Petticoat Ranch

by Mary Connealy

  Mandy took the towel out of Sophie’s idle hands. “I’ll finish the dishes. You’d best get on with it.”

  Sophie smiled at her girls and left the room. She knelt humbly by her bed and prayed for a new attitude toward life. A new ability to love. She began, “Oh, dear Lord, help me. . . .”

  Luther groaned and tossed out the last swallows of his coffee. His muscles ached, and his backside was saddle sore, and he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since that woman had started hounding him.

  Buff didn’t say a word. He got up and started saddling the horses. He didn’t need to ask; he knew what was eating Luther.

  “The boy has got himself tied up with a naggin’ woman.”

  “Is there any other kind?” Buff asked.

  Luther shrugged. “Don’t rightly know nothin’ about the strange little critters.”

  They made tracks down the trail for Texas.

  Adam pulled at the last of the disgusting, unripened juniper berries as quickly as he could and swallowed them. He’d gotten through the day without opening up his bullet wound. If he could drink a lot of water, maybe get lucky with a rabbit snare or find a creek with some fish, and get a good night’s sleep, then he could regain enough strength to start pushing hard for Mosqueros tomorrow. But all of that was driven out of his mind the instant he heard her. His Sophie. Calling to God for help, and God giving the great honor of sending that message on to Adam.

  Adam knelt by the spring that gushed out around the roots of the evergreen shrub and drank his fill. Then he got to his feet, careful not to put any stress on the skin around his wound. He started toward Sophie. He didn’t need a good meal and a long sleep. He only had to find the strength for each step. God would have to provide that.

  E L E V E N

  I love owning a ranch.” Clay leaned forward to rest his forearms on the saddle horn.

  Whitey sat his horse alongside Clay’s as they watched the newest batch of a dozen mavericks gambol down the hill to join the herd. “I’ve been with enough operations to know which ones are well run. You’ve picked up most of the ways of ranching along the trail, and it’s already starting to show.”

  Clay sighed with pure contentment. Having Whitey’s respect meant a lot to him. There was nothing about cattle and ranch land the old codger didn’t know. “I’ve been wondering though, this ranch—there’s a kind of weird quality to it. Maybe it’s just the Mead brothers’ working over what my brother did and nothing matches, but it seems like more than that.”

  “I know what you mean.” Whitey studied the ranch laid out below them. “This ranch was selected by a knowin’ man. This has to be one of the few really good stretches of lush grazing on this plateau. Your brother really had an eye for land when he picked it.”

  Clay pointed to the house, barn, and corral so far below. “And they’re laid out so the northern winter wind is blocked but the summer breeze comes through. And the buildings are well built, sturdy, and nice to the eye. And the springs have been dammed in exactly the best spots and spread out to water more acres. Still, there’s something. . .”

  Clay’s respect for his brother grew daily. But under that respect was a tinge of jealousy. All the girls spoke of their father as if he was the nicest, strongest, smartest man who ever lived. It was demonstrated to him almost daily that he would never take his brother’s place. That might be why he noticed every little flaw he found around the place.

  “I don’t think it’s the Meads who did the shoddy patchwork or who added the lean-to on the barn,” Whitey said as he stared down at the ranch yard. “They only came here two years ago, and the poor work looks older than that. And I see a different hand in some of the newer repairs.”

  Clay had had the same thought himself. “Did someone live here between Cliff and the Meads?”

  Whitey shrugged. “I’m new around these parts. I didn’t even know the Mead brothers.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Clay smiled. “It’s just that it’s mine, and I want to know everything about it. I’ll need to fix the place up.”

  Whitey grunted his agreement. “First things first, though. Gotta get those cattle rounded up and branded.”

  Clay sat a few minutes longer and stared at his home. He saw Sally dash out of the house so far below and run to the barn. Clay couldn’t hold back a smile. Yes, he loved everything about owning a ranch.

  By the end of two weeks of ranching, he had some steady cowpokes on the place. He knew these men. He didn’t know them personally, but he knew their type. They were men of few words. Men who worked from sunrise to sundown. Men who knew the job and didn’t need to be given orders but who knew how to take orders.

