Petticoat Ranch

by Mary Connealy

  Sophie gasped. “Be careful.”

  The pain of pulling the knife out almost buckled his knees, but he ignored it. There were more important things to do.

  “It wasn’t deep. It just caught the skin.” Clay looked at the knife that had hit him. It was razor sharp and thin as a nail. “This is nice. I reckon I’ve always wanted a knife like this.”

  The man stood in front of them, looking side to side like a wild animal hunting a bolt-hole.

  “You’re not going anywhere old man”—Clay aimed his gun straight at the outlaw’s black heart—“except into Mosqueros to talk to the sheriff.”

  “We don’t think that’s such a good idea, Major.” A second man came out of the brush. A third and fourth were just a few paces behind him. All three of them had rifles. All the rifles were pointed at Clay.

  “Percy, we were getting right worried about you.” One of the men stepped in front of the others.

  “Right nice to see you and the boys, Jesse.” A sneer twisted Percy’s face. “Talking to the sheriff is a bad idea. We didn’t come for naught but you McClellen, but we’da needed to see to your wife by and by. So it might as well be now.”

  “Yep.” Jesse glanced at Sophie but looked right back at Clay, as if Sophie wasn’t part of this standoff. “She’s seen us now for sure. We can’t let the little lady walk away.”

  “You may not be the ones walking away,” Sophie said.

  Clay realized that they hadn’t been watching her, and now she had that nasty old shotgun raised and pointed straight at them. Clay felt a surge of pride in his feisty little wife. Then, in the next second, he felt sick. There was no way he and Sophie were going to get through this without getting bloody—either getting shot themselves or shooting someone else. He’d been to war. He knew what it cost a man to kill. He didn’t want to do it again, and he didn’t want Sophie to live with killing on her conscience. But they had to fight, or these prowling wolves would kill both of them and Clay’s unborn child. Then they might turn their murderous eyes on his girls.

  “She’s got a shotgun, Jesse.” Percy watched Sophie now.

  All four men went rigid. Clay knew every one of them had seen the damage a shotgun could do at close range.

  Percy stood between the three men and the McClellens. “There’s two of them and four of us. And that little lady doesn’t have the guts to pull the trigger on that cannon she’s aholdin’.”

  The other men turned their attention back to Clay, which is how he wanted it. He thought with grim amusement that Percy was standing in a direct line of fire between all of them. Clay looked straight at Percy. “Whoever else dies here today, you’re gonna be the first to go.”

  Clay didn’t mean it. He had no intention of wasting a shot on an unarmed man. But Percy seemed to be giving orders, so if he backed down, they might all think twice. That was the only way everyone could come out of this alive.

  “Four agin’ two, and one of ’em a gutless, little female,” Percy said with a cackling laugh. “I’d say that makes you purely outgunned, McClellen.”

  “Guess again, you low-down polecat,” Adam roared from out of the trees. Adam raised his gun and took aim at the unarmed man closest to his Sophie. Fury such as he’d never known cut through his soul.

  He gripped William’s gun until the carved stock cut into his hands. He’d spotted horses and this rifle on a sling on the saddle. He knew he’d found the cowards who had killed his friend.

  He’d taken the gun and slipped through the woods in time to listen to that murderous scum threaten his own sweet Sophie. Adam squeezed slowly on the trigger. Revenge. The time was now. It stood to reason that if the one man was with the lynching party, then they all were. From his vantage point, he could open up on them and take them all.

  Vicious satisfaction burned low in his gut. His finger tightened. His finger trembled on the trigger. He had killed in the war. It was a horrible knowledge to carry around inside a man—the fact that he’d taken another life. Then in his mind’s eye he saw William and Moses and Dinky. Swinging. Lifeless. Someone had to pay for them. These men would go on killing until someone stopped them. He aimed at the unarmed man’s black heart, then he looked at Sophie.

  She stood there, so fearless. His Sophie had always been tougher than any woman should need to be. Adam’s devotion to her offset some of his rage when he thought of his girl witnessing the destruction Adam wanted to rain down on these brutal men.

  And he thought of her call for help. The call God had allowed him to hear. Would God speak like that to a man only to bring him to this place of murder? Because killing the unarmed man would be murder. There was no other word for it.

