A Rancher of Convenience

by Regina Scott

  “I can stew it with rosemary instead,” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “Wouldn’t help. I never was partial to rabbit.”

  Nancy frowned. “Then why did you bring it to me to cook?”

  “It’s good for the baby,” he said. Then he cocked his head. “Isn’t it?”

  “Very likely,” she assured him, touched. “Babies need good food of all kinds to grow.”

  “There you are, then,” he said, lifting his fork. “I’ll just have to learn to like rabbit.”

  He was thoughtful that way about other areas of their lives. One day she heard his steps in the hall earlier than usual as she was finishing edging a gown for the baby on the sewing machine. It was getting harder and harder to reach the pedal, as she had to sit farther and farther away the less she fit against the table.

  She sighed, glancing at her sewing machine. It was the latest model from Singer, with gold etching on the rise, a steel faceplate and an actual bobbin winder. She’d been thrilled when Lucas had brought it home in the wagon after ordering it to come by train.

  “Do you like sewing?” Hank asked, watching her from the doorway.

  She smiled. “Yes. There’s something about taking a few bits of fabric and turning them into something useful and pretty. But I can hand sew for now, and I can use the machine again after the baby is born.” She passed him in the doorway. “Dinner wasn’t supposed to be ready for a bit. I’ll see if I can hurry it along.”

  “Take your time,” he said. “I can occupy myself.”

  Very likely with chores out at the barn. She still found it hard not to think of that as his domain while the house was hers. But as she crossed the hall to the kitchen, she had to own that she liked her domain. Her pots and pans and mixing bowls were all in easy reach. Her stove, the best Little Horn had to offer, cooked fast and predictably. She knew what she was doing, and the results proved she was good at it.

  She was returning the chicken and dumplings, a recipe Lula May had given her, to the oven when she heard an odd buzzing coming from across the hall. Had hornets invaded the house?

  She hurried to the hall and paused in the doorway to her sewing room. Hank stepped away from her sewing machine, saw in one hand. Four wooden cylinders lay on the floor, surrounded by sawdust. And her chair was a good few inches shorter.

  “What did you do?” she asked, starting to laugh.

  “Couldn’t figure how to raise the machine,” he said. “So I lowered the chair.”

  And it worked brilliantly.

  “He’s the perfect husband,” she confessed to Lula May at one of the quilting bees at the Carson ranch. “Anything I want done, he does, and he often realizes it needs doing before I think to tell him.”

  “Just as I expected,” Lula May assured her.

  But after Hank’s story of his upbringing, Nancy was careful not to expect too much. She knew the pain of feeling inadequate. She would never knowingly inflict that on another.

  Besides, she had more reasons to smile than to worry. They christened the new church building and parsonage the middle of September with the wedding of Lula May and Edmund. The entire community turned out, and Nancy helped bake and decorate beforehand.

  “Should you be doing so much?” Hank asked her as he drove the wagon into town for the wedding.

  In truth, she had found it hard to sleep lately. She’d let out her gowns, made up the clothes and diapers she’d need for the baby and laid up jars of beans, beets, peaches, plums and blackberries for later, besides doing her usual chores.

  “I’m fine,” she assured Hank. “I wanted to make Lula May and Edmund’s day special, after all they’ve done for me.”

  And it was a special day. Stella Fuller had brought a rosebush out West with her little brother and still had some blossoms to contribute to the wedding. With their perfume dancing on the air, the hint of fresh paint was barely noticeable from the whitewashed walls. The benches from the meeting tent had been installed, but Nancy knew that Lula May was already campaigning for proper pews. What was most important was the carved wood cross that hung behind the altar, drawing all eyes to it.

  The ceremony was simple; Preacher Stillwater read it from the book, and Lula May and Edmund recited the words as required. But when Lula May looked up into Edmund’s eyes and promised to love, honor and obey him all the days of her life, Nancy felt her own eyes turn misty.

  Hank was silent as they drove home. Evening was coming sooner every day now, and the sky was rosy with twilight as the horses plodded down the dusty road. The oaks rustled along creeks that were starting to bubble again after summer’s heat.

  “I spoiled things for you,” he said in the quiet.

  Nancy frowned. “Spoiled what?”

  “The wedding. Marriage.” He cast her a glance, face lined by shadows. “I saw how McKay looked at Lula May, how he treated her like she was the finest person ever to come to Little Horn. I never saw my ma and pa look at each other that way. I never knew anyone who did, outside CJ and his wife.”

  “Lucas didn’t look at me that way either,” Nancy remembered. “Of course, we’d only known each other a few days when we married, so that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

  “So you think it just takes a while?” he asked.

  Was that hope she heard in his voice?

  “I suppose it’s different with each couple,” she said. “My mother birthed babies for couples who’d known each other two weeks before getting married, and they seemed just as happy as the couples who’d grown up together before marrying. And she birthed babies when the mother and father could barely stand to look at each other, whether they took a short while or a long time to wed.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry, Nancy. Maybe if I hadn’t married you, you might have found a fellow you could look at that way.”

