“My horse!” Ben shouted. “Can that boy ride?”
I ran after Ben as he bolted away, following him through the back of the barn and into the corral where his horse should have been. A bunker of half-eaten hay was all that remained, while a cloud of dust behind racing hooves and a boy’s urges to hurry faded down the road.
“Of course my son can ride, and I know the places he likes to go,” I said, envisioning the happy places along with the sad, wondering to which this new shock would take him. “I’ll go get him. You wait here.”
Ben shook his head, glancing from Flynn’s shirt to his boots, then back to my face. “No, ma’am, you’re mistaken. You won’t go get him, and I won’t wait here.”
Chapter 5
Skirts sure do get in the way. Mrs. Howard couldn’t have said it better. ~Rex
It wasn’t the barn I saw. It wasn’t the memory of those two sour faces inside it, either. Or the recollection of my horse being led away by Regina’s son. It was her face—rather striking, honestly, something I hadn’t noticed over the pitchfork, over the saddle, or over her son—that I noticed as it disappeared behind me when with one quick stride I shot past her, heading back to where that other horse was. Her comeliness struck me in that fleeting second, almost making my next stride unsteady. But what nearly brought me to a dead halt was the look of a mother. A woman wanting her child back. Protective concern that enhanced her beauty even more.
I had to agree with her son. The mother beneath that mane of red hair and oversized men’s clothing had at her core pure woman and all the breeding of the East. I heard it in the way she talked, saw it in the way she carried herself. Imagined it beneath the baggy pants and shirt. She was far better suited to having a dress cinched around that tiny waist than saggy trousers, slippers on her feet instead of oversized boots, and something fancy pinning that mountain of curls into some sort of style.
“Is that horse out front one I could use?” I called back over my shoulder.
“That’s Ted’s.” She was in motion. I caught a glimpse of her arms pumping as she ran to catch up, one pointing toward the barn. “You stay here, I’ll take it and get Jess.”
“Boss.”
“Yes. That’s better.” She glanced up as she drew closer.
I slowed as I looked back.
She narrowed the distance between us to a matter of paces as I reached the barn, and looked up at me as we hit the gate. “You don’t have to call me Boss, but I’m glad you finally understand I make the rules around here.”
“I meant the horse.” I stared down at her, the thin beginnings of becoming levelheaded disappearing as her eyes went from too bright to narrow. “Jess told me, before you came into the barn earlier, that horse’s name is Boss. He said he called the horse Boss because Ted manages your ranch.”
“Neither that horse nor Ted is in charge here.” Regina’s face fired scarlet. It brought out the strawberry in her hair. “I’m the one in charge.” She shot a glance the direction Ted would be with his horse. “I don’t have time to stand here and explain everything to you. I need to get my boy.”
She did need her boy. And I needed to get my horse. I intended to do both in one quick ride. I stepped into the barn. She did the same, the two of us hurrying side by side to find this fellow named Ted. We found him just where we’d left him, next to the perturbed banker, an even more cantankerous look tightening Ted’s face.
“Mind if I borrow your horse?” I eyed the animal next to Ted. One quick glance told me it was a rather expensive mount. Especially for a ranch hand. Good flanks, long span front to back. Might be able to catch up to Walter, since Walter was worn out and wouldn’t run as hard as usual with a stranger on his back. “Got a young man on my horse I need to go find. I’ll bring Boss right back.”
“I ain’t letting you take advantage of widows, and you sure ain’t taking advantage of me. Mrs. Howard don’t need your help getting her son. I’ll do it. And she certainly don’t need you for a husband. She’s got me to watch out for her.” Ted drew back the hand that held his horse’s reins.
“You might take some of those notions up with her. In the meantime, I could still use your horse.” I came close, near enough I would get a hand on those reins first chance I got.
“Ted, this is Ben Miller. He’s not taking advantage of me. I’ll explain later. Just let me have your horse for now. Jess is out there on a strange animal, running wild.”
