Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 21

Glen's arms being wrapped around the pretty woman in front of him were no sort of comfort. Catherine no doubt thought that she was guarded, that she kept herself closed, but he'd never had much trouble reading people. It was why poker seemed a natural choice of second career while he sipped on what the army had given him for pension.

More than that, he was good at predicting what people would do, a product of twenty-odd years scouting out in the western territories for the Army. Mostly working alone, it had given him plenty of time-and plenty of motivation-to learn how to guess where the chips fell before he got caught out.

He had known before he'd walked into the courtroom that he had her dead to rights. She probably had expected him to use it like some sort of bludgeon. Bill seemed to have planted some very strange thoughts in her head about how men acted, but the truth was that he had hoped to discover that there was some sort of legal recourse she could be offered. Some sort of legal way out. But instead-nothing.

It was past lunch when they finally pulled back up in front of the ranch home front. Garth and Brady were leaning on the paddock fence and talking, and it burned him more than it should have.

"What, you two couldn't find anything to do? Place is in such great shape that you got time to sit around and dilly-dally around?"

He could already see gaps in the fence, a ways down, and posts that were hanging wrong. Things he could have fixed himself, given an afternoon. Things he needed to fix.

Brady turned, his broadly handsome face looking as if to say something, but then he thought better of it. He turned to his partner and jerked his head. "The man's right. Come on..."

Garth stood still. "What were we supposed to be doin', boss? This here's the woman's place, ain't our place to go fussin' with it if she says not to. Did she give her go-ahead? Cause earlier you were sayin' to leave her things alone."

Glen didn't like being talked back to one bit, but the younger man had a point. The thought was cut off by Catherine's voice, cold and hard.

"This is Mr. Riley's property, as I've just been informed by the county Judge. It's his place to do with whatever he likes." Catherine ignored Glen and his help's hands offering to help her down and slipped off the saddle on her own, rubbing the soreness out of her thighs before heading inside.

The twins just had Ada's clothes, and she had never had as much as Catherine would have liked. Well, that would make it easier to pack up. The only thing that stopped her was the thought of the steers outside.

Her father could afford to pay the loss, but it represented years of work to get back to the point where she could keep a herd this size. Even if she wasn't treating them like she should, even if she didn't have the men to deal with them, it had meant more to her than it should that she'd been able to raise up a thousand head and have them as fat as they were getting. But they were still underweight.

She could sell them anyway, of course. Catherine heard the screen door open and shut, heard the main door close along with it. She folded up the dress in her hands and put it into her suitcase and picked up another before she heard the boots moving through the house and decided she couldn't ignore him forever. No matter how much she wanted to.

She came out the door to find Glen down the short hall, squatted down in a way that made his body look good. Every position seemed to, and that was the thing she liked the least about him.

She had been married once to a man who looked good, a man who liked to gamble, and she'd learned from that mistake. The similarities repeated themselves in her head, whispering that she should be careful, not get too involved with this man outside the childrens' room, but she already knew better.

He spoke softly. "Y'all doin' alright?"

She heard Ada's answer that they were doing "just fine, thank you." Catherine smiled to hear the 'thank you' at the end.

He held his hand out through the door, just the right height for a child. "My name's Glen. I'm gonna be hanging around a little while. Your ma's letting me stay out in the barn. I thought we should get acquainted, long as we're gonna be neighbors."

"My name's Ada. This's Cole, and Grace."

"Nice to meet you, Ada. Say-how old are you?" There was a pause, and Catherine could just imagine Ada counting off seven fingers. "Wow, seven? Gee, Ada, you know-"

He seemed to see Catherine standing there, all of a sudden, and stood back up. Back into the adult world. He wiped his hands on his blue jeans and stepped clear of the door as Catherine walked up. She couldn't help smiling when she saw Ada standing.

"Mama!" Ada reached up at her. "Pick me up!"

She was getting big enough, now, that Catherine couldn't help thinking the days where she could pick Ada up and hold her were numbered. That just seemed to make it feel that much more important that she do it now. Catherine reached down and picked her daughter up, planting a soft kiss against her head. Seeing her children grounded her again, set Catherine's head straight.

