagon, she knew that much. Especially after overhearing the conversation between Tobias and her father when they spoke about a certain ranch hand who would be riding with them in their wagon.
The thought of having him all to herself for the nine-hour ride into Canon City gave Hailee an inspiration. They might play a few games to pass the time, like Twenty Questions or Happy Harriet. She wondered if a round of I Packed My Bag for China would be too immature; her father always enjoyed that game, but maybe that was because he played it with his daughter.
She shook her head and frowned again. There would be no China game, she decided.
Hailee wandered to her mirror and scrunched up her nose. How could a seventeen-year-old girl-no, she corrected herself-how could a seventeen-year-old young lady attract the attention of a twenty-three year old real man, without appearing pathetic and desperate for his attention?
She stood back from the mirror and gave herself a good, long look; she saw what she always saw, and that was the problem. Just an ordinary girl with curly hair and no clue what to do with boys.
A slight grin slid across her face as she came to a new conclusion in her mind.
“Tobias isn’t some boy; he’s a grown man! I bet he’s been looking for an older girl,” Hailee whispered aloud, “and if I can’t be one, I can at least look like one,” she continued. Fingers pulled the ribbon from her hair and deposited the thin green strand into the top drawer of her dresser, giving the childish accessory a symbolic burial.
The slight grin deepened into sweet satisfaction, and once Hailee pulled the brush through her hair once again, she allowed her tresses to fall down around her shoulders, running a finger through the curls, puffing it up here and there. Satisfied with how mature she looked all of a sudden, she decided to practice her most sophisticated facial expressions in the mirror.
Waving a hand nonchalantly in front of her mouth, she mouthed a flirty, ‘Why, thank you’, followed by a series of practice laughing-sessions.
Coming to the conclusion that nobody needed to see that many teeth when someone laughed, Hailee shook her head and moved forward to the last maneuver - the art of being taken off guard by a gentleman.
Tilting her head downward, she paused for just a moment before jerking her head back up to catch her own look of surprise reflecting in the mirror.
She rolled her eyes and groaned. “That’s becoming of a young lady…I look like I was just thrown off a horse.”
The second attempt provoked another giggle. “And now I look like the town drunkard.”
After only three minutes of mock conversations with herself, the girl decided she looked more like a fool than an older woman and let out a deep breath.
Determined to gain the affection she so desired from this man, Hailee made the resolve in her mind to come back from this trip with more than a filled list of trinkets and toiletries - she intended to return with the heart of the only man she could imagine herself ever loving as much as she knew that she loved Tobias Logan.
The last time her father planned a trip into town, they had been gone for three days. A day traveling to town, a good day of shopping, and another day traveling back to the ranch … and the last time they made the journey, Tobias came down with the flu and found himself unable to go.
Hailee determined to make this next three days memorable for both of them.
She folded her list and placed it inside her handbag, double-checking to make certain she’d remembered to put her heavy paper fan in there. She smiled to herself, remembering last summer when she and Richard spent a couple of hours making that thing; he’d taught her the proper way of pressing flowers and sealing them to be preserved forever between wax, the flowers, and paper that lived for a week inside one of Richard’s heaviest cooking recipe books as it readied itself for her use.
Sleepy fingers reached toward a short oak table in the corner of her room and as they opened her copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the girl settled down on her bed. A stabbing image of Tobias laughing at the book made its way into her head, so she stuffed it under the mattress near her diary and opted for a copy of Poe’s work instead.
Her eyes began to shut halfway down the second page, and before she knew it, daylight rubbed at her eyelids.
P
Agog with energy, Hailee found herself clothed in an instant; brush in hand, she peeked into her mirror and out of habit, reached for her box of hair ribbons. Just as the tips of her fingers touched the familiar
fabric, she yanked her hand back as quickly as if a spider had crept in there while she slept and had spooked her.
“Not today,” she told herself, being reminded that Tobias was a man, not a school boy.
She made her way to the oak vanity in the corner of her bedroom to clean her face and get her smile freshened up.
