Grace be a Lady (Love & War in Johnson County Book 1) (4 page)

Grace
didn’t say much on the ride back to the Diamond R. She was afraid she might
make a slip. Raney, however, didn’t seem to notice. Quite a conversationalist,
she kept up a steady stream of chatter as the wagon crossed treeless, rolling
plains, and headed toward the mountains. As the air cooled and the scent of
pines wafted down to meet them, Grace learned that Raney had been a widow for
three years now, only kept about a hundred head of cattle, owned fifteen
hundred acres of lush, fertile land along the Crazy Woman, which was apparently
a river, and all the fool men in the valley had run off to some place called
Chena River to look for gold. Raney stole a suspicious side-ways glance at
Grace with that news, as if Chena River should mean something to her.

It
didn’t.

“So,
what about you?” Raney asked. “You’re awful young to be out here alone. Where’re
your folks?”

The
chilly November breeze prompted Grace to pull her jacket tighter, in an effort
to buy a moment. “I lost my parents in a flood in Pennsylvania.”

“Aw,
that’s too bad. Were you young?”

“Eight.
I went to live with my grandparents in Reading until –” Grace paused.
Until,
at eighteen, they sent me off to school to become a teacher—my life-long dream.
She couldn’t tell Raney her grandparents had mortgaged the farm to pay for
her schooling. Because then she’d have to tell her how a handsome, high-rolling
Irish gang leader had flattered her senseless with diamonds, furs, and
champagne. What she
could
tell her was a lie that stuck in Grace’s craw.
“I lived with my grandparents until I left to find work. Always wanted to see
the West.”

“Sounds
like you’re an only child?”

“Uhumm,”
Grace mumbled. But something made her re-think that. “No, I mean I have a
sister.” The lies were piling up on each other and Grace felt ill. Why had she
said that? She
was
an only child.

“Where’s
she at?”

Closer
than you think.
“We parted company in Misery. She couldn’t
find work here.” Even when she told the truth, she was telling a lie.

“Well,
it’s pretty adventurous of you to come out here on your own. That takes sand.”
Raney’s gaze drifted off to the distant mountains. “Those are the people that
make it out here. Folks with sand.”

Suddenly,
Grace was curious about her new employer, about the things she wasn’t telling
her. “Ma’am, fifteen hundred acres is a lot of room for a hundred head of
cattle. I don’t mean to pry . . .”

Raney
chuckled. “The Diamond R used to run three thousand head, and we had sixteen
thousand acres. When my husband died, the men wouldn’t work for a woman.” She
paused, as if recalling the details, then shrugged as if they didn’t matter. “No
men, no ranch. Started selling it off. I’ve had some drifters over the years
help out, but nobody permanent. It’s a size now I can manage on my own if I
have to.”

“Do
you mind me asking what happened to your husband?”

“Jake
was out checking fence one day and somebody shot him.”

Grace
gasped. “I’m sorry.”

Raney
swallowed, tightened her lips. “Almost three years now.”

“When
you say somebody . . .?”

“Never
found out who or why.”

Grace
couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live with that kind of mystery. She
thought it would drive her crazy. She wanted to ask what Raney had done about
it. Had she pushed the sheriff to investigate? Had she hired a private
investigator? But the set of the older woman’s jaw suggested it wasn’t
something she wished to discuss further.

Raney
snatched up on the reins, jerking the wagon to a stop. She pointed to a distant
hill. “That’s Bill Lewis’s place.” A dark pillar of smoke drifted on the air.
As they watched, it burned blacker and billowed faster. Raney slapped the reins
across the horses’ rumps and yelled, “Come on, git up!” Skillfully, she turned
the wagon in the middle of the road, pointed them all back the way they had
just come and then whipped the reins again with a thunderous crack. “Yahhh!”
she bellowed and the team took off like they’d been shot out of a cannon. Grace
grabbed hold of the seat and gaped in horror at Raney.

“Yahhh!”
the woman yelled again, putting the horses into a thunderous gallop. A gust of
wind nearly snatched the hat of Grace’s head. Heart in her throat, she shoved it
back down and held it in place, as if she was capping a barrel of snakes.

