Dawn Comes Early

by Margaret Brownley

  Chapter 7

  Brandon scooped a pitchfork of straw and tossed it into the wheelbarrow with one easy move. He had mucked out all thirty-five horse stalls in less than two hours. She greeted him with a smile and fell into his arms. He smelled like the sun and rain all rolled into one . . .

  Horse dung! That’s what she smelled like. It was in her nose and hair and even her mouth. It seeped into her pores like water in a hole, along with the horsey smell of soggy hay and stinky urine.

  Her body still sore from yesterday’s horrid ride, her muscles ached as she swung the last pitchfork of soiled hay into the wheelbarrow. Her skin still felt prickly from the cactus needles. Though the burning had all but disappeared, her embarrassment at having to bend over naked in front of Miss Walker remained.

  The relatively tame horseback rides she’d endured at college were nothing compared to the kind of riding expected on the ranch. Certainly she’d never been on a horse as large or fast as that gelding, Decker. Ruckus said it was old and slow. A racehorse should be that slow!

  She collapsed against the wooden side of the stable. Two days felt like two years.

  As usual, whenever she stopped working Ruckus appeared as if able to see through the walls that divided the stalls. He glanced around and pulled out his pocket watch. “Forty-six minutes,” he announced in his gravelly voice.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, although at the moment she was too hot to care. It had been one mishap after another. Why hadn’t Ruckus told her to remove the horse before cleaning the stall? And how was she supposed to know to turn the wheelbarrow in the direction you wanted to go before filling it?

  “God created the world in only seven days. That was good,” he said, and not even his drawl could hide the sarcasm. “At the rate you’re going you won’t have the rest of the stalls mucked out until next month sometime.”

  “The rest? You mean I have to clean them all?”

  Hat tilted over his forehead, he scratched the back of his neck. “Yep,” he said cheerfully. “All thirty-four of them.”

  Luke Adams hunted through his scrap pile. The waist-high mound was made up mostly of discarded horseshoes, old nails, worn-out gun barrels, and other scraps of metal. Railroads had lowered the cost of transporting iron in recent years, but he enjoyed the challenge of twisting and turning old iron into something new.

  Every door latch, windmill rod—even Doc Masterson’s scalpels—had once been forged exclusively in his shop, first by his uncle and then by him.

  Uncle Sam was fond of saying that the blacksmith was the heart and soul of the community. He and the town’s former preacher had some lively disagreements over that one.

  Things had changed in recent years and not necessarily for the better. Everything from kitchen utensils to farm tools could now be ordered through Montgomery Ward’s catalog. The quality wasn’t as good, but the novelty of ordering through a catalog and waiting for its arrival took precedence over workmanship. It was this lack of craft that had turned Adams Blacksmithing into little more than a fix-it shop. He no longer made tools; he repaired them.

  Finding a piece of metal he wanted, he returned to his workbench.

  Homer let out a bark, tail wagging. He put his nose to the crack beneath the door and sniffed.

  “What is it, boy?” Luke asked. “Do we have company?”

  Just then his two aunts walked in. Aunt Bessie stopped to pet Homer, whose entire rear end followed his tail in greeting.

  “How is my nephew treating you?” she said in an unnaturally high voice reserved for babies, animals, and anyone she deemed hard of hearing.

  She straightened and glanced around. She was a hefty woman with birdlike legs and arms. Her bow-shaped mouth pursed thoughtfully upon a stack of three chins, her features drawing together in a knowing frown.

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “Running an errand,” Luke said. He hated lying, but if he told her that his brother was up to his old tricks it would only worry her.

  Aunt Bessie’s eyes sharpened as if she picked up some signal he gave off without knowing. “Fighting again, eh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She wagged her finger. “The trouble with you two is you don’t talk to each other.”

  “We talk,” Luke muttered, “but the moment he hears the word work he runs the other way.”

  Aunt Bessie heaved her ample bosom and stared at him with haughty rebuke. “There’s nothing wrong with your brother that a good wife won’t fix.”

