Rebellion in the Valley

- Title Page

- Chapter 1

- Chapter 2

- Chapter 3

- Chapter 4

- Chapter 5

- Chapter 6

- Chapter 7

- Chapter 8

- Chapter 9

- Chapter 10

- Chapter 11

- Chapter 12

- Chapter 13

- Chapter 14

- Chapter 15

- Chapter 16

- Chapter 17

- Chapter 18

- Chapter 19

- Chapter 20

- Chapter 21

- Chapter 22

- Chapter 23

- Chapter 24

- Chapter 25

- Chapter 26

- Chapter 27

- Chapter 28

- Chapter 29

- Chapter 30

Rebellion

in the

Valley

By

Robyn Leatherman

This book is dedicated in loving memory to Tom, my buddy and brother.

Thanks to Edna for not only volunteering to be my beta reader, but also for your constant support!

Published by
Robyn Leatherman
Smashwords Edition
62,572 words
Copyright 2013 Robyn Leatherman

Edited by Kim Diehl

Cover design arrangement done by Lindsay Kayser;

actual photograph owned exclusively by

Daniel Speck of FreeStockPhotos . com

and used with permission (see terms of use on website).
Contact Lindsay for your own cover design
at:
lindsaykkayser @ gmail . com

Disclaimer from the author:

This western story does contain some historical points,

however, it is not meant to be read as a history lesson.

Some of the names, characters and events in this work of fiction

are from parts of history,

and some names are used with permission by people I know personally.

In any case, my intention is for my readers to just enjoy the story.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people.

If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it
with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it
was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to
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Thank you for respecting the hard work

of this and every other Smashwords author.

Chapter 1

Bruce Johnson allowed his eyes to roll around the room, over the tapestry-covered chair and out the window to the Red Bone Ranch he shared with his daughter. Without looking down, he tilted the snifter in his hand and swirled the brandy around a few times. A long, slow sip felt its way through his throat; his nostrils flared as the liquid warmed his chest.

A portrait of his beloved late wife, Camilla, hung reverently on the wall opposite the fireplace, but before his thoughts found an opportunity to run away with him, their daughter, Hailee, bounced into the room, reminding him of the here-and-now.

She wrapped one of her pale blonde curls around her finger and let go, amused with her own locks, before approaching him with the conversation he sensed would be coming sooner or later.

“Daddy, are we going into town soon? I overheard Duffy and Tobias talking out in the barn, and they said the wagons might be finished by Thursday morning. I sure could use some more burgundy yarn, and I’m almost completely out of …” Hailee’s latest rambling found itself stopped a little short by the familiar sound of the dinner bell ringing just outside the kitchen door.

“Ah ha!” Bruce teased. “Saved by the dinner bell, I am!”

He sat the brandy glass down on the catalog table, making a mental note to come back and finish his well-deserved drink after he finished eating. Feigning a doubled-up fist to bonk his daughter on top of her head, Bruce escorted his daughter into the kitchen.

A white-aproned gentleman who appeared to be in his late sixties stood half-slumped over the dish-washing sink, his time-weathered hands scrubbing the pan he'd just cooked a few steaks to perfection in.

Experience allowed the cook to reach in a fluid movement to pans hanging from the semi-abused wagon wheel that had seen better days. Compliments of a couple of the ranch hands, it now served as a reconstructed pots-and-pans distribution center.

Richard Blake had been cooking for the Red Bone Ranch for the past twenty years - ever since he lost that bet with Bruce.

The whole thing started with a game of gin rummy, and the wages were high; whoever came out with the losing hand agreed to cooked that entire weekend. After a couple of days of coffee without grinds, pancakes that were actually done clean to the middles, and dinner that satisfied down to his bones, Bruce offered Richard a deal to stay on as the ranch cook.

Whether Bruce knew it or not, Richard had no other place to go. After twenty of some of his most pleasant years, it hardly seemed to matter anymore.

Hailee sniffed at the air and wrapped an arm around Richard’s shoulder.

“You made some of those yummy yeast rolls; I can smell them hiding in here somewhere!”

He stepped back and opened the oven door, a warm blast of air catching her face as she bent down to take a sniff.

Most of the hired hands had known the girl for several years, if not her whole life, and for the most part, she held them in high regard. Over the years, their conduct had earned a mark of trustworthiness and Hailee’s confidence in the majority of the men was strong - but the actual enjoyment of working side-by-side with her father’s hired hands had been limited to only a few.

For a fact, Richard was one of the elite.

As soon as the man placed the baker’s tray on the butcher-block counter, there she stood, plate ready to scoop up her share of the night’s dinner.

Richard grinned. He enjoyed watching that girl fill her plate up clean to the edges; she worked every bit as hard as the men folk some days and ate like them when she put in a full day around the ranch.

“Girl, you’re dripping’ off the side of your plate,” Richard teased, pointing to the stream of milk gravy pooling up on the counter.

“No worries,” she retorted, bringing the plate to her mouth and sucking up the drippings. “That is so yummy!” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, emphasizing a factual statement and not her personal opinion.

Bruce shook his head. He just knew Camilla would have utilized countless moments such as this one to mold their daughter into a more feminine creature. Nevertheless, he took pleasure in observing the young woman their daughter was evolving into all on her own.

Richard placed a dinner roll on top of her steak. “There you are, Hailee. Enjoy your supper - but you save enough room for my chocolate mess cake, you hear me?”

“I always do!” she hollered out as she vacated the kitchen for the separate dining room, which was simply an extension of the kitchen and not meant to set Hailee or her father apart from any of the ranch hands. The fact was, once the entire lot of workers gathered to eat, there was not enough room for everyone to eat at the same table. Several times when Bruce had come in with the last of his hired men, he could be found eating in the kitchen in one of the few still-available chairs, jawing with the men-folk in there while Hailee and others ate in the dining room, absorbed in their own conversations.

The dinner rush began as ranch hands piled into the kitchen through the rear door, filling the room with more noise of voices, boots clacking across the wooden floor, and chairs scooting from under the table. The familiar sounds reminded Bruce that most of these men were more than just the hired help; a few of them had become more like extended family over the years that they had been living and working on the Red Bone.

The ranch owner felt his eyes sweep over the crowd gathering in his kitchen and understood why the women folk often stated that the kitchen was the heart of the home.

“Bruce! Good thing you’re still here,” Tobias began, removing his hat and hanging it on the coat rack by the door as he’d done hundreds of times before. He headed over to the hand-scrubbing bucket of warm sudsy water and continued without interruption.

“That conversation of ours about the fence out on the back forty? Yeah, well, I found a section that’s a good twenty feet long, and it’s just not repairable anymore. Too rotted. Gonna hafta be pulled down and replaced - all of it,” he explained. “And that’s not all. That cat’s been back. I saw the leftovers of one of its dinners up near that cluster of boulders again.”

Bruce grunted his disapproval.

“How many did we lose this time?” he wanted to know.

“Best I could tell, maybe a calf and a couple of goats. But that don’t mean there ain’t more,” he reminded his boss as he reached for a plate. “I didn’t see the tracks til right before the sun started to drop, so I was planning on tracking it first thing in the morning, soon as the sun comes back up.”

Tobias stabbed at a thick steak and plopped it on his plate, then grabbed the spoon standing out of the pot with the mashed potatoes and dropped a healthy serving. He hunted around for the gravy, and as he located it on the other side of the stove, Hailee walked back into the kitchen.

His heart skipped a beat when their eyes met.

“Hi, Tobias! S’cuse me, I just came in for my milk. Didn’t mean to interrupt you fellas,” she tested to see if he would mind her staying in there a few more minutes.

Hailee thought Tobias was just as fine a man as she had ever met, and three times the looker. She'd come to know him as a hard worker with a gentle streak she'd seen many times over.

The deep cocoa in his eyes invited Hailee to linger and sip at her milk; his perfect smile made sure that she did.

Tobias sat down with his meal and told Bruce he would have to go into town for some extra fencing supplies within a few days.

“It’ll hold up for a few more days, but I don’t want to chance the cattle getting out if we get a strong wind,” he explained.

Hailee stood up a little bit taller in her boots and exclaimed without thinking, “That’s perfect! Daddy and I are heading into town soon as the wagons are repaired. We could all go together and make a day of it!”

Embarrassed once she realized that she had spoken out of turn, Hailee looked to her father for help.

“Well, that is a fine idea. Richard, now that I'm thinking about it, why don’t you plan to come along, too? Get the pantries stocked up. I hear corn’s holding steady at ten cents a bushel and if rumor has it right, hogs aren’t any more’n three and a half dollars per hundred weight, so plan what we’ll need for the winter through.”

Bruce Johnson waved a hand toward the other ranch hands in the kitchen and suggested, “Heck, why not everyone make up a supply list and a bunch of us can all head in together. I’ll treat us to supper at that fancy restaurant while we’re in town,” Bruce offered.

Hailee gulped down the rest of her milk and noticed Tobias smiling at her. He pointed his fork at her and shook his grinning head. He laughed to himself when she almost choked on her milk.

He concentrated his eyes on Hailee and could almost feel the breath she tried to hide in her chest as she realized he was staring at her.

“Sounds like a plan, Boss, sounds like a plan,” the man said aloud as he shoved a bite-sized piece of steak into his mouth.

His eyes were still resting on Hailee.

Chapter 2

Howard J. Duffman stood in the tool shed, taking an inventory of which meat-cutting tools he should think about replacing and which ones could get by with just a good sharpening.

Duffy, as he was known, was the one ranch hand in charge of handling the butchery - a profession passed down to him by his father, and since nobody else cared for the job, it became exclusively his duty.

He didn’t mind. This appointed position gave him an air of self-importance he felt set him aside from all the other men. Duffy figured having business in the tool shed gave him the excuse of getting out of such duties as stall mucking and pig slopping; since nobody else knew how long it actually took to sharpen tools and meat saws, Duffy possessed a way out of almost anything he didn’t care to do.

Tobias and a couple of the other men were near the barn and shooting the breeze in between chores; Duffy overheard the punch line of a joke one of them told and chuckled, although the thought of them standing around doing nothing, in his eyes, caused his blood pressure to raise a bit. It wasn’t so much that Duffy was thinking of all the ranch duties and chores, but mostly it buffed his hide he was never included in their conversations.

Duffy was the second oldest ranch hand, next in line to Richard. Sometimes it irritated him that he had slaved away and worked so hard for another man’s home and land, while he never even owned one single acre in his entire life.

“Just ain’t fair,” he would sometimes grumble to himself whenever he was having a

bad day.

Just as those very words crept across his brain, a cupped hand slapped him square on the shoulder, causing his mind to surface from his deep thoughts.

It was Bruce. In both hands, he held tins of freshly brewed, steaming coffee and offered one of them to his friend.

“Got an inventory list goin’ yet? Looks like everyone on the place is writing one - I figure we may as well make a good trip of it. I got to thinking, and we haven’t done this in a long while; I guess it’s time,” Bruce paused, running an eye over the tools hanging on hooks and nails.

Knowing how many years those tools had provided service, Bruce wondered how he still managed to keep some of them operational without actually being a danger to use after all the wear and tear on them. He also knew Duffy’s father handed most of those old tools down to him, and Bruce would never be offensive by mentioning the fact that they'd seen better days.

Instead, the man sipped at his coffee and inquired about how much chicken feed was left in the barrel.

Duffy nodded to the list, picked it up, and handed it to Bruce for inspection.

“Is this going over-board? I don’t intend on running you into the poor house,” he teased only half-heartedly. “I could always chop it down some.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow.

“This ain’t enough; we probably won’t be headed into town on another trip like this one for at least another six to eight months, near as I can figure.” His eyes fell to the dirt floor. “I saw the hole in your fencing gloves last week, Duffy. You put another pair down on your list - and you best take those boots in and get them repaired, too.”

Bruce sighed and looked over his shoulder to make certain of their privacy before he continued.

“You’re one of my oldest friends and a whole heap of help around here; you can’t take care of this ranch in the winter if your toes are hanging out of your boots and you can’t feel your fingers from the frost on ’em. I take care of you, and then you can take care of me. That’s how it works around here, you hear me?”

Bruce gave a nod of his head toward Duffy’s slip of paper as he placed a hand square on his friend’s leather vest-covered shoulder once again and looked the man square in the eye.

“You get what you need to carry yourself through the next few months,” he instructed.

Duffy opened his mouth to say something when one of the horses reminded the men of feeding time; Epoenah, Hailee’s treasured mare, bounced her muzzle back and forth and kicked up a bit of dirt in her stall to show her protest in dipping into an empty feed bucket.

Bruce finished his business with Duffy and gulped down the rest of his coffee before setting the empty tin down on a grain barrel.

“Alright, Girl,” Bruce assured the mare as he wandered over to her stall with some feed. “I hear ya.”

P

Hailee hadn’t run out of her lemon verbena just yet, but the glass bottle containing lavender oil had been empty for a couple of weeks now. That was her going-to-church scent, and she didn’t like being without her 'smell-em-ups', as her father called them. They became the first items she wrote down on her list, followed by a few more toiletries, some fancy writing paper, and a yard of lace to dress up one of her old bonnets.

The seventeen-year-old beauty stood in front of her mirror, shifting herself to avoid the morning sun streaming in and reflecting in her mirror as she ran the abalone shell hairbrush through a mane of thick blonde curls; she had always been well pleased with them and wondered on more than one occasion if Tobias ever noticed her hair. Or anything else about her, for that matter.

She sure did notice everything about Tobias, that was for certain. From that mop of wavy hair to those strong arms she’d seen so many times, right on down to the way the man walked and carried himself, nothing the man did escaped her attention...if only Tobias Logan would notice her, she sighed.

Hailee opened her diary and left an entry for the day. After penning the words, “Hailee Gretchen Logan,” she finished the page with several small hearts drawn near the name she'd grown to love before she let out one final breath of air and closed the book. Slipping it under her pillow, Hailee’s attention was drawn outside, where she heard familiar laughter coming from the area of the riding pens.

Standing in the center of one of them stood Tobias, his hands tossed up over his head. The man seemed to be having the time of his life with her mare.

“Well, if that’s not an invitation, I don’t know what is!” she grinned. Hailee yanked her bonnet up and over her head, having it tied in place before she even reached the bottom of the staircase.

Curls bouncing under her bonnet, she ran toward the pen and hollered, “You’re back already? I figured you’d be gone til later this afternoon.”

Tobias grinned at the sight of her. That girl did things to his insides that he could never reveal - he’d heard stories about ranch help who lost not only job and home, but their reputations as well, messing around with the boss’s daughter.

Still, Tobias could hardly help it. There was something about Hailee Johnson he wanted - needed - to add to his personal life. He would just have to find a way around the boss.

“Who am I kidding?” Tobias asked himself. “There is no way around the boss, and that girl doesn’t see me as anything but the help anyhow.” He shook his head to clear out some of the cobwebs forming in his brain, only to hear Hailee’s voice again.

“Tobias! Are you in there? I was asking you about the cat.”

“Oh, yeah. I found the tracks early this morning - it’s heading east, past that old bunk house. You do know it's caving in, right? What‘s your Daddy planning on doing with that thing, anyhow? It’s either gonna need tending to or tearing down, one or the other. And pretty soon, I’d say.”

He continued to ramble on a bit with Hailee about ranch business, but his heart refused to focus on anything other than those incredible blue eyes of hers. Truth be told, the young man made a regular practice of grabbing at pretty much anything she talked about, just so he could turn it into another piece of conversation and he could keep her around for a few minutes longer. On occasion, he’d wondered if she'd figured him out yet. But she never let on, if she had.

P

Morning at the Red Bone Ranch turned into late afternoon before half the day’s work found its end, and at last Duffy and a couple of men reported the work on the wagons had finally come to completion.

“It’s them dang grease worms every time,” one of the men grumbled. “Sometimes it seems like we can’t keep on top of these wagons. Something always needs fixed on one or the other of ‘em.”

One of the men tapped the lid back on the galvanized metal pail still half-way filled with the Mica Axle Grease, used to lubricate the wheels. He nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I know what ya mean. The wind up here in Rosita is always blowing; it don’t seem like we really get a break from the dirt and grit. Wish someone would come up with some way to cover up them hubs.”

After a good couple of days to tend to all five of the wagons, with having the other ranching duties to tend to as well, Duffy was just glad they finished the job. But it wasn’t worth it to hire the wagon work out, either, as a few other local ranches regularly had the habit of doing.

Bruce held a firm faith in the men at the ranch and knew they could handle just about anything that came up; that’s why he hired the men he did. He wanted the most efficient ranch in the Valley.

Duffy grinned and told his crew they had done a good job this time - and they would all be standing there having the same conversation in another six months or so. One of the men took his hat off and gave Duffy a playful smack on the head with it to thank him for the reminder.

Chapter 3

Hailee stood at the foot of her bed and frowned; sleep seemed the least likely option at the moment, but the girl knew morning would arrive soon and the next day would be such a long and busy day. She didn’t want to fall asleep in the wagon, she knew that much. Especially after overhearing the conversation between Tobias and her father when they spoke about a certain ranch hand who would be riding with them in their wagon.

The thought of having him all to herself for the nine-hour ride into Canon City gave Hailee an inspiration. They might play a few games to pass the time, like Twenty Questions or Happy Harriet. She wondered if a round of I Packed My Bag for China would be too immature; her father always enjoyed that game, but maybe that was because he played it with his daughter.

She shook her head and frowned again. There would be no China game, she decided.

Hailee wandered to her mirror and scrunched up her nose. How could a seventeen-year-old girl-no, she corrected herself-how could a seventeen-year-old young lady attract the attention of a twenty-three year old real man, without appearing pathetic and desperate for his attention?

She stood back from the mirror and gave herself a good, long look; she saw what she always saw, and that was the problem. Just an ordinary girl with curly hair and no clue what to do with boys.

A slight grin slid across her face as she came to a new conclusion in her mind.

“Tobias isn’t some boy; he’s a grown man! I bet he’s been looking for an older girl,” Hailee whispered aloud, “and if I can’t be one, I can at least look like one,” she continued. Fingers pulled the ribbon from her hair and deposited the thin green strand into the top drawer of her dresser, giving the childish accessory a symbolic burial.

The slight grin deepened into sweet satisfaction, and once Hailee pulled the brush through her hair once again, she allowed her tresses to fall down around her shoulders, running a finger through the curls, puffing it up here and there. Satisfied with how mature she looked all of a sudden, she decided to practice her most sophisticated facial expressions in the mirror.

Waving a hand nonchalantly in front of her mouth, she mouthed a flirty, ‘Why, thank you’, followed by a series of practice laughing-sessions.

Coming to the conclusion that nobody needed to see that many teeth when someone laughed, Hailee shook her head and moved forward to the last maneuver - the art of being taken off guard by a gentleman.

Tilting her head downward, she paused for just a moment before jerking her head back up to catch her own look of surprise reflecting in the mirror.

She rolled her eyes and groaned. “That’s becoming of a young lady…I look like I was just thrown off a horse.”

The second attempt provoked another giggle. “And now I look like the town drunkard.”

After only three minutes of mock conversations with herself, the girl decided she looked more like a fool than an older woman and let out a deep breath.

Determined to gain the affection she so desired from this man, Hailee made the resolve in her mind to come back from this trip with more than a filled list of trinkets and toiletries - she intended to return with the heart of the only man she could imagine herself ever loving as much as she knew that she loved Tobias Logan.

The last time her father planned a trip into town, they had been gone for three days. A day traveling to town, a good day of shopping, and another day traveling back to the ranch … and the last time they made the journey, Tobias came down with the flu and found himself unable to go.

Hailee determined to make this next three days memorable for both of them.

She folded her list and placed it inside her handbag, double-checking to make certain she’d remembered to put her heavy paper fan in there. She smiled to herself, remembering last summer when she and Richard spent a couple of hours making that thing; he’d taught her the proper way of pressing flowers and sealing them to be preserved forever between wax, the flowers, and paper that lived for a week inside one of Richard’s heaviest cooking recipe books as it readied itself for her use.

Sleepy fingers reached toward a short oak table in the corner of her room and as they opened her copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the girl settled down on her bed. A stabbing image of Tobias laughing at the book made its way into her head, so she stuffed it under the mattress near her diary and opted for a copy of Poe’s work instead.

Her eyes began to shut halfway down the second page, and before she knew it, daylight rubbed at her eyelids.

P

Agog with energy, Hailee found herself clothed in an instant; brush in hand, she peeked into her mirror and out of habit, reached for her box of hair ribbons. Just as the tips of her fingers touched the familiar fabric, she yanked her hand back as quickly as if a spider had crept in there while she slept and had spooked her.

“Not today,” she told herself, being reminded that Tobias was a man, not a school boy.

She made her way to the oak vanity in the corner of her bedroom to clean her face and get her smile freshened up.

Her father bought it from the general store over in the San Luis Valley over the Sangre de Cristo mountain range when she was only nine years old. Some friends of the family invited the Johnsons to their wedding over the basin and while Bruce began to choose which wedding gift to buy them, he couldn’t help but notice Hailee’s face light up when she stood in front of that vanity.

As she watched the store owner and her father struggle to load the vanity in the back of her father’s wagon, she was confident the new couple would fall in love with their wedding gift. But when she learned her father purchased the gift for her instead, Hailee hugged him around the neck, confiding how grown-up it made her feel.

Setting the white porcelain pitcher of water carefully back in its place and scrubbing her face once more with the last bit of lavender soap she still had left, she made sure not to splash water down the front of her dress while rinsing off the soap.

Richard’s hurried breakfast of biscuits and sausage gravy hit the spot just right. Without much fuss, the group of hands that were staying behind went about their chores, while the rest of the group was all ready to head out on the day’s journey.

“Let me do those dishes, Richard,” Hailee offered, “so you can get your things in order and get ready to head on out of here.”

Appreciating the extra help, Richard folded his half-damp dish-drying towel and thanked the girl for her offer as he hobbled his way toward other tasks.

P

Not quite six in the morning, but Bruce snapped the reins. Epoenah and the three other horses came to attention and let out a soft whinny as if to reply they had been set to go all morning and were only waiting on the humans. With a starting jerk, the wagon wheels began to turn. And so did Hailee’s stomach.

The ranch hands, cook, and owners were all on the road toward the valley. The Colorado air at that time of the year felt fresh in Hailee’s lungs and she took in an extra deep breath with her eyes closed. Halfway to filling her lungs to satisfaction, she heard a mountain bluebird overhead and wondered if it paid any attention to the goings-on underneath it.

Poised between her father and Tobias, her fingers reached habitually for her bonnet strings, then adjusted the brim so the early morning breeze would stay off her face as she snugged her brown and cream rippled afghan around her arms in one more fluid motion.

Spying Tobias looking at her out of the corner of her eye sent a shot of excitement through her spine; she remembered to sit up just a bit taller in the buckboard seat and grinned, realizing that she was sitting so close to the man she could smell the soap he’d washed his hair with the night before, feel him bouncing in gentle little nudges each time the wagon hit a rut or rock. His shoulder rubbed against Hailee’s and she was grateful that the wagon disguised the wild beating of her heart–if the man only knew she could barely breathe!

After all the planning of what to talk about and which games they would play along the way, none of that mattered once the trio were out of sight of the ranch. Bruce inquired about the cat and whether or not Tobias thought it would be a good idea to go out and find the blasted thing before it found a way to wipe out all the livestock.

“Well, I figure we best be getting to it before we lose everything. That would be my guess, if you’re asking what I would do,” Tobias answered Bruce with a shrug of the shoulders. “I was giving thought to going after that blasted thing the day after we get back from Canon City, anyhow,” he thought aloud. “But on the other hand, I better get that fence mended on the back forty before I go off for that long, though, don’t ya think?”

Bruce turned his head and looked past Hailee as if she had disappeared.

“You weren’t figuring on going after that dang cat alone, now were you?” he wanted to know.

Tobias shrugged again. “It ain’t any trouble, Boss. I didn’t want to take the other men from their duties, ‘specially with us being gone for a few days on this trip. Besides, I can handle it myself. Not like I ain’t never tracked a cat before.”

Hailee shook her head.

“No! You can’t go out there by yourself! Daddy - you’ll go with him, won’t you?” Hailee begged.

Heart pounding in her chest, the look on her face indicated she didn’t much care whether her words had been spoken out of turn or not.

Bruce waved a hand and gave her knee a gentle pat.

“Hailee’s right, Tobias; you shouldn’t be going out there alone. Anything could happen. Why don’t all of us get together and see who wants to go with you? We’ll talk it over at dinner tonight. It needs to be done and it’s my responsibility to make sure it gets done; let’s plan on maybe three or four of us going together, ” Bruce said with a nod of his head.

It suited Hailee just fine; if anything happened to Tobias, her heart would be crushed!

Both passengers knew when Bruce gave that one certain nod of his, the final word and decision had already been made; there would be no sense in speaking about the matter after his final word.

For the remainder of their ride into town, rounds of joke telling and ranch talk kept the conversation rolling, and a few times the group pulled over near some trees to relieve themselves.

Richard thought ahead and brought along plenty of snacks and barrels of water to drink from. And he was certain to pack one of Hailee’s favorite treats - his famous pickles. The man was well-known throughout Rosita for those dill pickles; he canned them with a couple cloves of garlic and a few of those tiny little red peppers Hailee adored. Hot, crunchy, and oh, so tasty on a warm day!

She gulped down three of them by the time they reached the town of Canon City.

Even before leaving home, she'd set on taking in as much of the town as she could before dinner; she saw three new businesses since the last trip into town, and one of them looked like a rather well-stocked general store. Maybe that burgundy yarn would be in their supplies!

“Where do you want me to leave you, Hailee? I might as well drop you off so you don’t have to walk the whole street,” Bruce told her when he noticed the look on his daughter’s face.

Her eyes hadn’t moved from that new storefront.

She pointed to it and looked back at her father.

“I’d really like to go in there, Daddy,” she told him with an excited raise to her voice. “Is there anything I can look at for you while I’m there?”

Bruce thought for a moment, rubbed his chin while in the thinking process.

“Tell ya what, Darlin’. How about I stable these horses and I’ll just come back to join you?”

The wagon pulled to an abrupt stop in front of the storefront, kicking up some dirt and dust from under the wheels as it did. Tobias jumped down and held his hand up to Hailee.

Those cocoa-toned eyes of his nearly begged her to stay with him instead of heading into the store when he smiled up at her.

For just a brief second, Hailee noticed that Tobias’ eyelashes seemed darker than she usually noticed them to be; was that a fleck of gold in his left eye?

Their hands touched and Hailee felt her knees go limp just a bit; did he notice that when she fell against him?

She gathered her skirt in her hands and reached up for the handbag her father was holding down to her.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she smiled. “See you in a few minutes.”

She turned to Tobias.

“Thanks.”

He nodded and watched her walk into the store before turning his attention to climbing back into the wagon.

“I noticed a new horse-boarding stall down the street, Boss. Which one we gonna use?”

Bruce let Tobias choose, and with the money paid for services, Bruce clapped a hand on Tobias’ shoulder.

“So what are we eatin’ tonight? Do you want to try something new, or do you have the notion to fill yer belly on some of Ethel’s apple pie?”

Ethel made herself a favorite for a couple of years back; she made the best pie ever - but they wouldn’t dare mention it in front of Richard. She layered hers deep in cinnamon and sugar. As a real treat, the woman topped it off with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream, which was an item the ranch did not have very often.

Halfway down the dirt street, Bruce heard the train a few hundred yards behind them. He turned to get a good look at it, but only saw the heavy black smoke pouring out from the coal engine over the brown-topped roofs of buildings on either side of the street.

“Who ever thought we’d see something like that runnin’ through a civilized town, huh, Tobias?” he asked with a jerk of his thumb. “Just amazing.”

He paused a moment to allow a woman in a heavy-looking green and white calico dress to pass by, tipped his hat to her.

Tobias nodded his head to the woman and lowered his eyes out of respect until she has passed by them before they crossed the street and made their way to the wooden-planked walkway lining the storefronts.

The younger of the two men spied the shops he was anxious to explore and found the one stocked with all the equestrian gear a rancher could ever dream about.

Bruce caught the way his friend eyed the front window of the shop and reminded him to get what he needed.

“Now, I mean it, Tobias. I don’t reckon we’ll be back to town for another six months, what with the winter coming, on. You fill your list, you hear me?”

Blessed to work for such a generous man, he parted ways with Bruce until dinnertime and made his way into the equestrian storefront, list in hand.

The owner of the Red Bone Ranch turned his attention and walked past the empty lot between the Webb & Thurman store and McGee’s & Mack’s Feed Store, making a mental note to stop in the feed store before he left town to ask about enough trees for a sizable apple crop come spring.

When Bruce found his daughter, she stood perched in front of a tall glass cabinet housing several glass bottles of various fragrances, colors, and sizes. Just the sight of it caused one of his eyebrows to arch when he wondered how females went about their selection process in such feminine matters.

This should be a mother’s place, he shook his head as he kept his fatherly role distant at the back of the store; even a father could see she hadn’t chosen quite as many items as she wanted to; she appeared to be having a great amount of difficulty in deciding whether or not to get the fragrance in the tall greenish bottle or the shorter rose-colored one. She held the shorter bottle in her hands, indicating that she was close to making her mind up to take that fragrance.

When he saw the store clerk wrapping all the items in butcher paper, Bruce made his way to the shelves lined in books, confident that his daughter had taken care of her most delicate needs.

Choosing, in the end, one last amber-colored bottle, both father and daughter made their final selections and paid for them at the wooden counter in the back of the store.

Handing the store owner some cash, Bruce inquired about how his children were and asked him to please send his greetings back home to the wife.

“I’ll stop by before we head back up the pass to settle up with you for the charges my ranch hands sign for, Todd,” Bruce reminded the man as he reached out to shake his hand.

“That sounds fine, Bruce, sounds fine,” he agreed.

The pair turned with packages in tow and found the sun already setting.

“Tobias wondered about that steak and taters place down there,” he pointed to the end of Main Street. “How’s that sound for dinner?”

Hailee would eat mud-covered biscuits if Tobias suggested them.

“Sounds great to me. When are we supposed to meet up with everyone else, Daddy? And are we staying at Cassiday’s hotel again?”

Bruce grinned. He certainly enjoyed seeing his daughter so relaxed and happy; if only Cammi were there to make sure their daughter made it home with the proper items a young girl should have in her dresser drawers.

“Six o’clock sharp, and yes, if that’s what you want.” He answered both of her questions at once, moving his eyes up and down the street, through the mass of people and fading sunlight.

Surrounded by a multitude of faces, the girl assisted her father's search through the busy crowd, spying a few of the ranch hands standing in front of the restaurant.

“There they are, Daddy,” she pointed them out to her father.

Once decisions finalized on where to eat, Bruce handed each man a generous amount of greenbacks for their meals, rooms, and evening entertainment; he figured the men might enjoy a drink or two at Jenkin’s Tavern before turning in, seeing as how he didn’t allow them to have any on the ranch.

He explained to the men, once again, that they were to sign for any supplies they needed and he would make good on the payments by four o’clock tomorrow, so they best be finished with their lists by that time.

The group agreed to meet back at the same spot the day after next, at precisely six in the morning and parted ways for the evening, each group heading off into different parts of the bustling little town of Canon City.

Chapter 4

Gus Hyde, owner of Canon City’s blacksmith shop, struggled as he bent over the chunk of iron ore situated in the flame. Glowing a red-orange, the shape in the man’s hand really didn’t resembling anything in particular, not yet. Sweat poured from his entire face and neck, each drop sizzling when it hit the iron; the shirt clung to his back muscles, drenched from the intense heat and physical labor.

The sledgehammer, which he made himself, sat next to his right side for the ease of grabbing it in a hurry.

As the iron rotated around in the center of the fire, Gus introduced a gentle blast of air near the piece, waiting patiently until it began to glow an even darker shade of orange.

With a pair of tongs held tightly in his hands, Gus gripped the glowing ore and turned it over to examine the entire piece of work. Satisfaction came to his face when the ore turned a shade closer to the color of a harvest moon in September, and he reached down for that sledge hammer; bringing it down with such massive force, a few flecks of bright orange flew off from the glowing chunk he held firmly in the tongs.

Once, twice, three times, he came smashing down on it, turned the chunk, and repeated the process another five or six times.

Hailee wanted to visit with him, but she could see that he was already a busy man today and decided to come back later on in the day to visit with the man she had come to call a friend of their family.

She glanced into a few shop windows, not really shopping, but just taking in all the sights and smells. The city certainly looked and sounded much different than the mountains of Rosita! In the mountains, she could hear her own heartbeat and smell the pine needles after a big rain. The city carried heavy coal smoke and she smelled liquor on every other man’s breath who passed by.

Main Street stretched down about eight buildings on one side of the packed-dirt street and five on the opposing side; in the business district of Rosita, only a couple of stores were available for shopping, which wouldn’t have been so bad, she thought, if it wasn’t for the fact that the town's five saloons contrasted their shopping choices so drastically. And the stores in Rosita certainly did not appeal to a young woman. Not unless she found herself interested in hardware or farming implements.

Her blue eyes wandered to the farthest end of the street and saw it littered with horses and donkeys laden down with huge packages. Manure droppings lay everywhere and she wondered whose job it was to clean up the streets, because they were either lacking in their skills or didn't care to tend to their duties.

Hailee watched an older woman dodging a mess in the street, maneuvering herself as if she'd done it a hundred times and it was second nature; Hailee’s hair swayed as she shook her head, certain she could never live this way and felt sorry for those who had no other choice but to live in it.

When the wagon pulled up with passengers and let them off at Cassiday’s hotel, she wondered where the people came from and what their lives were like; a girl that looked pretty close to her own age was the last one off the stage wagon and she looked to Hailee like she’d never been in Canon City before; the young woman’s eyes scraped over the people’s faces as if she were looking around to get her bearings or maybe searching for someone.