  Adam’s anger still battled for supremacy, but there was Sophie. And there was God.

  With a sudden jerk of his hand, Adam eased off the trigger. He’d still have his revenge. There would be other chances. But for now he would try and end this standoff without bloodshed.

  His unexpected voice froze the group. “With me there’s three of us. That makes us even, ’cuz you got a man without a gun. And I’ve got an angle on all of you. Every man jack of you is gonna die where he stands if you don’t drop your weapons.” Adam couldn’t keep the cold amusement out of his voice when he added, “And don’t you ever think Sophie don’t have what it takes to pull that trigger.”

  Clay saw Sophie’s head come up. She never took her eyes off the men who had attacked them. Her shotgun never wavered. But Clay knew from the gleam in her eyes that she recognized the voice.

  He looked back at the men who had waylaid them and saw they still weren’t sure. They weren’t ready to back down yet.

  “Make it five to three,” another voice growled from the opposite side of the clearing from the first voice.

  “Luther, is that you?” Clay asked in disbelief.

  “It’s me, boy.” There was a sharp crack of a rifle shell being levered into a chamber. “Let me see some hands in the air. I hain’ta askin’ twice.”

  “Buff?” Clay’s heart lifted. “Buff, you, too?”

  “It’s me, boy.”

  “We had a hankerin’ to see you, so we drifted down Texas way.” Luther sounded closer, and the brush rustled under his approach. “Looks like we picked ourselves a good time.”

  It was too much for the outlaws. Guns dropped to the ground. Clay shoved Percy toward the three men and frisked all of them for hidden guns and knives. He found a few.

  A middle-aged black man, wearing only a pair of tattered trousers, stepped out of the woods. Sophie lay her shotgun aside and turned toward him. “Adam? Adam, I can’t believe it’s you!”

  Sophie took a couple of running steps, then stopped. She turned unsteadily away from Adam. “Clay?” She sounded bewildered.

  “Sophie, what in tarnation are you doing way up here all alone? I told you to stay at the house and rest.” Clay saw Buff and Luther come straggling out of some brush. Clay tipped his head at the men they’d caught. “Watch ’em.”

  “Clay, could we talk about. . .about. . .” Her voice dwindled to nothing.

  He strode toward his disobedient little wife. “Talk about what, Sophie?”

  She went pale as a ghost. “Help me.”

  Clay caught her before she hit the ground. Adam was one step farther away, but he was at Sophie’s side immediately.

  Luther, busy hog-tying Percy, said to Buff, “That’s her. That’s whose been a-callin’ me all this while.”

  “Figured.” Buff finished off one man, bound hand and foot, and started another.

  Clay turned to look over his shoulder, when Percy hollered, “Hey, not so tight!”

  Luther leaned over him and growled, “Now’s not the time to complain, you yellow-bellied, back-shooting, would-be lady killer.”

  Percy quit whimpering in the face of Luther’s venom and sank against the ground.

  Clay knew Buff and Luther had things in hand, so he lowered Sophie gently to the forest floor. He brushed her disheveled hair back off of
her forehead. Adam knelt across from him, studying Sophie.

  Her eyes fluttered open before either of them could speak. “Did I faint again?”

  The fear that had burned Clay when she collapsed turned into a feeling he was way more comfortable with—rage. He roared, “Again? Again! When did you faint before? And what are you doing up here?”

  “Now don’t go. . .” Adam looked at Clay for the first time. “I—I—” He gathered himself. “Mr. Edwards, sir. I thought you were someone else. That is. . .I’m glad to see you. I hope I haven’t overstepped myself by coming home thisaway. I know you said I wasn’t to come back and make a nuisance of myself with Sophie. I’ll just be movin’ on through. Please don’t take me being here out on Sophie or the young ’uns, sir.”

  Sophie rubbed her face. “This isn’t Mr. Edwards, Adam. This is my new husband.”

  Adam looked doubtfully at Sophie. He patted her softly on the head and spoke as if she were a little child, and not a particularly bright child at that. “Why, sure it’s Mr. Edwards. I can see that plain as day.”

  Sophie sat up, and Clay pushed her right back down on her back. The fact that she let him told Clay just how bad she was feeling.

