Petticoat Ranch

by Mary Connealy

  They were coming—coming for Clay.

  Well, she wouldn’t have it! She was tired of breaking in new husbands. She was keeping this one!

  Sophie hadn’t survived in a confounded bramble bush for two years by being careless. She knew her property. She knew how to track, and she could read signs like the written word.

  Clay rode out to check his herd every day, always scolding her to “leave man’s work to men.” Sophie waited until his dust settled, and she and the remaining girls that hadn’t been taken off by Clay to learn how to be boys got to work.

  “Ma, I finally landed a rope on a yearling yesterday,” Mandy announced, as she shinnied up to the highest rafter in the barn to settle a basket of rocks on a board.

  “Mandy, you didn’t!” Sophie stopped prying up the floorboard she’d spent all day yesterday laying in front of the barn door.

  “Pa sure threw hisself a fit when he saw you’d put a wood floor across the barn door, Ma.” Sally had quit pouting because Elizabeth had gotten to go with Clay just as Sophie expected. Now that Clay was gone, there was no reason to fuss about it, because she knew Sophie wouldn’t change her mind regardless of the ruckus.

  “Pa and I talked about it again, Sally. I told him it’d keep down the mud, and he came around to my way of thinking once he saw I’d already done the work. His main complaint was that the barn was his territory and he didn’t want me dirtying my hands with such hard labor.”

  Mandy giggled.

  “I think that’s right nice of him to want to spare you hard work, Ma.” Sally said in stout defense of her beloved father.

  “Kinda dumb,” Mandy pointed out. “Since you haul buckets of water from the creek a dozen times a day and chop wood for the fireplace and work over the fire for hours and hunt food and clean it. . .”

  “I’m not supposed to hunt anymore,” Sophie reminded her.

  “That’s right. I remember. Pa said it was man’s work, ’ceptin’ he never brings in food so what are we supposed to cook?”

  “I don’t think he’s keeping track.” Sophie set the three center boards aside and began digging. “He’s waiting for me to tell him I’m running low on something, then he’ll go and fetch us a deer. But he’s powerful busy these days, and I hate to bother him. Besides, I like to hunt as much as the next person. I hate to give it up. His heart’s in the right place. He means to help.”

  “So now you don’t just have to hunt food, you’ve got to do it on the sly.” Mandy shook her head in disgust.

  Sophie laughed. “Hunting is a sneakin’ business anyway, little girl. It’s no bother. And if I hadn’t been hunting, I’d have never found out we’re being watched. We laid traps during the years your pa was gone to war. Then we had them in the thicket. But I might not have thought to rig anything up in the barn, what with so many men around.”

  “You’d’ve thought of it.” Mandy attached the braided hemp rope to the basket handle and threaded it through the notch she’d drilled in the nearest rafter. Then, she carefully eased her way out on the board twenty feet above the ground until she could reach the barn wall. She hooked the rope around a little notch left there from years back.

  Sophie laughed again as she dug down to make a man trap out of the entrance to her barn. “I reckon that’s so.”

  Mandy dropped the long rope off her shoulder until it fell to within four feet of the barn floor. Sally caught it and, careful not to upset the basket, tucked it behind the door frame so no one could pull it by accident. Mandy nimbly clambered down the barn wall and dropped to the floor.

  “Anyway,” Sally reminded her mother, “you’d’ve found out about it ’cuz Pa told you he’d seen tracks.”

  “True, true enough.” Sophie nodded. “This pa is a fine tracker.”

  They worked companionably together in silence. Laura slept peacefully on a pile of straw in the corner of the barn. The hole got about shoulder deep and Sophie stopped. A man just had to fall far enough for the sharpened, wooden spikes she was going to plant in the bottom to have some poking power.

  “Are you gonna tell Pa about the traps, Ma?” Sally wondered.

  “I think I’d better.” Sophie laid her hands on the ground and vaulted out of the hole. “I’d hate to catch him by accident.”

  “You know he’ll have a fit,” Mandy warned. “He’ll figure it for men’s work.”