  He’d grown up around men just like this, and he felt comfortable with them. He had to fight the inclination to stay out on the range with the men till all hours, so he wouldn’t have to go into the house and get giggled at, or worse yet cried on.

  Then he’d get lonely for his girls and the sweet kisses he’d sometimes steal from Sophie, and he’d find himself practically running for the house. He loved his nieces—daughters, he corrected himself. He’d sort of expected to do that. But he hadn’t expected Sophie.

  A quiet woman most of the time, she worked hard, was a stern disciplinarian with the girls, but quick with a laugh and ready with a comforting word. She was always turning her hand to something he would have thought was man’s work.

  He shook his head. “Time to quit thinking and start working.”

  He and Whitey rode out to hunt strays. He stayed out until the sun was setting.

  As he unsaddled his horse, he looked between the uncomplicated friendship of the men in the bunkhouse and the “nuthouse” he couldn’t resist. He couldn’t decide where to go. While he considered what kind of coward that made him, Clay loitered around the corral, trying to work up the gumption to go into the house. Pounding came from the back of the barn, and he walked around to see what was going on.

  Sophie knelt, holding a sagging board in place on the shabby little lean-to tacked on to the otherwise tightly constructed barn. Clay intended to tear the little room off and start from scratch. Now here Sophie was patching it, and it sparked his temper. She treated him like he didn’t take care of her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Sophie jumped at his harsh tone and whacked her thumb. “Ow!” She grabbed her finger and looked at it for a minute, then stuffed the tip into her mouth and glared at him.

  Clay forgot his temper and chuckled at the sight.

  “There is nothing funny about me smashing myself with a hammer!” she growled around her thumb.

  “You look like Laura sucking her thumb. It’s cute.” Clay smiled at his wife. Her hair was bedraggled. She had on her stained work dress. She was wearing boots five sizes too big for her, and she was wildly irritated. He thought about how pretty she was and wondered if he could tease a kiss out of her.

  “Cute?” Sophie withdrew her thumb, scowled, and bent over to go back to work on the board.

  Clay remembered why he’d hollered at her to begin with. His amusement faded. “I’ll do that. You wouldn’t have hurt your thumb if you’d been doing the work God intends for a woman to do. Get back in the house!”

  He strode over to where she crouched beside the board and jerked it out of her hands. At the same time he noticed that she was half finished, and the job was well done. It reminded him of. . .

  Sophie yanked the board back. Distracted, he lost his balance and fell over on top of her. They tumbled to the ground.

  A bullet ripped a hole in the barn just over their heads.

  Clay grabbed Sophie, kicked the new boards—and a couple of old ones—out of the lean-to, and literally threw her through the hole. Gunfire exploded all around them, and Clay rolled well into the barn. Keeping low, he dragged Sophie toward a stall. Splinters of wood shredded the barn under the hail of bullets.

  Sophie got her feet under her.

  “Stay down,” Clay roared.

  Sophie
cried out and fell flat on her back. Clay looked at her, and from the way she was squirming around to get behind the stall, he figured she was all right. The pounding gunfire eased up. Return fire erupted from the bunkhouse. That turned his attention from surviving to finding out what was going on. He edged himself around the corner of the stall and scrambled to the back wall of the barn.

  He heard the barn door slam and turned to face an assault. All he saw was Sophie gone. Outside! Maybe right into the teeth of more rifles! Running scared, the fool woman. She should have trusted him to do repairs around the ranch, and she should have trusted him to protect her.

  The girls trusted her to protect them.

  They might come outside when they heard the commotion. They knew right where Sophie was working, and they might come running straight for her. But no, her girls wouldn’t come. They’d know just what to do. Just as they’d know she’d come.

  She dashed for the house, grateful that the barn was in a direct line between where she was heading and where the bullets were flying. She did the little quickstep that avoided the traps on the porch and slammed her way into the house. Mandy tossed her a loaded rifle. Then Mandy pulled the shotgun off the rack and commenced loading it.

