Pete (The Cowboys)

by Leigh Greenwood

  He leapt on the bed, throwing his body across hers. “What is it? What’s wrong? Why did you wake me?”

  Anne was too stunned to speak. She tried, but no sound would come out of her mouth.

  “It’s not a snake, is it?”

  She managed to shake her head.

  “Then what is it? I don’t see or hear anything.”

  He got up, opened the door, and looked out into the hall, but the house was silent. A look out the window apparently offered nothing of interest.

  “There’s nobody here,” he said as he lowered the gun. “What happened? Did you have a bad dream?”

  She nodded her head. She knew something awful would probably happen to her for touching him and lying about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what had really happened.

  “Don’t look so frightened. There’s nothing wrong with that. I used to have them all the time myself. Indians. Had the same dream over and over again. They were attacking the wagon train I was on, killing everybody in sight. People screaming, blood flying, people running every whichaway. Can’t stand Indians to this day.”

  “It was Indians,” she managed to say.

  “You don’t have to worry about them. They’re pretty much locked away on reservations. You all right now?”

  She nodded.

  “You think you can go back to sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You can wake me if you have another bad dream, but don’t touch me. Just call my name softly.”

  “Okay.”

  He put the gun under his pillow—she hadn’t seen him do that earlier—and got back into bed. “I’m going to see you don’t have any more bad dreams. Now tucker down and go to sleep.”

  He turned over and was soon breathing softly again.

  But Anne couldn’t sleep. She didn’t know if she’d ever sleep again if she had to be in the same bed with him. She didn’t know how Peter could have changed so drastically. He had never acted like that. She remembered more than once having to shake him hard to wake him up. This man had been wide awake and ready to fight in the space of a second. She had never known anybody could react so quickly.

  But there was something else that upset her. The nightmare. Peter had never had nightmares about Indians, never dreamed about them at all as far as she could remember. But most important of all, he didn’t hate Indians. He couldn’t. She was part Indian. It was for that reason Peter had agreed to marry her.

  Pete looked at Anne sleeping peacefully. He was tempted to wake her, tell her who he was and why he had come, but he changed his mind. She had probably been too scared to get much sleep last night. She had to be exhausted. His pulling a gun on her probably didn’t help. She’d looked petrified. He couldn’t explain to her that you had to sleep half awake to survive in a gold camp. Men had been killed for nothing more than their equipment and supplies. Only his watchfulness had kept him alive.

  He was certain this Peter Warren wouldn’t have done anything like that. He probably had to be shaken awake. From the way people acted, he must have been a real dolt. Pete hoped he didn’t run into an adult who remembered him clearly. He might be able to fool Anne—she couldn’t have been more than six or seven when she last saw Peter—but he’d never be able to fool an adult. Except for the color of their hair, they didn’t look all that much alike.

  Pete tiptoed to the bathroom. After years of shaving and washing in ice-cold streams, this was an unexpected luxury. He wondered how they kept the water from freezing in the winter. As he washed his face and put on his clothes, he turned his attention to the problem of finding the men who’d shot him and taken his saddlebags. The trail was old, the tracks lost in the welter of hoof prints made in the ten days since.

  He hadn’t found any hoofprints in or near the corral that matched the tracks he’d followed, but he was certain the men were here. Or close by. That bothered him. It made him certain that whoever had ordered Peter killed was also here at the ranch.

  Belser desperately wanted the ranch. Though he’d never seen Peter, he had declared right from the first that Pete was an imposter. The best possible way to know that would be to know you’d killed Peter, or had him killed. Pete wouldn’t mind proving Belser guilty of murder. The man was easy to dislike.

  But Pete had to face the fact that others at the ranch could have wanted Peter dead. Maybe the foreman feared he’d lose his job. Maybe someone in the vicinity other than Belser didn’t want Peter to inherit the ranch. After all, Belser could be involved with the rustling and his partners could want Peter dead so they could go on with their stealing. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it was never wise to ignore any possibility.