Hailee thought about offering her some help when out of nowhere, Tobias stood in front of her, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face.

“Oh, no, you don’t, young lady!”

She was taken aback.

“Excuse me?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

He lowered his gaze to hers and tried not to grin.

“You were just about to go over and start talking to that girl, weren’t you?” he accused with accuracy.

“What are you doing? Just standing in the shadows, lurking after my every move?” she wanted to know. “Don’t you find that just a little bit…odd?”

He laughed.

“No, not really. Not when someone cares about another person and looks after their well-being,” he defended himself.

Hailee found herself taken aback.

So he did care about her!

The pretty young woman twisted a finger around a lock of hair and felt her heart soften; the annoyance she might have felt when Tobias first appeared at her side left her mind altogether as he explained he'd seen that same girl the previous night at the saloon.

“Apparently,” Tobias explained, “she came into town to play the part of some young thing in distress, in need of financial assistance to get back home to her dear old daddy, who - according to the ‘damsel in distress’ - is dying of some mysterious disease.”

Hailee had never heard of a person being so dishonest!

“I don’t believe you!” she let him know. “People don’t just go around doing things like that!”

Tobias took a worn leather money case from his pocket and handed her a quarter.

“Go introduce yourself to her, then. You’ll be needing this when you feel the urge to donate to her traveling expenses,” he teased as he plunked the coin in her hand.

Hailee grinned and her fingers wrapped around the coin. She was off to prove Tobias was just overprotective of her. Which was a good thing, she told herself as she walked away.

Only a couple of yards from the girl in the red hat, she looked back at Tobias, who glued his eyes to her every step. He grinned and waved her onward.

“Go ahead,” he mouthed.

The girl held one white-gloved hand up to her eyes as if she were shielding them from the blazing sun while she took inventory and looked around. At her feet were two pieces of luggage, expensive-looking paisley print.

The girl smiled when Hailee came near.

“Step one,” Tobias whispered out loud, leaning up against the men’s barber pole.

The girl and Hailee appeared to exchange conversation, but Hailee gave no indication anything out of the ordinary came from the other young lady, from the way she carried herself. She even shook the girl’s hand before parting ways with her.

“Well, what happened?” he wanted to know.

Hailee looked up into his eyes and shook her head.

“You were right. I asked her if she was new in town, and that's when she started telling me a story about how she'd been on her way home and got robbed; apparently, she is now trying to find work along the way to fund her wagon fare back to her family.”

She yanked down on her bonnet strings, untying and retying them as she added, “So I asked her if her father was still sick.”

Tobias let out a shout of surprise and slapped his open palm on his leg.

“You did not!”

“I most certainly did! And when she opened her mouth like some pond fish, I asked her if she could see a tall, handsome man in front of the barber shop. She nodded, so I told her that was my husband, and he overheard her story last night in the saloon.”

Hailee stalled, looking Tobias straight in the eye while she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and added, “I might have also told her that you were the sheriff’s nephew.”

He cocked his head to one side and chuckled.

“It just gets better and better with you, doesn’t it?”

She began walking toward the entrance of the restaurant across the dirt-covered street, knowing the man of her affections would follow. He did.

“She wants to assure the sheriff of her departure on the next train out of town and offered to never return back to these parts,” Hailee offered as the last bite of her encounter with the stranger.

Still laughing when they sat down in the restaurant, he ordered two tall sweet teas.

Hailee removed her bonnet and allowed her hair to fall down about her shoulders; how he wished what she said was true, that he really was hers to call husband!

She found his eyes full of concern and asked him what he was thinking about.

Tobias shook his head.

“Nothing. I was just wondering what might have happened to you if that girl had of taken advantage of your generosity. Bruce has always taught you to be that way, to give of yourself. You’ve been a good student and learned well, but Hailee,” he warned her in a more serious tone, “you really have to be careful. Especially here,” he tapped on the table, “in town. She might have taken every cent you had in your handbag and you would have never seen her again. Or worse. She might have hurt you.”

She heard his voice crackle at that last thought, and catching it himself; he cleared his throat in attempts to cover it up and took a long gulp of his tea.

“Thank you. For lurking in the shadows, I mean,” she half-way teased. “Have you been doing that for very long?”

He leaned a little bit closer to her and allowed his eyes to lock with hers when he inquired, “Today or in general?”

Before she could even allow her heart to resume its beating, Hailee’s attention diverted to a couple outside, strolling cozily along the walkway.

With a nod of her head in that direction, she inquired of Tobias, “Have you ever known a girl like that?”

He shrugged, shook his head.

“No. You’ve known me for how long now? Have you ever known me to be in love?”

Her young heart skipped a beat when he said the words, in love.

The palms of her hands began to perspire and tremble, so she kept them hidden under the table.

Changing the subject, he returned his focus back to the pretty girl sitting across from him.

“So…now I’m related to the sheriff, huh?”

She blushed, sat up taller and answered, “And maybe someone else, too.”

“Yeah. Caught that.”

They sat still, eyes locked and hearts beating.

When he felt a measure of composure creep back into his head, he swallowed hard and lowered his eyes, sipped the tea. He was afraid to look back up.

What had he just started here?

He knew it could not possibly go anywhere, but good Lord, this woman wanted him just as much as he wanted her.

Hailee sniffed and he looked up to tears swelling up in her eyes.

“No, oh, no! Hailee, no...”

She wiped the red and white checkerboard napkin across her eyes, sopping the tears up before they could fall and add even more ebarrasssment to the situation.

“I’ve made a fool out of myself, haven’t I? Here I’ve been pining away for something that clearly doesn’t belong to me anyway.”

She began to push herself away from the table, but Tobias grabbed her hand and begged her to stay right where she was.

“Don’t make me beg you, Hailee. Please sit back down.”

She did.

Tobias began to sweat.

“Look. I guess I have to tell you something, Hailee; I’ve been keepin’ this to myself but it looks like I’ve got no other choice now, but to confess myself to you,” he began with a nervous hand raking through his dark brown mop. “Have you ever looked at something real nice, real expensive, and wanted it real bad? You knew you wouldn’t ever have it, but you still wanted it? Do you know what that’s like?” he asked in an almost whisper.

“I suppose everyone has had that feeling at one time or another.”

He shifted his weight in the chair and lowered his gaze toward the table, twisted his napkin as he tried to find the right words.

“Hailee, you’re the thing I can’t have, as much as I’ve wanted it…wanted you. For one thing, if your Pa ever found out that I looked at you like this, he’d have me packing faster than I could blink. Can’t say that I’d blame him. Just look at me.”

Hailee tilted her head to one side and whispered across the table, “Tobias, I have looked at you! I have looked at you every day for the last year and a half, and nobody else. I was afraid I could never have you!”

Their eyes met, an understanding growing between them.

“So now what? We can’t exactly go to your Pa - “

She let out a quiet giggle and nodded her head. “He is a bit protective, isn’t he? He loves me, Tobias; I’m all he has now, with Mamma gone,” she explained. “We don’t have to say anything right away. But -,“ she stopped herself short.

Tobias gave her a curious glance. “What?”

She shook her head and blushed again. “I just don’t know how long I can keep it a secret. Knowing how you feel, every time I look at you, it will be different.”

He blew out a long breath and leaned back in his chair, ran his hand back through his hair.

“What am I thinking?” he asked himself out loud.

It was just about then when Bruce walked up to the table.

“Yes, just what are you thinking here?” he inquired.

Tobias sat up straight at the sound of Bruce’s voice and with eyes wide open, found himself staring into the face of the one man he was most afraid of at that moment in time.

Hailee reached up and grabbed her father’s arm.

“Daddy, Tobias was just telling me when we get back home, he might want to repair that old bunk house on the back of the property. You know, the one that's been on the verge of falling since forever; he was nervous to ask for your permission, but I told him we never use it anyway, and you haven’t even been near it for the longest time.“

Bruce grinned and held his hands out in front of his body.

“Consider it all yours! I never even look at it, myself, and nobody else has given it any thought. What are you going to do with it?” he asked as he looked around for another chair to pull up to the table.

“Uh, well,” he stammered, shooting Hailee a look of deep appreciation for saving his hide. “I haven’t really thought about it for very long, and that’s the truth. But now that you say I can have it, I’ll let you know what I come up with.”

“Take your time, I plan on having you around the ranch for a long time to come, Tobias,” Bruce told him with a nod of his head and a wave of his hand to the food server.

P

Once the three returned to the matter of discussion, which was filling their shopping lists, Hailee remembered she still had not spoken to Gus yet and would need to make a special trip into the general store for a few pieces of candy; he was especially fond of jellybeans.

Her father praised Gus’ skills to many people in the valley, since he made most of the horseshoes the ranch hands used. He even made some of the things Richard used in his kitchen.

A tired-looking Gus was found wiping his face down with a wet cloth and sitting on an old tree stump he’d fashioned into a sitting chair when Hailee entered his blacksmith area.

He looked up from behind the rag and a toothy smile emerged.

“Well, if it ain’t Miss Johnson!” he blurt out, getting up on his feet. “I’d surely like to give you a big squeeze,” he began, glancing down at his filthy apron and dungarees. “But you wouldn’t much appreciate me for that right now! So how have you and your father been? I didn’t even know you were in town.”

She produced the bag of candy, opening it up to show him the contents.

“And now I owe you a double squeezin’ once I get cleaned up; thank you,” he told her.

“You’re most welcome. You don’t think I’d come into town and not say hello, do you? I came by earlier but you were busy over there,” she pointed.

Gus explained he just got a big order in from the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company last week.

“That’s great! What are you making for them?” Hailee asked.

“Well, they want me to make up a whole mess of parts for the dynamometer. Should keep me busy for some time to come, because after I’m done with that job, they have more waitin’ for me,” he told her with an air of pride.

Hailee couldn't have been happier for Gus; jobs for a blacksmith in the area had given out a bit the last time she and her father were in town and Gus had even given thought to moving more northwest.

“So you won’t have to move, will you?”

“No, I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with me for a long while now,” he grinned with a hand stuck in the bag of jellybeans. “You haven’t told me how long you’re in town for-or where your Pa’s been hiding, for that matter.”

Hailee explained that the group would be heading back the following day when an idea struck.

“Gus, why don’t you meet us for dinner tonight? Richard and Tobias will be there, and you can all get caught up!”

From the look on his chubby face, she could see her old pal thought it was a dandy invitation; Gus agreed to meet up later with the group of his friends-if a slice of Ethel’s apple pie slipped into the deal somewhere along the way.

P

Richard laughed harder than he had in a long time; Gus had a way of telling stories that made a fella burst at the seams!

“Stop!” Richard told him as tears streamed down his face. “My jaws are achin’ and my sides can’t take any more!” He laughed rather loudly, even though he strained to keep his voice down some.

Bruce drained his coffee cup and agreed. “It has been too long since we did this, Gus. Why don’t you ever come up into the hills and spend time with us?”

“I sure would like to do that someday, but it’s gonna have to be awhile now, what with my big contract goin’ with the railroad,” he reminded.

Their food server set the check down near Bruce’s mug of beer, cleared the table of two plates and nudged Hailee with her elbow when nobody else was looking.

Hailee glanced up to find the woman winking at her; the puzzled look on her face caused the server to nod toward Tobias and grin.

Hailee blushed and turned her head away, pretending to fasten her bootstrap so nobody would know she required a moment to regain her composure.

“Well, we have us an early morning ahead, so I reckon we best tie this visit up,” Richard moaned. “Much as I hate to admit it, this old rooster is too tired to cluck.”

While the group found their way outside, Gus stayed behind with Bruce as he payed the bill.

“They make a real nice couple, Bruce; you must be mighty proud to have a fella with such a good character comin’ into the family tree,” Gus ribbed him.

Bruce shook his head. “What do you mean?”

Gus chuckled.

“Aw, come on, Bruce! You don’t mean to stand there and tell me you don’t know!” Gus blurt out.

Again, Bruce shook his head. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Gus turned around and nodded to the group standing outside on the wooden sidewalk.

“Tobias. He’s sweet on your Hailee. And you’re double blind if you can’t see the way she looks back at him…yeah, sometimes I wish I had me a whole flock of children,” Gus trailed off in his own thoughts.

Whatever Gus said after that point faded into the night air, with Bruce giving a nod every then and again when his old friend said something and laughed.

Sweet on Hailee? Tobias? No - he was the ranch help and an old family friend, that’s all. Gus was just reading too much into it, that’s all.

Sometimes people who live and work together-the way Bruce and his daughter did up on the ranch – form good friendships with the help. They become real close friends, that was all. There wasn’t anything else to it.

At least, that’s what Bruce Johnson tried to convince himself of as he snuggled down under the handmade motel quilt and leaned over to snuff out the oil lantern.

Chapter 5

While Hailee chattered on about the general store being sold out of that burgundy yarn and not having any idea about where she could even begin to look for more in that exact same color, her voice drifted in and out of the minds of both Bruce and Tobias.

Occupied deep in their own thoughts, both men concentrated on the pretty thing sitting between them. The one thing which brought them together and yet separated them about as far apart as they could get. And those thoughts had nothing to do with yarn of any color.

Reminding himself of the biggest mess he had ever backed into, he scolded himself, thinking of Hailee’s heart and how it was not some game to be toyed with. how he should have remembered they would all be returning back to the ranch. Flirting with her in town and confessing himself to the girl was probably the dumbest thing he had ever done.

Maybe his life would have been miserable without Hailee, sure, but if he was to get kicked off the ranch and hurt that girl, it would be something he would never be able to live with.

Bruce sat firmly in place on the buckboard seat, eyes on the team of horses in front of the wagon, unable to shake the words of Gus out of his head. He could hardly up and ask either his ranch hand, who also happened to be a good personal friend, or his daughter, for that matter - if the words Gus spoke happened to be true.

Bruce wanted - no, needed - to find out if Tobias honestly had grown sweet on his daughter, but risking the dignity of such a valued worker wouldn't be worth it. How, exactly, does a man just come right out and ask a fella if he’d been thinking romantic thoughts about his daughter? It just wasn’t done, and especially not between old friends.

How would either one of them handle the situation if Tobias found no attraction at all to Hailee or the thought even repelled him? Would Bruce be able to look him in the eye ever again? Moreover, if Hailee ever discovered her father invaded her privacy with such questions ...

‘No,’ Bruce told himself. ‘Some things are better left alone. Time will tell.’

A dizzy feeling at the back of his eye sockets tugged off to the side when he felt Hailee yanking on his shirtsleeve with some persistence.

“Daddy, are you okay? You didn’t answer me.”

He smiled at his daughter as if nothing was on his mind at all.

“No, I don’t suppose I did at that. Just paying mind to the team, Honey; I believe they might be on the brink of quitting on us if we don’t give them a little break. Soon as we get up Hardscrabble, just a bit beyond the pass, we’ll pull over.”

He cracked the whips and the horses hurried the pace, almost as if they understood what he’d decided..

“Now, Darlin’ what were you saying?” he asked as he turned his attention back to her.

“I was asking you about the trip. Did you have a nice time while we were in town? You were so busy making sure the rest of us filled our lists, I was wondering if you were able to tend to your own.”

“Sure enough,” her father nodded. “I was fortunate enough to find most of it, anyway. Some of the larger items will have to be delivered when the next train pulls into Canon City with more supplies. Most of the shop owners think it should be within another week or so; they’ll start deliveries shortly after that. And of course, I’ll have a wait on my fruit trees. They won’t be delivered for a few more months.”

She thought for a moment before giving one more report concerning the elusive burgundy yarn. “Do you think my crochet supplies will be in the next train delivery, Daddy?”

Bruce turned to his daughter.

“Darlin’, how important is that yarn to you, anyhow? Seems like you’ve been goin’ on about it for some time now.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she groaned with mock disgust. “Guess I should have bought all I needed when I first started my project, but I didn’t think it would be this hard to get more. People in Westcliffe or Rosita should sell threads and yarns in all my favorite weights and colors; it sure would help me out, that’s all I know.”

The crochet mistress snapped her fingers, jerking Tobias’ head toward her to see what the hub-bub was all about.

“Maybe we could get that lady down the road to teach me how to spin my own yarn; I heard she uses the wool from their sheep.” The sun-blonde girl thought for a couple of seconds before asking, more to herself than anyone else, “What’s her name again?”

Tobias interjected. “Are you talkin’ about the Hoods?”

She snapped her fingers and smiled.

“That’s it! She made a winter scarf and hat set, mittens and all, for Preacher McDermott last year. And she got the yarn from her own sheep!”

Hailee sank back into the buckboard seat and scrunched up her nose like she was thinking about things.

Bruce chuckled and gave a nod at Tobias.

“Uh-oh. We’re in for it now. I know that look, and it’s gonna cost me more money!” Bruce told him over his daughter’s head.

Tobias shook his own head and grinned in agreement.

“Like that girl needs another project,” he commented. “She’s got herself knee-deep in training Epoenah to walk backwards and the dogs to sit up straight. She needs another seven critters to take care of, don’t she, Boss?”

He had to laugh when she looked up at him, stuck her tongue out, and slugged him in the arm.

“You don’t think Epoenah will ever do it, do ya?” she asked with her head cocked to the side.

Bruce called the team to a halt.

“Here’s what I think: it’s time for a break; my back is killin’ me right about now.”

P

Several hours after the sun had gone to rest over the Red Bone Ranch, four of the most exhausted horses once again found comfort in their own pens for a good feeding and watering.

Hailee rubbed a hand up and down the back of her horse and cuddled her neck.

“I love you,” she cooed into the horse’s fur.

Tobias was about to hand Hailee a bucket of feed when he overheard her.

“Aw, cut it out, Hailee. You’re gonna spoil her even more than you already have,” he teased.

She shook her head and tightened her hold.

“Nope. I ain’t ever gonna cut it out with this girl. She’s the best horse I ever owned, Tobias. And besides…are you jealous?” she teased back.

The truth was, maybe he was just a bit jealous. Tobias had imagined Hailee whispering those words to him on a chilly winter’s evening as the couple snuggled up in front of a popping fire, but he wouldn’t dare let her know about that now.

His eyes grew as almost large as Epoenah’s when he realized she’d said those words aloud; his head whipped around the barn real quick to spy out who else was in there with them.

“Hailee! You can’t be talkin’ like that! What if someone hears you-like that man over there?” he asked with a tug of his thumb.

She glanced. He meant her father.

“He’s bound to figure it out. And besides, whose business is it, anyhow?”

Duffy walked into the barn with a burlap bag to hang up before heading to his bunk house and eyeballed the pair standing there in the darkened barn with the horse; he had obviously walked in on a private conversation and knew it. The man almost paused before deciding to go ahead and enter, but his eyes didn’t leave the couple as he made his way to his tack room. A smirk made its way to the corners of his mouth, and he looked satisfied in that smirk.

Tobias shook his head in an attempt to cover what he was afraid Duffy was bound to figure out-both him and Bruce.

Knowing he had to think of something real fast, the man whipped out his rough tone of voice to use with the pretty girl.

“No, Hailee,” Tobias pretended to scold her, turning his back on Duffy. “It’s not a good idea to do that. Epoenah’s dog-tired. You best let her alone for a couple of days.”

His eyes were bugged out and he had a look on his face as if he were telling her to roll with it.

“But I’m not a bit tired and I want to ride just a little while more. I won’t be long.”

It’s all she could come up with at nearly two in the morning.

Now it was Tobias’ turn to roll his eyes.

Hailee shrugged her shoulders and mouthed an ‘I’m sorry’.

Duffy poked his head out of the tack room, obvious his ears had been glued to the tack room wall so their conversation could be overheard.

“Ain’t none of my business, but I’m with Tobias on this one.”

Tossing her locks over a shoulder in frustration that her conversation had been cut short, denying her the courtesy of giving the man a proper goodnight on her own terms, Hailee huffed her way past Duffy and out the barn doors. On her way out, she made sure that her gaze hit the tack room in hopes that he saw her disgust in him.

He saw – and smirked once again.

Stomping a new trail toward the house, the girl noticed her father leaning over the pigpen. He wasn’t really doing much else, just standing there.

“Daddy, it’s late. What are you doing?”

The man didn’t look up.

“Thinking about your ma. She would have enjoyed the trip into town. And she would have made sure that you got that yarn, by golly.” His voice began to crack, so he cleared his throat.

Lacing an arm around her daddy’s, she snuggled up against him and rested her head against him.

“You miss her a lot, don’t you, Daddy?”

“More than you know,” he nodded.

“I wish she was here, too…there’s things a girl wants to talk to her mom about.”

Hailee was thinking about her situation with Tobias but couldn’t say that to her father. Not tonight.

Bruce nodded, patted her hand.

“I know. And there are just some things I could only talk to Cammi about,” he grinned. “I remember when the doctor gave us the news about you,” Bruce continued. “You know, she started to crochet that afghan on your bed the very next day? Spent every waking moment on it. She told me her little baby would be sleeping in it for years to come and it had to be perfect,” her father reflected.

Turning to Hailee, Bruce allowed his eyes to rest on her face. How she resembled her mother, even standing outside in the glow of an oil lantern.

He would never forget what a pretty woman she was, that wife of his, and he would always remember the first time Camilla saw him.

She had been making a quick sweep of all the attendees there at the community barn dance, making mental notes of who she might consider dancing with and who would be on the avoiding list forming in the back of her mind.

When Bruce first took note of Camilla, she tried not to even acknowledge him and instead glanced away as if she hadn’t noticed him at all. But it was too late; he had seen the grin emerging across her lips as he tried to dig for one more sign that she might be interested in meeting him.

Her uncle caught the looks the kids were trying to conceal from each other and gave his niece a playful nudge with his shoulder. In return, Camilla gave her uncle one of those looks that warned him not to embarrass her that evening. Bruce remembered how he caught their eye conversation and chuckled.

“Hailee, you’ve made me one heck of a proud father,” he sliced through the early morning air. “I couldn’t have asked for any better than you. No matter what the situation in life may be, you do know you can always come to me, don’t you?”

He silently hoped there was not a situation brewing between her and Tobias that she felt compelled to actually speak to him about, but could not tell her so.

She nodded, fighting the tears. The sleepy father and daughter leaned against one another, staring at the pigs and nothing at all, all at the same time.

Chapter 6

Richard scraped his two brand-new knives together, producing the familiar sound he liked so well and grinned. What a thin cut of meat he was gonna shave off for tonight’s roast beef dinner!

“Hey, Bruce! I sure do appreciate these,” he said yet again as he held them up, allowing the sunlight to sparkle against the shiny edges. “Ain’t nothin’ like new kitchen tools-just feast your eyes on that shine,” he added.

The Boss just shook his head and grabbed a cup of coffee.

“You might be using them to ready us some travelin’ vittles. That dang cat was back again last night, just before we got home; Duffy found the tracks headin’ both in and out of the hen house.”

Richard peeked over his shoulder and walked a few steps around the door frame to make sure they were alone.

“Ain’t gonna say it to Hailee, but that calico kitty of hers ain’t been around for a week or so now; I fed it leftover breakfast meat every morning since it came on the place, and then all a sudden, it disappeared.”

Bruce shook his head again.

“Yeah, I know it. I haven’t said anything to her, either,” Bruce said, trailing off in thought before adding, “Do me a favor, will ya? Keep an extra eye on her for a while.”

Richard grinned.

“Worried about her since you’re heading off on that cat hunt?” He shrugged his shoulders before adding, “You know, that girl of ours is turning out to be quite the young lady.”

Out of the corner of his eye, the old cook saw his friend glance out the window.

“I’ll ask her to lend me some extra help in the kitchen, if you’re worried about her bein’ around them boys out in the barn for too much time outta the day.”

Bruce knew the only one he was worried about would be with him on that cat hunt...or was he the only one?

The thought sent shivers up his spine and his hands instinctively went straight to the sides of his head; he squeezed both it and his eyes in an effort to ward off an incoming headache.

The only reason he let go of his temples was because he could hear his daughter’s laughter drifting into the house from outside.

Richard gave a quick slice through a loaf of bread and grinned in satisfaction at the new tool before inserting it again and inquiring offhand, “Now what are those two up to?”

“What do ya mean?”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Oh, Tobias and Hailee. Those two have been at it for an hour now.”

“In an argument, are they?” he asked with a gleam of hope.

“Are you kidding me?” Richard laughed. “Those two? I don’t think they’ve ever had a cross word to say about the other one. No, they’ve been chasin’ one another around the horse pen the whole morning long; not sure if they’re cleaning it or messing it back up,” he commented with a grin. “I’d give two bits for that kind of energy, myself,” he added with a yawn and a long stretching-out of both arms over his head. “It’s going to take me a week to recuperate from our trip into town.”

The owner of the ranch was already standing at the back door with his eyes in a firmly focused gaze on the scene not far enough from him: Tobias held the rake out in front of himself with a playful grin plastered across his face, taunting his daughter with the rake.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he pleaded with a laugh.

Hailee pretended she to pour a bucket of water onto the pile of manure that Tobias had just pulled up, and as she laughed, her head tossed blonde curls across her shoulders and down her back.

It was a scene Bruce had witnessed many times between the two of them; they had a regular way of cleaning out the pens and had worked together for years now. The man knew they were close, and he never gave a second thought about it…until now.

He had to scold himself and laughed aloud at the mere thought of those two being anything more than friends.

“Those two couldn’t be any closer if they were brother and sister,” Bruce reported confidently to the man standing behind him.

He had already shoved the door open to join the pair in the fresh mountain air as Richard shook his head.

“Believe what you want,” he grinned, pushing some potatoes into a heavy cast iron skillet.

“Tobias! Don’t let her get the best of you,” Bruce teased as he opened the pen gate.

Hailee gave a mock pout.

“Whose side are you on, Daddy?”

Bruce patted Tobias on his back and gave a quick nod of his head.

“Well, I’m for my fellow man here,” he winked. “And if you get the best of him, then who am I gonna have on my side when we take after that cat?”

Tobias poked the rake into the ground and got more serious.

“Yeah, about that. I think we best get goin in the next couple of days at most; me and the boys are fixin’ to get that fence repaired this afternoon, and once it’s good ‘n sturdy, I’ll be ready whenever you are, Boss.”

Bruce had to agree. With winter approaching and the livestock coming up missing right and left, not only would the winter meat supply be dwindled away, but the spring babies would be in danger as well.

“Then it’s all settled,” Bruce affirmed with a firm pat on Tobias’ shoulder. “We’ll leave on Wednesday if that works for you.”

Duffy overheard the conversation; he had been eye-balling Tobias the whole morning, strutting around the ranch like he practically owned the place.

He surely was getting sick of that man, walking in and out of the ranch house at all times of the day. He wasn’t like the others, who only went inside at meal time and left promptly after they had finished eating, the way all paid hands should do.

No, that Tobias would just open the kitchen door without so much as a knock-just march right in and jaw with Richard in the middle of the day, drinking a glass of sweet tea or lemonade, just making himself to home. And he took it on himself to linger on after dinner, too! Drinkin’ one cup of coffee after another, just sittin’ there and actin’ like he was one of the family!

‘What gives him the right?’ Duffy thought in a burst of inner anger. ‘Bruce is my friend! That kid ain’t got any right to sachet in and out of the main house whenever he darn well pleases!’

The moody ranch hand reached up to a pair of pliers hanging on a rusty nail and grasped a long wire in them, emptying his anger out on the metal line as he twisted it back and forth in an attempt to snap some of the wire off.

Just the look on the man’s face as he dwelt on the images replaying in his mind’s eye, a person could see how worked up Duffy had allowed himself to become by the pale red flush in his cheeks.

If Bruce wasn’t careful, that boy was gonna get his daughter cornered into thinking that she was in love with him, the way he flirted with her so.

“Disgusting. That’s what it is. Just plumb disgusting,” Duffy spit out.

The wire popped off the end of the pliers and the ranch hand proceeded to cut seven more strips the same way. He intended to take them along on the hunting expedition to string meat on; he’d found it easier to pack that way when going on a hunt.

The more Duffy thought about it, the more it riled him up; here, he’d spent the good portion of his life slaving away for a fella, building up his land and his property-and for what? To groom it so some young whippersnapper could just march right in and take the whole dang thing away when he up and flirted with the boss’s daughter?

“Well, I won’t have it!” he told the wind.

P

Tobias and Bruce finished the raking of manure as Hailee left their stinky mess in favor of feeding Epoenah.

She turned when she had enough space in between them and hollered out, “I still don’t think you rake manure right!”

Tobias waved a hand at her and rolled his eyes.

“That girl,“ he said out loud. He hadn’t even realized he said it until Bruce chimed in.

“Yeah. Some days I don’t know what I’m gonna do with her. She’s growin’ up on me, Tobias, and there ain’t a whole lot I can do about it.” His face turned toward the man standing next to him and he opened his mouth to say something, but stopped short when he couldn’t help but notice that Tobias was still watching Hailee as she stooped under Epoenah’s pen fencing.

The look on her daddy’s face made it clear he wasn’t so sure he was comfortable with the way Tobias was still looking at his only daughter.

P

After dinner that very evening, Duffy stood at his work bench, putting a match to the oil burning lantern he kept hanging on an old hook and pulled the wick down some.

“Best to keep the light down low right now,” a guilty conscience cautioned as he tugged at the tack room door again to make certain it was shut tight.

His eyes followed the words scrawled out on the paper and he bit at his bottom lip without even thinking about what he was doing.

‘An opportunity like this one don’t come around but once in a man’s life,’ Duffy rationalized. ‘If I play my cards right, the kid will be done away with and I’ll be top dog again.’

Yanking a worn-out wallet from his back dungarees pocket, he opened it and re-counted the number of greenbacks he owned. If he decided to go ahead and buy those shares in the Pocahontas Mine, it would show Bruce he was better than that kid. He would prove to be the smarter one, the one with a mind for business.

Nodding to reassure himself that he was making the right decision indeed, Duffy closed the wallet and slid it back into place in his pocket.

“Yep,” he mumbled. “I’ll head on over to the Bank of Rosita first thing in the morning and get that taken care of,” he nodded in satisfaction. ‘Now to take care of that dang kid.’

Duffy’s arm reached high over his head, fingers wiggling around the top shelf until they grasped a leather pouch.

A lump filled his throat and a trickle of perspiration rolled down his forehead; he swallowed hard as his fingers pulled at the thongs tied around the top.

He slid the smaller blades back out of the pouch, scowled at his own indecision.

Should he or shouldn’t he?

Chapter 7

Climbing up on his Palomino, Duffy rode off the ranch early enough so nobody even realized he was gone; he’d planned it that way. It wasn’t anybody’s business where he went or what he did, anyhow.

Just as the hill caused him and his horse to disappear, a dirty grin eased its way across his mouth. Images of the reaction he would get from Bruce when he realized Duffy had purchased stocks in such a profitable business deal played in his mind over and over again, each time the scene being just a bit different from the one before; he would have to be quiet about buying these shares in the mine or people would be worming their ways out of the woodwork little by little to borrow money or try to buddy-up to him. And Duffy would have none of that!

The man on horseback pulled a worn-out pocket watch from his vest.

The Bank of Rosita would be opening its doors within fifteen minutes; Duffy felt his back pocket for the fifth time, just to make certain his wallet hadn’t fallen from his dungarees somewhere on the trail into town.

Soon as Duffy hit the farthest end of Tyndall Street in Rosita, Colorado that Tuesday morning, he smelled the bacon that gave him a tickle in both his nose and his belly; obviously, someone in one of the seven homes located on the street just behind the Bank of Rosita had already been up and taking care of household business. An unintentional hand went straight to his belt buckle, rubbing that empty spot caused as a direct result of skipping Richard’s breakfast. He winced just a tad without even realizing it; soon as he purchased those shares in the mine, he would have to stop in at one of the hotel saloons and order himself a nice hot breakfast to celebrate his new-found riches. He’d been hearing a few of the silver miners bragging on the food they served, and he’d meant to stop in there for a while now, anyhow.

As long as he wandered back to the Red Bone before too much time passed and he eased his way up through the back of the property, he could always make like he’d gotten up early in order to get a few things done before the day got started.

The morning sunshine warmed the hands holding on to the reins of his horse and he snickered to himself…at least he wouldn’t be lying. Not completely, anyhow.

Duffy swung his right leg over the rear end of his Palomino and as his boot hit the planked walkway, his eyes scanned down the length of Tyndall Street; the schoolteacher had already rung the massive bell hanging outside the double doors and most of the people walking around were only those who were tending to their everyday chores.

With one hand, he attached the reins to the wooden hitching post and paused to think of those fancy ones he’d heard they used in the big cities back east. From stories related by some of the local folk who’d been out that way, they were made from solid cast iron and from what Duffy heard tell, they were even fitted with thick gold rings for tying the reins onto. He wondered how heavy they actually were and how far they planted those things into the ground when the sound of a barking dog caught his attention. The mutt apparently snagged an older lady’s basket of food as she was exiting the hotel Duffy planned to eat at once those shares were hot in his hands.

The bank smelled clean and tidy; his boots clanked across the hard wooden floor. Tall windows positioned across the front of the building allowed plenty of warmth to fill the large room, adding to Duffy’s already perspiring forehead.

“Good morning, Sir,” Duffy offered to the man behind the oversized solid oak banking desk. Thick iron bars across the length of the desk formed a barrier between the bank employees and the public; the man on the other side smiled a toothy reply to Duffy.

“How may I be of assistance to you on this fine day?”

Duffy could just feel himself growing richer by the second!

“You can assist me by taking some of my hard-earned cash here,” Duffy replied, not in the most educated manner. “I’ll be taking five shares in that Pocahontas Mine this morning. It’s a little surprise, if ya know what I mean,” he added with a self-important sniff and a tugging on his cow-hide jacket.

Mr. Walter Stuart, the proprietor of the Bank of Rosita, just grinned.