  “This isn’t Cliff,” Sophie said to Adam. “Cliff died a couple of years ago. This is Clay.”

  “You reckon this is why God’s been tellin’ me and Buff to come see you, Clay?” Luther had a sling on his rifle. He hung it across his back while he worked on tying up their captives. “Just to wrangle with these hombres?”

  Clay looked over his shoulder. “God told you to come here?”

  Luther nodded.

  “Iffen this is what God wanted us to do, can we go back now?” Buff asked Luther.

  “Not sure. Better keep listenin’ fer a while.”

  “Yer hearin’ voices in yer head,” Percy jeered. “That makes ya crazy.”

  Jesse laughed, then grunted.

  Clay looked around to see what caused the grunt, but all he saw was Buff busily binding him.

  “Shut his mouth whilst you’re at it, Buff,” Luther said.

  Buff pulled Jesse’s neckerchief up and tucked it in.

  “Adam, what happened to you?” Sophie asked.

  Clay turned back at the alarm in Sophie’s voice. She was reaching for Adam, and that’s when Clay saw Adam had been shot—not too long ago.

  Adam caught her hand and stopped her from touching his wound. “I’m fine, Sophie girl. And just so you know, God’s been nagging at me, too. Something fierce. I’ve heard you purt near every time you’ve called out.”

  “Called out?” Sophie shook her head. “What did I call out?”

  “Help me,” Luther and Adam said at exactly the same second.

  Clay looked at Sophie, and they both said, “God?”

  Luther and Adam stared at each other for a long moment.

  “The last time, it was Clay. Heard it plain as day, and we were miles off.” Luther pushed his furred cap back on his bushy, shoulder-length head of hair and sniffed. “Guess God let me hear both of ’em whilst Adam only heard one.”

  Adam shrugged, stopped looking at Luther, and turned back to Sophie. Clay had a little dig of annoyance at the adoring way Sophie looked at Adam. She’d come close to looking at him like that a few times.

  “About Cliff, Sophie, I don’t know why you fell down just now, maybe from the upset or something. But I can see that Cliff is here beside you.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Adam. Cliff died.”

  Adam looked worried and started inspecting Sophie’s head for bumps.

  “I married Clay just a short time ago.” Sophie patted Adam’s workscarred hands.

  “It’s not such a short a time!” Clay caught Sophie’s hands so she’d quit fawning over Adam. “I’ve had time to buy a ranch and corral a herd. Time to find out I’m a hand at running a ranch. Time to start a baby growing in you.”

  “A baby?” Adam smiled, but then his smile faded. “I’m right sure it’ll be a boy this time, Mr. Edwards. It’s just bound to be.”

  Clay started to tell Adam again that he wasn’t Cliff, but then he remembered what he’d started to ask Sophie. “What are you doing up here? I told you to stay in the house. You could have been shot! If Adam, Buff, and Luther hadn’t come along, you could have been killed.”

  Clay was so furious that he wanted to throttle her, except killing her would have to wait till later. Right now he was too busy keeping her alive.

  “A young ’un, eh?” Luther sounded proud, like he’d arranged it himself. “Congrats, boy.”

  Buff chuckled, and Clay glared at them over his shoulder. “We don’t have time to talk about the baby right now.”

  He stood with Sophie cradled in his arms. “Buff, Luther, you got ’em under control?”

  There was no answer, which Clay deserved. If Buff and Luther were having trouble, they would have mentioned it. It gave him a jolt to realize just how chatty he’d gotten in the last few weeks, living with a house full of women. He looked over his shoulder and saw that they’d not only bound and gagged the varmints, they’d hunted up their horses. Luther grunted from the effort of hoisting Jesse facedown across a saddle.

  “Let’s go down to the house,” Clay said to Adam.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Edwards, sir.”

  “I’m not Cliff. Sophie isn’t lying to you.”

  “Why, I know as sure as I’m standing here that Sophie would never lie, Mr. Edwards.” Adam followed Clay to his horse, as if he wanted to be handy to catch Sophie when Clay dropped her. “But I’m thinking she might be a bit overset from all this commotion, and it mixed up her thinking. Don’t be mad at her for forgetting you. There’s no call to be angry with her. I’m sure everything will come back to her real soon.”