  A yearning rose up inside her. Maybe it was the tenderness between Lula May and Edmund, maybe it was the lack of tenderness in her own life. Whatever the reason, she was not about to admit the feelings. She wasn’t ready to take a chance on falling in love. Her poor heart still felt battered by Lucas’s death and all the secrets it had uncovered.

  “The same goes for you,” she reminded Hank instead. “If I hadn’t married you, you might have found a girl you could love.”

  “I had one once,” he said. “That was enough.”

  She knew he meant the girl in Waco. “It’s hard losing someone you love.”

  His voice came out gruff. “She deserves to be happy with Adam.”

  “You deserve to be happy too,” Nancy said, surprised by the vehemence in her voice.

  He clucked to the horses. “I’m happy enough.”

  Was there such a thing, the perfect limit to happiness? She remembered a verse in the Bible that talked about being content in all things.

  “I suppose I’m happy,” she said.

  “You suppose?” She could hear the tease in his voice. “Do I have to call fun to come around again?”

  Nancy laughed. “Oh, no. I couldn’t dance right now.”

  “Must be other ways of having fun,” he insisted. “We just need to look for opportunities.” He glanced at her, then quickly out to where the gates of the Windy Diamond were rising against the hills beyond.

  Opportunities for fun. She’d never thought about life like that. But then, he saw things differently than she did in so many ways—dealing with the cattle, praying.

  “What do cowboys do for fun?” she asked.

  He wiggled his lips a moment as if chewing on the answer. “Sing songs, tell stories, make up rhymes.”

  “Rhymes,” she said. “Like poetry?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I never could get the words to match, but Upkins has a way with it.”

  “Mr. Upkins?” she asked, unable to picture the tough old cow
boy reciting poetry. “Our Mr. Upkins?”

  “The very same. Only don’t ask him to share it with you. Some of the language might be a bit...odd to a lady. I can’t see him declaring at one of my mother’s literary teas.”

  She couldn’t picture that either. She’d assumed Hank’s mother was a ranch wife like her too busy to hold literary teas. “But I thought you said your family owned a ranch.”

  “They do,” he assured her. “But Mother came from money in Dallas. She never forgot how to be a lady. I think she’d like you.”

  Nancy blinked. “Me? Why? I’m no fine lady.”

  They were nearly at the house. He guided the horses closer to the barn. “Finest lady I know,” he insisted. “You remind me every day how it feels to be a proper gentleman.”

  “I refuse to set expectations on you,” she protested as he set the brake.

  “I know.” He hopped down and came around. In the dim light, she couldn’t see his face under the brim of his hat. “But I’d be no kind of man if I didn’t have my own expectations of how a lady should be treated.” He reached up and lifted her off the bench, setting her on the ground so gently she might have been made of fine crystal. For a moment, she stood in his embrace.

  “You deserve to be treated like a lady, Nancy,” he murmured. “That’s what a husband should do, show his wife every day how much she means to him.”

  Her heart started beating faster. Was he saying he wanted to be a real husband? Was she ready to be a real wife?

  Not yet. Not until she felt more sure of herself.

  She stepped out of his arms. “Thank you, Hank. I appreciate everything you do around the ranch. See you at dinner tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, but she couldn’t help hearing the least bit of disappointment in his tone as he turned to the horses.

  * * *

  Opening the corral and letting the horses inside, Hank shook his head at his own stupidity. What was it about weddings? Women cried when they should be smiling. Men started thinking about their futures. Why had he gone and hinted to Nancy that they might fall in love?

  He’d tried with Mary Ellen, and it hadn’t turned out well. The only thing the experience had taught him was that love wasn’t something achieved by yearning or striving. The seeds either grew or they shriveled, and he’d never been certain how to make them grow. He was a cowman, after all, not a farmer.

  Besides, he was pretty sure any warm feelings Nancy might have toward him would only cool, and fast, when she learned how her husband had died.

  He’d tried a dozen times to tell her and always the words dried up in his throat. He knew the story was best coming from him, but this wasn’t a tale he could tell with a smile and a wink like he did when he was talking to the baby.

  The best thing he could do, he reasoned as he headed to the barn for the items to groom the horses, was to stop the man who had been taking the stolen cattle off Lucas Bennett’s hands. That fellow was as responsible as Bennett for the losses in the area. Sheriff Fuller had warned Hank to back off, and he’d tried to put the matter behind him, but he felt it like a sore tooth, a constant ache until something ratcheted the pain higher.

  He’d questioned Fuller again this afternoon at the wedding. It seemed the law in Oakalla had arrested a group of outlaws they thought might be the rustlers, but the leader had escaped. The sheriff had been reticent to tell Hank anything more. Likely he feared Hank would ride off half-cocked if he heard the suspect’s name. Likely he was right. Yet, try as he might, Hank could not figure out who would be so brazen.

  “Of course we didn’t think Mr. Bennett was involved either,” Upkins pointed out when he and Hank were discussing the matter later that night in the bunk room. Jenks had already fallen asleep. With the gang rounded up, Hank was hoping they might do away with night riding for a time.