  Luke clamped his jaw tight. According to his aunt, a wife was the cure-all for everything from gout to heart failure.

  Sensing she was gearing up to deliver one of her oft-repeated lectures on brotherly love and family obligations, he quickly changed the subject.

  “So what brings you two to town?” Despite his aunts’ obsession with finding him a wife, he was glad to see them.

  “You tell him.” Aunt Lula-Belle nudged her older sister. “It was your idea.”

  The shorter of the two, she was as thin as Aunt Bessie was wide, her snowy hair wound in tight springy curls. Her red frilly hat sat atop her head like a cherry on a mound of whipped cream.

  “Oh, all right,” Aunt Bessie said, speaking in her normal throaty voice that made him suspect she still smoked cheroots on occasion even though she had promised to stop.

  Her habit of putting her nose where it didn’t belong would try a saint, and Luke was anything but one. She meant well, of course, even though she did delve a little too deeply into his personal affairs. They both did, though Aunt Lula-Belle was more of an accomplice than an instigator.

  Aunt Bessie cleared her throat. “Remember the woman we met on the day that Cactus Joe tried to rob the mercantile?” she asked.

  Luke grimaced at the memory. He hadn’t known his aunts were in town during the attempted holdup until two days later. It was bad enough that they interfered in his life, but he still shuddered to think they tried to take on an outlaw.

  “The day my hat was ruined,” Aunt Lula-Belle added with a woeful sigh.

  Aunt Bessie rolled her eyes. “Would you stop complaining about your hat? Losing it was the best thing that happened to you since Murphy gave up playing the fiddle.”

  Aunt Bessie turned her attention back to Luke. “I’m talking about the woman you saved.”

  That wasn’t exactly accurate, but Luke let it slip by. Instead, he leaned against his workbench, arms crossed. “What about her?”

  Was she still in town? It had been nearly two weeks. That meant she had lasted longer than any of the others. That was a surprise. A big surprise.

  Aunt Bessie’s hand fluttered to her chest. “You won’t believe this, but she took the trouble to find out our names and wrote a lovely note inquiring as to our well-being. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her?”

  “Yes, it was.” He still remembered how she looked sitting on this very workbench, all soft and pretty and more than anything, vulnerable. Of course she seemed more scared than vulnerable when they reached the ranch house, though she did her best to hide it. Not that he blamed her. Facing Cactus Joe and Miss Walker on the same day was enough to scare anyone.

  “And so we were thinking”—she glanced at Aunt Lula-Belle—“that maybe we should get to know her better. Perhaps invite her to supper. And of course we think you should be there too. I’m sure she would love to see you again.”

  So that was the reason for their visit. He should have known they were up to their usual matchmaking tricks. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

  Aunt Bessie feigned a wounded look. “Why not?”

  “We have nothing in common. We don’t even speak the same language,” he said.

  Aunt Bessie’s mouth turned down in disappointment. “I don’t remember her being foreign.” She looked to her sister for confirmation. “Do you suppose she had someone write the note she sent us?”

  Aunt Lula-Belle looked as perplexed as her sister
. “She didn’t look foreign either.”

  “Yes, but we only saw her for a moment before Cactus Joe dragged her outside,” Aunt Bessie said.

  “She’s not a foreigner,” Luke said. Last he heard Boston wasn’t a foreign country. “She’s one of those book-learning women who talks over your head.”

  He was a plain and simple man and he didn’t need no ten-dollar words to say what he had to say. Nor did he go around naming things after Greek philosophers.

  “Like Louise?” Aunt Bessie asked, her voice edged with dislike.

  “No, not like her,” he said gruffly. Louise had run off to Chicago to attend one of those fancy schools. It hurt like crazy when she wrote to tell him she was betrothed to a professor. He cared for Louise, had wanted to marry her. Miss Tenney was little more than a stranger. Not the same thing at all.

  Regretting his harshly spoken words, he leaned over and pecked Aunt Bessie on her crinkly cheek. He would always be grateful to her for taking care of him and his brother just as she promised her dying sister she would. She and Uncle Sam treated him and Michael like their own. Apparently, in his aunt’s mind at least, finding wives for them was part of her responsibility to her deceased sister, and she had no intention of resting until she had fulfilled that obligation.

