Rebellion in the Valley

by Robyn Leatherman

  Rebellion in the Valley

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Rebellion

  in the

  Valley

  By

  Robyn Leatherman

  This book is dedicated in loving memory to Tom, my buddy and brother.

  Thanks to Edna for not only volunteering to be my beta reader, but also for your constant support!

  Published by

  Robyn Leatherman

  Smashwords Edition

  62,572 words

  Copyright 2013 Robyn Leatherman

  Edited by Kim Diehl

  Cover design arrangement done by Lindsay Kayser;

  actual photograph owned exclusively by

  Daniel Speck of FreeStockPhotos . com

  and used with permission (see terms of use on website).

  Contact Lindsay for your own cover design

  at:

  lindsaykkayser @ gmail . com

  Disclaimer from the author:

  This western story does contain some historical points,

  however, it is not meant to be read as a history lesson.

  Some of the names, characters and events in this work of fiction

  are from parts of history,

  and some names are used with permission by people I know personally.

  In any case, my intention is for my readers to just enjoy the story.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people.

  If you would like to share this book with another person,

  please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it

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  Thank you for respecting the hard work

  of this and every other Smashwords author.

  Chapter 1

  Bruce Johnson allowed his eyes to roll around the room, over the tapestry-covered chair and out the window to the Red Bone Ranch he shared with his daughter. Without looking down, he tilted the snifter in his hand and swirled the brandy around a few times. A long, slow sip felt its way through his throat; his nostrils flared as the liquid warmed his chest.

  A portrait of his beloved late wife, Camilla, hung reverently on the wall opposite the fireplace, but before his thoughts found an opportunity to run away with him, their daughter, Hailee, bounced into the room, reminding him of the here-and-now.

  She wrapped one of her pale blonde curls around her finger and let go, amused with her own locks, before approaching him with the conversation he sensed would be coming sooner or later.

  “Daddy, are we going into town soon? I overheard Duffy and Tobias talking out in the barn, and they said the wagons might be finished by Thursday morning. I sure could use some more burgundy yarn, and I’m almost completely out of …” Hailee’s latest rambling found itself stopped a little short by the familiar sound of the dinner bell ringing just outside the kitchen door.

  “Ah ha!” Bruce teased. “Saved by the dinner bell, I am!”

  He sat the brandy glass down on the catalog table, making a mental note to come back and finish his well-deserved drink after he finished eating. Feigning a doubled-up fist to bonk his daughter on top of her head, Bruce escorted his daughter into the kitchen.

  A white-aproned gentleman who appeared to be in his late sixties stood half-slumped over the dish-washing sink, his time-weathered hands scrubbing the pan he'd just cooked a few steaks to perfection in.

  Experience allowed the cook to reach in a fluid movement to pans hanging from the semi-abused wagon wheel that had seen better days. Compliments of a couple of the ranch hands, it now served as a reconstructed pots-and-pans distribution center.

  Richard Blake had been cooking for the Red Bone Ranch for the past twenty years - ever since he lost that bet with Bruce.

  The whole thing started with a game of gin rummy, and the wages were high; whoever came out with the losing hand agreed to cooked that entire weekend. After a couple of days of coffee without grinds, pancakes that were actually done clean to the middles, and dinner that satisfied down to his bones, Bruce offered Richard a deal to stay on as the ranch cook.

  Whether Bruce knew it or not, Richard had no other place to go. After twenty of some of his most pleasant years, it hardly seemed to matter anymore.

  Hailee sniffed at the air and wrapped an arm around Richard’s shoulder.

  “You made some of those yummy yeast rolls; I can smell them hiding in here somewhere!”

  He stepped back and opened the oven door, a warm blast of air catching her face as she bent down to take a sniff.

  Most of the hired hands had known the girl for several years, if not her whole life, and for the most part, she held them in high regard. Over the years, their conduct had earned a mark of trustworthiness and Hailee’s confidence in the majority of the men was strong - but the actual enjoyment of working side-by-side with her father’s hired hands had been limited to only a few.

  For a fact, Richard was one of the elite.

  As soon as the man placed the baker’s tray on the butcher-block counter, there she stood, plate ready to scoop up her share of the night’s dinner.

  Richard grinned. He enjoyed watching that girl fill her plate up clean to the edges; she worked every bit as hard as the men folk some days and ate like them when she put in a full day around the ranch.

  “Girl, you’re dripping’ off the side of your plate,” Richard teased, pointing to the stream of milk gravy pooling up on the counter.

  “No worries,” she retorted, bringing the plate to her mouth and sucking up the drippings. “That is so yummy!” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, emphasizing a factual statement and not her personal opinion.