“Ben-Miller-Who” flickered in Ted’s eyes, the sort of “Who” that meant he hadn’t heard of me before this moment either, and didn’t care or trust what the answer was. He was sizing me up—my height, my arms…two hands instead of just the one I realized he had. He was clever at the illusion of having two good hands. He’d been at this for a while.
“I’ll be back with Boss as soon as I get Jess.” Regina reached in front of me for the reins.
I raised a hand, blocking hers. “You’re not riding for me, or getting my horse. He’s neither strange nor running wild, but he’s more animal than you can handle, and he won’t slow down for you. I’ll go. And I’ll take good care of your boy. You wait here.” I looked down on her mountain of hair. Red. Like Oklahoma dirt.
She tossed her head back and glared up.
Ted held the reins away from both of us. “Ben Whoever-You-Are, you sit tight while Mrs. Howard and I go after Jess. We don’t need no help, and I can handle any horse there is.”
“Mrs. Howard.” Mr. Gulliver stepped Regina’s way. “Let your manager, Ted, here, go for your son while you and I discuss…”
“I said I’d see you in town, and this ranch is still mine since I have a husband now. Or will have soon.” She snatched the reins from Ted’s hand. “I’ll be right back.”
“No, I’ll be right back.” I reached for the reins. She yanked them high and behind her. Not so high I couldn’t outstretch her much smaller frame, but out of reach where I had no right to lean. I stared down at her. I hadn’t noticed how green her eyes were until now. Piercing green as they bored into mine. “All right. He’s your son.” I turned to Ted. “We’ll be right back.”
Her stretch relaxed enough that she let me take the reins. I looped them over the saddle horn and set the toe of my boot in the stirrup. As soon as I hit the saddle, she was at the horse’s side, one arm, far too slender for the sleeve that bunched down near her elbow, extended my direction. I took her hand, let her foot have the stirrup, and lifted her up. She slung one leg over the horse’s back and dropped into place behind me. “How long you been wearing trousers?”
“Let’s go.”
“Mrs. Howard, I must insist that you consider…” Mr. Gulliver came near the horse.
Regina dug her legs into Boss behind me, and we were off.
I tipped my hat at Ted as Boss leapt forward. Both of his bosses leaving him behind. He missed, or ignored, my gesture as we sped off, his eyes on the woman behind me.
“Go northeast,” she shouted near my ear. “It’s where Jess always goes. It’s where his father was…never mind. Just go northeast.”
I let Boss have his head, reining him northeast, wondering if that was the direction Jess had intended to go look for land before the widow Howard found us both out. My shirt tightened against my ribs, hard knots I decided were Regina’s fists gathering the material in handfuls at my back. I glanced down at the buttons straining in their holes. “Let go of my shirt and grab around my waist,” I called over my shoulder.
“This is purely a business arrangement between you and me.” She leaned to the side and yelled. “Nothing else.”
“We have no arrangement, business or otherwise, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“You’re more than welcome to leave right after I get your name on my ranch, in fact I insist you do. I promise to pay you for your trouble. Eventually. Pay you well enough to help until you come up with a plan. I recall you saying in your letters that your cattle driving days were over, thanks to the railroads.” She pulled tighter on my shirt.
Cattle d
riving days? I’d forgotten the story Jim had invented about me. Didn’t matter anyway. I glanced over my shoulder. “I said hold on around my waist. You’re about to rip my shirt, and I only have three. Unless you want to loan me a blouse you clearly don’t use.”
My shirt loosened, the buttonholes relaxed. If she was still behind me, she wasn’t holding onto anything. I glanced back to make sure I hadn’t lost her, my face meeting hers as she leaned to the side to look ahead. Long strands of red hair whipped up and down behind her, like a curly, determined flag.
“Hold on.” I looked forward again.
She didn’t. At least not to me. I had to give her credit. She rode better than most men. Not many could hold their own on the rump of a racing horse.
Her arm shot out from behind me, a slender finger aimed to the left. I saw her son, then, and my horse. The lanky figure bent tight over the back of the galloping black animal, brown dirt thrown up in occasional clouds and clods behind them. Walter’s stride was powerful, impressive for a horse that had been ridden hard from Indian Territory to here.