  “I’ve got to get to work.” He hated to rush them out the door, but orders were backed up and since Michael had taken off again, he was on his own. He really did need to hire an assistant. “See you Sunday.”

  Each Sunday after church he had dinner with his two aunts and uncles. “Maybe I’ll ask Miss Chase to join us,” he added, hoping that would please them.

  Aunt Bessie’s smile did not reach her eyes. “That would be wonderful, dear,” she said, sounding more distracted than happy at the prospect of seeing him with the schoolmaster’s daughter.

  He watched them go with a fond sigh. He supposed listening to Miss Chase rattle on incessantly, as she tended to do, was a small price to pay to appease his two meddling aunts.

  Chapter 8

  “Shoot at your own peril,” the ruffian yelled. “Curses on you!” Brandon yelled back. Bang, bang, bang!

  Ruckus was a slave driver. That was the only way to describe him. Every day he greeted Kate with that mournful face of his.

  “You’re still here, eh?” he asked, as if he’d expected her to sneak away in the dead of night.

  That morning, after his usual greeting, he made her saddle up. “Today we’re riding the range. Since you haven’t fallen off your horse for three days, it’s time you did some real ridin’.”

  She greeted this news with both jubilation and dismay. Her legs were so sore she’d barely made it down the stairs that morning. Her arms throbbed and her tailbone ached. Even her bruises had bruises. Already her hands were calloused, the nails broken to the quick.

  The thought of getting on her horse filled her with dread. On the other hand, Ruckus wasn’t big on praise. Letting her ride out on the range was about as close to a compliment as she was likely to get from him, and she intended to prove herself worthy—if it killed her.

  She filled her lungs with crisp air and mounted, grimacing against the pain that spread from her inner thighs all the way down to her ankles.

  With grim determination she pressed her legs against the sides of her horse and followed Ruckus out of the corral. Stretch, Moose, and Mexican Pete waited a short distance away. None of the three looked happy to see her, Moose least of all.

  “Why do we have to take her?” he asked, his lip turned up. “All she does is slow us down and make a mess of things.”

  Kate gritted her teeth. She hated the way they talked about her as if she weren’t there.

  “I’m only doin’ what the boss lady says,” Ruckus said. “Now quit your yappin’ and move it.”

  Moose cast a frown in her direction, pulled his hat as low as his ears would allow, and rode off.

  Kate patted her horse. “Come on, Decker. Let’s show them.” She kicked her heels into the horse’s sides and followed the four men who rode in a straight line, one after another.

  Oddly enough, the past intruded less when she was in a saddle. Perhaps it was because nothing about the desert reminded her of Boston and all that had happened there.

  As they rode, Stretch spun a tale of a man who fell in the Grand Canyon wearing rubber boots. “He kept bouncing up and down for days. They finally had to shoot him to keep him from starving to death.”

  This brought guffaws from the other three men and a chuckle from Kate. The stories told by the hoboes outside her childhood window were never as amusing as Stretch’s.

  “You ought to be a writer,” she called to him.

  Stretch glanced over his shoulder. “Nah. Writers are for people who read. My stories are for everyone.”

  “Yeah, but it’s sure a lot easier to close a book than turn off your ears,” Ruckus moaned, and Moose laughed.

  “Stay behind me,” Ruckus ordered when her horse wandered off the tracks made by the others. “We don’t want to disturb no more grass than necessary. And keep your eyes peeled lest you see somethin’ strange.”

  “Like what?” she called. There wasn’t much out here but cactus and sage. What little grass there was didn’t seem worth protecting.

  “Injured or sick cattle,” he said. “Fire. Rustlers. Broken fences.” He pointed to a rabbit hole. “Everything out here lives in a hole. So, Goldilocks, watch where you’re riding.”

  She had grown used to his calling her Goldilocks but still grappled with the rather odd ways westerners expressed themselves. She still felt uncomfortable calling Miss Walker the boss lady, though Ruckus insisted it was a sign of respect.