  Bruce shook his head. He just knew Camilla would have utilized countless moments such as this one to mold their daughter into a more feminine creature. Nevertheless, he took pleasure in observing the young woman their daughter was evolving into all on her own.

  Richard placed a dinner roll on top of her steak. “There you are, Hailee. Enjoy your supper - but you save enough room for my chocolate mess cake, you hear me?”

  “I always do!” she hollered out as she vacated the kitchen for the separate dining room, which was simply an extension of the kitchen and not meant to set Hailee or her father apart from any of the ranch hands. The fact was, once the entire lot of workers gathered to eat, there was not enough room for everyone to eat at the same table. Several times when Bruce had come in with the last of his hired men, he could be found eating in the kitchen in one of the few still-available chairs, jawing with the men-folk in there while Hailee and others ate in the dining room, absorbed in their own conversations.

  The dinner rush began as
ranch hands piled into the kitchen through the rear door, filling the room with more noise of voices, boots clacking across the wooden floor, and chairs scooting from under the table. The familiar sounds reminded Bruce that most of these men were more than just the hired help; a few of them had become more like extended family over the years that they had been living and working on the Red Bone.

  The ranch owner felt his eyes sweep over the crowd gathering in his kitchen and understood why the women folk often stated that the kitchen was the heart of the home.

  “Bruce! Good thing you’re still here,” Tobias began, removing his hat and hanging it on the coat rack by the door as he’d done hundreds of times before. He headed over to the hand-scrubbing bucket of warm sudsy water and continued without interruption.

  “That conversation of ours about the fence out on the back forty? Yeah, well, I found a section that’s a good twenty feet long, and it’s just not repairable anymore. Too rotted. Gonna hafta be pulled down and replaced - all of it,” he explained. “And that’s not all. That cat’s been back. I saw the leftovers of one of its dinners up near that cluster of boulders again.”

  Bruce grunted his disapproval.

  “How many did we lose this time?” he wanted to know.

  “Best I could tell, maybe a calf and a couple of goats. But that don’t mean there ain’t more,” he reminded his boss as he reached for a plate. “I didn’t see the tracks til right before the sun started to drop, so I was planning on tracking it first thing in the morning, soon as the sun comes back up.”

  Tobias stabbed at a thick steak and plopped it on his plate, then grabbed the spoon standing out of the pot with the mashed potatoes and dropped a healthy serving. He hunted around for the gravy, and as he located it on the other side of the stove, Hailee walked back into the kitchen.

  His heart skipped a beat when their eyes met.

  “Hi, Tobias! S’cuse me, I just came in for my milk. Didn’t mean to interrupt you fellas,” she tested to see if he would mind her staying in there a few more minutes.

  Hailee thought Tobias was just as fine a man as she had ever met, and three times the looker. She'd come to know him as a hard worker with a gentle streak she'd seen many times over.

  The deep cocoa in his eyes invited Hailee to linger and sip at her milk; his perfect smile made sure that she did.

  Tobias sat down with his meal and told Bruce he would have to go into town for some extra fencing supplies within a few days.

  “It’ll hold up for a few more days, but I don’t want to chance the cattle getting out if we get a strong wind,” he explained.

  Hailee stood up a little bit taller in her boots and exclaimed without thinking, “That’s perfect! Daddy and I are heading into town soon as the wagons are repaired. We could all go together and make a day of it!”

  Embarrassed once she realized that she had spoken out of turn, Hailee looked to her father for help.

  “Well, that is a fine idea. Richard, now that I'm thinking about it, why don’t you plan to come along, too? Get the pantries stocked up. I hear corn’s holding steady at ten cents a bushel and if rumor has it right, hogs aren’t any more’n three and a half dollars per hundred weight, so plan what we’ll need for the winter through.”

  Bruce Johnson waved a hand toward the other ranch hands in the kitchen and suggested, “Heck, why not everyone make up a supply list and a bunch of us can all head in together. I’ll treat us to supper at that fancy restaurant while we’re in town,” Bruce offered.

  Hailee gulped down the rest of her milk and noticed Tobias smiling at her. He pointed his fork at her and shook his grinning head. He laughed to himself when she almost choked on her milk.

  He concentrated his eyes on Hailee and could almost feel the breath she tried to hide in her chest as she realized he was staring at her.

  “Sounds like a plan, Boss, sounds like a plan,” the man said aloud as he shoved a bite-sized piece of steak into his mouth.

  His eyes were still resting on Hailee.

  Chapter 2

  Howard J. Duffman stood in the tool shed, taking an inventory of which meat-cutting tools he should think about replacing and which ones could get by with just a good sharpening.

  Duffy, as he was known, was the one ranch hand in charge of handling the butchery - a profession passed down to him by his father, and since nobody else cared for the job, it became exclusively his duty.

