Colorado Dream (The Front Range Series Book 4)

by Charlene Whitman

  All this talk about getting hitched was making Brett prickly.

  “Well, I’ll be on my way, then,” Tuttle said as he hopped up onto the wagon and sat on the bench. He tipped his hat at the rancher and then at Brett, then clicked his teeth at the mules.

  As the wagon rolled across the fancy slate, Brett caught sight of Tate Roberts, then took his leave from Logan Foster, who went back inside his ranch house. He hefted his saddle and bags and gave the puncher a wave as he headed off to find the bunkhouse.

  Chapter 15

  Brett swiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. Grit stung and clogged his eyes as he leaned back against the breaking pen fence in the cool of morning and watched Tate Roberts deftly take over with the last of the bunch of green geldings. He regarded the capable Missourian who Brett could tell was an all-around cowman. Brett figured Roberts had no more than two years on him and grew up in a saddle. He was the kind of fella that said a whole lot in mighty few words. Roberts broke with a light hand, something Brett was glad to see. For he detested the way some wranglers treated horses with harshness. It was usually a matter of arrogance or impatience or both, but Brett had no tolerance for such bullying.

  They’d spent the afternoon yesterday, along with the buster named Rusty, on three of the most ornery mustangs Foster had. Today, they’d had an easier time of it.

  Across the yard, beyond the hay barn, two punchers were sliding off their mounts. They’d brought in a dozen or so cattle—mostly young bulls but a few heifers among them. They’d led them into a pen, and Brett figured they’d culled them from the herd to brand them, since a branding chute was attached at the far end. They were prob’ly ones that had been missed during the last roundup and range branding.

  While it was common for punchers to brand in the open, as needed, if the herd wasn’t too far from the ranch and the punchers were heading back there anyways, they’d lead ’em back. Usually a ranch this size had a brander on site.

  “Let’s see what’s goin’ on,” Roberts called over, reins in hand, nodding at the barn. The horse he was presently working was bridled and huffing through his nostrils as he stood staring at Roberts expectantly. Roberts doffed his hat and slicked down his thin red hair, then replaced the hat. Brett noted he had a lean shaved face except for a pencil-thin mustache that tickled his upper lip.

  Brett followed Roberts out of the corral and waited for him to let loose the animal into the nearby pasture. After the buster pulled off the bridle, the little pinto kicked up his hind legs, then galloped off across the fields of tall brown-tinged grass. Roberts turned to Brett.

  “I’m s’prised we got the load of ’em cooperatin’ so fast. A good day’s work,” he said with a genuine smile. “I’m glad ya joined up.” He glanced over at the two punchers who were standing at the fence talking to a young kid who looked all knees and elbows.

  Roberts narrowed his eyes, and Brett sensed the fella’s immediate disapproval in the set of his jaw. Every muscle in Roberts’s body appeared to tense as they walked over to the punchers.

  One of the fellas was about thirty, thick in the gut and wide-shouldered, with a swarthy complexion that hinted at some Mexican blood. Thin brows lay over small eyes that looked like hard chunks of coal—eyes Brett instantly distrusted. The other fella was closer to Brett’s age, but the lines and scars on his face attested to a harder life. He was tall, lean, and sinewy, and a shock of thick wheat-colored hair fell into his eyes, though the puncher did nothing about it. Their clothes showed they’d been out on the range some days, and their hats were coated in that film of red dirt that seemed to dust everything in Colorado.

  Both fellas had cruel smiles as they chatted up the kid, who was clearly a newly arrived tenderfoot. His clothes looked like they’d just been purchased out of the Montgomery Ward catalog, and his too-large hat swam on his head. Brett figured the kid to be about sixteen. It would take him a few years to grow into that hat.

  Brett could tell right off these fellas were giving the kid grief, and the poor fella didn’t have the guts to stand it. He looked like a lost calf stuck in a thicket and about to wail.

  “Well,” Roberts said cheerily, slicing through the obvious tension in the air as he sidled up to the tenderfoot. “Who do we have here?” Roberts kept that narrowed gaze on the two punchers even though his voice sounded jovial.

  The fellas, who’d been up close to the trembling kid, took a couple of steps back, and their tense stature relaxed.

