“What’s that?” he said, realizing Kittie had asked him something.
“Dad. Reid wants to take me into town this afternoon to have a chocolate ice-cream soda. He says the drugstore has an old soda fountain, whatever that is, with marble counters and a pressed tin ceiling from a long time ago.”
“A soda fountain is a place where they serve cold drinks and sandwiches and such. They were in drugstores and five-and-dimes,” Jacob explained, his brain working furiously.
His daughter had been asked out on a date? The fear that he’d missed Kittie’s childhood came back with tidal force.
She wanted to go on a date.
A date.
He was being rushed into a strange new world that he didn’t like in the least. She would be eighteen in four years, attending college, getting married...driving. His heart began pounding in his chest.
Kittie seemed puzzled. “What’s a five-and-dime?”
Jacob felt very old and curiously nostalgic at the same time. How many kids today had ever heard of a five-and-dime store? The old Woolworths store in his hometown had closed when he was a boy, but he still remembered the variety of goods it had carried—things a kid could afford on a modest allowance. Not that everything cost five cents or a dime back then—that had changed decades before he was born.
“They were stores where everything was priced either five or ten cents,” he said.
“There’s a shop or two in Billings where everything is a buck,” Burt said. “Closest thing we got now to a five-and-dime.”
“Oh, well, can I go, Dad? Reid is celebrating because his finals are over at school and he got straight A-pluses. He’s supersmart, you know.”
Jacob wanted to refuse more than anything. But of all the young men who could take Kittie on her first date, Reid Weston was the most trustworthy. He was intelligent, respectful, worked hard and couldn’t possibly be a member of a street gang—the nearest gang had to be a hundred miles away. Or more.
“Uh, okay...unless Burt has an assignment for us that would interfere.” He gave the wrangler a hopeful glance.
“Naw.” Burt rubbed some oil into his saddle. “Matter of fact, I’m pickin’ up a load of feed grain in town later. Was thinking of havin’ a soda myself. ’Course, I prefer strawberry over chocolate. Y’er welcome to come with me.”
“Sounds good.” Jacob could have kissed the old guy.
Kittie didn’t seem as pleased, but she didn’t throw a fit.
Burt unwrapped a stick of mint gum and stuck it in his mouth. “Glad to have you along, young man. Three o’clock, then.”
* * *
KITTIE RUSHED to the tent at two-thirty and grabbed one of her new dresses so she could be ready whenever Reid wanted to go.
She could hardly believe it—he was taking her for an ice-cream soda. Not that you always got kissed on a date, especially the first one, according to Shayla. It probably couldn’t happen anyhow, not if her dad and Burt were going to show up in the middle to have ice cream, too. She wished she could tell Shayla that her dad had actually given her permission, but the McFees were out for the day, moving a couple of herds to fresh pasture with their wrangler.
Kittie also wished she could ask Mariah what to wear and stuff, but she hadn’t seen her, so she had to guess.
At the last minute she changed back into jeans, but picked out a prettier top than the ones for every day. That, with her cowgirl boots, didn’t seem as if she was making a big deal of Reid’s invitation.
While Kittie was waiting in the mess tent, she put her finger over the scar on her chest, some of her excitement fading. She couldn’t talk to her dad about it, even if things weren’t so awful with him right now. It just made her so mad that sometimes she wanted to bust out screaming.
Maybe she’d get used to knowing her heart was bad and that her mom had lied to her dad, but she doubted it.
* * *
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT Mariah stayed in the barn with Knicker, one of the horses they assigned to the guests. A wrangler had told her that he’d caught a visitor feeding grain to the five-year-old, lots of it. Too much grain could cause colic, and the friendly horse was already in a fair amount of pain. Knicker’s only vice was greed; otherwise he was a fine, gentle mount with an inquisitive nature.
“Okay, boy, you’ll be all right,” she soothed, noting he’d started sweating on his flanks and kept turning his head to peer at the side of his body. She’d been walking him steadily to insure he didn’t lie down and roll. “Doc Crandall is coming.”
“He’s here,” a familiar deep voice said. The veterinarian smiled kindly. “I don’t get many calls for colic at the U-2.”
“Unfortunately, one of our guests thought Knicker should have extra grain as a reward. Two days on the ranch and Mr. J. J. Scullin fancies himself an expert horseman.”
“Tenderfeet and lazy-assed cowboys cause a lot of problems,” Doc complained without rancor. He checked Knicker carefully and opened his bag. “I don’t think he’s too bad, but we’ll take measures to be sure.”
They worked with the sick animal until the symptoms subsided. But it was when Knicker playfully caught Mariah’s sleeve in his teeth and tugged it that she relaxed. Colic could be serious in a horse. “Good boy,” she said, patting his neck.
“He’ll be fine,” Doc Crandall assured, packing up his medical bag. “Just keep an eye on him. You know, if all my clients were like you, I wouldn’t have much of a practice.”
She grimaced at the compliment. “I could’ve prevented him from getting too much grain. I’ll have to put locks on the feed.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You can’t take care of the entire world, Mariah.”
