Petticoat Ranch

by Mary Connealy

  Clay didn’t look at Sophie again. He wasn’t sure he’d survive it. But he decided in that moment that, if they wanted to carry on Cliff ’s name, it was going to be the name Cliff was born with. McClellen. Everyone in this house was changing her name to McClellen and like it!

  He pulled the plate of biscuits toward him and started spreading on jelly as he continued making plans in his head. And while he was making changes, he’d get them out of this thicket and make sure they had meat on the table. And her next child was definitely going to be a son.

  With grim satisfaction, Clay decided they’d name the boy Cliff.

  F I V E

  Sophie paced around the outside of the cabin and fumed. She stopped and glared at the closed-up house and thought dark thoughts about the occupant. He didn’t emerge. She started pacing again. After a long time she started to think he might have died in there. That softened her anger somewhat. True, he’d insulted her years of backbreaking effort to keep a roof over her girls’ heads. True, he’d told her she should have married one of the rabble who proposed to her—and she included the banker and sheriff in that lot. True, he’d looked at her with Cliff’s eyes, and she’d seen straight into his soul.

  She stopped pacing and admitted that the way he made her feel when he looked at her was the real reason she was so mad at him.

  Once Sophie stopped being angry, she started to worry in earnest. She was a mother, after all. Worrying was her job! He’d been in there too long. How long could it take a man to bathe? She’d left some of Cliff ’s clothing—rescued from the rag bag—for him to wear. How long could it take a man to dress? He was still unsteady on his feet. What if he’d fallen? He might have hit his head again. What if he’d passed out in the tub and sunk under the water? Sophie gave up her pacing and charged toward the door. She might already be too late to save him.

  She was on the step when he opened the door.

  “Coming to scrub my back, Sophie?” he drawled.

  Sophie felt her cheeks heat up. “I was afraid you’d fallen. . .or something. You’ve been in there a long time.”

  “Trying to soak out some aches and pains.” He tilted his chin slightly and gave a little one-shoulder shrug. It was a gesture so like Cliff ’s Sophie almost gasped out loud. He was watching her intently, but he didn’t outwardly react to what must have been blatant fascination on her part.

  “First things first. Where’s my horse?” he asked.

  Sophie and the girls, who had been waiting impatiently with her, all looked at each other.

  Mandy said bluntly, “I reckon he’s dead, Uncle Clay.”

  “Dead!” Considering all the shocks the man had endured so far today, Sophie was surprised how upset he seemed about the horse.

  “You went over the creek bank,” Beth reminded him. “And your horse went with you.”

  “We never saw any sign of a horse, Clay,” Sophie said sympathetically. “It was pitch black. You were half buried in mud. I suppose your horse was down there, too. But there was no time to look. A flash flood came through the creek, and we were lucky to get out alive.”

  “I ’spect the fall kilt him, but iffen it didn’t, I reckon the flood got him,” Sally said, patting Clay on the arm.

  “You girls went down into that creek, in front of a flash flood, to pull me out?” Clay asked incredulously.

  Sophie hadn’t been called a girl in a long time. She hadn’t felt like a girl for even longer. She kind of liked it. She said in exasperation, “Well, we didn’t know there was a flash flood coming when we went down!”

  “You could have been killed!” Clay growled.

  Sophie replied sarcastically, “I promise, if we’d have known there was the least danger, even of a stubbed toe or a broken fingernail, we’d have left you to die without a second thought.”

  Clay glared at her. “You need a keeper.”

  Sophie saw Mandy roll her eyes, and the two shared a grin.

  Clay returned to the subject of his horse. “Has anyone gone down and looked? What about my saddlebags? And I had. . .” Clay stopped talking, and Sophie could see he was holding back something about what he had in those saddlebags.

  Clay shook his head as if to accept the fact that he’d been wiped out by the flood. Accepting what couldn’t be helped was very Western of him. It was something Cliff had never learned.

  “I’ve got to get to a telegraph. How far is it to the nearest town?”

  “Mosqueros is ten miles straight west.” Mandy pointed toward the narrow trail.