  Sophie nodded and shrugged, then went to the floorboards she’d split and sanded smooth. “Still, I’d better tell him. So you roped a yearling? Already? Do you think that’s wise?”

  “I’d been missing for a week. It was driving me crazy!”

  “Still, it took you months to learn it the first time,” Sophie reminded her as she took the chisel to the floorboards. “We don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  “It’s all right. I acted all excited and told him what a good teacher he was. I made sure to miss three or four times, and then make one again. I did that most of the day. But toward the end I started getting right dependable.” Mandy snagged a lariat hanging on the wall and whirled it around her head for a few seconds before she sent it sailing toward a post on one of the stalls. It settled perfectly in place. Mandy snapped the noose to pull it off the post, coiled it again, and lassoed the post, again and again.

  “It’s nice of him to work with you, but you have to go slow or he’ll catch on. I just wish you could get on with learning a little faster so you could actually start helping the man.”

  “Oh, he’s not going to let me help once I learn.” Mandy replaced the lariat and started whittling on one of the spikes her mother was going to plant.

  Sophie straightened from the boards she was cutting halfway through. She stood too suddenly and for a moment the barn spun around. She stepped quickly to the side of the barn and leaned, one arm out straight, until her head cleared. “What do you mean? Why would he teach you then not let you help?”

  “It’s men’s work.” Mandy looked up from her whittling and grinned at her mother.

  Sophie shook her head and turned one corner of her mouth up in disgust. “Then why, may I ask, is he teaching you?”

  Mandy giggled as she dropped her sharpened stick and started on a new one.

  “Ah, Ma, don’t let him get you all stirred up.” Sally tugged on the hemp rope she was braiding. “He means well. He wants us to know just in case we ever have need of the skill, but he also keeps promising to take care of all of us forever. And that’s right thoughtful of him.”

  “It is thoughtful.” Sophie slid back into her hole and imbedded Mandy’s sticks so they pointed straight up. “But how does that man think we lived without him for two years?”

  “It was really more like seven years, Ma. ’Cuz Pa—I mean our first pa, you know—not the one we’ve got now.”

  Sophie said snappishly, “I’m not likely to forget the man I was married to for nine years!”

  Mandy hastened to point out. “I was just trying to be clear on which pa I was talking about.”

  “You make it sound like there’ve been a dozen of them.” Sophie jabbed the spike hard into the ground.

  “Sorry.” Mandy went on sharpening. “Anyway, my point was, our first pa wasn’t around much, what with the war and all. We’ve been on our own almost from the first. And here we are, alive and well. How does he think we managed it?”

  “I don’t reckon men are supposed to think,” Sally said philosophically, as the pile of hemp rope grew at her feet. “That’s why God gave ’em big muscles.”

  Mandy tilted her head sideways for a second. “Makes as much sense as anything else.”

  Sophie nodded. “Men do the lifting and women do the thinking. That sounds fair. I suppose God could have planned it that way.” She added, “That’s enough spikes for now.”

  Sophie set the last one in place as Mandy laid aside her bowie knife. Sophie hopped out again.

  With the girls’ help, Sophie braced the boards that covered the hole much the same way they’d done to the front porch. Th
ese were sturdy enough a man could ride a horse across them, but if Sophie tripped the braces, they’d collapse.

  They had a dozen other snares and booby traps set up around the perimeter of the property, not to mention a collection of clubs and sharpened sticks tossed in unexpected places so there was always a weapon close at hand.

  Nope, no one was getting this husband. Sophie had become purely fond of him.

  Sophie began filling buckets with dirt so there’d be no evidence of digging. “You know, I’ve done a fair amount of lifting to get the traps all in place, so Sally’s theory about muscles isn’t perfectly sound.”

  Mandy nodded. Sally shrugged. Laura stirred in her sleep. Sophie thought that “fond” didn’t really describe how she felt about her new husband. It was a whole lot more than fond—even if he did have weird notions.

  “Where do womenfolk get all their weird notions?” Clay shook his head at Beth’s inept efforts saddling his Appaloosa. Why would the little mite think a horse would want to hear all five verses of “Bringing in the Sheaves”? All the girls were proving difficult to teach.

