The air practically sizzled with the strength and virility of him. Much to her alarm her racing pulse brought a flush to her face. She could not, would not trust him, not for a single moment. No man could be trusted. Not even one as handsome and seemingly kindhearted as Mr. Luke Adams.
The wagon jolted over a rut in the road and her arm inadvertently rubbed against his. Inching as close to the outer edge of the seat as possible, she measured the distance between them and it was still alarmingly close.
As much as possible she kept her gaze straight ahead. The long, narrow road seemed to stretch to the horizon. “Are you sure we won’t run into that horrible man?”
“Cactus Joe? I doubt it. If you ask me the man’s short a hat size or two but he’s harmless. Not like the Texas Kid or the Tucson Kid. Drat, he’s not even like Billy the Kid. Now those are outlaws.”
His assurances did little to calm her nerves. Apparently the only bandits he took seriously were the ones belonging to a society of human goats.
Seemingly oblivious to her anxiety, he whistled softly but she didn’t recognize the tune. He sat tall and straight, his shoulders wide, his hands firm on the reins. From time to time he pointed out various landmarks. He was extremely knowledgeable and described the history of the territory going all the way back to Spanish rule.
He indicated a building with a tall steeple and small cemetery. “That’s the church. We don’t have a regular preacher, but a circuit rider whizzes through every other week or so.”
Homer trotted a short distance ahead, sniffing the ground like a hound trailing a fox.
About a mile or two out of town, Mr. Adams pointed to a small adobe house with a corrugated steel gable roof. “My Aunt Bessie and Uncle Sam live there,” he said with obvious fondness. Homer stopped in front of the house and barked.
“Not now, boy,” he said. “We’ll pop in for a visit on the way back.” For Kate’s benefit he added, “Homer has a fondness for gingersnaps and Aunt Bessie makes the best.”
About a mile farther down the road he tossed a nod toward another house almost identical to the first. “Aunt Lula-Belle and Uncle Murphy live there.”
“How many relatives do you have?” she asked.
“Not many. I have a brother named Michael and another aunt who lives in Tucson. That’s about it. I was born in Texas, but my parents died when I was eleven. My pa was killed in an Indian uprising and my ma died soon after, in childbirth.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kate said.
“I went to live with my aunt and uncle in Houston, but when a second smithy came to town my uncle decided Texas was gettin’ too crowded, so we moved here.”
A smile broke through her guarded countenance.
He grinned back at her. “What’s so funny?”
“I can’t tell you how many blacksmiths are in Boston. At least a dozen or more.”
He grimaced. “Don’t sound like there’s enough room between the hammer and the anvil with that many people.”
She couldn’t imagine Luke Adams on the crowded streets of Boston. He was definitely a man who needed wide-open spaces.
“What do residents do here?” she asked. Boston with its libraries, museums, and theaters offered a rich cultural life she thoroughly enjoyed.
He gave her a cockeyed look. “What do we do?”
“For entertainment?” she said to clarify.
“There’re more than a dozen saloons in town. I reckon that’s about as entertainin’ as it gets around here.”
At first she thought he was joking, but he looked perfectly serious. She bit her lip and said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
He glanced at her. “I prefer it out here in the desert.”
“There’s nothing out here.”
“It’ll grow on you.” After a while he said, “In the Bible God used the desert to test men.”
She fanned herself furiously with her hand. “Is that what he’s doing now? Testing us?”
“Could be.” He clicked his tongue and his horse picked up speed. “Could be.”
He stopped from time to time to offer the dog a drink. He also insisted Kate drink from his canteen, wiping the top with a clean bandanna before handing it to her.
They drove through what seemed like miles of high desert, ringed by steep-cliff mesas and littered with angry black rocks pitted with holes.
“Volcanic rock,” he explained.
The rocks looked as inhospitable as the rest of the land, and she shuddered. “Everything looks so dry.”
