by Liz Harris
‘Why’s he come back to us now, Pa?’
‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ he said, sitting back down again. ‘Like he said, it was his home for years, and maybe he just felt like seeing the homestead again, and maybe me, too. I wouldn’t know. Or it may be to do with money. He seems to have got a ranch, and he might wanna buy more heads of cattle than he can afford, and think that he’s entitled to some of the money from the farm to help him out. Who knows with your uncle? I reckon he’ll tell us in his own good time, and we’ll just have to be patient till then. Come on now, Bridget. It’s time you were in bed.’
She didn’t move.
‘Miss Quinn was wearing a real pretty dress today,’ she said.
Connor looked at her in surprise. ‘She always wears pretty clothes. She’s careful about the way she looks.’
‘She looked especially nice today. Usually she wears a white blouse and a dark-colour skirt for school. But she didn’t today – she wore a dress. It was light blue. I’ve never seen her in school in a coloured dress before.’
‘You haven’t been going to school very long. She might often wear dresses, but just hasn’t worn one till today. I can’t see that it matters what she wears, unless, of course, the school board has told her what she should wear, and she’s going against what they’ve said. But I wouldn’t know about that. Now say goodnight and go to bed, please.’
Still Bridget didn’t move. ‘It’s funny, Miss Quinn acting strange yesterday, and getting all dressed up today, don’t you think, Pa?’
‘All I’m thinking is that you should go to bed now.’
‘Would you like me to help you get ready?’ Ellen asked, starting to stand up. ‘I’ll read you a story, if you like.’
‘I don’t like,’ Bridget said. She got up. ‘Whatever you say, I think it’s funny,’ she said, and she turned to go to her bedroom.
Connor stood up. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said, his voice steely. ‘You’ll apologise to Ellen at once. We’ve just been talking about your ma, and this is not how she raised you. I’ve put up with your rudeness to Ellen for long enough, giving you time to settle into the situation, but it’s almost a couple of months now and I reckon you’ve had sufficient time. I don’t know about Ellen, but I sure have had enough of your backtalk. Now apologise.’
Bridget scowled at him, then at Ellen. ‘I apologise,’ she said stiffly, turned, walked over to her bedroom and slammed the door shut behind her.
‘Thank you for getting her to say sorry,’ Ellen said as Connor sat down again. ‘I appreciate it.’
He nodded. ‘It was time.’ He stared down the table, his brow creased with worry.
‘Talk to me, Connor?’ she pleaded. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘I’m wondering if Bridget can be right about Oonagh,’ he said at last. ‘About what she’s thinking, but couldn’t bring herself to say.’
Her stomach turned over.
‘Would this be difficult for you, seeing Oonagh with Niall?’ she asked. She could hear the tremor in her voice. ‘Would it?’ she repeated, her heart pounding.
‘It’s what Niall’s up to that I’m worried about.’
She felt herself relax a little.
‘In what way? He has the same parentage as you, so can his character be so very different?’
‘Truthfully, I don’t know. I just know that I feel uneasy about him coming back. I’m real worried that his return means trouble for us, but I don’t know why I think that, nor what trouble he could cause. It’d be a relief if this were just about money, and it might well be as it’s not been easy for cattlemen since last winter. It would certainly explain him checking out the place before making his presence known. The thing is, I’ve never really known him. He was more like a brother to Jeb Barnes than to me. Both would play cards sooner than checkers, and they lived for hunting, shooting and fishing, and above all, for cattle.’ He paused. ‘I don’t like to say it of my brother, but he and Jeb could be quite sly, and if they could get me into trouble with Pa, they did, and remembering that makes me feel uneasy. The sooner he returns to his ranch the better.’
He pushed his chair back, stood up, and looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry, Ellen.’
‘What for?’ She put her hand to her throat.
‘I was beginning to enjoy our evenings together.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘Sure I had Aaron for company before you got here, but talking to a woman is a different thing. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been missing it. Niall’s return may spoil the evenings.’