Her father bought it from the general store over in the San Luis Valley over the Sangre de Cristo mountain range when she was only nine years old. Some friends of the family invited the Johnsons to their wedding over the basin and while Bruce began to choose which wedding gift to buy them, he couldn’t help but notice Hailee’s face light up when she stood in front of that vanity.
As she watched the store owner and her father struggle to load the vanity in the back of her father’s wagon, she was confident the new couple would fall in love with their wedding gift. But when she learned her father purchased the gift for her instead, Hailee hugged him around the neck, confiding how grown-up it made her feel.
Setting the white porcelain pitcher of water carefully back in its place and scrubbing her face once more with the last bit of lavender soap she still had left, she made sure not to splash water down the front of her dress while rinsing off the soap.
Richard’s hurried breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy hit the spot just right. Without much fuss, the group of hands that were staying behind went about their chores, while the rest of the group was all ready to head out on the day’s journey.
“Let me do those dishes, Richard,” Hailee offered, “so you can get your things in order and get ready to head on out of here.”
Appreciating the extra help, Richard folded his half-damp dish-drying towel and thanked the girl for her offer as he hobbled his way toward other tasks.
P
Not quite six in the morning, but Bruce snapped the reins. Epoenah and the three other horses came to attention and let out a soft whinny as if to reply they had been set to go all morning and were only waiting on the humans. With a starting jerk, the wagon wheels began to turn. And so did Hailee’s stomach.
The ranch hands, cook, and owners were all on the road toward the valley. The Colorado air at that time of the year felt fresh in Hailee’s lungs and she took in an extra deep breath with her eyes closed. Halfway to filling her lungs to satisfaction, she heard a mountain bluebird overhead and wondered if it paid any attention to the goings-on underneath it.
Poised between her father and Tobias, her fingers reached habitually for her bonnet strings, then adjusted the brim so the early morning breeze would stay off her face as she snugged her brown and cream rippled afghan around her arms in one more fluid motion.
Spying Tobias looking at her out of the corner of her eye sent a shot of excitement through her spine; she remembered to sit up just a bit taller in the buckboard seat and grinned, realizing that she was sitting so close to the man she could smell the soap he’d washed his hair with the night before, feel him bouncing in gentle little nudges each time the wagon hit a rut or rock. His shoulder rubbed against Hailee’s and she was grateful that the wagon disguised the wild beating of her heart–if the man only knew she could barely breathe!
After all the planning of what to talk about and which games they would play along the way, none of that mattered once the trio were out of sight of the ranch. Bruce inquired about the cat and whether or not Tobias thought it would be a good idea to go out and find the blasted thing before it found a way to wipe out all the livestock.
“Well, I figure we best be getting to it before we lose everything. That would be my guess, if you’re asking what I would do,” Tobias answered Bruce with a shrug of the shoulders. “I was giving thought to going after that blasted thing the day after we get back from Canon City, anyhow,” he thought aloud. “But on the other hand, I better get that fence mended on the back forty before I go off for that long, though, don’t ya think?”
Bruce turned his head and looked past Hailee as if she had disappeared.
“You weren’t figuring on going after that dang cat alone, now were you?” he wanted to know.
Tobias shrugged again. “It ain’t any trouble, Boss. I didn’t want to take the other men from their duties, ‘specially with us being gone for a few days on this trip. Besides, I can handle it myself. Not like I ain’t never tracked a cat before.”
Hailee shook her head.
“No! You can’t go out there by yourself! Daddy - you’ll go with him, won’t you?” Hailee begged.
Heart pounding in her chest, the look on her face indicated she didn’t much care whether her words had been spoken out of turn or not.
Bruce waved a hand and gave her knee a gentle pat.
“Hailee’s right, Tobias; you shouldn’t be going out there alone. Anything could happen. Why don’t all of us get together and see who wants to go with you? We’ll talk it over at dinner tonight. It needs to be done and it’s my responsibility to make sure it gets done; let’s plan on maybe three or four of us going together, ” Bruce said with a nod of his head.
It suited Hailee just fine; if anything happened to Tobias, her heart would be crushed!
Both passengers knew when Bruce gave that one certain nod of his, the final word and decision had already been made; there would be no sense in speaking about the matter after his final word.
