Mary Connealy (49 page)

Belle’s contribution to the order was in the way she respected her daughters. She didn’t shout words of caution or advice. She expected her girls to be capable, and they were. Silas could see the proud, confident way the girls rose to their mother’s expectations. And while they were at it, Belle was outworking them all.

Silas pushed himself hard. At first he thought it was to take up the slack for a bunch of womenfolk. But he soon admitted it was to keep from being the slacker of the group.

The second day, at the fire at night, Silas noticed Emma had bound her three middle fingers together with a leather thong cut off her deerskin coat. “What happened to your hand?” He sat on a fallen log with a plate of beans and beef Sarah dished up.

Emma shrugged as she got her food. “Broke my finger.” She scooped up the first bite of beans without further comment.

None of the rest of them spared the broken bone a glance.

Silas felt a spark of annoyance at the unsympathetic group.

Sarah kept stirring the beans. Lindsay was feeding the baby. Belle was still riding herd.

“Let me have a look at it.”

Emma arched a blond brow at him. “Why?”

With a snort of disgust, Silas set his plate aside. “Just do it.”

Emma shrugged and untied her fingers. “I checked to see if the bone was lined up proper before I strapped it down.”

Silas took her hand gently. The girl was right. The middle finger was swollen but straight. Emma was patient, but she acted as if he were just putting off her getting to eat.

The next morning, Lindsay’s horse bucked her off twice, while Silas had his hands full saddling his own bronco. Each time she hit the ground with a dull
thud
and a kicked-up swirl of dust. Then she got to her feet, rounded the contrary beast up, and jumped on his back again before Silas could help.

After the horse kicked its morning kinks out and settled down, Silas noticed a vivid red streak of blood running down the side of her face. He rode over. “Are you okay?”

She was attending to her horse and looked up surprised. Following the direction he was looking, she swiped the back of her leather glove over the cut, smearing blood across the whole side of her face. She glanced down at the bright red on her hand without much interest. “Cuts on the head bleed something fierce,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll be fine.” She rode off without further comment.

Silas had to grind his teeth to keep from telling her to get down and let him doctor the cut.

Belle almost got gored by a longhorn steer that same day. She caught the uncooperative critter diving into the brush and woods that came most of the way up to the trail. She harried him with her nimble cow pony, dodging his flashing heels and wicked horns.

Silas was busy with his own side of the herd, but when he saw Belle tangling with that desert brown monster with the white lightning blaze on his face—the brute had given him trouble since the first day—he spurred his horse to get between Belle and certain death.

He got there just in time to see the steer wheel and charge Belle and her horse. The horse jumped out of the way so quickly it almost unseated Belle, riding with Betsy, but she hung on. The razor-sharp horns slashed within inches of Belle’s left leg.

Silas snagged his rope off his pommel. He whipped out a loop and sent it flying toward the steer’s head. Silas’s horse skidded hard to snap the steer off its feet. Silas hit the ground and had the animal’s legs hog-tied within seconds.

Silas was riding his own buckskin, and that horse was as good a hand as any of the people he’d ever worked with. Every time the steer tried to regain its feet, the buckskin backed fast enough to keep him laid flat.

“I am sick of this old he-grizzly.” Silas took a quick glance at Belle, who still sat on horseback, breathing hard, her expression calm, but Silas thought he saw a tinge of fear and, probably his imagination, just a hint of gratitude.

Silas tied the blazed-face steer’s head down to his foreleg with rapid twists of his pigging string and then released the string hog-tying his legs together. Silas released his lasso from the broad horns and jumped free before the spooky mossy-horn knew what had hit him. Silas stepped back into his saddle.

Hazing the beast back toward the herd with his head strapped down to his foreleg, Silas waited until he was satisfied the steer wasn’t going to attack; then he turned and rode back to Belle. “We’ll leave him like that till he settles in for the night. It won’t hurt him, and it might gentle him some.”

Belle stared after the steer. “I’ve seen that done a time or two, but I’ve never done it.”

“You can’t throw a steer like that.”

Belle looked at him and shrugged. “Sure I can. I run a branding iron every spring, but that’s mostly calves. Still, you can’t run a ranch without busting cattle.”

Silas couldn’t seem to get his mind to twist around the sight of Belle doing something like he’d just done. Cold fear shook him at the thought of Belle wading into that mass of churning hooves and stabbing horns. “I don’t believe it. You’re too small to throw a steer.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Belle dropped the question into the space between them like a drawn six-gun.

Silas’d seen that level, challenging look before out West. A man’s word was everything out here, where thousands of acres or whole herds of cattle might change owners on a handshake. To call a man a liar was to cause his reputation damage that might destroy his ability to make a living and follow him to his grave. Silas knew better than to call anyone a liar. And he hadn’t meant that now, but judging from the golden lightning flashing out of her eyes, Belle didn’t see it that way.

His Western learning kicked in. “No, I apologize for that. I haven’t done much this whole trip but underestimate you, and I’m sorry. I just thought as little as you are …”

“How much do you weigh?” Belle asked through clenched teeth.

Silas shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. A hundred and eighty, or two hundred pounds, I guess.”

“And how much does that steer you just threw weigh?”

“A ton. At least.”

“I’d say more like twenty-three hundred pounds.”

Silas was a good judge of cattle, and he’d say that steer weighed within twenty pounds of Belle’s estimate. “What about it?”

“Throwing cattle isn’t about
weight.
If it was, the few pounds difference in ours wouldn’t matter.”

“It’s more than a few pounds, Belle. You’re a skinny little thing, and I—”

“It’s about leverage and quickness.” Belle cut him off. “And, more than anything, a good cow pony. You know your horse did most of the work there, and mine is just as good. All of my horses are well trained to work cattle. Emma can bust a steer better than I can. Lindsay just as well. This is the second year Sarah has bulldogged calves at branding time.”

