Only Maynell’s taciturn husband, old Jimbo, had been with her for that fun, though, and they hadn’t exactly traded witticisms and grins and twinklings of the eye as she’d done with Eagle Jack. Their conversation had been more like grunts of surprise when they finally caught some wild-as-a-buck cow and sighs of relief when the time came to go to the house.
And after all of that sweat and blood and agony, they had gathered only a couple dozen head of cattle and put them in the one small pasture that still had its fences standing. Then came that beautiful, rainy day when she’d found the money Everett had hidden under the hearthstone before he went off to the war.
He had hidden it from her. That was the thought that sent a cold shiver through her when she’d noticed the edge of the stone was raised a little and realized something was beneath it, holding it up. He hadn’t cared if she starved to death or if the livestock did, too, while five gold coins lay in hiding within her reach, waiting for his return.
That was customary behavior for Everett. Well, it served him right that she’d found it. She had never dreamed they had that much cash money.
Not enough to make up for the last two years of bad luck with both the orchard and the corn, which had meant no cash crops. Not enough to pay off the mortgage he’d left along with the ranch. Not enough to hire the many men she needed to clear away the brush that was fast choking the grass out of her pastures and taking her crop land.
But enough—she knew it by the thought that God dropped into her head as the money dropped into her hand—to put together an outfit to go up the trail. Enough to pay a few men to gather the wily cattle hiding in the brush all over her ranch so she could drive them north.
That was all people talked about in town. How much more those cattle would bring in Kansas than in Texas. How much of a profit could be made.
And the drovers didn’t have to be paid until the drive was done. Perfect!
Since Everett had been gone, she had sold off everything of value that she owned to keep the banker from foreclosing on her land. She could’ve used the found money to replace the good bull and the spare plow horses and the decent harness she used to have. She could’ve used part of it to pay the mortgage for this year.
Then she could’ve hunkered down and prayed for rain, holding on piecemeal for as long as she could.
Instead, she had decided to gamble, and it was too late to back out now.
Now she’d hired a trail boss who was trying to leave her at home. He must be pondering on that again, because he hadn’t said a word for at least two miles.
“Brushy Creek is the next ranch,” she said to him. “We’re almost there.”
She didn’t leave home very often, usually only once a month or so to get supplies, but every time she did, she felt the same thrill at returning. This bend in the road that they were taking curved so sweetly around the grove of big live oak trees and, up ahead of that, her own lane came meandering down to meet the road where an old sweetgum tree stood sentinel at her gate. That sight lifted her heart every time. Brushy Creek Ranch. Her own place.
But the thought brought those cold, familiar fingers of fear to clutch her stomach. She took in a long, deep breath to try to loosen their grip.
No. She could not lose Brushy Creek. She would not. The drive north would make all the profit that it promised, she would pay off the whole mortgage against her ranch, and she would have enough money left over to make all the improvements it needed.
She would pay off the whole mortgage! Then, even if she couldn’t sell any cash crops, her home would be secure. Never again would she have to worry about having no home of her own.
She looked at Eagle Jack, who still hadn’t answered her. His mind seemed a million miles away.
“See that lane up there that branches off from the road?” she said. “That’s the entrance to my ranch.”
That woke him up.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll have all afternoon to start the branding. We might get half done today. Do you think we could hire the men who did the gathering to stay and help?”
She stared at him.
“How can you be my trail boss if you don’t listen to me any better than that?”
He stared back. “What I heard you say was that that’s your place right up there.”
Somehow his saying the words “your place” sent that shard of fear through her heart again. He believed it. The neighbors believed it. The mortgage banker believed it. It wasn’t just a dream that she owned a ranch. It really was her place to keep or lose.
Susanna said the quick prayer she always said when she thought about the money she’d borrowed.
Lord, don’t let me lose it. Please help me keep my home.
“Earlier,” she told him, “in town, I told you that I spent my last money on you. I can’t hire any more help that has to be paid before the drive.”
He looked her up and down as if he thought she’d lost her mind.
“You also said you were going to pay Tucker or whatever his name is and his brushpoppin’ buddies for the gathering when you got home.”
He said it flatly, as if calling her a liar.
It flew all over her, after the years and years with Everett and his hateful ways of talking and behaving.
“I am.” She held his gaze without wavering and spoke just as flatly. Her financial situation was none of his business. She didn’t need to tell him anything more. “You’re my trail boss, Eagle Jack. Not my husband.”
“Thank God,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “thank God. And I’ll never have another one.”
“Right,” he said. “Marriage never looked too good to me, either.”
The sudden agreement took the wind out of the argument’s sails for a heartbeat. They exchanged a startled look.
But she knew him already. He wasn’t going to give up. Sure enough, he began to push again.
“You want to get on the trail as soon as possible, don’t you, Susanna? The sooner we get ’em branded, the sooner we hit the trail. The sooner we head ’em out, the sooner we load ’em on the rail cars in Kansas.”