  He didn’t mind. This appointed position gave him an air of self-importance he felt set him aside from all the other men. Duffy figured having business in the tool shed gave him the excuse of getting out of such duties as stall mucking and pig slopping; since nobody else knew how long it actually took to sharpen tools and meat saws, Duffy possessed a way out of almost anything he didn’t care to do.

  Tobias and a couple of the other men were near the barn and shooting the breeze in between chores; Duffy overheard the punch line of a joke one of them told and chuckled, although the thought of them standing around doing nothing, in his eyes, caused his blood pressure to raise a bit. It wasn’t so much that Duffy was thinking of all the ranch duties and chores, but mostly it buffed his hide he was never included in their conversations.

  Duffy was the second oldest ranch hand, next in line to Richard. Sometimes it irritated him that he had slaved away and worked so hard for another man’s home and land, while he never even owned one single acre in his entire life.

  “Just ain’t fair,” he would sometimes grumble to himself whenever he was having a

  bad day.

  Just as those very words crept across his brain, a cupped hand slapped him square on the shoulder, causing his mind to surface from his deep thoughts.

  It was Bruce. In both hands, he held tins of freshly brewed, steaming coffee and offered one of them to his friend.

  “Got an inventory list goin’ yet? Looks like everyone on the place is writing one - I figure we may as well make a good trip of it. I got to thinking, and we haven’t done this in a long while; I guess it’s time,” Bruce paused, running an eye over the tools hanging on hooks and nails.

  Knowing how many years those tools had provided service, Bruce wondered how he still managed to keep some of them operational without actually being a danger to use after all the wear and tear on them. He also knew Duffy’s father handed most of those old tools down to him, and Bruce would never be offensive by mentioning the fact that they'd seen better days.

  Instead, the man sipped at his coffee and inquired about how much chicken feed was left in the barrel.

  Duffy nodded to the list, picked it up, and handed it to Bruce for inspection.

  “Is this going over-board? I don’t intend on running you into the poor house,” he teased only half-heartedly. “I could always chop it down some.”

  Bruce raised an eyebrow.

  “This ain’t enough; we probably won’t be headed into town on another trip like this one for at least another six to eight months, near as I can figure.” His eyes fell to the dirt floor. “I saw the hole in your fencing gloves last week, Duffy. You put another pair down on your list - and you best take those boots in and get them repaired, too.”

  Bruce sighed and looked over his shoulder to make certain of their privacy before he continued.

  “You’re one of my oldest friends and a whole heap of help around here; you can’t take care of this ranch in the winter if your toes are hanging out of your boots and you can’t feel your fingers from the frost on ’em. I take care of you, and then you can take care of me. That’s how it works around here, you hear me?”

  Bruce gave a nod of his head toward Duffy’s slip of paper as he placed a hand square on his friend’s leather vest-covered shoulder once again and looked the man square in the eye.

  “You get what you need to carry yourself through the next few months,” he instructed.

  Duffy opened his mouth to say something when one of the horses reminded the men of feeding time; Epoenah, Hailee’s treasured mare, bounced her muzzl
e back and forth and kicked up a bit of dirt in her stall to show her protest in dipping into an empty feed bucket.

  Bruce finished his business with Duffy and gulped down the rest of his coffee before setting the empty tin down on a grain barrel.

  “Alright, Girl,” Bruce assured the mare as he wandered over to her stall with some feed. “I hear ya.”

  P

  Hailee hadn’t run out of her lemon verbena just yet, but the glass bottle containing lavender oil had been empty for a couple of weeks now. That was her going-to-church scent, and she didn’t like being without her 'smell-em-ups', as her father called them. They became the first items she wrote down on her list, followed by a few more toiletries, some fancy writing paper, and a yard of lace to dress up one of her old bonnets.

  The seventeen-year-old beauty stood in front of her mirror, shifting herself to avoid the morning sun streaming in and reflecting in her mirror as she ran the abalone shell hairbrush through a mane of thick blonde curls; she had always been well pleased with them and wondered on more than one occasion if Tobias ever noticed her hair. Or anything else about her, for that matter.

  She sure did notice everything about Tobias, that was for certain. From that mop of wavy hair to those strong arms she’d seen so many times, right on down to the way the man walked and carried himself, nothing the man did escaped her attention...if only Tobias Logan would notice her, she sighed.

  Hailee opened her diary and left an entry for the day. After penning the words, “Hailee Gretchen Logan,” she finished the page with several small hearts drawn near the name she'd grown to love before she let out one final breath of air and closed the book. Slipping it under her pillow, Hailee’s attention was drawn outside, where she heard familiar laughter coming from the area of the riding pens.

  Standing in the center of one of them stood Tobias, his hands tossed up over his head. The man seemed to be having the time of his life with her mare.