Widow Woman

by Patricia McLinn

  “Cowhands.”

  “And wouldn’t the boys just love being hay shovelers? And even so, it’d cost in wages. And if you don’t raise hay, you put out cash for it. Any way you cut it, it’d cost a good sight more.”

  “And it’d cut losses.”

  “Could. Hard to tell if it would make up the expense.” Shag nodded twice. “Something to think of cold winter nights, I suppose. Yessir, something to think of.”

  Silence enclosed them, with the only sounds rising from the fire and the industry of the two men’s hands. A peacefulness Nick seldom experienced in another’s company lulled him, so when Shag broke the silence. Nick’s careful reserve had relaxed.

  “You’ve had hard going, haven’t you, Nick?”

  Nick cut his eyes to the foreman. Shag’s attention appeared concentrated on the wood taking shape under his knife. Nick said nothing. Shag went on anyway.

  “That’s why I think you and her should understand each other so you get along better than you been doing. Rachel, I mean,” he said, as if Nick wouldn’t have known.

  Maybe they understood each other too well, at least understood what each wanted from the other, but couldn’t have.

  “She’s had rough times, too. Her ma died with Chell still a child. Something went out of Oren Phillips when Theresa died. You know, that’s where the name came from. Some think it’s from Terhune, but Oren Phillips branded Circle T when the home ranch was on the Platte. T’s for Theresa, the circle for the 0 in Oren. His way of saying he’d care for her. When he couldn’t, he nearly went with her. Only thing that kept him going was dreaming of this place.

  “He saw this land in the sixties, wanted to run cattle right off. But it belonged to the Indians. Oren wouldn’t cheat Indians like some, and he wouldn’t help run ‘em off. But when others did, he wasn’t backward. Said not doing it’d hurt the Circle T and didn’t help the Indians none. After Theresa, he loved the Circle T. And Rachel knew it.

  “Oren was good with cattle and horses. Keeping books and making a good deal, though, he didn’t have the knack. Took less care after Theresa died. Got deep in debt. Rachel tried to help. Still a girl when she took on the books, but he didn’t listen, not to her, not to me. When Terhune got Oren’s notes, Rachel did the best she could for her pa.”

  Nick felt the ominous weight of sorrow in the older man’s words. If he’d thought he could stop Shag, Nick would have tried.

  “Edward Terhune said he’d throw her and her pa off the place and burn the house Oren had built for Theresa and everything in it. He would have, the sorry son of a bitch. When he wanted something, it wasn’t enough for him to have it, nobody else could. So Rachel gave Terhune what he demanded—herself.”

  A scalding churn set up in Nick’s gut. The padres had taught he’d go to hell for hating, but Hades would be worth it to get his hands around Terhune’s throat, even in the afterlife. It didn’t help any that the image of Rachel’s stricken face when he’d lashed out about Wood wanting her land and body rose up to reproach him.

  “Rachel insisted Terhune marry her. She’s always had heart, that girl, and she figured as Mrs. Terhune she might could help folks on the Circle T, starting with her pa. She insisted Terhune leave Oren to run the place. Terhune didn’t mind, but Oren’d taken to drink and wasn’t the man he’d been. Then Terhune did the first good thing in his entire life and got his neck broke trying to ride Warrior before Chell finished gentling him. He called her training nonsense, said the animal needed a firm hand, just like a woman. Guess they both showed him.”

  Shag’s obvious satisfaction reminded Nick that the old foreman could be a formidable enemy.

  “This area was opening, and Rachel dived into move the Circle T. Oren rallied some. He couldn’t live in the saddle, but he clear delighted in adding rooms to the house—different plan for each. Five months he lasted. Then he died happy, the parlor near done, second story started, his Circle T where he’d always wanted it. Rachel . . . Well, it took a while, but she came round. Soon as she saw her pa’s dream hadn’t died, not with her running the Circle T.”

  Nick sat back, extending his legs, itching to walk away from the swirling emotions the old man dispensed. “Don’t suppose she had any help from you seeing that?” he asked with thick irony.