A wave of pleasure spread through her. She rose to her feet and looked into his eyes. ‘Niall can only spoil things if we let him. I, too, enjoy the time we spend together.’ She felt herself going red. ‘Me with my sewing,’ she added quickly, ‘and you repairing the harness or doing a chore like that.’
She felt the warmth in his eyes as they lingered on her face.
‘To get back to the subject of chores,’ she said, putting her hand to her hair and pulling it further across her scarred cheek. ‘I ought to clear the table.’ She turned away from him, moved around the table and leaned over to pick up Bridget’s plate.
He stood still, staring hard at her. ‘Because of the way you’re standing, I can see only the right side of your face. You must have been a very beautiful woman,’ he said slowly.
She straightened up and faced him squarely. ‘There is a left cheek as well as a right cheek, Connor. I never let myself forget that. Both are a part of me now. I’m not as I was before, and I never will be, so I prefer to forget that other time. That Ellen died when the hoof of the horse met her face.’ She paused a moment. ‘But you’re very kind, and I’m grateful for it.’ A sense of loss aching within her, she moved across the room towards the kitchen.
‘She didn’t die,’ he called after her. She stopped and looked back at him, her brow wrinkling in surprise. ‘She’s still there, but she’s scared to come out. One day she will, though, I’m sure. Every week I see a little more of her and I know that she’s too strong to stay hidden forever.’
‘I fear you may be wrong,’ she said, and she continued to the kitchen.
With her every step, she was aware of him standing in the middle of the living room, staring after her.
Chapter Fourteen
Connor stepped out of his house, saw Niall and stopped sharply. He was sitting in the yard with his back to the chopping block, hat tipped down over his eyes, looking relaxed as ever.
‘You’re back, I see,’ Connor called. ‘Why, it must be the fourth or fifth time in the couple of weeks since you got back that we’ve seen you here so early in the evening, or at all, for that matter. Are there no poker games in town tonight?’
Niall pushed his hat off his nose and held it up with his finger. ‘I thought I’d come back today. I stopped by the school, had a word with Oonagh and then with little Bridget, and then I hung around the town for a while, but there was nothin’ doin’, so I decided I’d come home. Thought I’d have dinner with my brother and his family. Yessir, I did.’ He smiled at Connor and let his hat slip down again.
‘This isn’t your home any more,’ Connor said sharply. ‘But if you’re hungry, I’ll get you something now.’
‘No need. I’m fine, thanks. I’ll wait for dinner. I guess I could use a coffee though.’
‘I’ll get us both one and I’ll join you.’ He went into the house and reappeared a few minutes later, a couple of mugs in his hand. He walked across the yard to Niall, handed him a mug and sat down on a tree stump opposite him.
Niall glanced up at Connor, pulled himself up on to the chopping block and sat on it. ‘That’s better. Now we’re seein’ each other eye to eye, you might say.’ He reached down, picked up his mug and took a swig of coffee.
Connor stared thoughtfully at him. ‘What’s this about, Niall? You’ve been restless since you got back. Don’t you think it’s time you went back to the place that is your home? I’m guessing that you put some men in charge of your cattle, an
d you trust them, but you need to be there to make sure you’ve prepared for winter as best you can. Two weeks is long enough to leave a ranch without a boss.’
‘There ain’t no ranch,’ Niall said bluntly.
Connor leaned forward. ‘What do you mean, there ain’t no ranch? You talked about your cattle when you got here, didn’t you?’
‘You heard it like that because that was the way you wanted to hear it. But I was talkin’ in a general sort of way. You might as well know, I lost everything in the last winter.’
Connor straightened up, feeling sympathy. ‘I’m mighty sorry to hear that, Niall. I really am.’
Niall studied Connor’s face. ‘Yup, I reckon you really are. You know how much I always wanted my own place.’
‘I sure do. But last winter …’ Connor shook his head. ‘That was a winter like we’ve never had before, and it went on for months. I heard tell that cattlemen across the Territory lost everything when the snow and ice finally melted and they saw that their cattle had died on the open range, trying to find food in the deep snow. But I never thought you might’ve been one of those cattlemen, not the way you were talking when you got here.’
