"Whoa, Doc." Barclay halted him. "Tell us what to do with these babies tonight. They don't sleep at the same time, and one's always fussing, if not all of them. We need to feed them but don't know how."
"Soak a bit of cloth in warm milk and let them suck on it. Be patient. It will take a while. Remember to burp them afterward. Sometimes, when they cry, it's because they have air in their tummies and need to belch."
"Burp them?" Chase scrunched up his face in confusion. "How do we do that?”
"Put them up to your shoulder and gently pat their backs like Barclay's doing now."
Chase's brows lifted but he looked uncertain. "I'll give it a try."
"Good. I'll be back as soon as I can, likely in the morning. Late morning."
"Be glad to come into town and bring the lady back here with me," Barclay said. "One of us has to go in anyway and see what we can find at the store to use for diapers. I'm sure there are other things we'll need for them too."
"I have to go see her first thing in the morning anyway." Doc looked at his watch tucked in the pocket on his vest. "In four hours." The door clicked shut behind the good doctor, and, minutes later, the squeak of wagon wheels announced his departure.
"I sure hope that woman will agree to come and nurture these poor tykes." Barclay shifted the position of the baby he held. Shoot. Babies were dang difficult to deal with. How did women do it?
The baby burped, and the boys chuckled, but the sound of their laughter revealed the depth of their exhaustion. Barclay returned the baby to its bed and lowered his large frame onto the settee.
Oysters came in with plates and a platter of sandwiches. "I woke up and heard you boys out here. Figured you could use some grub."
"Looks good." Barclay picked up his plate and bit into bread and ham. "Thanks."
Chase grabbed up a sandwich and took a bite. As if jealous, the little girl wailed. He set his meal aside and went to pick her up.
After taking a big bite, Barclay put his meal down, placed a fresh sandwich on a second plate and said, "I can't eat this knowing that woman up there might be hungry."
"Let me take it to her," Chase said, returning the baby to her bed. "Minnie seems to tolerate me better than you big ugly lugs."
"Smart thinking. Thanks." Barclay handed him the plate and Chase started up the stairs. The fact that he didn't come right back down boded well. It meant the girl must feel well enough to eat. But curiosity and worry banished his appetite. "I'm going to sneak upstairs and see how things are going."
"Good idea." Jared continued to eat.
Upstairs, Barclay stood just outside the bedroom door.
"Why hadn't you eaten for two days?" Chase was asking Minnie. "Is that how long you were on the road before reaching here?"
"No, I've been riding and walking more'n a week. Kept getting lost. Two days ago, I came on a cabin where a nice woman fed me and let me sleep in her bed. She tried to get me to stay, but I didn't dare. After that, it was too uncomfortable to ride anymore." Her muffled words indicated she chewed while she spoke.
"Why not?" Chase asked. "Is someone after you, Minnie?"
Several moments passed before she replied, "I don't want to talk about it."
"If you're in danger—if someone is after you—we need to know so we can be prepared to defend the ranch and all of us, including you. Tell me."
She appeared to cogitate on that before shaking her head no. "It's too dangerous. How do I know I can trust you?"
"Minnie," Chase said, "we took you in, a total stranger, and helped you through the birth of three babies. Does that sound like you have reason to fear us?"
"No," she said. "Even so, I'm afraid to tell you. Might be safer for you if you don't know."
Barclay's concern escalated. He found it difficult not to storm in there and demand answers. If she weren't in such a fragile state, he might have given in to the urge.
"Please, Chase, let me eat in peace," she said.
"All right. Yell if you need anything. We'll be downstairs. We have the babies in their drawers in front of the fire and—"
"I don't care." She ground out, "I do not care. I don't want to hear anything about them."
Chase gave her a long, pitying stare.
Barclay swallowed hard, realizing her feelings about the babies were not wavering. He made it downstairs just ahead of Chase and fetched a jug of milk from the ice box. He removed the lid and set it inside a small kettle of water over a lit burner. "Let's try feeding them like Doc suggested."