Belle rode her horse straight up to Silas’s side. “Don’t
ever
tell me what I can and cannot do.”

Belle’s voice was so cold it sent shivers up Silas’s spine. “I’ll try and watch my mouth, boss. But I’m trying to learn about a new kind of woman here. The two I almost married weren’t a thing like you.”

Belle’s chin lowered, and the anger left her eyes. Silas knew that was the very reason he’d spoken of such foolish things. Belle was a woman after all. She’d forget about whatever was going on inside her head if she could listen to his mistakes.

She didn’t ask, not out loud, but her eyes burned with curiosity.

“The first one was the tough one. I really thought I was set in life. I owned a nice spread in New Mexico. I had a house built, a good herd started, and I had a woman set to marry me. I got caught in the middle of the Lincoln County War. Ever heard of it?”

“I’ve heard a little. Mainly I’ve heard of Billy the Kid.”

“I met him. I wasn’t even involved with that fight. It was between two other bunches of hotheads. But when the bullets started flying, they were none too particular who got caught in the crossfire. My girl thought she saw the future and hitched her wagon to another star. I still thought I’d win her back until the day I came on a group of men on my property. I rode up to order them off.”

Silas could still feel the icy chill running down his spine. “One was Billy the Kid. The way he stared at me…killing-mean eyes.” Silas paused to swallow. He was a coward, no denying it. “I knew it wasn’t a fight I could win. The Kid didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. The law’d broken down, and Billy and his outfit were taking whatever they wanted. The only way to stop him was to kill him, and he was a mighty hard man to kill.”

Silas rubbed the back of his neck and forced himself to admit the truth. “Too hard for me.” Silas looked at the ground between their cow ponies, not wanting to see what was in Belle’s eyes. “They let me ride off.”

He’d seen contempt before because he’d ridden to Millicent’s pa’s ranch and told her he was leaving the country. He’d asked her to come with him.

Contempt. She’d figured out before Silas had that he was a coward.

Millicent had turned Silas down. She’d dealt her cards into another game and she’d made what she saw as the best choice. Later Silas heard the man she’d taken up with had died in the fighting…so she’d backed another loser. He was well rid of her, but it still hurt. It was all part of the shame. The failure.

Belle might as well know the truth. She’d know what Millicent had known. Silas wasn’t a good bet for a woman. “I quit the country. Went home and paid off my hands and fired ’em. I rode out with what supplies I could pack on a string of horses and what cash I could scrape together. I didn’t even try to move my herd. I knew I wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy ’em.”

“Smart man.”

Silas looked up, figuring she was making a joke.

She looked dead serious. Then she smiled. “Did you think I’d say you should have shot it out with Billy the Kid—backed by a pack of his friends? My life has little time for fancy dreams, Silas.

You did the right thing, and you know it. You’ve been drifting ever since? What, two years? Three? That’s when that trouble was brewing, right?”

When she put it like that, walking away from Billy the Kid sounded like an act of wisdom. The next wasn’t so easy. Running from Lulamae. Belle might as well know.

“I started a new spread in the far corner of northwest New Mexico Territory and got run out of there by a woman. Not as exciting as Billy the Kid.”

Belle laughed. “What happened?”

“I got caught kissing her in the stable.”

Belle narrowed her eyes, and the smile faded from her pink lips.

Silas wasn’t above feeling ashamed.

“And when you were caught you refused to do the right thing?”

Silas well remembered Belle had four daughters. This wasn’t a woman who liked seeing young women treated wrong. “She set me up. She grabbed me and kissed me. Her pa was there, handy with his rifle, yelling about my mistreating his daughter before he could even see us, so I knew the two of ’em had it planned. He had friends right behind him, and they took his word against mine. He demanded a wedding. I guess Lulamae was ornery enough that they’d given up finding a husband for her by the regular means.”

Belle shook her head. “Overpowered by a girl, huh? I feel
real
sorry for you.”

“Well, don’t. I’ve learned my lesson. If you haven’t figured it out by now…well, I get that same message right back from you, so you understand. I’m
not
gettin’ tangled up with a female. Never again. I’m drifting now because it suits me. But I like having land I can call my own. I like a nice spread, and I aim to build myself another one of these days.”

“We understand each other then. That…that first morning. Just a stupid, weak moment on my part. I don’t have many.”

Silas remembered that moment. He’d spent far too much time remembering that moment.
Weak
and
stupid
about explained it. And he knew she didn’t have many. That was the honest truth.

“Let’s get back to work.” Belle looked at the cattle spread out in front of them. Almost trail broke, except for a few like that blazed-face steer. “The sun’s moving low in the sky, and there’s good grazing up ahead with plenty of water. I might let the cattle stay put for a day or two so the girls can rest.”

“After only three days on the trail?” It just came blabbing out of his mouth without a thought. He’d like to let the girls rest, too. He could see that Emma had already lost weight. Lindsay had a gaunt, hard look around her eyes, and Sarah had cried when they woke her up this morning, though only until she was fully awake. Then she cut the tears off instantly and went straight to work setting up breakfast for the camp.

Before Belle could cut him off at the knees, he said, “I think they need it. The first few days on the trail are rough. The cattle are almost trail broke, so it won’t be as hard from here on. And we’ve got that mountain pass ahead of us. We’d better rest now, because there’ll be no stopping then.”

When he’d first opened his stupid mouth, Belle had looked like she was ready to bite his head off, and he wanted to save his neck. Then, when he’d changed his tune about stopping, she got that soft, sad look in her eyes. The one that’d made him kiss her that first morning, and he wanted none of that either.