Cattle Baron's Daughter

by S. Dionne Moore

  “I’ll eat with the men,” he said, and spun on his heel, away from the conflicting emotions stirred by these two women. Factions that should be at war with each other but insisted on pulling a blanket of peace over a crime. He would not do that. Could not. And hadn’t he wanted to eat with the men anyhow?

  ❧

  A shift in the planes of Josephine’s face flickered disap-pointment then resolve as she stared after her departing son. Olivia reset the brake, unsure what to say or how to think. Words seemed such a waste in the face of this conflict. She could see why Ryan would be angry and why his anger would extend to her, but she also felt regretful that he would keep her at arm’s length without giving her a chance.

  Throughout the simple meal, Josephine absorbed all that Olivia shared on fashion trends and city life. But it was hard to miss the plaintive glances the woman sent toward the front door as darkness descended. He was all she had in the world, and Olivia felt responsible for the grief her presence brought to their relationship.

  Between clearing the table and wiping the last fork dry, Olivia made up her mind. “I’d like to go talk to Mr. Laxalt.”

  Josephine flinched. “My son, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “He will not talk to you.”

  “He might listen to what I have to say.”

  “What can you say to lessen the pain, Olivia?”

  Olivia squeezed the towel she held. The baldness of the question surprised her. “Perhaps I can convince him that I am not his enemy.”

  “You bear the name Sattler.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I know. But you don’t seem to hold that against me.”

  “I know your hands are clean of my husband’s blood.”

  “Then I’ll talk to him.” She passed the towel to the woman, determined to bridge the gap between mother and son.

  “Remember that our workers also see that you are first a Sattler, second a woman.”

  Hand on the door, Olivia’s smile was tight. “But I am also your friend.”

  twelve

  Firelight flickered against the rough wall of the barn. Olivia’s heart pounded, and her neck muscles were tight with worry. She changed directions, not wishing for her looming shadow to announce her presence. She would do this her way. She skirted the barn and came up the other side, directly in front of the house where the ranch hands bedded. Voices rose and fell with laughter. Words overlapped as the men tried to top each other with whatever wild stories they told. Horses seemed to be the subject from what she could comprehend.

  She lingered at the corner of the building, telling herself she was not spying on the men. She wanted only to be prepared. One peek let her know the positions of the men around the fire. Ryan leaned back on an elbow, ankles crossed. Across the fire were two other cowhands, both sitting on wooden stumps. Empty plates were stacked at their feet, evidence that they had finished eating.

  Ordering her thoughts, Olivia lifted her foot to step into the open but was stopped suddenly by the unmistakable click of a cocked hammer and a gravel voice at her back. “Never shot a lady before.”

  She spun, and a hand pushed her roughly against the rough poles of the building, pinning her. Pale eyes burned into hers. The stranger’s face was half in shadow, and firelight danced along the other side. She shuddered hard, for the man’s face gave the impression of a demon come to life.

  “Any reason for a woman to be poking around here, Mr. Laxalt?”

  His overloud voice hurt her ears. She twisted to get free of his grip on her wrist. The looming figure of Ryan Laxalt appeared, and then the other two men came into view.

  “My mother’s guest, Ty. Let her go.”

  Ty seemed reluctant to obey, and his lips twisted in a sneer. “Your mother’s guests always take to spying on people?”

  Ryan didn’t answer, but he nodded at the man beside him. “Bobby.”

  The larger man of the three seemed to interpret that message and motioned the other two men back toward the fire.

  Olivia felt pinned beneath Ryan’s dark eyes as she rubbed the place Ty had gripped. Prickles of fear and relief dueled for first place along her spine. “I wanted to talk. . . .” She stared at her feet and knotted her hands in the material of her skirts.

  “Ty is keeping watch.”

  She raised a hand and rubbed the soreness of her wrist. She would have a bruise. “He does a great job.”

  His eyes flicked downward. “I’m sorry if he hurt you. Men are sometimes rougher than they realize, especially when threatened.”

  Her breath halted. When she searched his face, the darkness hid his emotion. But his choice of words—was he excusing himself? “I’m no threat.”

  “You’re a Sattler.”

  “You can’t think I’d have anything to do with your father’s death. I just got here.”

  Ryan hesitated and stared into the darkness. A shot of wind ignited the fire, stripping the shadows from his eyes long enough for her to see the wariness.

  She tried again. “Did you agree with everything your father ever did?”

  ❧

  Ryan said nothing. The answer was universal. Children never agreed 100 percent with their parents. He understood her point and admitted it to be a valid one.

  “The accusation is that your father stole from mine.” Her voice cut the silence. “Shouldn’t we worry more about getting to the truth of the matter than standing here accusing each other based on loyalty? Neither of us was here when it happened.”

  “I do not condemn you for your father’s mistakes.”

  She shifted and both hands worked along her upper arms as if warding off a chill. “Is that why you growl at me? Disapprove of your mother befriending me? Because I’m a stranger to Buffalo, and this is a display of western hospitality?”

