He bent his arms over his head and flinched at every gut kick until he retched and spewed his last meal on the feet of his attacker.
“Look what you’ve done, you good-for-nothing piece of dirt!”
A whiskey bottle dropped next to his head, the dregs of what always led to a beating sharp in his nose. A muddled curse, a scuffling step, and a body fell across him, heavy with the stench of sweat and liquor.
He shoved against the dead weight and rolled out. Pushing to his knees, he wiped his soiled mouth on his shirt sleeve …
“Papa’s land?”
Clay ran a hand down his face, scraping at the memory, the stink, the taste of bile on his tongue. “That’s right, Willy. Papa’s land. You have a future here.”
His own future lay hidden in his saddlebags, ever since he’d learned his father had drunk himself to death. Not an inheritance, but what was left over. He intended to see things went different for his son if he had one.
They rode north around the pasture with the yearling bulls, and by the time they skirted Pine Hill, Willy was nodding with every step of the horse. Clay stopped at the house and took the boy inside.
“I’m thusty, Mustu Cay.”
“Me too.”
He helped Willy into his chair and scooted it close to the table with one of Sophie’s cookies at eye level. From what remained in the pitcher, he filled a small cup for Willy, another for Sophie, and sat down with the cup he’d brought in earlier.
Footfall on the stairway sounded a welcomed note.
When she came around the corner, he stood. Maggie’s instruction all those years ago hadn’t fallen on deaf ears, though he’d been nearly as clueless as Willy at the time.
Sophie looked at him curiously, but took a seat, immediately polishing off what he’d poured. Her temples were damp with sweaty hair. Maggie would say she was glistening. But he wouldn’t. Sweat was sweat.
A question filled Sophie’s eyes before she voiced it. “How did you know?”
The same way he knew to move before a cow kicked him to kingdom come. The same way he knew a horse was about to snake its neck out and take a bite from his hide. He just knew.
He scratched his unshaven jaw. “A feeling in my gut?” More question than answer.
She let loose a sigh and leaned back in her chair.
He set the crock of cookies in front of her. “Maybe you need something to tide you over until dinner.”
Her crooked smile pulled weakly. “More like supper, now.”
Which would be just the two of them eating together if he didn’t count Willy.
“What?”
She read him like a newspaper, which wasn’t the most comforting thought.
“Just thinking ahead is all. Why?”
“You seemed, I don’t know, suddenly surprised by something.”
Intuition—a trait not to be taken lightly.
She went to the stove and stoked the fire before moving the kettle to the hottest part.
Use a hot pad trailed through his brain, but he held his tongue. This woman would be feeding him for the next month, and he didn’t want to sour that proposition by telling her how to do her job. Beans and canned peaches would go only so far in Deacon’s cabin, and he’d never baked a cookie in his life.
However, she had taken his advice on cutting the cord.
“Did you learn about that acid at school?”
They were running parallel. “Antiseptic is being used more and more. A British surgeon, Joseph Lister, believes germs cause infection. But he also says they can be killed before they invade a patient. He pretty much proved his theory when he used carbolic acid during minor surgery on Queen Victoria.”
“Germs.” She looked doubtful.
“Those small, invisible things that are easily held at bay by washing our hands as well as surgical areas. I sterilized my instruments and Xavier’s gash before stitching him up. So far, no infection.”
“I see.” She pressed her hands down the front of her apron.
She was right, the dressing on her burn needed to be changed. He got up and took her hand, turning it over in his. “I can change this for you.”
He held on gently, yet as firmly as he held her eyes with his. “In a day or so, you won’t need one at all.”
The kettle hissed, and he pulled it to the front of the stove.
“I’m brewing tea for Mae Ann,” she said. “Willow bark as well as elderberry. The herbs are in my satchel.” Her voice hushed with a promise. “I’ll be right back.”
He let her fingers slide from his, realizing he’d change that dressing every hour if it meant he could touch her.
When she returned, he was bouncing Willy on his knee, teasing laughter from the boy’s crumb-covered mouth.