  “If she was male, we’d call her old man,” he’d said. “That’s what-cha get for bein’ the biggest toad in the pond.”

  She learned that a hat was a lid unless you were from south of the border and then it was a sombrero. A cowboy’s rope was a lariat not a lasso, one being the noun and the other a verb. It was Arizony and New Mex, though the men seemed to have too much respect for Texas to call it anything other than its rightful name.

  It wasn’t just the language of the West that confounded her; the desert that seemed so barren from afar actually teemed with life. Nothing was as it seemed at first glance. Sage that looked purple from a distance was actually gray. Rocks that seemed dull from afar glittered with fool’s gold up close. Wildflowers grew in abundance, and what appeared to be endless flatland was actually filled with rocky gullies, rough gulches, and dry riverbeds.

  The desert was like a painting whose beauty could only be uncovered upon close observation, and a thrill raced through her with each new discovery.

  They rode through wild mesquite and prickly scrub brush. Ruckus had loaned her a pair of chaps to wear, but they were heavy and uncomfortable so she’d left them behind. Now she wished she hadn’t.

  Range mustangs looked up when they rode by, then calmly resumed grazing. “What beautiful animals,” she called to Ruckus.

  Grazing cattle lifted broad white faces, jaws making circular movements as they chewed. Up close the cattle, even with their short legs, looked so much larger than Kate ever imagined.

  However, the animals she found most amazing were prairie dogs, which seemed to be everywhere. They stood up on hind legs and made funny little barking sounds, and she couldn’t help but laugh at their antics.

  Equally amusing were the roadrunners that raced frantically across the desert floor, their legs but a blur beneath their fast-moving bodies.

  Ruckus slapped his rope against his chaps to chase a couple of cattle out of a gulch, his movements deliberate and unrushed. The steers scrambled up the incline with low moos.

  “The quickest way to move a steer is slow,” he explained. “Otherwise it’ll take off in the wrong direction.” After a while he added, “I reckon that’s why the Forever Man sometimes takes his time answerin’ prayers. He wants to make sure we ain’t gonna run off and get lost once we get what we wa
nt.”

  Having no experience with answered prayers, Kate guided her horse around a prairie dog mound and said nothing.

  Ruckus veered off in another direction and stopped to examine the remains of a campfire. He didn’t look happy and Kate wondered if it meant trouble.

  She was so busy watching him she didn’t notice that her horse had strayed away from the trail left by the others. By the time she heard the rattling sound it was too late. Decker reared back on his hind legs, pawing the air with a loud whinny, and Kate hit the ground.

  “Oomph!”

  Ruckus galloped up, pistol in hand, and shot the snake with a single bullet. “You all right?” he asked, looking down from astride his horse.

  “I’m f-fine,” she stammered with a wary glance at the lifeless snake. No doubt she had another batch of fresh bruises, but the rattler could no longer harm her. Moose’s sneer made her face burn with humiliation.

  Ruckus holstered his gun, rested his arms on his pommel, and stared at her.

  She glared back at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He tilted his hat away from his face. “I plumb don’t know why God brought you here, but I reckon if he wanted you to be a rancher he’d have built you so you could stay in a saddle.” He shook his head and blew out his breath. “If you can’t even ride a horse—”

  “I can ride a horse,” she yelled. “I just can’t ride that horse.” Decker was like every other male she ever knew—one moment gentle and the next wild and unpredictable.

  “Fallin’ off of Decker makes as much sense as fallin’ out of a rockin’ chair. If you can’t ride an old nag, how do you expect to ride a cuttin’ horse?”

  She had no idea what a cutting horse was, but it sure didn’t sound too appealing.

  Mexican Pete and Stretch rode back at the sound of gunfire and laughed upon seeing her on the ground.

  Mouth clamped shut in annoyance, she stood and brushed herself off. She looked around for her hat, shuddering anew at the sight of the dead snake. Spotting Miss Walker on her horse a distance away, Kate’s heart sank. No doubt the woman saw her hit the ground. Again.