  Her questions plucked at that place down deep that remembered a man’s responsibility of gentleness and respect toward a woman. Things were different in eastern cities, he knew. Especially among higher-class individuals. The proper male-female roles more defined. He’d hated his visit to New York, which had showed not only the lowest of the lowest class of people, but the highest of the high. The chasm between the two classes had sickened him. He did not wish to see the big ranchers crush the small. That event would make citizens of the West too much like those in the East. Yet his duty was clear. Miss Sattler deserved at least to be heard.“My apologies. My father and I did not agree on much, as I’m sure you and your father do not see eye to eye.”

  “My father is not the man I remember, Ryan.”

  Hearing his name fall from her lips in soft tones provoked a frown. Impatient, he jerked around and motioned. “Let’s walk.” He had no desire for his men to overhear whatever she had come to say.

  Beyond the building and out of reach of the light of the fire, the moon guided his path toward the corral. He didn’t turn to see if she followed, almost hoping that she did not.

  “I want to help.”

  Her voice flowed over him, silent and entreating. He wondered if he could love her, and the suddenness of the thought rocked him off balance. He clung to the fencing surrounding the corral and lifted a booted foot to the bottom rung. His forearms scraped against the wood. The mustang came to him and nibbled at his sleeve, and still he could not answer her.

  “Tom Mahone hired me to write for the Buffalo Bulletin.”

  Every part of his body felt the warmth of her presence as she appeared beside him. Her hand on his arm was placating, and he knew her eyes would be beseeching him to relent. “Tom Mahone is on their side from what I’ve been told.”

  Her breath whispered out on a sigh. “I. . .I need to know the whole story of your father’s death.”

  “I’m sure your father would not approve of you teaming up with the enemy.”

  “You are not that, Ryan.”

  His throat closed at the gentleness of her statement “We’re definitely not on the same side.”

  “Only because you have chosen what side
you think I’m on, never considering that I am a mature woman with thoughts and opinions of my own. I am not afraid to align myself against my father, but. . .”

  When she did not continue, he finally turned his head to her. A small smile played on her lips, though she wasn’t watching him but rather stroking the mustang’s side. He wondered why she felt so compelled to befriend his mother, or his mother to befriend her. It didn’t make sense to him. He could not deny his curiosity. “But?”

  She tilted her face up, the soft moonlight limning along her jaw and sparkling in her eyes.

  “I want to print the truth. Not as my father sees it or even as you see it, but as things truly are. Both sides of the story. Maybe it will help one side better understand the other.”

  “I don’t think Tom Mahone will like that too much.”

  She lifted her shoulders and sank her fingers into the mustang’s mane. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  Despite himself, he had to admire her spirit. He could even understand what it was his mother saw in the woman: a trait indefinable but indomitable. “So we are to work together?”

  The question hung between them as she twisted a chunk of the mustang’s mane around her index finger. She pushed away from the railing and brushed her hands together, her gaze meeting his. “I think that means we must first be friends. Don’t you agree?”

  thirteen

  His eyes ran over her hair, auburn in the darkness. There was a straightforwardness about her that he liked, and his instinct rejected the possibility that her offer of friendship might be a trap. Nevertheless, he would be careful.

  “I learned this afternoon that Phoebe was leaving Landry’s. She’s moving out to a ranch beside Bowman’s.”

  “Jacob Bowman,” he said.

  She nodded. “I remember him from a long time ago. He was a sourpuss.”

  “Still is.”

  “Have you always lived here? I mean, before you left.”

  He thought back to his restless feelings as a young man. He’d worked the ranch beside his father, and his mother taught him reading and arithmetic late at night. Not until he was ten did he realize a world existed beyond the Laxalt ranch.

  “I left when I was fifteen.”

  “I don’t remember you.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  The material of her dress rustled, and he glanced at her. The tenderness in her expression caught his breath. “Tell me about your father.”

  He closed his eyes and swallowed, ordering his thoughts. “He was a hard worker.”

  “I can see that in your mother.”

  Of course she could. They had both poured so much of themselves into the ranch. Building it beyond their expectations and sacrificing so much in the process. Why was he only now able to see that? He’d chafed through his teens at the thought of hard work and sweaty palms, rope burns and trail dust. He’d hated it, and he’d taken that hate out on his father more than once. His father’s impatience with him had erupted during a violent storm. Thunder and lightning had slashed the sky and rocked the world as driving rain pounded their bodies. They’d had to ride out into the pasture after Ryan’s confession that he hadn’t shut the gate. The young cattle might have spooked at the sound of the storm and run off a cliff.

  He’d been so angry that night. So disgusted with having to go back out in the weather. Who cared about the cows? Didn’t his father ever think of anything other than the animals?

  Ryan remembered those burning thoughts that proved his immaturity. Even now he experienced a wave of bile at his foolishness. His father had had a right to be angry with him and his attitudes. But there was no use dwelling on it now, for he could turn back the hands of time no more than he could take back the bullet that stole his father’s life.

