Petticoat Ranch

by Mary Connealy

  With a dart of aggravation, Sophie thought the man was determined to die one way or another. She felt stubbornness well up inside of her that would have humbled Hector. After all she’d been through, he’d live if she had to grab his worthless life and hold him on this side of the pearly gates with her bare hands!

  T W O

  Where’d he get to, Harley?” Judd Mason roared into the storm. Judd wheeled his horse around in a circle and looked along both sides of the forked path ahead of them. The rain slashed and their quarry’s trail washed away like dirt in a Chinese laundry.

  Judd pulled back hard on his mustang. The horse reared and fought the brutal hand on the bit. Judd whipped his mount hard with the long reins and swore at the unruly horse he’d caught wild and never really mastered.

  He’d seen the horse that thieving trash rode. If Judd could have gotten his hands on that magnificent thoroughbred, he’d have put a bullet in the brain of this ornery cuss and kept the beautiful bay for himself. After all, a man catching horse thieves deserved some payment.

  That was why Judd had sent the bulk of the gang after the rest of those no-account varmints when they’d split up, while he, Harley, and Eli had kept after this one.

  He’d have made a deal with Harley and Eli somehow. Let them keep whatever was in the man’s pockets or given them a bigger cut of the next windfall. He wanted that horse! It would have made a sound start for breeding on the ranch he’d be buying on Monday.

  He thought of the Mead ranch and the twisting, turning path he’d followed so the Mead brothers’ disappearance wouldn’t be noticed. Now, the Meads’ ranch would be his. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted that thoroughbred bay!

  “I’m sick of this weather, Judd. We’re not going to track him in this.” Eli wiped an arm across his face, but it did no good. Even with foul-weather gear, they were all soaked to the skin.

  It was all Judd could do to not knock Eli out of his saddle. The day would come when he quit putting up with the constant carping. But for now, Eli had his uses.

  Instead of knocking Eli down, he turned his temper on Harley. “Where’d ya lose him, Harley?”

  “We ain’t a-gonna catch ’im tonight, Mason.” Harley, calm as usual, hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and tugged his hat low over his brow.

  Judd jammed his spurs into his horse’s scarred sides. The horse reared up, fighting the heavy hand. “He can’t have gone much farther in this rain. I want that horse! No two-bit horse thief is gonna ride a horse like that while I’m stuck on this nag!”

  Judd hated the black mustang. He’d done his best, but he couldn’t beat the fighting spirit out of him. The animal was so vicious, he couldn’t turn his back on it.

  Harley didn’t argue. “I might have seen a trail into the thicket back a piece.”

  “You think he left the trail?” Judd hollered. “Well, why didn’cha say so earlier?”

  Harley said coolly, “Let’s go back and see if he went down that way. He might have ducked into that thicket and found a hidey-hole we can flush him out of. If he’s ahead of us, he’s gone. We won’t catch him tonight.”

  Judd turned back, determined to sniff out their prey like a wolf would sniff out a three-legged elk.

  “Elizabeth, wait,” Sophie shouted after her rapidly disappearing daughter.

  “He’s bleeding.”

  Beth skidded to a stop and looked back.

  “Bring rags and the water Sally was warming.”

  “Got it, Ma!” Beth ran on.

  Sophie had lived on the frontier for a long while. She’d given birth to Mandy beside a jumbled shelter of fallen logs on her way west with her husband, Cliff. She’d fed two babies at her breast at the same time, because there was no other milk for growing girls. She’d buried a tiny boy, born too soon after she’d fallen from a horse while bull-dogging cattle, and watched Cliff withdraw from her. He’d wanted a son so badly. She’d run the ranch herself, with two old men her only help, while Cliff went off to war. Then she’d cut her husband down from a tree and dug his grave with her own hands.

  All of this she had endured. In truth, she’d flourished under the hard life. The West did that to people. It changed them. They either grew bigger, stronger, reveling in the freedom that could be wrested from the wilderness with two strong hands. Or it broke them and revealed them as small, unfit for the bounty that could be wrested from the land. Cliff had been such a man.

