Now and Forever (13 page)

As he jerked it over his head, he stared at the last remaining irritant in the house. “You’re in the middle of a family quarrel and you are not welcome.”

Hiram fidgeted with his glasses and mustache, clearly not wanting to leave. “That’s Mr. Stewbold to you, and I did have some questions.”

“You’ve seen that we’ve built a cabin of a proper size. We’re living here. No further inspection is required. Any other questions you have, I’ll answer when I get to town to change the paper work. We don’t need you to bring it out here.”

Unable to hold up under Tucker’s cold glare, Stewbold sniffed. “I won’t forget such rudeness, Mr. Tucker.”

Tucker remembered that feeling of distrust from when Stewbold had first come in. Despite the man’s weak appearance, Tucker wondered what kind of trouble he could cause. The land agent scurried out of the house, mounted up, and rode away just as Cudgel came back, leading his roan.

Following Stewbold to the door on his crutches, Tucker asked, “How much do you like your pa, Shannon?”

“I don’t like him that much.” Shannon patted him on the back. “But I think you’ll feel bad later if you beat up an old man.”

Tucker stared down at his clothes and frowned. “I’ve never worn cotton clothes in my life. It’s been buckskin from my earliest memory, and this outfit feels strange and flimsy. I reckon I’ll feel bad if somehow I tear my brand-new clothes the same day I finally got dressed. Especially if you sew my next outfit as slow as you sewed this one.”

“Whatever reason you choose for not giving him a whipping, this is how Pa is, always on about something, always insulting. I reckon you could try to teach him some manners, but I doubt you can change him. I’ve learned to avoid him as much as I can, ignore him when I can’t avoid him, and endure what can’t be ignored.”

“What did he mean about you fighting in the war?”

Shannon looked at him, her eyes level, as if she’d rather do anything but answer his question. “I spent two years dressed like a man, fighting for the Union Army.”

Tucker arched a brow at her. “You really did that?”

“Yep.”

“Your pa have a part in that decision, too?”

“Oh yes.” Shannon sighed quietly and stared at the floor.

“That where you learned medicine?”

Shannon nodded as she looked up to face her pa.

Tucker caught her arm. “Is that where the nightmares come from?”

Since that first nightmare in the cavern, Shannon had
awakened them both with her dreams, always screaming, always talking about a saw. Once she was awake, though, she would say no more.

“I reckon.”

Cudgel came storming back into the cabin, which stopped Tucker’s questions.

Tucker would probably feel bad later, but he almost hoped the old fool started calling him a coward again. But if he punched him, or cracked him over the head with his crutch, it wouldn’t be for anyone but his Shannon.

P
a, who told you I got married?” Shannon tried to stop whatever trouble was coming. “Is that why you came over here, just to kick up a fuss about that? Because if you did, then just quit before you start. I’m married, and the land is Tucker’s now. All your yelling won’t change a thing.”

Shannon was mighty used to Pa. Usually she didn’t bother standing up to him, seeing it as a waste of her time. But she wasn’t overly afraid of him, either. He was all noise. She thought of the nasty things he’d said to Tucker, a brave man, stronger and more decent than Pa would ever be.

Her temper—which she didn’t really know she had—flared.

“My husband will do as he sees fit with his land.” She jabbed a finger in her pa’s chest, her voice rising with each word. “And if you say one more word about him not fighting in that ugly war, or if you dare to call my husband a coward, I will move off this land today.”

She leaned closer until she was eyeball to eyeball with him. “I will go straight to town.” Now she was just plain shouting. “I will abandon my claim and make sure Gage Coulter is there to buy it on the spot. Do I make myself clear?”

Pa took a step back.

Shannon felt a little dizzy. She’d never made her pa move backward before, not once in her life. She felt strong hands on her waist and knew Tucker was holding her in place. Maybe he thought she’d feel bad later if she went so far as to hurt Pa, an old man.

Shannon went on, “Now, did you have anything to say to me today beyond airing your nasty opinion of my perfectly reasonable decision as an adult woman to marry?”

Pa opened and closed his mouth but not a sound came out. His brow lowered. She’d startled him, though now his anger returned. His eyes shifted from her to where Tucker stood.

“This is Wilde land, Tucker. You’re in the family now. You’re one of us.”

“I reckon Shannon and me are family. Not so sure about you, Cudgel.” Tucker slid his arm around Shannon’s waist in a way she found extremely pleasant.

Pa made a purely rude noise, spun around, and left. They were still standing there watching as he rode off.

Tucker leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I didn’t punch him, but that don’t mean I want to invite him to Sunday dinner.”

Shannon swung the door shut, turned around, laughed, and flung her arms around her husband’s neck. He almost
fell over backward, and she caught him just in time. “You need to take your pants off,” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am.” His arms tightened around her waist.

