“Walter? That’s a funny name for a horse.” The boy grinned.
“You had to know the boy that gave him that name to understand.” I hopped up on Walter’s back. Someone had to know that boy, really know the widow’s son, and get him on his feet. Someone other than Ted, even other than Doc. “Dag-nab-it,” I said instead of what I really wanted to say, in case the boy could still hear. I never had so much trouble staying with or getting away from someone. “Back to the ranch, Walter. Back to the widow’s—I mean, Mrs. Miller’s—ranch.”
Chapter 38
I was sorry Ben married me for nothing. Now I’m sorry I married him at all. ~Regina
I watched Ben’s back as he galloped away. I was getting tired of this. If only he’d been forthright about who he was when we corresponded, someone the bank could clear. Someone who obeyed the way I needed them to. Someone who stayed. I hit the boards with the heel of my boot, stomped away any chance of tears I hadn’t had time for. I could feel them. I stomped again.
Ben was a warrior retreating, his tall form, dark hat, and black horse tearing out of town. How could a simple arrangement become so complicated? I’d done nothing but vex that man since he came, almost as much as he had vexed me, and now the bank was vexing both of us. I turned toward the side street and clomped my boots all the way to the livery, where I’d left Boss.
Men’s voices met me as I rounded the last corner. They were lingering there near the horses, a group of them wasting time with their feet propped up on rails instead of being off working somewhere. I wiped my eyes, pinched my cheeks, and tossed my head back. Men had become nothing but bothers ever since Flynn was gone. Maybe even before. No wonder crying was difficult.
If I didn’t mind leaving Ben’s name on a marriage certificate while Ted signed the deed, why should it bother him? It was part of the plan, even if that part didn’t work out.
I stopped. What if he wanted a real wife? A family? What if someone was waiting for him? Some woman he would take care of while I was here reminding Ted I was his boss no matter where his name was signed. I stomped my boot, and the cluster of men turned.
I whisked past them to Boss, felt the path their eyes traveled over the shirt and pants Ben had given me. I glared at them. Their conversation stopped as I set the toe of my left boot in the stirrup and tossed my right leg over the saddle. Their mouths and eyes gaped as I made a clicking noise. Boss didn’t move, so I punched him with both heels and laid the reins against his neck. “Bothers, all of you,” I said loud enough for them to hear as Boss wheeled, understanding exactly what I wanted now. We sailed out of town.
Boss was heaving as we raced into my barnyard, creating a cloud of dust almost as big as the one Walter and Ben had left. I lunged forward when he came to a stop, loving the momentum. Boss was powerful, expensive according to Flynn, but he labored at the pace he’d kept up in the few miles he’d run, in a way Walter never would. He tossed his head and snorted. I felt like doing the same. I leaned over the back of his neck and hugged him, let the damp sweat of a horse wet my face. It felt nice. It smelled wonderful. I rubbed my cheek against his mane.
“You were in a hurry?” Ted was at Boss’s nose, his hand around the bridle.
I sat up, tucked a wad of loose hair up with a comb, and wiped my hands down the front of my clothing. “I have a lot to do.” I dropped to the ground and patted Boss’s side. “Is Jess doing well?”
“He is. You have a moment to finish our talk?”
I undid the girth strap beneath Boss’s saddle. “After I take care of Boss and check on Jess.”
“I’ll take care of Boss. You go on and see your boy.” Ted tried to smile. Tried. “Then we’ll talk. First chance you get.”
“I’ll let you know.”
I walked to the house. I knew what Ted would say, at least I hoped it was that and nothing worse. The same thing Mr. Gulliver had.
There was nothing on Ben. Nothing good, nothing bad. He was a nonentity, whereas Ted was an entity. A known entity that could have saved me an arranged marriage. And parting.
Jess was propped up in my bed, his color better, his scowl less.
“Your leg feeling good?” I came to his side, touched his forehead, combed his hair with my fingers.