  And now, in the rickety barn, with no tools but warm water and rags, she set out to save a man’s life. She began unbuttoning his tattered shirt. “We have to see if he’s injured anywhere, Mandy. Now this is doctoring, so it’s not improper to remove his clothes, like it’d be otherwise.”

  Mandy nodded easily and started coaxing the shirt off one broad shoulder.

  It was hard to tell where the mud ended and the bruises began. His chest and arms were bleeding from a dozen cuts and scrapes. Sophie pressed against his ribs, checking to see if any bones gave where they shouldn’t. The man groaned softly once, when she pressed high on his right side. The bone held firm, and Sophie was encouraged by the sign of life.

  Something stirred in Sophie as she worked over his bared chest. It was almost—for want of a better word—recognition. She hadn’t given much thought to the man’s identity, assuming him to be a stranger. But now, she looked closer. His face was so filthy she couldn’t make out features, even in the occasional burst of lightning. But his chest, the light covering of coarse hair across the top and the long, ever narrower line of hair down his stomach, struck a familiar chord. Sophie knew she couldn’t identify a man from his chest, unless maybe she’d doctored him before, and she had only used her skills on Cliff and the girls.

  She shook off the feeling. It didn’t matter. Whoever he was, she’d help him. And if he turned out to be one of the town storekeepers, who were so cruel to her, she’d still get him on his feet and send him on his way—she just wouldn’t be polite while she was about it.

  She hesitated about his pants. It really was too bold to remove them. She looked up at Mandy, who seemed to feel the same way, and shrugged her misgivings at her mother. After a long struggle with her own sense of propriety, Sophie said, “We’ll have to get them off later or he’ll catch a chill, but let’s leave him dressed for now.”

  She settled for running her hands down the man’s muddy pant legs, firmly enough to satisfy herself that he had no broken bones. She came away with her hands caked with mud but satisfied that his lower half was intact.

  The black sky opened up while she examined him, and the rain, whipped with the fury of the thunder and lightning, poured down. Sophie wiped her hands clean as best she could on the hay, just as Beth returned to the shed with a sloshing bucket of water and a bundle of rags.

  “Thanks, honey. How were the little ’uns?”

  “Good. Laura’s asleep. Sally had everything ready for me. Is he dead yet?”

  Sophie took a rag from her pessimistic daughter, wet it, wrung it out, and dabbed at the blood on the man’s forehead.

  “Nope,” Mandy said placidly. “Pretty soon I s’pect, but not yet.”

  “Get that lantern closer, Mandy.”

  Beth began spreading the blanket over the man’s filthy, inert body.

  Sophie searched for the source of the bleeding on his head and found a nasty gash just under his hairline. The bleeding had already slowed to an ooze. “He should have stitches.” Sophie cleaned the cut carefully.

  “He should have a doctor,” Beth said quietly.

  Sophie didn’t answer. It was one thing to do all she could; it was another to bring in someone from town. Once the townspeople knew she was here, the menfolk, with their dishonorable propositions and their anger at her refusal, would be back. Those men had driven them into this thicket.

  A doctor to save this man’s life might cost her daughters theirs. Of course, when this man woke up, their secret would be out anyway. Still, Sophie could do no less than her best to save him. />
  After she was satisfied his head wound was clean, Sophie explored his skull further and found another lump on the back. Between the two blows, it was no wonder the man was unconscious. Sophie was just ready to turn her attention to wiping the grime from his face when she heard, in the far distance, the sound of more hoofbeats. The pursuers? After all this time?

  She knew she didn’t have a moment to spare. “Riders coming. Elizabeth, stay with him. Put the lantern out. If he starts to wake up, do whatever you must to keep him quiet, including gagging him. Mandy, get to the house and cover things, then get up in the loft with Sally and Laura. Don’t let them see you!”

  They ran to get ready for intruders as if their lives depended on it. They had done it before many times.