  Whether he wanted to admit it or not, there was always the possibility that Anne was involved. After all, if Peter was the complete idiot everybody thought, maybe she didn’t want to be married to him. Maybe she wanted to inherit the ranch from her dead husband, then marry a man capable of holding the place against rustlers and greedy neighbors. Bill Mason looked like an obvious choice. Pete had discovered that the man’s wife had died a few years back, that Mason was known to be interested in marrying again. What would be better for both of them than to marry and combine their ranches? Mason gave the appearance of a man quite able to hold his own.

  But most likely Belser was the villain. If so, and if Anne was really married to Peter, she was in as much danger from Belser as her husband had been. Pete muttered several curses. He should have waited and taken the steamship down the Missouri. Then he wouldn’t have been shot, wouldn’t have lost his money, and wouldn’t have found himself in the middle of a murder plot with all the guns aimed at him. He didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t leave Anne to the mercy of an unknown killer, especially if that killer was sleeping only two bedrooms away.

  But he was in even more danger. If they’d tried to kill Peter once—and he didn’t know that there hadn’t been other attempts—they’d try again. He would have to tread very carefully if he wanted to stay alive.

  Maybe he would lock his bedroom door tonight.

  “You look like you’ve been in a fight,” Dolores said when Anne entered the kitchen the next morning. She smiled wickedly. “It must have been some wedding night. You going to tell me about it?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Anne said, pouring herself a cup of coffee and taking a big swallow of the hot liquid.

  “From the looks of you, it’s a lot more.”

  Anne sat down at the table. She needed time to still her shaking limbs. She’d finally dropped off to sleep sometime during the night, but her entire body ached. She’d been relieved to find Pete gone when she woke. “Where’s Pete?” she asked.

  “He and Eddie rode out at dawn. If that man intends to get up this early every morning, we’ll have to start going to bed earlier.”

  “Did Belser go with them?”

  “No. He came down later. He was in a foul mood. From the look of him, he got in a fight and lost.”

  “He burst into our bedroom last night without knocking. Pete punched him in the face, knocked him right back into the hall.”

  “Belser didn’t come back fighting?”

  “No.”

  “Your Pete has turned out to be a real eye-opener. From what your uncle said, I was worried Belser would run you both off inside a month.”

  “Pete’s changed.”

  “He must have.”

  “He said he takes after his mother’s side of the family.”

  “Must have been a handy bunch of people to have around. Now tell me about you. I can tell you didn’t get much sleep.”

  It was on the tip of Anne’s tongue to tell Dolores she suspected Pete might not be Peter. But if he wasn’t, where was Peter? What had stopped him from arriving at the ranch as he’d promised? Something must have happened to him, but she couldn’t believe Pete would hurt Peter. If she did, she couldn’t have slept in the same bed with him.

  She’d lain awake for hours trying to decide whom to te
ll, what she ought to do. But now that it was morning, she hesitated. She had to admit that worry for her own position was at the root of it. If she swore Pete wasn’t Peter, then he would be thrown off the ranch and Belser would inherit. Belser would throw her off, too. The minute that happened, her uncle would haul her off to old man Cyrus.

  The consequences of telling on Pete were certain. He would have no future at the Tumbling T, but she wouldn’t have one either.

  What if she didn’t tell on him? What if no one ever found out? She was no longer lying frightened in the dark, next to a man she didn’t know. She’d had time to think. She didn’t know what Pete was doing there, but wouldn’t it be better to try to find out? Maybe Peter had sent him. It didn’t seem like something Peter would do, but it was obvious Pete was better at handling difficult situations than Peter would have been. Maybe Pete was the man from Texas Isabelle had hit with the log. That would explain why he knew so much about ranches.

  Peter must have sent him. Pete knew a lot about everything.