  “Where are the others?” Sophie dropped to her belly, double-checked the load, and skittered along on her elbows to the front window. Mandy didn’t need to answer. Sophie knew where they were. Her girls were Texans after all.

  Still, Mandy responded, “The crawl space under the house. Beth and I went down with ’em right off. I watched from the crack under the porch, and when I saw you coming, I came up and started loading.”

  “Good girl. Did you pull out the support boards on both sides?”

  “Yep.” Mandy crawled close and laid another rifle next to Sophie. “First thing after the little ’uns were safe. The front and back porches will collapse if anyone tries to step on ’em. I haven’t closed the front window shutters yet.”

  Sophie listened and heard that the gunfire was still focused on the barn. She hoped Clay was all right. Cautiously, she inched up to the glass windows and pulled the heavy, wooden shutters closed.

  “I got the ones in the back and on the sides. There was no gunfire from that direction.” Mandy jacked a shell into the shotgun and then loaded the second barrel. Matter-of-factly she added, “I knew you wouldn’t want me going close to the front. Although the gunfire seems to be aimed at the far side’a the barn.”

  Sophie took the shotgun when Mandy was finished with it and added it to their arsenal. She looked out the narrow slit in the shutters, just wide enough for a gun barrel, ready now to pinpoint the exact location of the assault. She heard shots from the little grove of trees that the boar had come charging out of and studied the situation in her mind. She was listening to at least five different guns booming from up there. She heard return fire from the barn, which meant Clay was faring well, and there was plenty of noise from the bunkhouse.

  Sophie waited with bated breath, never taking her eyes off the landscape. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Mandy looking out the gun portal of one side window. Then Mandy crossed the room in a crouching run and looked out the other side.

  As Mandy lowered herself to the floor, she looked sideways at Sophie, and a furrow appeared on her very young brow. “You’re bleeding, Ma.”

  Sophie saw that the left sleeve of her dress was soaked in blood. She reached for the little hole that marked the highest point of the bleeding—about halfway between her elbow and her shoulder—and tore the hole a bit wider. She studied it for a long second. “It’s just a scratch. He must have clipped me in the barn. Humph. This dress had another year left in it. Now it’s ruined.”

  She went ahead and tore the sleeve all the way off and fashioned a bandage around her freely bleeding arm. Mandy came over and helped her tie it tight, then went back to checking both windows.

  Beth popped her head up through the trap door Mandy had covered with a rug. “Need any help, Ma? Sally’s got Laura safe. I could go out through the tunnel to the cave and scout around.”

  Sophie knew Elizabeth could move as quick and quiet as an Indian, when she chose. It made Sophie’s stomach lurch to think of Beth out in those dangerous woods, but if it had come to life and death, Sophie would have sent her.

  Help me, Lord. Help me, help me, help me.

  The gunfire from the grove fell silent. Sporadic shooting continued a few more minutes from the bunkhouse and barn, then quit. Beth wouldn’t have to go. Thank You, Lord.

  “It seems to be over,” Sophie said. “Replace those braces in the porch so we don’t catch one of our own menfolk in our trap.”

  Beth grinned and ducked out of sight. Her head reappeared a second later. “Your arm’s bleedin’, Ma. Are you okay?”

  Sophie waved the concern away. “Just nicked me. I didn’t even notice it till I had things secure in here.”

  “Good. I’ll have a look at it later.” Beth vanished back into the floor, and the rug dropped neatly in place.

  Sophie heard the sound of running horses from a distance and knew that whoever was shooting at them was riding off. Men came pouring out of the bunkhouse and fired a few shots at the retreating gunmen, but the riders never showed themselves, leaving the grove and riding into the heavy woods.

  Clay came charging out of the barn. “Whitey, get some men and make sure they keep moving! Don’t try and run ’em down, though. They’re pure coyote to shoot from cover thatta way, and they might do it again. Just lag back, and see what you can learn from readin’ their tracks.”

