by Holby Cindy
“Here’s hoping I don’t freeze to death,” he said to the reflection he saw in the mirror of the coat stand. “Dang it, Fu is right. I do need some company since I’m standing here talking to myself.” Jake shook his head at his foolishness and walked out the front door, shutting it securely behind him.
“You heading to town, Mr. Jake?” Two of his hands, Randy and Dan, came out of the bunkhouse as he approached the barn, both dressed for the weather. Jake knew they were as antsy as he was.
“Yes,” Jake said. “I’m worried something might have happened down there, since that fool donkey showed up here.”
“We’ll ride with you,” Randy said.
“If you don’t mind,” Dan added.
“Suit yourself,” Jake said. He didn’t mind the company, especially if the snow was bad. More than one man had died a cruel death in this weather, and there was safety in numbers.
It took no time for his men to saddle up and join him. Jake gave Libby’s lead to Dan and they started out, but Skip had only taken a few steps when a horrible ruckus started. Jake turned to see Libby sitting on her haunches in the snow with her front legs planted while she brayed her distress at the top of her lungs.
“Now what?” Jake groused. He dismounted and as soon as his foot hit the ground Libby got up and trotted to him. She butted her head against his side and hee-hawed again. Dan and Randy both cracked a smile.
“Looks like she’s sweet on you, Mr. Jake,” Randy said.
Dan handed him the lead. “Only one way to find out for sure.” His face twisted in an effort not to laugh.
Jake sighed. If Libby followed him without a fight he was never going to hear the end of it from his men. Who knows, maybe he’d get lucky and Libby would just lie down in the snow and refuse to move.
Jake swung up on Skip and gave a tug on the lead. Libby trotted right up next to his leg and shook her body indignantly, as if Dan’s hold had been an insult.
“Smart-ass,” Jake said to the donkey.
Dan and Randy burst into laughter.
“Not another word,” Jake threatened good-naturedly as they set off. Skip settled into the trough that the donkey had plowed on her way to the ranch, with Libby following behind and Randy and Dan bringing up the rear.
“Too bad she didn’t show up sooner,” Randy said.
“Would have kept Mr. Jake from spending all those evenings alone,” Dan rejoined.
“Yup, she probably would have curled up on the rug in front of the fire like a big dog,” Randy added.
“I’m going to shoot both of you and leave you for the coyotes if you don’t shut up,” Jake said.
“That’s the biggest ass I’ve ever seen in more ways than one,” Dan said.
“Hey,” Jake barked. “Now you’re getting personal.”
“Yeah, Dan, don’t you know you’re never supposed to talk about a lady’s personal . . . er, accoutrements?”
“That donkey ain’t no lady,” Dan observed.
“Where in the heck did you learn a word like accoutrements?” Jake asked Randy.
“I wasn’t always a cowboy, Mr. Jake,” Randy said. “Sometimes circumstances dictate a fellow’s future, no matter what else he’s planned for.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Circumstances?”
“Don’t ask,” Dan said.
“It was all because of a girl,” Randy said.
“Isn’t it always,” Jake said.
They moved on, down the trail that led out of the wide valley that was home to Jake’s spread, the Rocking J. The going got easier the farther they rode out of the mountains. The moon rose up behind them and the reflection off the snow was bright.
“Looks like she wandered a bit before she showed up,” Dan said. He pointed north and Jake saw the packed-down snow that showed signs of something Libby’s size passing through.
“She’s lucky she didn’t wind up as a meal for a wildcat or the wolves,” Randy observed.
“What were you up to out here?” Jake asked the donkey. Libby twitched her ears and showed Jake her teeth.
“Yup, she sure is sweet on you,” Dan said.
They were almost out of Jake’s valley and to the main road. To the south and east the road led out of the mountains and eventually to Denver, after a week of hard riding. To the north and west was the small town of Angel’s End. Other valleys branched off the road on both sides, most all of them home to various ranches. Higher up in the mountains, beyond the ranches, were scores of mines, some with gold, others with silver. Mining was hard work and too much of it depended on luck. It wasn’t the life for Jake; he knew good and well that he didn’t have the patience for it.
It had been awhile since Jake talked to the other men in the local Cattlemen’s Association and he wondered how they had all fared during the long hard winter. Raymond Watkins, who had the valley opposite Jake’s, had the biggest spread. He considered himself the head of their association, even though Jake had been elected this year to run it. Some men liked to be in charge and Jake figured he’d get along better with the man by letting him be rather than standing up against him. It just wasn’t worth the trouble to challenge him. Watkins’s crew was bad news. Jake wouldn’t have hired any of them, but since they weren’t on his payroll it was none of his business. They didn’t bother him, so he minded his own business and was happy that Watkins chose to do the same.