  Clay hung on to his patience. This was the second time Adam had referred to Cliff ’s temper and that Cliff aimed that temper at his wife and children often enough that Adam was trying to placate him.

  “I’ll explain everything to you once we get home.” Clay’s Appaloosa stood with its reins dangling. Clay shifted Sophie around so he could catch the horse. “For right now we need to get my disobedient, little wife home so she can rest.”

  S I X T E E N

  Sophie needed to get home all right. But she had no intention of resting or doing anything else Clay told her to do.

  And she didn’t like him calling her disobedient either!

  Before she could tell him so, Clay asked, “Where’d you tie up Hector?”

  Sophie got very busy straightening her riding skirt. Clay leaned down so he was in her line of vision. “Do you mean to tell me you climbed all this way on foot? You’re miles from the cabin!” Clay looked like he wanted to explode.

  Sophie sighed and braced herself.

  Instead of hollering at her, he shook his head with disgust and set her up on his Appaloosa. He was very gentle, considering his clenched jaw and the bright red color of his face.

  She would have explained to him that she couldn’t rightly go to bed when she had company, but Clay turned his attention to getting Adam a ride.

  “I’ll be glad to walk down this ol’ hill, Mr. Edwards,” Adam said.

  Clay swung up behind Sophie and pulled her onto his lap. He growled at Adam, “Call me Clay.”

  Adam took a worried look at Sophie, where she lay in her husband’s arms. “Clay it is.”

  Sophie saw that Buff and Luther had led four horses out of the woods after they’d tied up the outlaws. Clay’s two friends had full beards and were dressed in fur and leather. They looked like every mountain man Sophie had ever heard tell of. They’d been throwing a man over each horse, until they noticed Adam was on foot.

  Buff unceremoniously tossed Jesse and Percy on the same blue roan and jerked his thumb at the sorrel. “Ride this ’un.”

  Adam took a couple of steps toward the now unoccupied horse then stopped. “Let’s toss ’em both on the sorrel, and I’ll ride the roan.”

  “What
difference does it make which horse you ride, Adam?” Sophie asked.

  “The difference is the roan is mine.” Adam strode toward his horse.

  For the first time, in the fading light of evening, Sophie got a look at Adam from behind. “What happened to your back?”

  Adam grabbed both men by the scruff of the neck, dragged them off the horse, and let them fall to the ground with a little more force than was necessary. He didn’t answer Sophie’s question. He just led the sorrel over beside the men.

  Adam didn’t ask for help. Sophie couldn’t remember him ever asking for help. But Sophie could see that Adam was taxing the limits of his strength. Clay’s friends stepped in and loaded the men before Adam could get to them.

  Adam went back to the roan, and the horse whickered softly at him, clearly greeting an old friend. Adam petted the horse’s neck. “Missed ya, Blue.”

  Then Adam turned to look between Clay and his two friends. “There’s a C-shaped scar under this horse’s belly, and there’s a ROCKING M brand on the other side of her. . .the side I haven’t seen yet. She’s my horse. That brand is registered to me.”

  None of the men bothered to check out the scar on the horse’s belly, but Sophie could see the ROCKING M from where she was sitting. She could also see the look in Adam’s eyes. Cold—bitter cold—and furious.

  Adam had endured Cliff ’s constant criticism until the ranch was well started. Then, when he knew Sophie and the girls had a solid roof over their heads and land and cattle to support them, Adam had left because Cliff had taken his sullen dislike of Adam out on Sophie and the girls. Adam, who was so politely confused over Clay looking like Cliff, was a man of patience and kindness and wisdom. The cold in his eyes didn’t go with any of it.

  Buff tugged on the edges of his deerskin coat. “Stolen?”

  “Stolen by the men who lynched my three partners, shot me in the back, and laid a whip on me for the first time in my life.”

  Sophie gasped.

  “Not too many black men could make that claim. But I could.” Adam ran his hand over the gunshot in his side. “Till I ran afoul of this gang.”

  Clay’s arms tightened around Sophie, or she might’ve jumped off the horse and gone to Adam right then. Clay whispered to her, “Leave it for now.”