Grace
saw a road coming up on the right and braced herself, somehow sure that was the
track Raney was going to take. The woman whipped the horses hard and steered
them down the dusty little road at full speed. The wagon tipped, slid sideways,
and then whipped back around behind the team. Grace held her breath and clung
desperately to the seat, wondering if she’d come all this way just to die in a
wagon accident.

Wide
open and hell-bent-for-leather, Raney pushed the team to an astounding speed.
The horses stretched and pounded, their hooves moving so fast they were a blur.
Grace had never experienced such speed, and it terrified her, but the
desperation on her employer’s face told her not to question.

They
crested a hill and saw a cabin engulfed in flames. Six men had formed two lines
from the water trough to the fire. Working at a fever pitch, the desperate
brigade dipped buckets in the water, passed them on, tossed the water, and passed
the buckets back, over and over. Raney ran the wagon right up to the trough,
skidded the horses to a stop, and leaped from the wagon.

“You,”
she pointed at Grace as she ran around the front of the horses, “get down and
work this pump.”

Grace
jumped to the ground, grabbed the handle, and started pumping as if
she
was on fire. Raney swooped up a bucket sitting on the ground, and dipped it in
the water at the head of the trough. Deftly, she exchanged her bucket with a
young man, who handed off his empty vessel, and then she dipped again. Another
man, older, graying, his eyes wild and round, grabbed the bucket from the man
in his line. They exchanged containers and he spun on his heels toward the
fire, all in a blur of motion. The frenzied ballet went on and on and on as the
inferno roared and belched hellfire. The two bucket brigades dipped and threw
water with a furious beauty. Grace pumped till her arms burned like the fire
was in her veins, and then she pumped some more. The inferno hissed and
screamed. The heat blazed.

And
then the roof collapsed in a cacophony of growling flames and snapping timbers.

Shielding
their faces from the heat, the makeshift firemen backed away, lowered their
buckets, and stared hopelessly at a lost cause. Exhausted, Grace leaned on the
pump for support. Tears threatened but she fought them back. She sensed someone
here had lost more than a house.

Raney
walked over to the man who had been fighting with real fear in his eyes, a
short, stocky, middle-aged man, now covered in soot and dirt. She placed her
hand on his shoulder. The look that passed between them broke Grace’s heart.
The man shook his head and swallowed. Raney sagged.

After
a long silence, one of the young men slogged back to the trough and dipped his
bucket. His movements were slow, as though his arms weighed a thousand pounds.
He acknowledged Grace with a somber nod then attacked the fire once more. Raney
and the others joined in as well, but with the same weary speed.

Grace
pumped the handle twice more and, as water flowed, stepped over and took a
bucket, dipped it, and had it ready for the hand-off. The group worked with no
sense of urgency. Grace knew a funeral procession when she saw one.

After
nearly two hours of dousing the doorway and entrance with more water, the young
man at the head of the line dropped his bucket in the trough and left it to
sink. “I think I can get in there.” His solemn tone betrayed his hopelessness.
“I’ll go take a gander.”

Raney
and the others stopped their brigade and waited.

He
trudged up the steps and Grace flinched against the thud his boots made on the
three small steps, like the sound of the Grim Reaper entering a bedroom at
midnight. He skirted a flaming beam, turned sideways to navigate some hot
debris, and then paused. The man next to Raney stiffened, clenched and
unclenched his fists. Raney clutched his shoulders, as if she might need to
stop him from collapsing.

The
man in the house knelt and disappeared behind a glowing section of the roof.
Cords of grief knotted in Grace’s stomach. She kept thinking how horrible it
would be to die that way, with the hellish heat and choking smoke. She heard the
tall, lanky cowboy beside her swallow, as if steeling himself against the
discovery.

Momentarily,
the man reappeared and worked his way out of the house. He walked down the
steps, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Bill,” his voice broke. “She’s by the
stove.”