  The hoofbeats turned onto her path just as she darted into the door a step behind Mandy. Mandy tossed several large cloths over Laura’s crib and high chair to disguise the presence of others in the cabin. Then she flew up the ladder behind Sally, who had heard the sound of someone coming and had gone into action without being told. Sally had the sleeping Laura in her arms and Sophie’s disguise laid out.

  Sophie grabbed her bulky housecoat for the second time that night. She pulled it on over her slender form. She dove for the fire and scraped a bit of ash out from the glowing coals with a knife.

  She took the little bits of carved wood down from the shelf over the front door and slipped them between her front teeth and lips. A pillow came hurtling down from overhead, and she stuffed it up under her housecoat, into the special pouch sewn just for it. She tucked two pieces of clean, white cotton between her bottom teeth and her cheeks.

  She twisted her rain-bedraggled blond hair into a bun, then grabbed for the nightcap, to which she had attached a heavy tress of Hector’s tail, liberally greased, and pulled it on, so it looked like her hair was dark brown and stringy with oil. She checked the ash and found it cool enough. With a light, experienced hand, she dabbed it under her eyes just enough to look naturally hollow-eyed.

  As her last act of self-preservation, she did something she hated above all—she popped the top off the tin milk can and pulled out the scarf. It was her masterstroke. It was what happened when you let a mule wear a wool scarf for a month. She heard Sally gag.

  Mandy hissed, “Just hold your nose and keep quiet!”

  Laura slept through it all.

  The horses thundered to a stop outside. Sophie heard the creak of saddle leather and the treading of heavy footsteps. She rolled the long sapling from the side of the room so it would wedge against the door once it was open about three inches. Just as the pole was in place, a fist pounded on the front door.

  Sophie took her time, letting them think they’d woken her, but judging by the battering force of the fist, she didn’t dare wait long or the door might be knocked in.

  She cracked open the door and looked into the red-veined eyes of the man who had killed her husband.

  She couldn’t go into her routine as the slovenly, crazy woman who lived in the thicket. She was too shocked to do more than stare. She’d never seen the man before that terrible night when he’d killed Cliff, but his face was burned into her memory.

  In the seconds she stood frozen, the man tried to force the door, but it wouldn’t give. Then, after a bit, he reeled back with a sickened grunt and pulled the kerchief, tied around his neck, over his mouth and nose.

  Seeing him—this brute, this murderer, reacting with revulsion because she smelled bad—jerked Sophie out of her shocked silence. He wouldn’t recognize her from that night. He wouldn’t see through her disguise even if he did notice her the night he hanged Cliff.

  “Whadaya want?” She spoke over the wooden mouthpiece that made her appear grossly buck-toothed. The teeth and the wadded cotton altered her speech, slurring it and giving it the thickness of someone who wasn’t mentally quite right.

  “A man!” The vicious, bloodshot eyes of the beast on her porch began to water from the acrid stench. Sophie’s eyes watered, too, but that just gave her a rheumy look that was all the more repellent. He took another step away, which took him down the two steps.

  From a safe distance he snarled, “We’re chasing a horse thief! We lost him on the main trail and think he may have come this way.”

  “Hain’t no one be comin’ this way, this foul night.” Her voice cracked, and she cackled with laughter. “No one stupid ’nough ta do it cept’n y’all. The path goes across the crick, and it’s flooded right up to the rim. Has been for a while now.”

  The man, away from the meager shelter of her stoop, was battered by the wind and rain. Sophie could see the battle going on inside him. He was torn between the desire to run roughshod over anyone who turned him aside from his plans and his aversion to the squalid, stinking woman in front of him.

  A voice from the darkness behind him said, “He’s gone, Judd. Give it up, and let’s go have a drink. This rain’ll wreck his trail. So what if this one gets away? What say we just hang the next one twice.” A burst of crude laughter followed that suggestion.

  Judd.

  Now, for the first time, she had a name. She had no way to use it—had no way to gain justice for her husband. But it was more than she’d had before.

  The man whirled around at his grumbling companion. “I want that horse, Eli! He must have come this way!”

  The other man, the one who hadn’t spoken before, spoke up. “There are a dozen trails into this thicket. We can’t explore ’em all.”

