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He realized she’d misunderstood the motivation behind his question when her cheeks flamed red.
“That’s not what I—”
“I said I would,” she interjected. “It’s going to take another set of hands to make this place what I want, what my father wanted.” She climbed to her feet and threw him a haughty look. “I can afford to pay you when our agreement is up. Just as I promised. And I’ll pay you for every month you stay after that.”
“Then I’m not a mail-order cowboy anymore?” he teased, hoping to defuse her anger.
She scowled at him, but only for another few seconds, before she laughed. “I’ll admit you’ve done well.”
Will approached them carrying a calf, its ankles tied. “I think she’s the last one.”
“Caleb and I’ll finish up,” she said. “Why don’t you go get some drinking water from the creek?”
Nodding, Will transferred the calf into Caleb’s arms and headed off into the brush with one of the buckets.
As Caleb wrestled to keep the calf still, Jennie crouched beside the fire and pulled out the white-hot branding iron. When they were finished, Caleb let the calf go and stood to stretch his sore back. “You’re good with that iron.”
“I should be.” She dropped the branding iron into a nearby bucket. The hot metal sizzled against the water inside. “My mother hated this part of ranching, but I found it fascinating. I was always getting in the way during branding season until my father finally agreed to teach me what to do. I’ve been branding cattle since I was twelve.”
“Where’s your mother now?”
Jennie eyed him with suspicion. “Why do you want to know?”
Caleb shrugged, unsure why the simple question had struck a wrong chord in her. “Just wondered, since she’s not around.”
Frowning, Jennie picked up a cloth and wiped off her knife. “My mother passed away two years before my father did. She wasn’t living with us, though. She went to live with her sister when I was thirteen and Will was six.”
The casualness of her words didn’t disguise the pain Caleb heard behind them. He sat down on the ground and stretched out his legs, thinking of how to redeem himself. He hadn’t meant to dredge up hurtful memories. Sometimes they were best left buried in the past.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared off into the distance, the knife and cloth motionless in her hands. “You didn’t know.”
“That must’ve been tough.”
“The next few years were difficult.” She finished cleaning her knife and set it aside. “This is the point when you tell me it was all for the best. She couldn’t care for us. She was obviously ill in mind and body. We were better off without her.”
“Why would I say that?”
“Because that’s what people said after she left.” Jennie sat on the bare ground and wrapped her arms around her knees like a frightened child. Her vulnerability made Caleb want to put his arm along her stiff shoulders, but he didn’t. She was his boss, after all.
“Maybe that’s why my father stopped going to church,” she said. “He couldn’t stand people’s feigned sympathy.” Her eyes, dark with anguish, met his. “I couldn’t stand it, either.”
The urge to comfort her grew stronger, so he busied himself with opening the saddlebag that held their supper things. He unloaded the jerky, bread and dried fruit that Grandma Jones had packed for them. They’d stay tonight on the open range and return to the ranch tomorrow, once they’d doctored the few cows that needed it.
“I felt like that before,” he finally said.
“What?” She spun her head around and blinked at him as if she’d forgotten his presence.
“There was a time I felt alone and angry, and couldn’t stand it when people tried to sympathize.”
“Why?”
Caleb took a long breath, steeling himself against the rush of memories. “It was right after my fiancée, Liza, died.”
“Your fiancée?” Jennie brought her hand to her mouth. “What happened?”
“She...um...came down this way on the stage to visit her aunt, about a month before our wedding.” He regarded a group of trees in the distance, embarrassed to see the pity he imagined he’d find on Jennie’s face. It had been more than a year since he’d last recounted the story, but the pain felt as fresh as ever as the words spilled from him. “There was...an accident with the stage, and she was killed instantly.”
“I’m so sorry.” She set her hand on his sleeve for a moment. “That must have been devastating.”
“We attended the same church congregation with our families. I tried going a few times after Liza’s death, but I couldn’t take the pity I saw reflected in everyone’s eyes, how they’d stop their whispered conversations when I came close. I quit going to any kind of church for a long time.” He tore his gaze from the landscape back to hers, hoping to make his next point understood. “About a year ago, after making peace with God, I finally realized those people who knew Liza weren’t being cruel or unkind on purpose. The real reason I’d quit going to church back then had nothing to with them, and everything to do with me.”
With a shake of her head, Jennie scrambled to her feet. “You make it sound so easy, but it’s not. You don’t know what they said about my mother, the horrible rumors that they spread. Not that the truth was much better. Do you know she only wrote me once in those five years before we got the telegram about her death? Once.”