The Castles lived south of Jake. They’d only been around for a few years. Jared, his wife Laurie and their daughter Eden. They had a younger son who Jake had only seen once and who went to school in the east, and a three-year-old granddaughter by an older son who was rumored to be in prison. Both the son in prison and the granddaughter had Indian blood in them. There was a story there, but Jake didn’t know the Castles well enough to ask. They were good people from what little he did know and Jake often envied the obvious affection between Jared and his beautiful Laurie. Their daughter, Eden, was the image of her mother but walked with a limp from a twisted leg that came with her birth.
They came to the main road. There was evidence of traffic as the snow was beaten down and packed tight. A wagon couldn’t make it through the deep snow, but riders had passed this way and not too long ago. The sky above was cloudless and endless, with innumerable stars scattered across. It made one feel small and insignificant to look at it. It made one feel lonely.
Jake took a deep breath. It was time to leave the winter doldrums behind. The air was crisp without that bone-chilling slice that cut right through a person. Spring was definitely on its way. Jake could only hope that it wouldn’t take its own sweet time arriving.
He turned Skip to the north and the town of Angel’s End. The road split here, dividing off toward Watkins’s Bar W ranch to the left and Angel’s End to the right. Signs were nailed to the trees at each cutoff, identifying the name of the family and their brand. The three men rode on, lost in their own thoughts and the quiet magic of the beautiful night.
The valley on the north side of Jake’s and closer to Angel’s End was currently uninhabited. It had belonged to Sam Parker, a crotchety old geezer who would just as soon shoot you as look at you. He had run a few head of cattle and always contributed his part to the annual drive to market. He had up and died sometime the winter before last and no one had even realized it until the spring thaw when his cattle showed up mixed in with Jake’s. Jake had gone looking and found him sitting in a rocking chair by his fireplace. He’d been dead for a while. They’d buried him under a pine and sent a letter to a daughter-in-law, whose name and address Jake had found scribbled in an old Bible. The place had been empty for well over a year. Someone would show up eventually to claim it, or else it would be sold off. It was the way things were out here.
“Stop right there!” a gruff voice called out.
Jake cursed himself for a fool for gettin
g so lost in his musings that he didn’t see anyone coming their way. He looked up the trail and didn’t recognize the appaloosa or the rider who was currently pointing the business end of a Spencer rifle at his head. The rider was small and new horses turned up all the time. Could it possibly be one of Jim’s older twin boys? But surely the twins would recognize him. And why would they be robbing him?
Jake raised his hands. He kept a hold on Libby’s lead. He heard Dan and Randy pull up behind him.
“Boss?” Randy asked.
“Let me see what’s going on,” Jake said. He knew the three of them could take whoever it was but he wanted to avoid bloodshed if possible. It was too pretty of a night to have to shoot someone, even if they were stupid enough to try and steal from him.
“Turn loose of that donkey,” the rider said. The voice wasn’t as gruff this time. It was a boy trying to disguise himself by speaking lower than natural. Then the words sunk in to Jake’s mind.
“Wait.” Jake tried to keep a straight face. “Are you trying to steal my donkey?” He stretched out Libby’s lead. “This donkey?”
The rider cocked the rifle to show he meant business. “No. You are stealing my donkey.”
“What the hell?”
“Watch your language. And let her go.”
“I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding,” Jake started.
The rifle raised a notch. “I’m guessing you understand this, don’t you?”
“You want us to do something?” Dan said quietly from behind him.
“I got it,” Jake responded. “The last thing I want to do is kill some fool kid.” He raised his hands higher so the idiot with the rifle could see that he wasn’t holding a weapon, and with a squeeze of his knees, Skip moved forward, slowly, with Libby walking along by his side.
The rider, whoever it was, wore a coat that was way too big for him. It reached from neck to ankles and was made of heavy wool. His wide-brimmed, flat-top Stetson was pulled low over his face, and a heavy knit scarf wrapped around his neck, covering any hint of skin. The rider was so laden down with trying to stay warm that Jake knew he could take him out before he had a chance to twitch his finger on the trigger.
“Take it easy,” Jake said as they approached. “I’m bringing the donkey, although I don’t know why anyone in the world would want to steal the fool thing. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
“Like I said before. It’s my donkey.”
The rider sat on a small rise in the road. The moon was directly overhead and his features were lost in the shadow of his hat, but the gloved hands on the rifle were small, albeit steady, and the tips of the boots that stuck out from beneath the folds of the coat barely showed.
“What are you? Twelve?” Jake asked as Skip stopped about a head’s length from the appaloosa.
“What are you?” the thief said after he cleared his throat. “Stupid?”
Jake tapped his heels and Skip charged full bore into the appaloosa. The appaloosa reared and Jake wrenched the rifle from the rider’s hands as he tumbled backward from the saddle.
Libby hee-hawed and kicked out and the appaloosa spooked, taking off up the trail toward Dan and Randy, who quickly cut the horse off and grabbed its reins. Libby trotted a few steps away and turned to watch.
Jake jumped from Skip’s back and jabbed the business end of the rifle in the chest of the kid who lay sprawled in the snow.