  Sophie opened the front door. She heard the posts that supported the crosscut boards in the front porch being wedged back into place and noticed that Whitey, as well as the rest of the cowhands, had headed for the corral before Clay had begun giving orders.

  Clay looked at the house furiously, and his eyes zeroed in on her arm. Sophie sighed. She knew what was coming. It was going to be just like repairing the barn. Apparently staying alive wasn’t woman’s work either.

  Judd sat his horse and worked the action of his carbine. The sound eased his fury a bit.

  So they’d missed today. There was always tomorrow. He’d ridden up to scout the McClellen place, thinkin’ to go charging in and drop a necktie on McClellen, like he had Edwards. This time Judd would step right in and buy the land.

  He’d have to deal with Clay’s wife, too. Judd hadn’t thought of it at first, but now he remembered that Sophie Edwards had seen the men that took her first husband. Judd had worried about it at the time, because she’d raised such a ruckus. But then he heard she’d quit the country, and he’d forgotten all about her. There were others who had seen him, in the early days of his night riding, before he’d gotten smart and started seeing to it that there weren’t any witnesses.

  It didn’t sit well with him to kill a beautiful woman, but Judd knew it had to be done. McClellen first, then the woman. It needed to look like an accident when he did her in. Or maybe he could stage something that looked like an Indian attack. There hadn’t been any in these parts for a while, but there could always be just one more.

  One way or another, Sophie Edwards McClellen had to die.

  He’d come today thinking to take care of McClellen. He’d figured the hands wouldn’t be much trouble. They’d all be drifters who wouldn’t measure up any better than Cliff Edwards had. Since Edwards had been a weakling, it followed that his twin brother was one, too. And the next step in reasoning told him a man wouldn’t want cowpokes around him that showed him up. But McClellen had hired himself a salty bunch. And plenty of ’em, all armed.

  Studying the layout, Judd had seen a chance to take McClellen out from cover.

  With a quirk of humor, Judd thought of the look on Harley’s face when he’d been ordered to back-shoot McClellen. Harley hadn’t like it one bit. Judd had enjoyed making his saddle partner do as he was told.

  And then that no-account Harley had missed! McClellen must be a lucky one to have stumbled
forward at the exact moment Harley had fired. The missed shot gave McClellen the warning he needed. He’d taken cover until Judd had called off the attack.

  Judd rode off in a fine fury, but his calculating mind told him anything he wanted this bad wouldn’t come easy. He’d regroup and pick his time more carefully.

  He pulled Harley aside as they strung out over the rugged trail that led over the bluff behind the McClellen ranch. “Harley, I need someone watching this place.”

  “I’ll do it.” Harley studied his back trail.

  “No, I need you with me. Pick whoever’s best at ghostin’ around. I want to know McClellen’s routine. I want to catch him when he doesn’t have his guard dogs so close to hand.”

  Harley nodded. “Percy is the best, and Jesse’s good. There are a couple of others who’ll do.”

  “Get ’em started,” Judd ordered.

  The two of them moved out. Judd couldn’t remember the last time they’d had to hightail it. It was a bad omen. Harley fell in behind him, and they picked up the pace to leave the C BAR far behind.

  “Sophie,” Clay growled as he strode toward her. “You are the most ridiculous. . .”

  Her husband was a man of few words. This wouldn’t last long. But he surprised her. He kept up his lecturing the whole time he bandaged her arm.

  Beth edged up next to him. “Let me do it, Pa. I’ve done a sight of doctorin’ alongside Ma.”

  “I’ll do it,” Clay grumped at the little girl.

  Beth’s eyes got round and filled with tears.

  Clay hunched his shoulders like he was taking a beating. “Now don’t start in crying. I have some experience with this from the war, and I want to see to it.”

  The tears spilled onto Beth’s face. “I’m sorry, Pa.”

  Clay sighed deeply, but Sophie noticed he didn’t run, which was his usual approach to the girls’ tears. He turned back to the wound on Sophie’s arm and started fooling with it. Sophie wished for Beth’s gentle touch, but she didn’t tell him that.