  “Pete said we needed time to get to know each other,” Anne said. “He said he wouldn’t claim his marriage rights until I was ready.” He hadn’t said anything about claiming them at all. Didn’t that mean he was sent by Peter, that Peter was coming later when all danger was past?

  Dolores’s disbelief was obvious. “I never heard of a man doing such a thing. You sure there’s not something wrong with him?”

  There was absolutely nothing wrong with Pete. “No, he’s just a gentleman. I told you he was.”

  “Your uncle said he was a spineless clod. He never said a word about him being a gentleman.”

  “That’s because Uncle Carl wasn’t much of a gentleman himself,” Anne said. “Papa used to tell Mama never to let herself be caught alone in the house with Uncle Carl.”

  “Everybody knows that,” Dolores said. “I had a few close calls myself.”

  “You did?”

  “We’re not talking about me,” Dolores said. “I want to know more about this husband of yours.”

  Anne didn’t know what she could tell Dolores. Just about everything she remembered about Peter contradicted what she saw in Pete. No matter who he turned out to be, Pete had saved her from Cyrus. She owed him something for that.

  “I can’t tell you much more. He’s changed so much, I hardly know him myself. He said the same thing himself last night.”

  “Well, I’m real impressed with him. Belser was certain he could take the ranch right out of your Pete’s hands. No wonder he’s trying to convince us he’s not Peter. Though it seems like a silly thing to say. I mean, all he has to do is produce his papers and there’s no question about it, is there?”

  “No.”

  What would happen if he produced the right papers? Then he’d be Peter.

  And she would be his wife!

  A feeling totally unlike anything she’d ever felt for Peter before ran through her. Last night she’d been too afraid, too confused to pay much attention to anything but fear. But now, with Pete many miles away and Dolores comfortingly at her side, Anne could tell this was a new feeling, a kind of anticipation she’d never experienced before. She’d never felt anything remotely like this for Peter.

  She cautioned herself that no matter how attractive, no matter how exciting it might be to think of being married to such man, she didn’t know who he was. She didn’t know why he was here. She didn’t know where Peter was. She was married to Peter, not Pete.

  She shivered. The thought made her toes curl. She’d never dreamed of a husband like Pete, but now that the possibility existed, she admitted it excited her. It was like a magnet drawing her forward when she wanted to hang back.

  There was, however, a very strong possibility she was wrong, that Peter had dreamed of Indians but never told her, that he had changed so much, nobody would know he was the same man. She had no proof, only suspicions based on the ten-year-old memories of a seven-year-old child. She could be wrong.

  And if she were, then Pete was Peter, and she was his real, legal wife.

  She decided she had let the unexpected events of the last twenty-four hours confuse her. She’d been further upset by lying awake for long hours in the dark. Pete probably had a perfectly logical explanation for all her fears. She had only to ask. He would explain everything.

  Suddenly she felt better, no longer frightened. Pete was Peter. He would explain all her doubts away. Then he’d produce the documents, and no one would have any doubts. She would have a husband, a ranch, safety for the rest of her life.

  “You’re one lucky woman,” Dolores said. “You used to complain that nothing exciting ever happened to you. Being rescued at the last minute from being sold to an old man by a handsome young man who turns out to be your husband is enough excitement for the rest of your life.”

  “Too much,” Anne said. “I’ll never complain again.”

  Dolores winked and grinned. “I have a suspicion you won’t have to. Even gentlemen don’t hold themselves in check forever.”

  “I’ve made up my mind to round up everything we can and sell it immediately,” Pete said as he and Eddie neared the ranch after a hard day of riding. “The herd isn’t in good shape. We’d lose a lot of them in a bad winter.”

  “You’ll lose money selling now,” Eddie said.

  “Jake always said go with what you have, not what you might have.”

  “Who’s Jake?”

  He was going to have to watch his tongue. At this rate, he’d have blabbed about his entire family before the week was out. They’d only have to compare notes to be certain he was the imposter Belser claimed him to be.