  Shag looked surprised, then suspiciously bland. “I mighta said a word or two—when I got a chance around Ruth putting her cent’s worth in.”

  “Never known either of you to hold to a cent.” Shag’s smile grew. Nick’s tone sharpened. “Look at all the words you expended telling me Rachel Terhune’s life. For no reason I see.”

  “You might think I’m feeding off my range with all this talk, but you never know when a bit of knowing might come in handylike.”

  Nick was saved searching for an answer by Shag’s weary announcement that he was turning in.

  With dawn trying to push aside leaden clouds sullenly spitting snow, they mounted, with Shag unsuccessfully stifling a grimace. They prepared to head separate ways—Shag east toward the home ranch, Nick north.

  “If the weather holds, I’ll be round next month.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got enough to get through to spring. No need for more.”

  “A man needs all sorts of things. Not just rib-stickers and dried apples. Needs a bit of talking, another body by his fire.” Shag maneuvered his horse beside Brujo. “Man needs a bit of music now and then, too.”

  Automatically, Nick’s hand closed around the simple pipe Shag held out. So that was what the man had been working on.

  He mumbled a thanks, but Shag waved it off. “A man needs music in his life, and if he won’t take the music a woman can give him, he’d best learn to make his own.” The foreman grinned as he rode away.

  * * * *

  Shag didn’t return in a month, but Nick didn’t think much of that. The foreman knew he had supplies to last. Besides, Nick was busy, freeing cattle mired in deepening drifts, breaking through ice on drinking holes, using his rifle to hold off wolves drifting in from high ground. He’d spotted tracks of two horses, riding through Circle T land, but near enough to the wagon road between Chelico and Miles City to make him wonder why they hadn’t followed it.

  When he found trace of a fire, plenty of animals churning the snow, but not of men bedding down, he figured he could stop wondering. Someone had been branding. In dead of winter. On Circle T land.

  He spent more of each day looking for horse tracks off the road without finding them.

  But come evenings, after supper, when he sat by the fire trying his hand at whittling or tooting on that silly pipe. Nick sometimes acknowledged to himself he did miss the bit of company the old foreman provided.

  * * * *

  “He’s no better?”

  Rachel kept her voice low, though the man in the bed across the room hadn’t stirred.

  Ruth shook her head. Bluish marks cupped her eyes, set off by her paleness. “He’s sleeping and that’s good, but . . . He was coughing up blood again last night.”

  The two women’s eyes met in a sharing of worry.

  “He’s had bad spells before,” Ruth added, “but not like this.”

  “Damn that doctor.”

  “Can’t blame him, Rachel. If he comes out, he could get snowed in for a month or more, then what would all the other folks do? Makes sense he stays in town.”

  “Then we have to get Shag to town.”

  “But he said—”

  “Now I’m saying. Your niece’ll let you stay with her family?”

  “I’m sure she will, but—”

  “Then we’re leaving as soon as we can for Chelico. Henry will help me fix a pallet in the wagon. You heat stones and gather your belongings to stay till spring.”

  * * * *

  Hoofprints marked the shallow snow in front of the shed. Nick had directed his horses around it since the last snowfall a week ago just for this forewarning.

  He relaxed some when he saw the new horse in the shed
was one of the Circle T’s, though not Shag’s roan. Still, he slipped into the shack with revolver cocked, rifle tucked under his arm. By the rule of the range anyone riding through got shelter and food. But until he knew who he shared with, Nick’s rule was caution.

  The effusive aroma of fresh coffee hit him first. When Henry’s wrinkled face turned from where he bent over a Dutch oven. Nick eased off the trigger.

  “Howdy, Nick. Brought your supplies.” He waved a hairy arm toward a row of tins and two sacks on the table. “Brought oats for that black devil of yours, too.”

  “Thanks.” He slid his revolver into a saddle bag, propped the rifle by the door and drew off his gloves.

  Henry stirred something in a skillet, releasing an aroma that reminded Nick cooking could involve more than opening a can or boiling beans. Henry chattered about his trip. Settling himself on the stool. Nick listened to an account of every frigid step before deciding he wasn’t getting what he wanted by waiting.