“We don’t get a lot of rain out here,” he said. “About ten, twelve inches a year if we’re lucky. June and July are our rainy months.”
Boston got at least four times that much rain. “Anyone saving for a rainy day around here could probably get rich.”
“He’d be more likely to be robbed,” he said.
She blew out her breath. Never had she met anyone with a more casual regard for crime. “How much longer?” she asked. She didn’t mean to sound impatient or ungrateful, but the air was still warm and her body ached with weariness. The drive seemed interminable.
He guided the buckboard through a wire gap fence. “Here she is,” he announced as one might introduce royalty. “The Last Chance Ranch. You won’t find a better ranch in all of Cochise County.”
She hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not this. A tumbleweed rested against a rock, but no sign. Just a barbed wire fence and more arid, flat desert dotted with rocks black as coal. The gate leading to the ranch was so different from anything she’d imagined, she would have laughed out loud had she had the energy.
“How ostentatious,” she said in jest.
He glanced at her and frowned. Obviously, the man lacked a sense of humor. What a pity.
“Do you know the owner?” she asked, anxious to fill in the sudden awkward silence.
“Miss Walker?” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I reckon everyone knows her,” he said. “At least well enough to stay out of her way.”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Are you implying the woman is difficult?”
“I’m not implyin’ anything, ma’am. I’m statin’ it as fact. She’s more like a runaway locomotive coming straight at you.”
The picture he drew in her mind only added to her anxiety. It worried her that he used such strong words for the lady ranch owner, but described Cactus Joe as a mere nuisance. Could Miss Walker really be that bad?
In an effort to calm her nerves she rearranged her hat, wiggling the hatpin in place, and straightened her travel suit jacket. Her shirtwaist was now dry, but her skirt was wrinkled and covered in dust and smudged with train cinders. She neither looked nor felt her best.
She craned her neck looking for a ranch house or something—anything. Nothing stirred. Even the muted horse hooves and rattling buckboard failed to disturb the stark panorama that stretched all the way to the mountains.
She had taken him at his word when he said they had reached the ranch. So where was it? Maybe once she sighted civilization—if there was such a thing out here—the butterflies in her stomach would settle down.
“I thought you said this was the Last Chance.”
“It is, ma’am, acres of deeded property surrounded by thousands of acres of free range. The ranch house is just a mile or so up the road.”
“A mile?”
He glanced at her. “The entire area covers around two hundred and fifty square miles.”
She stared at him, openmouthed. “That much?” Westerners sure did think a lot bigger than their eastern counterparts.
She already doubted the wisdom of coming to Cactus Patch, and the size of the ranch only added to her apprehension. Had she not been so hot and exhausted she would have been tempted to ask Mr. Adams to turn the wagon around and drive back to town and . . . go where? As forbidding and inhospitable as this land was, she had no desire to return to Boston and the terrible memories left behind.
She shook her thoughts away. “So where are t
he cattle?”
He pointed to the right. “Over there.”
Shading her eyes against the midafternoon sun, she followed his pointing finger. The air shimmered with heat and the landscape was blurred. At first she didn’t see anything but saguaro cacti rising from the desert floor. Some of the cacti stood twenty feet high, arms branching out from a rounded pole—a strange plant, indeed.
Finally she spotted little black dots of grazing cattle next to a body of water. She hadn’t expected to see a lake in the middle of the desert and the sight offered a measure of comfort, however tenuous.
Spying the cattle too, Homer barked as if in greeting and raced ahead of the wagon.
“What I would give to dive into that lake,” she said, fanning herself with her hand.
He grinned at her. “I wouldn’t advise it, ma’am. That’s a mirage. All that’s out there is sand, rattlers, and burro grass.”
She blinked. “It certainly looks real.”
“The desert is deceivin’.” He glanced at her. “You just never know what you’re gonna find.”
“What about that up ahead? Is that a mirage too?” She pointed to a carpet of green that offered a pleasing contrast to the miles of arid land they’d passed.
