Mary Connealy (40 page)

Sophie filled her fourth pot of water to make more coffee. Suddenly her knees wobbled a little, and she had to grab for the edge of the water barrel to steady herself.

Clay was beside her in a split second, lifting her off her feet. “No more questions. Sophie needs to rest.”

Adam chuckled. “She’s as sturdy as a Texas cottonwood, Clay, but if you want to try and slow her down, I wish you luck.”

One by one the men left the cabin. Luther said as he went out, “Reckon me and Buff’ll hang around Texas for a spell. It’s too far to ride iffen she calls me again.”

Buff grunted. As he shuffled out of the room, he said, “Sorry I failed ya, Miz McClellen.”

“That’s okay.” Sophie blushed so prettily, Clay couldn’t believe she was the same little wildcat who’d captured a gang of cutthroats.

Buff shook his head.

“Me, too, ma’am.” Whitey stared at the floor as if afraid it might disappear under his feet. Andy and Rio apologized, too, on their way out. They’d each done it a dozen times apiece already.

Clay smiled as he watched the dejected group go. They were Texans. They’d bounce back.

The last one to leave was Adam. He came up to Sophie, undeterred by the stern look of
get out
on Clay’s face. “Mason kept saying, when they were yanking that wooden stake out of his leg, that he’d get even with you, Sophie, if it took him the rest of his life.”

“His life may not be that long.” Clay tightened his grip on his wife.

“It sounded like he wanted revenge for something. But I never did anything to him.” Sophie’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

“It got me to thinking about the revenge I’ve been hungerin’ for ever since my partners died. In the end, I stood by and let the law take its own course.”

Clay snorted. “You went charging into Sawyer Canyon alone. I don’t call that letting the law take its course.”

“I know,” Adam said with a sheepish shrug. “I had a real bad moment there when lettin’ Mason hide out from us was more than I could bear. I admit that.”

With the men gone except for Adam, the girls came out of the bedroom and sat at the table. Clay watched his family, all pretty and sweet smelling. They were soft as baby calves and tough as full-grown longhorns. He loved them.

“It’s a good thing you did,” Sophie said. “It brought you back to the ranch.”

“Yeah, none of these outlaws would have gotten out of here alive if we’d left them to my girls for much longer,” Clay said dryly.

Sophie and the girls grinned. Clay hugged his armful of a wife then set her on a chair at the table.

“Anyway, I realized that the difference between my need for revenge and Mason’s is the difference between God and Satan. It’s as simple as that. Mason insisted on delivering his wrath on those he was angry with, and in the end he was just a pure tool of the devil. No matter how angry I got, I could never have crossed that line and committed cold-blooded murder in an act of revenge. God has made me strong enough not to do that.”

“He’s made us all strong enough, Adam.” Sophie reached her hand across the table to pat Adam’s rugged hand. “In the end we all did the right thing.”

Beth crossed her arms and tapped her toe rapidly on the wooden floor. “I think Sally and Mandy enjoyed taking those men prisoner a little too much.”

“I did not! I purely hated having to catch those bad men.” Sally grabbed Beth’s long braid and gave it a hefty yank.

Beth screamed and backed up, pulling her hair all the more. She slammed into Mandy.

Mandy pushed her hard. “Be careful! And we did not enjoy ourselves! Not hardly none at all!”

Sally gave Beth’s hair another tug, and Beth started screaming at the top of her lungs. Laura began crying in the midst of the chaos.

Sally shrieked. “And the next time we’re attacked, you have to baby-sit. It’s your turn.”

“We don’t take turn on attacks. Ma says—” Beth jerked her hair free, fell backward, and staggered into Clay, who threw his arms wide to keep from falling over and smacked Adam across the face.

Adam ran.

Sally and Mandy attacked Beth as a team. Clay roared, “You girls settle down!”

The girls completely ignored his yelling, so he yelled louder. Sophie went to his side. “Aren’t you pleased?”

Clay decided his wife had lost her mind.

“Can’t you see the girls have decided you won’t quit loving them just because you’re mad?”

Clay hollered over the tumult, “And that’s a good thing?”

“Sure it is.” Sophie scooped Laura up as she toddled past, shrieking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She thrust Laura into his arms. “I’m going to lie down and rest.”

Clay didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She retreated to her bedroom and closed the door as calmly as if the screaming and yelling were a lullaby to her.

Clay faced his raging daughters and had a bright idea. He charged.

The screams turned to giggles as he was buried under petticoats, while his pretty wife obeyed him in the next room. Life didn’t get any better.

C
lifton Lazarus McClellen was born early on a bitter winter morning. All the girls slept through it, and Clay probably would have, too. Sophie was determined not to make the doctor ride clear and away out to the ranch in the cold for such a simple thing as bringing a baby.

Except there came a time during her laboring that Sophie quit trying to be brave and quiet and decided all men should die. And since Clay was handy, she might as well start with him. She was too busy to actually do him any damage before he could get out of her reach, though.

Clay panicked as she knew he would, what with him being a man and all. He started to get dressed to go for the doctor. Sophie was in the midst of a tearful appeal to not kill himself going out in the dangerous weather—ironic when a moment ago she’d really wanted him dead—when Cliff made his appearance.

His twin brother, Clayton Jarrod, was born five minutes later, while Clay was trying to wrap Clifton in a blanket Sophie had ready and, at the same time, frantically ordering Sophie to stop being in pain now, since the baby was already here.