  “Where’s Shag?”

  “Uh, he felt poorly, so she—they decided I should come.”

  “Poorly?”

  “Pains in his gut. Bad pains.”

  Nick frowned. “Doctor?”

  “Couple weeks back, Mrs. Terhune sent a message. But the doc ain’t coming out this weather. ‘Fraid he’d be here till spring.”

  Nick stood, reaching for gloves and rifle.

  “Where’re you going?” Henry demanded.

  “Get Shag, take him in.”

  “No! Wait!”

  Nick paused, taking in Henry’s worried frown. “Aw, hell,” the man finally said, “I told her this wouldn’t work. Mrs. Terhune left to take Shag to Chelico, day before yesterday. Took a wagon.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. Well, Ruth, too. Shag didn’t want to go, but when he saw he couldn’t change Mrs. Terhune’s mind, he told her to send for you. She wouldn’t, and Shag was so poorly . . . Well, I tried and Fred tried to tell her, this is no time of year to be hightailing round the country, a woman alone. She said she wouldn’t be alone, she’d have Ruth and Shag. I told her plain, they wouldn’t be no help if she broke a wheel or some such. She said she was taking Shag to the doctor and that was the end of it.”

  “Is she staying in town?”

  “Hell, no. She said as soon as him and Ruth got situated, she’d head back. Best Shag could get from her, she promised she’d take a stage ‘stead of riding alone.”

  Nick slowly returned his rifle and gloves.

  Henry shook his head. “I kept telling her my elbow’s paining me something fierce, and that’s a sure as hell sign of a howler coming down, but she wasn’t listening. Just said she’d be back quick as she got Shag cared for and not to tell you a thing. I said that don’t work with Nick, but she got that mule look.”

  He knew that look. So when Henry started speculating that maybe Shag would convince Mrs. Terhune to stay in town after all. Nick didn’t put any stock in it.

  * * * *

  Rachel doggedly held on to the rough plank door when wind threatened to rip it from her gloved grasp and slam it closed. An eddy of cold air slapped her lined cape and nipped her ankles even through thick-knit stockings and leather tie-ups. She was grateful for the layers of quilted petticoats under her wool skirt.

  Another gust spurted and the door swung open abruptly, practically flinging her into the tiny room that served as the stage line’s office in Chelico. Righting herself and getting the door closed, she released a huff of breath before turning to an array of grim faces.

  She’d caught sight of the horses being put in place, and had rushed the final few yards, concerned she might be too late to secure a spot on today’s stage. Now a new worry reared.

  “Isn’t the stage running, Milton?”

  Milton Olman, a scrawny man with one useless arm, collected fees and kept the books for the stage.

  “It’s running,” came a blustery voice from near the corner stove. A bulky man made bulkier by the theatrical effects of flowing beard and ostentatiously collared coat stepped forward, hands patting his chest. “I’m running it. Aaron Vaw, at your service. A true knight of the ribbons. I shall take this stage through to Miles City, whether I take it empty or whether these citizens cease to shivering in their boots and gather their fortitude and climb aboard.”

  Aaron Vaw’s bombastic style didn’t impress Rachel, but she would have no contact with him once the stage rolled; he’d be outside guiding the team, she’d be inside. Judging from the shaking heads and long faces, she would be alone inside.

  “Very well. Milton, I’ll purchase a fare to the Circle T.” The stage didn’t deliver her to the door, but the road ran past the main gate. If the weather was too rough for her to trudge the mile to the house, she could ring the bell attached to the gate and summon assistance.

  “Mrs. Terhune, there’s a bad storm brewing, looks like.”

  “The stage has gotten through in worse than this, Milton. Here’s the fare.”

  She held out the money. He didn’t take it.

  “Truly, ma’am, you’d best think on this. Another stage comes in three, four days, and the weather—”

  “Nonsense,” roared the driver. “This stage is running. Today. This very moment. And now, at last, we have found one passenger with backbone.”

  Advancing from the corner, he dramatically removed the money from Rachel’s hand and stuffed it into Milton’s vest pocket. He took the waybill the clerk held and snatched a pen from his desk. “Your name, ma’am?” She told him, and he wrote it with a flourish. To his demand about baggage, she held up her valise.

