“Luke, I’ve made my decision. I’m going to be a rancher.” Dare didn’t see anything here he couldn’t handle, although he knew they were going to brand these calves later and he had no idea how to go about that task. “I’ve a mind to buy Greer’s old land and change professions.”
“Do you have any money?” Luke asked.
“No.”
“Because you need money to buy the land.”
“Glynna offered to give him the land.” Vince jumped in, always talking.
“She did?” Luke frowned. “I don’t know if that’s right, taking land from a widow and her fatherless children.”
“I’m not taking her land,” Dare said in disgust. “What kind of coyote do you think I am? I can pay her—eventually.”
“Okay, fine. Then you’ll need cattle and horses. It costs a lot to get a ranch up and running . . . unless, wait!” Luke sounded excited.
Dare thought maybe he could get this ranching concern going, after all. “What?”
“You can go out into the hills and round up some wild longhorns. But they can be killers—you’ve gotta watch the horns. Backbreaking work, yet there are cattle aplenty running wild. That’s how my pa started his herd. I could loan you a few men and horses until you got a herd together.”
“I’d pay your men while they worked for me.”
“With no money?” Luke arched a brow.
“I’ll pay you over time, like I’m gonna do with Glynna.”
“And maybe we could find a herd of wild mustangs and get yourself some horses that way. Rounding up wild horses is tricky. Then you’ve got to break them. I’ve ridden out by Greer’s place. He’s got a ramshackle cabin that probably won’t stop the snow and cold wind through the winter. And there are no outbuildings or corrals. You know how to patch holes in a cabin or raise a barn?”
Dare pretty much just knew how to be a doctor. In his youth he’d been a decent wheelwright too, with his pa’s help. Now that he thought about it, he probably was fooling himself about the wheelwright skills. “I asked you to teach me, didn’t I?”
“You don’t have any hay for the winter, but there might still be some tall grass, winter-cured, on Greer’s place. You know how to mow hay and stack it?”
“I can learn.” Dare thought maybe his voice, always deep and a little gravelly, qualified now as a growl.
“You know, cattle and horses get sick, too.”
Dare perked up. “I might kind of enjoy doctoring them.”
“Probably the best thing would be if you came out to my place and worked for me as a cowpoke,” Luke offered. “That’d be a good training ground. We’ll see what kind of rancher you’d make.”
“I’m a little old to be starting out as a cowpuncher.”
Vince flashed a smile. “You’re a little old for a lot of things, Dare, my friend.”
Dare had a surprising desire to wipe that smile off Vince’s face with a fist. Vince seemed to know that, because he smiled even wider.
They didn’t call him Invincible Vince for nothing, so Dare knew better than to take a swing. All the same, Dare enjoyed imagining it.
“Come on out.” Luke pulled his hat off, smoothed back his overly long brown hair with a swipe of one hand, then anchored his hair again with the hat.
Movement from the south drew Dare’s attention.
“Here comes Red Wolf. I told him we’d be riding over to Gil’s, but I wasn’t sure he’d come along. Gil and Red Wolf and I had us a time running wild in these canyons.” Luke smiled at the memory. “Look at that man ride.”
Dare watched Luke’s Kiowa friend ride his horse, no saddle, the only bridle woven strips of cured hide. The horse stretched out, galloping across the rugged terrain as Red Wolf leaned forward, his spine straight as a lance. Man and horse moved together with such grace it was like they were one.
A moment later, Red Wolf came even with them and slowed to match their pace, riding on Luke’s right while Dare and Vince were on his left. “You say our friend Gil has returned?”
“Yep.” Luke reached across the space between his horse and Red Wolf’s and grasped his friend’s forearm. Dare noticed they clasped each other’s arm over their scars, and he wondered if it wasn’t a secret handshake of sorts.
“He’s moved back into the cabin he grew up in. He’s come into the country with a wife and three sons. The oldest of them had pneumonia, just like you had, and Dare’s been doctoring him.” Luke told Red Wolf about the sick boy.
