A Change of Scenery, page 3
“They’ll also ease our woes at the bank and buy us a few extra head.”
Hugh picked up the box of nails at his feet and spit again.
“Appreciate your sunny attitude.” Dust from the ride home coated Cale’s grin, but as the younger twin by a minute, he felt it his duty to keep the banter going. Never let it be said that he’d allow sixty seconds to stand in the way of a little jawing.
Hugh sliced him a cold look and trudged off to the barn.
Cale set Doc to an easy walk around the back of the house, mulling over what had his brother’s tail in a tighter knot than usual. He scoured the yard, the corrals, the swing in the big cottonwood tree, looking for the boys and whatever trouble they might be in.
Maybe Helen had them scrubbing floors or picking berries. If anyone could wrangle them, she could.
In spite of the clear, sweet-smelling day, a sad note hummed heavy in his gut. Helen had come to their aid early on. She’d taken to Jane at church and did for her what she’d never been able to do for her own brood since there’d not been one. But when Jane took sick and died, Helen swept those boys up and moved in. Cale didn’t remember who asked her, or if anyone had. She’d just been there.
He did his part too, but he and Helen couldn’t take the place of a loving woman whose smile never failed to soften his brother’s sharp edges. Nowadays, those edges cut against everything Hugh came in contact with, including his sons.
Truth was the whole situation had put the whoa on Cale as far as a wife was concerned. Not that he didn’t want a bride of his own. But loving a woman and then losing her was a proposition that set his teeth on edge. Besides, he hadn’t found the right one yet, and he was creepin’ up on thirty.
The image of a hot-blooded, bob-haired filly circled the back of his mind. Something about that gal whetted his curiosity. Just what he didn’t need—distraction.
With a snort to make Doc proud, he kicked for the barn.
Six of their best horses stood swishing their tails in the corral. They’d have a rodeo for sure if those city boys couldn’t ride. He stopped outside the barn where Hugh was banging around in the tack room. “I’m gonna drive down those twenty head we corralled up the draw.”
His brother stepped out and squinted up at him. “Why? The flicker crew will be here tomorrow.”
“My gut tells me someone—or something—else might be here tonight.”
Hugh’s spit hit the dirt like a bullet. “Want help?”
Doc danced sideways, picking up on Cale’s sudden tension. “I’ve got it. Finish what you’re doing here.”
Hugh pulled his gloves off and slapped them on his chaps. “We’ve got enough saddles if those stall-fed dudes can stay in ’em.”
“Thorson says Barr knows his way around. Word is he worked for an Oklahoma spread, him and the other three fellas he’s bringing with him. Can handle himself on about anything, I hear.”
Hugh cut a side glance. “Care to make a friendly wager?”
“And take your hard-earned money?” Cale shortened the reins and shifted his weight. “I’ll pass. Besides, I’ll skin him at the rodeo in a couple weeks, if he enters.”
Hugh looked out across the yard. “They can park their rattle traps in the lower pasture. I’ll have the boys out there early tomorrow, directing ’em away from the fence.”
That meant Kip, Jay, and Ty would be out of Hugh’s hair. So long as one of them didn’t get run over. Cale wasn’t especially fond of automobiles himself, and this morning’s close call deepened his dislike. They cut down the time spent traveling, but it was a toss-up as to what a fella valued more: time or peace.
Or his life.
He again saw the stark fear on Ella Canaday’s face as she stood frozen in the street, and it sent a chill up his neck. He’d taken a mighty big chance with that running grab—he’d be the first to admit it. The good Lord had saved his hide again. And hers.
He turned toward the draw that cut north from the house and barn, watching the dry trail for sign. Juniper peppered the air with its pungent smell, and a blue bowl hung above it all, not a cloud in sight. That fact alone concerned him. Whatever was taking their cattle did so more often during the dry spells. Easier for a man to cover tracks.
But a bear?
Some ranchers claimed a renegade was stealing their cattle. A descendant of that rogue grizzly, Old Mose. Cale wasn’t convinced. Only thing for certain was there’d been no rain for a week, and the Rafter-H couldn’t afford to lose one more steer.
