Montana Rose (9 page)

“My clothes from yesterday are still dirty. I’ll wash them up today and wear them tomorrow. You can mend these then.”

She smiled timidly, as if she was out of practice. “I’ll wash your clothes, Red.”

“Thanks, Cass. If you have time.” Red tried to think of the possible disasters involved in swishing pants around in water.

She’d smiled bigger, and he couldn’t think of a thing that could go wrong.

She turned to the fireplace, her charred skirt swaying. Cracking eggs into a pan, she hummed as she worked.

She was his wife. She was the most beautiful woman Red had ever seen. She was feeding him and sewing for him and doing his laundry and she’d just asked him to take his clothes off. Red decided if she wanted to kill him, he’d just sit back and thank God for every second of his life until he died.

And just in case there was a chance he wasn’t going to die, he’d make sure she forgot all about his asking her to help outside and stayed strictly in the house.

Cassie spent every minute of every day outside helping.

She was determined to learn everything as fast as she could. When Red didn’t offer to show her what to do, she struggled to figure things out herself. She’d never leave a gate open again. She stayed out of reach of the terrifying mama pig. But she watched, and she did her best to make sense of the mysterious business of ranching.

The first evening as Red came in for dinner, Cassie met him at the door and pointed to the little building built with slender saplings. “Look at how many chickens came back. You were right that they’d come home.” The chickens had wandered in a few at a time all day. Cassie had been careful not to go near them while they moseyed along, scratching for food.

Red pulled his hat off the peg after supper. “I’ll wander the woods some and see if I can find any roosting.” Red was complimentary about the beef steak she’d cooked over the open fire and didn’t complain a bit when he went out around sunset, leaving her alone.

She carefully stayed outside, on watch for his return. She guarded the closed gate to the coop so she could open it for him. He came walking in from the wooded area behind their home with his hands full of chickens. The chickens hung down at his sides. As he drew near her, they all started flapping their wings and squawking violently. Cassie used every ounce of her courage to stay on guard.

He made a lot of trips that evening, working long after dark until he’d gathered quite a few more.

“We got a lot of them back, didn’t we?” She carefully closed the inner gate before she opened the outer one.

Red passed through the gate and locked it for her with a smile. “About half.”

“Already?” That seemed like a good start to her.

“A great start,” he agreed.

They walked side by side into their cave house, and Cassie marveled that Red had never once let his temper loose on her.

She gathered the eggs the next morning with Red right at her side the whole time. She enjoyed his company. “I only got four, Red.” She waited, afraid he’d be angry. This was all her fault.

“They laid them in the woods this once. We’ll get more tomorrow. It’s no great loss, just a day’s gathering.”

She stepped close to him, the four eggs clutched in her hands. “It’ll never happen again. I promise.”

Red stayed close to the house all day. He said he didn’t need to check his herd of cattle too often. Cassie accepted that because Griff, explaining to her that they foraged for food and needed little handling, hadn’t checked his often either. Sometimes not for weeks at a time.

When he did go out riding, he made her promise faithfully to stay inside.

Red’s house was so small and easy to keep tidy, the time hung heavy on her hands if she stayed inside.

One day, when he came back from checking the herd, she was sitting at the kitchen table fidgeting.

As if he read her mind, he asked, “Would you like to explore the cave off the bedroom?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve wondered about it, but I didn’t want to go in without permission.”

Red looked at her a little oddly, and then he shrugged. “Let’s go.”

“There are dead ends down this way.” Red held her hand as they passed through the dark opening in the back bedroom. When the ground was especially uneven, he’d stay close to her side in the narrow passage, with one hand resting on her shoulder. “This part here is really steep. If being so big with the baby makes you feel off balance at all, you’d better not cross this section alone.”

“I’ll never step foot in here without you. I promise.” Cassie thought the tunnel was spooky but found she enjoyed the little thrill of fear she got from walking through it. The tunnel descended quite a ways over its length, and it opened into the rocks right near the creek where Red took Buck and Rosie to water.

Red showed her a deeper spot in the creek where he took baths. The water was bitterly cold and Cassie preferred to warm a basin in the kitchen. But Red promised that if she wanted to bathe, he’d walk her through the tunnel and leave her in privacy to brave the chill.