  The kid sucked in a big breath, and relief lit his eyes as if he’d just been rescued. Maybe he had, Brett thought, sizing up the two fellas before him.

  “I’m Archie,” the kid said in a rush. “Archie Halloran, from over Loveland way.” A band of bright freckles streaked across his nose, and Brett could tell he’d recently had his hair cut—probably at a barber shop. The kid looked squeaky clean, and Brett wondered how he’d gotten hired on here. Maybe some kid of a friend of Miz Foster’s needing a job.

  “Nice to meet ya, Archie,” Roberts said. “I’m Tate Roberts. This is Brett Hendricks.” He nodded at Brett. “And I s’pose you’ve met Ned Handy and Rufus Shore.”

  The tenderfoot nodded, and Brett saw fear flare up in his eyes.

  Brett exchanged hellos with the two punchers, who eyed him warily. Brett paid them no mind. He’d seen their type on every ranch he’d ridden for. Fellas full of themselves, and while it was true that cowboys often joshed each other and played jests and roughed the tenderfoots, it was all in good humor, for the most part. But when Brett had first started out as a tenderfoot, he’d been sorely mistreated by a few fellas like these two, and he’d been grateful that Ol’ Tex had stood up for him and told the others to leave him be, which they did, though he’d still been the brunt of their jokes, and they regularly snickered at the fun they had at his expense.

  “We were jes tellin’ the kid how things work round here,” said the swarthy fella name Rufus Shore.

  Roberts nodded, and Brett read a lot behind the buster’s cool green eyes. “Well, let’s git those beeves inside so Collins can check ’em over.”

  It took a moment for Brett’s eyes to adjust to the scant light inside the barn. Handy and Shore had goaded the animals, and they were now pressed into a small pen. Kicked-up dust choked the air from the cows that surged and lowed against the fence. Brett, standing outside the pen, noted a few golden duns among the piebald black and whites, some longhorns. All were cooperating agreeably except one big white heifer that kept charging back to the gate despite Handy’s yelling and arm-swinging.

  “Stand over yonder,” Shore directed the kid, whose eyes looked about to bug out of his head. Brett reckoned he’d never even seen a cow up close. He knew what Rufus Shore was up to, and he didn’t like it one bit. Brett headed toward him around the outside of the pen.

  Archie stood transfixed near the gate as the heifer charged at him, his mouth open wide enough for a frog to jump into it. Brett knew he couldn’t get to the kid in time, but he spotted a shovel propped up against the fence railing.

  He grabbed it and tossed it over the railing at Archie. “Here, use this,” Brett yelled, then scrambled over the fence in time to see Archie rush to scoop it up. Both Shore and Handy had cocky grins on their faces as they watched to see what would transpire. Brett wanted to kick them into next week. A mean heifer would as soon kill a man as snort at one.

  The tenderfoot thrust the shovel in front of him, hoping to ward off the heifer’s advances.

  “Smack her between the horns!” Brett yelled, catching a glimpse of Roberts out of the corner of his eye. The buster was inside the pen, working his way around to the kid’s left.

  The heifer’s tail lashed as she slid to a halt, then she whirled and charged at Roberts, who stopped abruptly about ten feet away. To Brett’s surprise, the kid raced at the heifer like some wild dust devil, shovel swinging, yelling and hooting. Then, as he neared, his feet slipped from under him, and he landed flat on his back.

  Brett sucked in a
breath as the shovel went flying across the pen, and the heifer, bracing her forefeet, slid through mud right up to where her two hooves practically dug into the kid’s ribs.

  Then, to everyone’s surprise, she backed away a couple of feet, nuzzled Archie’s body and face in inquiry, and lightly prodded him with her horns—prob’ly to see if he was alive.

  Smart kid, Brett thought, watching Archie lie there unmoving, his eyes closed, playing possum. Brett saw the fury raging in the animal’s eyes soften to wonder and curiosity. He imagined her wondering how a body could go dead so quickly. Then she lightly leapt across the kid and ran over to join the other cows pressed against the fence, as easy as you please.

  Inside of five seconds, Archie had scrambled to his feet and mounted the fence, panting hard and shaking his head. Brett imagined every inch of that kid was shaking like a leaf.

