A Change of Scenery, page 17
Helen’s expression remained neutral, at least as much as could be seen above her coffee cup. She nodded slowly, inviting Ella to fill the silence with the rest of the story.
“He brought my satchel. I forgot it the other day when we left after Mabel’s rescue scene on the runaway horse.” The image of Mabel throwing herself at Cale still burned. She held her coffee in both hands and flicked a look at Helen, whose casual posture belied her eagle-eyed attentiveness.
“Before he returned it to me, we had sodas at Palace Drug and then stopped by the candy store so he could buy peppermints for the boys.”
Helen’s eyes brightened. “And bon-bons. My, but it’s been too long since I enjoyed such a wasteful pleasure. My Ben used to treat me to them on occasion, God bless him.”
Perhaps it was Helen’s familiarity with love lost that encouraged Ella to share her sorrows. An affinity between them. A common ground.
She held the cup close to her lips to catch the words. “He bought some for me too.”
Helen nodded. “I thought so. He had more than his hair trimmed that morning. Something pained him deeply, based on the way he resembled his brother when he walked in the door, cut close to the quick.”
“He always resembles his brother.” The words spilled out before she could stop them, sharp and not at all what she intended. Guilt stabbed again, puncturing her breath. She knew what Helen meant, but bolstered herself with another swallow of unsweetened coffee. “Our conversation worked around to my . . . my weakness. My tendency to limp.”
“Does he know about the accident?” So matter-of-fact and unpretentious.
Ella stared into her half-full cup, looking for a reasonable answer.
“Why haven’t you told him?”
“Why would he care?”
A low chuckle raised Ella’s head.
A smile teased the woman’s soft wrinkles.
“My dear, he cares a great deal for you.”
Ella’s pulse jumped to her neck, and the earlier headache sharpened to a pinpoint. “But I don’t belong here. I’m leaving soon, and I’m . . . I’m so much less than he needs or wants.”
Helen set her cup on the table with purpose, and her kind eyes pressed into Ella like salve on an open wound. “Less than? Less than what, dear? Intelligent? Attractive? Accomplished? Generous?”
Ella’s stomach turned upside down and threatened to bend her in half. She wasn’t any of those things, and she’d certainly been anything but generous with Cale that day after his insulting remark.
She met Helen’s gray gaze and took a chance. “He said he wouldn’t put me down if I were a horse.”
The older woman clapped her hand over her mouth and guffawed in a most unladylike fashion. Her hilarity infected Ella in spite of her embarrassment, and she allowed a small laugh.
Helen fanned herself with her apron hem, then dabbed her forehead. “You’re just not accustomed to the way our menfolk around here talk. Honey, Cale paid you a fine compliment.”
Ella sniffed and smoothed her tea-green skirt. Compliment, indeed.
“Less than, as you put it, to a rancher is cause to put an animal out of its misery, particularly one that is unable to pull its weight or get around without pain.” A quiet chuckle slipped out. “Mercy me, I’ll admit he could have said it a bit gentler, but in his rough-edged, cowboy way, he was telling you that he values you.”
Shame prickled Ella’s brow, and she set down her coffee. Valued her? Highly unlikely now. “I’m afraid I made a mess of things.” She unfastened the top button of her jacket, suddenly wishing for a cool breeze to waft through the oven-warmed kitchen.
“It all started when I put words in his mouth. Words that are Mabel’s, not his.” She turned the cup in circles on the table.
“What words might those be, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Oh, she minded, but refusing was pointless. “Actually, just one word.” She flicked a glance at her hostess. “Cripple.” Even now, here in the safety of the cozy kitchen, the word cut deeply. “I accused him of thinking of me as a cripple. That’s when he said what he did.”
No laughter followed her confession, but neither did judgment. Helen reached across the circular patchwork of pies, freed the coffee cup, and wrapped her work-worn hand around Ella’s with a soothing squeeze. “We all have a wound that makes us limp, dear. Some more than others, like Hugh who is crippled in spirit. That’s a much more difficult injury to deal with than a hitch in your gait.”