“I mean, I need to do a better job of sewing them.” Shannon was a while turning her overheated-by-embarrassment face back to a temperature that a human being could live with. “Go get back in bed. I barely basted them together, and you’ll rip them apart if you make one wrong move.”

Tucker stared at her so long and hard, Shannon didn’t know if he’d ever get on with handing over her sewing project. In fact, she had no idea what he was gaping at.

Well, maybe she had some idea.

Hooves pounded outside the door.

“Tucker, you still laid up?” Gage Coulter had come to call.

Tucker rolled his eyes. “You ain’t gettin’ these pants back anytime soon,” he told Shannon. “Maybe you oughta start on a second pair.”

Shannon picked up Tucker’s crutches. She’d managed to knock them away from him when she’d hugged him. She handed them over, then went to the table and took Stewbold’s coffee cup to wash. They didn’t have that many cups. If Coulter was staying, she needed to clean the dishes.

Coulter hammered on the door.

Tucker hobbled over to let him in. “What is it?”

“Good, you finally got rid of that stupid-looking nightgown and put on some pants.” Coulter came in without
being invited. “Now all you need is to get your woman in a dress and this’ll be a normal family.”

Shannon kept her back to the men while she washed up a cup for Gage and poured him fresh coffee. She considered dumping it over his head, but that’d be wasteful. Besides, she’d have to mop the floor then.

“Have you decided when you’re gonna head up the mountain yet?” Coulter asked. “My cattle need water, and you know you’re leavin’ sooner or later. While you’re lying around healing, with a handful of sheep livin’ off a whole river, the grass is wearing out on one of the last patches of land on this side of my ranch—the only side that’s got a good water source.”

“Have a seat, Coulter,” Tucker said. He sounded tired.

Her husband had promised to stay with her, unlike Sunrise’s husband and so many other mountain men, but she wondered if he would. Coulter made it sound like Tucker heading for the mountains was inevitable. And there was no denying he was a restless man. Could it be he meant he’d stay with her so long as she followed him wherever he went?

Gage sat down, dragged his Stetson off his head, and tossed it on the table beside him. Shannon plunked the cup down in front of him hard enough to earn herself a look. “This is
not
your ranch. This land’s mine.”

“I was here when no one else wanted it, Mrs. Tucker.” Somehow Gage made her name sound like an insult. “Any roads or trails you ride on out here, I built. I came here before anyone knew if the Shoshone were going to be friendly or lift my scalp.”

“Don’t talk to me like you’re an old-timer,” Tucker broke in. “I was here when you were still sittin’ on your daddy’s knee back in Texas.”

Gage Coulter’s eyes shifted from gray to pure ice. “I know you got here first, but you lived in the hills. You didn’t build nuthin’.”

“A man don’t always have to change the land. He can find a way to fit in.”

“He can or he can put his mark on it, which is what I did. I blasted rocks to widen the trail. I drove cattle over a thousand miles on land no white man had ever trod. I had wolves at my heels, and outlaws were the worst varmints of all. Go look at that river, Mrs. Tucker.”

“I’ve seen the river plenty of times.”

“Have you noticed that there are spreader dams on it? I dug ’em myself. They water fifty acres of grass. All that grass was wasteland, thick with underbrush and scrub pine when I first came to this country. Now there’s a wide, lush meadow on the east side of the water that’ll feed a herd of cattle for months, and you’re runnin’ a dozen sheep on it. I did the same for the smaller pasture on the west side. None of that was there before I came. I built up the ford you take every time you cross the river, too. You think those big stones just happened to fall in a line like that?”

Shannon had thought they were conveniently located.

“I’ve done work in dozens of places, all to turn
my land
into a place that’ll support a herd. Your sheep are gettin’ fat on land I cleared. You say this homestead is yours? Your pa says you’ve come to build an empire? Well, you’re
walking in and setting up your empire after I’ve done years of hard work to make that easy.”

All the things he’d listed were a big part of the reason she’d homesteaded here. And she hadn’t noticed that the water feeding her grass didn’t flow there naturally. But just from Coulter saying it did, she recognized the truth of it.

“It’s not easy to tear civilization out of wilderness, Shannon.”

“It’s not always good, either,” Tucker interjected. “I like the mountains the way they are. Shannon hasn’t taken that much from you. Her sheep run on her homestead and drink from a stream, but there’s still plenty of land left for you.”

“You know that stream turns into the Slaughter River a few miles away, right?”

“I know the waterways, Coulter,” Tucker said.