“Certainly, Sir. That will be five shares in the Pocahontas Mine, at ten dollars per share, which comes to a total of fifty United States dollars, please.” He reached under the cabinet, retrieving a few formal-looking documents. “If you would please fill out these forms, sir–quite customary, I assure you. They will assign each share to its rightful new owner and legally document you as the purchaser. Each share is numbered, as you will see at the top of each share form,” Mr. Stuart pointed to the many places on the sheets of paper as he explained what each spot represented in legal terms.

With each stroke of the ink pen, Howard J. Duffman felt his life getting better - and richer. Behind those bars, Mr. Stuart tried not to smirk at the grin spreading across Duffy’s greedy face; he’d seen that same look on several faces recently and knew what they would eventually amount to.

Signed and paid for in full, Howard J. Duffman strolled out of the Bank of Rosita as the proud owner of five shares in the Pocahontas Mine. Feeling rather invincible, he decided a hearty plate of breakfast vittles was definitely in order and instead of mounting his Palomino, he chose to walk the horse on over to the hotel, where he re-tied it to yet another hitching post. Whistling a cheerful tune, Duffy held the door for a couple who were exiting just as he pulled the door open for himself.

Tipping his hat in a kind gesture, Duffy nodded his head. “Morning,” he acknowledged.

Once a cup of steaming fresh coffee had found its way into his system, he pulled the documents back out of the envelope the bank man had folded them into.

‘Just imagine! Owner of five shares in a silver mine.’ His mind began wandering and he thought of at least ten different ways he would spend the profits when he cashed them in one day. ‘Or,’ he rubbed his chin in thought, ‘I just might even sit on them for a while longer than I’d figured.’ Who knew how far those shares could take him?

Tipping his server a full two bits, Howard J. Duffman found his way back outside, feeling like a brand-new man. Reborn. Energized and ready to tackle just about anything that came his way. Maybe even Tobias, that whippersnapper.

That reminded him. He really should be heading on back to the ranch since his business had taken a spell longer than he had planned.

Just as Howard J. Duffman, entrepreneur, vacated Tyndall Street, Mr. Walter Stuart kept an eye on the man who had just purchased the last of the shares offered from the Pocahontas Mine.

P

Jabbing the tip of an old manure fork back into the pile, Bruce nodded his head at the man speaking to him. “Yeah, makes no never mind to me how we get it done, long as it gets done.”

The morning, short-handed by three ranch hands, moved a bit slower than usual.

“Normally I’d have no problem dropping all the hay off in the fields by myself, but I sure could use a hand today so the cattle gets fed before too much longer,” the ranch hand pulled on the brim of his hat casually.

“Hey, tell ya what,” Bruce thought aloud. “I’m almost done here. Give me maybe another thirty minutes, and I’ll come on over and help you with that. Been a while since I worked with you anyhow.”

The other man nodded in agreement. “That should give me enough time to finish loading up. You know where to find me, Boss.” He turned on a booted heel to return to the stack of hay piled up behind the weathered old barn.

Bruce wiped his forehead. He felt a break coming his way, but knew the work had to be done and opted for getting this and at least one more chore completed before having the entire crew come in and get out of the heat for a few minutes.

The fork, under the weight of the load he scooped up, caused Bruce to grimace.

“Kinda stinky, huh, Daddy?”

Shaking his head, Bruce tossed the pile into the wheelbarrow and stabbed the fork down into the mess again.

“Well, I can handle the stink. What has me stumped is why in the world the stuff has to be so gosh-darned heavy,” he told his daughter. “I’m not as young as I used to be, you know. I watch the way you and Tobias muck out the stalls and you two act like it ain’t nothing. What’s the secret?”

Hailee cocked her head to one side as if he had just asked her to reveal every hidden thought in her mind. “What?”

“What’s the secret behind mucking stalls like you’re having the times of your lives out here?” Bruce reached back for the fork, realizing how much still had to be done before moving along to the day’s next chore–and the ranch hand who would be expecting him shortly.

She laughed, removing it from his hands.

“Oh, I don’t know. Tobias is a lot of fun, I guess. He makes me laugh, so it’s really not like we’re working at all. We do lots of the chores that way,” she grinned. “I’ll finish up here, Daddy. Why don’t you stick around and see how much you can make me laugh?” she teased.

Bruce waved a hand at her. “Nah, I’ll leave that to the expert. Time for me to feed some hungry cows,” he winked.

Hailee gave a forced poke into the pile, heaving a load into the wheelbarrow. When she realized how full it already was, she couldn’t help but give a grimace herself. Emptying the wheelbarrow wasn’t exactly one of her favorite chores, but with Tobias lending a hand to the repair of the house water pump, she knew she was on her own with this one.

“Heave ho,” the girl told herself aloud, shoving the wheeled mess forward.

By the time she realized the wheels had gotten stuck in a patch of mud and then caught on a few rocks, Hailee understood her father’s aching back. Struggling to tip the mess over and into the growing pile that her father would be spreading out in the hay field come fall, the co-owner of the Red Bone Ranch added her stinky contribution.

Returning to the barn, Hailee mucked that last load for her father and dumped it with the rest, spilling some of it on the front of her dress.

“Well, that’s attractive,” She grumbled, although it was not the first time it had ever happened to her.

Overhearing the men talking unusually loud, Hailee returned the wheelbarrow to the barn, hanging the fork back in its proper place on the heavy nail on the wall before heading over to all the noise.

“Whoa! Hold on right there,” she heard one of them shout. “That’s far enough!”

The water pump for the house had malfunctioned earlier, leaving Richard without any water for cleaning the kitchen up or preparing lunch; Tobias and two others had been attempting to repair the mechanical parts, but as she got closer to the group of men huddled over it, it didn’t sound very promising.

“The pin fell down in the shaft. We just gotta get another one, simple as that. Who wants to go into Rosita?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Tobias squinted and held a hand up to his eyes, shielding the sun. “Hey, anyone see Duffy today? That’s what’s missing–I haven’t seen him all day.”

Richard shook his head. “Didn’t come in for breakfast, so don’t ask me.”

Tobias had a look of irritation on his face now; spotting Hailee, he nodded his head toward the tack room. “Hey, you wanna run over to Duffy’s area and see if he’s in there? Nobody’s seen him all day and we need an extra pair of hands here.”

In compliance, Hailee darted over to the tack room, only to find it empty.

“Dang it,” Tobias mumbled. “When you actually need the man…”

Hailee glanced down at her dress. “Well, boys, I’m headed inside to clean up some.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Richard replied. “Not with our pump down. Best get to walking down to the creek to clean up. I’ll go up and fetch you a clean dress from your room. Which one do you want?”

While Richard was upstairs, Tobias and the other men gave opinions about where they figured Duffy might be.

“All I know is, he’s not here right now and he best have a good reason for disappearing like this. He’s always hiding out in his work room, organizing and doing nothing, if ya ask me,” one of the younger hands offered. “Seems like he always has something to do if a good sweat is gonna be involved.”

Tobias nodded his head. He understood his work mate's frustration; he’d felt the same way a time or two. His eyes trolled the landscape. Barn, hog pen, vegetable garden, horse arena, outbuildings. Finally, a thought came to Tobias and he snapped his fingers.

“Hey, what if we’ve been going on and on about Duffman being missing and he’s laid up in his bunkhouse sick or something? Here it is, nearly eleven in the morning, and nobody’s even checked his living quarters. I’ll head on over and check things out,” he offered.

Tobias only shook his head. “Duffy better be sick, or I just might hurt him,” he grumbled.

P

With her left hand, Hailee yanked the soiled dress up and over her ankles, just enough to watch her step. Bared feet stepped into the chilly water and her lips pursed a bit; it had been too long since she her last romp in the creek, she thought.

One step after the other, Hailee lowered herself toward the center of the rolling waters, allowing its healing weight to ease away both the stall mucking and her sore limbs.

Eyes shut and face toward the Colorado sunshine, the young woman allowed the crispy coolness to wash over her shoulders and neck. A large boulder serving as a convenient seat gave Hailee her own aquatic throne as she began humming a tune to herself, head swaying ever so much when she realized the cicadas surrounding her had joined in song.

“I am bound for the Promised Land, I am bound for the Promised Land; oh, who will come and go with me? I am bound for the Promised Land.” Hailee let one of her favorite songs soothe her mind in a different tone as her ears half-way covered with water.

A lazy grin eased its way across her face as her song began to find its ending, but that grin came to a sharp close when she felt eyes watching her; she’d spent less than twenty minutes in comfort and her initial thought at being disturbed was one of annoyance.

One eyelid raised very slowly, just in case she had been mistaken and was indeed alone.

What she saw was a man on a horse. And he stared down at her as she floated in the center of the creek. It was only Duffy, though, so she didn’t budge very far from her comfort zone.

“Daddy’s been looking for you,” she stated without much feeling behind the words.

“Yeah? What for? I’ve been tending to business.”

Hailee shook her head. She had no intention of telling him why her father was looking for him. “Guess you best head on back to the ranch and find out what he needs for yourself,” she told the horseman.

He offered her a lop-sided grin and asked almost lewdly, “You want some help in there?”

Taken aback by his most inappropriate question, Hailee refused to allow the man to know he disturbed her either mentally or from her relaxing bath.

“Nope. I’ve got it handled,” she stood up a bit to let him see she gone in fully clothed.

“Now why are you bathing with your clothes on? Don’t you have any sense about you anymore?”

Hailee just snorted and pointed toward the ranch. “If you would have been home earlier, you would know that the water pump went down and I got horse manure on my clothes. Figured it would be easier to see where to clean if I just went in with everything on,” she explained, although she felt he deserved no such courtesy.

Duffy’s horse whinnied and began making his way toward the creek for a drink.

“So the pump’s down, huh? What’s that got to do with me, anyhow? I don’t know how to fix that problem.”

“Just get on back, so I can finish up here, will ya?”

Duffy pulled his horse from the edge of the creek after it had taken its fill and took too long looking at her, obviously observing the fact that Hailee certainly had grown into young womanhood as she stood in her soaked dress. He grinned far too much as he turned his horse and his own head away from her.

P

Just as the men had come to the conclusion that there wouldn’t be any saving the water pump except a new pin set, the elusive Duffy came riding up over the farthest hill toward the ranch.

“Well, look at what we have here,” Tobias scowled at the man on the horse. “I’ve got half a mind to – “ Bruce put a hand on his shoulder to indicate he would take care of it himself.

“Not worth it, Tobias. If he’s going to be angry with anyone, it’s best that he take it up with me,” Bruce reasoned. “And besides, I need to tell him a couple of things anyway. I’ll be right back, fellas.”

The ranch owner walked toward the mounted Duffy, wishing he would have been a little more considerate of everyone else this morning.

“Morning, Howard. Where ya been off to so early on in the day?”

Duffy dismounted his Palomino and tipped his hat up a tad. “Been into Rosita. Had some business to take care of, Boss.”

Nodding in understanding, Bruce held a hand out to the horse, fingers scratching him under his muzzle. “I sure can understand that, but if you don’t mind, maybe next time, would you mind poking your head in the door and letting me know you’ll be gone for a spell? We came across a near-emergency this morning and a couple of extra hands would have made the chores move faster with the animals and all.”

A look of protest on Duffy’s face, he turned his back on Bruce and acted like he was tending to the horse before speaking up.

“I had business to tend to,” he repeated.

“And I understand that. I don’t have a problem with that in itself, we all have personal business to tend to. Any time my workers have needed time away from their duties it’s never been a problem, has it? I’ve never even given it a second thought. I guess I’m just asking that you let me know in advance, that’s all. Tobias thought you might have been sick, so he even went to your bunkhouse to –“

Duffy’s face shot Bruce a look that he had never seen before. “He didn’t go inside my house, did he?”

Confused, Bruce answered, “I imagine Tobias probably did knock first, Duffy, but when he didn’t get any response from you, he probably just took a quick peek in–just to make sure –“

“That’s my living space! I don’t want him nowhere near my place!” Duffy jabbed an angry fist into his palm, his mood changing from not so good to worse.

Bruce stepped closer to Duffy, aware that he was now invading this man’s personal space and not much caring at this point. Speaking in a serious tone, Bruce started in on the man.

“Hey, what’s really going on here, Howard? If you have a problem, you best work it out right here, right now. You’re a valued worker on my ranch, no better and no worse than the others. Tobias was concerned about you, believe it or not; but for some reason, it seems like you’ve had a burr on your tail for a while now. I want to know what’s wrong.”

Duffy’s head reeled.

What was this talk of him being a common ranch hand? A worker, like all the rest of them?

“You’ll find out in due time,” was all that Duffy revealed.

Bruce cocked his head to one side; he had never seen this side of Duffy before, and it made Bruce think hard about how to deal with the new situation he could see brewing.

“Do you have a problem with me, or with somebody else on the ranch? Because if I can help you, I would like to help get this straightened out.”

When a couple of uncomfortable minutes had passed, Bruce shook his head, ran a hand through his hair.

“Look, Duffy. I know you just came from town, but I’m gonna ask that you head back in and sign at the store for a new pin set. We need to get that thing functioning by dark tonight so we can take our leave for the hunt at daybreak. It’s a Coalbrookdale, and we need both the pin and the seal. Just sign for it and tell Jake I’ll send someone in to pay up in a few days. Maybe you can do some more thinking and come back ready to talk to me.”

Wanting to say something he knew his boss didn’t want to hear, Duffy opted instead to reach for the reigns and hoisted himself up. He gave Bruce one last look before galloping off.

When Bruce removed the thumbs from his eye sockets, Hailee stood before him, dripping wet and out of breath.

“What was that all about, Daddy? He’s really starting to worry me.”

P

“Dang it all to fiery heck!”

The look on Duffy’s face told the story of how he felt inside; the words spewing from his mouth filled in any gaps anyone might have had.

“Why in the world nobody else could have gone into town for these parts is beyond me,” the grumpy man mumbled aloud, although nobody else was around to hear him complain about matters. “Least it gives me the chance to get away for the whole day,” he gave his Palomino a nudging of the boot. Duffy let his eyes settle in on the Lodge poles and remembered when he was a kid, when his folks had prepared a family picnic area under one of those trees on the property they owned. Those days felt like they happened a million years ago.

As the muscles in Duffy’s jaw tightened with thoughts of being just another one of the common ranch hands, the man flinched in his saddle. A drop of sweat found its way down his temple; the sun overhead reminded him of what he’d seen in the creek earlier; too bad that Tobias was in the way.

P

Business in the kitchen had not slowed down very much with the pump being out of commission; if anything, Richard found himself scrambling around even more than usual trying to come up with ideas for lunch and dinner minus the ingredient of water, the task proving to be more difficult than he figured it would be.

As he piled a few food items on the table, he had to hand it to himself. ‘Not bad, guess we won’t starve after all,’ he thought aloud.

Sourdough bread from the day before, some cheese and apples, plus the cookies he’d put up a few days earlier. Thank goodness for cows-there would be something wet to wash it all down with.

The man turned to grab his knife from the oversized canning jar he kept most of his knife collection in and checked the edge of the blade. The cook’s mouth turned up on one side, he frowned, and poked it back into the canning jar. Continuing the search until he pulled out one with a sharp serrated blade, Richard offered the loaves of bread a satisfied grin and began to work on slicing them up for the cheese sandwiches he planned on serving. Out of the corner of his eye, a blonde-headed girl caught his attention when she entered with one of her books, walking without bumping into anything as her eyes never even left the printed pages.

“Hi, Richard,” she offered without looking up. “What are you doing?” Finishing the chapter, Hailee pressed the open book to her chest and sighed. “Sometimes my stories just pull me in and I forget where I’m at. Can you imagine living in Ireland or walking on a real beach?”

“I’ve never been outside America, but when I was a kid, my grandmother lived in California, and I got to spend a whole summer at her house. We went to the beach every single weekend,” he reflected.

“No kidding,” she perked up, tugging the book even closer to her bosom. “That must have been wonderful! What do you remember the most?”

His nose sniffed the air. “The smell, to tell you the truth. It didn’t really smell very good.”

Hailee’s head cocked to the side. “You’re kidding me.”

Handing her a platter of sliced bread, Richard motioned for her to lay a dishtowel over it. “No, it smelled terrible! Like rotting fish and old socks,” he laughed. “If you think the stalls smell bad, multiply that a few times over and toss in a bushel of old fish to boot.”

Almost on cue, Tobias opened the door and stepped in, running a hand through his hair after he removed his hat. “We’re having fish tonight? When did you go fishin' without me?” he teased his favorite gal.

Richard grunted. “No fish. Someone’s been reading, not fishing. But it sounds like a good idea if anyone wants to load me up with a basketful,” he hinted with wiggling eyebrows.

“It’ll probably have to wait til we get back from that cat hunt,” came the reply. “I think I’ll spend the rest of the night getting ready to be gone for a few days.”

The sad droop in Hailee’s posture didn’t go unnoticed.

“Speaking of getting things done, the water pump is a big deal; that’s gotta be the first thing we get situated before we can even think about leaving. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen today, either, the way Duffy’s taking his ever-lovin sweet time getting back with that pin and seal,” he tapped his fingers on the counter top. “I’ll get on it first thing in the morning, unless by some miracle the man slinks back in before dark.”

Hailee frowned and opened her mouth to say something about the creepy way Duffy had looked at her and the rude manner he’d spoken to her earlier, but after recognizing that look on Tobias’ face, she opted to keep her thoughts to herself.

‘Guess I better not add even more kindling to this campfire,’ she reasoned.

“Chin up, we won’t be gone that long,” Tobias promised, thinking her facial expressions reflected her feelings about her father leaving. “And if we’re lucky, the cat won’t work us over too bad,” he teased.

“Ha ha. Not funny.”

Richard’s knife sliced through a few peeled potatoes, creating vegetable circles. When the pile grew big enough for his taste, the taters found their way into a cast iron skillet he’d already prepared with hot bacon grease.

Speaking a bit louder to be heard over the potatoes crisping in the skillet, Richard reached over for the bag of salt and asked Hailee to refill his containers.

P

Standing in front of the man holding the smoking branding iron, Duffy pulled his wallet out. “So what’s this gonna set me back?”

“Well, you threw the shoe pretty clean, so it shouldn’t be too bad. If you want to go grab yourself a bite to eat down there at the saloon, I bet I’ll be done by the time you get back. We can settle up then,” he confirmed.

Duffy stuffed the wallet back in his pocket and nodded. “See ya in a bit, then.”

The heavy wooden door creaked when his shoulder shoved against it, and then the whiff of roast beef and chicken hit him. On his way to the bar at the back of the room, and with boots clacking against the old planked floor, Duffy gave a nod to a couple of men he knew as he strutted by them.

The sign above the bar had been repainted since he’d been in the last time; it was easier to read now. A bit for a drink of beer, two bits for a drink of whiskey, unless you order food. Five cents with paid meal.

Duffy was absolutely going to eat.

He didn’t have the chance to eat twice in town in the same day, but maybe once a year. He aimed to take advantage of the situation; and once those mine shares paid off, he would be doing this more often, maybe even paying for a meal or two here and there for someone else. A grin emerging across his face, Duffy leaned back a bit in his chair and figured he might as well give the folks a little preview of what was to come.

Once the saloon owner’s wife waddled to the table with his bread and cold roast beef, she wiped her hands on the pale blue apron tied about her thick waist.

“Want anything with your beer? We have some cheese and salt pickles,” she offered.

He glanced down at his plate. “Well,” he rubbed his chin. “Sure! I’ll take some,” he told the woman. Reaching down for a bit of meat and bread, he wasted no time shoving it in.

Glass platter nearly licked clean, Duffy flipped four bits on the table. “You can keep the change,” let the woman know.

Duffy pushed his hat back enough to get a good look at the sky; he figured it was time to head on over to the store to pick up the pin and seal. Sure as anything, Bruce would be waiting to get that pump going again. Not that he could blame the man, but he did feel the stab of resentment of being the go-get-it person instead of someone else. A younger man who hadn’t put in as many years as he had, for instance.

Or better yet, how about that danged Tobias?

P

Richard gave one more glance into the sink filled with dirty dishes, thankful there weren’t any more than that. He knew that once he finally had some warm water to suds up with his lye soap, he would first have to let them soak an hour before he could scrub them down. ‘Dried-on egg is a beast’, he grumbled without anyone hearing him. Just as the older man turned around, he heard the sound of Hailee laughing outside.

Glancing out the window, he couldn’t help but notice that Tobias was the reason she was having such a good time out there. Shaking his head, a smirk found its way to his face; he ran a finger over his eyelid to care for an itch and chuckled at the way those two got along so well.

“And what’s so comical,” Bruce wanted to know as he came in for an old rag to clean his rifle with.

Richard finished the chuckling and nodded his head toward the window. “Those two,” he indicated with a tug of his thumb. “They’re at it again.”

Hailee raced around the laundry-drying line, threatening to toss her handmade wicker basket at Tobias, who was threatening in equal measure to yank her wet dress off the line.

Of course, he never would have done such a thing to Hailee, and she knew that. Once she allowed him to catch her, she let out a squeal for his reward.

“C’mon,” Tobias told her over the top of her thick blonde curls. “I’ll help you finish this up.”

Bruce watched the pair work together, tugging on Hailee’s dress as they straightened all the ruffles and gathers so it would dry tight. She did like her ruffles tight, he grinned before the words that Gus told him came full circle back into his mind.

Could Tobias really be sweet on his Hailee?

Before wrapping his mind around that question much more, the dust trail of hooves caught his sight just over the other side of the hill and diverted Bruce’s attention; it was Duffy, he finally figured out.

Bruce motioned for Richard to come closer. “Get some oil lamps out, just in case we hit a snag on fixing your water pump. I want it done by the time anyone hits the pillow tonight,” Bruce assured his old friend with a hearty pat on the back.

Disguising the way he felt about how long Duffy had been gone, Bruce made his way outside, waved at the man on horseback and smiled.

Chapter 8

Her father’s favorite wing back chair cradled her lower back and eased the tension she felt at the base of her neck. Even after a bath in the creek, the general disgruntled atmosphere around the ranch caused everyone to be on higher than usual alert. What was wrong with Duffy these days, anyhow?

With eyes fixed straight ahead into the fireplace, Hailee’s intention had been to focus on the new book she bought in Canon City, but found no concentration for anything except the man who stood outside. The man she found herself staring at through the window. The man leaning up against the loaded down wagon and discussing the best route to take in the morning.

The man who found himself glancing back inside the window at the pretty blonde sitting in front of the fireplace…the girl with the glow of soft flames against her face…the girl he would rather be talking with right now, than a bunch of foul-smelling men who best be bathing tonight before they all head out together in the early morning hours.

Hailee slid a lavender-scented bookmark into the book, flipped the cover and set it down on the round table on top of the snow-white doily her grandmother had tatted a lifetime ago, then lifted herself from the chair and made her way to large picture window overlooking the majority of the ranch.

Her eyes fell right into focus on the group of men as they ironed out the last details for their departure, and she wondered what Tobias found so comical as he flashed his teeth a couple of times in response to what she assumed was men-talk; he held out a hand and motioned toward Puma Canyon before the crowd of ranch hands shook hands and dispersed, each one moving toward his respective bunk house.

The girl allowed her eyes to narrow as she watched Tobias linger at the wagon and tend to tightening down one of the ropes. As the last man fell into shadows, Hailee saw Tobias shove a hand into his leather coat pocket and pull out a piece of paper that he unfolded, read, and placed inside an envelope. Glancing over his shoulder, Tobias made his way to the front porch and her pulse quickened; would he come inside the house so late at night?

When he paused at the porch railing and slipped the envelope under a flower pot before turning and whistling all the way back to his bunk house, she tilted her head out of curiosity. He was grinning ear to ear.

She had only been inside his bunkhouse one time. Her father explained to her later that it was probably not appropriate for her to have been in there, but Bruce couldn’t be angry with either of them; Tobias had simply shown her a winter blanket in need of mending and wanted her opinion about the matter. Hailee had to make a full confession to the man, which was the fact that couldn’t sew a lick.

“I can crochet a mile a minute and have even begun to knit some, but you sit a mending basket in front of me and you’re likely to be running naked before I’d even think about looking into it!,” she laughed.

That's when the books caught her attention.

“You’re a reader!” she accused in an excited tone.

Tobias ran a hand through his hair and nodded before he had time to think about it.

“Yeah, I like to read right before I blow the candle out at night; read most of these a few times each, but that’s alright, I guess.”

Hailee’s eyes ran over the titles. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, followed by a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and next to that book, stood one that she never even heard of before.

She ran a finger over the spine.

“John Rollin Ridge? Who is that?”

He grinned. It was one of his favorites.

“He’s actually an Indian. Cherokee. The man wrote about his own life, told his own story the way he wanted it told, before anyone else had the jump on it. Pretty clever, wouldn’t ya say? I read somewhere that he was born and raised in the heart of the Cherokee Land in Georgia, right in New Echota itself.”

Hailee nodded. She’d remembered something or another about the place when she was still in school, but the teacher hadn’t spent much time on the subject.

“He walked a hard life, saw things a man shouldn’t have to see,” Tobias told her with a twist in his eye. “I like books that tell a story the everyday man can understand and take to heart; the other books over there,” he told her with a jerk of the thumb to the side where Hawthorne and Dickens were housed, “don’t get to me like these over here,” referencing a few of his more tattered books, such as The Last of the Mohicans.

Hailee nodded; she knew what he meant.

“I just don’t get those fancy pants boys who live in Paris and whatnot. They’ve never done a decent day’s worth of work, I bet. Shoot,” he told her as his hand ran back through his wavy mop, “it’s not their fault they weren’t born in the Valley, so it’s not really like I got something’ against ‘em, ya see. I just don’t understand them.”

Allowing herself to take in his abode a bit closer, she noticed how tidy he kept his home. When did he have the time to clean it? It was something she had never given any thought to until that day – the man her heart ached for stooped over a bedchamber pot or a messy floor, food crumbles underfoot.

The two of them talked about books and story lines until her father found them together in the bunk house.

The minute Bruce heard their voices from inside the bunk house, he stood frozen to the ground, leaning over to get a listen at their conversation. He’d stood outside just long enough to become comfortable before knocking on Tobias’ door.

The girl’s father was even more pleased when he poked his head in, finding Tobias keeping his distance from Hailee at a respectful pace.

With her thoughts wandering off, so did Tobias. Before she knew it, the man disappeared into the evening air. She squinted out the window to see if she could catch one last glimpse of the man, but only caught her own breath fogging over the image of the flower pot on the porch railing; all she could see in the near distance was the occasional flicker of a lightening bug.

He was gone.

“How far are you?”

Startled, she turned her face to the sound of the familiar voice.

“Daddy! You scared me! What did you say?”

He pointed to the book.

“How far are you? Isn’t that one of those new story books you bought?”

Nodding, she answered. “Yes, it is…but Daddy, I can’t read the night before you leave the ranch; do you even how long you’ll be away?”

Bruce shook his head and grimaced.

“No way of knowing, not really. I guess we’ll be gone til we get us a cat; could be a few days, but it’s possible it’ll be more than that.”

He grabbed the cast iron poker Gus made the family as a gift a couple of years back and budged a smaller log on top of the burning mass, reached over and pulled another log into his arms from the iron ring next to the fireplace.

Rolling it into the burning center of the fireplace, Bruce added, “I bet you won’t even miss me, I’ll be back so fast!”

“Not true! And not funny, either,” Hailee pouted. “I know that thing has to be found, but I guess I was hoping he’d come and give himself up or something, “ she teased.

For a fact, that girl hated it whenever her father had to leave on any kind of ranch business. He hadn’t had to leave without her very many times, but she disliked it every time that he did.

Not that she wanted to go with him this time. She rather enjoyed her soft bed with the blankets. And a pillow.

Glancing at the book still on the catalog table, Hailee knew she wouldn’t be able to read any more of it tonight.

“I just wish I knew how long you were going to be gone, Daddy,” she told him, standing up and wrapping her arms around him. “I miss you when you’re not here.”

“So let’s make the most of the time we have before I have to go,” he suggested.

Opting to sit down at the chess table in the corner, she vowed to win this time.

Chapter 9

Rubbing the sunlight from her eyes, Hailee dressed in such a rush, she discovered crooked buttons running down the front of herself; unbuttoning her dress and smock in order to dress properly, she opted to skip over her morning routine of face washing and ran down the staircase, fearing she had missed the men already and would not even have the chance to say goodbye.

Most of the men had either already eaten and were strapping their horses down or were going about the daily chores of ranch life; her eyes darted around for her father or Tobias, the only two she cared about at the moment.

A smile emerged and Hailee felt relief trickle through her veins when she caught sight of her father making his way toward the barn.

“Daddy!” she called out to him.

He turned and held out his arms for the hug he knew was coming his way.

“I was afraid you had already gone,” she informed him when his strong arms wrapped around her untied hair.

“I would have woken you up, Darlin',” he replied. “Want to help me get ready to go?”

“No. If not helping you means you’ll stay.”

He cocked his head to one side and looked down at her with father’s eyes. He understood.

Resigned to do whatever he asked of her, the girl sighed.

“What do you want me to do?”

Before the man could even begin to think of an early-morning chore to assign his daughter, he spied Tobias in his regular morning routine of toting firewood into the kitchen.

“I guess you could hold the door open for Tobias,” he chuckled.

Hailee smiled. Sure, she could do that!

She yanked up on her dress and scooted on back toward the main house, landing at the kitchen door just an instant before Tobias reached out for the door handle.

“I got it!”

The log-laden man peered around the firewood and thanked her, but before either of them could even give a good morning greeting, they overheard Bruce cussing in the barn.

“Ah, dang burned it!” he hollered out.

They heard the sound of a milk bucket being kicked across the barn and made a face at each other.

Duffy had just rounded the side of the barn and dropped his load to find out what the commotion was all about.

When the three reached the barn entrance, it didnt take long to figure out what the commotion was all about; black and white fur tainted with blood. Lots of blood. The goat’s neck had been ripped wide open and from the look of the rest of the body, the meal had been a grand one.

“It wasn’t a cat, Boss,” Tobias told him, full aware that every person standing there knew the habits of the predators that sneaked their ways into the Red Bone Ranch. “We know cats take the meal off and eat it; this had to be a dog. Wolf, maybe?”

He shook his head at the sick look on Hailee's face, but the girl had seen her fair share of blood living on a ranch. She could get through the next few minutes well enough.

“Dang burned it,” Bruce repeated. “We can’t keep losing animals this way! Gonna have to kill off that cat and whatever else gets in here,” he told whoever was listening. “Well, boys, good thing we decided to head off this morning; this mess isn’t going to just up and go away all by itself.”

Hailee hated to see the dead animal, but she also realized it meant the loss of more of her father’s sanity; he had been up the past four nights pacing in front of the window facing the barn. She knew he wanted to see the cat with his own two eyes, but the animal had somehow evaded Bruce’s attention.

From a rancher's standpoint, she knew this had to be unacceptable.

Bruce stared at the dead goat for a few more seconds before heavy steps trudged him over to the wall where several larger tools on hooks and heavy nails hung up neatly. He yanked an old shovel off the nail, turned around without saying another word and stabbed the shovel into the ground next to the edge of the darkened pool of blood.

“Let’s get this carcass buried and get on with the chores at hand, everyone,” Bruce mumbled to nobody in particular.

Duffy waited until the tail of Bruce’s shadow left the barn and snapped the shovel up with an angry glare in his eyes.

“I don’t intend to keep on losin’ animals! Here,” he almost commanded Tobias. “Take care of this, and I mean right now!”

Duffy stormed out of the barn, leaving both Hailee and Tobias stunned. He behaved as if the ranch belonged to his own person!

Tobias raised one eyebrow in Hailee’s general direction.

“I wonder what that was all about?” he snickered with a shake of his head. “Well, I reckon I got me some chores to take care of before we take off this morning. Wouldn’t wanna see old Duffman get all riled up, now would we?” he asked with a scowl on his face.

Hailee patted him on the shoulder and grinned.

“Ah, don’t pay him any mind; he just takes his duties too far sometimes because he’s known Daddy for so long.” She looked over her shoulder and took a couple of steps to make sure that Duffy was out of ear shot. “Daddy doesn’t know it, but I don’t like him as much as the other ranch hands.”

Hailee batted her eyes and stepped real close to Tobias, tilted her face up toward his.

The man felt her warmth breathing across his chin and lower lip; he swallowed hard, failing to hide his nervousness from her.

“And I don’t like him near as much as I like you,” she cooed in whispered tones.

Tobias’ jaw fell.

Hailee giggled.

“Girl, that is exactly what I was talkin’ about! You gotta cut that out!” he told her, although it was only his head saying the words, and not his heart.

He ran a nervous hand through his dark mop of hair, swallowed half a dozen words he would have given his left leg to have spoken, and allowed himself to draw ever so closer to Hailee. He could smell the lavender in her hair when the breeze caught in between strands of the blonde curls, and he felt his gut tighten for the want to reach out and run his fingers through it.

“Girl just what are we gonna do about this mess we’re in? I’d like to take you up in my arms right now, but I can’t do that. And that ain’t right. If a man wants to give his girl a kiss, he oughtta be able to do it, dag nab it!”

He shook his head. He wasn’t sorry he’d said it, either.

“You want to kiss me!”

Stepping back before the girl had a chance to persuade him into anything he probably wouldn’t regret later, Tobias scooped up the goat and marched out to bury the carcass, rolling his eyes.

“That girl is gonna be the death of me one way or another, I just know it!” he mumbled.

From the corner of his eye, Tobias spied Duffy standing next to the hen house; almost as if he’d perched himself just far enough away to catch the two of them in some precarious situation. That, or he was waiting for the barn to become vacant that or for some unknown reason.

“Hmm, I wonder what he’s up to?” he wondered aloud, proceeding with the duty of burying the goat’s carcass.

P

Duffy stood at his work bench inside the tack room, ran a finger along the edge of the meat saw.

The small leather pouch of assorted blades stared up at him, mocking his indecisiveness when all of a sudden the flickering from the oil lantern drew his attention back to the blades and a slow, evil grin spread across his lips as an idea jumped into that brain of his.