Red Wolf turned to Dare. “Your healing has helped another family, medicine man.”
Dare nodded his head. He couldn’t reach far enough to shake the man’s hand, but he felt as though there was a friendship between them.
“Maybe we oughta make Dare and Vince blood brothers like you, Gil, and me.” Luke raised his scarred forearm.
“That’s a nasty cut.” Dare frowned at the ugly wound. “You’re lucky you didn’t sever a radial artery in your wrist and bleed to death or get an infection and die.”
“Yep, you’re a natural as a rancher.” Luke and Vince laughed.
“No sense pretending to be a medicine man, Dare,” Vince added.
Red Wolf looked confused and might have asked what they were talking about, but then a cow made a break for home. Luke herded her back into line with such ease that Dare had serious doubts about his ability to ranch.
They rode four abreast, trailing after the cattle until they reached the Foster holding.
“Bunch the cattle on that grass and hold them there. Holler when they’ve settled in, and we’ll get to the branding.” Luke’s foreman, Dodger, took over while Dare and his friends swung down by the front door of the Foster cabin and lashed their reins to a hitching post—all but Red Wolf, who left his horse standing as if the horse stayed with him because it wanted to.
It was a one-story house, whereas Luke’s house had an upstairs, but it was longer than Luke’s. It looked more than big enough for a family of five. A fine-looking home, built with logs and the red stones that littered the neighboring canyon. A stand of cottonwoods was nearby, which had provided the logs for the house, and yet there were plenty of them left standing.
Gil opened the door, and the shrill laughter of his wild sons echoed out of the house. “Red Wolf!” Gil jogged across the wide porch and down three steps.
Red Wolf met Gil as he reached the ground. The two men shook hands in the same way Luke and Red Wolf had, then they laughed and Gil slapped the Kiowa man on the back. Luke joined in the good-natured talk, and Dare could see the boy in Luke, see more of the fires that had forged him into a strong soldier and a capable rancher.
After a few minutes, the Foster boys came charging out of the cabin, and Gil, a man with a lot of practice, snagged them both and held them wriggling in his arms. “These are two of my three sons, Red Wolf. Come on in. My boys will climb on your horses and go riding off if we don’t pen them up.”
“I can pen up the horses,” Dare offered, though they looked fine standing tied to Gil’s hitching post.
“No, I mean pen up my boys.”
They all laughed.
“Let’s go in.” Gil hoisted the boys, one under each arm, as he went up onto his porch.
Dare watched Luke enjoy his friends, and the antics of Gil’s boys reminded him of how fine a thing it was to see a child in full health.
They turned to the branding, and between the bawling cattle, the red-hot irons, the stench of burning cowhide, and two little boys who seemed determined to cast themselves into the fire or get hit by thrashing hooves, Dare wasn’t sure what was even happening.
They were ready to leave when Dare saw Luke absentmindedly scratching his neck. Dare saw a red spot, then a closer look revealed another and another.
Measles.
“We’d better head out now,” Dare said. “By the way, Gil, have you and your boys ever had the measles?”
“Yep, sure have.” Gil’s brow furrowed, curious about the unexpected question. “We’ve all h
ad them. Why?”
“Luke, you need to stop scratching.”
“Why’s that?”
“Have you had a fever?” Dare was struck by how differently he felt about Luke coming down with this than Red Wolf. There was a good chance Luke would be well in a few days with few, if any, complications. Why would such a thing be true? Some doctor, somewhere, needed to do some research on that.
“I feel fine.” Luke gave Dare a man-to-man look that said nothing could lay him low.
Dare had a feeling Luke was going to spend the next few days learning different. “We need to get you home.”
Dare decided he’d stay until he was sure Luke was going to get through this. It struck Dare that about the only thing that could make his life more hectic was if a cyclone blew into Broken Wheel.
Chapter 12
Tina Cahill blew into Broken Wheel tired, filthy, and scared. What if Jonas didn’t want her?