“Hold on.” I reined to the left, leaned closer to Boss’s neck, and spurred the animal on. She must have leaned with me, I’d have to trust that she did. There was no use telling her to hang on again.
“There’s a gully up ahead. Jess knows it’s there, but your horse doesn’t, and it looks like it’s running amok.”
“Amok?”
“Wild. Crazy.”
“That’s called hieing where I’m from. And I told you, Walter won’t run wild with your boy.” I pictured her gully as a dip, nothing more than that in land laid out flatter than the bottom of a griddle.
“You’ve got to stop him! See it up ahead? That sharp drop into that old creek bed?”
I did see it, the change in the line of blowing prairie, the bend in the lay of the land. The widow was right. I urged Boss on. Walter was powerful, as tired as he had to be, running strong at Jess’s insistence. But he’d slow when he heard me. We inched closer, close enough Walter could hear before he reached the gully I knew he’d handle just fine but the boy might not. I lifted my head into the wind and let out a whistle. Walter’s rump dropped, his front legs stiffened. Jess flew over his head, a spindly ball of arms and legs rolling hard through the prairie.
Regina screamed. More shrill than my whistle, the wail of both echoing from my ears to my chest. A call of love. Like the sound a little brother made when he shouted, “Stop” at someone running from their burning ranch. Or the sound a stepmother made when she begged two boys to be careful around red things—like fire. Like the red-haired woman behind me crying out to her son. Another boy I’d somehow done wrong. Love always seemed to happen this way—so shrill, so harsh, so dire…so red.
Chapter 6
Whatever vile thing Ted spouted that day he dropped the bucket, I double it today. For Ben. ~Regina
I dug the heels of Flynn’s boots into Boss’s sides, hurrying the horse forward while Ben drew back on the reins to slow him down. I hurtled off the side, hit the ground very nearly as my son had, and floundered after him over hard earth and brittle grass, my skin and bones battered and burning as I tumbled. Jess lay just ahead, his body still, the angle wrong, his back arched my way for the second time today.
“Jess!” Brittle stems, skeletal survivors of winter’s cold, speared and nicked at my skin as I righted myself and ran.
Ben’s boots thundered behind me, then alongside me, and finally ran past as he stretched ahead. His stride powerful like his horse’s, his surge great as he hit the ground, his height still evident as he plowed through grass and dirt on his knees until he came to a stop where Jess lay. I skidded to a stop behind him, hitting Ben’s arm as it came up, blocking me from my son.
“Get out of my way!” I twisted, squirming under Ben’s arm. He latched onto the shoulder of Flynn’s shirt and held me back. I pawed at him, raked my hands through the air, threatening him over his shushes while his other hand traveled lightly over my son’s body. “What in the world are you doing?” I grabbed at everything, latching onto nothing. “For Pete’s sake, Jess needs to know I’m here, and you barely touching him won’t tell him that. Let go of me!” I jerked and squirmed at the end of his arm, dangling like a fish from a hook.
“You gonna be still?” Ben’s dark eyes were on me, darker than before, the hand motionless he’d been running over Jess. The face I’d thought of as rugged earlier, maybe even handsome, held me in a glower. An unsteady glower, as well it should be after what he’d done.
I kicked all the more. “This is my son! Let me go.”
He held me back with no more trouble than if I were a rag doll. “I need both hands to check your boy. You need to let me do it.”
That look was there, that little bit of unsteady beneath the deepening threat. I didn’t like that look. I knew I couldn’t trust him. “He needs me more than he needs your hands right now, especially since this is your fault.”
Ben’s arm sagged, enough that I took a swipe at his shirt. He yanked me up again, his arm powerful and holding taut. “You don’t want him needing some explaining how it was you made him worse by pawing all over him.”