“See this crack, down low here?” Red knelt and passed his hand into the crevice. “Feel how cold it is. It must have water in the back of it, same as our cooler. We could store cold things in here if the cooler didn’t have enough room.”

Cassie shivered with cold and excitement to know the little details about Red’s cave. She’d have liked to explore some more but didn’t want to impose on Red’s time.

She wasn’t much help around the farmyard, because Red politely but steadfastly refused to give her a chance with milking. She chafed with the memory of Red saying she’d have to help. She knew that’s what he wanted and she was determined to abide by his wishes. He no longer urged her to help outside, but she knew he was just being kind. Whenever she did start a chore, Red would jump in and do it for her. She thought it was sweet of him, but she was determined to learn. She tried her hand at milking a few times when Red had gone off to ride herd and nearly got her head kicked off. But she could tell Rosie just kicked out of cantankerousness. There wasn’t any real meanness in it. By the end of the week she still couldn’t get milk out of Rosie, but she felt like the little cow liked her.

Most of the chickens were back. Red had quit hunting for them at night. The mama sow had ... well, Harriet still wanted her dead. And Cassie decided she wanted to learn to ride Buck.

She hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell Red that she’d never been on a horse. With the exception of the terrifying trip to town on her bay to tell Seth and Muriel that Griff had died, and the ride she’d slept through with Red after their wedding, she’d always ridden in carriages. Griff had said it was unseemly for a woman to ride, even sidesaddle.

She was surprised to find out Red had a nervous streak. She didn’t really know him, of course, but he’d seemed like a calm man. She found out he was prone to clumsiness. He’d hurt his ankle in a fall and he’d scared Rosie that first morning. When he offered her help with some job, he’d talk a little too fast and stumble over his words, and he seemed to spend time fixing things around the farm that had seemed fine when she’d been working with them.

She was serving him his noon meal on Saturday when she started to ask about riding the horse. Before she could gather her courage, Red announced they were heading for town as soon as dinner dishes were done.

“Town? Why?” Cassie’s stomach fluttered with excitement. She loved going to town, although she’d gotten so she avoided it whenever possible with Griff. He made her sit quietly in the carriage while he conducted his business. She wasn’t to speak to anyone or even smile or make eye contact. Griff said it was familiar and indecent behavior for a married woman, and Cassie had done her best to please him.

“I’ve got several jobs I do in town on a Saturday afternoon. To raise money and barter for supplies. And I’ve got to preach tomorrow morning at Seth’s. I’ve considered it awhile and I’ve decided we’ll stay in the hotel. Grant has always offered me a room. But sleeping on the ground has suited me. The nights are getting sharp, though, and I think you need a bed.”

“Can I help with your jobs, Red?” Cassie began cleaning up after the noon meal, hurrying so Red wouldn’t have to wait when he was ready to go.

“Most of it is heavy work. That’s why they hire me.” Red carried his own plate to the sink.

Cassie was still amazed when he did woman’s work.

“You could spend the afternoon with Muriel if you want,” Red suggested.

“Why do you do all that work, Red? You have everything you need here. You grow your own food and you seem to have a fair-sized herd of cattle. Why do you do all those chores in town?”

Red began drying the dishes Cassie washed. He was silent as he considered her question. Cassie realized that the way he talked to her, not as if she was stupid but as if the questions she asked were interesting, was the thing she liked best about her new husband. She also liked that he never yelled and the way he savored every bite of the food she made. It was amazing to her that he’d complimented her on the food. She’d never thought a man would bother with such a thing. Why, she even found his nervousness endearing.

Now, he stood there helping her and thought about her question as if the answer were important. Which meant the question was important and somehow that made Cassie important. It was wonderful.

“When I first moved here, I had nothing. I got out here a year before they opened this area for settlers because I reasoned that this would be next. I scouted until I found this place, the creek, the grasslands, the mountain valleys that could feed so many cattle but would be worthless without the creek. I’d even found this cave and had the beginnings of my home built. I was working odd jobs around Divide to earn enough money to buy a few cattle. I staked out a few good water holes and bought them up nice and legal as soon as I could scrape together the money. I bought ten head of cattle from a herd passing from Montana to the rail yards in Kansas City. I had the cows and the land, but I still needed money.”

Red kept wiping until the few dishes were done, then poured them both another cup of coffee and settled at the table. “I had my eye on the forty acres next to me which had never been claimed, so I worked like crazy, afraid someone would beat me to it. As soon as I got the money together, I bought it.”