If outward appearances told a story well, the bitter man approved of the idea he entertained in that head of his.

P

Bruce gulped down the last of his coffee, making certain the men had eaten and were ready; they would probably not stop until they were ready to bed down for the night.

Tobias had finished his business and was about to climb up on Epoenah; Hailee insisted he take her prize mare on the hunt with him.

He’d already laid the felt pad and blue Navajo blanket over the horse’s back and chose the saddle with the darker colored leather accents to match the blanket.

With the leather cinch straps in his hands, Tobias brought them over the front and back of the saddle with the natural confidence of a seasoned cowboy, positioning the saddle with perfection, giving another quick tug to double check the snug fit before he offered one last unintentional nod of satisfaction.

Being a horse lover himself, he would have never allowed Epoenah to become rubbed raw with his weight on an uneven blanket and half-cocked saddle. But he was especially careful to mind what he was doing because he knew what that horse meant to his beloved Hailee.

Tobias grinned as his fingers adjusted the stirrups; he was reminded of the fact that she was a good six inches shorter than he was and he could, in fact, rest his chin on top of her head in a very comfortable standing position. He had pictured himself doing just that many times over in the past several months and wondered when he would ever be able to test it out.

With his left foot in the stirrup, he glanced around to make sure nobody else was around as he leaned over and motioned with a nod for her to come toward him.

Tightening his grip on the saddle horn, he confided, “I left something for you under that flower pot on the front porch…it’s a letter I wrote,” he told her with a sheepish wave of his hands. “I never have written a letter to a girl before, so I don’t know if I did it right or not. I just kinda let my heart guide the pencil and I almost didn’t leave it at all, but -” he was cut short when Hailee put a hand on his leg.

“I watched you lay it under the pot. I thought it was for Daddy, so I just let it sit there!”

Pulling himself upward and swinging his right leg up and over the saddle in one swift motion, Hailee watched his muscular arms tensing as he seated himself, hooked his left boot into the stirrup and looked back down at the pretty girl with the bonnet strings in one hand.

“Well, it ain’t for your Pa or anyone else, so you best get to finding it before someone else does.”

She nodded and smiled, anxious to read what his heart had to say to her.

Tobias yanked on the reins and urged Epoenah to join the rest of the men gathering by the ranch gate.

Bruce called out to Hailee and motioned for her to come give him a hug.

“Now you help Richard out in the kitchen and make sure you keep those eggs gathered up while I’m gone, you hear me?”

All goodbyes said, the group of seven men headed out of the ranch gates, a few pots and pans clinking off the rear of one horse.

Hailee wasted no time in running to the front porch, where she yanked the flower pot off the railing.

There it was.

Her hand swooped down and snatched the envelope; she felt the bulge inside and replaced the flower pot quickly in an effort not to draw any attention to herself.

Noticing the dark clouds gathering off in the distance, Hailee wondered if it would rain on the men later in the afternoon. If it did, she knew the men would get both cranky and on one another’s nerves.

She also knew if Howard J. Duffman became any crankier, Tobias was more likely than not to set him straight.

Forcing that image from her mind, she found her place on the wooden rocking chair in the far-left-hand corner of the porch. Fingers skittered along the bulge as she tried to guess what it might be.

Hailee closed her eyes and pictured Tobias writing the letter. Had he spent much time pondering over his words, or did he just blurt it all out at once? Had he written the letter early in the morning or at night, by the light of his lantern?

The young woman’s mind rolled back to earlier in the morning when he admitted that he wanted to hold her, kiss her.

Her heart moved with a new kind of warmth at the thought that someday, he would be able to do just that.

Sealed with a line of glue, Hailee ripped the top of the envelope off and removed the letter. Once it had been unfolded, the bulge revealed itself in the form of a cameo on a delicate double chain.

Her breath paused, causing her chest to tighten as her fingers dared to touch the face of the unknown woman; the chain winked in the sunlight.

She opened her pocket and allowed the cameo to be lowered down little by little so the chain wouldn’t become tangled, then unfolded her letter, noticing the neat handwriting.

A tight grip on Hailee’s throat caused her hands to tremble as she began reading:

Dear Hailee, The whole time I’m gone, I’ll be thinking about you. We’re gonna have to find a way to talk to your Pa soon enough, but don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of everything. You’re mine, you know. Sleep well until we see each other again and know that my heart belongs only to you.

The words were signed with, All my love, Tobias.

An entire lifetime of promises summed up within a few lines of the most open words she had ever heard, Hailee read the letter another three times before folding it back up and slipping her man’s vow of love into the envelope.

Before standing up, she took the necklace from her pocket and laced the chain around her fingers, held it up to the sun and allowed herself to imagine Tobias clasping the lock at the nape of her neck and letting her hair fall down around it.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; where in the world did he buy it? She hadn’t seen any fine jewelry stores in Canon City.

P

Richard slumped over the cast iron fry skillet, pouring the last of the morning’s bacon grease into a tin can he kept in the back of a handmade cabinet Bruce crafted; the oak-carved kitchen accessory stood over five feet tall and occupied a prominent section of Richard’s kitchen.

Tapping the lid down to keep the grease fresh and inside the container, Richard placed it on a shelf and yanked the red and white checkered fabric across the wooden rods to put the morning chores to rest.

Hailee smoothed her pocket, pausing over the spot where her new treasure lay in secret; if Tobias found a moment to speak with her father in the next few days, she would be able to wear it to church!

Thoughts of making an entrance through the oversized white double doors in her blue frilly dress, a splash of lavender oil and her new token from the best looking man in the Valley slowed her down just a bit in the dish-drying task Richard assigned to her.

She thought about laying the necklace out across the butcher block for Richard to take a gander at, but uncertain where his faithfulness to her father would actually begin or end, opted to excuse herself in order to finish up a couple of chores in the hen house instead.

“How about you gather those eggs and I’ll pour us some sweet tea. It’s just you and me for a while, so I figure we may as well play games all day and stay up late drinking hot cider. Maybe even make a few wishes on stars while we’re at it. What do ya say?”

Staring out the window, Richard added, “Although I probably already know what some of your wishes might be.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t want to look him in the eye.

“Yeah. I sure do hope they find that cat and get back home in a hurry; that’s about the only thing that’s been on my mind lately,” Hailee openly lied to one of her dearest friends.

Richard chuckled.

Hailee reluctantly gave him that quick glance out the corner of her eye.

“He does love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course he does! I have the best daddy in the valley. I don’t think there’s anything he wouldn’t do for me -“

Richard shook his head and cut her off.

“There is no doubt that your father does adore the ground you walk on, Hailee, but that's not who I’m talking about here,” he told her as a matter-of-fact.

When her face snapped up and their eyes met, panic darted straight into her heart; he knew! How could Richard know about the secret she and Tobias worked so hard to keep hidden? The grip tightened when her mind shifted to the other question, which took precedence over every thought in her mind - did her father know?

He chuckled again and the young woman could feel her face beginning to blush.

“I don’t know what to say,” Hailee started to explain.

“Well, for starters, you can tell me what’s in that pocket of yours.”

She pulled her head back and cocked it to one side.

“Girl, I haven’t seen anything pawing at something the way you’ve been pawing at that pocket of yours, not since those dogs tore away at an old bone I tossed out last month,” he teased. “So what did Tobias give you that you’re so scared of showing someone?”

Hailee knew when she’d been caught.

And she had just been caught.

Shaking her head, she brought the necklace out and held it up so he could take it in his fingers.

He whistled.

“Whew-wee, that’s a dandy! Set Tobias back a few coins, I reckon! How long have you had it?”

Relaxing a bit, Hailee smiled this time when their eyes met.

“Just since this morning. He left it in an envelope with a letter,” she started. “Tobias said he wants to talk to Daddy.”

The cook, old friend, and wise man nodded.

“He aught to do just that. You know your daddy don’t wanna step in the barn one day and get an eye full of something he ain’t ready for; he might be feisty about the news for a while, but he’ll come around,” Richard tried to comfort. “Best for Tobias to step on up to the plate and ask for your hand. Best he get it over and done with as soon as he can.”

Hailee blushed. Her hand?

Richard caught the look on her face and shook his head. One eyebrow cocked upward, he looked her square in the face.

“What? Now don’t you tell this old man you didn’t think Tobias was leanin’ that direction. A fella looks at a beauty such as yourself, he’s got marryin on his mind.”

“I don’t think I was looking at it that way. Not really. No boy has ever been interested in me before - I don’t know what to do now!”

The old friend reared his gray head back and ripped out a good old belly laugh on that one.

“Girl, are you serious? No boy has ever looked at you? You can’t be meaning that.”

But soon as he asked, he saw the blank look on Hailee’s face; she was oblivious to all those other boys who had come calling on her in the past.

“Well, Hailee, I got one thing to say to you,” Richard told her with a more serious tone in his voice. “Tobias ain’t a boy. He’s a full grown man with full grown ideas and ways of thinkin’ about certain matters. Are you ready to be a grown up woman and meet him in those ways of thinkin’?”

“Richard, what happens now?”

He nodded for her to follow him to the table and reached for the deck of cards someone left there from the night before.

“We play gin rummy. Just let the cards play themselves out, Hailee. If it’s a good game, you’ll come out of it just fine. Now get on out there and get my eggs, girl. I’ll whip you at a round or two of cards when you get back,” he winked.

Chapter 10

A couple of days after the wagon wheel marks disappeared up at the Red Bone Ranch, the group of men found themselves looking down a seventy-five-foot embankment in Puma Canyon, located not more than three miles from their home.

Duffy shrugged a thumb downward. He shook his head.

“That creek’s got a lot of water flowin’ since that rain storm came in the other night, and that’s a good sign. Critters follow the flow of water, ya know. What do ya think we oughtta do, Boss?” he asked, not really listening for an answer from anyone.

Bruce shrugged a shoulder in response.

“We go on. I came to get me a cat, and I ain’t goin’ home unless I have me a pelt to hang on my wall,” he asserted.

The men nodded in agreement.

Another hour up the canyon path, the ranchers-turned-hunters pitched tents and ate hot beans under the twinkling stars, which gave off just enough light to see by.

Bruce finished sopping up the last bit of his food with a chunk of Richard’s sourdough bread when he caught sight of Tobias all hunched up over a writing tablet on the other side of the campfire. He looked involved in his thoughts; probably, knowing how thorough the man was, he probably kept a diary of their every movement while tracking the cat. Good man, that Tobias.

He waited until the pencil slid back into a coat pocket and the tablet shut before calling his fellow hunter over to his side of the fire ring.

“Come get your coffee cup refilled, Tobias. I don’t reckon anyone else is gonna have any more and it ain’t that good after it sits a while.”

Tobias obliged.

“Keepin’ track of what we’re doin’ out here?” Bruce inquired with a nod of his head toward the tablet.

Tobias didn’t want to lie, but the fact was, he had been writing to Hailee, and yet, he wasn’t ready to say anything to Bruce about the situation. The timing wasn’t right and he wasn’t about to say one word about his feelings unless they were words said in private.

Glancing around at all the other men, he answered in softer tones, “Well, no, Boss. I had another project I was workin’ on. I reckon we’ll remember where we are in the morning, so there really ain’t any need to record where we slept last night or where we’re going tomorrow. Least ways, that’s how I see it. But I can write it all down if you want me to, though,” he mentioned off the cuff.

Bruce just chuckled and rubbed his chin.

“Nah. You’re right as usual, Tobias. We come home with a pelt, we’re gonna remember the story well enough to tell our grandkids,” he took a slow sip out of his mug. “Not like I see any of them coming any time soon,” he drifted off in half-mumbled words.

Tobias grinned into his own mug. If the man only knew.

The younger man glanced around and noticed they were the last two still milling about. The fire flickered low highlights around their boot heels, the fireflies gave evidence of themselves in and out of the trees.

“Hey, Boss. You ever smear those things all over your arms when you were a kid? Wake up covered in bug guts the next morning?” he asked out of the blue.

Bruce choked on his drink and let out a soft chuckle, obviously remembering a childhood moment or two.

They sat together for a while longer, not really saying that much, just building on the friendship they already enjoyed.

Bruce tossed one more log on the fire and bid Tobias a good night’s rest. He pat him on the shoulder and went his way toward the wagon, where he slept.

Hailee was the last thing on the minds of both men that night.

P

“I ain’t doin’ it!” Duffy shouted loud enough to wake the Rosita cemetery. “I ain’t here to be no errand boy!”

Bruce lifted his head off his rolled-up blanket so fast he gained an instant headache from the jerk, wondering not the first time, what in the world had gotten into Duffy lately. He’d been behaving like a different person for a while now. Why didn’t he leave the attitude behind at the ranch?

When a man gets jerked awake by a grown man throwing a tantrum, it’s time to start asking questions.

He rolled over, onto his side and pushed himself into a sitting position on the back on the wagon, stretching out the night’s kinks.

“Sure wish the day wouldn’t start out like this,” Bruce muttered.

Jumping down off the wagon, Bruce’s eyes darted toward the source of the commotion: Duffy riled up over something or another.

Arms folded over his chest almost like a three year old and his mouth all shriveled up, the man’s demeanor made him look ten years older than his actual years.

“Alright, Duffy. What’s got you upset this early in the morning?”

Duffy wasted no time in telling his story.

Come to find out, a couple of the men woke up and someone suggested putting on coffee Then someone else mentioned a need more wood; someone would have to go fetch a few branches. And someone had the audacity to ask Duffy to do the fetching!

“I ain’t no errand boy,” he repeated.

Stunned, Bruce shook his head and rubbed both fists into his eyes. This couldn’t be the same man he felt a friendship with not very long ago; what had gotten into him?

“Let me get this straight. You wanta eat but you don’t wanta help. Duffy, we could use an extra pair of hands out here, and I’d sure hate to see you go on back to the ranch-but we’re all out here to make one thing happen, and that is to bring us home a dead cat. Now, you know how I feel about it: ain’t any of us better than another one out here or back home at the ranch. Let’s you and me come on back to my wagon and get to the bottom of what it is that’s got your dander up.”

Embarrassed and humiliated by this point, his mind filled with excuses he could lay on Bruce. Truth was, he was just plain sick and tired of never having anything for himself, and it was getting the best of him.

Having no choice but to watch that danged Tobias edging his way into the very core of the Johnson family day in and day out almost had Duffy at his breaking point.

The man tried to disguise his mood and ran a hand up to the brim of his leather hat.

“Aw, can’t we just forget about this? There really ain’t nothin’ to it. Just woke up in a foul mood, that’s it-ain’t no more to it than that,” he lied.

Bruce wanted to believe him. But his attitude had been increasing to heights that even he couldn’t ignore anymore.

“Look, Duffy. You and me, we’ve been friends for a mighty long time now. I’ve tried to take care of you, like I’ve tried to take care of everyone else on my ranch. Maybe I’ve done more for you over the years because we’ve been friends. But that don’t mean you’re any better than the rest of the help.”

His voice trailed off in a mud puddle of words and humiliating talk.

Like everyone else? My ranch? The rest of…the help?

Bruce could see the day had gotten off to a rotten start and he didn’t know how to fix things, make them better.

Tobias wandered closer to them in case Bruce needed him to lend a hand, but Duffy seemed to resent the younger man’s presence and made no further comments when their eyes met; instead, he marched off, fists clenched.

As if to emphasize an opinion of his company for the day, the grumpy ranch hand refused breakfast, drank no coffee, and nearly cut the circulation from his horse when he saddled, making certain everyone knew how disgusted he really was, by gosh!

The other men, however, would not allow Duffy’s disposition to wound their spirits as they cut jokes and ate a hearty breakfast before climbing back on their horses for the important task at hand.

P

Puma Canyon lent for a calming ride as horse hooves clamped down over the compacted narrow trail. Orange and yellow leaves fell from aspen and birch limbs and into the creek down below in the embankment; chances of the cat living along these large boulders and drinking from that creek were not only possible, but probable. Eyes darted from boulder to creek several times over the course of the morning until the man who rode next to Tobias began holding his face at a sharper angle, his forehead pulling together more often and his jaw clenching.

Finally, the man felt the need to break the group’s silence.

“I’m sure we’re getting closer now, I smell it.”

Tobias nodded. “I’m with you on that one; keep your eyes open and fixed, boys. Boss, looks like you’re gonna have that pelt after all. Maybe even by the end of the day if she cooperates with us. Then we can all get back to the ranch and Hailee.”

Once the words tumbled out, there was no taking them back. His glance caught Bruce nodding his head at the mention of his daughter.

“I do believe you’re right,” he beamed. “Let’s get this job done and get home, boys. More than a few days from my little girl makes a distracted hunter.”

Tobias understood the sentiment and nodded, wiping sweat from his brow with an absent-minded motion.

Duffy observed Tobias from a few horses back; something brewing there, he just knew it. The man looked a bit too nervous for his liking when he mentioned the boss’ daughter; Duffy cocked his head, narrowing his gaze on Tobias.

He’d suspected something going on between those two when he walked into the barn and caught them standing all too cozy. That little moment sparked his curiosity, but now he was positive those two young 'uns were keeping a secret.

He would find out what that secret was and put a stop to it, by gosh! Wasn’t nobody gonna take what he wanted, and Duffy had a mind to have that ranch.

Chapter 11

“Gin,” she stated. “Again.”

Richard slumped over in mock disgrace, covering his eyes with the cards still left in hand.

“Okay. Let’s make it best out of ten rounds instead of five; you’ve already whipped me three of those and I can’t let no little girl be fer whippin’ this old man at a friendly game cards, of all things,” he winked.

Shuffling the deck, he glanced up at the girl and then shuffled once more-just to be sure. When the old cook began to file through his own cards, he scowled and made a sour face.

“Good thing we aren’t betting anything tonight - I’d be losin’ my socks!”

She giggled and flipped down two pairs.

“What? Already? You’re killin’ me, girl,” he teased only half-heartedly.

“We could always leave the game for later,” she suggested.

“Deal,” he stretched both arms overhead. “And I don’t mean the cards, either. This old man needs a break.”

“Me, too,” she nodded. “You know what I’ve been thinking about all day?”

Wincing as he hoisted himself up off the chair, the man placed a palm against his hip and grunted as he forced himself to stand completely erect.

“Don’t know what you’ve been thinking about, but I’ve been spending a mighty long time thinking about the days when I jumped off my seat without having to make old man faces,” he poked his tongue out playfully. “Let’s put on a pot of water and get some potatoes peeled while you tell me what’s been on your mind.”

“I’ve been thinking I need to keep my mind occupied,” she glanced back to him as she reached into the cupboard for the large cooking pot. “And it sure would be nice to actually have all my yarn put back before I start a project so you people don’t have to listen to me complain all winter, don’t you think?”

Teasing, he nodded.

“Well, Daddy said I could get some sheep, right?”

“That he did.”

“That brings me to what I need from you,” blinking her eyelashes a bit much, she placed both hands under her chin. “Do you think you could help me bake a pie for the Hoods? They might think of me as annoying if I stopped by asking for a favor without bringing them something in return.”

“Girl, your list of things to do has grown over this past year, but I have to hand it to you,” Richard nodded as he cut the vegetables and scooped them up. “Seems like you’re more than able to keep up with your interests. All except that idea of teaching Epoenah to walk backwards, that is.”

“Hey! Have you been comparing notes with Tobias or something?”

Changing the subject straight away, Richard tilted his head to side and inquired, “Are we talking about a fresh filling for that pie, or should we pull out a jar from the pantry?”

P

Tom Hood stood in the yard with a heavy ax hung on his shoulder and the Rosita sunshine in his eyes. The unevenly stacked pile of pine at his feet begged him to finish the job at hand, but judging from the look Hailee caught on his face, his back leaned more toward taking a break.

Just as he swung the ax again, Susan called out the window, “Tom, isn’t that the Johnson girl?”

Hailee waved and called back, “Yes, It’s me, Mrs. Hood! Are you busy?”

Susan flashed that inviting grin all the neighbors had grown to love.

“Never too busy for you, dear!” she responded as the heavy wooden door flung wide open.

Tom propped the ax up against the wood pile, thankful for the rest he intended to take anyway.

“And especially never too busy when you’re bringing food,” he teased when he saw the checkerboard cloth covering what was, he hoped, a baked good of some sort.

Susan shook her head.

“Oh, never mind Tom,” she chuckled. “I haven’t had a chance to bake much of anything sweet for almost a week now and I suspect he might be able to smell treats from fifty yards at this point.”

Grinning in agreement to that assumption, he propped his ax up against the pile and held out an arm as if to escort the treat-toting ladies inside.

“Young lady, how is that father of yours? Last time I saw him, we were both standing in line to pay for some grain in Westcliffe,” Tom recollected. “If memory serves me right, he has a notion on planting a whole new crop of apples. Is that so?”

She nodded and grimaced all at once. “Yes, it is; I’m certain to be one of the main recipients of a good blister when the hole-digging begins,” she glanced down to both palms. “But that won’t be for a while, anyway, seeing as how he and some of the others have gone off for a while.”

Tom listened to Hailee’s explanation as to where her father had gone and for what reason. The news allowed both he and his wife a sense of relief.

“Good. Long as they stay close to the canyon, I bet they’ll come across her; she’s causing a lot of trouble around here. I know several of us up and down this stretch of road alone have lost critters,” Tom reached over and took Susan’s hand.

“We even lost our favorite kitty,” he mumbled, taking note of his wife’s saddened face.

Susan’s head bobbed in disbelief, as if she still held out some measure of hope to see her furry little friend scurry across the floor at any moment.

Before Hailee offered any words of comfort, Susan stated, “A young girl doesn’t come all the way down the road with a fresh peach pie just to hear about the misfortunes of other people’s critters. What I’m hoping is, you’ve come to ask me for help in one way or another. My girls have all grown up and moved into town. It sure would be nice to be needed for a little something now and again,” she smiled.

Hailee blushed. Had she really been that obvious?

“Well, now that you mention it, I heard you know how to spin your own yarn from your sheep. Is that true?”

“Is that true?” Tom repeated. “That’s my cue to scoot on back outside. I thank you for the peach pie, Hailee, but this is where I get on with my work,” he winked.

The women scooted their chairs to different spots around the kitchen table, pushing dishes off to the side for the moment as Susan leaned in closer.

“Maybe if you could fill me in with what you already know about sheep and the caring for them, tending to them, fleecing them -”

“Oh, my goodness, I’m about as clueless as you might imagine! All I know about sheep is, I get my yarn and sewing thread from them. I have no idea how the color gets into the thread or how it gets wound onto those tiny little spools. Can you teach me all that stuff?”

Nodding her head, Susan’s expression demonstrated patience with the inexperienced sheep lover.

“Have you got any supplies to use once you have yarn or thread?”

“My mother’s old spinning wheel is upstairs in Daddy’s bedroom. He keeps it dusted and said he oils it every now and again, gives the wheel a spin to prevent the thing from locking up. But you know something? Not once have I ever sat behind that wheel,” she trailed off.

Susan allowed her a moment to herself, and then when the young lady returned to the present, she asked, “Are you and your father comfortable with you using your mother’s tools and wheel - or have they just been put away?”

“Oh, no! Daddy’s told me more than once that any time I’m ready, they belong to me. It’s just that I almost feel…intrusive by touching it. I didn’t know my mom but I know she would have wanted me to learn her trademark craft, to carry it on. Still,” she looked down to the floor. ”It just feels like I’d be touching things I shouldn’t be.”

Susan nodded.

“I completely understand. When my own mamma died, it took me a full month to empty her coffee-drinking tin,” she reflected, then chuckled to herself. ”Would you believe the coffee actually molded inside that tin cup before I could bring myself to touch it?”

They sat for a few moments and allowed themselves every bit of the silence they shared.

“Well,” Susan began. ”I guess we start from scratch, then. Are you planning on keeping your own sheep or farm them out?”

“Farm them out?”

The look on Susan’s face told her otherwise and she had to laugh at the girl’s expression.

“How many do you think I’ll need just to get started?”

“I think animals should have at least two of each of its own kind to keep ’em company, but that’s just the way I feel. One should suffice just fine.”

Hailee grinned and replied that she had already asked her father for two or three and received the approval she was hoping for.

“Daddy even promised to take me into Westcliffe to purchase feed as soon as he gets back home. Preacher McDermott has the sheep waiting for me in his barnyard.”

“Then we best get to teaching you how to tend to your new critters properly, and that begins with a proper pen. I imagine your pa already has that covered and knows all about their feeding needs, but if you want this project to be all yours, you should plan to all the feeding and tending all by yourself. I just think you’ll appreciate the end project so much more that way.”

“And I’m sure Daddy will, too,” the young lady responded in a grin. “All my father needs is three more things to take care of.”

Pouring a couple of servings of tea, Hailee watched her new instructor pull out two pencils and some paper. She proceeded to draw out the parts of the spinning wheel and asked her student to copy them onto her own sheet of paper.

“This is how my mama taught me,” she explained. “You need to know what each part is called before you can understand what each of those parts does.”

Half an hour passed by before the lesson of part-and-function ended; Susan scooted a heavy spinning wheel from the corner of the room until she had the front facing the center of the room.

“Honey,” Susan asked, “would you mind bringing that over here?” She pointed at the woven basket housing several skeins of yarn and miscellaneous tools such as hooks for crocheting, needles for knitting, scissors and other supplies necessary for a spinner and her craft

Looking into her supply basket made Hailee remember that large basket in the food pantry Richard never seemed to use and made a mental note to ask him if she could have it for her own supplies.

Susan proceeded to explain everything she knew about yarn, taking the girls plumb into the dinner time hour.

The ladies worked together in the Hood’s kitchen, making toasted cheese sandwiches and a batch of seasoned fried taters with green onions to go with the meal, barely stopping for breath as they chattered on and on.

Once the trio had polished off the last of the pie Hailee brought earlier in the day, Tom offered to take Hailee back home in the wagon.

When she began to protest, Susan held up one hand and gave her the surrogate mother look.

“Not with that cat still unaccounted for,” she scolded. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you, especially with your daddy being gone right now. So grab your pie plate and give me a hug before ya go,” Susan smiled once more. “And let me know what you Pa says about the sheep,” she added.

Just as the wagon turned into the Red Bone Ranch, Hailee turned to Tom.

“Ya know, if I would’ve known how much fun you and Susan can be, I would have come bothering you long before today,” she smiled, then turned in her seat to give him a giant hug before leaping off the buckboard seat.

Tom handed the brown pie plate down to her and reminded her to come back any old time she felt the urge to get away for a while.

That night, as she sat in front of her bedroom mirror with hairbrush in hand, Hailee felt blessed to have a connection to so many good people in her life; it was a fact that her family was a small one, but there was nothing small about the amount of love that filled her life.

Chapter 12

As Bruce scanned the depths and crannies of Puma Canyon, his eyes narrowed as if he could see behind the enormous boulders by doing so; cautious as his men were, the cat’s home could be almost anywhere. Lodge pole pines surrounding the cliffs would help that dang thing stay hidden from human eyes.

With the steepest climb in the canyon laying in the stretch of road before them, the packed dirt offered a route only wide enough for maybe two horses, side by side; the fella having the misfortune of riding on the outside of the path best not have a fear of heights, as the bottom of the ravine shouted threats of a most unpleasant landing.

As if those threats had been heard and understood clearly enough, a couple of the men snugged to the inside of the canyon wall, allowing their horses to keep at a slow trot and no more. Rattlesnakes peeking heads out from under one of those sun-warmed boulders and spooking a man’s horse as it slithered under hoof could mean the end of the day for a rider; without the extra space for a horse to properly kick and whinny it’s disapproval, every eye focused both overhead in the crags for the cat – and underfoot for snakes.

A stiff breeze weaved its way through the trees in the canyon below and the scrub oak spotting upward on the sides of the canyon.

When it caught the hat perched atop one of the men’s head, he reached up with a swift hand to grab for it, but his prized head covering was long gone.

“Well, heck!” he grumbled. “I just got that dang thing in town, and now I gotta go get me another one!”

His riding partner chuckled and told him it was ugly when it was new anyhow.

“I liked your old one better. It wasn’t so fancy,” he grinned, reminding his hatless friend about the numerous bird droppings the other one had managed to collect.

“You saying you’d rather look at me covered in bird stuff?”

“Well,” his friend’s grin widened as he continued to tease, “just until cows learn how to fly.”

“You’re one of those comical fellas, aren’t you? And I got me front row seats,” he shook his head, glancing over to Bruce.

“Hey, you know what I could go for right about now?”

His friend made a face and twirled a finger at the side of his head in the widely-accepted motion indicating craziness. “Half a lick of sense?”

“Hilarious. I was thinkin' about a handful of those cherry taffy candies we got in town. Don’t that sound real good?”

“They about tore the rest of my teeth out of my head, but they sure did it in the sweetest of ways,” he agreed. “I could go for a big ole hunk of cake, even,” he suggested.

Bringing up the rear of the procession, Duffy grunted his input to his fellow worker’s conversation and it occurred to Bruce the man’s entire day had been spent riding alone, keeping to himself and avoiding human interaction.

Wishing he could muster the courage to come on out and ask the man what was on his mind, Bruce opted to leave him be for a while. He had come to the conclusion that sometimes people change and it’s as simple as that; he decided sometimes even they don’t understand how or why.

“You’re making my mouth water, boys,” Bruce groaned.

Changing the subject off food, he ran a sweaty hand down his dungaree pants and posed the question of how a man’s hands get so grimy just sitting on top of his horse.

“I’m hoping for a good, long soak in the tub soon as we get home, I know that much,” he volunteered, wiping grit from between his fingers.

Returning his attention back to the canyon walls where the wind steadily picked up its pace again, he noticed the leaves beginning their fall color-changing and made a mental note to bring a few of them home for his daughter.

The man riding directly behind Tobias snapped his fingers and inquired of the others, “Hey, speaking of home, did anyone else catch the news about the Pocahontas Mine?”

At the mention of his prospective riches, Duffy’s ears perked straight up like one of those German hunting dogs, preparing himself for the gush of commendations and good wishes for all who had the good sense God gave a goose to buy into those stocks in the first place.

“I’ve been getting wind of a few things folks are talking about, what did you hear?”

“Talk is, they’re not selling any more stock in the mine. Don’t know why, I guess they must have had a cap of how many stocks they wanted to sell to keep the profit margins higher for anyone who bought into it or something.”

“Huh,” Bruce pursed his lips. “I never knew they limited mine stocks. Is the same true for the Querida and Humboldt mines, do ya know?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “No clue. I wonder if they limited how many shares each person could buy; sounds like whoever got in on it might make a pretty fair profit if everything turns out right. Hey, Boss,” the man turned to Bruce, “You ever know anyone who struck it rich? You know, just some ordinary fella?”

Duffy couldn’t resist the urge to chuckle to himself as he imagined this conversation taking place about him in the near future - what a day that was going to be!

“Nah,” Bruce shrugged. “All I’ve ever known was hard-working men who met their maker owing the bank a little something. If anyone in these mountains ever struck it rich, though, I bet that man would become well-known in a short time.”

“Yeah! I’d like to be friends with a rich man,” came the comment from the hatless man.

Duffy sat up a bit taller in his saddle, content to ride in his silence and dream about all the cash he’d be able to stuff in his pockets soon as those stocks paid off.

“I don’t mind telling everyone that my bottom side is beginning to call out for a little bit of mercy,” Bruce announced to anyone who wanted to listen.

The other men chimed in with their own versions of agreement, adding in which parts of their anatomy deserved immediate attention.

“There’s that holler up the way a bit, we’ll camp there for the night. With the rains we’ve had lately, there oughtta be a nice sized pool back in there. Course, I haven’t been up this way in a couple of years now, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Cutting into the conversation, one of the men offered some good news. “I wandered up this way some six months back and the water was running down the wall then. Stopped and waded in it, too,” he teased the other men.

“No kidding? Well,” Bruce nodded, “in that case, these boots are coming off tonight, boys!”

P

The Puma Canyon road, tending to appear even steeper and narrower once the night tied a blanket of pure black through the deep chasm walls, breathed a sigh of relief as the first flames of the campfire glowed in the center of the holler and bounced off the cascading water falling down the inside of the circular wall.

As their horses drank from the pool, the men parked themselves near the fire and warm grub and exchanged thoughts on the day’s journey.

“We woulda been begging for disaster, had we been forced to keep going in the dark,” the group agreed.

Joking, one of the men mentioned that if the fireflies were any bigger, “They might come in handy if we strung the little buggers all together.”

Sliding another bite of his cheese sandwich into his mouth, Bruce had to laugh at the idea.

“I’m trying to picture the family getting together on a summer night, with grandma stringing thread on needles for everyone to poke through a mess of the poor critters. You suppose that could become a new pastime around here?”

“Bug-stringing? I don’t think so,” the man laughed back. “Now, playing checkers with ladybugs and beetles? Ya might have something there,” he teased.

Bruce shook his grinning head. “I have to say one thing. You men sure provide the entertainment; it wouldn’t be the same without you along to keep me company.”

With a couple of sandwiches in his hand, Duffy made his own message clear by stomping off to a boulder over by the pool: he did not want to be disturbed by all their foolish talk.

A couple of the men gave each other the shake-of-the-head once Duffy’s back had properly turned against the lot of them and mouthed with palms facing up, “What’s wrong?”

Problem was, nobody knew what that man’s malfunction was or when it even started.

Tobias handed a second cheese sandwich to Bruce while he bit off a healthy chunk of his own and motioned for the men to put Duffy out of their minds while they finished their food and made with more small talk to pass the rest of the evening.

“Hey, Boss,” Tobias nodded. “How many apple trees you figure on planting this time around?”

Rubbing his chin as he calculated in his mind, he replied with, “Oh, I imagine we might plant two or three dozen trees. That’s about how many I ordered anyhow. Figured it out with Richard and if all the trees bear fruit the way he’s counting on, there should be more than plenty to feed the bunch of us plus some to sell.”