Each brother dipped a cloth into the warmed liquid and attempted to get the babies to suck on them. The girl caught on quickly. Barclay thought his little boy would never figure it out. When the trio finished their poor meal, the men burped them. Barclay's spit up on him and he grumbled the whole time he cleaned it up.
The brothers decided one of them should stay downstairs on the settee to watch over the infants during the night and keep the fire going. Drawing straws seemed the fair thing to do. Jared got the short one, so he would take the first watch.
"Goodnight," Barclay called as he and Chase climbed the stairs.
"Night ended three hours ago," Chase said.
"True enough."
During what was left of what would have been normal sleep-time, Barclay woke now and then to hear the distant wail of a newborn, a strange sound in this house that hadn't seen a small child in decades. He thought of his mother tending to him when he was small and realized for the first time the magnitude of raising a child and what a good job his parents had done. The next time he saw his mother, he needed to tell her how grateful he felt.
In that moment, he decided to call his tiny charge Caleb after his grandfather. He’d always liked his grandparents’ old-fashioned names. Maybe he could talk Chase into naming his little girl Mercy after their grandmother.
Chapter Four
"B arclay?" a voice whispered.
A hand shook his shoulder while a familiar voice growled in his ear.
"Blast it, man, wake up and tell me where Minnie is." Despite the intensity of the message, the words came in an undertone.
Barclay's eyes snapped open and he sat up, groggy but awake. For an instant, he wasn't sure where he was. Then he remembered being woke up so he could take his shift with the babies. Outside, the light indicated he'd missed dawn by three hours. He spotted Jared in the shadows by the drawers, then rose to check on Connor and the others. "What are you talking about, Jared? Minnie is in her room."
The babies slept. Barclay yanked on his pants and boots.
"You think I didn't look there first?" Jared spat. "Her room's empty and there's no sign of her anywhere. Her horse is gone too."
"That can't be right." He stomped upstairs to her room. "She has to be here somewhere. Did you check the outhouse?"
"Of course. I'm no dunce, Barc. I've got the men searching for her on foot and on horseback. She was careful not to leave any tracks. Kept to the grass."
The door stood open and the room proved empty, all right. Except for the half-full glass of water on the bedside table, nothing hinted at the recent guest who'd stayed there and given birth to triplets. Even the worry stone was gone.
"Good hell." Barclay rubbed his eyes. "What could she have been thinking to take off so soon? She's weak and helpless. Where could she possibly be planning to go?"
"She didn't consult me." Jared leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his broad chest. "I'd say she didn't tell us everything. She took one of our quilts with her. If I were you, I'd check the house funds."
Barclay headed downstairs. "Where's Chase?"
"What does he have to do with it?"
"Open your eyes now and then and you'll know."
"What do you mean, Barc?"
Barclay stopped and pinned Jared to the wall with his glare. "Haven't you noticed the bond that's developed between her and Chase? If anyone knows where she is, he will."
"Well, I'll be…" Jared trailed Barclay into the office.
Sure enoug
h, the house funds, around fifty dollars, were missing. "Well, she's not stupid," Barclay said, shutting the drawer. "She knew she wouldn't get far without cash. How did she saddle her mare?"
"None of the men did it for her. How she managed it, I sure don't know."
They went into the kitchen where Barclay poured a cup of coffee and downed it in a gulp. "She's got more guts and gumption than I credited her with. Let's go see where the men have looked."
Oysters looked up from the fresh biscuits he'd taken from the oven. "You want I should bag these so you can take them with you, boss?"
"That would be helpful. Can you watch the babies while we go hunt for their mother?"
Oysters shifted his weight, frowning at the floor. "I reckon, if you're not gone too long."
"Shouldn't be more than an hour at the most." Barclay lied. He figured it could take all morning, unless they got lucky.
Oysters nodded, and the men went outside, taking the biscuits with them.
Several of the ranch hands waited on horseback surrounded by a bevy of ranch dogs eager to run. Slim, the ramrod, sat in the middle of the melee, mounted and ready.