  “A man I knew,” Pete said. “He lost nearly everything he had during the war. He didn’t believe in waiting.”

  “I didn’t know there was any fighting in Illinois.”

  He was going to have to sew his mouth shut. “There wasn’t. He was from Texas. He moved to Illinois after the war.” The mere thought of leaving Texas, especially to go someplace like Illinois, would cause Jake to choke.

  “Anyway, I want you to start making preparations for a roundup. If we get them to market quickly, we’ll get in ahead of anybody else.”

  “Everybody around here is waiting as long as possible, hoping the steers will put on a little more weight.”

  “They won’t. There’s no grass. And that reminds me of something else. We’ve got too many strays from other herds on our land. Tell the boys to chase back anything that isn’t ours.”

  “That’s going to make people angry.”

  “They’re welcome to run mine back in this direction. In fact, I’d be obliged. It’ll make the roundup easier.”

  “I never heard of anybody doing this.”

  “That’s one advantage of being the foreman and not the owner. You still get paid if I make a mistake.”

  Eddie half grinned. “Okay, you’re the boss.”

  “Good. Now let’s get cleaned up. My stomach’s already growling at the thought of the supper Dolores has cooked up.”

  After years of cooking his own meals over a campfire, or getting what he could at a local saloon, a properly prepared meal was a treat.

  Pete looked around quickly as they neared the corrals. Belser hadn’t shown up all day. He felt uneasy not knowing where he might be. He wasn’t comforted by not finding Belser’s horse in the corral. That meant he’d been gone most of the day. There was more than enough work to do on the ranch, but Pete didn’t think it was work that had kept Belser out of sight.

  Dolores stuck her head out of the kitchen as they rode by. “I’ll have the food on the table by the time you’ve unsaddled the horses.”

  “Give us fifteen minutes. I’ve got to wash up and change my shirt,” Pete called back.

  This was almost like being back at the Broken Circle with Jake and the rest of the boys—Isabelle cooking mountains of food, everybody crowding around the trough so they could wash up and get to the table first. He’d hardly had time to unsaddle his
horse when Belser rode up. He looked dusty and tired.

  “You’d better hurry and wash up,” Pete said. “Dolores said she’d have food on the table in twenty minutes.”

  “I eat like I am,” Belser growled.

  “Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you wash and change your shirt before you come in to eat. It’s one way to show your appreciation for the work it takes to put a good meal on the table.”

  “Dolores is paid to cook. She don’t need my appreciation.”

  “Then there’s the fact that the sight of perspiration running through the dust on your forehead offends me. As does your odor.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m washing just to eat.”

  “Then you can eat at the chuck wagon. Be sure to sit downwind. I wouldn’t want you ruining the men’s dinner.”

  Belser dismounted and walked up to Pete. He wasn’t quite as tall, but he outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. “You telling me you’re throwing me out of the house if I don’t wash up?”

  “That’s about the sum of it.”

  “Uncle Carl never made me wash.”

  “Uncle Carl is dead.”

  They stood facing each other.

  “I could kill you,” Belser said.

  “You could try.”

  Pete hadn’t expected Belser to challenge him so openly, but he was ready when the big man charged him, fists waving in the air. Pete nearly laughed when he saw what Belser considered fighting style. If he’d had to survive twelve years in the gold-mining camps of Colorado, Montana, and the Black Hills, he’d know what real fighting was. Pete sidestepped Belser’s first charge and tripped him. He went down with a whoosh of air from his lungs and came up with a roar.

  “If you want to fight, stop waving your arms in the air like you’re brushing off flies,” Pete said. “You’ll never hit me like that.”

  Belser rushed him again. Pete figured Belser thought his size would carry the day. He didn’t know Pete had honed his skills on his best friend, Sean, who was five inches taller than Pete and heavier than Belser. Pete sidestepped the second charge and hit Belser in the temple as he rushed by.