  Mandy couldn’t seem to twirl a rope for more than a few seconds before it would drop on her head and get her so tangled she had practically tied herself up. Her eyes had gotten all teary a couple of times, and Clay had been forced to remind her about rule number one. She’d finally gotten the hand of landing a lasso on a bored, little calf who wasn’t even moving.

  Sally was a trooper. She was picking things up fairly well, although she still had a long way to go, and sometimes her chatter about how brave and strong Cliff was grated on Clay’s patience.

  And today he had Beth. He knew she could catch up a horse. He’d seen her do it with Hector. But she was the almighty slowest little thing he’d ever imagined. She kept getting distracted by petting the horse’s nose and talking about how soft the “’paloose’s” fur felt. She also had a tendency to giggle at things that weren’t funny in the least, and that made the horse nervous. It made Clay nervous, too. They never got anything done.

  And Sophie—well, Sophie had the weirdest notions of all. Clay had decided that it wasn’t too late to teach Sophie a few things. So he’d started taking her out—never going far, of course, because of the girls, and setting her to practice man things. He’d needed to tell her about the men watching the ranch yard and give her orders about being cautious, both for herself and the girls.

  He’d told her he didn’t expect much from someone as old as she was, citing the adage, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” but she might as well try.

  She took a notion to get huffy when he mentioned her age, and all the things he taught her came a little faster. He’d have to remember a few little jabs about her being old seemed to spur her on. That might come in handy.

  She was a good shot—better than good, he reminded himself, as he thought about the day she’d brought down that wild boar. And she knew how to slap leather on a horse, although to Clay’s way of thinking, she spent too much time talking to the horse, too.

  She started talking once about laying snares and booby traps for night riders. Clay did his best not to laugh at her, but he couldn’t stop himself. He told her to quit worrying her pretty little head about man things. She worked harder than ever after that, mainly because she wasn’t speaking to him at all.

  But the most unusual reaction she’d had so far was when he brought the material home for her to make pants for the girls. He’d brought some other material, too, because the girls needed a spare Sunday dress, but the brown broadcloth was his favorite purchase.

  Mandy hugged the bolt of flowery blue to her chest, and Beth and Sally had started a tug-of-war over a bolt of pink nonsense the lady in the general store had told him was just the thing.

  “I remember once Pa brought us four different colors of cloth for dresses.” Mandy nudged Beth. “Remember? He got us ribbons to match and said Ma was to make us each a matching dress, ’cept in different colors?”

  Beth nodded and with a hard wrench got the fabric away from Sally. In the tussle Beth dropped the cloth, and Laura crawled over and sat down on top of it.

  Clay felt his jaw tighten until it likened to break under the strain. Of course Cliff had gotten them more. Of course there’d been four pretty colors and ribbons to match. Clay felt his temper rising. He remembered he’d made a rule about the girls taking things away from each other, but the cloth didn’t belong to anyone yet, and the girls weren’t screaming or crying, although they were too close for comfort. And Clay didn’t want to be cranky right now. Not while they were all thinking about how much better their other pa was than him.

  Laura started chewing on the material. Sally turned her attention to the bolt Mandy was holding. Beth was scolding Laura, who started to cry. Clay longed for the day Laura was three. They all ignored the brown. Clay told Sophie about his plans for the broadcloth while he was trying to think up a rule to cover this kind of racket.

  “There is no way on earth I am putting my little girls in men’s clothing.” Sophie harrumphed. “It isn’t proper! You can teach them all the manly skills you want, but it’s my job to teach them to be ladies, and that means dressing as God intended!”

  “Now Sophie, don’t go getting all persnickety on me,” Clay said. “I don’t know where in the Bible it says anything against pants on a woman, so we’re okay with God on this one.”

  Sophie stirred her soup as if her life depended on it. “We are not okay with—”

  “We’re living way out here where no one but the coyotes and the cattle see any of us.”

  “And the cowhands,” Sophie reminded him.