There was no reason to rush off for her father's house. It would only upset the children, confuse them, and then she'd have to have the talk she had been putting off far, far too long.

Catherine remembered all of a sudden that Glen was beside her, that he'd likely come in for a reason. Whatever it was, he wasn't there when she turned back around.

Five.

Glen guided the calves out of the pen by himself, letting the Garth and Brady do the real work of keeping Catherine's herd in. She hadn't asked him to deal with them, so he wouldn't. It wasn't pride or even spite-they were hers, and it was her right to do what she wanted with them. But if Brady were to be believed, then they'd do better out of the pen.

He counted them as they went through. Fifty-three head. They'd cost him $7 a head, though if word were to be believed they could have been gotten cheaper if he'd gone south. Almost four-hundred dollars gone, and he wouldn't have anything to show for it for almost a year.

He needed to learn how to manage them, or he would never manage to survive out here. If he raised them well, he might be able to bring back a herd large enough to think of himself as a real rancher.

He should've had a rifle, but he had barely a hundred dollars left. Fifty on a Spencer and cartridges would have left him unable to feed himself. Even the next few months would be close.

Glen felt the itch to find a table. If he were careful and lucky about who he sat down with, he could double that stake by the end of the week. Once he put the hundred back into his pocket and started playing more freely, that money could turn into a good month's pay.

The numbers for cattle ranching made sense. There wasn't much risk, and he didn't have to worry about the feast-or-famine pace that gambling stuck him with. He had told himself this was what he wanted.

Settle down. Raise a family. Make a life for himself that wasn't built around wheeling around the territories like a tumbleweed. But there had been years of relative independence, only reporting in every few weeks in the Army and then living on his ability to take people's money from them.

So instead of a rifle, he just had the Colt, and he let his hand rest on it. He looked out across the cattle and admired them. He'd given up that old life. There wasn't time to be thinking about going back now that things were tight. He had already expected that, and there was nothing going to change it. Might as well hang on tight and see it through.

Catherine looked at the money, stacked neatly on the table in front of her. Two hundred, thirty-seven dollars. It would get the four of them through to Autumn, and by then she had hopes that she might get the steers up to weight. That infusion of cash would be enough to get her into another ranch if it came to it.

But she didn't have that kind of time. She tried to do the math on how much she would make if she sold the steers as they were, underweight. Before the courtroom that morning, she hadn't seen the bill of sale.

Now that she was thinking about numbers, she realized something that hadn't seemed so important before. The ranch was worth better than four hundred dollars an acre, and it only held a hundred. Forty thousand dollars was so far outside her reach that it bordered on absurd.

Somehow, her ex-husband had gotten himself nearly fifteen thousand dollars into debt, sitting at a single table in a single night. She closed her eyes and searched for the grace to forget about him. She hadn't found it in her to forgive him, not after what he'd done. She doubted she ever would.

There was no way she could pay what he was owed for the deed, not without sending word back to her father. He'd insist that she come right back, and then he would give her an earful about what a d.a.m.ned fool she had been to ever trust that no-good Billy Howell. He had the money, but he wouldn't send it.

He was right about Billy, she had to admit, but that didn't mean that she was ready to hear him tell her about it. And she wasn't ready to give up. She had made it all this time on her own strength, and now that she was so close, she wasn't going to give up at the last moment.

Glen smiled at her as he pa.s.sed by the window, flashing a handsome set of teeth that only made Catherine more frustrated. Of all the times for this to happen, why did it have to be now?

She felt a pull on her skirt, and reached down to pick up Cole, and they watched the three men outside closing up the range. She would need to go out tomorrow and do another head count. Things had been mostly quiet at night, with the men here, but that didn't mean they weren't still stealing her cows. They were just doing it more cautiously.

Glen dusted himself off as he came in, suddenly more conscious of his clothes. Catherine hadn't moved from where he had seen her through the window, until she turned around and handed him another one of her delicious cups of coffee.