“I know all that,” she said. “I tell you, I can’t pay for help to do it all sooner.”
“Don’t worry about the money. It’s my decision, as trail boss.”
“We’re not on the trail. Yet.”
“My point, exactly.”
Her temper snapped. “You are, without doubt, the stubbornest man who ever lived,” she said. “Listen to me. I have exactly enough money to pay Tucker what he asked for the gathering and he’ll pay the other men. That’s it. That’s all. I saved that much back.”
“You listen to me,” he said. “I’m hiring help if there’s help to be had, and I’ll pay for it. I’m not going to lay over here for a week counting and branding this herd and packing a chuck wagon so you can make a pie while the best horse that ever ate grass is God knows where and having to put up with God knows what kind of treatment.”
That stirred all the old rage Susanna carried deep inside.
“I’ve had five years of independence now,” she said, “and never again will I abide a man’s domination. I can tell you that, right now, Eagle Jack.”
He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Domination?” he said. “That’s puttin’ it a little strong, isn’t it? All I’m doing is my job.”
“I don’t care what you think,” she said. “All my life my aunts and my cousins and my uncles and their dogs told me what to do and I had to obey because I was living under their roofs and eating their food. Then it was the same with Everett.”
Tears threatened and she swallowed them back. “Even though I thought was getting a home of my own when I married him.”
Eagle Jack slowed his horse and waited, not saying a word.
“You’re not about to put me into your debt,” she said, finally. “No. I will not owe you money. Then I’d owe you obedience, too, and I’d have no authority over my cattle
or anything else.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
She ignored that. “I’m the owner and I’m the one who pays the help. I have no more money and I can’t trade work, since I’ll soon be gone for months. Besides, how could I help a neighbor with the branding, since I’ve never branded so much as a goat?”
Eagle Jack smiled at that.
“Well, you’re fixing to learn,” he said. “I’ll put you at the fire handling the irons.”
That made her fear flare again.
“If you do, that’ll be the last time you try to put me anywhere,” she said.
The look in his eyes was hard to read but he was watching her face steadily.
“I was only teasing you, Susanna,” he said gently. “Trying to lighten things up.”
His voice soothed her, almost like a hand patting her shoulder.
But he didn’t understand. He still hadn’t backed down.
“I’ve had some years of hard experience,” she said, “with a hard teacher. No man will ever give me orders again.”
They reached the end of her lane and she turned into it. Eagle Jack followed for a minute or two.
Then he rode his horse up beside hers again.
“Ol’ Everett,” he said, seeming to muse to himself as the horses slow-trotted side by side. “Reckon it’s possible that his soul didn’t fly upward when he died?”
“’Probable’ might be a better choice of words,” she said wryly.
Eagle Jack nodded sagely.
“Sorta what I was thinkin’,” he said, “based on what you’ve told me about him so far. But I’m too polite just to come right out say so out loud.”
Susanna shook her head. In spite of her worries, he was lightening her heart a little bit. But it was only to get what he wanted. She had to remember that.
“You are not,” she said. “Eagle Jack, there’s not a polite bone in your body except when you think it’ll help you get your way.”
He raised his brows in mock surprise.
“Susanna! I know we just met but still I can’t believe you don’t know me any better than that.”
“I know you well enough,” she said. “You are totally still determined to go against my wishes and hire help with your own money.”
That truth tied her stomach into a knot.
What if he quit? Maybe she could do without him, now that she had a three-man crew.
No, she couldn’t. Three men couldn’t handle the herd, and from the looks of him, that boy Marvin she’d hired right off the street didn’t know any more about how to take a herd to Kansas than she did.
But she could not lose control of her cattle, either.
“Distracting me isn’t the same as convincing me to change my mind,” she said. She looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not going to give permission for you to hire more help now, Eagle Jack,” she said. “Keep your money and we’ll just be a day or two later getting on the trail. It won’t matter.”
He didn’t answer right away and in the silence, the terrible seriousness of it all came over her again. The ancient longing that had been with her since her very first memory turned to a blind fear that seized and shook her like a giant’s hand.
“My whole ranch—my whole life—is at stake,” she blurted. “I can’t bear to be homeless, ever again.”
Her voice shook with a growing urgency. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t choke back the flood of fearful words, either.
“I’m way too far in debt already,” she said. “So far in I may never get out. It was hopeless before I ever bought the chuck wagon and the supplies and everything’s riding on what happens now.”
Susanna managed to take in a deep breath, but it didn’t calm her enough to stop the panic pouring out of her.
“I’ve stepped off a cliff here,” she said, “and invested everything in this trail drive. I just can’t bear another debt hanging over my head. I worry about money all the time as it is.”
She bit her tongue and held it. This was making her look ridiculous and he had to respect her if she was going to be able to boss him at all.