He grinned. “And that girl of mine wants three trees planted right close to the barn so the horses can have a treat and the rest of us have plenty to snack on, too, as we go about our chores. Sounds like a right good plan to me.”

Tobias bobbed his head in agreement. “Sure does. You are aware of the fact that she is serious about those sheep, right? I’m thinking we best get some pens built here pretty quick, cause if I know that girl at all, she already has names picked out for them.”

“I’m with you on that one,” her father nodded. “I don’t suppose we could talk her out of one for dinner once she’s done with its fur, could we?”

The hatless man raised a hand in the air. “I would leave that one alone if I were you; who remembers that turkey she got attached to last year?”

The men chuckled when Tobias held a finger to his throat and pulled it slowly.

“She still doesn’t like to eat turkey near as much as she used to after that, now that you bring it back up,” Bruce recollected.

Duffy’s eyes squinted off in the distance as the other men’s laughter filled up the recesses of the holler and echoed off the inner walls of their home for the evening. His curious glances did not go unnoticed by Tobias, who stood up at just the right moment to stir up the fire pit a bit.

A nudge in Bruce’s ribs once Tobias sat back down drew his attention.

“Don’t reckon you caught that, huh?” Tobias grinned, glancing toward Duffy. Bruce caught Tobias’ hint and replied in hushed tones.

“Nah, I reckon I got me a mess of things on my mind tonight. What did I miss this time?”

“Just a heads-up,” he rolled his eyes backward. “Someone’s not happy again.”

“I’ve been asking everyone the same thing: have you and Duffy been having words back at the ranch? Or has he had any recent runs with anyone that you know of?”

“Now that you’re coming out and asking, me and Hailee have seen him back at home...being…different.”

Bruce looked downward and shut his eyes. How could this situation be happening right under his nose and never have even seen any of it coming, he asked Tobias. “I’m starting to get the same answer everywhere I turn.”

Shaking his head as if to soften the blow, Tobias added, “Not that either of us felt he was contemplating doing anything mean to either of us-to anyone-it’s just that he’s been watching the both of us lately.”

Tobias squeezed his eyes together and thought twice before adding, “Hailee isn’t comfortable being around him these days, Boss. He gives her the willies.”

Bruce dropped his head.

“Aaah, I had no idea,” he sighed out loud. “How long has this been goin’ on?”

Tobias shook his head, assuring Bruce that he wasn’t trying to stir up any problems between the two men. “I know he’s been around the ranch longer than I have, Boss, but Hailee talks to me a lot and tells me things that are on her mind; I reckon you could say that we’ve gotten close to each other because of it.”

There. He’d said it.

Bruce nodded his head. He wanted to say something to Tobias but decided that wouldn’t be necessary; instead, the men resumed conversation with the others as they all finished off the coffee before turning in for the night.

P

Pre-winter mountain air bit at noses peeping out from under bedroll blankets and hats, causing a stir within the camp as men rolled over on the cold ground and twisted around to work out the night’s kinks; the whiff of fresh-brewed coffee pushed them to their feet.

The familiar scent of sausage and potatoes caused their eyes to focus immediately on the fire ring as fists rubbed the life back into their eyes. A second rubbing became necessary for final confirmation once the identity of the do-gooder revealed himself.

Duffy sat on one of the large stones near the fire with what appeared to have been at least a second cup of coffee and a slight grin on his face.

“Mornin,’” he offered with a nod of his head. “Figured I might as well get the day started, seein’ as how I was up first. The sausage and bacon might look off-kilter, cause I think I lost some of my meat saws along the way. Horses are saddled up.”

Stunned the man was even speaking to them, the men exchanged looks of shock, almost afraid to even get out from under their blankets. Had Duffy laid a trap for the whole lot of them?

He stood, smoothed a wrinkle in his shirt and gave a second nod before walking off toward the same boulder he’d sat on the night before. With a startling contented grin pasted on his face and a cup of coffee in hand, he made his way to the rear of the holler to consume his morning beverage.

While the majority of the men shrugged and grinned, Tobias and Bruce still eyed the strange man with caution.

Chapter 13

Duffy hung his head over the side of the boulder and shoved a fist into his belly before he doubled over to make way for the contents of his breakfast to come spilling out over the side of the massive rock, leaving the man’s knotted body slumped over to one side.

Just as his mind and body relaxed enough to drift off in an early morning nap, the clanging of pots and pans being loaded back onto the horse drew him back to reality and he knew he had to pull himself together. There would be no turning back at this point.

With a deep breath, the man pulled the fist from his stomach, forcing himself into a sitting position; it took all the energy he still possessed to urge himself to a standing position, but it was only from habit that he found the way to his own horse.

“Sure was nice of you to get the coffee on this morning. We sure do appreciate it,” Bruce complimented him with a hearty pat on the shoulder..

“Least I could do,” he muttered and turned to stick his foot into a stirrup.

The men watched as their breath produced visible clouds in the early morning air, demonstrating how the temperatures had dipped so low during the night.

“This is the day it’s gonna change, Boss! I can feel something different this morning,” Tobias commented before lowering his voice. “And it has nothing to do with the fact that Duffman switched saddles on us, either,” he hitched a thumb at their horses.

Bruce nodded in acknowledgment, attempting to keep his voice down.

“I noticed it, too. He must have gotten them confused so early in the morning. It can be a bit on the dark side, especially out here. I was hoping nobody pointed it out to him; it’s almost like he’s trying to take a stab at making amends, and I’m all for that.”

“Yeah,” Tobias nodded, his eyebrows furrowing. “But I still don’t trust him.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Bruce nodded his agreement. “Neither do I, but it’s all we have to work with right now,” Bruce gave a tug of his head. “We’ll just keep our eyes and ears open. The truth always finds a way of showing itself.”

“Alright then,” Bruce clapped his hands together as he turned to the group of cowboys. “Let’s get up this hill and get some business done today!”

Tugging back on the reins, three men slowed their horses down some in order to to allow a couple others the space to pass by; it had been decided the men carrying rifles in the best condition should lead the way that last bit of incline. A level spot in the road lay not too far ahead, giving the group of riders the promise of a less uncomfortable journey than it had been the day before.

Holding a hand up to his eyes to block the early morning glare of sunlight as he peered upward, Tobias reached down to his saddle bag and drew out a plug of chewing gum to keep his mouth moist, then tugged his hat down some.

He and Bruce started upward, Bruce offering to take the outside ledge so he could peer over the side and bring a full report back to his beautiful and inquisitive daughter.

“Yeah, she’s gonna want to know what the canyon looked like, smelled like, and all the details you can remember about everything along the way, isn’t she?” Tobias chimed in. “She gave me a list of things to watch for with that horse of hers. I’m supposed to tell her goodnight for Hailee every night-which I have only done twice. But if you tell her I admitted that, well, I’ll just have to deny it!” he laughed.

Bruce laughed. “Your secret is safe with me, Son.”

Taking an amount of pride in the wording Bruce chose to use, he sat a mite taller in his saddle. Son. If he only knew…maybe since the day had begun so well, this could be the day he would try to talk to Bruce a little bit about his feelings and intentions with Hailee if nobody else was within earshot of their conversation. Deciding he would do just that, Tobias glanced over at Bruce again.

The concerned look on his face caused Tobias to tilt his head some and scan the man, the horse, and then Bruce’s face once again.

“What’s the matter, Boss?”

“Ah, nothing. I thought I felt my saddle slipping. I don’t feel like getting down and fixing right now. It’ll last til we stop for lunch and I’ll check ’er then. Hey, Duffy!” he hollered back behind himself. “You made a pretty decent breakfast. What are you planning for lunch?”

Duffy shook his head. “It’s a surprise!” he replied out loud. Then he mumbled to himself, “and that ain’t no joke, neither.”

P

“I had an aunt who knew all of ’em,” Bruce announced, referring to the foliage.

“All I really know is, they sure are green. Well, most of ’em,” Tobias told him. “Some of ’em, I learned can be used for curing a cold or for eating when the getting gets rough. But I don’t know all that much, really.”

Dust kicked up under hooves and an eagle swooped down low enough for the men to take in a good peek.

One of them pointed toward the sky, eyes scanning for one more look at the beautiful bird.

“We don’t get to see that very often around here,” he observed. “There’s a nest of them over on the Arkansas River, right in that area where the road swishes back and forth. Kinda surprised to see her over this way.”

Twisting in his saddle, Bruce clenched his jaw and all but halted his horse.

Thinking the cat had been spotted, a couple of the men followed suit and Tobias allowed his eyes to follow the line of boulders and hidden crevices a little more carefully. Once he realized the air smelled crispy clean, he turned his eyes toward Bruce, who continued to fidget on top of his horse.

“Boss, what's going on over there?”

“Eh, I’m gonna have to stop once we get up this stretch,” his head nudged toward the clearing just up ahead. “Something don’t feel right here.”

The men continued on, resuming talk about the eagle and her nest over on the Arkansas. General consensus agreed there must be a few more mouths to feed or maybe the river had gotten a bit over-picked for her to have been flying in this area.

“Tobias!”

The young ranch hand’s neck snapped toward the sound of his boss’ sudden cry of his name.

But the call for help turned into a grunted yelp as one of Bruce's ranch-roughened hands reached out to grab his saddle horn, stark confusion and fear on his face as he gave a desperate attempt to steady himself and prevent the fall he knew would be inevitable.

When the loud snap of his leather cinch strap sounded out over the canyon walls, it proved to be no safety net for either Bruce or his horse.

With a last-ditch effort to save himself from tumbling over the embankment and into his own his deathbed, Bruce gave an instinctive thrust of his shoulders upward, as if that single motion would somehow reposition his entire body a full foot in the opposite direction.

It didn’t.

In an instant, the saddle heaved itself to the right of the horse, promptly stumbling the massive beast over the side of the narrow pathway; man and beast both spiraled down the Puma Canyon wall.

Just as his right shoulder smashed against the loose dirt and gravel clinging to the edge of the embankment, Bruce felt gravity kick in and the weight of his body shifting once again. His head lifted to avoid the impact he knew would be coming. His eyes darted upward, landing square in focus with Tobias’ eyes.

Bruce’s heart thundered in his chest when saw the look of utter terror in Tobias’ eyes, who sensed the unintentional message of grave danger he felt himself in.

Not reassuring.

An echoing whinny vibrated through the canyon as the horse attempted one last desperate attempt to regain its footing. The sound of Bruce crying out for help as his body snapped one limb after the other blended as one continuous sound while rocks tumbled down and pelted his body.

Still perched atop his horse, Tobias felt his lips move, but his mouth felt frozen while his throat squeezed the very breath out of his lungs. A sudden fear-inducing adrenaline rush pounding through every inch of his body caused his brain to fuzz for a second or two.

“Boss! No!” Tobias called out far too late.

A thundering crash came with every tree limb the horse and Bruce fell through, and he could feel the flesh ripping away from his arms, face, and back as he tumbled over thick limbs and prickly scrub oak poking out from the canyon wall. Bits of debris stabbed him in his eyes, and all he could see was a blur as he felt himself tumble, smash against the side of the wall, and then fall airborne once again. He could barely breathe as terror filled his brain. Bruce was close to losing consciousness - and worse. He knew it.

It was no use. They had fallen too fast and too far to do anything but watch in horror.

Tobias dismounted in such a hurry, he felt the impact jar his knees. But it didn’t slow him down a bit; he scrambled to the edge and slammed to his knees, pressing the palms of his hands deep into the dirt and gravel.

Other men dismounted as fast as they could, but the canyon walls offered no footing to lower themselves down. The edge fell as straight as a waterfall, branches and small trees jutting out here and there.

Two of the men shouted commands to nobody at all, wanting to do something, anything, to retrieve Bruce while one of the others could only cuss and fling his arms about his head, caught in the throws of an emergency without any idea how to handle it.

Duffy screamed, “O my Lord! What’s going on here? This wasn’t supposed to happen! Who’s gonna fix this now?”

Tobias shoved the coward out of his way for not offering to do so himself.

“Get me some rope, hurry,” Tobias hollered out to anyone who had their wits about them. “Tie me to a tree and lower me down. Maybe I can get to a point where I can do something!”

Adrenaline racing through his entire body, he glanced toward the men.

“Someone needs to go find Doc Amerley right away, and bring the sheriff, too!”

“Sheriff Anderson’s got that gear in the back of his barn! Gather up as many men as you can find and get back here fast as you can,” he told those who were already climbing back on their horses.

“Hey, Tobias,” the youngest one called back. “What about Hailee?”

Tobias ran a hand through his hair. Crud!

“Oh, I don’t know. Don’t tell her anything. Let me be the one…just stop by long enough to tell her there's been an accident. But do not tell her any more than that, you hear me?”

The man waved his arm in agreement and turned in a flash, the dirt of the road kicking up behind the horses as three men rode off.

Shouting over the edge and praying to be heard, Tobias cupped both hands around his mouth and let out a loud call, assuring Bruce he was on the way down.

“Hang in there, I’m comin’ down!”

Tobias looked Duffy square in the eye as the men lowered him down over the canyon wall. He caught an empty glare in return; it sent a chill down his spine. Their eyes remained locked until Tobias had been lowered out of view, but Duffy’s gaze stayed focused in the same spot for several seconds before a slight grin began to tug at the corner of his mouth.

Chapter 14

“Lower me down faster, will ya,” Tobias hollered over his head. He could still see their faces clear as day, and that wasn’t good; he was hoping to have been closer to the creek bottom by this time. As he kicked at the side of the canyon wall to move the stray branch out of his way, all he heard was a tearing sort of noise; the rope attached to his waist began giving way. He looked up to see a fray in the cording and the dangling man’s heart skipped a beat. He felt the sweat beading up on his forehead and for a split second, lost the tight grip he held on the rope. Feeling himself jerk as he began to sway backward, the man tilted his head upward and swallowed hard.

“Hey! The rope’s gonna snap! Pull me back up - and make it quick, too,” he added.

It didn’t take long for the group of men to realize the most efficient way to get Bruce out of that creek bottom was going to be on foot. They were gonna have to get down there and pull him out on horseback.

One of the ranch hands gave a quick look around for straight branches that could be used to form a cot to carry him out of there on as the ranch hand wearing the red flannel pulled on Duffy’s coat sleeve. He pointed at the darkening skies over the canyon and shook his head. “It’s gonna hail-that breeze comin’ in is pretty darn cold. We best get crackin’ here or Bruce is gonna be in for loads more trouble than we can get him outta.”

Duffy snorted, mostly to himself.

Tobias yanked his own flannel shirt’s collar a little bit higher around his neck and squinted his eyes as he looked up. He knew his friend was dead right about the coming storm.

“All right, men. Saddle up and let’s get this done already! We gotta get the boss outta there right now! Duffy, you take up the rear and see to it that everyone gets down there. I’m taking Epoenah and headin’ straight in.”

He was gone before Duffy could make any protest.

“Always suckin’ up to the ranch master, that one is,” he grumbled just loud enough for a couple others to hear his words.

They both cocked their heads and looked at one another in astonishment; Duffy had been coming up with some stuff recently that left the men wondering where he’d gotten it from. But this was not time to be airing differences, so they chose to shake their heads and carry on in silence instead.

Just as Duffy figured those cowards would do.

“Ain’t nothing’ but a green whisppersnapper, and he figures he got the world by the tail, he does! I ain’t never seen the likes of that one just walkin’ in and takin’ over like he owned the place,” he continued on with his rant.

The more the anger built up inside the man, the louder he got.

The other two men shook their heads again. They weren’t about to tackle him, not alone and back in the hills with nobody else to witness what they said or did.

The trio set out on the dirt road and pulled the brims down tighter on their heads; raindrops pelted in quick, stabbing insults as if to mock their situation.

P

Tobias almost didn’t wait for Epoenah to halt before he dismounted her; in a fluid motion, one leg swung up and over the flanks of Hailee’s mare while the opposite hand pulled on the few medical supplies he’d thought to bring along in the canvas bag tied together with a leather thong. It pulled away from the rear of the saddle as fast as he’d hoped it would.

His boots hit the grass underfoot with a thud and the .45 in his holster jostled from the impact. Instinct drew a hand to the black powder rifle strapped to his back and another to the ammunition to make sure he plenty on hand.

With darkened eyes squinted and only the back of his hand to shield himself from the oncoming hailstones, Tobias struggled to dodge a couple of heavy, dead cottonwood branches from swinging down on top of his head.

Puma Canyon, scattered with debris from the aspens and pines so common in the area, left an almost overwhelming scent when combined with packed, wet leaves. Hailstones smacked up against pine needles, inviting them to open up and offer the canyon an even deeper whiff of pine.

Tobias and Epoenah stepped with careful, yet swift strides to ensure their footing wouldn’t slip in the mud and grass. Not having been down in the canyon itself for a couple of years now, it became apparent the old pathway he’d been on before had long since grown closed. Forced into pulling her hooves up higher than usual in order to get through the muck, Epoenah whinnied her own opinion of having to do so. The farther they trudged forward, the man grimaced, concern filling his mind that Bruce might be unable to shelter himself from the storm...or any other intruder.

Shaking his head, he scolded himself. No need to think the worst; Bruce is just downstream somewhere, waiting to be patched up and carried off, that‘s all.

His hike into the canyon proved Bruce had toppled over the edge at the exact spot he thought; he could see a distinctive line of broken branches trailing down the canyon wall on the left-hand side.

“That’s it,” he told Epoenah. “Here we go, girl.”

Together, they pulled on another eighth of a mile when Tobias called out loud enough for his voice to echo downstream a way.

“Bruce! Hey, Johnson, where are you?” he called.

No answer.

“I’m comin’ after ya, Boss. You just sit still til I get there. Holler at me, would ya?” he almost begged. “Boss!” his voice echoed throughout the canyon.

A stirring of birds overhead swayed in golden branches of aspen boughs, the clicking of pine needles and the whoosh of hail thundering down through the canyon.

Requiring no invitation to join Tobias when he tucked up under a rock embankment to wait out the hail, the mare nuzzled up next to him as if she were asking for a hug around her neck.

He closed his eyes as an arm encircled the mare.

Something was not right and somehow he smelled Duffy all over it…

Chapter 15

“Look up at the sky. It’s been bustin’ loose a few miles over that way and we’re fixin to get it here before nightfall, I bet. A good ‘n hot stew sure goes down better when it’s chilly outside, don't you think?” The ranch hand opened his eyes wider and asked Richard if there might be any buttermilk biscuits included with their meal as he reached over and grabbed a couple of apples to snack on while he finished his chores for the afternoon. “And Hailee,” the added off the cuff, “you might wanna know there’s been another rat in the feed bins; I shooed him out but I know how you get,” he teased her.

She tilted her head, sticking her tongue out playfully. Last time she found a rat out in the bin, the only reason it scared her was because the dumb thing jumped up and ran across her arm.

“Ya know,” Richard broke in, “a nice hot stew simmering all day just might give this girl and me a chance to play a few more rounds of cards out on the front porch. I'm not about to let you walk away from this thinking you're a better card player than me.”

She chucked a dishcloth at his head.

“I sure wish Daddy was home. And Tobias, too,” Hailee blushed.

“Well, near as I can figure, they ought to be home any day now. That cat couldn’t have gone too far out. They’re probably on the way back now,” he reassured her.

She tossed her pile of carrot chunks into the pot and grabbed a couple of potatoes.

“You know what they’re gonna want when they get back, don’t you?” she asked over her knife.

Richard grinned.

“Yep. They’re gonna be starvin’ for steak and taters, as Tobias puts it. And your pa is gonna be in the mind for a big ole chocolate mess cake, I know that much,” he laughed. “You reckon we oughtta get the pans out and ready before bedtime?”

She nodded and felt a surge of excitement at the thought of seeing Tobias again after so many days.

“Funny,” she said out loud, “how a girl’s life can change in just a matter of a few words.”

“Oh? How’s that?” Richard inquired.

She tilted her head and continued to peel the potato.

“Well, I realized how I felt about Tobias a while ago, but I didn't have anyone to talk to about all these things going on in my head. Then in a matter of a few seconds, really, I accidentally let the beans slip.”

“You know, you still haven’t told me how this whole thing came to light between the two of you. Wanna spill the beans just one more time, to catch an old man up to speed?”

She nodded and tossed her contribution of potato pieces into the stew pot and laid the knife down so she could concentrate better.

“I sort of told a lady he was my husband when we were in town...and then I kind of related that conversation to Tobias.”

Richard’s jaw dropped, and then when he remembered who was telling the story, he let out a low chuckle.

“Yeah, that’s a Hailee thing to have done; bet it took him by surprise, huh?”

She thought about it before shaking her head.

“You know, it didn’t take him back as much as I was afraid it would have. He wasn’t shocked, anyway, if that’s what you mean,” she reflected. “He just sort of looked at me. When he didn’t say anything right away, I'll admit it scared me. But it was too late to take anything back, and I honestly didn’t even want to take it back,” she gushed. “He just sat there looking at me like he was trying to think of something to say. I thought he would either laugh at me or give me some long speech I hadn’t prepared myself to hear.”

Richard tapped a finger on the counter top after she stopped for a breath of air.

“I bet you a plug nickel that boy’s insides were churning when he heard those words come outta you, girl. I see more than you know,” he shrugged before continuing. “And I know that man’s been sweet on you for a year and a half now, maybe more’n that.”

She dragged a few more vegetables toward her cutting board. Just as she sliced through the center of a brown potato, Richard stopped and pulled her toward the window as he noticed dust and dirt being kicked up in the distance.

“Guess we should put on a little more stew - looks like your Pa's home,” the cook laid his carving knife down as he busied himself in the baking cabinets, pulling out a couple of the cake pans he’d planned on getting out later in the day.

By the time he’d pulled them out and rearranged the others back into their places on the shelves, Hailee already stood at the door, eyes scrunched up tight and trying to make out who could be riding up first when she caught sight of just three riders, certain none of them were either her father or Tobias; she frowned.

“Oh, snicklefritz!”

She lumbered back into the kitchen and gave the report to Richard. “Not Daddy yet. Or Tobias.”

A few minutes later, the back door to the kitchen slammed open and the youngest ranch hand popped his head in the house.

“S’cuse me, I don’t mean to show no disrespect, but there’s been an accident and we’re here just to grab some supplies and get Doc Amerley and the sheriff. Just wanted to let you know.”

In the young man’s face, Hailee caught his deliberate attempt at hiding the facts. Her heart dropped to her feet and knew in an instant by the unsaid, it must be her father that had been injured.

With one swift motion, Hailee grabbed the edge of the counter top and let out a low moan.

“No! Daddy!”

She felt the urge to vomit; sensing her father's danger, she spun around for Richard’s face to have something to gauge her own fear scale on and didn’t like what she picked up as he stepped to her side and shook his head at the inexperienced ranch hand. He gave the young man a questioning look, and received the answer he silently asked for. Bruce was in a mess of trouble.

“What can I do to help?” Richard wanted to know right away.

“Some extra food might come in handy, anything you got to throw in a knap sack would be nice. Not sure how long we’ll be gone for, but I’ll be back for it in five minutes. I gotta run out to the barn for some things.”

The kitchen door slammed behind him as he raced for the barn without one more word to either of them.

With Hailee’s mind in a swirl of what could have gone wrong, she began to shove apples and pears, chunks of bread and carrots - anything within grabbing distance, into the sack she found hanging on a nail near the door.

When the ranch hand returned with sweat pouring off his brow, she sensed the level of emergency even more. She gave way to the notion that his forehead had been brought into a wrinkled state she'd only seen on the face of someone much older.

And although she wanted to, she did not beg to go along with him. Instead, Hailee only handed the man a filled sack and told him, “Tell him I love him.”

He looked his boss' daughter straight in the eye and almost opened his mouth to say something, but resisted and just gave her a nod of his head. There was no need to say anything with the look he gave her; the rancher’s daughter knew everything he wanted to say, deep down in her gut.

She tried to convince herself this wouldn't turn into anything awfully serious as her eyes watched the young man and the door shutting behind him.

Chapter 16

Hailee sat at the kitchen table, head held firmly in place with both hands. She stared at the tablecloth, not blinking. Images of her father in places and positions she would have rather leave her imagination altogether, refused to budge.

Are his legs broken? Is he cold? Did he get under shelter before that storm hit? When did he last get a bite to eat? And the question that haunted her heart: what about the cat?

She prayed her father found that thing before it found him; Bruce had always been Hailee’s protective hand, the one who had never shown any signs of weakness. It was unthinkable for him to ever be anything less.

“Hailee. Eat a few bites of soup; you getting sick ain’t gonna do your daddy no good. He’s gonna be needing you more than ever once he gets back home. You’re gonna hafta tend to animals, help run this ranch. Just tryin’ to live up to his expectations is gonna leave you plum tuckered out, girl. Eat,” Richard tried to encourage her.

She lifted her head to reveal a tear-streaked face and bloodshot eyes. Just as Richard expected to see.

“I know you’re right. Daddy’s going to want to get back to business as usual, and we’re going to have our hands full just keeping him in bed. I just feel so guilty to sit here in the home he owns and operates, eating hot stew from food he worked hard to grow, while he is God-knows-where, probably cold and I don’t know what else,” she explained and then muttered under her breath, “I don’t even want to think about the ‘what else’.”

“I understand. But you hafta know that your daddy wants you to be safe and healthy, too. Eat, Hailee.”

She nodded and downed two bowls of stew plus a chunk of sourdough buttermilk bread with a thin layer of sweet butter as they discussed everything they might be doing over the following few days, weeks, even into another month ahead. Concerning the chore of keeping Bruce Johnson in the house and out of the barn, their joined opinion was simple: this wouldn't be an easy haul for either one of them.

Good thing they had Tobias Logan on their side.

P

Duffy seemed eager to get ahead of the others. Too eager. His attitude had been one of pure arrogance, voicing his displeasure at being left behind with the other couple of men while Tobias took off straight ahead without anyone else.

“He don’t need to act like he’s the boss man’s best friend,” he spat once again, the words frothing out of his mouth. “He’s already pretty much got the run of the house and don’t nobody even say nothing to him about it! If someone don’t do something about it -,” he was cut short by one of the other men.

“Look here, Duffy! I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve just about had my boot full of hearing you run Tobias into the ground, and I ain’t gonna stand for it no more! Now, that man has stood still and never once has he ever taken a cheap shot at you, even though none of us would have come to your defense if’n he had of,” he stormed.

The other ranch hand chimed in at that point with, “Yeah! Seems to me like you oughtta be more concerned with whether or not we’re ever gonna see Bruce alive again, rather than who gets to go inside the main house when he wants to. What is your problem, anyhow?”

No need to say any more, the three men exchanged looks of disgust and spent the next hour or so in silence.

As the day moved along, the men tugged their coats up a notch or two higher around their necks to divert the chilly winds. Their horses began to act skittish, as if they had long since become bored or would rather be anywhere else than where they were at the moment.

In a sudden gesture of what he mistook as a rebellious spirit in his horse, one of the ranch hands yanked back on his reins to prevent it from walking crooked. His horse had suddenly taken the notion to begin backing up and kicking its hooves somewhat; at first thought, the ranch hands began to scout the ground for a snake. But then when they realized it was far too cold for snakes to be out, it was too late to think much more. The horse had reared up just ever so much, and when the ranch hand’s eyes lifted, he spied a long golden tail swishing back and forth in the not-far-enough distance.

There sat the cat. On top of a large boulder, centered in the depths of a crag no more than fifty yards away!

Even Duffy found himself taken aback in surprise, stunned for a moment before allowing his eyes to register what they were actually viewing right there in plain sight.

All three men froze in the middle of the pathway and dared not even look at one another, dared not make one more movement until at last, Duffy leaned back and instructed someone to take a shot.

He reached into his own bootleg for a meat saw that he’d kept back in case of an emergency.

“Hey, Duffy. You told us you lost your meat saws a couple of days ago. You got stuff hid on us?”

“I don’t hafta answer to you or nobody else,” he scolded. “You just keep your aim on that dang cat, will ya?”

The men kicked their horses in a gentle move, just enough to get them moving along in a slow walk. With eyes on the cat, they knew very well the cat was doing the same to them.

P

The muffled plea for help coming from his friend’s horse is what drew Tobias’ attention toward the patch of wet grass and broken branches near the creek.

He dropped Epoenah’s reins and stood there in the brush, ankle-deep in wet leaves and broken twigs.

“Bruce?”

No answer.

“Oh, no! Bruce,” his hoarse voice coughed out a couple of curses as he made wide steps to his friend’s side; a limb off a scrub oak had gone clean through his left leg on the way down the incline – his friend had been bleeding a great deal by the large stain covering his dungarees.

Tobias studied the leg wound cautiously. Having never seen anything like it before, he had no idea how to move the man without causing more harm than good, but thought he remembered hearing somewhere in the back of his head not to remove an object if it had gotten stuck as far as this limb had. He crouched down just enough to hold the back of his dirty hand up to Bruce’s forehead and frowned. He placed an open palm against his neck and hung his head.

“Well, Boss,” he glanced toward his friend’s horse, “this sure is a situation, don’t ya think?” He turned his head upward to look once more at how far the owner of the Red Bone Ranch had tumbled down the canyon wall; when his gaze fell back on Bruce, he winced at the large bruise covering the side of his head, already showing a stomach-turning shade of brownish-blue.

He stood again, his eyes scanning the terrain for saddle, bedroll, or any of Bruce’s other belongings, knowing full well what the future held out for the whinnying horse laying only feet away. A fella’s horse became his companion over time, and this one had served Bruce and the Red Bone faithfully since they bought her a couple of years earlier; the thought of putting her to rest gnawed at him to the point of feeling ill.

Trying to fight the most unmanly act of shedding tears, Tobias hit his knees and leaned down over Bruce’s still body as a rifle shot rang out in the distance overhead.

Chapter 17

Duffy rubbed his chin and squinted his eyes in an attempt to focus through the haze and get a better gander at the situation.

Where was it?

Following the rifle blast, gray smoke dissipated into the fog; the scent seemed to linger in the air because of the hail and rain, and for a moment, the heavy sulfur odor almost covered up all the fresh pine. The men waited to regain their clear visual on the cat, motionless in the echoing clatter of wet pine needles clicking overhead.

The ranch hand reached down to the barrel of the rifle, tugging it back upward to welcome the warmth of the barrel against his cold fingers. He ran his hands up and down the barrel with an absent-minded gesture for the warm comfort his fingers gained temporarily, eyes never leaving his prize just ahead.

With the air cleared, the men focused on the crag and found through disbelieving eyes - the cat had vanished.

Duffy slapped one of his hands across his pants leg and spit out, “Well, ain’t that just a fine howdy-do! We get a clean shot and there he goes; who knows if we’ll get another chance?” He grimaced a bit too much so the others would catch his disgust.

The other two men remained still, letting their eyes do the moving instead of their mouths.

The one in the back poked his friend in the shoulder and pointed upward just a bit. They were grinning even as Duffy’s mouth continued; they brushed past him, the reins to their horses held tight in their hands.

“Now what in the heck,” he began to protest when he realized they weren‘t paying him any mind at all.

When he saw the intent look on the faces of the other two men, Duffy turned his head to the same area and squinted his eyes again in order to get a better look.

“Well, I’ll be dag-nabbed!”

Duffy was already reaching for his rifle, but both ranch hands shook their heads and gave him a stern look.

Recognizing the somberness in their faces, he chose to keep his tongue this time.

“Not yet, man! Wait til she gets closer; she’s creeping little by little. Act like you don’t see her anymore and she’s bound to make her move on us. That’s when we gotta be ready.”

The other man paused for a few seconds in consideration of the situation at hand and inquired, “What are we doing here? We don’t even know what’s going on with Tobias and Bruce. Don’t we need some kind of plan before we just go and -”

Duffy interrupted him, scowling his disgust, something that man was getting better and better at doing.

“I say we let Tobias take care of his own business. I mean, you two keep carrying on about how capable and how wonderful he is, I say we let him get on with his life and we get on with ours,” he grunted. “We came after a cat, so let’s bring her home. Bruce is gonna show up with Tobias in a bit anyhow, and I know we can have his cat half way skinned before he even gets home,” he stated. “That dang cat is the only reason we’re even out here. How do you think he’d feel knowing we let that cat go so she could creep on back into his ranch and help herself to even more of the meat you and I depend on to get us through the winter? Yeah, if you leave it up to me, I say we bring her home while we got the chance.”

There wasn’t much in the world they could agree on when it came to Duffy, but this time both men nodded their heads; it didn’t make much sense to leave the thing now that they’d found her. Her gaze had set on them and they knew she would pounce even if they had decided to walk away and leave her alone.

“Okay,” they agreed in low tones. “Let’s get this done,”

The hatless man chuckled to himself. “My bet is, Tobias already has Bruce propped up against one of them boulders down there. They’re probably even hoping that last shot bagged the cat,” he thought out loud.

Duffy grinned to himself. This was going even better than he thought it would …

P

Knowing somewhere in the back of his head the gunshot he’d just heard was a sure sign Duffy had things pretty well taken care of, Tobias assumed the men must be on top of the cat and he paused for a moment to wonder how large she’d turned out to be.

He took one more look at Bruce before wiping the debris away from his kneecaps. Standing to stretch the kinks out from his lower back, Tobias leaned his neck back and rolled it around til he heard it pop, then yanked his jaw to a sharp left-hand pull to finish getting the knots out.

It only took about fifteen minutes, but Tobias found his saddle sideways in a tree.

Eyebrows furrowed, he stuffed the toe of his boot in between a split in a boulder and hoisted himself up far enough to yank on the cinch strap and stirrup hanging from a mass of pine branches. Steadying himself with one palm securely against the first branch he came to, he finally lifted himself high enough and curled his fingers around the familiar leather strap. He snagged it downward.

On the last tug, the saddle crashed through with a heavy thud, causing the man’s boot to slip; the mishap sent him in a swift plunge off the boulder and down into the wet earth. The saddle joined him in the grass a few feet away from the horse blanket.