  “We depart this very moment,” Vaw announced, casting a superior look at the other occupants of the room.

  As Rachel crossed the yard to the stage, a large, wet snowflake struck her cheekbone and slid down like a tear.

  * * * *

  He was a damn fool to be out in this.

  And if he didn’t know it, Brujo did. The horse had tried more than once to reach back and nip Nick’s leg since they’d started out in this storm.

  “Not much farther,” he promised aloud.

  A little more along the road, then he’d cut across country and, with luck, they’d reach the shack within an hour. Then he’d sit by the fire and wonder what had possessed him to let Henry’s frettings of three nights ago push him out into this white hell.

  It had started snowing yesterday noon and blown hard all night. The snow eased off by first light, but the wind whipped drifts around like clouds. The sky hung, weighty and gray just above the ground in stark warning that the storm was gathering strength for a second—and harsher—round.

  Nick told himself he wouldn’t have much chance to go out the next few days, and he had to keep watch on the herd. But instead of following the creekbed, where cattle would likely gather in fierce weather, he was tracking the stage road.

  Brujo gave a snort, ears pricking, then flattening.

  Nick focused immediately on what had caused the reaction—something dark whipping in the wind, down near ground level—and he kept Brujo headed toward it when the horse would have skirted wide.

  A corner of loose cloth—a piece of coat. A bulky, eyecatching coat with a buffalo collar so wide it almost formed a cape. A coat that hadn’t been warm enough to protect its owner. A coat worn by a dead man.

  Nick knew the man was dead before he dismounted, holding tight to Brujo’s reins in case the unsettled animal got the notion to bolt. Without a horse, Nick could come to the same end as the bearded stranger staring up at him, the skin of his cheeks a strange, blanched color, as if the snow had sifted into the flesh.

  A stage driver, by his flamboyant getup.

  Brujo snorted, and Nick eased his grip on the reins he’d unconsciously jerked. He saw no sign of stage or horses. The man had been afoot. Fresh snow mostly obscured his path. He must have fallen sometime during the night, and died not long after.

  Most likely there’d been an accident in the drifting snow. Horses
must have bolted or been hurt, or the man wouldn’t have been afoot. Unless he’d lost his head, the way some did in a fright.

  Nick’s eyes followed what he could of the man’s path, and beyond. Somewhere out there had to be the stage the man had driven. Wrecked? Empty?

  Brujo shook his head with an uneasy jangle of metal and stiff leather as Nick crouched by the dead man. Nick didn’t hesitate as he slid his gloved hand inside the coat. He found the man’s money pouch. Then one of tobacco. It took longer to find what he’d sought: a packet of papers in an inside pocket.

  The top paper was a waybill. Below the listing of trunks destined for one Marta Grunderschell in Miles City, read a single entry under the heading Passengers:

  Mrs. R. Terhune, Circle T Ranch, Wyoming Territory.

  Chapter Eight

  Squinting hard against the stinging snow, Nick thought he made out a shadowy shape. But he knew the tricks his own eyes could play on a man. Especially when he’d battled the whiteness for more than an hour, straining to follow a trail near rubbed out.

  He wiped across his eyes with a gloved hand, and looked again.

  There was something.

  A stage. Listing on its side, like the dead carcass of a giant steer.

  “Giddap, Brujo.”

  He jabbed at the horse’s sides and Brujo responded with a determined floundering through the snow. After a few steps, the animal stumbled, nearly going down. Keeping his tone calming, Nick let a stream of self-directed curses slip through his lips. He allowed Brujo to find his own speed.

  His eyes never left the stage. Snow rapidly whitened the dark body and gaily painted trim. A few more hours and it would have sunk invisibly into the landscape. There was no movement.

  “Mrs. Terhune!” he shouted.

  No answer. No stirring.

  A chill from inside shuddered across his shoulders.

  “Rachel!” His yell seemed to echo within the smothering cloud of snow. He clamped his jaw for fear a third shout might come out a howl.