“You do well with children.” Pleasure wrapped her words. “Did your mother teach you?”
The bouncing stopped. Willy looked up at him, not understanding why. Neither did Clay, completely. He returned the boy to the chair and gave him another cookie.
Sophie stared but kept her thoughts to herself.
Motherhood was not a delicate subject in his line of work. But his mother was. The cutting pain attached to her memory was sharper than any scalpel. Of all the agony he’d tried leaving in the past, he had never been able to let go of her.
Just like he hadn’t been able to let go of her that night.
“Clay?”
Sophie’s touch was a firebrand and he jerked.
She pulled back, confusion clouding her soft eyes. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
No, he wasn’t all right, and too much was wrong to talk about. If he could just keep the memories buried, he’d manage. He did manage, most of the time. Until an innocent like Pete Hickman or Willy or Sophie Price tore open the sutures and he started bleeding all over himself.
He tousled the boy’s hair, keenly aware that his mother lay abed upstairs with a sibling. Two points in the kid’s favor. “You’re a big brother now. Maybe you can help your ma come up with a name for your—”
At his glance, Sophie answered. “Sister. Willy has a little sister.”
Clay stood, chair legs scraping the floor. “I’ve near finished patching the roof. And there’s a couple other things I need to check on. I’ll be back for dinner. Supper.” He scrubbed his face. “Later.”
Maybe.
“Clay?”
He stopped at the gentle way she said his name but didn’t turn around.
“Your help today meant everything and … ”
He looked across his shoulder but avoided her gaze.
“I want you to know you can talk to me about things. Anything. I’d like to help if I can.”
He gave a quick nod and beat a path out the front door and across the yard. At the cabin, he worked the pump handle until water ran cold and fast, then ducked under it, soaking his shirt as well as his hair.
He’d never backed down from an honest fight or allowed some fool to beat an animal. He’d never turned away those who couldn’t pay for his services or refused to make the most difficult call of a merciful death. But he couldn’t face the pulsing wound within himself. And the one thing he feared more than any other was Sophie’s likelihood of making him do just that.
He didn’t go back to the house that night. He had to get hold of himself first, and daybreak always gave him a clearer perspective. He’d moved his bedroll from the bunk room to Deacon’s bed in the main cabin and plopped down on it fully dressed. Reaching for the lamp, he caught the dull shimmer of gold letters on a black leather book behind it. Now wasn’t the time to open it, though he didn’t know exactly when the right time might be. He blew out the lamp and rolled into his blankets, waiting for sleep to dull the ache.
In the middle of the night, a cry woke him. A young boy screaming for his ma. Flames licked up the sides of the barn, but he couldn’t get her to move. He pulled on her arm, her dress, her hair, but she wouldn’t wake up. He crawled on top of her. Smoke burned his throat and ey
es, and he cried until rough hands dragged him away and carried him outside.
Then his ma came out, limp as a rag in the arms of a man whose face he couldn’t see. Horses charged out. The cow his ma had been milking ran from the barn, its calf following, wide-eyed and weak, the hair burned off its hide. The roof collapsed and the walls fell with it, and the smell made him retch.
Suddenly awake, Clay stumbled out the front door to the pump, his clothes soaked with sweat, heart stampeding. He splashed water on his face and chest, then straightened and looked up at the swath of stars banding the night, flecks of broken light against the vault.
Was she there? Was she watching him?
He’d never know the answer, because he couldn’t bring himself to ask the God who had taken her from him.
Chapter 13
Puzzled by Clay’s reaction the day before, Sophie stood at the sink, staring out the kitchen window and seeing nothing but sunrise casting a crimson flare on snow-covered peaks. At every turn, he amazed her—with unbounded kindness, inexplicable timing, or surprising disclosures. Partial disclosures. Bits and pieces of a story she longed to hear and understand. And she finally admitted to herself that she really didn’t know anything about this man who had worked his way into her heart.
The difference in their ages was now the least of her concerns, for he had clearly lived more of life than she. He was also clearly unwilling to share it with her.