Caleb couldn’t fault her entirely for her reaction; he’d been stubborn about giving up his past hurts, too. “What’d your mother say in her letter?”
“I don’t know.” Her cheeks flushed red. “I never read it.” She stalked away from him, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to see what’s keeping Will.”
Breaking off a chunk of bread from the loaf at his side, Caleb opted to appease his growling stomach while he waited for Jennie and Will to return. He ripped off a smaller piece of bread and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t regret telling Jennie about Liza, despite the sadness it still stirred inside him. Rather than pitying him, she’d shown sympathy. At least before she’d gotten mad and left.
Caleb ate another bite of bread as he thought over what Jennie had told him. He was honored she would share as much as she had about her own past, but it concerned him, too. He’d grown comfortable with only having to be responsible for himself, and he didn’t like the idea of having people dependent on him again. It left too much potential for disappointment, and loss. Life was a whole lot simpler on his own.
Chapter Six
Caleb crept through the grayish mist of the nightmare, the voices of the two stage robbers arguing somewhere unseen ahead of him. He felt none of the anticipation he had that fateful day a year and a half ago when he’d discovered the final two members of the gang who’d robbed Liza’s stage were together again. In the dream he felt only dread at what he knew was coming.
He moved toward the cabin and peered through the dirty window. The two men hunkered around the small fire, their weapons neglected on the nearby table. Brandishing his revolvers Caleb slipped silently to the door. He paused, the hatred he felt for these men thrumming as hard as his heartbeat. Lifting his boot, he kicked in the door and rushed inside.
“You’re both under arrest!”
One of the men scrambled up and tossed his chair at Caleb. Caleb leaped out of the way but the split-second distraction allowed the man to lunge through the back window with a horrific crash of glass. Caleb fired a shot, hitting the man in the foot, but he still escaped.
“Get down on the floor,” Caleb barked at the other bandit.
“Blaine,” he screamed as he lowered himself to his knees and put his hands in the air. “You gutless coward, get back here!”
Keeping one gun trained on the man, Caleb stuck the other in his holster and reached for his rope. He approached the bandit. “Don’t worry about your partner. I’ll find him, too.”
The man scowled, then hung his head.
Caleb tossed the loop in his rope over the man’s head and waist, but just as he prepared to tighten it, the bandit leaped up, slashing at the air with a knife. The rope fell to the floor.
“Put the knife down,” Caleb shouted as he jumped back to avoid the blade. “I don’t want to take you in to the sheriff dead.”
“I ain’t going no other way.”
The man rushed him, his arm cocked. Caleb backed up and felt the wall hit his shoulders. He was cornered. He dropped to his knees as the man came at him, hoping to throw the bandit off balance, but Caleb found himself wrestled to the floor.
Caleb tried to work his gun free from the man’s weight, but his arms were quickly growing tired from keeping the knife at bay. The blade inched nearer to his skin.
The bandit grinned, releasing foul breath into Caleb’s sweaty face. “So long, sonny,” he hissed.
Caleb put all his remaining strength into wrenching his arm loose. He angled his gun against the man’s shirt and squeezed the trigger. The bandit’s eyes flew open wide in shock before he crumpled onto Caleb’s chest, dead.
At this point the dream whisked Caleb away from the horror of the cabin to the sheriff’s crowded office.
“It was self-defense, Mr. Johnson,” the sheriff said. “No judge would convict you otherwise.”
“Self-defense,” Caleb repeated, if only to convince himself. “Self-defense.”
* * *
“Caleb? Caleb, wake up.”
Grabbing his guns, Caleb jerked upright in his bedroll. In the moonlight he saw Jennie crouched next to him.
“It’s all right,” she said, drawing her coat tighter around herself. “I think you were having a dream. You kept muttering something.”
“I—I’m sorry to wake you.” He rubbed at his eyes to clear the sleep from them.
Her shoulders rose and fell. “I couldn’t really sleep. I wanted to...” She ducked her head, her next words directed at the dirt. “I wanted to apologize for my...behavior earlier. I don’t like talking about my mother leaving, but it wasn’t right to lash out at you, either.”
“Apology accepted.” He steeled himself against the questions she would likely ask about his dream, but to his relief, she moved back to her makeshift bed. Caleb glanced at Will. The boy snored softly from his cocoon of blankets. At least he hadn’t awakened him. “You going back to sleep?”