“I guess.” He ducked his head away from my hand. “I can sit up faster.”
“Don’t get too adventuresome. Doc says you can’t get up and around yet.” Doc, who may never return to tend to my boy.
“I know what Doc said, but Ben said different. Doc said weeks, and Ben said soon.”
“Ben was here? Never mind what Ben said. Doc said weeks. He’s the doctor. Ben was here?”
Jess pushed himself higher with both arms. “Yes, Ma, Ben was here. You married him, didn’t you? He came in and talked to me. He said he needs my help.”
There was new color in Jess’s face, new light in his eyes.
“Weeks,” I said again. I glanced toward the window. “Ben was really here?” How’d he beat me? Walter. The warrior horse. He had to go farther, make a wide loop so I wouldn’t spot him, yet Walter had done it faster.
“Yes, Ma, I told you he was.”
“We need to make sure with Doc.”
“Or Ted?”
I knew by the voice behind me and the steeliness of my boy’s eyes in front of me who was there.
“Ted has nothing to do with this…” I stood and faced Ben as he filled the doorway.
But he left the doorway and was across the room in three easy steps, my elbow gripped in his fingers. “If you’ll excuse us, Jess, your mother and I need to have a little talk.”
“We sure do. I’ll be right back,” I added over my shoulder. I yanked my arm, but Ben held on.
“Tell her I’m ready to get up,” Jess yelled.
Ben steered me out of my room, to the small stairs that led up to Jess’s real bedroom in the loft.
“Up there.” Ben tipped his head that direction.
“I will not! I told you, this is…”
“I know, purely a business arrangement. Ma’am, we need to settle a couple of things without an audience. Ted’s ears pretty much fill up the outdoors, and Jess is suffering for lack of entertainment in there, unless he likes counting the holes in your lace curtains. So up you go.”
His hands fit around my waist as he took me from behind and started me up the stairs.
“I can do this myself. What are you doing here anyway?” I hissed as he followed. “I thought you were done here, the way you took off. Again.” I paused and glared down at him.
“I did too, but Walter made me come back. Git on up there.”
I took the last two steps and stood in Jess’s sleeping area. I glanced around at what little my son had, looked at the bed, then at Ben. He was staring there, too. At my son’s bed, my bed now, my own clothing and some of Flynn’s draped across it. He looked at me, and extended an arm to Jess’s only chair.
“Please sit.”
I did.
Ben stood over me, his head bent forward under the low ceiling.
“You can sit on the bed.” But please don’t. My face burned as I gestured where I’d been sleeping. There were things there only Flynn had seen.
“I think I’ll stand.”
“As you wish.” Thank God.
“I may have found your husband’s…I mean Flynn’s…other land. So maybe this deed you keep talking about really is somewhere.”
I stood. I stared up at Ben. “How? How did you…”
“I need to be sure, and I think Jess can help.”
“Jess never saw Flynn’s land, if he really had it. And neither did I.”
“Your boy listens, and I’m guessing he absorbs more than you realize.”
“I listen.”
“We can discuss that another time. For now, I don’t want you agreeing with the bank about Ted signing for your ranch.” His head tipped farther…close, his eyes deeper and darker even than I’d thought. “You understand? Don’t agree to anything.”<
br />
I felt breathless, more breathless than I did lifting fence posts, as I stared into those eyes.
He reached for my shoulder, and I inched it his way. Little nudges, bringing us closer, until he paused, his hand stopping, leaving my shoulder where it was. Alone. He stepped around me and my shoulder, then, and went to the stairs. Air that was burning my lungs seeped out like a low-burning flame as he took the first two. “Don’t forget, you’re already under an agreement with me.”
“The agreement was you’d stay out of my room.” I glanced around for something to throw.
“Get ready to change rooms. That boy of yours needs to get up and walk. Soon.”