When he hadn’t returned for supper, she was not surprised. It was to be their first meal alone together, and she too felt a bit awkward about it. But after the incident with Willy, the tension between them had stretched tight as barbed wire. Perhaps time was all they needed—that old standby remedy that made women forget their birth pangs and gladly give life to another child.
Yet she’d worried. She’d fretted and stewed until she was absolutely useless, so she went out to the barn to see if his horse was gone. Duster stood half asleep in his stall, and she hurried back to the house, praying she hadn’t been found out.
Another hour crawled by, then another, and near midnight she stole back with the plate she’d kept in the warmer. Potatoes, carrots, and sliced roast so dry she had to make extra gravy from bacon drippings. A half dozen cookies. Determined to feed him, she’d lifted the latch on Deacon’s cabin door.
Clay’s long frame stretched from head to foot of the bed, boots and all. She set the basket on the old table, then tiptoed out, no breath passing her lips until she made it back to the house, where she checked through the front window for any sign that she had wakened him.
Nothing.
And this morning nothing—other than a thump from upstairs that quickly brought her back to more pressing matters like breakfast. Willy had learned that she came running when he pushed over the chair. The little urchin.
Prepared this time, she carried a tray of toast and tea upstairs and quietly opened the bedroom door. From the smell of things, Willy had been busy doing more than just pushing over the chair.
“Good morning, young man,” she whispered. “Do you need to use the potty?”
Mae Ann lay propped on her pillows, the babe at her breast. “At least he doesn’t seem to be jealous.”
Sophie set the tray on the bed beside Mae Ann. “No, he doesn’t. I’m afraid he’s too busy for that. I’ll take him outside to the privy and get him cleaned up. Honestly, I didn’t think about his needs last night.”
“Do you mind changing him?”
Unbid humor bubbled from Sophie’s heart, relief from heavier thoughts. “And what would you like me to change him to? A puppy? A foal? A kitten for the barn?”
Mae Ann laughed, then pressed her hand against her abdomen with a small moan.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I know better. Of course I don’t mind changing his britches. That’s part of the reason I’m here, to help. I’m doing laundry today, so I’ll soon be disturbing you as I change the bed linen and help you with your clothes and another round of swaddling for …” Her fingers brushed the baby’s downy head. “Have you chosen a name?”
“Madeline. Cade and I discussed it before he left. I felt certain she was a girl and Cade argued that it was a boy. But he agreed on the name just in case.” Gentler laughter brushed Madeline’s head as she suckled.
“It’s a beautiful name and well chosen.” Carved into one of the crosses atop the hill—Cade’s mother’s name. Sophie recalled his parents’ funeral, the same day Betsy eloped with her beau. Such pain all the way around for this family, yet now new life bore a beloved name and offered another go at things.
Self-pity pinched behind Sophie’s eyes, and when Madeline broke away in sated slumber, Sophie scooped her up. “Enjoy your breakfast now that she’s had hers. I’ll bring the cradle in from Willy’s nursery and then take care of the little man.”
~
Clay hadn’t missed the latch lifting on the cabin door last night, nor the aroma of seasoned roast from the plate Sophie left on the table. But he couldn’t eat it.
Before dawn, he saddled Duster and rode for the knoll. Unobstructed, the grassland lightened at the first wink of day, but the red-rimmed horizon promised a storm before nightfall.
His personal storm had quieted, slid away untended, and with the morning came a peculiar trait that had carried him through life with something like hope. He didn’t know when it started, but he knew it was the reason he leaned toward daybreak. Maybe something his mother had told him early on, but he wouldn’t dredge through the memories to find it.
Duster tasted the first breeze and tossed his head, flicking his ears toward horses grazing below. A shrill whinny from the corralled stallion answered a call from a prancing white mare that swished her tail and tossed her head. Betsy’s Blanca.
Parker should wait until early summer to breed the pair, but the stallion could tear himself up breaking out of the round corral and through fences. Unless Clay moved Blanca completely out of range to, say, the Price farm. However, that was no guarantee either with the way the wind blew.