I stopped the clawing I’d been doing, dropped my hands, and forced my arms to stay at my sides. The only sound besides the wind around us was the air going in and out of my lungs. Hard. Loud and hard. Harder than I’d realized. Jess was the biggest reason I hadn’t cried enough for Flynn. I’d let my boy cry for the both of us while I struggled to hang onto what was left of Flynn’s dream. I looked at my boy. If I lost both of them, the tears would explode and never stop. “Okay,” I whispered. “Finish. But remember, he’s not some cow on the range, he’s my son. Just do what you have to, and do it quick.”
He let go, and I scooted nearer Jess’s back. Thin stalks of grass spiked up between us as Ben leaned forward. His back stretched long, his arms making his reach even longer. I watched this cowhand who should have been in Liberal right now becoming my husband instead of here draped over my son he’d hurt. Walter stayed near while Boss wandered away, Ben’s horse nuzzling Jess’s bent knees as if he felt guilty—like his owner should.
Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe a nightmare. Ben’s hands squeezed harder now, the tension of his fingers obvious as they traveled around Jess’s head and down his back, stopping lastly at his legs. Splatters appeared on Jess’s shirt. Small dark circles that spread and widened beneath where I leaned. I swiped my eyes against my shoulders, and wrapped my arms around my boy.
Ben’s hand touched one of mine as I clasped my son. His hand traveled up my forearm, and over Flynn’s sleeve. When it reached my upper arm, it stopped and squeezed. “You can’t be putting pressure on him,” he said. The dark of his eyes was swimming now, swimming from him to me as his squeeze tightened. “We don’t know how hurt he is, and you might be making him worse.”
“Me? I’m not his problem.” I yanked my arm loose. “I didn’t cause this. He needs me. He needs to know I’m here.” I shrugged away and held tighter to Jess.
With one hand on each of my arms, Ben broke my embrace on my son. In a single motion he had me on my feet as he rose to his.
“Let go of me! How many times do I have to say it? Clearly, taking orders isn’t one of your qualities, if you even have any.”
Ben towered above me. Over the wind, through my insults and tears, he held on. Close and tight. Too tight for me to swing at him.
“Listen, Regina. Get on Boss and go for help. You surely have some sort of doctor around these parts.”
I nodded. In Liberal. Doc Harris. The answer rattled around with the storm I tried to contain—the deluge of tears that needed out. “I’m not leaving Jess.”
Ben’s fingers tightened more. If he lifted me like a child and set me on Boss, I’d kick him the moment my feet left the ground.
“It’s better if you go.” His head bent forward, the dark of his look lost now in the shadows of that deep complexion and the waning afternoon sun.
His jaw swelled at both sides. The way Ted’s did sometimes, the way it had at the barn when he first met Ben. “I can go for help,” he said. “But it will take me longer than it would you. I’ll leave Boss with Ted when I stop and explain where you and the boy are, and I’ll have to get his or that banker’s help, since I don’t know where to go or who to ask. I’ll have to saddle Walter while those two do what I expect they’ll do—argue with me. Seems to be the Kansas way of doing things. And finally, you have to promise you’ll stop squeezing your boy until I get back with the doctor. Can you manage that one thing if I do all of the rest?”
My palms itched. Itched for the sting of my hand against his face. The face that hurt my son and spoke to everything except the one thing he’d promised to do once he got here. “Surely a man who’s driven cattle all his life doesn’t need detailed directions. And from what I’ve seen, you are more than capable of handling Ted. Those are minor problems compared to—” I glanced down at my son. Compared to Jess. To me. To our future here on the ranch. The shallow lift and fall of Jess’s ribs promised he was still with us. How long had Flynn lain this way? If help had been there for him, would he still be alive? We’d searched for him all night, Ted and a neighbor helping us, looking every direction except the one where Flynn lay. Dying or dead. “Liberal isn’t far. I’ll tell you how to get there and how to find Doc Harris. Just take Boss and leave Walter here.”
Ben was quick. He didn’t argue, for once. In three gigantic steps he was at the other side of Jess, and in several more he was where Boss nosed around in the grass. He whistled for Walter—gentler this time—as he reached for Boss’s dangling reins.
“You ride that way.” I pointed. Ben didn’t even look the direction I indicated. “Straight that way,” I said louder. “Maybe three miles.”
The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted) Page 6