Flicking the debris and rainwater from the heavy blanket, he couldn’t help but notice it smelled of wet horse and pine; Tobias scrunched his nose up and turned his head a bit, catching sight of Epoenah nibbling on grass near the creek.

Tobias trudged around in the damp terrain in search for either a decent cedar or spruce branch he could devise into parts of the cot he planned to lay Bruce onto. He required three sturdy branches to accomplish his mission.

After locating the second branch and deciding it met his approval, he allowed a slight grin to emerge when he spied Bruce’s bedroll, still intact, lodged in between a tree and a boulder.

“Well, there you are,” he mumbled.

Dropping the branch in his hand back down on the ground, Tobias made his way through the various stones and twigs scattered in his way. In spite of the tumble it took, the bedding remained in the same manner Bruce left it only hours before. Tied into a tight bundle, Tobias planned to use the contents for his friend’s transportation back home. He set it down near the poles and got to the task at hand of stripping the seven and a half foot branches.

Unsure of whether his words reached listening ears or not, Tobias lifted his voice to a rather off key rendition of Old Dan Tucker as he stripped his outer flannel shirt off and pulled out a pocketknife, which he used to cut the sleeves free from his shirt at the shoulders. Rings fell off the sleeve every four inches, first one sleeve and then the other. Gathering the rings into his hands, Tobias gave one last tug through the whole bunch of them, producing several strips of fabric.

Spreading the bedroll out, the man laid one of the long poles on the side of the woolen blanket and rolled the pole into the blanket it twice, cutting a slot clean through the blanket every few inches down the length of the poles. As he thread one of the flannel strips through each slot and tied it tightly to the pole, Tobias kept an eye on the sky overhead.

Once both sides met with his close scrutiny, the third pole found itself chopped in two with his hand ax and fixed into the makeshift cot; by the completion of the project, Tobias no longer tried to ignore the rumbling in his stomach, reached for his last two apples and seated himself near the man lying in the center of the newly constructed bed that would carry him back home.

To have something else to focus on for a few minutes before he loaded the cot to the Epoenah’s saddle, Tobias pulled the malfunctioned saddle in front of himself.

“This is my own saddle,” he shook his head. “It didn’t give me a lick of trouble yesterday; why would the straps suddenly go haywire this morning?”

Something about the day didn’t smell right to Tobias. He ran a hand under the cinch straps, glanced back over toward where Bruce lay on the cot. Turning the saddle over, something caught the feel of his fingertips, so he craned his neck closer to the thing for a better look.

“Well, I will be dag-nabbed,” His fingers ran back over the spot on the cinch strap where his eyes had focused and refused to let go. With his head shaking, Tobias began thinking of how this could have happened, knowing in the back of his mind full well how this happened.

“I’d like to say I can’t believe it, but I should have seen something like this coming,” he scolded himself. “This ain’t gonna sit well at all,” he trailed off; a sick knot formed in the pit of his stomach as one single question pounded at his brain.

What was he going to say to Hailee?

One more look at the underside of the cinch strap confirmed any initial suspicions Tobias may have begun to entertain.

Shaking his head once more, he stood and began to unlatch his belt in order to secure Bruce to the cot, making certain the man fit snug enough in the apparatus.

Next came the task of single-handedly lifting Bruce-cot and all-and attaching the man to the rear of Epoenah without tipping him over.

“I don’t guess the next few hours are gonna be much fun for any of us,” Tobias grunted from under the weight and awkwardness of the situation.

Visions ran through his head of the cot either dragging or scraping on the damp ground and getting caught up on branches or stones along the way; Tobias wanted to leave nothing to chance.

Looping a length of heavy leather strapping around both the cot and Bruce’s body, Tobias checked a second time to make certain he hadn’t left the strapping too loose at the corners of the cot.

Shoving both uneaten apples back into his pocket, Tobias tried not to think of his belly, which was alerting him to the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning.

“Well, Bruce,” he mumbled to the unresponsive man, “We got us a long way back to the old homestead.”

Chapter 18

Doc Amerley stood at his iron cook stove, pouring a second cup of coffee into a stained cup, attempting to fully understand what the young ranch hand was explaining to him.

Shoving one hand down into the front pocket of his dirty dungarees, the eye-witness to the events began to repeat the part where Tobias parted ways with the remaining men.

“I never saw nothin’ like it, Doc. One minute we were all goin’ along all good-like and the next minute the whole day went to heck! Can’t nobody blame Tobias if’n he don’t find Bruce in good shape, neither. He was the first one down the side of the canyon wall, til he figured out the rope wouldn’t hold,” the younger man slowed to a stop in his speech, shaking his head and looking down into his cup of black coffee. “And it was Tobias who volunteered to backtrack down into the canyon to fetch Bruce, too; fact is, he kept his head together and made sure the rest of us had clear direction what to do next. He was down that road no more ‘n twenty minutes after the boss fell.”

The doctor nodded his head because he knew that not only was Tobias a good man, but also because in his mind, Tobias would have been the one to keep the situation together.

“Just soon as the sheriff gets here, we’ll be tearing outta here real quick,” the doctor assured the nervous young man with a firm pat on his shoulder. “I’ve got a feeling everything–and everyone–will be just fine.”

Doctor Amerley offered a positive smile but the young ranch hand read what was behind the man’s eyes. He didn’t like what he picked up and hung his head.

In an absent-minded effort to just be doing something to bide a few minutes, the doctor reached down with rag in hand, twisting the handle of the heavy iron door to the wood stove. Satisfied it contained a sufficient amount of banked pine, he swung the door shut; the sudden draft of air swept inside the stove caused the flames to kick. They turned a deeper shade of red-orange as the doctor clanged the door and turned the latch.

The look on the doctor’s face demonstrated the serious situation at hand; he knew the canyon well and knew the danger Bruce faced. The possibility that his friend had sustained any number of injuries, from the way the young man described what he’d seen, was all too possible.

Doc Amerley’s eyes scrunched up in concentration, tuning out the nervous yammering of the young man who’d brought him the news; more than likely, he would come face-to-face with a head injury, bruised ribs, if not broken bones or even worse. That thought was far too heavy to carry, so he shook the images from his mind and stuffed bandages, ointments and some iodine into a small waterproof medicine pouch before allowing his eyes to wander around the room for anything else. He spied a bottle of morphine he was certain would come in useful and leaned over far enough to grab it with the tips of his fingers.

The doctor was just about to open up a cedar chest in the corner when the sheriff and other ranch hands came in through the squeaky old wooden door. Turning his attention back to the chest, three heavy blankets were removed for the occasion.

Without looking at anyone in particular, he asked, “Is everyone ready? There’s coffee if anyone wants it and there’s apples and biscuits over there,” he instructed, pointing to a small round barrel table. “Take what ya want, let’s eat on the road.”

The doctor had seen his fair share of accidents and births. He’d spent the better part of forty-three years and counting in medicine, stitching folks up on that mountain home of his. And he had known Bruce Johnson and his family for longer than that; this was personal.

In his mind, the intention was to bring his friend back home and see to it that he stayed comfortably in bed for a few weeks while he mended.

But in his heart, Doc Amerley feared the worst as he gave a gentle kick into his horse’s side and gave a stern nod to the sheriff.

Chapter 19

“Heave-ho! Someone needs to shove a little harder over there,” Duffy grunted under the weight of the animal.

After drawing sticks for who received the honor of carting the critter back to the ranch, the hatless man pulled the longest one.

“Heck yeah! I win, fellas,” he wiggled the stick in the air for full impact of his reward. His victory-shout echoed through the trees as he chucked the stick over his head.

That victorious win proved short-lived, however. After several miles of the horse trotting away over uneven dirt roads, the weight of the cat shifted at least twenty times, either pushing the man farther back on his saddle or causing the cat to droop to one side or the other of the horse, forcing the man to strain his back in order to yank the critter back up and into a more sturdy position. Then there was the other issue of the blood; once Duffy gutted the animal back in the canyon, it left an opening on her belly gushing with the life-liquid for the better portion of half an hour. By the time the men hit Hardscrabble Pass, the man’s dungarees - and his horse – were in the need of a bath from the blood still sloshing out of the animal.

Running a hand down the length of the cat, the man sat up a bit taller in the saddle and shoved the animal farther toward the saddle horn; he twisted himself in a sharp jab to his left in an apparent attempt to work the kinks out of his back before nodding his head and breaking the silence by announcing, “Another hour and a half, and I part ways with this stinkin’ thing!”

His friend grinned. “Yeah, I figured the glory would wear off before we made it to the gates; you did real good with her, though, especially being your first time,” he added as a bonus for keeping her from slipping off.

“I’m gonna be fillin’ my gut with something warm tonight, that’s all I know,” Duffy said out loud.

Not too long after making that statement, they turned down the last curve in the road leading them home. Riding along in silence, Duffy had skillfully managed to kill the mood with his angry words and rude looks a long time before they brought the mountain lion down; as they neared the Red Bone Ranch without their boss and friend, the full impact of what happened out there on that trail came bearing down hard on their minds and in their hearts.

P

Duffy wasted no time in making his way to the back door of the main house, popping his head into the kitchen. He knew Richard had both seen and heard the trio of men when they reached the top of the hill, but he still made his presence known.

“We got the cat,” he told Richard with a smug look on his face. “You wanna come out and take a look?”

Richard just looked at him.

“What I’d really like to be looking at right now is Bruce. Can you tell me how bad the fall was before Hailee runs down here? That girl hasn’t eaten more than a handful of food since we heard the news.”

Duffy pulled himself all the way into the kitchen and shrugged his shoulders. “It wasn’t good, I can tell ya that much. Toppled right over the edge of the canyon wall, plumb down to the bottom I suppose. But I wouldn’t spend much time worryin’ over it,” he almost mumbled. “I imagine the doc’s got it under control by now, don’t you?”

Taken back by the lack of concern for not only his boss – but his friend – Richard shook his head as if he were clearing it.

“Doctor Amerley and the sheriff ought to be able to handle the situation, yes, but I would have thought that you could have stayed behind to help Tobias with –“

“Tobias this and Tobias that! A man gets mighty sick of hearing that name by the end of the day! He took control and went fetchin’ after Bruce all by himself, didn’t ask nobody for no help, either. You weren’t there and you don’t know what happened, so you don’t have no right buttin’ in and accusing me of things you don’t know nothin’ about!”

Duffy turned, his face reddened with anger, letting the door slam behind himself.

Just as Richard opened his mouth to say something to him, he heard Hailee.

“What’s got him so worked up? And why didn’t he stay to tell me what happened to Daddy? What did he say to you?”

“He’s got the cat out there …”

“I don’t care about that stupid cat – that cat is what got my father into this mess in the first place! Would somebody just please tell me what is going on here?” Hailee raised both hands to her face, bringing her fingers across her nose and over her eyes in one liquid motion; she shut her eyes and allowed her fingertips to find their way over her eyelids.

Richard shook his head.

“I know just as much as you do at this point, Hailee; Duffy didn’t tell me anything, either, just seemed irritated that I didn’t care to make my way out there to take a look at the cat. Didn’t mention what happened to your father, not really.”

They stood in the quiet kitchen for a few moments, each with looks on their faces as if they were trying to makes sense of the events, when out of nowhere, they both heard loud voices coming from the direction of the barn.

“Daddy?”

Richard wiped his hands on a dish cloth, taking it along as they scurried out the door.

What they saw stopped them both cold.

Duffy and some others had the mountain lion pulled off the horse and had her torso pulled out straight on the ground, full length from her ears to end of her tail; Richard whistled at the sight of it.

Hailee gasped audibly. “I had no idea she was so big!”

“It’s been quite a few years since the last time I came this close to one of these,” Richard reflected. “Good work, everyone.”

Duffy snorted in disgust, much to the surprise of everyone gathered around the animal.

“Yeah, well, she’s pretty and all, but she ain’t gonna skin herself. Someone needs to get my block and tackle ready,” he added to nobody in particular.

Hailee yanked her skirt up a couple of inches. “I don’t mind getting up there,” she announced before anyone else could say anything. “It’ll give me something to do while I wait for Daddy to get home.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d made her way up the ladder Bruce built; as a father raising a child without her mother, Bruce soon discovered the need for a way to keep the toddler occupied and out of trouble; he spent almost every minute of his day outside tending to things around the ranch and his daughter enjoyed being with him instead of being cooped up in the house, so her favorite childhood toy had been born out of the need for a babysitter - a swing built right in the dead center of the barn entrance.

Right after he built he swing, his daughter sat on it just about every day, whether it was for play or just a place to read a book. But as the years wore on and Hailee grew from being a toddler to a little girl entering school and then into a stunning young lady, she spent less and less time sitting there in her swing, opting instead to either read in the parlor or the privacy of her own bedroom.

As the years passed and Bruce acquired a few more hundred acres, hired more and more hands, Richard also acquired more mouths to feed and Duffy had more and more meat to keep up with. The old swing converted into the block and tackle Hailee had become so familiar with.

“Okay, here she comes,” she warned right before lifting the hook keeping the large wooden apparatus secured above the barn’s entryway. It swung downward, making a swooshing sound on the way, clanking as the chain and hook strained mid-air.

A couple of men stopped the hook from swaying and pushed it to the side in order to move it and fetch the burlap sacks which were to be laid underneath the cat as the pelt was peeled away from the animal.

Hailee always opted out of that ranch activity; she’d heard the men-folk talking about what happened, and the hearing about it was plenty enough for her. She was thankful her father trained his help to always lay the sacks down before they began the pelting; if she were to step in a big puddle the next day…the thought sent a chill down her spine.

“You yank the tail over in that direction and hold some decent tension while I start peeling the flesh away,” he barked at the youngest man as the trio exchanged looks. “Ready?”

Duffy knew the young man had never in his entire life skinned a wild cat before; somehow he managed to give the impression that it almost gave him a thrill to watch the young ranch hand squirm as he split the cat’s flesh open at the breastbone. With the initial piercing of its flesh complete, he continued right down the center of the animal, slicing through to the end of the tail. The young man held the length of fur in place for Duffy until he had finished the task, but averted his eyes as much as possible.

Slicing and peeling the flesh back a few inches at a time gave Duffy a rush that the others saw as chilling, almost, but they said nothing to him about it. Instead, they gave one another looks and shook their heads whenever he would chuckle at hitting another vein.

When one of the men would reach for an old rag to wipe himself clean, Duffy would reprimand him, saying that it took a real man to skin a cat.

“Don’t any of you even look like you know what’s going on here. Why don’t you just step back and let me handle this,” he growled.

After the better part of a couple of hours had crawled its way down the length of the dead animal and the group stood over a lump of golden fur, Duffy barked out yet another strand of commands.

“Someone pull up on the hide over here – come on!” his lips twisted.

When none of the men moved, Duffy stopped his work and plunged his knife into the ground before looking up.

Before he could even think of an insult to whirl in their direction, one of the men took a step closer to Duffy and spoke up for the group as a whole.

“Now you look here, Duffman. You are not our boss and you do not own this ranch,” he lashed out with a wave of his hand. “You are as much a hired hand as the rest of us and we don’t know what’s gotten into you over the last few months, but we ain’t gonna take it anymore.”

The others chimed in with a chorus of agreement, setting Duffy on guard.

He spat on the dirt floor of the barn and looked around before grinning.

“I’ve put in more time on this ranch than any of you. I’ve paid my dues.”

The group of men gave one another questioning glances; what could he possibly mean by that statement?

“You’re all gonna find out what’s what soon enough,” he mumbled.

“All I know is, we’re done here. Skin the rest of this cat by yourself, Duffman. You seem to be good at doing things all by yourself anyhow. And you be sure to take full credit of this kill when the boss gets back home, will ya?”

The group of men disappeared through the barn door, heading toward to back entrance of the kitchen. So they could all sit with Richard and whine about the fate of the ranch, he supposed.

Duffy grinned as he reached over for the knife and looked at the pelt again.

“Yes sir. This will look darn good on the parlor room wall,” he mentioned out loud.

Chapter 20

Richard dipped the last of the skillets into his bucket of rinse water and laid them out on a clean dish towel to air dry, paying close attention to every single word the men muttered in complaint against Duffy as they all sat huddled up around the table.

Towel in hand, the cook made his way over to the end of the butcher block counter and left the half-damp cloth folded in half over a glass jar. Shaking his head of gray hair, he admitted to the group of men, “I hate to say it, but you’re right. He has changed over the past few months–I thought at first, maybe he was going through something personal, so I left it alone. But he’s gotten downright ornery.”

“Like he thinks he’s better than the rest of us,” someone added.

Without Bruce there to bounce any ideas against, the ranch hands and cook found themselves in the position of having to put up with everything Duffy shoveled their way, and the problem with that was, the man was very well aware of that fact.

Richard rolled the heavy flour barrel over to the edge of the table, sat down and leaned over toward the men, plopping his elbows down to rest his chin on the backs of his old hands while they talked.

“Soon as Bruce gets back home, he oughtta have a long sit-down meeting with that man; this business of feeling like we’re in Duffy’s way doesn’t sit very well with any of us. We’ve got chores to get done, and how do ya expect us to go about the day when he’s gawking at every move we make and trying to make more out of what we say than there is to it?”

The man at the end of the table pulled his coffee tin from his lips and nodded. “Yeah, me and Tobias were talking about something the other day and he comes up behind us, only heard half of what we said and lost his temper. Saying we were all against him. Never saw anything like it.”

Richard nodded. “At least I only have to deal with him when he comes inside for meals; I bet it’s double hard on all of you. And it’s only been a day of having to put up with him without Bruce on the place, so the sooner he gets home, the better we’ll all –“

The cook wasn’t able to finish what he was saying, as the subject of those words stood at the kitchen door. He’d overheard the men talking about him, but made no attempt to come inside, made no attempt at defending himself. Instead, he stood his ground and let out a chuckle before turning around and walking off.

Richard shook his head and the crease between his eyes deepened.

“Could someone please tell me what that was about?”

The youngest ranch hand hunched his shoulders up and rolled his eyes toward the door. “Who knows? That’s pretty much what we dealt with the entire time we were out on the road with the man. It’s almost like he’s mad about something and expects us to know what it is, but none of us have ever done Duffy wrong. If anything, we’ve kept our tongue and don’t even say much of anything at all around him. Not anymore.”

“Didn’t use to be that way when I first came up to work on the ranch,” the man next to him added. “Something has started eating at the guy, though, that’s for sure.”

Richard wanted to pass the whole thing off, but after seeing for himself what the others had been complaining about, there was little he could do except bring it to Bruce’s attention. Duffy’s attitude couldn’t be left unattended or every worker on the place would find his wages earned elsewhere.

“Bruce will probably be sore and tired by the time he and Tobias get home, so if I don’t talk to him tonight, we’ll have us a little chat first thing in the morning. If I know Bruce at all, he’ll get it taken care of and everything will get back to normal around here.”

The men knew they had procrastinated for long enough. Until Bruce took care of the situation at hand, it was probably best to work with someone else in the event Duffy tried to start any more trouble, so out of the kitchen the men trudged, putting the chickens to bed and closing the horse stalls for the evening, working side by side in pairs.

P

Hailee’s head lay on her pillow, blonde curls scattering over the pillowcase and half her face, eyes wide open and focused on the shadows falling across tree limbs outside her bedroom window.

Blowing out a breath of air, she flipped a few strands of hair away from her eyelashes but made no other movement for several moments.

As the silence in her bedroom nearly choked the last bit of her energy away, the girl visibly forced herself to a sitting position at the edge of her bed and turned her head toward the blue porcelain clock on her dresser.

Tick, tick, tick.

Six fifteen.

“I imagine there’s ten different things I could or should be doing right now,” she mumbled to nobody at all. “And I don’t even care; the whole day can stay on hold until Daddy walks through the door.”

Her eyes caught sight of the book she’d bought in Canon City and she almost pulled it off the bedside table. Then in a move resembling a lazy puppy, she flopped her hand down on the bedspread and tucked it back under her pillow.

Tick, tick, tick.

Six seventeen.

The smell of dinner had long since drifted into her room, but the girl couldn't have cared any less about eating; she closed her eyes and began to rock herself side-to-side on the edge of her bed. After the third yawn, Hailee slowed the rocking motion to lay back down, drifting off into a world she could always escape into when the real one became too scary.

P

Duffy opted to skip his dinner altogether that first night back from the hunt, choosing instead to spend the time in his bunk house with his only companion being the fire he built in the small-yet-efficient stone fireplace; the grumpy-looking man pulled his chair up in front of the flames only a few feet away from his stocking-clad feet, pulling an old green crocheted afghan across his shoulders. Biting the tip of the pencil in his hand and tapping it a few times against the paper tablet in his lap, Duffy’s face reflected the growing flames.

The pencil began scratching its way across the tablet until finally the man’s face twisted in a slow, slight grin as if an idea–or plot–had begun to take root.

An evil chuckle almost rippled from in between his lips as he listened to the pine needles crackle at the center of the logs, his eyes still squinted as he sat in the broken down chair with the flicker of a wood fire splashing orange hues against his semi-bearded face.

Chapter 21

The day had long-since given way to moonlight when Tobias opened the kitchen door real slow and peeped inside, grateful the squeak had been taken care of with that bar of lye soap some weeks earlier; this was not the best time to alert Hailee of his return.

Just as Richard whipped around the corner with a flour sack for the following day, Tobias held one finger against his lips and shook his head. With one hand, he made the ‘no’ sign by gliding his outstretched fingers across his throat and pointing upward as he mouthed Hailee’s name.

Understanding what he meant, Richard only nodded when Tobias tugged his head toward the door.

The old cook laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder and whispered, “Where’s Bruce?”

“I’ve got him out in my bunk house, but it ain’t good news and I don’t think Hailee should be seeing him this way…I want you to come on out if you can, but don't let anyone see you,” he whispered even lower. “Don’t want to tip Duffy off that I got back. Not yet. You and me, we got us a whole lot to talk about tonight.”

“You go on ahead, I’ll be along. It’s easier for one to creep along in the shadows than it is for two. I’ve got some talking to get done myself.”

As he peered out into the darkness to make sure nobody saw him, Tobias slid along the edge of the Johnson home, careful not to step on a twig or anything else that might give away his presence; there wasn’t much he could at that point but to make a mad dash for his bunk house and hope for the best.

He'd stayed in the shadows until he spied the glowing of Duffy’s oil lantern die out in the window and then waited a good spell after that before he made his way to the main house, but he still took precautions not to stir the man.

Once back inside the safety of his own domain, Tobias kicked his boots off and sat them in a neat side-by-side manner next to the door on a small rug and waited for Richard. It didn’t take very long before his palm pressed the door open and he helped himself inside.

“Like I told ya,” Tobias repeated, “We gotta talk.” He stepped aside so the cook could get in a good eyeful of the Boss laying there in his bunk house, still all stretched out on the makeshift cot.

Richard and Tobias agreed that in all the years they’d known Bruce, not once had they ever seen him in that condition.

“‘Bruised and scratched beyond belief,” Richard frowned. He shut his eyes in order to prevent himself from shedding tears as Tobias pulled one of Bruce’s arms back up and rested it on his chest before reaching down to the end of the cot and pulling the blanket upward in a gentle tug before giving a respectful nod of his head at the boss.

“Have a seat there and let me get you caught up,” Tobias started.

P

Richard looked out the window and noticed the early sunrise beginning to cast shadows here and there. He knew it wouldn’t be long before Duffy and all the others – including Hailee – would be piling into his kitchen for grub; a ball of nervousness began to build a nest in the pit of his belly, so he absent-mindedly popped a chunk of sour dough bread into his mouth to keep from feeling sick.

The man hadn’t slept at all; he hadn’t even changed out of his clothes from the day before. He and Tobias, each looking at a whole heap of problems to work out, weren’t looking forward the upheaval Hailee would have to endure.

The tapping at his shoulder caused him to turn his head.

“Do you want me to turn those for you?”

Richard cocked his head to the side when his nose finally understood her question.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” the cook moaned, realizing the morning’s flapjacks were burning.

Hailee stood back and rested her eyes on the older man.

“No offense intended, but you look just terrible this morning. Are you okay?”

Flapjacks discarded and the next round bubbling in the cast iron skillet, Richard tried to reply, to say something happy and positive, something that didn’t involve tears or that feeling he had in his own belly, but what came out instead was the blunt statement, “Tobias came in early this morning.”

Her eyes grew large with excitement, but when she noticed the concern in his face, Hailee appeared reluctant to ask any questions. She had known Richard her entire life and knew when to let him take the lead.

“We’re gonna have to sit down, Hailee. We got us one big mess to deal with, and I need you to promise me that you’ll give me the most careful listen you’ve ever given in your life.”

Richard turned the flapjacks, gave the batter a couple of nervous stirs.

“You know I’ll listen, Richard,” she assured her friend with a gentle smile. “When will the others be bringing Daddy back home? He’ll be tickled to get out in the barn and see that cat pelt, don’t you think? Too bad they couldn’t have saved the pelting until he got back,” she chuckled out loud. “I bet he woulda liked being in on that.”

“Hailee, I know you won’t soak this in until later, but there are a few things I learned early this morning. Things you need to know.”

He finished pouring the last of the flapjack batter and then poured a couple mugs of fresh coffee for them while the unsuspecting girl looked around for the sugar bowl and a spoon.

Taking a quick peek out the kitchen window, Richard asked, “Are you ready to hear me out while I can still do this?”

With a puzzled look of concern spreading across her lips, Hailee nodded and turned to take a seat at the table in the dining room.

He took his own seat on the other side of the table and opened his mouth. Nothing toppled out yet, so he stood up again and wiped his hands, attempting to hide how nervous he was. It wasn’t working even a little bit.

Hailee began tapping her foot on the chair leg.

Richard sat down again.

“Tobias came back home this morning, Hailee.” He squinted his eyes, leaned just a tad closer to her. “Just Tobias. Do you understand me?”

She heard his words just fine, but their meaning refused to sink into her brain, refusing to absorb the real jest of what he was trying not to say out loud. Instead, Hailee just yanked at a strand of her curls and began the familiar twisting. When he caught her mouth beginning to curl up at the edges, Richard felt her pain as she fought the tears that were certain to show themselves at any moment.

“Sure, I understand,” she affirmed with a crack in her voice. “Everyone else already came back, and Daddy’s in town being taken care of by the doctor. Daddy’s in town. Right?”

Searching Richard’s face for the world’s worst punch line to the world’s worst joke, her blonde hair shook in uncomfortable thoughts as the shock set in.

The back door of the kitchen shut all too quiet-like and instinct told her right off it was Tobias.

She stood in a fluid motion and ran to the man she knew would have the answers.

When their eyes met, tear for tear, every bit of physical strength drained from her mind and body as she slumped to the wooden-planked floor in a soft heap. Tobias wasted no time in hitting his knees to sit down on the floor next to her, making himself available for comfort as one hand raked through her long hair.

For what seemed like half an hour, the trio sat in the silent kitchen, making no movements except for the occasional sniffle and runny nose she wiped away.

“Where is he now?”

It was the first question Tobias knew she would want answered.

“No, Hailee, you can’t see him. He’s not here,” Tobias lied.

She shook her head as if she hadn’t heard him right.

“Excuse me?”

Richard stooped down to make eye contact with Hailee; the anticipation of this very moment was what kept the old man awake all night and as much as he’d practiced it, this was not the way it went in his head.

“I’ve been up with Tobias all night. Doc Amerley don’t want you to see your pa this way. Says you can’t handle…it. He was there, Hailee. And the sheriff, he agrees with the doc. This is one you’re going to have to trust me on.”

With the corner of her petticoat, Hailee wiped at her nose before nodding at Richard.

“So, then, Daddy is in town, right? He’s at Doc’s place. Well, we can all go in soon as we’ve eaten our breakfast – that should give Daddy plenty of time to get ready for visitors, shouldn’t it,” she stated more than asked.

When neither of the men offered any response, the runny-nosed young woman refused to accept anything other than the fact that she was going into town to see her father. Her eyes searched their faces but found no signs of them offering to take her into town.

“Tobias! Where’s Daddy?”

His head barely shaking, the man’s brown eyes fell to a section of floor a few inches in front of her blue gingham dress. He tried to focus on the lacy edging on the bottom of her petticoat, but his eyes refused to cooperate.

“Richard, I’m trusting you to tell me the truth!”

“Let’s go back into the dining room, Hailee; we all need to talk and you need some coffee, it’s bound to be a long day.”

Nodding her compliance, she held her hands out for assistance in regaining her standing position just as Duffy came strolling into the kitchen for his breakfast. His eyes locked with Tobias’ and the men froze mid-glare, causing the air to became thicker than someone telling a fib on Sunday.

Richard finally broke the silence by handing Duffy a plate stacked with four buttermilk flapjacks and pointed to the table.

“Eat, we got business to tend to in here,” Richard told grunted. The old man had begun to grow weary of pretending that Duffy was still the same man he’d met many years ago.

“Well, why don’t Bruce help you tend to your business, as you call it? When did you get in, Tobias?” he inquired with fast words.

He bit his lip. “Earlier, that’s when.”

Duffy poked a forkful of flapjacks into his mouth and a couple of drops of syrup dripped off his bottom lip. His eyes never even blinked as a sick grin half-way emerged; Tobias thought of a pig at a trough as the syrup finally splattered onto the plate.

Richard stared him in the eye.

“Bruce can’t help us this morning; he isn’t here, Duffy. Fact is, the sheriff and Doc Amerley don’t want Hailee seeing him after his accident.”

“Pretty banged up, huh?”

Tobias’ mouth cringed at the man’s lack of compassion; both of his eyebrows sloped downward as his head moved in a slow motion from left to right.

By the looks on both Richard’s and Tobias’ faces, Duffy could tell that Hailee hadn’t been told much – if anything – about the accident. He wasn’t sure how far to press the subject, choosing instead to stuff another bite into his mouth.

“Got any bacon this morning?”

If Hailee hadn’t been in the room, Richard was certain Tobias would have beaten Duffy on the head with a cast iron skillet, judging from the look of disgust on his face.

Chapter 22

Tobias stood a protective ground over Hailee Johnson as he continued his glared focus on Howard J. Duffman’s face from across the room.

“I’m not going to beat around the bush here, Duffy. There’s business and personal matters that need to be worked out this morning, and I’d appreciate it if you’d make not only your own self scarce for a few hours, but make sure that the word gets around to everyone else.”

Duffy knew full well Tobias was not making a request, and that once he’d taken his leave after breakfast, he wouldn’t be a welcomed face until dinner, at the earliest. And that didn’t sit very well with the man, but he just shrugged and continued to eat what was before him. Slowly.

“I wish someone would tell me what’s happening here,” the girl's voice almost yelled out. “I’ve got you two staring each other down,” she accused, “and nobody’s telling me where my own father is or what happened out there on that hunt! Would someone around here just be straight with me?”

Duffy snorted a few words under his breath that sounded something similar to a derogatory comment toward Tobias, but seeing as how it wasn’t said very loudly and nobody cared to really pay the man any mind anyhow, his words wound up disappearing into the air.

Tobias turned his back on the man at the table and turned his head; he wanted out of the man’s view before mouthing to Hailee that they should take their conversation into the formal dining room.

She nodded, clueless as to why Tobias had treated Duffy so rudely.

Richard moved the heavy tapestry curtain serving as a decorative divider between the kitchen and dining room, holding it back in one hand for the other two to pass through while at the same time, keeping his ground with one eye on the kitchen table. And Duffy.

When she’d gotten far enough into the dining room, she turned around and asked in a hushed tone “Tobias, what’s gotten into you? You and I both know he’d been a little bit out of the ordinary before you left…but what was that all about?”

The tall man just shook his head and looked down as he grabbed a chair and sat down next to Hailee; Richard still posted himself at the curtain, to make sure their voices didn’t trail out of the room.

“Having this discussion with you is the last thing I could have ever imagined. Yet here we are,” he shook his head.

She was thankful she was having it with the two men she loved and trusted most, next to her own father.

“Hailee,” he began, “I don’t know where to start here. Where do you want me to start from?” A hand raked through his hair in an anxious attempt to get a grip on these new emotions he was so unsure of, aware of the fact that this conversation couldn't be danced around for very much longer.

Hailee leaned closer to Tobias and waved her hand at Richard, inviting him to take a couple steps close into their circle.

“I want to be told what’s happened to Daddy, but I can see that’s going to take the majority of my attention, and I want to be calm when I hear, so what’s going on with you and Duffy, first of all?”

“Soon as we left, he started showing a…darker side of himself. A couple of days into the hunt, the man was making every minute miserable for everyone including himself. Hailee, he’s up to no good, and I mean it. You stay away from him.”

She saw the serious look in his eyes, gulped the knot forming in the top of her throat and only nodded-not from an understanding, but out of willing compliance.

“If you can help it, you stay out of the kitchen during hours he might be in there, you keep clear of talking to him even in passing, and Hailee,” he reached over to hold her hands in his, “you have to stay out of the barns for a while, too.”

“What? Epoenah –“

Tobias shook his head. “Will be fine. Don’t you trust me with her? C’mon, Hailee. It’s not going to be for very long. Just until we can get this whole mess figured out.”

The girl shook her blonde curls out of confusion, a thick mass of questions stirring in her brain.

“Mess? I want every detail about Daddy, Tobias, and I mean right now! I need to know.”

He looked at Richard, who nodded his agreement to her request; with words carefully chosen, Tobias began to unravel events from the past few days, not only including how Bruce toppled over the edge of Puma Canyon, but also attitudes he had seen coming out of Duffy.

Hailee remained calm as he relayed the entire morning of the accident, noticing how his neck tensed and his eyes became tighter as his mind remembered every detail, apparently, reliving each second.

As he related the morning when Duffy woke up unwilling to help find a few pieces of firewood for their campfire, Hailee’s jaw gaped open and her curls swayed back and forth in disbelief.