The twenty he was driving down were marked for a Cripple Creek butcher and his hungry gold miners. A quick run through the draw tomorrow shouldn’t take much weight off the cattle, though Hugh was right about it being easier to leave them up there tonight.
Trouble was Cale’s gut was right more often than not, and his gut said bring ’em in now.
At supper that evening, Cale hung his hat on the hall tree and swallowed a snicker. The boys were still as crickets under a courtin’ moon. Tough being their age, all full of spit and vinegar. Helen had her hands full, he’d give her that. But Hugh could jerk the slack out of his sons by cocking a sharp eyebrow, which he did as soon as Helen bowed her head. She’d laid down the law—they’d give thanks or they wouldn’t eat. Cale obliged her, as did Hugh, but not without fighting the bit.
Cale peeked at the portraits gazing down on the table from the back wall. His mother was of like persuasion as Helen. It showed in the soft lines flanking her mouth. His pa had cowboyed this spread and passed it on to Cale, Hugh, and Grace when he died. They all favored their mother, aside from her light hair. Even Hugh’s boys carried their grandpa’s darker look. Jane had something to do with that too, Cale supposed, seeing as how her near-black hair had matched that of her sons. What was it about those dark manes that drew the Hutton brothers’ attention?
“Where are you, Cale?” Helen caught him wading through his thoughts.
He’d missed the amen.
“Beg pardon?”
She offered him her peach preserves and a biscuit. He took two. Old enough to be his and Hugh’s ma, Helen kept them all fed and cared for, but Hugh still wore the same look he carried just after Jane’s death. Devastation. Suppertime seemed to pull it out of him, and Cale usually hurried through the meal and escaped to the barn.
“What are they plannin’ to do out here tomorrow?” Hugh shoveled his food and tore a biscuit in half to sop the bowl, frowning more tonight than usual.
“Thorson said they want ranch scenes. Herding, branding, chasing.”
The last word stopped Hugh’s soaked biscuit halfway to his mouth. “Chasing?” A swear word took the sop as Hugh growled out his displeasure, rousing Helen’s disapproval. “I’m not running the weight off the cattle, that’s for d— ” Her warning glare cut the word from his throat. “That’s for sure.”
The boys kicked each other under the table, squirming like worms on a hook. Helen eyed them over her coffee cup. “Whose turn is it to wash tonight?”
Two heads swiveled toward the oldest.
“Aw, Miss Helen.” Ty screwed up his eight-year-old face, and his brothers snickered.
“No complaining, Tyler Jonathan Hutton.” The woman plated her flatware and handed it across the table. “Jay, you’ll be clearing the table and putting the dishes away after Kip dries them.”
All three faces fell. Cale shoved his coffee cup against his lower lip and drowned a laugh.
A garbled mumble rolled across the table and landed within range of Helen’s hawk-sharp hearing.
“What was that, Jay?”
“Nuthin’.”
“Speak up.” Hugh’s hard edge straightened his middle son’s back.
“That’s woman’s work.” Two dark eyes stared at the pile of plates while his siblings shed him like thick hair in summer on their way to the kitchen. Lightning was about to strike.
Helen set her cup in its saucer and cleared her throat with a lady-like cough. “If you’d like, son, I can parcel out some woman’s work for you tomorrow while your brothers help your father and uncle direct our visitors and their motorcars.”
She leaned back in her chair with a far-off look, fingering the gray at her temples. “Now that I think on it, I have a lot of washing to do. And there’s the kitchen to mop, rugs to beat, beds to strip, and chickens to pluck. And after that, I can show you how to darn your brothers’ socks that sprout holes quicker than weeds grow in the garden.”
Cale’s own collar tightened. He should be bedding down. Morning always showed up early.
“Sorry.”
“What was that?” Hugh bore into the youngster with a blue stare.
The boy’s head popped up. “Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Helen. I meant no disrespect.” His dark eyes shimmered with his effort to keep the tears corralled.