"Mr. Riley, we need to talk."

He drink a sip, enjoying the taste and the rush of mental clarity that accompanied it. d.a.m.n fine cup of coffee. "What about?"

Catherine took a seat at the table, a piece of paper set out where she'd been scratching out her math. She started to read it over and Glen waited a moment for her to tell him what was going on, but when she didn't he pressed her on it again. She seemed to look up as if she had already forgotten he was sitting there.

"I have a proposal for you, Mr. Riley."

"Alright."

"I've managed to save a few dollars here and there, over the past few years. As you can see, I've got a bit of a larger herd than you have, as well. So I figured, well, I need the land more than you."

She waited a moment to let it sink in, and he sat back in the chair and waited for the other shoe to drop. Kept his face impa.s.sive, the way he'd learned to do playing. If she made a good offer, he couldn't look too impressed. If she didn't, he couldn't look too frustrated. Controlling the conversation meant first controlling himself.

"And?"

"What would you say to my buying the land from you? I could put down a few hundred dollars now, to show I'm serious. Once the cattle are ready for butchering, I can get you the rest."

"What's 'the rest?' "

"According to your bill of sale, you paid fifteen thousand dollars for the land."

"That's true, if you want to count it that way."

"Well, I'd be willing to make you whole again, Mr. Riley. It'll be tight, but we can manage."

Glen took a breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. The hot sun must have baked his brain, because for a second he thought about it. Then he came back to his senses. "I'm sorry, ma'am. But I'm not selling it."

Anger flashed across her face, an instant before she managed to smooth herself back over. "Why's that?"

Because it wasn't enough, he thought. And because, if they somehow had enough to pay him off, then it would leave her children to starve. He wasn't about to invite that.

"I know that you've got your own problems, and I'm not trying to feed you a story. But I can't go back to that life." He considered it for a moment before correcting himself. "Won't go back."

Six.

Catherine glowered. That stubborn son of a b.i.t.c.h. Did he think this was fun for her? That she was enjoying having someone in her house, sleeping in her barn? That she wanted this to happen, and that was why she'd married Billy?

It definitely wasn't because she'd thought he would turn things around. It wasn't that he had promised her that things would be different once they got out of Baltimore. She had just done all of this so that now, she could be right here, getting squeezed by some out-of-towner who suddenly shows up with a piece of paper.

Catherine took in a deep breath, looked back up at his perfect face, the face that just made him all that much easier to hate, but then she realized she was overreacting.

She didn't know any more about him than he knew about her, and if he were telling the truth, he wasn't like Billy much at all. Billy could never wait to get back to the table, could never wait to throw down a big risk on nothing, and yet he'd never had the skill to back it up, either.

Mr. Riley, first of all, had made several thousand dollars in a night, which was more than her husband had ever done, and second of all, here he was, insisting that he wouldn't go back to gambling. No matter what she said.

He nodded to her, seeing how angry she was. She'd need time to cool off, but she needed to realize he wasn't going anywhere either. Glen stepped out the door and walked around to the boys. Garth seemed to notice his temper and decided to stay away. It was the right decision, Glen thought.

Climbing up into the loft was easy. It was falling asleep was gonna be hard. He'd take the cows back out for a few days. That ought to give Catherine time to be by herself, to figure things out. And when he came back, then they'd be able to talk the next morning. Easy as that.

He brought the cows out under the supervision of Garth and Brady, and when they didn't correct him on anything he a.s.sumed he'd gotten it about right. Fifty three head. Same as the day before, and the same as it would be tomorrow.

It was important to check, though. He'd heard those magic words: Cattle rustlers. He hadn't seen any of it in evidence, not yet, but if the woman said it was a problem, then he believed her.

So it would be daily headcounts. How he'd do it out on the range, he didn't know. But he knew how he'd keep watch over the cattle easy enough, and he had always had good eyes, even in the dark. So he'd just have to trust himself, and trust that he wasn't making a big mistake.