It was eerily similar to what Jacob had said about her thinking everything was on her shoulders. She wished she could get him out of her head—even if she had feelings for him, nothing could come of it.
“Uh...you know me,” she said.
The veterinarian nodded wryly. “I do indeed.”
When she was alone, Mariah resumed walking Knicker up the long barn as a precaution and saw Reid at the door as she turned the horse.
“What’s up, sis?”
“Colic. Doc Crandall was just here.”
“I saw him leave. You should have called me or Granddad to help. Have a seat and I’ll take over. You look bushed.”
Reluctantly, Mariah surrendered Knicker’s lead and sat on a hay bale, then realized it was the kind of opening she’d been hoping for. When it came to horses, neither one of them would go to bed unless everything was all right, whatever the provocation.
“Reid, I found those college applications in the trash.”
His eyes went blank. “I don’t walk to talk about it.”
“I do,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to fight. I only want to find out what’s going on. And I’m not dropping it, so you might as well talk to me.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. The only sound was the clomp of hooves on the wood barn floor and the distant call of a coyote. “No point in fooling with them. That’s all there is to it, so there’s nothing to talk about,” he finally muttered.
“Come on, Reid. That isn’t true. You can study something else if you don’t want to be a veterinarian, but you should experience life away from the ranch to be sure of what you want. At the very least, you can go the State University in Billings and come home on weekends if you want.”
“Or I could just stay here.”
“Reid, talk to me,” Mariah insisted. She’d meant it when she had said she wasn’t dropping the subject—this was a critical time for Reid and she couldn’t live with herself if she blew it. “Are you worried you’ll be homesick? You probably will be, but that’s not a reason to stay. The U-2 will be here when you’re ready to come back.”
“I�
�m not... It isn’t that exact...” His voice trailed off miserably. “How can I go away and leave you with everything? You gave up being a vet because of me.”
Mariah sighed. “Reid, that isn’t your responsibility. Maybe you don’t understand because we’ve never really talked about the accident and what it meant.”
“It sucked like the worst thing ever. That’s what it meant.”
A ghost of a smile curved her lips. Yup, her brother had summed it up nicely. “I agree.”
“I wish...I wish they hadn’t told Dad that Mom was dead,” Reid burst out. “Why couldn’t they have waited until he was better? He’d be here now, wouldn’t he?”
Mariah felt as if the ground was being shaken beneath her feet. She would have sworn her brother didn’t know what had happened in the hospital with their father.
“Oh, Reid, I don’t know. Dad was badly hurt, and it’s impossible to say how it would have turned out if they’d waited to tell him. He kept asking to see her and became more and more agitated when the doctors put him off. We could do the what-if question forever and still not get an answer.”
His young face worked furiously. He came from a world where “men” weren’t supposed to cry, and it must have made things harder for him. Hell, she thought she shouldn’t cry, that she had to be strong and keep emotion from consuming her.
“I really loved them, sis. But sometimes...sometimes I’m afraid that if I talk about them, it’ll upset everybody.”
Mariah got up and gave him a hug. Obviously the “Weston way” of keeping things bottled up needed to change. “You can talk to me about whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?” He gave her a sideways look. “What about Luke? You’d be married to him if it wasn’t for me. It’s my fault it got screwed up.”
Well...she had invited him to ask anything he wanted.
“No, Reid. None of it is your fault. It turns out that Luke and I weren’t enough in love to get married. And as for school, there were a whole lot of reasons I left. For one thing, I couldn’t let the ranch go further into debt for my education. But that was my decision—do you really think Granddad and Grams didn’t try to convince me not to quit?”
“But it’ll cost money if I go to school.”
“I’m not claiming it’s going to be easy, but we’re out of debt. I’ve saved money toward your college fund and we’ve still managed to make improvements like the new guest bathrooms and the power station. You know all that, so why are you making excuses?”
Her brother shifted from one foot to the other while Knicker nuzzled his arm. “I...I do want to be a vet...only I want to be as good as you,” he confessed in a rush. “I don’t have your way with animals. You can’t get that out of a book.”
Ah, damn.
“You can’t compare yourself to me or to anyone. You’d be a great vet. But it’s your turn to choose what you want.”
“You didn’t.”
Mariah hesitated, searching for the right words. Her reasons were more complex than she’d ever acknowledged, even to herself.
“Reid, it’s complicated. I wanted to be here for you and the rest of the family, but I also felt guilty for being so far from home when the accident occurred. I used to tell myself that if I’d only been home, Mom and Dad might not have gone to Billings that day. I’m sure I would have made the same choice to leave school, but I would have handled it better if I hadn’t felt so guilty.”
* * *
THE WEIGHT IN REID’S CHEST began to ease. He couldn’t believe that his sister felt guilty, too. Not Mariah. She was the one everybody admired.
“That’s stupid,” he said.
“I know. The accident was horrible and senseless and we may always be angry about it, but Mom and Dad would want us to be happy and stop wasting energy with irrational feelings. We don’t have any cause to feel guilty—either one of us.”