Something shifted inside. Helen’s words seeped through the woman’s fingers and into Ella’s core, dissipating a heavy shadow that had lingered there for the past year and a half. A thin and gauzy hope settled in its place.
Helen pushed to her feet and took her cup to the sink. “I dare say, Cale doesn’t see you as less than anything at all. Why, you’ve filled him up in a way no one ever has. As if you’re an answer to half my prayers.”
She sniffed and pressed her eyes, then busied herself at the sink for a moment.
Ella wondered what the other half of her prayers concerned and decided they had to be for the boys or Hugh.
Helen dried her hands on her apron and turned to face Ella. “If you don’t have your mind set on going back to Chicago with the movie people so soon, it’d sure be nice to have you around for a spell. I know I could keep you busy with sewing projects and pie-baking and putting up preserves.” Her face brightened as she voiced her ideas.
“Give it some thought. You could stay here at the ranch for a while. And we could see what develops.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She’d floated out of the third car like a spring leaf from a cottonwood tree, carrying her satchel and wearing those black strapped shoes she wore in town. Cale had clamped his jaw and tried not to stare. As successful a venture as shooting the marauder last night, though he’d nicked it.
Daylight had revealed a scant blood trail among other things.
He fingered a red-rimmed circle in his vest pocket, one he’d found near the corrals this morning when he and Hugh were taking down the tin-can wire. Whether it was dropped last night or earlier didn’t matter. It cemented his hunch about a double-prong attack.
Not too many bears he knew of carried poker chips from a gambling parlor on Cripple Creek’s Bennett Avenue.
He reined Doc toward the corral as Barr’s cowboys mounted up and gathered around.
“You’re loaded for bear.” Barr jutted his chin at Cale’s Winchester ’95, sure to bring down what he aimed at if it wasn’t the middle of the night and dark as the inside of his boot.
“If necessary.”
The powder-faced actor moved in closer and lowered his voice. “You boys weren’t packing last time. You expecting trouble?”
Just what Cale needed—a word-of-mouth wildfire lit by a moving-picture crew. He tugged his hat down. “Can’t hurt to be ready.”
The only person he wanted to talk to was Ella Canaday, and she’d made it clear as day that she didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t even wear her riding skirt and scurried into the house as if the rogue bear was after her instead of his calves.
Hugh took the lead toward the branding area they’d staged away from the house at the lower holding pens, and the men—Mabel included—followed. Cale rode drag with Tug, eyes on the scrub oak and thickets around them. If they were lucky, last night’s episode had scared the creature off for a while.
Smoke fingered into the morning sky from Hugh’s branding fire, an ancient signal denoting a gathering place. Two steers and eight cow-calf pairs huddled in the opposite corner. Hugh lifted the irons he’d laid in the fire earlier, and the double H’s with an inverted V above them glowed hot and orange.
Cale untethered his rope, built a loop, and snagged a little bull calf. Barr was paying attention and caught its back feet. Mama wasn’t too happy about it, but a couple of other cowboys cut her off and forced her out through the gate.
A half dozen people lined the fence, and three more crowded the pen on horseback. Mabel perched on the top pole, paying little attention to what was going on. Pete set his camera up in the far corner, the sun at his back. Thorson pushed his hat up, raised his arm, and hollered, “Roll film!”
By noon, all ten head were branded without incident, and Thorson had several minutes’ worth of struggling calves, smoking hides, and Jed Barr’s mug in the mix. He wasn’t half bad, Cale grudgingly admitted to himself. Seemed to know his way around a rope and iron.
Surprised that everything went as smoothly as it did, he let the last calf out to find its mother and circled the bawling animals clustered at the near end of the meadow. Nothing like announcing fresh meat on the hoof to whatever lurked out in the cedars, be it man or beast. Tug trotted beside him, ears up but unalarmed. The dog was so old, Cale couldn’t count on its nose or ears for anything at a distance. Maybe it was time to get a pup.