Cassie sat down across from him.

“Doing odd jobs in town turned into bartering my labor at nearly every store where I did business. I almost never pay cash for anything, and if I get ahead, they pay me or they keep an account open for me. Like at the general store last week, I was able to have Griff ’s bills taken off what I had in my account, and they traded the value of your dress. So that bill is all settled. Quite a few of them are.”

“You are paying all of Griff ’s bills with your labor?” Cassie sipped carefully at the burning hot brew.

“Sure. Labor is how you get money. How else do you think I could do it? If I paid cash—I do have some money in the bank these days—that money is all labor, too. It’s the same.”

“But ... then why didn’t Griff work for them when he owed so much?” Cassie’s voice faded away. She knew why. Griff would have found working for Seth beneath him. Even now Cassie could feel a twist of embarrassment to picture Red doing all that menial labor for the town shopkeepers.

“Griff had his way. I have mine. I’ve managed to add another 160 acres to my holdings as other settlers gave up. Because I have good water, I control several thousand more acres. I’m buying it all up as fast as I can because I don’t want there to be any question about the title.

“I worked at the lumbermill to pay for the barns and corrals. I traded work with a farmer to get the chickens. I traded one of Rosie’s calves for Harriet. I’m up to nearly five hundred head of cattle now, with last spring’s calf crop. There’s a lot of money to be made in cattle drives back East, but I take a little less and sell my cows in Divide because I don’t want to be gone from my place for the whole summer. I don’t hire a lot of hands like a lot of ranchers do.”

“Five hundred cattle? You built that up from ten cattle in only ... how many years?”

“I’ve been out here four years now, counting the year before I homesteaded. I’ve spent hundreds of hours hunting the hills for cows that have gone maverick. I’ve bought cattle cheap that weren’t ready for market from settlers who were folding up. I’ve sold off the steers only once. I had a few three-year-olds ready to sell last spring, but I’ve held on to all the mama cows so they could build the herd. It’s a lot of work to build something from nothing, but God gave us a bountiful world. He put gold under the ground in California and He put gold in the ground here in the form of rich soil and plentiful grass and water.”

“I’d be proud to help you in town if you needed me to, Red. I’d like to be part of what you’re building.”

“We’ll see. Like I said, a lot of it’s hard labor and heavy lifting. But I’ll think on it.”

“Didn’t you say you haul groceries from Seth’s to Libby’s Diner? I could carry that back and forth, just take a lot less each trip than you do. Please, Red, you’ve been so good about letting me help. Oh, I want to say again how sorry I am about knocking you out of the hayloft in the barn earlier. I was trying to lift the bucket of corn up there so I could pour Harriet’s food into her trough from overhead. She gets so upset whenever she sees me. And now that the colder weather has forced you to move the feeder away from the fence to keep it out of the wind, I can’t reach it to pour in her ears of corn. I thought you saw me raising that bucket up to the loft.”

“I did see you, Cass. I just thought you looked like you didn’t have a very good foothold. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. It’s all my fault. I was just afraid if I said your name to warn you I was there, you might be startled and fall. That straw can be slippery. I guess I proved that by slipping on it.” Red smiled.

“Thank heavens you landed on the haystack. You could have really been hurt.”

Red’s cheeks got pink and his jaw tightened, and she thought it was sweet he was embarrassed at his clumsiness. His sweetness reminded her of the way he snuggled up to her every night, even though they were careful to fall asleep with a respectable space between them. This morning she felt him rubbing his chin on top of her head when he was still asleep. It had almost felt like his mouth instead of his chin, but despite his assurances that a woman expecting a baby wasn’t unclean, she could tell he didn’t want to kiss her.

She remembered that awkward kiss the first night they’d been together. She was the one who had kissed him. He’d never followed with a kiss of his own, so she knew he didn’t like kissing. But she liked to pretend he kissed her while she slept.

“The haystack was lucky all right.” Red finished his coffee in one last, long gulp. “Let’s not feed Harriet that way again. I’d be glad to do that chore. She’s a cantankerous old monster.”

“I suppose the haymow wasn’t a good idea. But I’m sure to find a way I can keep feeding her.”

“Yes, well, yes ... you’re sure to find a way. Let me wash these two last cups.”