“Nope, that’s real. Two hundred acres of alfalfa and red-top clover. Up ahead is the ranch house.” He clicked his tongue and flapped the reins, and his horse picked up speed.
At the first building they reached, he brought the wagon to a stop and set the brake. Jumping from his seat he hurried to Kate’s side. Hands around her waist, he lifted her to the ground as if she were weightless.
His horse drank from the water trough next to the largest windmill Kate had ever seen. The sucker rods made a swishing noise as they rose and fell in the well casing. The metal teeth of the gears scraped and grated as the windmill drew water from the depths of the earth.
Homer stuck his long nose in the trough and drank with loud lapping sounds. Mr. Adams filled his canteen directly from the wooden tank that no animal could reach and handed it to her. Next to the hot air, the water tasted cool and sweet.
“Miss Tenney, I want you to meet your new friend, Adam,” he said, introducing her to the windmill.
She tilted her head back to look up. “I didn’t know windmills had names.”
“There’re more than fifty windmills on this here property and they all have names. If one gets into trouble you just yell out its name and everyone knows where to go. This here was the first windmill on the ranch.”
“Is Adam named after your family?” she asked.
He laughed. “Nope, the first man in the Bible gets that honor. We had nothin’ to do with it.”
“It’s huge.” At least twenty feet wide, it was much larger than any windmill in Boston.
He nodded. “It has to be. It’s pullin’ water from hundreds of feet down. We don’t get much rain so we have to depend on wind for water.”
“I always liked Longfellow’s ‘Windmill.’ I can’t remember the words exactly, but he wrote that the windmill faced the wind as bravely as a man meets his foe.”
“Never heard of a Longfellow windmill. Most of the ones around here were made by the Wolcott Union Windmill Company.”
“Oh, but Longfellow’s not a . . . a very well-known company.”
“Probably why I never heard of it.”
“Yes . . . well.” She raised her voice. “I’m pleased to meet you, Adam.”
In response, the spinning sails turned toward the wind with a creaking sound. Homer, wanting to play, barked and wagged his fluffy tail.
“Come on, we’re almost at the ranch house,” Mr. Adams said.
She stopped to run her hand along his horse’s slick neck. It was a reddish horse with white markings. “What’s his name?” she asked.
“Bacon.”
She smiled. “I wrote an essay on Bacon in college.”
“Seems like a strange subject to write about,” he said.
“A strange . . . oh.” She blushed. “I was referring to Sir Francis Bacon, the English philosopher.”
His mouth quirked but only briefly. “Named him Bacon because that’s what he looks like.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Do you easterners name animals after philosophers?”
“Not always,” she said, and because she wanted to return to their earlier rapport added, “Neither do we name our animals after breakfast fare.”
His serious expression disappeared, but the smile she hoped for failed to materialize. “Come on, we better get you to the ranch house.”
He walked by her without another word and climbed into the driver’s seat. Had she offended him or had she only imagined his sudden curt manner? She watched him warily as she took her seat by his side.
Not that his abrupt change of mood surprised her. Men were unpredictable. It was part of their nature. One moment they could seem all friendly and kind, and the next . . . She shuddered and pushed the thought away but remained circumspect. If she’d learned nothing else in her twenty-nine years, it was never to let down her guard where men were concerned.
From early childhood people had drifted out of her life, never to return. Her father walked out on her and Mama when she was only five, but others had deserted her as well, including her grandfather, who had disapproved of her mother’s fondness for alcohol and men. For that reason Kate had conditioned herself not to get too close to anyone, so she’d never had many friends.
Protecting herself had come with a price, of course, requiring her to trade hurt for loneliness, but it was the best she could do. Between the harsh desert land and the uncertainties that lay ahead she welcomed the blacksmith’s acquaintance, however tenuous.