Bill
tried valiantly to hold his composure, but the instant tears plowed through the
soot on his cheeks, he gave in to the grief. The cowboys, all in mournful
unity, removed their hats. Bill put his head in his hands and wailed. Raney
locked him in a hug. For a few seconds he accepted it, then something in him
snapped. He broke away with a heart-crushing sob, and rushed towards the house.

The
young man blocked his path, latching on to his arm with a vice-like grip.
“Bill, I can’t let you see her this way.” Raney stepped up and tried to put Bill
back in that bear hug as the two men scuffled. The younger man shook him. “No!”
And then he shook him harder. “Bill, get hold of yourself. You don’t want to
see her like that!”

Bill
stopped. Tears ran down Grace’s cheeks as she watched the man accept the news.
Thankfully, his eyes glazed over with shock.

The
young man waited a second more to make sure Bill was calm, and then addressed
Grace. “Do you have a quilt . . . or something . . .
in the wagon?”

Something
to wrap her in?

“There’s
one under the seat,” Raney said gently.

Grace
climbed into the wagon and rifled through the storage box. A moment later she
pulled out a moth-eaten quilt, jumped down, and walked it over to the young
man.

He
clutched it, but didn’t take it from her. “I’ll need help. You up to it, boy?”

Grace
swallowed. “I . . .” she cleared her throat, lowered her voice.
“I . . .” But the words didn’t want to work their way past the
lump in her throat, so she nodded.

Raney
gently rotated Bill away and led him over to the barn. Grace and the young man
entered the house. She followed carefully behind him, thinking it a morbid
coincidence that the man leading her through these dying flames was dressed all
in black. He slid past a beam and told her over his shoulder, “Don’t touch
anything. It’s all still hot.”

Again,
she merely nodded and followed him to the stove, trying to ignore the
blistering heat and the smell of burnt meat. She didn’t make a sound when she saw
the charred body lying face-down on the floor, but every fiber of her being
wanted to weep. The teacher in her helped her quickly assess the situation in a
more clinical fashion. She assumed the woman had passed out before the flames
got to her, as she was lying on the floor with both hands splayed out beside
her, not curled up like a frightened child attempting to get away from the
smoke and flames. Grace was somewhat comforted knowing the woman hadn’t
suffered too much.

One
leg was bent; her clothes and hair had burnt completely off; and her entire
body was black and blistered. Marks and abrasions across her back revealed that
the man had moved a beam off her. Viewing these pitiful remains, Grace thought
he had been right to keep the woman’s husband or father out. “Who was she?”

For
an instant, a wrinkle creased his brow, and Grace realized she had sounded like
a girl. He shrugged, though, and said softly, “Maggie, his wife.” He knelt down
to one knee, raising a hand to his mouth, as if pondering how in the world to
go about covering her, and shook his head. “God, if the independents did this,
there will be hell to pay.”

Grace
helped the man gently wrap Maggie in the quilt then slowed her pace as he
carried her outside. For some reason, she hung back, as if she shouldn’t be
there when Bill saw his wife. She nearly slapped her hands over her ears when
she heard his mournful cry, the most heart-wrenching sound she had ever heard
in her life. She thought of the times she had sobbed so desperately after a
beating from Bull. She’d only
thought
that was pain. What Bill was
suffering—that was real pain.

Muffled
voices reached her ears. Realizing they were discussing how next to proceed,
she quietly wandered out onto the charred remnants of the porch. Maggie lay in
the back of the wagon; the barbed wire had been removed to make room for her.
Bill rested one hand on his wife’s remains and wept quietly beside her. A few
feet away, Raney and the young man were leaning into each other, talking in
hushed tones. The other cowboys stood quietly, faces downcast, hats in their
hands.

Raney
looked up and saw Grace. She clutched the man’s shoulder then strode over to
her. “I need to go with Bill into town. We need to take Maggie . . .”
she trailed off, shaking her head, as if resisting the grief. “I’m going to let
Nick here take you on to the ranch. He and his brothers help out some times, so
he can show you the routine. Feed up, and then get some rest. I’ll be home in
the morning.”