“Ow,” a much more feminine voice said. Jake used the tip of the rifle to push the hat away from his . . . no, her face. The moonlight spilled down on delicate features and skin that looked like it should be on a porcelain doll. Her mouth was pursed into a pout that made his lips twitch with the urge to press a kiss against their fullness. Lush lashes formed crescent moons on her cheeks before she opened them to stare up at him with accusing blue eyes. Her pale hair was short and wispy, and stuck out in every direction like tufts of grass.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Language,” she said as she pushed the rifle away.
“What are you, a Sunday school teacher?”
In the next instant Jake was lying on his back in the snow and she was standing over him with a .45 pointed at his chest. He heard Randy and Dan chortling in the background. He had to admire her. Tiny as she was, she’d managed to sweep his legs right out from under him with one of the slickest moves he’d ever seen.
“I’m the owner of that donkey that you stole,” she said vehemently.
“I didn’t steal her. She came to me.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow and the pistol she held in her left hand did not waver a bit. She was so petite he wondered how she could get her hand around it, but she did, and it was obvious she knew which end meant business.
“Yeah, Libby is madly in love with him,” Dan said.
“You’re fired,” Jake said. He didn’t take his eyes off the woman. He wasn’t worried for his life and he knew Dan wasn’t worried about his job. Jake was aware his two men could take her out if they wanted to and were just cutting up, as he was, to put her at ease, so she didn’t do anything stupid.
She raised the gun and took her finger from the trigger. “You do know her name . . .”
“And now you do too,” Jake said. “That doesn’t mean you knew it before.”
Her pale eyes changed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Do you mind if I stand up? My ass is freezing.”
“Do you always talk like this?” she asked with a sigh.
“Only when someone tries to rob me and then dumps me in the snow.”
Randy and Dan snorted with laughter. The woman backed up a few feet but kept a tight hold on the pistol as Jake clambered to his feet and made a production of brushing the snow from the back side of his duster. She picked up her rifle while Jake cleaned himself off, and stuck the pistol in the pocket of her oversized coat.
“You can put the rifle away too,” Jake said as she stepped far enough back so that she could keep the rifle leveled on all three of them. “If I wanted to hurt you I would have done it already.”
“Well excuse me if I’ve heard that before.”
Jake found his hat and brushed the snow from it. “Lady, I don’t know who you are or where you are from but I can tell already that you have an attitude problem. So I suggest we both go to town and clear this up.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said indignantly.
“Then tell me who sold you the animal.” If she said Jim’s name he’d gladly turn Libby over to her. But he wasn’t about to give the donkey up just because some woman waved a gun in his face.
Her tone turned defensive and her hold on the rifle slackened. If Jake wanted to, he could jerk it from her hands. “I got her last fall from the livery in town. I don’t know his name, as it was a friend of mine who bought her.”
“Well that sure does prove a lot,” Jake said. “How about we both go to town and we’ll see what the sheriff has to say about this.”
“What?” she spouted. “Like I said, I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Suits me,” Jake said. “If this donkey is indeed yours then you can pick her up tomorrow at the livery. If she’s not . . .”
“Oh she’s mine,” she said. “And maybe I’ll have a word with the sheriff about how you wound up with her.”
“Fine,” Jake said. “You can both find me at the Heaven’s Gate.” As he didn’t trust her with the rifle, he kept his eyes on her as he spoke to his ranch hand. “Randy, you can give this fine lady back her horse now.”
The tiny woman gave an exasperated sigh and clicked her teeth together. The appaloosa responded by shaking his head. Randy let go of the reins and the little horse trotted over to her owner. “Stand back,” she said.
“Gladly.” Jake raised hi
s arms wide. She guided the appaloosa to a rock buried in the snow and used it to gracefully swing into her saddle. “Believe me, I plan on staying as far away from you as possible,” Jake added.
She slammed the rifle into her scabbard. Without a backward glance she took off up the trail to Sam Parker’s spread.
“Well now, don’t that beat all,” Randy said as they watched her ride away.
Jake let out a heavy sigh before he slammed his hat onto his head and mounted Skip. “Boys, I am in desperate need of a drink.”
TWO
“All I know is the man who bought Libby was Mexican,” Jim Martin, who owned the livery, said. “He didn’t say where he was from or where he was going. He just came into the stable around the first of December and asked if I knew of anyone who had a donkey for sale. I showed him Libby and he offered me two dollars for her. It sounded like a deal to me so I took it.”
“Has anyone said anything about someone moving into the Parker place?” Jake asked. “Because that’s where she was headed last we saw of her. If it’s family, it seems like I should have heard from them since I sent out the letter.”
Cade Gentry, the sheriff, and Ward Phillips, owner of the Heaven’s Gate Saloon where the men were happily enjoying a drink, both shook their heads.
“I sure would have loved to have seen her put you in the snow,” Ward said with a laugh as he poured the four men another round of shots.
“It was a pretty slick move,” Jake admitted. “Whoever she is, if she’s not careful she’s going to try that on the wrong person and wind up dead.”
“I reckon I should ride out to the Parker spread tomorrow and see what’s going on,” Cade said.