After passing a horse corral, large barn, bunkhouse, and various outbuildings, Mr. Adams pulled up in front of a two-story U-shaped adobe ranch house with a low-hip tile roof. The covered porch was supported by wooden columns and ran the length of the house. It provided the only shade Kate had seen since arriving in town, a pleasing sight.
A brick courtyard was hugged on three sides by the house and protected in front by a low adobe wall. An ornate metal gate stood open and looked surprisingly inviting.
Mr. Adams helped her down from the wagon, his work-hardened hands strangely comforting around her small waist. Nonetheless, she moved away the moment her feet touched ground and stared at the ranch house. It was larger than she’d imagined, larger even than the grand houses in Boston’s south end, and perfectly maintained.
She brushed off her skirt, threw back her shoulders, and swallowed hard to brace herself. She hadn’t come all this way to let a few quivering nerves get the best of her.
Mr. Adams leaned against the wagon with folded arms. “I can take you back to town now, ma’am. It would save you from havin’ to hitch a ride back tomorrow or the next day.”
It took her a moment to understand his meaning. “Are you saying that I’m not going to make it here?”
“None of the others have. The longest anyone stayed was a week, but that woman was a workhorse.”
Irritated that he so easily assumed she’d fail without knowing anything about her, she tossed back her head. He wasn’t the first man to underestimate her, but if she had anything to say about it, he would be the last.
“I won’t be needing a ride back to town, but thank you for your concern.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself, ma’am.” He nodded his head toward the back of the wagon. “I’ll bring in your trunk.”
Something in his voice reminded her that he had been obliged to pick her intimate garments off the street. Blushing, she turned quickly to hide her face and walked to the open gate.
Knowing he watched, she moved with quick, confident steps that belied her shaking knees, tightly clenched stomach, and dry mouth. Reaching the oversized carved wood door, she tugged on the bellpull with damp hands and glanced back. He stood where she left him, doubt written all over his handsome square face. Gritting her teeth, she gave the bellpull another tug.
From deep inside came the sound of chimes, and after a short wait, a Mexican girl flung open the door.
“I’m Kate Tenney,” Kate said by way of introduction. “Miss Walker is expecting me.”
“My name Rosita,” the girl replied in halting English. Kate guessed that she was probably in her late teens. She wore a gray dress and white apron, her black hair tucked beneath a white ruffled cap. “Miz Walker back soon. Hurry, hurry.” She motioned Kate inside and slammed the door shut.
“Flies,” she explained.
“Oh.” Relieved at not having to face the ranch owner immediately, Kate glanced around the large entry hall, which was as cool as it was dim. Adobe brick walls, partly covered by a colorful Indian rug, rose from a red tile floor. The house smelled of furniture polish, old wood, brass, and just a hint of freshly baked bread. The bread reminded Kate that she hadn’t had a bite to eat since breakfast, and her stomach growled.
A sweeping staircase led to the second floor, and Rosita was halfway up before Kate realized she was expected to follow.
Upon reaching the second-floor landing she couldn’t resist glancing over the polished wood banister to the huge foyer below. Mr. Adams had not yet brought in her trunk. Was he really so certain that she wouldn’t last? That she would quit before she’d even begun?
Something—a movement, perhaps a shadow—made her lean forward for a better look, but all remained still. Whoever it was had quickly stepped out of sight. No doubt a curious resident or employee.
Rosita led her down a long narrow hall past a small room with a toilet but no tub.
She opened a door toward the end of the hall and motioned Kate inside. The room was light and airy and surprisingly cool. A four-poster bed piled high with pillows and spread with a colorful quilt promised a good night’s sleep, the first since leaving Boston. A mahogany lift-top desk stood in a corner next to a tall wardrobe. An oak washstand containing a porcelain basin and water pitcher was centered on the wall opposite the bed, next to a freestanding gilded mirror. The town, ranch, and surrounding area fell far short of her expectations, but the room was everything she could hope for and more.
Dawn Comes Early Page 3