Nick
gathered up two saddled horses that had been wandering around the fringes of the
disaster. Moving slowly, he heaved himself onto the back of a black-and-white
pinto, and led a brawny sorrel over to Grace, the cowboys parting as he came through.
“We can get Bill’s horse back to him tomorrow.”

She
nodded and hoisted herself up.

With
a light kick, Nick urged his horse over to the wagon. “Bill, don’t worry about
anything here. We’ll take care of things for you.” He glanced off toward one of
the cowboys, the skinny one Grace had heard swallow. “Toomey, if you need
anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The
man responded with a small, quick nod.

Bill
made no sign he’d heard any of this. Nick didn’t push it. Grace came up beside
him and wanted to say something comforting to the man, but words were so
worthless at a time like this. Instead, she reached down and touched his
shoulder. For some reason, the action released a wave of sobbing from him.
Hurting for him, Grace slowly removed her hand. The anguish in Raney’s face,
the crease in Nick’s brow, the grief in the bowed shoulders of his cowboys, it
all touched Grace. If she knew nothing else about Bill, she knew he was a
decent man and at least he wouldn’t go through this alone.

Grace
and Nick rode in silence for the first few miles. Her heart and mind revisited
Bill’s grief-stricken eyes over and over.
What will he do without her?
she
wondered.

With
each thud of the horses’ hooves, though, her own problems inched slowly back to
her. She couldn’t help Bill. She could, however, help herself and her son.
Unbidden, the memory of Hardy laughing hysterically over the little rocking
horse he got last Christmas filled her mind and squeezed her heart. As she
recalled, Bull hadn’t even bothered to come home Christmas Day, after a night
of gambling and womanizing.

Grace
had spent most of the day with Hardy, watching him enjoy all the gifts from
Santa. Then he had napped, the house had fallen silent, and she’d rambled about
the Victorian mansion like a ghost, cold, empty, unseen, and trapped.

She
considered the mountains surrounding her, the craggy earth rising to the
cloudless blue sky, the horses casting long shadows on this wide open plain.
Grace was weary and weak with hunger, but actually felt more alive than she had
in years. The open spaces here filled her with a sense of freedom.

However,
a glance at her clothes, the only ones she had, blackened with soot and grime,
reminded her of her predicament. She could do this,
had
to do this. She
just needed a few months’ wages, and then she could get Hardy. Maybe they’d
come back here or some other place in the West, where there was so much room to
breathe.

She
sensed the man stealing glimpses at her, and wondered what emotions were
dancing across her face. She
risked
a glance
at him and thought maybe that angular nose and strong jaw were familiar
somehow. He was tall, solidly built, wore his dark hair short, and sat in the
saddle as if he’d been born to it.

He
caught her staring, and she feigned sudden fascination with her horse’s mane.

“Raney
has a bad habit of taking in strays,” he said, watching her intently. “Most of
’em don’t work out too well. She really needs good help. Are you up to it?”

Grace
fiddled with the horse’s mane. “I’ll work hard and give her everything I’ve got.”
At least for a little while . . .

Nick
twitched the reins back and forth, as if mulling that over. “What are you, all
of about fifteen?”

“Sixteen,”
Grace said, trying to recall the details she’d made up for this charade. She
didn’t feel like thinking at the moment. She was exhausted and so hungry. In
fact, her head felt a little light. It seemed to be bobbing a bit too much with
the horse’s motion, but she wasn’t sure. “Why are you dressed all in black?”

Nick
touched his lapel. “I was seeing a gal over in Rawlins. Best clothes I’ve got,
short of a tux.” He frowned at her. “But I was making a point. I’ve shot
coyotes that were bigger than you. Work hard for Raney, or I’ll slow roast you
like a side of beef.”

Grace
nodded and closed her eyes
. Beef. A lovely idea.
She could clearly see a
table before her, covered in white linen, topped with a mouth-watering array of
food.
I’ll have the filet mignon, with a side of broccoli swimming in cheese
sauce . . .

“
Hey!”
Nick yelled.

She
frowned at his rude interruption. She hadn’t invited him to dinner . . 
.