  Roberts whistled. “Hooey, who’d a thought a kid like you was loco enough t’ tackle a fightin’ heifer afoot? That heifer was hell bent fer trouble. Kid,” Roberts said, shaking his head, “ya got a lot of sand in ya—more’n what appears. That was right kind of ya, what ya did.”

  Archie looked too shook up to say a word. Maybe a frog had hopped into his wide-open mouth. He pulled his hat off his head and scrunched it between his hands.

  Brett went over to him and said quietly, “Come’on, let’s git ya some water to drink. Prob’ly time to wash up for supper too.”

  Archie looked up at Brett with eyes filled with gratitude. As he helped the shaky tenderfoot down from the fence, Brett caught the scowls on the two punchers’ faces. They stood outside the pen next to the now docile cows. Roberts dusted himself off and came over to Brett and Archie.

  “Stay away from them two,” Roberts said under his breath, checking Archie over. Roberts glanced at Brett, and Brett realized those words had been meant for him as well.

  “Just stick with me,” Brett said to Archie in an amiable tone. “I’m new here too.”

  “Really?” Archie asked, all innocent and naïve. Brett had to laugh. Had he ever been this green? He didn’t reckon he had, not even on the day he arrived naked out of his ma.

  He tousled the kid’s mud-caked hair and let Roberts, who was chuckling, lead the way back to the bunkhouse.

  Chapter 16

  “You ’bout ready, Miz Banks?”

  LeRoy Banks stood, a hand on his hip, alongside the wagon hitched to their two mules, watching his fine young wife fuss with the basket under the wagon’s bench seat.

  “I reckon,” Gennie said, a playful smile lifting her rosy cheeks and her emerald-green eyes sparkling with happiness. She grabbed hold of her skirts as LeRoy helped her down from the buckboard. The day was cooler than yesterday, and LeRoy was glad. It’d make for an easier ride over to Foster’s ranch. He reckoned the trip would take about three hours, and Gennie had spent the evening with his ma, making bread and concocting a batch of stinky paste used for treating horse ailments, from swollen muscles to sore teats, to bring to Logan Foster as requested.

  He’d been so thrilled to see the way she’d adjusted so quickly to what he called a normal life—Gennie’s prior life being nothing that resembled normal. She’d had him so fooled—dressed like a man, masking her sweet voice to sound like a man. She’d even chopped off that purty hair of hers. When he thought on the kind of life she’d led for years, so alone up in the mountains, what kind of inner strength it took to get through the brutal winters and long stretches of loneliness—his heart overflowed with deep respect and abiding love. He didn’t think he could ever love anyone as much as he loved Gennie.

  As they headed over to the horse barn, where his ma was gathering up the lead ropes, bridles, and halters for the dozen or so horses they’d be taking over to Foster’s, he took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. She shot him a look that sent fire right to his loins. There was still plenty of wild left in his now “domesticated” wife. Though, there was hardly much domestication to speak of when you scratched an inch below the surface.

  Gennie was every bit her own woman—just like his ma. And, to his great relief, when he’d brought the poor gal to the ranch the day after he’d coaxed her down the mountain last fall, she and his ma had gadded about the spread like two hens excited over a passel of worms. He chuckled recalling the relief he felt, knowing he’d have to leave her for a few weeks and finish up his work with Whitcomb to break in all those wild horses he and Eli’d driven into his corrals.

  Those three weeks had been agony for him. All he did night and day was pine away for Gennie. And while he knew he was foolish to worry about her, he couldn’t help hisself. He felt such a need to protect her and keep her safe—a feeling that had stunned the boots off his feet.

  While he’d wanted to go back to the ranch those weekends, to check up on her—and, if truth be told, to hold her again in his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her—his ma forbade it. That was one of the few times he’d dared argue with her so adamantly. But she wouldn’t back down—stubborn as always and had to be right. But she was. Gennie needed those weeks to settle into the little cabin Ma had cleaned and readied for her—for them, LeRoy corrected. She’d known somehow—through her crazy Cheyenne medicine—that LeRoy would be bringing her back. Not just to civilization but to life proper.