  Clay refused to be distracted. “No one’s gonna care if the girls wear a pair of pants. It’s not safe for them to ride sidesaddle. It’s just a plumb fool idea. They’re riding astride, and their skirts are flying all over and. . .”

  Sophie wheeled away from the stove and stormed right up into his face with a steaming, heavy metal ladle. Clay almost took a step back before he found his backbone.

  “You have to be mindful of their skirts, Clay.” She waved the ladle under his nose. “They’re out there with the hands, and I won’t have their skirts flying about!”

  Clay caught the ladle and relieved her of it so he could keep bossing her around without any danger to himself. He tossed it onto the table with a loud clatter and stepped up until her nose was practically pressed against his shirt. She looked up at him. The angry glint in her eye told him she wasn’t going to back down. Since it was up to a man to do all the thinking for a family, especially one that had as many females as this one, Clay examined his idea for flaws. There were none.

  He bent over Sophie until his nose almost pressed against hers. “Either you sew up a pair of pants for each of these girls and do it right quick, or I’ll take ’em into town and buy ’em a pair right in the general store, in front of everybody!”

  Sophie’s eyes flashed so much fire, Clay wouldn’t have been surprised if his hair was set ablaze. He held her gaze even at the risk of his charred skin. Something feral crossed Sophie’s expression, and Clay got ready to catch a fist if she threw one.

  Before she could attack, Mandy piped up, “Remember the schoolmarm with that split skirt she wears sometimes, Ma?”

  Sophie broke the deadlock of their clashing eyes and looked at her eldest daughter.

  Clay grinned. “I remember that skirt. I saw her ride by me just today in town. Why, Mrs. McClellen,”—he chucked Sophie under the chin so she’d look back at him—“are you going to stand there and tell me that Miss Grace Calhoun, Mosqueros’s one and only school teacher, isn’t a proper lady? Why she’s the most stiff-necked, starchy female I’ve ever met. If she wears one of those whatchamacallem skirts, right in the middle of town mind you, I reckon my girls can, too.”

  Sophie jerked her chin out of Clay’s grasp, looked at Mandy, then planted her fists on her hips and turned to her husband with a much more serene expression. “Yes, I hadn’t thoug
ht of Miss Calhoun’s riding skirt. When you showed up with brown broadcloth, I just naturally thought you were expecting men’s pants for the girls, like you wear.”

  That’s exactly what Clay had been expecting, and he hadn’t once thought of Miss Calhoun until Mandy mentioned it, but since he was winning the fight, he decided to let Sophie think whatever she wanted.

  Mandy, from behind them, said, “Pa brought us yellow calico, remember? It was mine first, but we all wore it as we grew into it.”

  Clay wanted to snap at Mandy, which he knew wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her fault her first pa had been so much nicer than her second pa. He focused his temper where it would do some good—at his stubborn wife. “Next time I give an order, Sophie, I expect it to be obeyed. We’re not having a debate every time I decide the way of things. That’s not how a marriage works!”

  “How do you know how a marriage works?” Sophie asked tartly.

  “I just do. The man’s in charge, just like God intended. And that it does say in the Bible.” Clay tried to hold on to his mad. It stung a little that Mandy had needed to jump in and convince Sophie to make the pants. But he was getting his way, and he could always go back to town for more cloth and a bunch of stupid ribbon, so he started to cheer up some.

  “You’ve never been married before,” Sophie pointed out. “I know a far sight more about marriage than you do.”

  “Yes, I know. My perfect brother.” Suddenly it was easy to be mad again. He was sick of hearing about Saint Cliff. “Cliff, the world’s bravest man. Cliff, the nicest pa who ever lived. Cliff, the best cattleman. Cliff, the world’s best—”

  “Who in the world ever told you Cliff was the world’s best cattleman?” Sophie asked incredulously. “The man barely knew the horns from the hooves, and he didn’t know how to dodge either one.”

  “He didn’t know. . .” Clay stopped, dumbfounded. “But. . .he built this place. All these buildings. . .that herd. . .the old C BAR animals are healthier than. . .”

  “Adam built the buildings,” Sophie said. “For that matter, Adam picked out our cattle, bought our horses, and hired our hands.”