“Tobias, are you sure you weren’t just reading him wrong? Maybe you misunderstood him.”

“No, Hailee. Every man in camp heard and understood him; fact is, your father had to take the man aside and set him straight. You can ask any of the others. He made the next few hours tense. You ask me, he’s been up to something for a while now; you and I caught some it firsthand before I even left. In case you forgot the day in the barn when he saw us together, it was rather evident to both of us that he’d been watching us, and now that Bruce is –“ he stopped short of finishing that thought out loud.

Bottom lip quivering, Hailee pressed her thumbs into her eye sockets and rubbed them; she had to know what happened out there, but the last hour had been so overwhelming, she felt sick to her stomach and couldn’t bear to hear the words she felt were inevitable somewhere in the back of her mind.

The dining room fell silent.

Richard cleared his throat, tapped on the table, and motioned toward the kitchen.

“I think I’ll head back on in there, make sure ears aren’t picking anything up from in here. Gonna make some noise and get some grub on. You come get me if need be.”

One of his old hands patted Hailee’s shoulder on the way out.

“You know I’m gonna take care of you, right? Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you ever again. Not as long as I’m here. I love you, Hailee. It’s gonna be okay, you’ll see one day.”

“One day I’m a happy young girl with everything to look forward to, next day my entire world caves in around me. This can’t be real, Tobias. Daddy’s okay and I’m going to wake up from this nightmare in the morning and it will all be behind me. That’s what this is–a horrible nightmare. I’ll wake up,” she trailed off in a near-whisper. “Daddy’s heart broke when Mamma died. And she died because I was born. All of this is my fault,” she sobbed. “I don’t even deserve to live on this ranch anymore, Tobias.”

He brought both eyebrows into a slant and shook his head at her. “Don’t you ever say that again! Your Daddy built this up for you,” he told her with a wave around the room to indicate that everything surrounding her came from love. “Don’t you ever let go of this,” he told her with a firm look in his eye.

Hailee focused on the wallpaper; her eyes fixed themselves on the tiny blue fans in between thin white lines, half hoping she would glance up to find Bruce standing there.

“I'll see Daddy before the funeral, though, right?”

Tobias looked up at the ceiling, blowing out a heavy breath of air that gave Hailee the answer she wasn’t hoping to receive. He hated this happening to her, hated that he couldn’t find the words to ease her pain, and he hated the fact that deep in his heart, he knew all of it was Howard J. Duffman’s fault somehow. He made a silent vow to make that man pay for every tear his beloved Hailee shed over this situation.

A finger wiped at a stray tear before she mustered up the courage to ask, “You didn’t just leave Daddy, did you?”

With a snapping of his head, Tobias reached out and placed one hand on each side of her face. He passed a finger over another tear, smearing it across her cheek.

“No, Hailee, no! Of course not! Doc Amerley was there, he and the sheriff both. We brought him back but you gotta trust me on this one, Honey. I just can’t let you see him. I just can’t.” His voice cracked with just a hint of how close he could come to breaking into tears along with her.

Before even thinking about it, Tobias found himself on his knees in front of the chair, holding her hands again as she allowed unbridled tears to flow in heavy waves, her chest heaving, nose running, and face drawn into the most painful look the man had ever seen in his life. Her pain caused him to sob along with her, molding the couple together as they shared the moment.

“I know I can trust you and Richard,” she nodded. “But I need to say goodbye to my daddy,” she looked up and into his softened eyes. “Can’t you understand that? I never got to say those words to my mamma.”

“Yes, I understand that, Hailee. And you’ll get…to…say–“ He couldn’t bring himself to finish the last bit of that thought when Richard opened the curtain again and interrupted by clearing his throat and giving a small yet firm shake of his head aimed at Tobias.

There wasn’t anything to be gained by saying it out loud.

Chapter 23

Snatching some tools off of their rusted old hooks and tossing them onto the work-worn counter in his tack room, the ranch worker sniffed at his collar. A dab of sticky syrup brought the conversation at breakfast full circle and right back into his beyond-annoyed mind once again; the snarl flinching at his upper lip told the tale.

Slam! Down came the sharpening stone with such concentrated force, the other tools jumped a quarter inch off the counter.

“Ain't got the right to order me around! No sir. I aim to eat my dinner in the same chair I do every evening, that's part of my paid wages, getting a decent meal at the end of my day,” he spat in between grumbled words so audible anyone could have heard him clearly. “Instruct me to get lost, will ya? Hummfff!”

Just as he slid a set of tools back into their places, his fingers grazed the tops of some old rags he’d kept back for cleaning his hands after a messy job; he pulled a stool up under his workbench so he could sit down and begin working on the morning's project, but then Duffy once again became distracted when he overheard a group of the other ranch hands talking outside. Something about Bruce, but he couldn't quite make out all the words and bent over closer to his tack room door so the eavesdropping would come easier for him. His eyelids dropped a bit as if that action enhanced the volume of their conversation.

“Yeah, I just don’t know what we’re going to do without the Boss around here to run the place. Can’t hardly run a man’s ranch if he’s not here.”

The man standing next to him grinned and pushed the brim of his hat back a tad, reminding him of a of fact they were all aware of.

“Hailee’s not gone anywhere and she still owns the place. That gal knows her way around this ranch good as the rest of us, you know.”

“And just in case any of you haven’t caught on yet, we’ve already got a successor to the head of the ranch; it’s just a matter of time now before Tobias takes his place. If you ask me, this ranch will be safe between the two of them. There’s nothing to worry about or even talk about, if you ask me. Only thing I wanta know is, which one of you plans on helping me with firewood this morning? Tobias is pretty busy and I noticed the stack's getting low.”

Once the group decided who each of the chores belonged to for the day and they dispersed to their tasks at hand, the man inside that tack room had already balled up both fists.

Grunting an obscenity, Duffy stomped out of his room, swinging the door to point of nearly busting it off the hinges. Heading straight over to a few old empty crates stacked up next to a couple of stalls, he punched them with clenched fists, one after another until it appeared that his anger had been properly emptied. With his head leaned up against a pile of hay, Duffy looked spent – and it was no more than ten-thirty in the morning.

Letting himself down to a empty barrel that had long since been turned upside down to drain, he sat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a blood-streaked trail under unkempt hair. Noticing his hands had been damaged during that little outburst, he turned them over in the sunlight to get a better look.

“Dagnabbit,” Duffy moaned.

Rubbing his fingers together, he popped his knuckles and shook them out, loosening the joints back into place somewhat.

The scowl plastered across his face gave evidence in any man’s book that he'd become one angry individual.

P

With the last of the vegetables being rolled into the oversized stew pot, the old cook wiped his hands across the dry towel and reached for the salt crock. Without even glancing up, his head shook when he heard the table scooting across the parlor room floor. Again. This made the second time today that girl had rearranged the furniture in there.

She’d been restless ever since the talk earlier, and seeing as how she had been advised to keep her space with Duffy and the barns, what else did she have to do with her time?

Ever since she had been old enough to be outside unsupervised, it had been her practice to go outside even before breakfast and make her rounds with the animals. Now, here it was: mid-afternoon and the farthest she’d gone was the front porch of the house.

Richard heard her father's armchair being moved and wondered where it find residence this time.

A few minutes later, Hailee strolled into the kitchen in search of the broom and a warm soapy cleaning rag.

“Do you have some extra vinegar? I think the windows could use a good scrubbing inside and out as long as I'm at it there,” she mentioned as her head popped into a cabinet.

What he wanted to do was make all this sadness and turmoil go away, fix it so none of this had ever happened. But what he did instead was hand her a dust pan to go with the broom.

“Could you reach behind the rocking chair and clean those cobwebs I saw a few days ago? I didn't have a rag with me then and just now thought of it again.”

“Already got 'em,” she reported.

Richard knew he hadn’t slept all that much, but was certain Tobias had him beat. They wouldn’t be able to go on this way forever; something had to be done about the way Duffy had such a hold on the place. It had only been a couple of days, but already the feeling of disorder clouded both the workers and residents of the Red Bone Ranch. Some measure of order needed to be regained before Duffy got the notion that everyone was about to bow and cower under his temper. The last thing anyone needed was for that man to get to thinking he was going to run the Red Bone!

P

Tobias found himself planted firmly at the base of the staircase in the Johnson's home; a nervous hand ran along his chin, giving the appearance of a young man who might be contemplating something or another. Just as he began taking that first step upward, he turned his head toward a window, wincing a bit when he caught sight of the chickens still roaming around in the yard. With night falling quickly, they should have been put up by this time. Figuring he'd best go lock them up himself, he took a step back when he saw one of the other hands taking care of the chore. He nodded, proud of the way everyone had been pitching in a little extra lately.

“Mostly everyone, that is,” he mumbled under his breath.

Smoothing a palm over the cherry wood railing, he pulled it back off and took a step back from the staircase. It just wasn’t proper for a man to visit a lady in her bed chamber, but he hadn’t wanted to bring the conversation up earlier when Hailee was in the parlor; he knew she wasn’t really cleaning - she was coping.

Besides, Richard had given Tobias the permission to speak to her in her private room, taking the role of her father on himself for the time being.

Eyes pulled shut, Tobias forced himself to climb the stairs, stopping in front of her closed door. Reluctantly, he tapped at it with his knuckles and wondered if she was reading or taking a much-needed nap.

Just as he thought about heading back down, her voice called out, “One moment, please.”

She pulled the door toward herself, revealing the fact that she still wore the yellow dress she’d been cleaning in earlier; a smudge on the left-hand pocket from the fireplace ashes proving his thought.

“Tobias!”

“Richard said it would be alright to come on up,” he offered before she had a chance to even ask. “I’d like a chance to talk to you. Alone.”

Her hand reached over to his and he caught a whiff of her perfume; she allowed herself a partial grin for half a moment when his eyelids fell slightly at her touch. “Of course,” she agreed without so much as a second thought.

She pointed to the chair in the corner as she climbed on her bed, finding the center of the mattress and making herself comfortable by grabbing a pillow and laying it across her lap.

“I know there are matters to take care of, but I don’t even know where to begin,” she started. “Maybe later on the tears will come again, but for right now, I’m all cried out. Daddy wouldn’t want me to risk losing this ranch by behaving like a spoiled little girl, so tell me what I need to do next, Tobias, because right now, I need something to focus on.”

His roughened fingertips scanned the cover of the book he’d picked up from the seat of the chair and grinned. Alice’s Adventures Through The Looking Glass by C.S. Lewis. One of the few books he'd begun and never finished.

“Are you feeling strong enough to do this?”

“No. I’ll never be strong enough to face the loss of my own father; I don’t think you can ever be ready for something like this. But I also know there are things to be done.” She picked at the lacy edge of her petticoat and poked her toes out from under the pillow on her lap. “Tobias, what do you think will become of the ranch now?”

“Well, Honey, you’ve always been co-owner. You still own it. The men and I will do everything we can to keep her running properly. Under your direction, of course. What else do you want to know?”

“Duffy seems to be the running problem around here. Shouldn’t we do something about that?” Those blue eyes, so drained of emotion as she asked the question, caused Tobias to shift his weight in the small chair. He leaned forward, the concern in his wrinkled-up forehead emphasizing the point to Hailee when he answered her with, “Yes. We all agree he has to go, but not quite yet…just between me and you, the sheriff wants us to keep him around for a while.”

Hailee leaned her head to the side and whispered, ”Is he a wanted man?”

Tobias shook his head.

“No, Honey. I believe I can honestly say that man is wanted by nobody.”

Chapter 24

The sound of horses brought Duffy to the front window of his bunk house; he had been so involved with his own miserable thoughts, the visitors managed to get rather close to the main house before he even realized anyone was on the place. What the man saw turned his blood cold; it was the sheriff and his deputy, and judging from the way both of them dismounted and marched into the main house without even knocking, they appeared to be on a mission. They weren't searching for anyone, Duffy could tell that from the way they rode in through the entrance gates at such a fast gallop.

“Well, that can’t be good,” he mumbled. “Wonder what's got them all the way up here.”

After ten minutes passed by with no signs of anyone going in or coming out of the main house, he couldn't help but notice his coffee drinking tin was just as empty as his coffee pot.

Tapping his fingertips in a nervous rhythm against the small table, he glanced up and out his window in time to catch the sheriff and his deputy galloping away from the Red Bone, leaving a trail of dust behind.

The man grabbed his coat and shoved the tin down into his pocket, but thought twice about going inside for that coffee. Instead, he tossed the coat over the back of his chair and made his way to the window once again, parting the red checkerboard curtain. His eyes raked over sections of the barn yard and a few of the pens he could see from where he stood.

“Something's afoot on this hill and I intend to find out what,” he mumbled under his breath.

P

One of the ranch hands poked his head in through the door and hollered in to Richard, “I was told to bring these to you; where do you want them?”

The old cook craned his neck around the open pantry door to see what the fella was talking about.

“Oh, that’s right! I dang near forgot all about them,” he snapped his fingers and pointed toward the basket. Richard's hands wiped across the sudsy dish rag in his hand, dropping it down on the shelf he’d been cleaning in his pantry.

Hobbling over to the table, Richard inventoried the vegetables he'd just acquired; they needed to be eaten up, and he asked for some help in retrieving a few of them out of the old spring house a few days back, but with recent events, that request had been completely forgotten by him.

Eyeballing the turnips, Richard asked the young man if he was too busy to help him bring in a couple more baskets of food.

“No, not at all. I was in there a little earlier swiping a few apples and thought you might wanna take a look at the stones around the spring anyhow; you may want me to repair this one section before it sinks in. You feel like heading on out there now?”

Tossing one basket over to his food-fetcher and reaching back into the pantry for another basket he could use himself, Richard asked how the apples were holding up this season and a conversation about the many things a body could do with those apples followed the pair of men all the way outside and down to the spring house.

When Duffy spied the pair of them disappear through the door, he made a quick dash to the kitchen; the thought of roaming into the house when nobody was in there sent an excited shiver down his spine and his pace quickened.

Just as Duffy returned the coffee kettle back on the wood-burning stove, a startled Hailee popped in from behind the heavy paisley curtain separating the dining area and kitchen. She held a hand-woven box filled with her unmentionable under garments and instinct moved her to retract a step when she sensed they were alone in the room. An uncomfortable second or two pierced the space between them, and Hailee placed a protective hand over the top of her clothing. She felt herself begin to tremble on the inside, but Duffy never even saw her fear as a lop-sided grin began to grow across his upper lip.

“Well, hi there. You haven’t been out to the barn lately. You wouldn’t be avoiding me, now would you, Darlin’?”

Allowing himself to leisurely take in the sight far longer than Hailee felt comfortable with, she took another step backward. Her back brushed up against the curtain.

Duffy let out a little chuckle and brought the coffee to his lips. His eyes did not leave her face.

“You know, we should get to know one another a little better one of these days,” he mentioned before turning to head out the door. Halfway through the kitchen, the clacking of Duffy’s boots against the wooden flooring paused, but the man didn’t say a word before resuming his pace out the door.

She heard him whistle a tune all the way to his bunk house and felt a sick knot building a nest in her throat.

Did that really just happen, or had she imagine the whole thing?

P

Hailee sat in her father's armchair, quietly slumped into a ball of blonde hair and blue gingham. The only sound in the parlor came from the light ticking of the wind-up clock on the mantle.

She had no idea how long Tobias had been standing behind the chair when he placed a firm hand on her shoulder, but that one action sent the girl sailing from the chair and half-way across the room in a soft squeal before glancing over her shoulder to see who had placed that hand on her. Her reaction confirmed his suspicions about her mind becoming occupied with unpleasant thoughts.

“Whoah, Nellie,” Tobias held the hand out in front of himself, palm still facing the nervous girl. “You dang-near turned this teacup upside down and over your head. You wanna tell me what's going on here?”

She tilted her head in an attempt to sluff the incident under the rug, but he stopped her.

“None of that 'whatever-do-you-mean' look. Not gonna work this time. C'mon, Honey. Why don't you tell me what's up?”

Both of Tobias’ eyebrows tilted inward and the skin between them wrinkled a bit. “What is it, Honey? What don't you want to tell me?”

“Nothing. I thought you were…”

“You thought I was what?”

Her hands reached out for the tea, grateful to have something to hold.

“Nothing,” Hailee repeated as she reclaimed the spot in her chair. “I’m glad you’ll be taking your meals with me in the dining room so I don’t have to eat alone, but why can’t you just talk to the sheriff and ask him to take Duffy away? Wouldn’t it be easier for all of us?”

With a hand raking through his brown mop of hair, Tobias could only shake his head and blow out a breath of air.

“You know what I told you. The sheriff’s hoping the man will slip up and hang himself in a mistake,” he reminded her in gentle voice. “I promised him our full cooperation.”

Pausing, Tobias fished for a truthful answer from the young woman he loved, asking straight out, “Has that snake out there made contact with you? If that man is trying to get to you, Hailee, I want to know about it.”

Swishing the tea in soft waves around the inside of her teacup, Hailee did not want to lie to Tobias. But she also knew what would happen if the truth of Duffy’s end of the conversation a few short hours ago was made known to Tobias.

Seeing the struggle in her face, his jaws clamped tight.

When she looked up, Tobias’ cheeks were darkened with anger and she did not like what she saw behind his eyes.

Chapter 25

“If only a person could turn back the hands of time, maybe I could have prevented some of this from even happening,” Tobias stared out the parlor room window, his eyes fixated on the flower pot he’d slipped the love letter under. “All I had to do was keep my eyes open. I knew in my gut that man was trouble and I did nothing.”

Hailee noticed both his fists were still clenched.

The Johnson parlor room fell into a silent domain for a full seven minutes, but she wasn’t about to be the first one to break that silence, choosing instead to occupy her father's chair and watch Tobias twitch his fingers every once in a while as she sipped at her cold tea.

At long last, he folded his arms in front of his chest and let out another long breath of air. “You won’t allow me to beat the man senseless – and believe me, I want him alive to pay for his sins; yet there's another part of me screaming out to plant the man in the ground the first chance I get.”

Hailee made her way over to the window and laid a calming hand on his back.

“I want him out of here. We all do. But we both know you have no intention of killing him, and that isn’t anything you should even joke about. I don’t know how you plan to take care of this, Tobias, but I can feel my hair curl every time the thought occurs to me that if you weren’t around to take care of it –,” he turned around to pull her close.

“Shhh, don’t even let that idea begin to drift into your head. I’m here and I won’t let him near you again. He’s not allowed past the kitchen these days, but if he’s feeling gutsy enough to have spoken to you in such a vulgar manner, he just might mosey right on into the dining room when some of the other men are eating and challenge either me or Richard to toss him out. I’m pretty sure he knows the situation could get sticky if he pulled a stunt like that in front of everyone else, so -“

This time it was Hailee who cut off Tobias in mid-sentence.

“I know,” she mumbled. “You’ll be bringing meals to me here in the parlor, right? I’ve been kicked out of not only my barn and kitchen, but now it looks like my own dining room is off limits.”

“You’re pretty quick,” he teased.

“I’m not amused, Tobias. I’m living in a nightmare; don’t you see how insane this is getting?” she mumbled.

He turned his face toward hers and nodded, acknowledging that he’d not only heard her, but fully agreed. “One day we’ll be able to look back on all this mess and it will finally make sense. I promise.”

Because Tobias sensed her shoulders tense and saw the questioning look in her eyes, he gave his best attempt at changing the subject.

“I just realized that I still haven’t gotten around to asking if you liked them,” he found himself blurting out of nowhere.

“Excuse me?”

He chuckled at the obvious look of confusion on Hailee’s lips as she struggled for an answer, back-tracking in her mind to what on earth he could be talking about.

“When I was standing at the window,” he explained with a tug of his thumb, “I started thinking about the envelope I left for you. Have you tried on the necklace yet?”

“No, I was hoping you would attach it around my neck the first time I wore it.”

“You know, the fact occurred to me that I left afraid to touch you, but with me being home again and Richard allowing me upstairs to talk in private with you...it almost feels like we might’ve missed a couple of steps. Are you comfortable with that?”

“I suppose so; most girls meet their beaus sort of the same way we did, don't they? Maybe you missed out on having to ask my father the big question, but then again,” she thought about it, “you haven't even asked me any big questions.”

The pair stood toe-to-toe for a moment before she began relating the way she’d held the chain in her fingers, how the sunlight flickered off the golden metal, and the way she’d closed her eyes and imagined that he was there to attach it to her neck. She also confessed to the man standing in front of her that she’d read and reread the letter dozens of times.

“I think I have it memorized; I slept with it under my pillow.” The blue-eyed girl glanced upward until her eyes found his. “Have you ever written anything else for me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Can’t remember if I have or haven’t.”

She clicked her tongue against her front teeth and gave him a playful smack on his chest.

“You have! What have you been hiding from me?”

He shook his head and gave her a gentle scoot back to her chair.

“Ah, you know I’m not fancy with words, Hailee. I never even planned to show any of it to you or anything like that.”

Feeling she'd embarrassed the budding wordsmith, she decided to leave it alone for the time being.

“Well, alright. But this conversation isn’t over, mister,” she teased.

He took his place in the chair next to hers, the one usually occupied by Bruce. Placing both hands behind his neck and looking at the lodge pole ceiling, Tobias looked uncomfortable as he chose his words, taking almost too much time forming his thoughts.

When the girl began to shuffle her feet, he cleared his throat and allowed his words to float on out.

“I understand this is the single most awkward thing you will probably ever have to go through in your life, but you should know the sheriff and his deputy came by earlier and reminded me of the important role we play in allowing Duffy to trip himself up.” Before Hailee raised any questions, he interjected with, “The sheriff now has information that will send Duffy to the end of Main Street in Canon City for a very long time, but he needs to allow Duffy to expose himself.”

Her face now full of concern instead of the playful look she’d been wearing only moments ago, the young woman felt an audible gasp creep from her lips.

“Are you saying he’s going to prison?”

”I can’t tell you anything else – I wasn’t even supposed to say that much to you. And no,” he assured her, “nobody else but Richard knows about this new development. Hailee, you are not to talk to him about it, either. You never heard any of this.”

She could see the firm look in his eyes and understood that it was not a suggestion or a request.

“It doesn’t make sense. I know you say it will one day, and I trust you, Tobias, I really do. But this will never make sense to me.”

“Don’t lose trust in me, Hailee. I need you to stay as strong as you can until this whole mess is taken care of.”

“Mess. That’s what it is alright.” She fell silent for a few seconds before asking in a clear voice, “Tobias, if I promise to accept the fact that you and Richard and the doctor and the even the sheriff,” she paused for breath, “didn’t think it would be in my best interest to see my daddy, would you please at least tell me where you buried the man so I can visit him sometimes? And why can’t we just have a remembering service in his honor at the church? Can’t we at least do that much for him?”

Tobias pulled a hand across his face.

“I know you’re right. Bruce deserves that much,” he said in between a long exhale of breath. “It’s just that I’ve never had to deal with anything like this, Hailee. I’ve never had anyone else to take care of, never had to make these kinds of decisions before. I don’t mind confessing I have no idea what I’m even doing half the time. Let's plan some kind of good-bye service tomorrow.”

She nodded in an apologetic way. “You know, I feel bad now. I’ve been so busy feeling sorry for myself and been so buried in my own sorrow, I guess I never even stopped to consider how this must have affected you. And the others. You were actually there when – it – happened. It must have been just awful.”

“And I wish Duffy would just straighten out, too,” Hailee said in her innocence. “How could a man allow so much hatred to creep into his heart, Tobias? It almost makes me feel like he hates me personally or something, the way he looks at me and the way he talks to me now.”

Tobias shook his head.

“I don’t think it’s so much a hatred for you or for your family as it is a sheer hatred for his own self, Hailee. All I know for sure is that man has not looked happy for a mighty long time.”

Chapter 26

As one hand held a steady match at the top of his oil lantern, the other hand adjusted the wick. The room filled with shadows and Duffy turned the glow down just a tad. He was in a mood.

Dang Tobias and the dog that dragged him in!

With a firm kick, he shoved his boots into a corner of the room; if he even heard the thud one of them made, he paid no mind to whatever it knocked into.

Scooting the old brown chair across the dirty wooden floor and closer to the fireplace, the legs left a trail to mark their journey a few feet away.

Crackling warm reflections against his face, the man with the tightened jaw held his hands up against the heat, turning them at regular intervals and mumbling something about getting even with the man he'd grown to hate more every day.

Duffy allowed his eyes to glance around the one-room bunking quarters; they had grown dirty over the past couple of months. Only three days had passed since he'd begun to open a window and at least air the place out some, but when he allowed himself to think matters over, he remembered all the resentment he’d harbored for Bruce and the thought of keeping such a small house tidy didn’t seem to matter much after that. The window slid back down against the sill and that was that.

“This isn’t my house,” he reassured himself out in the open. “Not this one, anyhow,” he grinned with satisfaction. “Now, the big house? One day I’ll be living in the big house!”

It had been near to a couple of weeks now since he’d seen the girl, and it wasn’t sitting well with him; he would have to figure out a way to flush her out of there.

“'Course,” he rolled his eyes, “she'll go and tattle to her boyfriend and stir up the gravy with him.”

Duffy reached down to his feet and picked up a pine cone, rubbed his fingers absent-mindedly across the thorny sections and tossed it into the flames, watching as it caught up in the burning mass and sputtered in a dark orange glow. His head snapped up and he let out a soft chuckle, as if an idea had just popped into his head.

“He thinks he can keep her hid in that house, but that won’t last forever. She’s bound to come on out of there sooner or later,” he said to nobody. “Another week goes by and she’s gonna be chomping at the bit to get to that horse of hers. And when she does,” he chuckled, “I’ll be there. Waiting.”

P

Doc Amerley's office occupied only two people that evening: himself and the sheriff.

“The thing is, I remember when folks considered him a rather nice fella; didn't need to worry about him ever causing a disturbance back then.”

The sheriff nodded his agreement.

“I'll tell ya the truth, Doc. I'm not planning on taking any pleasure in the next few days; the law-abiding man part of me knows what has to be done, and then there's the other part of me that's still trying to deny the whole thing. I've turned that saddle over and over a dozen or more times and Tobias is right,” he blew out a concerned breath. “That cinch strap didn't snap on its own.”

“And the saddle belongs to Tobias himself,” the doctor added. “He used it just the day before with not one problem. Obviously that saddle had been tampered with sometime between going to sleep and waking up; the question remains: how to prove Duffy's hand did the doing.”

“Howard was the first man awake that morning. He admitted before the entire group of men he had been the one who saddled up not only his own horse, but also Bruce and Tobias' horses. Somehow he must have slapped the wrong saddle on the wrong horse, it's the only explanation we can come up with.”

The sheriff ran a hand through his thinning head of hair, scratched the top of his head and replaced his hat before glancing over to the doctor.

“Why do you reckon Howard would do this to Tobias? Why would the man attempt to stage his accidental demise? You know about any problems between those two?”

Doc Amerley shut one eye, tilted his head at the sheriff and lowered his head a tad.

“We've been over this. Neither one of us have ever heard a bad word on Tobias; especially after getting an earful of what Richard reported the other hands told him...don't sound to me like Duffy's been in good sorts for a while now. Who's to say what's going on inside that head of his?”

Shaking his head, the lawman's forehead bunched up some.

“But to straight out just plan on killing a man? Seems like a fella would at least have the smarts to make sure he was doing in the right man!”

“Seems like,” Doctor Amerley nodded. “Bruce sure wound up on the wrong end of the plan, though, didn't he? I'll tell you what. I'll never be able to shake the image of my good friend all banged up and bleeding. Do you have any idea what all it did to my insides when I had to remove that branch out from his leg? 'Bout tore me up, is what it did. And that little girl up on that hill,” he hiked a thumb in the general direction of the Red Bone, “she sure didn't deserve any of this! Not a lick of it.”

The men shared a deepening silence in the room while they each processed their own thoughts; more than just the law had become involved here. Emotions ran strong with this one.

Chapter 27

The tips of her fingers tapped on the window sill and her teeth gnawed on her bottom lip; Hailee’s eyes were trained on the pen just outside of the barn. When Epoenah shook her muzzle inside the feeding bag and flipped it up and over her head, the girl at the window laughed out loud. It might have been the first laugh she’d had in several days and by the look on her face – it sure felt good.

Maybe the best part of the show was watching Tobias; she’d seen him reach several times for the feed bag, most likely, she guessed, to retie it around her mare’s neck. Each time the man attempted to release the bag, which had half-way fallen off anyway, the mare swished her head as if she knew her actions were being observed by her owner.

Finally caught in her line of fire, he found himself being smacked by her burlap-covered muzzle. Just when his fingers released the bag on one side of the burlap, the bag teetered in a downward swing and he grabbed the other side just in time to be in full contact with the mare’s muzzle. Down to the ground, right to his knees he stumbled.

The expression on his face not only kept her laughter rolling, but it also increased her want – need – to be back out in that pen herself.

Just to make sure nobody witnessed what happened, his head snapped around, urging her to knock against the window pane.

When his eyes found where the noise was coming from, he held both of his hands out in front of his body and shrugged his shoulders as if to say it couldn’t have been his fault. Once he’d managed to regain some composure, Tobias waved at the love of his life and bowed in a gesture that the equestrian performance had ended, and much to the relief of both females, he did manage to retrieve the burlap prize, handing a measure of freedom back to the mare.

Hailee remained at the parlor room window and watched him peer into what was left of the contents of the burlap bag; when he glanced up to see that the girl had not budged, he held the bag upside-down and shook it to indicate the Epoenah had been a good girl and had eaten all her feed for the morning.

Although Hailee had never before known any reason to be jealous of anyone, she couldn’t deny the feeling of being cooped-up for so long was beginning to develop in that direction.

“Three weeks is long enough,” she muttered without realizing that she’d spoken out loud.

Several minutes dragged on. The constant, irritating ticking of her father’s wind-up mantle clock grated on her nerves; it was too loud in such a silent room. Finally, Hailee turned on one foot and marched over to another window to open it up and air the house out a while. It was just as she’d pushed it open a couple inches that she noticed the trail of dust over the hill leading toward the entrance gates of the ranch.

“Yes!” Hailee cheered. “Someone else to look at other than my own reflection in the window!”

Instinct had the young woman smoothing down her dress and hair in one swift motion while she squinted to see who it could be.

As the buckboard wagon drew nearer, the squinted eyes traded places with a wide grin.

“Mr. Hood,” she affirmed.

Before she could even give a second thought to her orders of staying inside the house, her feet had already carried her out of the parlor, past the front porch, and clean to the team of horses pulling the wagon – and to the man who seemed pleased to see her.

Tom held a hand up and waved.

“Well, Hailee, that is a fine way to greet a fella such as myself; you must have been waiting at the window for me,” he teased.

‘If he only knew,’ she thought.

“There’s nothing wrong with Susan, is there?”

“Oh, no, not at all. In fact, she’s part of the reason I’m here. You see, she wanted me to ask if you were ready to get those sheep and get going on your spinning lessons. We thought it might help get your mind off things,” he added in a solemn tone. “Hailee, we sure are sorry to have heard about your Pa. He’s one of the finest men I’ve ever met and that’s a fact.”

For a few minute there, she’d almost forgotten all about that.

Forcing the emotions bunching up in her throat to go away, Hailee made herself nod in appreciation, trying to find words to fill the awkward silence.

As if right on cue, Richard’s voice sounded from the kitchen door.

“Well, Tom! How about a slice of cake and some coffee? Got ‘em both fresh ‘n piping hot in here!”

Never one to pass up a dessert invitation, Tom tied the team to a post and made his way up the pathway toward the kitchen, passing by Duffy and the spring house on the way.

Hailee had been so excited to breathe in mountain air, she allowed her guard to let down and paid no attention to the fact that he had been taking in her every movement since she stepped out of the house. Until, that is, she heard the scratchy voice calling out her name.

“Hailee,” he smirked. “It’s been a while.”

She felt her stomach turn a bit just at the sight of his face, the way he bent over the wheel barrow.

“Not long enough,” Tobias answered for her.

With eyes narrowing and searing holes right through Tobias’ head, Duffy stood his ground and reached over for a shovel in a fluid, nonchalant motion.

He shook his head without even moving his eyes off Hailee. “Nah, it’s been plenty long enough,” he said with no regard to who heard him say it.

Tobias walked square up to the man, face to face and toe to toe.

“You do know how much I want to sink my fist wrist-deep into your face, don’t you?”

Duffy spat off to the side, returning his gaze to the man in front of him, but said nothing at all.

Instead, he grinned and chuckled.

“I’m telling you right now to back off. You touch her and I’ll – “

Duffy offered a spit-spattered laugh into his face.

“Or what, Tobias? You’ll what?”

Hailee interrupted the men by yanking on Tobias’ shirtsleeve.

“No, Tobias! He’s not worth it!”

Duffy showed no emotion in the way his eyes raked over her.

“And how would you know what’s worth what, little lady? You never even gave the old Duffman a chance.”

“You’re disgusting,” Tobias told him.

He laughed and continued with his chores, leaving the startled group of people standing to themselves. Duffy carted the load off in the wheelbarrow, whistling a tune as if that conversation had never even taken place.

P

“So I sure would like some riding-along company if anyone feels like heading into Westcliffe with me for a spell,” Tom continued.

The gears in Richard's head already turning, he figured it would be good if Hailee got out of the house for the rest of the day; glancing over toward Tobias for his unspoken thoughts on the matter, the word was good.

“Hailee, you know, I sure could use some more sugar and flour, and I was thinking if you came along, you could pick out some sewing thread and get busy on a couple of redwork towels for yourself. Until you get full swing into your sheep business, I mean,” Richard winked.

Her head picked straight up. “Really? Yeah, I want to go! How many sacks are we bringing home?”

Now that her mood had settled down from the barnyard incident, the stress lines in Tobias' forehead began to smooth out as he gave his own reply about heading into town.