‘Well, I was. I had a nice little spread way north of here, and then too many people with fat wallets put an end to that. A few years ago, they came from all over to Wyoming, looked around them, saw free grass and the high price of stock in the markets, and they saw a chance to make easy money, so they flooded the open range with cattle.’
‘I heard things had been getting tougher for small ranchers in the last couple of years.’
‘Danged right they were! By the start of summer a year ago, you couldn’t move for stockmen controllin’ huge areas of grazin’ land. They had herds that numbered in the tens of thousands. They were even drivin’ herds up from Texas to graze on Wyoming grassland. There was big money behind them.’
‘You need not tell me. I’m guessing they overgrazed the land.’
‘Yup. The grass got too thin to feed the number of cattle on it. And then there was no rain all summer so what grass there was, dried up. By then the price of cows had dropped real low and I didn’t want to sell.’ He shook his head. ‘I should’ve sold them last fall. If I had, I would’ve had something left for today. Instead, I figured I’d hang on till this year or even next, hoping the price might have gone up again by then, and I left my skinny animals out on the range for the winter. When the snow melted, there were bloated carcasses everywhere, lying where they’d fallen. I can smell them yet. I’d lost my cattle, and with them my money and my ranch.’
‘That’s real hard. I can imagine what losing your ranch will have meant to you. Ranching is all you ever wanted to do.’
‘Ain’t that the truth?’
They fell silent and sat for a few minutes, lost in their thoughts.
‘Maybe between us we could try to get some money together for you to get started off with some cattle again?’ Connor suggested, breaking the silence.
Niall shook his head. ‘I think not, brother, but I thank you for the thought. I’ve done that, and it didn’t work. I guess I’ve kinda burnt myself out of cattle. I know that I haven’t the heart to start all over again. And certainly not in times like these, when it’d be real hard to get going. The days of the open range are over, and I don’t see myself building barns and feeding the animals. Why, it’d be like bein’ a farmer, and I don’t want that.’
‘Did you take a wife when you had your ranch?’ Connor asked. ‘You’d have needed someone to do a woman’s things while you were out tending the cattle.’
Niall glanced at him in mock horror. ‘No, sir. I left the marrying to you. But you’re right about me having a woman to work around the place, and what’s more, the woman I had knew exactly how to pleasure a man.’ He laughed. ‘But I never married her. When I knew I’d lost everything, so did she. I came back home one day to tell her we’d have to leave the ranch, but she was already gone. Plumb cleared out.’
‘I’m right sorry to hear that,’ Connor said.
Niall shrugged his shoulders. ‘It weren’t nothing to me. I didn’t have the feelings for her you need to have if you’re gonna wed a woman.’ He glanced at Connor. ‘I guess you got my share of such feelings as well as getting my share of the farm.’
‘We’ll leave that comment be. So, have you been looking for work while you’ve been here? Is that why you came back? To find work in Liberty?’
‘I came back because I couldn’t think what else to do. The family homestead was here – mine and yours. I know you, Conn, and I knew you’d have made a success of it. I might have walked out ten years ago, but I’ve still got some rights in the place, and you know it. It’s why you’ve wanted me gone from the moment you saw me.’
‘I asked you if you’d been trying to find work in town.’
‘There’s nothin’ to be had. Sure I could join a crew hauling lumber around the Territory and helping to make houses for newcomers, but I’m no carpenter and that’s no work for me.’
‘What about Jeb? Have you asked him to give you something? You’d be a good hand for them to have.’
‘Sure I’ve asked. He was the other reason I came back. I knew that my best hope of finding cattle work was on the Barnes’s ranch. But like everyone else, Jeb’s pa lost a lot of stock last winter. He just about survived it and he’s building sheds and barns now, and enclosing his land in barbed wire and wooden fences. He’ll not chance what happened last year happening again, and in future he’ll be bringing the cattle in before the freeze comes.’