Jennie slipped into her bedroll, but she shook her head. “You?”
“Not yet.” He needed to occupy his mind with something else, instead of the haunting images of his nightmare. Sometimes he’d had it twice in the same night. “You mind if I stoke the fire? It sure is chilly.”
“Go ahead.” Wrapping her arms around her blanketed knees, Jennie rested her chin on her legs as Caleb built the fire into a small but steady flame. “So does your family live around here?”
Caleb poked at the fire with a stick. “No. My folks live on a farm up north, in the Salt Lake Valley.”
“What are you doing down here then?”
“Earning money. I want to have my own freight business.”
She shifted closer to the fire. “Weren’t there any jobs up north?”
“There were.” He stared into the dancing flames. “I couldn’t stay up there, though. Not with Liza gone.”
“Were your parents sad to see you go?”
“Sad, yes, but more disappointed.”
He sensed Jennie watching him. “Surely they understood your grief?”
“In a way.” He let his stick grow black at the end and then pulled it out of the heat. “But I don’t think they knew what to do about me. I quit farming the piece of land they’d given me—me and Liza. I quit going to church, like I told you. The memories of her were everywhere, and one day, I couldn’t stand it anymore.” A shadow of that desperation filled him and he clenched his jaw against it. “I went and told them I was leaving. Told them I knew I made a lousy farmer and I wanted to do something else with my life.”
“Do they like the idea of you having your own freight business?”
“I think Pa’s disappointed that I didn’t stick with farming, but really I don’t know if they care what I do as long as I’m working hard at something and helping others. What they really want is for me to come home. But that’s not going to happen. It’s time for me to make my own way.”
Jennie bobbed her head in agreement. “I can relate to that—deciding to make your own way and not wanting others to step in. That’s why I didn’t want you paying for the candy I ruined in the mercantile seven months ago.”
The candy? He studied her, her red hair brighter in the firelight, her brown eyes peering back at him. “You were the woman in the store?”
“I didn’t want to feel beholden to you.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it. But I’d say we’re just about even, since you gave me a job. That was definitely worth the money to pay for the candy. And to see you smile.”
She tucked her chin back down, but not before Caleb caught that same soft smile he’d seen in the store lifting her mouth for a moment.
“What were you doing up in Fillmore?” he asked.
“Meeting with the bank president about our loan.” Her next question came quickly as if she couldn’t change the subject fast enough. “When was the last time you saw your parents?”
“Three years ago, but I try to write every few weeks.”
“It isn’t the same, though, is it?”
“No.” A feeling of loneliness swept over him. He hadn’t realized until he had entered the close-knit circle of Jennie’s family how much he missed his parents and siblings.
“I hope you get that freight business.”
He cleared his throat to rid it of emotion. “Thanks. It’s a lot more exciting than farming. You get to travel, meet new people.”
“Sometimes a life like that isn’t so adventurous.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.” Jennie released her hold around her knees. “I think I’m ready to sleep now. Good night, Caleb.”
She stuck out her hand and Caleb shook it. He liked Jennie’s firm but feminine grip. “Good night, Miss Jones. It was a pleasure talking with you.”
Her cheeks colored, but he guessed it was from facing the fire. “You can call me Jennie.”
“Jennie,” he repeated. He banked the fire and moved back to his own bedroll. Tucking his arms behind his head, he shut his eyes and exhaled a long breath. His nightmare didn’t come again. This time he dreamed of a girl in a green dress with a pretty smile and a pile of candy around her knees.
* * *
After a morning of doctoring the cattle that needed it, Jennie couldn’t stand the smell of smoke and sweat in her hair any longer. She left Caleb and Will napping and walked to the creek to wash her hair, armed with soap, a cup, a blanket and her gun.
She removed her dusty boots and socks and dipped her feet into the water. The cool wetness on her bare toes brought a quick intake of breath, then a sigh of contentment.
When was the last time she’d taken a break in the middle of the week? She had Caleb to thank for that. For a farmer-freighter, he handled the cattle rather well, and she had to admit she was glad to have him around.
She had enjoyed talking with him the night before. Maybe too much. She didn’t need him distracting her from her goal to save the ranch. Which meant she needed to keep their friendship professional—like Nathan’s. But Nathan didn’t cause butterflies in her stomach when he teased her or when he smiled, and she didn’t care one whit what Nathan thought of her appearance.