“I think I best stay around here, but how ‘bout I make me up a list of a couple things I need from town?”

Tobias caught the questioning look on Richard’s face and shook his head ever so slightly, shutting his eyes slightly. Richard got the hint they’d have to talk later.

“We don’t want you coming along and stinking the place up anyhow. We saw you out in the pig pens earlier!”

The group laughed and the air at the Red Bone Ranch filled with goodness once more.

P

Tom and Hailee agreed on their way into Westcliffe that he and Susan did share ownership of one great buckboard wagon, crafted with two full bench seats and three built-in chests for toting.

“When all our children were still living at home,” Tom began, “sometimes Susan found it difficult with all the young ones to figure out a way of keeping all their belongings gathered together on a long trip. There were a few times,” he recollected, “when even a trip into Westcliffe turned into a fiasco. So I made those trunks and they served a dual purpose: hauling and sitting on.”

She wondered what wagon-makers would think of next and reopened the chest next to herself, running a hand along the inside; so smooth and Tom had even built a divider to keep items separate.

“I wonder if I’ll ever have such a fine wagon one day,” Hailee wondered out loud.

“You thinking about settling down, Hailee?”

“Well, maybe someday,” she blushed. “If the right fella shows up.” changing the subject, she inquired, “Tom, what do you think about having three sheep? Susan said one would be sufficient, but I want to be sure I get plenty of wool so I don’t keep running out of yarn. In the winter, I tend to crochet a lot more, and I’m thinking by winter next year, I’d like to have a proper supply built up. Of course, that means I’ll be coming to your house more often for advice, if that’s alright with you.”

Richard smiled at her yammering on and on in aimless talk.

“I should have gotten more salt and sugar in Canon City. Noticed the other day my yeast supply is getting low. Gonna have to spend a whole day making another batch,” he drew in a breath of the fresh Colorado mountain air. “All I know is, there’s some flour sacks waiting with my name on ‘em. Did we settle on how many sacks to get, Hailee?”

“We go through about three barrel bags every couple of months, right?”

Richard nodded after he thought about it for a second or two. “Yeah, I guess that’s about right; my word, we go through the food, don’t we? I hear butcher hogs are going for close to fifteen dollars each over in the valley; good thing we don’t count on others to feed the lot of us.”

As the men transitioned into a conversation which neither involved nor interested the young lady in the back of the buckboard wagon, her eyes turned to the dust kicking up behind the wooden wheels and to the open skies overhead. Her mind turned to other things.

Bruce. Tobias. Duffy.

If only her father were still there, Duffy would never have gotten to this condition. He would for a certainty never have spoken to her the way he did, and he would never have been brave enough to stand in Tobias’ face and mouth off against him in front of the other ranch hands. It was true that the man sometimes gave her the willies, but she never imagined he could have ever thought about behaving this way. Not with her father there to keep him in line.

When she felt a tear trickle down her left cheek, Hailee just allowed it to drop. First one, then three more. She just allowed them drop, one by one.

P

The wagon rolled down the main dirt road in Westcliffe known as Dutch Row, mainly because of the number of German people who had moved into the mountainous region and set up not only their homes, but also many of the local stores and saloons.

The wagon moved onward toward the Sangre De Cristo mountain range and right past the Klutz saloon. Snow already wrapped the tops of the jagged peak edges, providing the perfect base for low-lying clouds to hover over. Hundreds of flat, grassy acres lay in between the town and the base of those mountains; Hailee had asked her father more than once how long it would take a person to walk from Westcliffe to the top of the farthest peak. As a little girl, it had been her wish to climb all the way up to the steepest peak of one of those mountains with him.

Shaking her head a little bit to focus, she noticed a couple of girls from church standing near the doctor’s office. They waved in unison.

Richard jumped down, helped Hailee from her perch. Out of the corner of his eye, he happened to notice the sheriff had just opened Doc Amerley’s door and stepped inside.

“Think I’ll head on over to the doc’s place and see about some camphor, his seems to be thicker than the general store’s supply – I’ll find you when I’m done.”

Giving Tom a nod in the direction of the feed and grain store, Richard and his friend decided to meet up there in an hour or so.

Boots scooting across the dirt street and down the wooden-planked sidewalk, Richard's open palm pressed against the heavy door to the doctor's modest office with one hand as the other turned the handle.

“Just the man we needed to see,” the sheriff extended a hand to shake the cook's. “Got news earlier this morning from the sheriff over in the San Luis Valley, and you might want to sit down to hear this.”

Complying, the man took his seat with a cautious yet optimistic glimmer in his eye.

“What do we have?”

“According to my old buddy over the ridge, we have a case. Enough evidence to bring him in for questioning, anyhow.”

P

Richard stood and shook the man's hand once again.

“That is the best news we could've heard today; our little trip into town is actually the result of getting Hailee out of harm's way for a while. That man doesn't care who he plows down anymore, and to tell you the truth, if Tobias has to look at him one more day, there may be other reasons for you paying us a visit,” he gave a nod toward the sheriff.

“Now you keep him calm,” the sheriff directed. “Don't let him stoop to that level, this is almost over and then life can carry on as normal for all of us. But first, we have some work to do.”

Doc Amerley glanced out the window, making certain none of the townsfolk were in the process of making their way toward his office before asking, “Are we still on board with the same plan?”

“I don't see any reason to change what we've already discussed, do either of you?”

“No, Sheriff, I believe we all know what to do and when,” Richard shook his head.

Chapter 28

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

A startled Duffy almost dropped the rags when he turned around to the sound of Tobias' voice; he couldn't help but notice the remains of the gunpowder keg Tobias held in his hands.

“First off, kid, I ain’t you. And second, if I was, I’d kill myself.”

“You do realize that's not a comical choice of words.”

“You don't see me laughing, do you?”

An uneasy rift filled the barn; it didn't take the mind of a genius to figure out why Duffy would be filling rags with gunpowder and tying the tops off in knots.

“You cannot possibly believe you would ever get away with something this sinister.” More words edged their way to the tip of the man's tongue, but he remained silent and kept both eyes firmly planted on the man in front of him. “When did you change, Duffy? What could have possibly happened that brought you to this point in your life?”

“Boy, you stepped in here at the wrong time. Now I'm left with the task of having to decide just what I'm gonna do about that,” he spat to the side. “You ain't got no idea who you're messing with, do you? There's lots of ways to make things look like an accident, especially when men get busy with their chores on a big ranch such as this one here,” he waved a hand to emphasize his statement. “and I've been feeling rather creative lately-if ya get my drift.”

Tobias clenched his jaw.

“Yeah. I get your drift, Duffy. Loud and clear. But in spite of all your scheming, it appears to me you've neglected to think this last act all the way through.”

He scoffed.

“Act? What act?”

“Duffy,” he nearly laughed, “Really? You stand before me with a bucket of little rags all tied up in gunpowder, not fifteen feet from that kerosene lantern. Wouldn't it be grand to send this place to blazes tonight while everyone else is fast asleep? Of course, you probably hadn't even given a second thought to the fact that if you happened to be the one to save Epoenah, no matter how much Hailee hates you right now - she would always feel indebted to you. How am I doing so far, Duffy?”

He finished tying the knot in the bundle, placed it in the bucket with the others and wiped his hands casually down the length of his dungarees.

“You have quite the imagination there, Tobias. You know, you should learn to keep your mouth shut. 'Specially when you don't know what you're talking about.”

“So enlighten me, then. Back to my original question: When did you change into this bitter man nobody even recognizes anymore? What happened?”

“See, the thing is, I don't report to you, Tobias. Fact is, not only do I not report to you, in no time a'tall, you're fixin' to report to me. What do you say about those apples?”

Tobias shook his head.

“Nah. Somehow I doubt that.”

Duffy, about tuckered out with the arguing back and forth, clenched one fist and moved toward his most hated enemy. But just as he lifted a leg to move toward Tobias, the man had already given the signal to to the ranch's youngest hand.

Without taking his eyes off Duffy, he shouted, “Now, Joe!”

From the barn's overhead loft, the heel of Joe's boot rammed smack into the barrel of lime, sailing the blur of dark brown over the edge along with a scattered mess of loose hay and chicken feed.

At the sound of the the boot heel cracking against the barrel, Duffy's confused head whipped around almost in time to see where it came from, but gravity yanked that barrel down before he could do anything about it. Catching Duffy squarely between the shoulders and peeling his work shirt, along with a considerable amount of flesh, the heavy object brought the man to his knees as the breath of life winded him to the point of passing out. He hit the dirt floor of the barn in a thud, alerting his assailant it was time to finish the job.

Within seconds, Joe hurled himself down from the loft, where he and Tobias tied the man with rope as though he were another calf and this was the rodeo; sweat dripped from their brows while adrenaline pushed them into completing the task at hand.

“What are we doing with him now?”

Tobias scanned the barn and held up a finger.

“Keep an eye on him. I'll be right back.”

The look on the younger ranch hand's face begged him to be quick about that as he nodded and glanced back down at the man he didn't want to be alone with.

“Alright,” Tobias instructed as he returned with a wheelbarrow. “To begin with, let's load him in here,” he grinned.

The men tilted the wheelbarrow nose-forward into the dirt and edged it as close to the man as they could, lifting and shifting the awkward mass a couple times before Joe mentioned, “I don't know about you, but I don't want him waking up with me standing this close to him. 1, 2, 3 and let's pick him up already!”

“Good plan,” Tobias agreed, and within another minute Duffy plunked in the center of the wheelbarrow, heavy and hanging out over the sides, but in there.

“Now what?”

“Give me a minute to catch my own breath here,” Tobias wheezed.

Both men turned their heads at the sound of several horses rounding the bend just before the ranch entrance.

“Great timing! Richard's back from town - hey, do me a favor,” Tobias reached out to his friend's shoulder. “They have Hailee in tow. Go out to the wagon and make sure she doesn't see what's going on out here. Tell her I want her to go straight into the house and up to her room and not to come out until one of us fetches her. She doesn't need to see any of this.”

“No problem,” Joe trotted on out to meet the wagon.

What he did not expect to find on the road was the sheriff and Doc Amerley riding ahead of the wagon.

Raising one hand at the large number of people, Joe made his way straight to the Hood's wagon and related the message to Hailee.

“Richard, sheriff, there's a bit of,” he glanced toward Hailee, “a situation we've encountered since you've been gone. Out in the barn,” he shrugged a thumb in that direction. “Tobias could use some help right about now.”

“What's going on? Can't I -”

Joe raised both hands toward the wagon, receiving the girls few packages from town to allow her to climb down from the wagon.

Tom began to wind the leather straps in his hands. “Is there anything I can do to help here?”

The sheriff shook his head.

“No, Tom. You best head on home. I think we've got this handled; one of us will stop by your place on the way back into town and fill you in on all the details. You go on home and rest now, I bet Susan has a hot meal waiting for you right about now,” the sheriff assured him. “But I do thank you for being so neighborly.”

“Let me at least get the merchandise off the wagon before you leave,” Joe thought out loud.

With a concentrated effort, Joe, Tom and the doctor unloaded the wagon in a snap.

Tom started back to the wagon, but turned around. “What's the big fuss about in the barn, anyways?”

Joe winced. “It's Duffy. Seems like it's been Duffy causing the stir for a while now.”

“Well,” he nodded. “You know where I am if another pair of hands is needed for anything. Guess I'll go home and see about that hot meal,” he winked at Hailee, hugging her as he turned.

She waved a confused hand of good-bye to her friend as he turned his wagon around and headed back down the road.

“Alright, girl,” Richard placed a hand on her shoulder. “You heard what Tobias said. Now get on up to your room and stay put. And stay away from that window.”

Blonde curls turned in an obedient swirl and the girl was off, skirt in one hand with an arm wrapped around her packages. A couple steps away, she turned.

“Hey, Richard,” she hollered. “Make sure nobody goes into the wash room. I may as well clean up while I'm waiting for you men to finish up out there.”

“Good idea, I'll pass the word,” he nodded.

Richard entered the barn and stood behind the sheriff, who instructed a few men to help wheel Duffy into his own bunk house for the time being.

“We'll roll him into his bed and keep the doctor and two other men posted inside the house with the door open so the rest of us can get this all sorted out and get things ready. This is it, men. You did good!”

The sheriff gave a nudge of his chin toward Tobias.

“Let's give Hailee time to finish up with her bath before we hit her with the rest of this. She's had an awful lot to digest lately.”

Nodding, Tobias had to agree with that statement.

“How much does she know?”

“Well,” the sheriff scratched his head, “seeing as how she was with the men while they were in town today, I didn't see any sense in keeping the news about Duffy's being brought into my office any secret from her. She seemed relieved to have that burden lifted from the property, so I'm glad to have been the one telling her about it. Now, as for any other information,” he grinned, “I suppose that's coming right after her bath, don't you reckon?”

Tobias reached out and placed an open palm on the sheriff's shoulder.

“You have no idea how tickled she's fixing to be,” he chuckled. “Why don't we head on over to my bunker and get the rest of this sorted out? So you're saying we've got enough to bring him in now?”

Excusing themselves to catch Tobias back up to speed, Doc Amerley waved them along.

“I have this situation under control. There's enough able-bodied men right here to take care of what needs to be done,” he assured them as the wheelbarrow containing the still-limp body of Duffy made tracks in the dirt as a couple of men pushed it through the barn entrance and into the sunlight.

“Howard J. Duffman is no longer a threat to the Red Bone; the man has finally come to the end of his proverbial rope. So to speak,” Joe announced with a sense of relief in his voice as he joined the others heading off toward Duffy's bunker.

Chapter 29

With eyes questioning his very sanity, Howard J. Duffman stood frozen in the kitchen doorway; his left hand still gripped the frame of the screen door and all the color drained from his face in one swift movement. All he'd planned to do was barge into the kitchen and raise Cain about who and what had clobbered him out in the barn a few hours prior, but those plans died out the second he hit that door.

“Good morning, Darlin'” Hailee mocked with a huge smile on her face.

“Howdy!” called Tobias as he lifted a hand.

Bruce hiked his thumb toward the stove where Richard stood with both hands on his hips and a dirty mean look scribbled across a clean-shaven face.

“Have a cup of coffee, Duffy. You’re gonna need it,” Bruce almost ordered.

Duffy looked like he wanted to vomit.

“I...I...uh...good to see...you,” he was barely able to choke out of his throat as a trembling hand raked across his sweating forehead and through his hair in a nervous attempt to cover the fact that he had been caught completely off guard.

The kitchen fell into silence for a solid three minutes as the trio at the table stared at him while they drank their morning coffee and Richard continued flipping the flap jacks.

Duffy shifted his feet and looked as if he wondered if he should stay or leave, but opted to stick it out just in case.

When Richard dropped a dish rag in the sudsy bucket by the door, he gave a poke into Duffy’s shoulder and told him to grab a plate of food.

“After all,” he said in a dry growl, “it’ll be the last meal you ever eat on the Red Bone Ranch.”

With a forced look of surprise, Duffy began to protest. He was cut short when Bruce reached under his chair and produced the lead lines that had once been attached to and were part of Tobias' equipment weeks earlier.

“Well, whaddaya have there, Boss? Just exactly what is that?” Tobias questioned. He pooched his bottom lip out and opened his eyes wide as his head turned toward Duffy. “You see what we have here, Duff Man?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed.

“Where in the...” he started.

Hailee raised a hand to her lips and flung her eyebrows high.

“Why, Duffy! You wouldn’t swear in front of your sweet little girl, now would you?” She cocked her head to one side and continued with, “I mean, my poor heart would be crushed if you’ve changed your mind about me!”

Bruce held out a hand, inviting him to shake it.

“Well, well, well! Are you saying we might have a wedding right here on the Red Bone? Why didn’t you tell me you were pining after my daughter, Howard? It’s no wonder you got so fired up on the cat hunt, what with planning a secret wedding on your mind and all,” he forced a chuckle.

Full of disgust, Duffy stomped a booted foot on the floor.

“I don’t know what any of you are trying to pull here, but I ain’t goin’ for it!”

Richard walked straight up to him and stared him in the eyes.

“I think you need to simmer down,” he instructed.

In full compliance, Duffy took a step back and shoved both hands into the front pockets of his dungarees. His eyes never left Richard’s.

“Funny thing, what I found laying down in Puma Canyon on the rocks. I believe these may be yours.” Tobias told him with a reach into his saddle bag.

Pulling out Duffy’s pouch of smaller meat saws, he slid them to the edge of the table and allowed them to sit there in the silence of the room, only making Duffy more uncomfortable.

Adding to Duffy’s irritability, every other person in the room appeared to be quite at ease and comfortable as they sat with their morning coffee.

He swallowed hard.

“Dang it,” he scolded himself as he drew his lower lip in a smidgen and shook his head. “So? The meat saws are mine and you know I lost ‘em. I already told you that much,” he added for an instant alibi.

Tobias shrugged.

“You sure did. Lost ‘em on the way home, ain’t that right?”

Tobias placed one finger on the pouch, tapped it.

“Know what else I found, Duff Man?”

Growing more and more irritated each time Tobias referred to him as him Duff Man, the upper left-hand corner of his mouth began twitching. Who did this kid think he was, anyhow? Other than the uncontrollable twitch, Duffy did not move. His eyes seemed to be glued to that weathered pouch on the table and prayed that it didn’t contain any condemning evidence.

One by one, Tobias pulled the meat saws from the pouch, laying them side by side on the table. At the fifth and final saw, he grinned and held it up to the sunlight.

“Huh. Well, lookie there, Hailee,” he mentioned as he pointed to the blade. “What would you say that is?”

She feigned a look of genuine curiosity and leaned forward to inspect the blade closer.

“Duffy, what in the world have you been using these for? Daddy, didn’t you buy these to cut meat with?” Hailee asked with her attention turning toward her father.

Bruce rubbed his chin as he turned his attention to the ceiling, as if in reflective thought about when he made the purchase.

“Yes, I believe that was the reason I bought them, now that you mention it. Why do you ask?”

Batting her eyelashes, she answered, “It's probably nothing, but I just noticed some leather scrapings on the blade, that’s all. I wonder how they might have gotten there.”

Duffy squirmed, looked around the room as if he were hoping an escape door might appear out of nowhere.

Raising a hand to swipe the beading sheet of perspiration from his forehead, he brought his eyebrows together and growled out a “So what? Ain’t no crime to use a meat saw to cut through leather strappins! I ain’t never had nobody tell me how to use my tools, and ain’t nobody gonna start doin’ it now!”

He poked a finger at Tobias and pulled his eyes in real tight.

“You double-crossin’ snake!”

“Me?” Tobias chuckled in his face. “You suspected I had my heart set on Hailee, and then when you had it all figured it out, you just had to jump in yourself, didn’t you? You’re the double crossin’ snake, Howard! All along, there was only one thing on that rotten heart of yours-this ranch.” he stated in a calm tone.

He leaned back in the chair and added, “And we both know the trouble you’d go to in order to get it.”

Duffy's cheeks burned a furious shade, puffing his chest out in self-defense.

“I ain’t got any idea what you’re talkin’ about!”

The blatant lie caused Tobias to throw away all willpower in remaining calm; before he found the strength to control the rush of immediate adrenaline, the ranch hand cleared the table and found himself on his feet and in the face of his only enemy.

“Murder, Duffman. I’m talkin’ about cold blooded, calculated murder.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that Tobias sure didn’t want to share a cell with that disgusting man for any amount of time at all, he would have killed Howard J. Duffman right on the spot.

He wanted to; Tobias made that very clear as he stood toe-to-toe with the piece of filth he called “a waste of space”. Teeth grinding to hold his tongue in check, Tobias felt his fingertips pushing into his own sweaty palms.

“I hate you, Howard, and I want you to know I have never felt that way about any other human being in my entire life.” In clear, deliberate tone of voice, he added, ”In time, I’m pretty sure that hatred will fade and we’ll all forget about you, forget we ever knew you. We’ll be here on the ranch eating fried chicken and playing with our kids – kids who will never even hear the mention of your name. And you, Howard? You’ll be in jail. Eating stale bread and mushy old apples without so much as a breeze coming in through your cell window. I sure hope it’s going to be worth what you’re getting in return for all the work you’ve invested in this whole plot of yours.”

Richard walked over to the back door and laid out a tray of some breakfast leftovers for the dogs, shutting and locking the door behind himself. He stood with his back up against the door once he’d locked it.

Bruce cleared his throat and took a long, slow drink out of his favorite coffee tin.

“The morning I fell to my assumed death, I kinda wondered in the back of my head why you were all of a sudden reverting back into the old buddy I had known as a young man. You’d been so fired up for so many days, but now I understand full well why you were so kind as to saddle up the horses,” he stated.

Reaching across the table, he placed one of the meat saws into his open hand.

“This leather perfectly matches up with the leather strappins off your horse‘s saddle and leads, wouldn‘t you say, Tobias?”

Bruce hung his head and added in his most sorrowful tone, “My poor, dead horse,”.

Tobias was milking this for all it was worth.

“Well, Boss, let me take a look there.

He rolled the blade over in his hands and inspected it carefully, holding it up higher than necessary so the sunlight would hit it, then handed the evidence back to Bruce.

“I think so, but maybe we oughtta have Sheriff Anderson be the judge on this one, don’t ya think so?”

Duffy’s face flushed and he began to tremble again.

“Ain’t no reason to be callin’ the sheriff out here all this way. You want me gone, let me go get my things rounded up and you’ll never see the likes of me again. I know when I ain’t wanted!” he tried to accuse.

Bruce just smiled.

“Oh, I don’t have to fetch the sheriff, Howard. He’s already here, waiting in the parlor right now.”

As if on cue, Sheriff Anderson showed himself in the doorway.

“Howard J. Duffman, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Tobias Logan and Bruce Johnson.”

Tobias swallowed hard, but he kept his eyes locked on Duffy’s as the sheriff took a step forward.

“It’s time, Howard. Let’s get this done without a fuss, it’s best that way.”

Wrapping a measure of braided leather roping around the man’s wrists, the man made his reluctance to cooperate clear, but the sheriff demonstrated he had expected no less and gave him a shove in the direction of the door.

Richard turned and unlocked the door; with it still in his hand, his eyes met Duffy’s. The man’s face had drawn into a sad frown with a single tear near to dripping from his left eye. Richard shook his head; he had nothing left to say to his former friend.

One hand on Duffy’s back and the other gripped around his cuffed wrists, the sheriff continued the escort to the man’s final steps out of the Johnson home.

Bruce cleared his throat, causing Duffy to stop. He did not turn around but instead focused his eyes on the wooden frame around the doorway and waited for his former friend to speak his mind before taking those last steps out of his home and his life.

“I didn’t want to believe any of this, Howard; I tried making excuses for you at first. How you could have changed this much and how you could have ever had one single notion to hurt me or my daughter runs beyond any nightmare I could have ever had. You betrayed me.”

“He tried to kill you, is what he did,” Tobias spit out.

“You don't know who you're messing with,” Duffy yelled over his shoulder. “I happen to be in ownership of stocks in the Pocahontas Mine, that's who you're messing with! One day I'm gonna be one of the richest men in this valley, and then you'll see what's what!”

With trails tracing their ways down Hailee’s cheeks, the young woman closed her eyes and allowed herself to sob openly; how could this man compare his material assets with the literal lives of people?

The sheriff glanced over to the Johnson family, asking if they'd finished venting their warranted disgust on the man.

Bruce nodded and without another word, Howard J. Duffman took his last steps out of that kitchen and within minutes he found himself vacating the Red Bone Ranch for the rest of his life, being paraded out the door and off the property right in front of all the other ranch hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught two of them giving one another the elbow-to-the-ribcage move and grinning.

Several moments passed before anyone could even move; the emotional weight of events had been heavier than anything the Red Bone had ever experienced before.

One by one, heads began popping in through the kitchen door, and one by one, relieved faces gave way to slaps on the backs and shouts of welcome for the man they’d all heard was long dead and buried.

“Well, I will be dag-nabbed,” one man exclaimed with wide eyes. ”Boss, you are the healthiest dead man I’ve ever seen,” the ranch hand joked.

Several men asked almost at once where he’d been and why he’d been laying low for this whole time, so Bruce motioned for everyone to come join him at the dining room table, where they would all be able to sit together and hear the whole story.

Shoving her hair back, Hailee made her way to the cupboard and pulled a stack of bowls to serve up the Irish oatmeal she was certain had grown cold already. She grinned as she plopped scoopfuls into bowls; at least the coffee was still plenty hot.

Just as she topped off the last couple of tins of coffee, Hailee dragged the step ladder out from Richard’s pantry and across the wooden-planked dining room floor, resting it at the end of the table next to the youngest ranch hand; Joe noticed she’d intended to sit down on it, and got up to offer the girl his seat. She shook her head and gave the man a pat on his shoulders.

“No, you go on ahead and sit down,” she whispered back before stabbing a spoon into her bowl of cold oatmeal.

“I want to apologize if my disappearance caused any of you problems around here. I understand there is only so much one can take outta this man,” he joked with a poke of his thumb in the general direction of Tobias.

“Hey!”

Sporting a more serious look, Bruce continued, “For those of you who went on the cat hunt, you probably saw how ornery Duffy had gotten, right?”

The men nodded, some even rolling their eyes at the memory.

“Well, here’s a piece of information Tobias, thank the Lord, figured out after my little mishap up in the canyon. In fact, Tobias, why don’t you explain it yourself?”

“To cut to the point here, after you fellas made your way back to get the doc,” he nodded to a few of the men, ”I made my way back down to the bottom of the canyon to find the Boss. Thought he was a goner, too, when I first saw him laying down there. His face already blue and green from bruising, you shoulda seen all the cuts and that tree limb clean through his leg,” he reflected, not even thinking about Hailee being right there and listening in on the conversation.

“Anyways, after I realized he was mighty banged up – but still alive – I bandaged him up as much as I could and built a fire. Which wasn’t easy, cause if you remember, it was pouring down buckets and the hail on top of it made it pretty hard to round up any dry wood. But I managed to pull the boss over by the fire and sat down next to it myself once I’d found a few of his things that scattered on the way down.” He took a long, deliberate drink to choose his words carefully and continued. “I found the saddle and for some reason, just sitting there, I noticed one of the cinch straps missing. And for whatever reason, I looked at it a little more closely. They’d been cut. With a serrated edge, from the looks of it.”

Tobias raised his eyes to see his audience shaking their heads.

Joe's lips were pursed and from the look on his face, he understood where this story headed. His head bobbed up and down as he posed the question, “And who was the only one of us who even touched those things?”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair and explained that at first, he had no logical reason to explain why Duffy would have done such a thing.

Shooting a look of apology in Hailee’s direction, Tobias apologized for the misery she’d been put through so much agony lately.

“But at the time, your Pa was lying down there in that canyon, we were both hungry and freezing and wet, and we weren’t probably thinking too clear at the time. We knew, though, that something was brewing in the man’s mind and we also knew the sheriff would be coming soon – and we’d have to have some plan thought up by the time he did.”

Bruce nodded in agreement. “By the time I came to, we figured I best play possum for a while and let Duffy believe he’d killed me off. We were near to wondering if that was the right decision when Doc Amerley and the sheriff found us, but when we ran our plan by them, we all made a pact to play it out and hope for the best.”

“So only the four of you knew the secret?” Hailee asked her father.

When the ranch hands turned their eyes toward her, she held up both hands in front of herself and widened both eyes. ”Hey, don’t look at me! I know as much as you do!”

“And me,” Richard confessed from the other side of the dining room. “They told me.”

Hailee looked down at her lap while a pool of tears collected, attempting to hide the hurt she obviously felt welling up inside.

Richard swallowed hard and shook his head, knowing he’d played a part in her misery.

“Honey, I had to pretend your daddy was gone so we could get Duffy cornered and find out what he was up to. I hated myself every minute of every day for putting you through it.”

In the deepest part of her head and in her heart, too, she reasoned that she was not the only person who had been caught in Duffy’s scheming, evil mind.

She also reasoned she was not the one Duffy wanted dead.

Chapter 30

Sheriff Anderson lowered his eyes and steadied them on Howard J. Duffman’s paperwork. It hurt him deep inside to be processing attempted murder charges on the man he’d come to call a friend over the years, but his hands were tied. And facts were facts; Duffy had already confessed that he'd planned to get rid of Tobias, but when his schemes went awry and Bruce took that tumble, he figured with the man of the estate gone and out of the picture, he would’ve been co-owner of the Red Bone Ranch practically overnight.

Yes, it tugged at his heart to be signing this paperwork, but it was that last conversation between Bruce and Duffy that made his stomach turn plum sick.

“But being just a co-owner would have never left you satisfied, would it?” Bruce had asked him. “How would you have taken care of that one last flaw in your plan?”

Duffy raised his evil, glaring eyes to meet Bruce’s as he had the audacity to flash a sideways grin.

“It’s a big ranch here...lots of things can cause an accident on a ranch. Everyone knows that. And Hailee ain’t nothin’ but a dumb farm girl. She might’ve just had an ill fated turn, that’s all.”

Before he had the chance to open his mouth to say one more word, Tobias had the man by the neck with a fist doubled up in his face.

“Why, you lousy son of a,” he spat in Duffy’s face, not caring that he did.

Tobias plowed Duffy square in the nose and knocked him to the ground.

“You’re the most disgusting piece of filth I’ve ever seen! You wanna know why your little plan didn’t work? I’ll tell ya why, Duffman. It’s because I happen to love Hailee and I won’t ever allow scum like you to hurt her or her family!”

Giving the humiliated man who lay sprawled out on the floor a swift kick before he walked away from him for the final time, Tobias promised, “I’ll see you hanged for this.”

P

Hailee sat in the center of her bed with her knees all drawn up under her chin, twisting a strand of long blonde hair around her finger, deep in thought and unable to erase the images from her mind or unravel the events that had occurred in the kitchen downstairs.

How could one person have become so evil?

A welcome knock at her door interrupted depressing thoughts she’d been trying to forget.

“Come in,” she called out.

The glass door handle turned to reveal her father's face.

“Hi, daddy!” she beamed. “It is so good to have you back home again. My heart was broken in half without you.”

He sat down on the edge of her bed and gave her foot a shake.

“Well, I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere without you ever again.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It sure enough is. But for right now, there’s a dandy young man waiting downstairs for you in the parlor room. He mentioned something about asking you a question, but for the life of me, I just can't figure out what that question might be,” he winked.

As her left foot nearly caught in the lace of her petticoat, his daughter tossed her book to the foot of her bed and made a leap for the floor; she darted out the door so quickly, her shoulder bumped into the door frame.

“Oomph,” she strained out, attempting to regain some composure as she turned to see if her father had witnessed the slick move.

Bruce just shook his head and smiled; the look of utter peace on his face urging her to go ahead.

P

Tobias stood in front of the fireplace; a nervous twitch had begun to flare up in both feet.

“Calm down,” he twisted his hat in his hands and smoothed the brim back out again, only to repeat the process another time or two. A nervous sweat covered his brow; he swiped at it with his kerchief, but in an afterthought of mussing his perfectly-combed mop of dark brown hair or worse - creating a cowlick, Tobias rushed to the wall mirror for one last inspection.

When he raised his eyes to the mirror, Hailee stood in the reflection, wearing that blue dress the color of a robin’s egg. Frilly white lace docked the neckline and matched a sash around her waistline. Remembering once out by the barn, he knew a bow tied at the back of the dress, because she’d asked him to remove a twig the wind had blown into it.

“I talked to the sheriff. He said Duffy will be taken into Canon City before lunch time tomorrow; we’ll never see him ever again,” he promised, turning to speak.

Hailee nodded. There was nothing left for her to say about Howard J. Duffman.

“But that’s not why I came to talk.”

She grabbed at another strand of hair, began to twist it around her finger.

“No?”

“Remember when I asked you a while back if you felt like maybe we missed a couple of steps somewhere in our courting?”

Nodding, she took a seat in her chair.

“I do. And at the time, it felt like there wasn't anything we could do about it.”

“But now,” Tobias sat down next to her, “everything is back to normal, and I want you to have a proper courting. I already asked your Pa for your hand, Hailee, and now I'm asking you. Would you let me court you proper-like so I can ask you to marry me?”

P

The sealed envelope from the US Marshall's office sat at the edge of his desk. It had been delivered right as he and the others were fixing to head on out to the Red Bone to nab Howard, and yet the lawman passed it off as one more letter in the pile he would get around to opening once the matter at the ranch had been tended to.

With Howard locked safe and sound in one of the tiny cells on the other side of the room, the sheriff's fingers picked through a scattered pile of items in his desk drawer until he spied the letter opener given to him by his grandfather. He slid it underneath the flap to avoid tearing the paperwork inside.

His eyes began reading: Dear Sheriff Anderson: By order of President Buchanan of the United States, I have been commissioned to visit your jail and surrounding township within the next two weeks time. In preparation of this visit, it would be advisable to see fit that any and all legal matters requiring attention be taken care of prior to my arrival in order to make an accurate report. It will be within my jurisdiction to assign an additional deputy, if necessary, upon my arrival - in the case that lawlessness has become too heavy a burden for you alone. It is my pleasure to work with in unison with you under the law.

Sheriff Anderson kicked both boots up and rested them at the edge of his desk; a slow grin began to spread across his face.

Justice. That's what his badge stood for.

P P P

Thank you for reading my story!

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What to look forward to in 2014:

The second book in the Valley trilogy, Anticipation in the Valley, will take my readers back to the Wet Mountain Valley.

We'll find out what becomes of not only Duffy – but also his shares in the Pocahontas Mine and learn how the man adjusts to his new life at the end of Main Street in Canon City.

Hailee and Tobias tie the knot and begin their new life together, each taking on some new responsibilities.

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper western story without a good old-fashioned bank robbery and a silver mine takeover, so if you'd like to find out more about what happened in the tiny mountain towns of Rosita, Westcliffe, and surrounding areas in the 1870s, stay tuned to my website and of course – right here on my Smashwords page!