Chapter 39
No use talking to women. Time to talk to the only other man I trust out here. ~Rex
I looked down at Regina’s boy, pondered the excitement that mingled with the scowl on his face. I’d seen plenty of scowls from Luke. The difference between Luke’s scowls and Jess’s was that Jess had good reason. Two good reasons, in my mind, while Luke had none.
Jess winced as he pushed up in the bed. “Ma know you’re in here?”
“You gotta be getting sore, just laying there all the time. Thought you might get up and outside for a little bit. If I had a horse down as long as you, I’d be thinking about shooting it. How about it? Want to get up?”
“I can’t. Doc said.” Jess mumbled to his lap, then he looked up. “Can I?”
I walked to the far side of the room and studied the frilly curtains. Those would be enough to sour my outlook on life if I had to stare at them day in and day out. I unstrung them and laid them aside on a trunk, opened the window wider, a wash of fresh air and sunlight flooding in. As well as a long black nose. “Well, I’ll be. Guess this thirsty fellow is looking for you.” Walter thrust his nose through the window, reaching for the front of my shirt. I glanced at Jess on the bed. “What do you think your mother will say when she sees the backside of a horse sticking out her bedroom window?”
That made a dent in the boy’s expression. A good one that didn’t last long.
“So I suppose you’d rather have the curtains back up instead of looking at Walter?”
Jess shifted his face to the side, chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Nothing wrong with that. You’re from the East, so lace may be your druthers.” I stroked Walter’s nose, leaned through the window, and patted his neck. “Git on now, Walter. Go get a drink. I’ll be out in a minute.” I smacked my hand on Walter’s neck. He slobbered on my shirt and turned away. I retrieved the curtains from the trunk and studied the way Regina’d had them strung.
“That’s okay,” Jess muttered from behind me. “You can leave them off.”
“Can’t say as I blame you.” I returned them to the trunk. “You tell your ma it was me when she complains someone took her curtains down. She’s used to me getting in her craw.” I made my way to his bed and looked down at the boy. He tried to straighten more and lift himself higher in the bed. “Your leg isn’t ready for putting weight on it yet.”
Jess pulled himself up even higher.
“You can straighten fairly well. Probably more than expected. That’s good.”
Jess nodded.
“Guess we won’t have to shoot you after all.”
The boy’s eyes grew wide.
“Legs are a horse’s livelihood. Laid up with a busted leg, a horse is pretty well worthless. Of course that ain’t true for men. We have other reasons to exist. Like being productive and helping in other ways, even though we’re laid up.”
“Like Ted?” Jess looked toward the window. “He’s missing an arm, but he still manages to work.”
Ted might be managing more than work. “I was thinking more along the lines of you, but yes, Ted is one example of surviving.” Although not the best.
Jess frowned.
“Like, say, leather. You ever work with leather? You got two good hands there. I’ll bet you could do some harness work I noticed needs done.”
“I never did that before,” he said.
“I could show you how. And you’d be a big help by doing it.”
“Ted never mentioned needing no harness work done.”
I shoved my hat back on my head. “Well, I imagine you kept pretty busy before the accident. Things are different now. You’re in a position to work with your hands. And your head.”
“My head?”
“Sure. Bet you can draw me a good map of your land. All the details. The shape of it, any fields, what sort of prairie, any water holes. Think you could do that?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the best we can do until you get out where you can show me.”
Jess stared at me, his tongue working inside his mouth. “I suppose I know as good as anyone what our land looks like.”
“Both sections?” I said it casual. I watched the flicker in the boy’s eyes. I saw what maybe was left of his father, the last tie, the last thing his father did before he died. That other land. Whatever it was, wherever it was, Flynn Howard either did something very right in buying it, or he did something terribly wrong.
“I never saw any other land.” Jess eyes still held that light. “I wanted to. My pa was going to tell me everything. It was special, whatever he had. He said so.” I watched Jess’s face fall, and I knew the rest.
“Think you’d know it if you saw it? If I could find it, think you could tell me for sure if that’s what your father bought? When we get you up, that is.”
“We?”