Leaning on his saddle horn, he waited for the others to mount and head back. Hugh stomped out the fire and cooled the irons in the small creek nearby, sending a hissing through the air that made a couple of fellas take quick notice. Cale approved of their alarm. It paid to pay attention in snake country.
By the time he made it back to the house, most everyone was scattered under the big pine, eating their way through boxed lunches and Helen’s pies. Jay, Ty, and Kip manned the table, sneaking a skinny sliver when they thought no one was looking. Mabel shared a crate with some unfortunate dude, but Ella wasn’t in the bunch.
He decided he didn’t care.
At the corral he looped Doc’s reins around the hitching rail and loosened his cinch a notch. What Ella Canaday did was no concern of his. Nor was where she ate or how she was getting on after that fiasco yesterday in town. He slapped his hat on his chaps so hard, Tug skittered away, tail tucked between his legs.
Dadblastit. “Come here, boy.” He bent down and rubbed the old dog’s scruff. “You’ve done nothin’ wrong, fella. Go on and see if you can mooch a piece of meat off one of those city slickers.”
The mottled dog took off as if he understood English. Probably did.
Cale screwed his hat down, blocking his view of anyone trying to catch his eye as he strode to the back porch and the wash tub. With absolutely no intention of looking through the kitchen window to see if Ella was inside.
He hung his hat on a peg, kept his head down, and rolled his sleeves up. Cold water had a way of clearing a fella’s brain, especially when splashed in his face over and over again. Eyes closed, he braced his hands on the edge of the tub for a minute, then reached for the towel. Log wall met his fingers, and he jabbed a splinter beneath a nail. Dadbla—
“Looking for this?”
His eyes popped open to the towel dangling from the fingers of one Miss Ella Canaday. Everything he could, should, or ought to say stampeded through his mind, but not one single word lined up proper behind another. He took the towel, pulled out the splinter, then wiped his neck and jaw.
Two words clicked into place. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“When did you—”
“Just now. I held the screen quiet.”
He rubbed the towel over his head. He was worse off than he thought if she could walk right out on the porch without him hearing her.
“I wanted to apologize.” Not a meek bone in her body, she stood there squared up and rifle straight. But her eyes were soft around the edges.
He raked his hair back. “All right.” A born conversationalist, he was.
Her shoulders relaxed, and her mouth pulled in a straight line. Not exactly a smile. But not daggers like she’d shot at him the day before.
“I saved a piece of pie for you inside.”
His nose dragged his eyes to the screen door, where he detected leftovers from Helen’s early morning baking. “Thank you.”
He followed her inside to a cup of coffee and a quarter pie at the end of the small table. Ella claimed a cup from the counter and stood off to one side. Helen was elsewhere.
He wasn’t about to sit and eat alone with Ella watching him like a heifer at an auction. He pulled out the near chair and indicated the other one at the opposite end. “You havin’ any?” If the Good Lord required a speech for passage through the pearly gates, he’d sure enough be left outside with the bankers, bandits, and other varmints.
“Here.” He forked his pie in half and scooted the plate toward her.
Her gaze flitted between him and the offering.
It wasn’t that hard of a decision—yes or no. Suited him either way. If she didn’t want to eat with him, fine. He reached for the plate.
She grabbed it quick-like and scraped a portion onto a saucer from the counter. Then she sat down and returned his plate to him. “Thank you.”
If either of them said thank you one more time, he’d start spittin’ like Hugh.
He raked in a bite to keep himself from saying something stupid.
“Helen said the bear returned last night.” Her hand paused with her fork midway between the saucer and her lips.
Her perfect lips, the color of summer chokecherries before they ripen in the fall. He focused on his plate and filled his mouth again, nodding.
She sighed. Resigned.
Swallowing, he looked up. “I winged it.”
Interest brightened her face and she leaned forward, brows raised. “You did? What happened?”