They went out around. The property was large, and though he couldn't say for certain where it ended, he was pretty certain he was still inside it when he brought the calves to a stop. He got off the horse this time. It wasn't just a day-trip, he would be out here the better part of three days. By the time he got back, Brady and Grant would be long gone.

Without much to do their last day, he guessed they would likely be packing up already. Glen wondered for a moment if Catherine would be more amenable to their help if they did the asking, and then dismissed it. Whatever they did was what they did, and whatever she asked them to do was her own business, as well, for that matter. It wasn't his place to b.u.t.t in, and it wasn't his place to worry about.

When he got back, he'd see what had been done with his last few hours' worth of pay. If it was nothing, well, he'd at least managed to figure out more-or-less what he was doing on a daily basis.

With that, looking out over the cows, mostly standing still, and his mind turned to Catherine. She seemed insistent on trying to get him off the land. She must have gotten it into her head that he intended to have her kicked right off. How could he, though?

After what had happened to her, he was tempted to walk away and find some other way to make his life work. There weren't no sense in frustrating either of them. But he couldn't afford that. If he'd given himself a buffer, he wouldn't have been able to make this opportunity work for him.

Glen didn't like to play aggressive. He preferred playing safe. It was easy to get away with a modest amount of money from a table if you were cautious. It was much, much easier to lose it again if you got greedy. But sometimes all-in was the only way to go.

That was the feeling he'd gotten when the deed pa.s.sed into his hands, and Bill Howell had said the magic words: 'cattle ranch.'

Catherine let Ada sit in her lap while the twins were napping. She had a book open in front of her, one she'd already read twice, but she wasn't reading it this time. Ada turned the pages at odd intervals, which would have been frustrating if Catherine had been trying to read them.

Instead she couldn't get her mind off the problem that she was facing. Glen hadn't come home last night, which was a blessing by itself. She'd thought, one night away from his slender hips, broad shoulders, and manly face, and maybe she'd be able to sleep through it.

But the visions, the imagining, had come all the same. As if he'd been right there in the room with her, never mind in the barn. Worse, though, was the knowledge that with a whim she could be turned out of her house, and there wasn't a whole lot she could do about it.

Legally, she was a squatter. On his property. If he turned her out, she didn't have much in the way of place to keep her cows. She was holding a hot potato. Once the cows were big enough to sell, then she'd be fine, but until then she would have to worry about what happened if suddenly she had to find another place for them.

There had to be some way to pin him down, to make him let her stay. She was a smart woman. She'd had a good schooling back home, and there was no reason to figure that she wouldn't be able to figure it out.

After all, she had solved bigger problems. She had figured out what to do with the broken pieces of her life after Billy left. She'd paid off the ma.s.sive debts that winter had incurred. She'd even started thinking about becoming a real ranch again, getting a few hands to help around the place.

She could offer him rent, but with the money she had... it wasn't going to be a pleasant prospect. Twenty dollars a month wouldn't be the worst in the world, and she could pay through winter up-front.

It wasn't as if there was too little s.p.a.ce for them. With the herd he'd brought in, he could practically pasture the cows still in the paddock, if she took hers and left. But still, that was money she could use. Money she needed. Ada started coughing in her lap, hard. She wasn't stopping.

Catherine pulled her close, put a hand on her forehead. It wasn't too hot. She had to hope whatever she had, it couldn't get too much worse. Catherine would do what she had to do for her daughter, but now was not the time to be getting sick.

Seven.

Glen counted the cattle. Two nights sleeping out on the open range and he was ready to get back to the house. It was only an hour or two out, but even still it would be nice to be able to throw down a few thick slices of bacon on the griddle. He let out a deep breath.

Fifty three. He was sure. Good. None had wandered off, and none had been hustled off. After the time away he was beginning to wonder. She couldn't be conducting a head count, from what he could see. How would she have? How would she know if a couple steers were missing?

The sun was already low in the sky, so his bacon would have to wait. Seeing Catherine in the window, watching him or his calves, meant he could at least go let her know he was back in the area. She deserved that much, after all.