Finally, thank goodness, her mind took over from her emotions. She was telling him too much. She was letting her fear control her.
And for nothing, probably. Where had she found this man, anyhow?
She took another long, deep breath and tried to compose herself. Then she looked at him straight.
“Eagle Jack, thank you for the offer,” she said, “but I can’t let you pay for anything. I’m the owner, I’m supposed to pay. Besides, if you couldn’t get yourself out of jail, how can you pay for any hired hands?”
“In jail, I couldn’t get to my money,” he said.
He looked at her for a minute as they rode along, then he added, “I have a little saved up.”
“Keep it,” she said. “I’ll never rest easy, all the way up the trail, if you don’t.”
“How about this?” he said. “I hire the help we need and you pay me back at the end of the trail.”
She thought about that.
“Out of your profits,” he said.
“I don’t know. I already have the mortgage on my place, and I’ll owe Mr. Adams for the use of his horses and mules. I have to pay you and the drovers. I don’t want to owe all that.”
“It won’t be all that much more that you’d owe me,” he said. “Only a couple of days’ work for your brushpopper Tucker and his men.”
“No, I—”
“Think, Susanna,” he interrupted her. “If we can get on the trail even one day earlier, it might determine whether you have profits or not. There’s a record number of herds going north this year and if too many of them are ahead of us, we won’t have enough grass.”
Shock ran through her with the force of a blow. It must’ve showed on her face. She slowed her horse to a walk.
Somehow, she had always assumed there would be plenty of everything, except she did know that there were one or two places on the Chisholm that they had to go a day without watering the cattle.
“Same with water,” he said, as if he could read her mind.
Desperation stabbed her.
“But I’ll have some profits,” she said. “If steers are eleven dollars a head here and they bring twenty in Kansas…”
“Things change,” he insisted. “It’ll be three months till we get there. Plus the cattle can’t be skin and bones and still bring twenty.”
Susanna drew in a hard-won breath. Her throat had closed up and so had her lungs.
Now she had visions of cattle skulls and skeletons, long, dry drives with no water, cattle bawling from hunger and thirst.
Here was another gamble. Here was where she was going to prove that she could be the boss and still bend. With the suddenness of a bolt of lightning she knew that there’d be many, many more times before those cattle got to Kansas that she’d have to either bend or break.
She had wrapped her destiny and that of her herd up in this brown-eyed man who was sitting his horse so quietly, just waiting for her decision. He was letting her make this decision.
But he knew what her answer had to be. And if it was different, he could just turn and ride away. He really could. Even if he had given his word to her at the jail.
He was a stranger to her and she didn’t trust even the people she knew—except for Maynell and Jimbo—but she had to trust him.
“If you pay Tucker the extra money and then trust me to pay you that much more when we sell the cattle, will that be enough? Will you not try to take over all my authority?”
He folded his arms across his saddle horn and gave a sigh, removed his hat, and resettled it at another angle. Then he cocked his head so he could look right into her eyes again.
“There’ll be times when you’ll think I’m taking over, Susanna. And there’ll be other times when I truly am. Times when I will gag and tie you and throw you in the wagon, if I have to.”
He waited a minute so she could think about that.
“But I promise you now, those will be times of life and death, times of great danger, if you are advocating the wrong course. The rest of the time, we can make decisions together. We can talk them over just as we’ve talked about this one today.”
His eyes were deep, dark brown and full of truth.
“All right,” she said. “Once again, I have no choice. Hire Tucker and his men to stay for as long as you can afford and let’s get started making a profit. Such a big profit that I can pay you back and have money left over.”
Then she smooched to her horse and loped away toward home, trying to leave Eagle Jack Sixkiller behind.
He confused her, he infuriated her, he scared her to death, and if he wanted to, he could seduce her when he looked at her with that smile in his dark brown eyes. But it was more than that. What really drew her to him with the power of the sun and moon and stars was the kindness in him.
She’d never really known a kind man before.
All she knew for certain was that she’d better get a good handle on her feelings before they started up the trail.
Eagle Jack tried to get a grip on his plan as he followed Susanna.
Maybe the problem was that he needed a new plan. Or had he ever had a plan, in the first place?
It’s too late for plans, Sixkiller, you dolt. What you need is a new brain. Blabbermouth.
He took off his hat and slapped it back on again.
Man, he hated worrying! He hated responsibility, too.
And he’d taken on a wagonload of both when he’d let his tongue get away from him. How could he have possibly told her she could go up the trail?
He took his hat off again and ran his fingers through his hair.
He was helpless. It was a hopeless mess.
His gaze already stuck to her like glue, though, as if he’d accepted that it was his job to watch out for her.
Well, it wasn’t bad to just watch her. Her pert little bottom sat unmoving in her saddle and her perfect rhythm with her mount promised that she could spend all day horseback. She was a good rider.
The Lover Page 4