  “What about you?” he asked, wanting nothing more than to trounce the grief balling in his gut.

  “My mother died, and my father thought it best that my aunt Fawn raise me. So I was bundled back east.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nine, but she’d been sick for months. It was harder right at the end. Daddy wouldn’t let me in to see her.”

  What could he say to that? To have your mother die at such a young age must have been devastating.

  “I remember praying to God every night to heal her. . . .”

  “Did you get mad when He didn’t?”

  Her eyes flicked to his. “Why, no. Of course not. I knew He had other plans for me.”

  “You accepted it”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that?”

  Her shoulders rose on an inhale, and he could almost feel the grip of emotion that brought a glassy sheen to her eyes. He reviewed the question, angst bunching the muscles in his neck. He needed to know the answer for himself. For all his mother’s talk of the Lord, of peace that passed understanding, he’d never felt it for himself. Never understood it or experienced it as his mother had—and now as Olivia claimed.

  “I missed her, yes, but in my nine-year-old mind, my mother had taught me that God knew far more than we did about our future. She’d taught me to lean on Him when I didn’t understand something. And—” Her voice faltered. She pressed a hand to her lips. “I knew that Mama would be in heaven and I would see her again.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It is simple. As a child. It’s the grown-up ideas and experiences that muddy the water of faith.”

  He massaged his forehead and felt the cold sweat along his brow. God had been little more than a nuisance to him for so many years. Now the cold deeds of his hired-gun days scorched a trail against his conscience. You’ve never done anything to regret.

  “Your mother is so proud of you being a Ranger.”

  He could not look at her. “I’ve not been a good man.” A mild description, to be sure. But he could not bare his heart to her. To God, but not to her. Some sins cut to the bone.

  “I guess this conversation means we’re friends.” She flashed a smile.

  She’d taken him by surprise. Her candor, her kindness. Even glimpsing the light of her faith had warmed the cold places of his heart. She stirred his curiosity, and he could not deny the help she would be in getting at the truth behind his father’s death. For the first time, he was willing to dig deeper than his assumption that Jay Sattler had fired the gun.

  ❧

  Olivia walked back to the wagon alone. Ryan had stayed behind at the corral. She thought she understood. Decision made, he needed to put distance between them, and though Olivia would be the first to admit she had little experience with men, she thought Ryan Laxalt might be fearful of working with her. His reluctance didn’t make sense, though, and she shook her head as she released the brake and got the wagon rolling toward home.

  Home. The word taunted.

  Talking of her mother had felt natural and good, but calling the Sattler ranch house home left her cold and lonely. When she pulled up to the hill overlooking her father’s house, her heart froze in dread. To enter those empty walls and pretend conversation with a man who mumbled answers and seldom smiled. . . If not for the need to be on horseback instead of in the wagon to do it, she would shoot off into the vastness surrounding the house and disappear. The idea did tempt though. But her father would expect her to be there and probably even now wondered what was keeping her so late. She wondered if her mother had ever felt such a disconnect—like her presence was merely a warm body in the house to her husband rather than a person with wants and needs, emotions, and a heart to share.

  It shouldn’t be like this.

  As Olivia sat in the dark and stared at the house, her throat thickened and burned. Every bit of her rebelled against the idea of going into that loveless home to spend time with a man who barely knew she existed and didn’t seem to care whether she was here or back in Philadelphia.

  The horse dipped its head and curved its neck to look back, ears pricked. She heard the approach of a horse and rider and stiffened in the seat, but the sound
stopped suddenly. Olivia gasped and darted a glance over her shoulder, trying to pinpoint the movement. A dark shadow moved closer. “Miss Olivia?”

  Though he whispered, she recognized the deep voice as that of her new friend. She could make out the sweeping breadth of his shoulders and the glint of his dark hair in the pale moonlight.

  “Is all well?” Ryan’s whispered question reflected the concern in his face.

  She saw his eyes dart between the house and the outbuildings. She couldn’t help but feel touched by his presence. “I was just going in.”

  “You were still for too long. I thought you might be ill.”

  “You followed me?”

  His teeth shone in the silver light. “I did. Riding this late at night is dangerous, even for a man. My mother would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t made sure you were safe.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now that I know you are well, I’ll be going before. . .”

  He did not need to finish. They both understood the risk. He drew the reins up, bringing his horse’s head around to turn the animal in a tight circle.

  A swell of loneliness, maybe even pity, rose. If only she could go home with him and bask in the friendship she’d found with his mother. They could cook and talk and. . . “Ryan, wait.” He stopped the horse and wheeled the animal broadside.

  What could she say? He would not understand, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to. Her mind raced for an excuse to cover the impulsive words on the tip of her tongue. “Tomorrow. Maybe we should. . . I mean, could you show me around? I’d like to meet people, learn the names of some of our neighbors. We could meet in town and ride out to neighboring ranches. Someone knows something about your father’s death.”