Her reaction set pride to bouncing off his ribs, competing with berry pie for room in his belly. “I didn’t bring it down, or slow it down, as far as I can figure. But I found a blood trail this morning at daybreak. We may have scared it off for a while, at least until this filming business is over.”
Not that he really wanted it to be over, because then she’d go back to Chicago.
She took another bite and tilted her chin. “Well, now it knows you’re serious.”
Her hair curled around her face like a bower, and he wanted to touch it, see if it was as soft as it looked. Press his lips against it and tell her that he was serious about a whole lot more than just bringing down a rogue bear.
~
The tightness between them eased a bit, allowing Ella to finally taste the sweet berries inside Helen’s flaky crust rather than dried crow. Apologizing had never come easy for her, a trait she’d inherited from her father. But if she couldn’t admit when she was wrong with this kind and thoughtful man, when could she?
She pinched off another bite with her fork. “How did the branding go?”
Not raising his head, he gave her an under-the-brows look that gave her pause.
“No problems.” He flattened his fork against crumbs and purple juice and licked it clean before pushing the empty plate aside. “When do you leave?”
Her heart plummeted to her toes, and she struggled to keep her expression from falling with it. Things were not as Helen had suggested. The boys would miss her when she left, but evidently not Cale. Was he eager to see her gone?
She took his plate and her unfinished pie to the sink, where she scraped her remaining bites into the chicken-scrap can. “I’m not sure. We have enough film for at least two one-reelers, maybe three. It depends on what else Mr. Thorson wants or if he already has what he needs.”
Chair legs scratched the wooden floor, and a sudden warmth at her back sent her rational thoughts scurrying like squirrels. He’d trapped her between the table and sink.
“You ever been to a rodeo?”
His low tones sent her imagination bucking out of control, and she hung on for dear life. She stacked the plates and turned to meet the second button of his shirt. The button that wouldn’t fasten when it was Jed’s costume he wore. His chest expanded with a breath and she looked up, past his unshaven jawline and into the blue of his eyes.
“At the World’s Fair.” She swallowed, ordering her heart back into place.
“Heard about that coliseum from Helen. Here we just circle the wagons.”
Her puzzlement must have shown, for his mouth pulled up on one side, pinching the dimple. “Our Wild West Days are this weekend. I’ll be entering.”
His voice dropped to a near whisper, low and deep like distant thunder. “Thought maybe if you were still around, you might come watch.” He didn’t move or offer her a way of escape, but stood solid and sound, presenting a most inviting refuge.
She dashed the thought and sidled along the counter, squeezing around the opposite end of the table, exhaling once safely on the other side. Perhaps she’d misjudged his question about her departure date. Smoothing her wrinkle-free skirt and looking out the window, she kept his towering presence in the corner of her eye and carefully chose her words. “I could take photographs. If we’re still in town, that is.”
He rubbed his right arm, flexing the elbow several times as if loosening a muscle. “Will you be photographing Jed Barr? I hear he’s entered in the bronc busting.”
Only if Thorson paid for her prints, which he would not. She was an amateur. A hobbyist. Risking a glance at Cale’s face, she found it guarded, void of emotion.
“I don’t plan on it.” There were always plenty of photographers capturing his image. “I prefer more unusual subjects.”
“Am I unusual enough?” The dimple flashed, then disappeared.
Her breath caught at his slip, but she schooled her features and forced her hands to relax their nervous fumbling. “Depends on whether you fall off or not.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
His re-use of her words left her wondering if he mocked her.
“Not in the roping, anyway.” He folded his arms, enlarging the idea of a safe haven. “Your money on me winning or losing?”
“I do not gamble.” Suddenly sensing she’d opened herself up for a counter argument, she crossed her own arms, fending off the impression.
His chin dipped and he gave her a look that stripped away every last shred of her defenses, leaving hidden thoughts exposed and easily read. If she didn’t evade his penetrating gaze, he’d have her admitting she gambled repeatedly—cutting her hair, taking a job with Selig Polyscope, coming to Colorado. Riding Barlow. Yes, that little jaunt had been her biggest gamble of all.