I stared at the boy. It was like getting gut-punched by Luke all over again. I was used to being on the outside of a family.
“The only ‘we’ that’s ever going to matter to you and your mother is each other, and that’s the way it should be. You need to think on getting up and out of that bed. I’m just here to help. She’s going to need you.”
Especially after she and I parted.
Chapter 40
One day you wake up and find you’ve been sleeping alone all along. ~Regina
“Mail from home, ma’am.” Ted dismounted. He did it with one hand, lit on the ground the way Flynn had admired. I had to admit, Ted had mastered living with one arm and managed to do about everything as if he had two.
“This is home,” I reminded Ted as he carried two envelopes to me.
“It still shows on you,” he said with a nod. “The East will always be a part of you, and nothing wrong with that.”
“Thank you for bringing the mail. How was Liberal?” I took the two letters.
“Quiet, as far as I could tell. Wasn’t there long. Only had a thing or two to do, then came right back.”
I wanted to ask Ted what he did in town. He came back with little, when he came back with anything at all. Most of the time he came back empty-handed, the same way he went. Like today, except for the mail. Like the mornings when he checked on things.
I glanced at the two letters in my hand. My mother’s was one, and I knew it would include a “suggestion” from my father. The other was from my cousin Clyde, at my father’s bank. Timid. Unsure of himself. His handwriting was as unnoticeable as he was. Normally. It had an unusual kick to it today, as if he wrote it on the run. He must have done something silly and needed my advice again.
“It’s time.” Ted glanced across the prairie. “It’s time we talked and got this ranch business settled.”
Don’t agree to anything. I glanced across the prairie with him.
“You need me to put my name on this place,” he said. “You have to. Or this ranch is going to go under and end up in someone else’s hands.”
I tapped my two letters on the palm of my hand. “What do you know about that other land Flynn supposedly bought?” Not just any man’s name. Ted’s name. Why wasn’t “Regina and Jess” good enough?
Ted’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he stared across the windblown grass, his eyes narrowing as if he could see that land far away. The crevices on his rugged face were like hard-earned gouges, deepen
ing as he thought, furrowing as he shook his head. “What do you know?”
“I’m the boss here, and it would be my land we’re talking about, so I’m asking you.”
He argued what I said with an almost pitying shake of the head, followed by a shrug. “Not land to till, if he bought what I told him not to.” He sighed. “That’s the best I can guess. It was a mistake, if he did. A fool purchase that must have ruined him.”
“Flynn was no fool when it came to money and investments.” Investments. The word Ben had used.
Ted looked down, kicked at the dirt, then looked back up. “Maybe he got advice from someone besides me. Bad advice, if he did.”
“Was he thinking of cattle, maybe?” I’d certainly suggested it enough.
Ted shrugged. “Cattle would be worse, especially there, but he never said. Wish he’d told me what he done, or even told you.” He raised a brow as he watched me. I said nothing but held my stance until the brow dropped and his usual bland expression returned. “Maybe he knew he’d made a mistake.”
I couldn’t stand the thought of Flynn carrying a regret, dying with it alone. If only he’d had time to fix it, or at least told me. “Where was this land? How could I find it?”
Ted ran his hand over his chin. “It was east and north of here, but I never saw it. Maybe he unloaded it before he…well, before he passed, and that’s why the deed is gone.” He glanced at me, a question back in his look.
“Flynn wasn’t one to make big mistakes. Surely he had a reason for what he did, a better reason than someone’s advice.” I didn’t want to think it was just another dream. This dream, this land, was a constant struggle, so maybe he thought another would be better, bring in a little more money to help support this one. “That’s where he’d been the day he died, wasn’t it?” He was so secretive about where he went. Secretive, but not so much that Jess didn’t understand, according to Ben. Since Jess listened.
“Possible.”
Maybe that land was where our money was. Maybe Flynn had taken it there the day of the accident. Maybe.
The Lady's Arrangement (Help Wanted) Page 18