For the remainder of their ride into town, rounds of joke telling and ranch talk kept the conversation rolling, and a few times the group pulled over near some trees to relieve themselves.
Richard thought ahead and brought along plenty of snacks and barrels of water to drink from. And he was certain to pack one of Hailee’s favorite treats - his famous pickles. The man was well-known throughout Rosita for those dill pickles; he canned them with a couple cloves of garlic and a few of those tiny little red peppers Hailee adored. Hot, crunchy, and oh, so tasty on a warm day!
She gulped down three of them by the time they reached the town of Canon City.
Even before leaving home, she'd set on taking in as much of the town as she could before dinner; she saw three new businesses since the last trip into town, and one of them looked like a rather well-stocked general store. Maybe that burgundy yarn would be in their supplies!
“Where do you want me to leave you, Hailee? I might as well drop you off so you don’t have to walk the whole street,” Bruce told her when he noticed the look on his daughter’s face.
Her eyes hadn’t moved from that new storefront.
She pointed to it and looked back at her father.
“I’d really like to go in there, Daddy,” she told him with an excited raise to her voice. “Is there anything I can look at for you while I’m there?”
Bruce thought for a moment, rubbed his chin while in the thinking process.
“Tell ya what, Darlin’. How about I stable these horses and I’ll just come back to join you?”
The wagon pulled to an abrupt stop in front of the storefront, kicking up some dirt and dust from under the wheels as it did. Tobias jumped down and held his hand up to Hailee.
Those cocoa-toned eyes of his nearly begged her to stay with him instead of heading into the store when he smiled up at her.
For just a brief second, Hailee noticed that Tobias’ eyelashes seemed darker than she usually noticed them to be; was that a fleck of gold in his left eye?
Their hands touched and Hailee felt her knees go limp just a bit; did he notice that when she fell against him?
She gathered her skirt in her hands and reached up for the handbag her father was holding down to her.
“Thanks, Daddy,” she smiled. “See you in a few minutes.”
She turned to Tobias.
“Thanks.”
He nodded and watched her walk into the store before turning his attention to climbing back into the wagon.
“I noticed a new horse-boarding stall down the street, Boss. Which one we gonna use?”
Bruce let Tobias choose, and with the money paid for services, Bruce clapped a hand on Tobias
’ shoulder.
“So what are we eatin’ tonight? Do you want to try something new, or do you have the notion to fill yer belly on some of Ethel’s apple pie?”
Ethel made herself a favorite for a couple of years back; she made the best pie ever - but they wouldn’t dare mention it in front of Richard. She layered hers deep in cinnamon and sugar. As a real treat, the woman topped it off with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream, which was an item the ranch did not have very often.
Halfway down the dirt street, Bruce heard the train a few hundred yards behind them. He turned to get a good look at it, but only saw the heavy black smoke pouring out from the coal engine over the brown-topped roofs of buildings on either side of the street.
“Who ever thought we’d see something like that runnin’ through a civilized town, huh, Tobias?” he asked with a jerk of his thumb. “Just amazing.”
He paused a moment to allow a woman in a heavy-looking green and white calico dress to pass by, tipped his hat to her.
Tobias nodded his head to the woman and lowered his eyes out of respect until she has passed by them before they crossed the street and made their way to the wooden-planked walkway lining the storefronts.
The younger of the two men spied the shops he was anxious to explore and found the one stocked with all the equestrian gear a rancher could ever dream about.
Bruce caught the way his friend eyed the front window of the shop and reminded him to get what he needed.
“Now, I mean it, Tobias. I don’t reckon we’ll be back to town for another six months, what with the winter coming, on. You fill your list, you hear me?”
Blessed to work for such a generous man, he parted ways with Bruce until dinnertime and made his way into the equestrian storefront, list in hand.
The owner of the Red Bone Ranch turned his attention and walked past the empty lot between the Webb & Thurman store and McGee’s & Mack’s Feed Store, making a mental note to stop in the feed store before he left town to ask about enough trees for a sizable apple crop come spring.
Rebellion in the Valley Page 2