Fighting down all her fears, she jumped off the back of the bumpy wagon just as a tumbleweed rolled across the street right in front of her. For days she’d ridden through the most barren wilderness, riding in a full wagon with the couple up on the bench seat mostly ignoring her.
She missed the lush green of Ohio. She missed the only home she’d ever known. She even missed stern Aunt Iphigenia . . . a little.
She missed her church work and even managing her home to Aunt Iphigenia’s exacting standards. The woman had taken cleanliness being next to godliness to the Commandment level.
Then, after all her years of hard work and dedication, she’d been cast out as surely as if she’d been Satan leading a rebellion in heaven. The man Aunt Iphigenia had married was nearly sixty years old, overly fat, and none too fond of bathing. None of that was the problem. It was the loathsome way her brand-new uncle Auggie had looked at her with hungry, wet, pink-as-a-pig eyes.
He liked to touch her when he walked past, lay a hand on her back—low on her back—and brush his body against hers when there was plenty of room to avoid it. The touches had grown bolder, the eyes hungrier. Aunt Iphigenia had noticed and accused Tina of flaunting herself. Then she’d cast her out.
Her aunt’s betrayal, picking the wretched new husband over Tina, was disgusting, but Tina had been only too happy to leave. She’d had a letter from Jonas, so she knew he was here in Broken Wheel, Texas. She’d written him a letter and left before Jonas could get it and tell her not to come—a plan Aunt Iphigenia had wholeheartedly endorsed. Both of them were worried he’d tell her to stay away. Now here she was, unwanted and uninvited, to make her home with her brother, whom she hadn’t seen in years.
At last.
Squaring her shoulders, she turned to instruct the driver and his wife how to best handle her trunks.
Motion drew her attention to a dark-haired man wearing a tidy black vest, walking across the street. She could see him over the backs of the horses, but he only had eyes for the wagon and its eight Missouri mules.
“Tina?”
She turned and saw a man coming down the board-walk toward her. “Jonas?” From the red hair she knew this had to be her big brother. He was nearly ten years older than her, and she hadn’t seen him since she was a child. She wouldn’t have recognized the broad-shouldered man as her scrawny brother if not for his hair.
Aunt Iphigenia hadn’t approved of Jonas back then, and she’d run him off quickly when he’d stop by for a visit. But Tina had always loved him.
Uncertain of her welcome, she managed a wobbly smile. “The red hair is a dead giveaway that you’re Jonas.”
During the war, Jonas had turned to the good Lord and begun writing letters home. They’d been kind and full of his new faith. Tina had always adored him, even when Aunt Iphigenia had railed at what a scoundrel he was. When he’d become a man of God, Tina’s love for her big brother had deepened. She’d poured all her dreams of family and love out to him in long letters. She’d never directly asked, but she’d hoped he could tell she wanted him to come for her and save her from the dragon that was raising her. She’d been devastated when he’d set out to preach the gospel in the West without even seeing her.
“Tina? My baby sister?” Jonas’s good-natured shout sounded just as the dark-haired man reached the meager excuse for a board-walk.
“I’m not a baby anymore.” Her heart was warmed by Jonas’s hearty welcome.
The approaching man’s eyes went to her, then widened. His mouth dropped open. He walked right into the steps up to the board-walk, tripped, and landed flat on his face. With a sniff of disdain, Tina realized the man had no doubt found his breakfast in a whiskey bottle.
“You sure aren’t.” Jonas reached out both hands and she clasped them, glad for someone to hold on to. Behind Jonas a second man with overly long, dirty blond hair stepped out of two swinging doors. Smells wafted out of the building he’d emerged from. A saloon. Hmph!
The man turned, drawn perhaps by Jonas’s voice. The man looked at her and walked smack into a post holding up the board-walk roof. He staggered under the impact and fell backward through the still-swinging doors.
Another drunkard. This town needed to shut down that saloon, and she’d be glad to help organize the effort to get it closed.
“You’ve grown into a beautiful woman.” With a delighted laugh Jonas slid his arms around her waist, hoisted her into the air, and swung her in a circle.