Reid stepped out again, tugging on Knicker’s lead. He loved the ranch; it was home. But he really wanted to be a veterinarian. He’d have to rely more on science than instinct, but was that such a bad thing? And he did know a bunch about animals—he’d grown up with them.
“So, what do you think?” Mariah asked after several minutes.
“I’ll take another look at the applications,” he said slowly. “There’s time—they aren’t due for a while.”
“Right. And if you send them in and get accepted to more than one school, you could visit the different campuses to see which one you prefer.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Of course, he already had an idea of where he’d like to go. It would save money to attend the State-U in Billings, but he might have an easier time getting into veterinary school if he was in a high-profile pre-vet program attached to a veterinary college.
“Then we have a plan?” Mariah prompted.
“Yeah, I guess we do.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“THIS DOESN’T LOOK too bad,” Grams said, inspecting a red, swollen lump on Delores Wheeler’s arm. She nodded approval at Mariah over the older woman’s shoulder.
Dolores hadn’t wanted to visit the dispensary after being stung by a wasp, but it was the U-2’s policy to have all stings checked to insure there weren’t any unpleasant consequences. The dispensary was more than what it sounded like. It was a mini medical station where Grams could treat a variety of health emergencies.
Mariah remained near the door in case she was needed, but her mind drifted. She was still in a quandary over Jacob, though she felt better about things with Reid. He was poring over his college applications as if they were due in days, and was far more cheerful.
She wasn’t fooling herself; it would take more than a single talk to resolve everything, but they’d made a start. In a way she understood why Jacob didn’t want to have more children—there were so many ways to screw up and worry yourself to death.
“Have you ever had an allergic reaction to an insect bite?” Grams asked, taking her patient’s blood pressure.
“Nope. Though I admit this really itches and burns.”
Grams pulled out her stethoscope. “Any trouble breathing?”
“I’ve never been stung. It scared me at first and I got breathless, but I’m okay now.”
Mariah’s cell phone rang and she stepped outside after exchanging a look with her grandmother. “Yes?”
“Reid and me are ridin’ toward some smoke we spotted,” Ray Cassidy told her. “Seems to be a half mile northeast of the house. Thought you should know.”
“I’m coming.” Mariah’s pulse shot upward. They’d already had one fire from a dry lightning strike and she hoped the reports predicting rain by the end of the week were accurate. “Do you need me, Grams?” she called.
“No, we’re fine.”
Mariah made another call, alerting Granddad, then ran to the corral, whistling for Shadow. She’d saddled him earlier, but hurrying to a possible emergency wasn’t the ride she’d planned on. She could see the smudge of smoke on the horizon and urged the stallion forward.
By the time she rode up to the scene, the smoke had lessened, and she found Jacob, Reid and the others putting out smoldering flames in a gully filled with dead brush. Kittie was holding Ray’s and Reid’s horses a safe distance away and Mariah handed her Shadow’s reins.
“Thanks.”
She grabbed a collapsible shovel from her saddlebag. All guests and wranglers carried small shovels in their saddlebags. They were a standard piece of U-2 equipment along with the wranglers’ cell phones and first-aid kits.
“If you can manage with all three, walk them around to cool them off,” Mariah added.
Kittie grasped the reins even tighter. “I can manage,” she said firmly, and a corner of Mariah’s mind marveled. The teenager was almost unrecognizable from the angry rebel who�
�d shown up at the U-2 a few weeks ago. Yet it wasn’t just her clothing—she was more self-confident.
Burt was in command and he waved his hand in a circle. “Firebreak.”
The word meant he wanted her to join the diggers clearing patches of earth around the area, so she dug into the ground. The blaze wasn’t serious, especially since the grass wasn’t as dry as it would be later in the season, but they had to make sure it stayed that way.
The brush was tucked into a gully that was too small for the entire crew to work in at one time, and Jacob was doggedly shoveling dirt onto the worst of the flames. Burt signaled to Mariah when Jacob didn’t respond to another command to give way and let someone else take his spot.
“Jacob,” Mariah said.
“What?” He didn’t look at her, instead beating down a smoking branch and covering it with loose earth. His shirt was soaked with perspiration and his breath was coming in deep, hard gasps.
“We do this in relays.”
“I’m fine.”
“Step out. Now.”
He looked at her finally and backed out reluctantly, his face grim beneath a layer of soot and dirt. Ray slid in and took his place. Twenty minutes later there was a ten-foot strip of ground cleared around the gulley. The dead brush had largely burned or was buried, and only coals and wisps of rising smoke remained.
Burt called for a break and they stood back, keeping watch on the site.
“Is anyone hurt?” Mariah asked.
She heard a chorus of “No,” and Kittie came closer, leading the horses she was tending. Mariah could see the other mounts a hundred yards away, tethered near a spreading cottonwood tree. From the items scattered nearby on the ground, it was apparent they’d been having lunch when the fire broke out.
The Ranch Solution Page 22