Big Hank, the wrangler, held out the reins to Barclay's sorrel gelding, Coyote.
"Thanks." Barclay swung into the saddle. From that vantage point, he eyed his ranch hands. "Anyone seen Chase today?"
Darn kid should be at the house keeping an eye on the baby girl. Barclay didn't understand how people could ignore responsibility and simply go off somewhere.
"I sent him to fix a section of corral the storm blew down," Slim answered. "He weren't too happy about it."
The foreman, a big man in his early thirties with hands like frypans, had been the first man Barclay hired after taking over the spread eighteen months ago. Most of the hands had been hired by his father and stayed on after George Givens' death. Barclay had liked Slim right off, and they'd become close. "All right," Barclay said. "Send someone to fetch Chase and then follow our trail."
Slim pointed to one of the riders. "Red, you go."
With a nod, Barclay acknowledged Slim's choice. Red, a trusty old timer, rode off.
"Any suggestions where to start this hunt?" Barclay asked his foreman.
Slim spat tobacco juice and wiped his beard with his glove while squinting at the horizon at the far end of the ranch road. Adjusting his hat, he said, "Reckon she'd take the easiest route. Should be able to track her with all this mud."
"Jared, fetch that old quilt she brought with her. I threw it out back in the trash pile. The dogs might get her scent from it and lead the way."
Mounted on his chestnut gelding, Jared rode off. When he came back with the quilt, he tossed it to the dogs. They gathered around it like it might be edible and began barking in excitement. They'd gotten the scent and, at a word from Slim, took off at a run.
"Okay. Let's go." Barclay nudged Coyote and the horse aimed for the gate a hundred yards away, following the dogs. They generally only closed off the road when they expected trouble, which wasn't often, so it stood open.
Barclay kept his gaze on the muddy track, watching for fresh hoofprints. By the time they reached the gate, he knew Minnie hadn't travelled this direction. The dogs had stopped and were milling about, sniffing. Old Rufus, the lead dog, ran up onto the hill that bordered the road.
"She must have planned to catch a ride on the coach road," Slim said.
"That's what I was thinking," Barclay answered. They might not look anything alike, with him being dark and Slim blond, but their brains tended to work the same way.
Coyote trotted after the dogs as if he knew where his owner intended to go. Barclay found it eerie how often the horse guessed right. He patted the gelding's neck. "All right, boy, where is she?"
Jared rode up alongside. "I questioned the men. They said they hadn't seen much of Chase since the woman showed up. He wasn't happy about being sent so far from the house this morning."
"I can imagine," Barclay answered. "I told you I suspected the boy of having a soft spot for Minnie."
"Heck, he has a soft spot in his head, like those babes. You don't suppose he took Minnie somewhere, do you?"
"Like where?"
Jared shrugged. "He was fretting last night that whoever roughed her up and filled her belly might be on her trail."
"Possible."
Jared spat and wiped his mustache with a finger. "Possible he was fretting or possible some man might be after her?"
"Both."
"You're just a mountain of information, aren't you? How about letting your brother in on whatever it is you think you know?"
"It isn't so much what I know as what I'm guessing, Jared." They followed a slight trail made by men angling across the hill to the coach road. Sort of a shortcut. Barclay clucked his tongue at Coyote to pick up his pace. "She didn't want to tell us where she'd come from or what happened to her. Said it might be safer for us if we didn't know."
"That doesn't sound good."
"Nope. I figure some scoundrel kept her somewhere, and she was afraid to leave until now. Maybe she was more terrified of having her baby there than she was of him catching her. I don't know." Barclay glanced up at a hawk flying high overhead.
"You think he kept her a prisoner?"
"Yep, if not physically, then by making her so scared to leave he didn't have to tie her up. Bruises and old scars from tearing indicated she'd been raped multiple times and roughly."
Slim rode up beside them, gnawing on a fresh chaw of tobacco. "The rate these dogs are going, boss, we might have hope of catching her."