“Jonas!” Laughing, she slapped at his shoulders. “Put me down.”
But it felt wonderful to have someone in the world who was her very own family. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nearly strangled her big brother with a hug. “It’s so nice to see you.”
On one of the swinging turns, Tina saw that the dark-haired man who’d fallen had stood back up. He had a faint flush on his cheeks, no doubt embarrassed to be caught intoxicated in the morning. On the next rotation she saw him flash a brilliant, if somewhat sheepish, smile. Jonas stopped twirling her so her gaze could lock on the man’s. His smile faded. He began walking toward her again—slow, steady, relentless. He was in Tina’s estimation the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
Intoxication notwithstanding.
“It’s wonderful to see you, pretty one.” Jonas hugged her tighter and drew her attention from the dark-haired man.
Jonas’s voice held such kindness. Aunt Iphigenia was of a stern nature, and she’d been inclined to lecture any and all—most especially Tina—with fiery details of the afterlife for the unrepentant. Jonas’s gentle flattery was like water in the desert, and the loving embrace was too wonderful. Unexpected and unbidden, she burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, baby girl.”
She’d never been a baby girl. From her earliest memory she’d been an adult, living on sufferance.
“You’re home.” He let her slide back to the ground.
She’d never truly had a home. Her parents had passed away very early on, and she’d lived with coldhearted Iphigenia from childhood.
“I’ll take care of you.”
She’d done a lot more caretaking in her life than having any care taken of her. Jonas’s strong arms and the idea that he was a man who’d welcomed her home and expected to bear her burdens made her cry harder. It was completely unlike her.
She was a while obeying his urging not to cry, but she finally did. When the storm eased, he stepped back as if he regretted letting her go, then offered her a white handkerchief.
She mopped her face with it and then looked up, sniffling. “I apologize for my outburst.”
Her voice broke. She fell silent as she tried to regain control of herself. The handsome man who’d fallen had stopped, still at a distance. He now stared at her in horror. When their eyes met this time, Mr. Handsome Drunkard turned and walked briskly away.
Aunt Iphigenia had always scorned a drinker. She said consuming alcohol was like putting a thief in your mouth to steal your brains.
This man moved gracefully for a sot.
He was probably running due to shame for
being inebriated in public in midmorning.
She then discarded that notion, for everyone knew drunkards had no shame.
“I’m telling you she was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Vince told Dare, although this wasn’t news.
Dare had heard the same thing from everyone he’d spoken to since yesterday morning when he’d decided Luke was going to heal just fine from the measles. “Jonas said she was chubby.”
“Well, she’s slimmed down considerable.” Vince scowled. Which wasn’t like him. Vince usually had a ready smile.
No one seemed much interested in the wagon that had brought in a good load of doctoring supplies. All anyone could talk about was the woman who’d moved into the parsonage. There was even talk about a few sinners repenting just so they could attend services and catch a glimpse of the “golden-haired angel.”
Duffy Schuster had come in to see Dare with big goose eggs on the front and back of his head and called her that. Vince had a small bruise on one cheek too, but he didn’t ask for doctoring advice and Dare didn’t offer any.
Dare wondered if God ever got plumb tired of the people He’d created.
Glynna stepped out of the kitchen with her heavy coffeepot, and five men stood like they had springs in their backsides and offered to carry the pot for her. Dare didn’t stand by sheer force of will. Glynna might just slam the burning pot into his head. She hadn’t forgiven him for mauling her the other day. And he hadn’t stopped wanting to do it again, confound it.
“There’s no prettier woman in this town than Glynna, so Jonas’s sister can’t be the prettiest,” Dare said.
Vince quit his nonstop yammering about the new woman in town to arch a brow at Dare. A challenge.
Dare didn’t know how to decide which woman was prettier, short of a beauty contest, and he didn’t see Glynna cooperating—nor Tina Cahill, for that matter.
“Then she started crying like her head was a storm cloud. She just poured. I’m surprised Jonas didn’t get hit by a thunderbolt coming straight out of her soggy eyeballs.”
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