  Clay nodded. “I’ll have to take the mule, but I’ll only be gone—”

  “Oh, you can’t take Hector,” Sally interrupted him.

  “I’ll bring him back.” Clay’s eyes slid from one to the other of them. “Don’t you trust me? Do you really think I’d steal your mule?”

  He sounded so hurt Sophie almost smiled. “It’s not that. People would recognize Hector. He is so ornery he’s almost a legend around these parts.”

  “So what if people recognize him?”

  “Well, they’d know he was ours, and then they’d know we were here abouts,” Beth explained.

  Clay tilted his head again, and Sophie had that same wrenching reaction to him. She clenched her fist and held it close to her side when she realized she wanted to reach up and touch Clay’s chin as he reminded her so much of her husband.

  “Are you saying no one knows you live here?”

  Clay spoke quietly, but Sophie heard an intensity in his voice that made her wary when she answered. “No. We were getting. . .bothered by a few of the townfolk.”

  “The men,” Mandy said flatly.

  Sophie didn’t like the way Clay’s eyes narrowed. She continued quickly, “So I led them to believe we’d gone to live with family.”

  “ ’Cept we don’t have any family,” Beth said sadly.

  “Till we got you.” Sally grinned.

  Clay rubbed his mouth with his hand, and Sophie thought he was trying to not say something. She forged ahead. “And if you show up with Hector they’ll think we’re here somewhere.”

  “And they might start coming around chasin’ after Ma again.” Sally, bouncing with energy, clung to Clay’s hand.

  “No one’s going to bother your ma now that I’m around.” Clay sounded like he was making a threat and a promise in the same breath.

  “Then they’ll just pester Mandy,” Beth said philosophically.

  “Mandy is only ten!” Clay exclaimed.

  “Men!” Mandy snorted as if she’d noticed the same thing.

  “There’s a shortage of women ’round here,” Sally said matter-of-factly. “They’re thinkin’ to the future.”

  “They won’t be bothering Mandy either.” Clay patted Sally on the shoulder.

  “And besides,” Sophie said, “and this is the important part: They might think you’re Cliff, and he was supposed to be a horse thief. So you might not be safe in town.”

  “But everyone knows Cliff is dead!” Clay protested.

  “Lots of them came and watched him be buried,” Elizabeth remembered.

  “Still, we wondered about you,” Sophie reminded him. “They might, too. It was quite well known Cliff didn’t have any family, especially after he died. And for a while I had nowhere to go until I remembered a ‘cousin’ who’d take me and the girls in.”

  “You better not go into Mosqueros.” A furrow formed in Sally’s brow. “We don’t want to lose you like we lost Pa. They might just round you up and hang you to be on the safe side.”

  Sophie wondered if Sally could bear losing Clay. The little girl had never really gotten over Cliff ’s death. Sophie turned to Clay, more determined then ever to convince him to stay out of Mosqueros.

  Clay snapped, “Let ’em try!”

  He headed toward the back of the house without another word. Sophie exchanged anxious looks with her daughters then she hurried after him. They found him dropping a halter over Hector’s head. Sophie waited for Clay to get bucked
off into a thornbush. She was still waiting when he rode the disagreeable mule around the house. He headed for the gap in the thicket, and just as he rode out of sight, he stopped and turned Hector around without any effort, steering mostly with pressure from his knees.

  He looked straight at Sophie for a long minute. “You know what needs to be done here, Sophie?”

  Sophie most certainly did know what needed to be done. She’d been managing her life and seeing to her girls single-handedly for. . . well, honestly forever. She felt herself puff up with indignation. What did he think? Was he planning to give her instructions on what chores to do while he was gone?

  She said waspishly, “Of course I know!”

  “And you’re willing?” Clay asked.

  “Of course I’m willing. You didn’t even need to ask.”

  Clay nodded silently for too long. “Then so be it. I’ll see to it.”

  Sophie wondered what he’d “see” to. She opened her mouth to ask when Clay said, “Are you a God-fearing woman?”

  Anything she’d been going to ask fled her mind when she pondered the question that seemed to come out of the blue. “I am, Clay. God is who has helped me through these last hard years.”