When the whirlwind had passed and another blanket had been found, Clay finally calmed down enough to say with immense satisfaction, “We really narrowed the gap between girls and boys in this family.”

“I thought you said you wanted another girl,” Sophie challenged him, still not very happy with the man who had caused her a very uncomfortable night.

“I lied,” Clay announced with an unrepentant smile. “I wanted a son like the very dickens. I didn’t know how much until this very second.”

Sophie looked at the arms full of babies Clay held and smiled. “I didn’t know how much I wanted a boy either.”

“If you keep having them at this rate, we’ll be tied by next Christmas.”

Back to wanting to kill him, Sophie said, “Just for that, you’re getting up in the night to change their diapers.”

“What’s a diaper?”

Sophie slumped back on the bed and started to cry. Clay sat down beside her. “Sophie, what about rule number one?”

Both boys chose that moment to start howling their heads off.

They wriggled and cried, and Sophie couldn’t take her eyes off of them—until she noticed that Clay’s expression had turned from insufferable pride to pure unadulterated horror.

“I didn’t think boys would cry!”

Sophie forgot all about breaking rule number one because she wanted to laugh. “I’m going to enjoy watching you learn to be a pa to infants.”

Clay looked up from the babies and leaned over to kiss her soundly on the lips. “I’ll be great at it, just like I’ve learned to be a great pa to the girls.”

Sophie laid her hand on Clay’s cheek. “We’ve been through so much together this last year, Clay. I’ve learned as much as you have.”

Clay nodded and looked back at his sons. “We’re going to teach the boys to be good men. To work hard. To respect a woman’s strength.”

Sophie turned the edge of the blanket back on the baby closest to her. “You’ve never gotten over me protecting the ranch all by myself.”

“Why should I get over it? I learned what a special woman I married. And I learned to trust God in everything.”

“Except birthing these babies,” Sophie teased him. “You wanted the doctor for them.”

Clay ran his rough finger over one tiny fist, looking first from one son then to the other.

Sophie wanted to start crying again from the sweetness of it. She couldn’t hold back what was in her heart. “I love you, Clay.” She knew she shouldn’t say it. Clay wasn’t a man who wanted to talk about such nonsense.

He said very calmly, “I love you, too, Sophie.”

Sophie straightened away from him. “Since when?”

Clay looked away from the babies. “Well, since always, I reckon.”

“But you’ve never said such a thing. Why didn’t you tell me?” Sophie took one of the babies from him to punish him for being such an insensitive clout.

Clay stroked the soft cheek of the baby he had left, not appearing punished at all. She nudged him sharply with her elbow. “Well?”

His eyes never moved. “Well, what?”

“Why haven’t you ever told me you love me?”

“Of course I love you.” Clay shook his head, still staring. “How could I not love someone as sweet and pretty as you? It’d only be news if I didn’t love you, I’d think.”

Sophie tried to remind herself of the lessons they’d learned about revenge, and the wildly fluctuating moods she was prone to after a baby was born. And she still almost throttled him. He was saved by the babies between them.

Sophie remembered how much he’d learned to talk in the last year and how completely he’d been surrounded by men all his life, and she decided to let him live. “It gives me a nice feeling inside to hear it said now and again.”

As if he didn’t know the danger he’d been in, Clay said, “Okay. How often?”

Sophie sighed deeply then decided this might be her only chance. “At least once a day is nice—at bedtime. And then throw it in out of the blue once in a while besides.”

Clay nodded, rocking the baby in his arms to quiet it. Sophie thought he was getting very good at being a pa already.

He said, “Once a day and then some. That’ll be fine.” Sophie shook her head. “You’re hopeless.”

He didn’t appear to hear what she said. He was lucky she was a Christian woman—a Christian woman with her hands full. They sat together and watched their babies until the sun came up.

Then the girls came in and broke rule number one all over again.

1.  In
Petticoat Ranch
there is a lot of “battle of the sexes” comedy. Discuss the differences between men and women. Are they caused by society or are boys and girls just different?

2.  Discuss what children as young as Sophie’s daughters do. Can children this young really rope and ride? Do we ask to little of our children today?

3.  The fundamental premise of
Petticoat Ranch
is, how do Christian people deal with very justifiable hate? Sophie, Clay, and Adam all hate Judd Mason for very good reasons, and yet God calls us to love our enemy. Do you have people in your life who are difficult enough that you are hard pressed to love them? How do you deal with that?

4.  Do you like that Sophie acted without Clay’s permission to secure her ranch? Or was she defying him against God’s call for a wife to submit to her husband? How should she have handled her sweet but clueless husband who wanted her to leave everything to him?

5.  Clay McClellen was so inexperienced with women. Did you sympathize with him or was he too maddening?

6.  Judd Mason started out being a vigilante only chasing down bad guys, but he ended up being a law unto himself and being a criminal. Discuss why we need to be ruled by the laws. Is it ever all right to take the law into our own hands to right wrongs?

7.  
Petticoat Ranch
is book one of the Lassoed in Texas Series, now a new series called Sophie’s Daughter follows Sophie’s girls, all grown up with love stories of their own. Talk about the three oldest girls in
Petticoat Ranch
. Were they well developed as individuals who you can see having their own stories?

8.  Do you think you could skin a buck?

9.  Adam’s rage is white hot through this book. Did you understand his anger? Did it seem too out of control for him to be a likeable man?