“Then you know this stretch right here is the only place for miles where the banks are low enough for animals to go up and drink. Finding water like this isn’t that easy out here. And the good land is disappearing at the rate folks are homesteading. I’ve been to town and I’ve bought up every acre I can. I own every water hole that’s left, but homesteaders poured in this spring before I knew they’d even opened this area up. They’ve claimed up so many springs and ponds and grasslands my cattle are suffering, but they’ve left the wasteland, the mountainsides. They’ve come like locusts to skim off the good and leave slim pickings for me. What’s more, I’ve ridden by a lot of the homesteads, and these folks don’t know what they’re doing. They’re tilling up rocky soil, and it’s blowing away in the harsh winds. All the dirt that made good grazing
land isn’t right for farmland, yet they’re plowing it up anyway. And the grass was the only thing holding it. The dirt’s blowin’ all the way to Nebraska.”

“If the land isn’t right for farmers, these folks will figure that out and move on,” Tucker said. “And you’ll get your ranch back.”

“Maybe, but by then the land will be ruined. I’ll have my water holes back, but they’ll be silted in with dirt washed off the land. The grasslands won’t come back on soil that’s no longer good for growing. And thousands of acres of beautiful mountain meadows and hillsides will have been destroyed. I’m surprised it doesn’t bother you to see it happen, Tucker. This isn’t Kansas and it isn’t for farming. None of these homesteaders want to admit it. At least you, Mrs. Tucker, aren’t plowing it up and trying to grow corn in a country where the growing season is two months too short for it to ripen.” The disgust in Coulter’s voice echoed in the little cabin. “But sheep are going to do damage, too.”

“My sheep won’t hurt a thing.”

“Not if you keep running a dozen of them, they won’t. But don’t let your herd grow. Sheep eat the grass down too short, while cows don’t cut the grass so close to the ground when they graze. A sheep, though, will nibble it all the way to the dirt, and then it doesn’t grow back as fast. If there are too many sheep on the land, they eat it so short sometimes the grass doesn’t grow back at all.”

Shannon wanted to hate him. She wanted to throw the arrogant man out of her cabin. Trouble with that was, he was probably right about almost everything. “If I let you
water your cattle here, they’ll overrun my meadow and I’ll have nothing left for my sheep.”

“Sheep!” Coulter growled. “They’re about the stupidest critters God ever put on the face of the earth.”

“Jesus was a shepherd,” Shannon countered.

“Honest, Shannon,” Tucker said, “Jesus was a carpenter, not a shepherd. And sheep really
are
stupid. Now, we can figure something out, can’t we?”

Since Shannon pretty much had to carry each sheep into the barn every night to keep them from staying out where they’d be eaten by wolves, she had to admit they weren’t the world’s brightest animal. And now that the wolves were starting to run in packs with the coming cold weather, it was downright witless of them. But she really loved them, and she didn’t mind the work it took to keep them alive.

“Tucker, I am not letting Gage Coulter have my land.”

“No, you’re not. I agree.”

That took the starch out of her. “Then what do you mean by ‘figure something out’?”

Tucker rubbed his chin. “You’ve got a dozen sheep and a meadow that’ll feed about two hundred cattle. Could we . . . I don’t know, rent Gage access to the water and maybe put up a fence that’d keep the sheep and cattle separate?”

It annoyed Shannon that her husband was being so reasonable. And that’s when she knew she was being unreasonable, which made her feel like just as much of an arrogant land baron as she was accusing Gage of being—except of course she had one hundred sixty acres and he had about twenty or thirty thousand. Despite that disparity, she didn’t want a cow to die of thirst.

“Rent for how much?” Coulter sounded suspicious.

“What sounds fair to you?” Tucker asked.

Shannon had no idea what land and water rented for. It seemed like renting air, for heaven’s sake. Of course, she owned the land and water, but renting it seemed wrong, sinful somehow.

Gage named a price higher than Shannon would have dared ask, and she got past the sin of it instantly. There was no commandment against accepting rent after all.

“Sounds fair.” Tucker turned to her. “Is it all right with you, honey?”

He liked to act like this was her land, but he’d sure taken over the dickering as if he owned the place . . . which he did.

“Can I think about it?” She was careful not to let a big smile break out on her face. They could really use the cash. Money was short, and Bailey had been nagging her to sell the male lambs born this spring. No one wanted a male and female, a breeding pair. They just wanted food.

Tucker gave Gage a hard look. “You’d have to build the fence. Make it nice and solid and make sure the sheep have access to the water, too.”

“I’d be glad to handle the fence. I have another week or two of grazing where my herd is now. I can get a fence up by the time the cattle need to move on.” Gage stood from the table and picked up his hat. “I’ll make that fence tight enough to protect every one of your sheep, Mrs. Tucker, and give them plenty of grazing.”

There he stood, the biggest rancher in the area, hat in hand, being as helpful as a man could be. And a little cash money would come in mighty handy. She’d hoped to earn
enough to buy a milk cow by selling wool, though she hadn’t quite managed it. Gage’s money would be more than enough. It was such a simple solution, it made Shannon want to kick somebody.