“Thank you, Jay. I know you didn’t.” Helen’s shoulders softened, and she leaned toward Jay with a lower tone. “Now don’t keep your brothers waiting. They won’t be able to finish their chores without your help.” Glancing toward the kitchen, she raised her voice a notch. “Heaven forbid I have to find something extra for them to do because they dilly-dallied.”
A shy grin capped off a forgiven “yes, ma’am,” and never did two short legs carry a body out of a room quicker.
Cale scooted back from the table. “Thank you, Helen. We’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
“You’re not having any of my rhubarb cobbler?” She scooped a large helping onto Hugh’s plate and a smaller portion for herself. “I baked it fresh this morning.”
He was tempted, but he wanted to put some thought into tomorrow. The way he fell asleep after one of Helen’s desserts, he’d be lucky if he got his boots off first. Tonight he’d pass.
“More for me,” Hugh growled around a spoonful.
On his way out, Cale looked over his shoulder, remembering the way Jane used to lean against his brother’s arm and say something to pull a grin across his grumpy face. Now he just sat there and ate his rhubarb in silence.
Hang fire. If he could, Cale would order him up a bride, but folks didn’t do that anymore. Pity.
The moon lit the yard like near day, exposing Cale’s own hidden longings. Hard to admit he wanted his own close table-talks with a woman, one who’d spread a smile in his heart and a quilt on his bed. But a fella didn’t always get what he wanted—or keep it—and he was old enough to know the truth in that.
The blue-gray night settled around him, and an owl called from the cottonwood. Tug padded up and shoved his cold nose in Cale’s hand. He rubbed the old spotted dog’s head and thanked God again that they didn’t live in town.
At the barn, he stopped in the wide doorway long enough for one of the cats to lace herself around his legs. Her long back arched beneath his hand, and he caught four wide-eyed kittens watching from a dark stall.
Satisfied the cattle were settled in the corral, he made for the far end of the house and the stone stoop marking a back door to his father’s old study. Helen’s arrival required he give her his former room, and he’d shoved the big desk up against one wall and set a cot against another.
Inside, he closed the door with a quiet click. Moonlight spilled through the window and across the narrow bed. He kicked his boots off, dropped onto the cot, and closed his eyes against the intruding moonlight.
Might as well try sleeping at high noon.
CHAPTER FOUR
That evening, Ella sank into the copper tub until her shoulders slipped beneath the silky water and her bobbed hair teased its surface. She had not expected such luxury so far from Denver, particularly the Hotel Denton’s running cold and hot water. Steam coated the gilded mirror on the wall next to the tub, obscuring her reflected image and confirming her over-indulgence.
She toed the lever, sighing as warmth swirled beneath her legs and back. After a day of stumbling around boulders at Grape Creek and tripping on loose, flaky rock the locals called shale, she wanted nothing more than to stay in the tub all night.
Her leg ached. Her heart ached. All of her ached, but the heat was helping—exactly what she’d heard about the Hot Springs Hotel. Evidently people came from far and wide for the springs’ curative powers. But if she wanted to take the waters there, she’d have to hire a hack or entrust herself to an unknown local automobile driver.
Her shudder sent ripples dancing across the water.
A knock at the bathing room door shot her upright, and water splashed onto the floor. “Just a moment.”
She pulled the plug and carefully climbed out to a towel-draped chair scooted against the tub. After drying off, she tightened the sash of her dressing gown, gathered her slippers and room key, and opened the door to find no one waiting.
Her jaw clenched. Who would play such a cruel trick?
One name came to mind, but Mabel’s room was on the floor above. Surely she wouldn’t come all the way down to torment Ella after hours.
Surely she would.
Ella flicked off the electric light switch and made her way down the hallway’s lush carpet runner. She let herself into her room, careful to turn the key in the lock behind her. Taking a seat at the dressing table, she brushed her bob, appreciating how little time it took to care for, other than a few curls crimped around her face with a marcel iron. Much to her father’s distaste.
She pulled the hairbrush through again and puffed an indignant breath. He did not spend hours twisting knots and teasing long strands into pompadours that called for combing out and fluffing up day after day. Good riddance to both.