‘That means he’s gonna restock then, so he’ll need to take on men.’
‘Sure, but it’s never gonna be a big ranch again, leastways not for a long time. He hasn’t got the money. And he’s got men working for him that he’s had for years, as well as Jeb and his two boys. There’d be some casual work there, but nothin’ I could count on.’
‘So what are planning on doing?’
‘You telling me I gotta move on? You’re gonna put me on the road that goes over the hills to the poor house?’
‘Not till you’ve got somewhere to move on to. But you can’t carry on like this, coming and going whenever you feel like it, sleeping in the living room, an extra mouth to feed when you’re here, but one that didn’t help produce the food. That’s not right, and you know it. And suppose you got wed and had a family. The acres we farm wouldn’t support a second family; not the way they’re set out now.’
‘Thanks, brother.’
‘It sounds hard, I know, but I’m telling you the facts. I have to think about my family, about Bridget and my wife. And about the children I hope to have.’
‘So you get everything left by Ma and Pa, and I get nothing? That’s fair, is it?’
‘You could’ve shared it with me, but you didn’t want it. I wanted it, though, and I’ve worked hard for it, every minute of every year since you left. If you’d wanted to stick around and farm this land with me, we’d have built a second house years ago, or made this one bigger, and we’d have used the land differently, gone into areas we’ve not been able to go into.’
‘Such as?’
‘Sheep, maybe. I hear tell there’s good money to be made in sheep. If we’d expanded, the farm would’ve been able to support your family and mine. But that didn’t happen. You walked out because Ma and Pa had never wanted to invest in cattle in a big way, and you were certain I’d want to farm the place as they had. You didn’t even stay long enough to try and change my mind. As you said, you’re the older brother. I’d’ve had to listen to you. We’d have found a way of doing what we both wanted.’
‘Maybe we could do that now, go into sheep. There’s many a cowman turning to sheep.’
‘Face it, Niall. It’s life on the farm you didn’t like. You told me many a time it was like being in jail. Sheep is farming, just as wheat and corn is farming, just as ranching cattle today will become like farming. When you walked out, I reckon you weren’t just getting away from
what we were farming, you were making a break for freedom from the life of a farmer. Life on the open range and a herd of cattle gave you that sense of freedom.’
Niall gave him a wry grin. ‘I guess that’s a no to sheep, then.’
‘It’d be spending money on something new at a difficult time, and I wouldn’t want to take that risk. Apart from anything else, I’d be gambling on you sticking to your word and not takin’ off as soon as you got bored or heard of a job with cattle. And you would take off. You don’t really want to spend your evenings with Ellen and me.’
‘Ah, but you’ve forgotten Bridget.’
‘I haven’t; she’d be in bed. No, Niall. If you can’t get work on a ranch, you’d be happier living in town.’
‘Well, that sure is tellin’ me.’ He stood up, brushed the earth and twigs from the seat of his jeans and walked across to the fence. Leaning against the wooden bars, he stared ahead of him.
Connor got up and stood beside him, his eyes on the purplish-blue mountain ridges. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked after a few minutes.
Niall turned his head and looked at him. ‘I’m thinking that you owe me something even if I did walk out. You said you would have found a way to help me if I’d wanted to go into cattle again. I don’t want money for that, but that don’t mean I don’t want any help from you, because I do.’
‘What help are you expecting me to give you?’
‘Money. Maybe you don’t make enough to keep a second family, but you make more than you need. I’ll wager you sell eggs, butter, potatoes, wheat, the hay you don’t need for your animals. Why, you’ll get at least two dollars for a bale of hay. I’ve been lookin’ around and I reckon you’ll have thirty bales or more to sell. And I saw you had a couple of four-year-old colts. You’ll get at least two hundred dollars for each. I don’t need to go on, do I?’
‘Nope. As you said, I’d have tried to help you get into cattle again.’
‘I’d find lodgings in town, and I can look around from there for any work that’s going.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘And with a stake in my hand, I might even be able to find me a game of poker or two.’