"If we get to the coach road before the stage comes and picks her up," Barclay said. "There's one always comes through on Thursday mornings. This is Thursday."
"Yeah, I know. Old Billy Hinkle drives that route and you never can quite figure when he'll show. Depends on how soon the barman kicks him out at the stage stop over Cooke Hill way."
"That's what I'm counting on, that he'll be late enough for us to reach the girl before he does."
Up ahead, the trees on the hill were thinning, the ground sloping downward, which meant they were on the downhill run and would reach the stage line soon, probably twenty minutes. The dogs, out of sight now, yipped up a storm. Barclay hoped they didn't scare Minnie half to death.
Within ten minutes, he knew they'd lost her. The main road, visible through the trees down below, stood empty. No sign of a woman. Barclay examined the ground when they reached it and concluded that she had waited in the saddle until the coach drew up. Probably in too much pain to get down by herself. Footprints indicated the driver tied her mare to the boot before helping her inside.
Barclay cursed like a teamster. Not so much at the girl as at himself. Holy hell. He couldn't believe this had happened. Why hadn't he realized she might pull a stunt like this? What would they do now? How would a houseful of bachelors deal with three babies they had no idea how to take care of?
Although he figured the chances of her staying in Cutthroat, the next stop, seemed too slim to bother checking into, he sent one of the men to town with instructions to bring her back if he found her. She had children to take care of, like it or not.
Exhaustion set in on the trip home. Lack of sleep, worry and all that had gone on the previous day had taken its toll on Barclay. He yearned to crawl into bed and sleep the rest of the day. He couldn't easily ignore the books he needed to update, the bills waiting to be paid, the records he'd meant to study.
High Mountain Ranch raised about five hundred steers, thirty cows and a herd of forty horses. The work never ended. Barclay took care of the business end while Jared and Chase saw to the physical running of the ranch.
When they reached the lane to the house in late mid-morning, Barclay spotted Doc's buggy parked outside and groaned. There went the nap he'd hoped for.
Doc surely didn't know yet about Minnie being gone. Could he have brought that woman he talked about? Having a wet-nurse for the babies would be a blessing. He supposed they'd have to
decide soon regarding their fate. To keep the tykes would be ridiculous. They should search for someone to adopt them.
The thought saddened him.
The men drew up by the stables and Big Hank came out to take charge of the horses. Not all of them. The hands unsaddled and brushed down their own steeds. Big Hank saw to the oats and hay and took care of Coyote when Barclay didn't have time to do it himself, like now.
"I have some chores to see to," Jared said as they walked toward the house. “Can you take care of the babies yourself?”
"Yes," Barclay said. "Doc's here. Go do what you need to do.”
"All right."
The brothers split up. Jared aimed for the bunkhouse and Barclay entering the house.
As soon as he stepped inside the boot room, he knew something had changed. The soft, soothing voice of a woman came to him instead of the wail of unhappy babies. Doc must have brought her here.
Barclay couldn't say why he didn't simply march into the house proper. Some sense he couldn't name, some hint that things weren't normal, caused him to hesitate and peek in first.
He didn't see Doc, but a strange woman sat on the settee with one of the babes held to her breast. Mesmerized by the sight, Barclay stared.
The woman, a few years younger than himself, had reddish hair drawn up on her head in loose curls. As she watched the baby suckle, her face held a softness, a reverence that socked him in the gut. She was beautiful. She and the infant together were about the most stunning thing he'd ever seen.
"So beautiful," she whispered and stroked the baby's head.
A tear trailed down her face and her mouth quivered. Barclay had to ignore the impulse to rush in and ask why. The memory of what Doc had told him about her losing her husband and then her baby hit him then. How tragic to have to nurse someone else's child after losing her own. But she wouldn't be here if she didn't want to be, and they needed her desperately.
He continued to hang back, not wanting to intrude on her grief. He must have made a noise because she looked up, and their gazes met across the distance. For a long moment they stared at each other before she snatched up a small blanket and covered herself, breaking the spell.
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