  “We should have realized something was up the way he kept going off by himself,” the older cowhand was saying. “And I can think of a half dozen things I should have wondered about.”

  “Such as?” Hank asked.

  Upkins tilted out of his bunk to look up at Hank. “Such as the way he kept directing us away from the canyon where you found him. Gave us some excuse about flash floods when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And he mentioned how he had his own room at the house, when any man with any sense would have been proud to bunk with a pretty wife.”

  Hank hadn’t realized Lucas Bennett had kept his own room. Had Nancy cleared it out after his death? If not, would the things Lucas Bennett had squirreled away give Hank any clue as to who was helping him?

  He knew Nancy was planning on going to one of her quilting bees the next day, so he made sure to stay close to the barn with the excuse of hitching up the wagon for her. He watched until she was out the main gate, then hurried for the house.

  It was quiet as he let himself in, a shell of a place without Nancy to animate it. The chime of his spurs echoed as he started down the hallway.

  He knew from experience that the parlor and kitchen lay on the south side of the house, and the last room on the north side was Nancy’s sewing room. So, he pushed open the door to the first room and peered inside.

  This had to be Nancy’s room. The iron bedstead was draped in a soft blue quilt embroidered with daisies, and the curtains on the windows were frilly and white. The clean scent of her colored the air. He couldn’t help the smile that formed as he closed the door and headed for the next room.

  There was no question this one had belonged to Lucas Bennett. The bedstead was covered in a fine blue-and-gold quilt, Bennett’s tan Stetson still resting cocked over one of the end caps. A carved chest sat under the window, and a tall dresser and wardrobe stood along one wall. Nancy must not have been able to force herself to clean out the room, because a tortoiseshell brush and comb and shaving kit stood ready for Bennett when he woke.

  Except he never would wake this side of eternity.

  Shaking off the guilt, Hank headed for the chest. Kneeling on the bright-patterned rug before it, he lifted the lid and poked through its contents, which appeared to be coats and wool shirts for cooler weather. Feeling a little like a two-penny thief, he checked the pockets and discovered only a penknife, three bits and a clean handkerchief embroidered with the initials LB. The thought of Nancy working the stitches set his gut to twisting. He shoved the things back in the chest and rose.

  Where would a man keep his secrets?

  He picked up the Stetson and looked inside the brim, feeling the blocked wool firm in his hands. Why couldn’t Lucas have stood so firm? By all accounts, he’d never known want. Yet he’d wanted more and more until he’d lost it all.

  Hank drew in a breath, returned the hat to its spot. Feeling as if a shadow hung heavy over the room, he hurried through his search, checking the bed, the wardrobe. He even bent and peered under the bed but saw nothing except dust, a sure sign Nancy had been avoiding the room.

  There was only one place left. He strode to the dresser and looked things over. Again, Nancy’s handiwork was evident, for everything was neat and tidy and arranged at precise angles. Or maybe it had been Bennett who wanted things so perfect. The only thing out of place was a brass key, stuck back next to the mirror.

  Hank pulled it free, hefted it, balanced it in his hand. It was heavy and ornate, and he was fairly sure it didn’t belong to any of the outbuildings on the ranch. He couldn’t recall a lock on the front or back door of the house either. Folks didn’t bother locking up much around Little Horn. So why had Lucas Bennett needed a key?

  “Hank?”

  The sound of Nancy’s voice had him spinning on his heel. She was standing in the doorway, her sewing basket in one hand, brows up in surprise.

  “You’re back,” he said, and nearly winced at the obvious statement.

  She made a face. “I forgot my sewing baske
t of all things. My mother said forgetting things during pregnancy was a way for a lady to make room in her head for being a mother. When I came back inside, I saw this door ajar and thought I must have left it open. Why are you in Lucas’s room?”

  There was no suspicion in the question, only curiosity. She trusted him, had no way of knowing he’d already violated that trust. He refused to damage it further.

  “I thought maybe if I looked through his things I might find something that would tell us about why he was stealing,” he told her.

  She frowned. “But you told me you thought he was stealing because he was gambling.”

  “That’s the only reason I know,” he assured her. “Right now, I’m interested in learning who was helping him.”

  She raised her head. “No one was helping him. Mr. Upkins and Billy and you wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know,” he said, keeping his tone soft. “But he was selling those steers to someone.”

  She blanched. “Doesn’t Sheriff Fuller look into such things?”

  “He does,” Hank acknowledged. “But I’m not sure he has all the information he needs.”

  Her face was puckering, and the look tightened his gut again.

  “Don’t get in the middle of this, Hank,” she begged. “Please. I don’t want you hurt too.”

  He crossed the room, then put a hand to her elbow. “I won’t be hurt. But that thief needs to be brought to justice, Nancy.”

  “Then let Sheriff Fuller bring him in,” she insisted. “I’ve already been made a widow once. Don’t make me one again. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Hank.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was a dangerous confession. She didn’t want to raise Hank’s hopes that they might fall in love. Perhaps he would put the statement down to the fact that she needed him around the ranch. But she knew the sentiment went beyond that. She was so tired of losing people.