  He was so grateful Gennie and his ma got along. And he’d been determined to brook no argument from either of ’em when he’d finished up at Whitcomb’s and galloped the whole way home, chewing up the miles from Fort Collins as fast as he could. But neither woman voiced objection when LeRoy swooped Gennie up in his arms and told her he wanted to marry her as soon as was humanly possible. He’d worried so that her affections might have cooled for him, but upon seeing her, he knew his fears had been ungrounded. She’d kissed him passionately and thoroughly until his ma had to loudly clear her throat and get ’em to wash up for supper.

  Not three days passed before Miss Gennie Champlain was all his. A simple ceremony with just Eli and Clare and Lucas and Emma by their sides, to witness the vows. Ma had made a ceremonial cake, and they’d all sat at the kitchen table eating a hearty, simple stew as fat flakes of snow fell and the fire sparked and crackled in the hearth in the living room. LeRoy would never forget the way the firelight danced in Gennie’s eyes—eyes so filled with joy. He’d gone up the mountain to hunt down a bear and returned with the gal of his heart. Like Eli and Clare—and like Lucas and Emma—theirs was a perfect match. He felt as if he’d waited his whole life for her and she for him. The passion that flared hot that night had hardly cooled in the nine months they’d been together.

  “What’s with the big grin?” Gennie asked, cocking her head and staring at his face.

  “Oh, I’m jes thinkin’ ’bout how much I love you.” He grabbed her tiny waist and squeezed. She squealed and slapped at him with the buckskin gloves she held in her hands.

  “And that gives you the right to pinch my sides?” She lunged for him and wiggled her fingers under his armpits.

  “No fair!” he cried. He was fiercely ticklish, and this woman of his took advantage at every turn to remind him of it.

  “You two,” his ma yelled from the barn, sticking her head out. “We’re burning daylight. Fetch them horses and let’s get goin’.”

  LeRoy and Gennie exchanged guilty looks, then broke out into laughter as they strode to the fence and swung open the gate. His ma had been getting grumpy of late. Complaining about her old bones and threatening to give up the ranching business. She claimed she was too old to chase horses all over creation and wanted to spend the rest of her days doing something less taxing. Like what? He could hardly picture her sitting in her stuffed chair knitting like the old ladies in Greeley liked to do.

  It took ’em inside of ten minutes to get halters on the bunch, and when they’d led ’em out to the barn, his ma already had her favorite mustang bridled and saddled. But then his eyes caught on the mare with the strain of Arabian blood. She was tied to the post, digging the dirt with he
r hoof.

  “What’re ya doin’ with her?” LeRoy asked, nodding his head at the horse while fetching his saddle off the fence rail.

  “That’s Ehase’o, isn’t it?” Gennie asked his ma, who took the leads of two of the horses in her hand. “Isn’t that the brood mare you’d decided to keep?”

  Sarah Banks nodded but said nothing as he and Gennie watched her tie a long lead line to a gelding of fifteen hands that was the gentlest of the bunch but who always had to be in the lead. LeRoy noted his ma had necked Renegade to trail alongside.

  LeRoy threw his saddle up over his pinto he’d named No’kest’a, short for the Cheyenne word for “handful,” and cinched it up. He took a bridle from off the fence post where his ma had hung ’em and got his mount ready to go. He then turned to her, unable to keep the question from working its way out his mouth.

  “I don’t figure why you’re takin’ that mare. You ain’t givin’ it to Foster, are ya?”

  “No, LeRoy.”

  LeRoy shook his head, wondering what his ma was up to. She was humming an odd tune—something he’d never heard before. Sounded like a kind of folk tune. His ma rarely ever hummed. Something was up, and he knew better than to press her with useless questions.

  His ma looked over the remaining bunch of horses with a thoughtful eye, then reached out and took the reins for O’asé—named for the bright blaze on his face. His ma rode every horse she broke at least once a week, and on deliveries like this one, she always picked the most ornery, to iron the kinks out before the horse left her hands. Some of their horses liked to tie themselves in knots now and again just to remind themselves they once used to be wild. His ma would just huff at such antics. Few horses every gave his ma much lip, and if they did, they got an earful of Cheyenne words that even LeRoy could hardly figure out. But those animals shaped up quick enough.