Her reflection reddened, and she quickly refocused her anger on the knots and pompadours, not her father. As much as she’d fought to flee his controlling presence, “honor thy father and thy mother” lay firmly planted in her soul, a hedge she found herself snagged in more often than not where her father was concerned. Unfortunate for her that she had not been a male child, though she possessed the pluck necessary to tear away from the hedge. When he’d first threatened to cut her off, she’d beaten him to it with a pair of fabric shears.
Émilie Bouchaud had done the same and managed to survive society’s scandalized response. Ella would as well. Charles had loved her long hair, and she had loved Charles. With one gone, why not the other?
She shook her head and the unfettered fringe brushed against her face. Unfettered—such a lovely word. And so reflective of the coming styles in hair and dress for this new century. Women continued to break out of traditional roles and molds, and she fully intended to follow suit.
She laid aside her dressing gown, switched off the light, and slid between the cool cotton sheets, drawing her knees up beneath her shift. Escaping her father’s world had landed her in a sea of strangers making moving pictures of robbers and villains and heroes saving damsels in distress. Yet for the life of her, she did not know why Selig Polyscope’s leading damsel continued to hate her so. They had both lost Charles, though in truth, Mabel had never possessed him. Yet she seemed to enjoy taunting Ella. Mr. Thorson showed her no favors and was as exacting on her as he was every other member of the troupe.
A niggling memory flickered briefly, as outrageous as the incident that spawned it. Jed Barr had been exceptionally welcoming on Ella’s first day with the company, going so far as to lean over her hand and brush it with his lips in a very uncowboy-like way.
Mabel had seethed like a boiling kettle, her charcoal eyes flashing nearly green.
But that was weeks ago, before the company boarded the train to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. In plenty of time for Ella to back out after learning that Mabel had joined the company.
Which, of course, she did not.
Ella stretched her legs out and rolled to her back. Faint light from the streetlamps painted the ceiling gossamer gray. An errant automobile clattered by, intruding upon the night’s calm and her conscience. She must write Nana. The dear woman would worry if Ella didn’t let her know she’d arrived safely and was in secure surroundings.
Or she could telephone. The Denton boasted of telephone service to the outside, but that would dip into her meager earnings and she needed to save every penny. Perhaps tomorrow she’d have time to write and post a letter, describing to her grandmother the peculiarities of the fabled West.
Her eyes drifted shut, and with a silent prayer, she offered thanks for constant work and its attendant fatigue that kept the nightmares at bay. Waking from dreamless sleep was a blessing she’d not been afforded back home in Chicago.
~
Cale bolted upright. The room was dark and still, no moon in the window. His heart hammered. Had he really heard the bellow or was he dreaming?
Outside, Tug yelped like a rustler was on him with a hot iron.
Cale dashed for the gun cabinet in the dining room, knocking over chairs and making as much racket as was going on outside. Hugh ran down the hall for the same purpose, and they both sprinted out the kitchen door.
The cattle bunched at one end of the corral, clacking horns against each other and kicking up dust. Tug growled and barked, frantic after a shadowed hulk at the opposite end.
A rail snapped like a rifle shot, and the shadow took off with a bawling calf.
Cale raised his gun and fired. Hugh followed suit, but the moon was long gone and they saw only the flare from their weapons. They heard no cry, no fall.
They’d missed.
Cale called Tug. Whimpering, the old dog skulked to him, dropping to the ground at his feet. He knelt and rubbed a hand over its body, and a wet sticky spot on one hip drew a yelp. Tug pressed into him as if he’d let his master down and was begging forgiveness.
“You did good, boy. We’ll get you fixed up.”
“Bear or man?” Hugh’s voice ripped the night like an iron rasp.
“Hard telling with no light. Could be a claw mark on the dog, could be knife.” Cale stood, his eyes adjusting to the dark, and realized he was barefoot. “Whatever it was, it was good-sized. We probably shouldn’t have shot blind.”
Hugh’s spittle hit the ground. “Doesn’t matter. Nothin’ has the right to steal our cattle.”