  The rain hit Judd full in the face and sent a visible chill through him. Then, with a dismissive grunt, as if his killing rage had only been some fun he’d missed out on, he gave a rough laugh. “All right. Let’s go. Let’s get out of this weather.”

  He turned again and stared at Sophie, who let her mouth sag and her eyes cross just a bit. With a shudder of obvious disgust, he turned away.

  Hatred ate like acid at Sophie’s soul. For that moment, when he stood with his back to her, it was as if there was a target painted on the man. She had a loaded shotgun hung over the door. She could kill him.

  She’d die for it. The man’s friends would see to it. Her girls would die, too. And maybe, before they died, they might face horrors so great it would destroy them, all the way to their souls.

  But she was tempted. God forgive her, she was tempted to kill him where he stood. She knew she harbored hatred. She had carried the burden of that hate for two years. But she had never been so nearly overwhelmed by it—to the point that she was almost beyond control of herself. She shuddered under the weight of that temptation—to sacrifice everything for revenge.

  The two men behind Judd rode off into the storm, their identities cloaked by darkness. Judd, just a few steps behind, swung himself up onto his horse’s back. The animal fought against its rider and danced toward Sophie enough that she saw a brand.

  J BAR M.

  Judd and Eli. J BAR M. She had two names, a brand, and a face burned forever in her mind. At last, she had somewhere solid to pin her hate.

  Sophie now called up another of her standard prayers. It’s evil to hate the way I do, Lord. She gathered the shreds of her self-control and let the men ride away. It was the only thing she could do. She shoved her hatred down deep inside her, and if she couldn’t bring herself to forget it, she would lock it away and ignore it, which was almost the same thing.

  She closed the door and whipped the foul-smelling scarf off her neck. She shoved it into the covered pail and slammed the lid shut tight. It seemed to ripen in that pail, getting more hideous with every passing day.

  “Ma, it takes a week to air the house out after you’ve done that,” Sally groused from overhead.

  Mandy started down the ladder.

  “Sorry,” Sophie answered. There was no point discussing it because it had to be done. Her disguise had evolved over the course of time. She had come to fear the attention of the men around Mosqueros, so she’d decided to play down her appearance. The trouble was, her main appeal was her
ranch, and no disguise could conceal that.

  Then the ranch loan had come due, and Sophie had been forced into choosing between the banker, Royce Badje, and eviction. It hadn’t taken her a second to decide on the latter.

  “I want to see the hurt man before he dies, Ma.” The ladder creaked under Sally’s feet as she brought the sleeping baby down to her crib. “I don’t want to stay with Laura.”

  Sophie sighed at her insistent daughter. Her children’s safety had been the reason she’d ended up here. She had no family anywhere, and nowhere to go. She had discovered this cabin during one of a hundred picnics with her girls. It had been like a little playhouse to them, deep in the thicket. When it became apparent that she was losing the ranch, she’d shifted what possessions would fit into it before the ranch was sold.

  “You’ll see him in the morning, Sally. I know you’re curious, but someone has to stay with Laura, and I need Mandy. We might have to lift him, and she’s stronger.” Sophie removed her costume quickly, while Mandy threw open the two little windows so the smell would get out. Sophie removed the rest of her disguise and ran a quick hand to tidy her bun before giving it up as a hopeless cause.

  “Can’t I just take a peek?” Sally persisted. “If I have to wait till morning, he’ll most likely be dead. I want to see him afore he croaks.” It occurred to Sophie that her children were remarkably calm in an emergency, and just the littlest bit bloodthirsty. Part of being Texans, she supposed. They’d adopted Texas ways along with the drawl.

  Sophie had to smile at Sally’s wheedling. Really, the child didn’t ask for much, and this was the most excitement they’d had in a long time. It had long ago become clear to Sophie that excitement was usually a bad thing, and she never quit being thankful to God for a boring life. “Is Laura fast asleep?”

  Sally laid her little sister down and gently patted the baby’s back to keep her asleep, but there was really no need. Once the toddler dropped off for the night, she could take a ride on a cyclone without waking.