  Clay nodded again as he sat on Hector’s back and seemed to consider all the great questions of the universe. Finally he quit nodding as if he’d worked it all out. “I’m a believer myself. I reckon it wouldn’t have mattered. Taking care of you and the girls. . .well, I have it to do. But it’s for the best, as far as raising the girls, that we agree on doing right by God.” He nudged Hector, and the old mule obeyed Clay like the gentlest of lambs. Hector turned and Clay rode into the thicket.

  He was gone before Sophie thought to call out, “What is it you have to do?”

  There was no answer, but she assumed he meant something about helping with the chores later on. Sophie sniffed. She wasn’t about to wait around for him.

  She dusted her hands together. “Girls, let’s get on with our day’s work.”

  Sally set up a clamor about Clay leaving. Laura picked that moment to start crying her lungs out.

  Beth’s shoulders drooped as she headed for the house. “I’ll get some dinner cooking.”

  Mandy bounced Laura and rubbed Sally’s back and exchanged a very adult look with her mother. “Whatever he’s up to, I’m planning to go along with it if it means we don’t have to keep that mule scarf in the cabin no more.”

  Sophie shrugged and nodded. “Stay with the girls until they cheer up, Mandy. I’ll go see to tidying the house.”

  She and the girls spent the next few hours pretending things were normal. They did their chores and ate a noon meal none of them wanted. Sophie scrubbed Clay’s torn-up, muddy clothes and draped them over a bush to dry. Mandy and Beth explored downstream of the now-receded creek for over a mile, looking for any lost possessions that could be Clay’s. They found nothing of his, but they did bring back a decrepit wooden pail with no handle and a tin coffee cup. Treasure.

  The day wore on and Sophie was preparing their biscuits for supper when she heard a wagon come creaking into the yard. Branches from the bramble slapped back as the wagon squeezed though the thicket trail. The wagon had two horses tied on the back.

  She pulled her biscuits out of the fire and ran out to see who’d come by. It was Clay with Parson Roscoe and his wife. Clay rode Hector like the old firebrand was a house pet.

  She walked out to meet the parson, with the girls scrambling past her sedate walk. As she passed the unusually obedient Hector, she whispered, “Traitor!”

  Speaking normally she said, “Howdy, Mrs. Roscoe. Parson.”

  “Get the house packed up,” Clay said brusquely. “We’re getting out of here.”

  Sophie opened her mouth and looked from Clay to the parson to Hector. None of them were any help.

  “Where are we going?” Mandy, always calm and sensible, asked.

  “I went to town looking for a better place for us to live. It turns out Cliff ’s ranch was for sale, so I bought it back. We’re moving. I want to be over there before sunset.”

  Sally squealed and ran into the cabin. “I’ll have my stuff packed in ten minutes, Uncle Clay.”

  Sophie was abstractly aware that she kept opening and closing her mouth, not unlike a landed catfish. She just didn’t know what to say. Sally ran past her with her arms full of clothing, and Sophie realized they could indeed leave this place in about ten minutes.

  “Y–you bought the ranch back?” Sophie finally managed.

  Sally dumped her things in the wagon and ran back in the house. The other girls were hard on her heels.

  Clay was wearing new clothes. There was no sign of Cliff ’s old clothing anywhere. He swung down off Hector’s back and yanked the front of his new Stetson in an abbreviated tip-of-the-hat to her. “The owners had taken off a few weeks back, owing on the mortgage. No one else has shown any interest in it. I bought it.”

  “With what money?” Sophie asked. “You left here in borrowed clothes with no horse or saddle.”

  “I had my bank in Denver telegraph the one in Mosqueros confirming my draft was good.” Clay headed into the cabin. Sophie followed after him. She was slowed by her girls passing her with the kitchen pots and Laura’s crib. By the time she got inside, Clay was carrying the kitchen table outside. She almost got knocked back down the stairs. She stepped inside, and the girls dashed past her to grab bedding and the kitchen chairs and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. Beth even thought to grab the cooling biscuits. Sophie noticed Mandy pull up the loose floorboard and take out the meager family purse.