He could also turn them out together and tell Parker there’d be a late-spring foal next year. You’re in charge, he’d said.
At the nudge of a boot heel, Duster made his way down the north slope toward the yearling’s pasture and fenced-off hay, stockpiled against a late storm. Spring blizzards were all too common in Colorado.
It was a perfect morning for skirting the ranch and getting the lay of the land. Deacon had filled him in, but getting an eye on it beat all the hearsay in the world. And if he timed it right, he should make it back by midday. If Sophie didn’t have dinner on the table, he could always eat what she’d left in the cabin.
Aside from beef, she might be running low on stores, after what Deacon packed in the chuck wagon. A good excuse to check on Maggie in town, ask about her friend’s acreage, and stop by the livery for veterinary calls.
His perimeter ride stretched into mid-afternoon, and by the time he made the home place, his stomach thought his throat had been cut.
Storm clouds rolled off the mountains, flirting with the rangeland. He unsaddled Duster, left him in the barn, and brought the milk cow in as well.
The stallion had worn a path around the inside of the round pen, and Clay slipped through the poles, a cotton lead behind his back. Voice low, he moved toward the center, unhurried but confident. “You want out of here, don’t ya boy?”
Head up, tail flicking, the bay pranced the perimeter, nostrils flaring, one ear swiveling toward Clay and the other toward a sassy white mare a pasture length away. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“Got a big box stall for you and that gal you got your eye on.”
The stallion blew and tossed his head, made another trip around the corral but in a tighter circle, closer to the center.
Clay waited, murmuring low and steady, showing the horse there was nothing to fear.
A couple more trips, and it stopped beside him, eyeballing him, flicking those ears.
Clay held out his empty hand. “C
ome on, fella. Let’s get in out of the rain. It’s fixin’ to cut loose here any minute.” He slid his hand along the bay’s neck, and its skin quivered at his touch. He stepped closer, his tone easy and calm as he clipped the lead on the headstall, leaving plenty of slack.
Another head toss but no fight, for there was no constraint. Within minutes, the stallion followed Clay through the gate and into the barn.
After settling the horse in the biggest stall with hay and water in opposite corners, Clay screwed his hat down and picked up two more leads. The smell of rain hung heavy and thunder growled closer as the storm crawled toward the ranch.
Sophie’s old mare and Blanca pressed the farthest of the near pasture, instinctively fleeing the onslaught. Clay turned his shirt collar up against the wind and walked out toward the pair, showing the leads. As he’d figured, Blanca was eager to get inside, but the old mare resisted, completely out of character for a saddle horse.
At a close lightning strike, she went straight up, eyes rolling white and wide. He grabbed for her halter, but she cut away with surprising speed and high-tailed it for the gate he’d left open, heading for the herd in the next pasture over. He let her go. He couldn’t bring them all in the barn, and his priority was keeping the stallion safe as well as Parker’s yearling bulls. They’d have enough sense to get in a low spot or on the off side of the stockpile and ride out the storm.
As soon as he led Blanca in the barn, she squealed. Xavier’s nostrils flared and he struck at the stall door. Clay had little choice but to put them together. Better than getting them both sliced open trying to get at each other. No sense asking for more trouble when trouble was already headed their way. The stall was big enough for both horses, and he doubled up on their feed and water.
Another thunderclap, closer than the last. He checked on Duster, calm as ever, and the milk cow that was chewing her cud and looking bored. Then he grabbed hold of his hat and lit out for the house.
Rain busted loose as he made the front porch, and the door opened.
Sophie braced it against the wind, then slammed it shut behind him. She must have been watching for him.
He pulled his boots off in the jack and hooked his hat on the wall. A small fire danced on the hearth, competing with the concern in Sophie’s eyes. A strong sense of what must be “home” curled his arms, but rather than wrap them around her, he ran his hands through his hair and headed to the fireplace.
An Impossible Price: Front Range Brides - Book 3 Page 11