  Beth disappeared into the thicket for a minute, and when she came back, she said, “I tore down the snares so’s we won’t catch a rabbit and leave it to starve to death.”

  Clay came back in to the nearly empty little house and grabbed the milk pail with Sophie’s Hector scarf in it. He pulled open the lid and dropped the pail with a gasp of shock.

  He looked wildly around the room. The girls were stripping the last of their things out and running past him.

  “Leave it and get out while you can,” Beth yelled as she dashed past him.

  Clay grabbed Sophie’s arm and dragged her out of the empty cabin.

  Sophie found herself plunked into the back of the wagon. The parson and his wife sat on the bench. Sally sat in front of Clay on Hector, chattering away. Clay had untied the horses from the back of the wagon and put Mandy and Elizabeth each on horseback so they could ride along beside him. Sophie held Laura.

  Sophie heard Clay say to Sally, “What do you mean ‘disguise’?” as they disappeared down the trail.

  The steady rocking of the wagon lulled Laura to sleep almost immediately. Sophie sat quietly so the baby could sleep, even though she was fuming at being moved without being consulted.

  Of course, she’d have gladly moved. She wanted to move! She couldn’t wait to get out of that shack they were living in. But couldn’t Clay have said something? Talked to her like she was a competent, thinking adult instead of just issuing orders?

  They were thirty minutes down the trail when Sophie’s jaw finally unclenched enough that she could say to Parson Roscoe, “Where did you meet up with Clay?”

  The parson chuckled. “Word travels fast around a town the size of Mosqueros. I came out to see Cliff Edwards come back to life, and by then he’d been to the telegraph office, the general store, and the bank to buy his ranch back. I approached him and asked him who he was. He laughed and asked me, ‘Don’t you think I’m Cliff? Everyone else seems to believe he’s back.’ ”

  “I was right beside him,” Mrs. Roscoe said in her peaceful voice. “I said, ‘We saw Cliff Edwards buried, and although we are believers in Jesus Christ and as open to miracles as the next person, we aren’t about to believe God resurrected a man after he was two years dead and buried.’ ”

  “Clay said,” Parson Roscoe continued, “ ‘It does seem like if God’s going to resurrect someone, He’d do it ri
ght away when it’d done some good. By two years later everyone’s gotten used to the idea of him being dead.’ ”

  Mrs. Roscoe reclaimed the story, “So Irving said to him, ‘Are you family?’ He said, ‘Twin brother. I’ve come to see about his death and care for his family.’ ”

  “Then I said,” the parson interjected, “ ‘We heard Cliff didn’t have any family.’ ”

  Mrs. Roscoe added, “Clay said, ‘You heard wrong.’ And since there he stood, big as life and as surely a twin brother as any man could be, we welcomed him to Mosqueros. Then he said you were all moving, which is a good thing and high time. We’ve worried about you something fierce out here, Sophie,” Mrs. Roscoe said severely. “So we offered to help, and he said you’d be moving immediately. He said he’d bought a wagon to haul you and could use a driver.”

  “I see,” Sophie said weakly. It wasn’t that she minded moving. The thought of getting back the lovely home that she’d been forced out of made butterflies soar around in her stomach. But it was a little overwhelming to just be whisked away. Why, it bordered on kidnapping!

  Then Parson Roscoe distracted her from the house. “Now you know I’m a Christian man, and if my time is up and the Lord calls me home, I expect to go praising God’s name. But that doesn’t mean I need to be a reckless fool. Time was, a parson’s collar would protect a man of God from most everybody, but those days are gone. You and Clay will have to say your ‘I do’s’ quick. I don’t want to be on the trail after dark. Those vigilantes were out riding again last night.”

  “I do’s?” Sophie stopped listening or caring about anything, except getting her hands around Clay McClellen’s arrogant neck! There was a roaring in her ears by the time they reached the ranch house.

  Clay was already dismounted and coming out of the barn. Sally skipped along beside him, holding his hand, and Beth stood in the front door of the house wielding a broom. Mandy ran from the corral to take a groggy Laura into her arms. For just a second Sophie forgot her need to beat some sense into her brother-in-law and admired the ranch she and Cliff had built.