Waiting for Morning (The Brides Of Last Chance Ranch Series) (18 page)

“I’m here, ma’am.” Stretch pressed the spade of his shovel into the soil with his boot and leaned on the handle.

“Ride into town and let it be known that cattle are dying at the Last Chance Ranch due to disease. That should make them think twice before cutting my fence.”

The men looked at each other and Ruckus rubbed his chin. “It could backfire,” he said.

Miss Walker snapped a look in his direction. “Backfire how?”

“If buyers get wind that our cattle are diseased, they’ll be less likely to purchase our beef.”

Miss Walker considered this for a moment. “If we have to keep fighting for grass and water, our cattle will be too emaciated to sell.”

Much discussion followed, but in the end, the ranch hands agreed the possible rewards were greater than the risks.

The brim of his Stetson pulled low, Stretch scratched the back of his head. “What disease do you have in mind, ma’am?”

“How about tick fever?” Feedbag said.

“Foot and mouth disease?” Stretch added.

“Gold fever?” Molly suggested, half-jokingly.

That got the men’s attention. “The cattle died of gold fever?” Feedbag shook his head. “Never heard of such a thing.”

“That’s because no such thing exists,” Miss Walker said. She thought for a moment. “The investors won’t know what they’re dealing with and that could be a good thing.”

Feedbag shook his head. “They’ll never go for it.”

Stretch shrugged. “They might. Least for a while. That will give us time to repair the fences and come up with another plan.”

“Very well,” Miss Walker said. “Gold fever it is.”

Chapter 17

C
aleb turned his car down Main Street and blinked. Despite the early morning hour, a long line of people crowded the boardwalk from one end of the street to the other. It wasn’t
until he pulled up to his office that he realized the line began at his
door. “What in blazes?”

He turned off the motor and the inevitable backfire rendered the crowd silent. Something about the cool morning air made Bertha want to get in the last word.

A horse neighed and tried to pull away from the hitching post. Magic barked and wagged his tail and waited for Caleb’s command.

“Come on, boy.” He climbed out of the motor buggy and lifted Magic to the ground. The moment Caleb stepped up to the front of the line, everyone began talking at once. Something about gold fever . . .

Unable to make heads or tails out of their babble, Caleb waved his arms. “Quiet! One at a time.” He pointed to the owner of the mercantile store. “Suppose you tell me what’s got folks all riled up.”

Mr. Green assumed an air of importance, his spectacles riding the tip of his nose. “There’s an epidemic of gold fever, and me and the others want to get ourselves one of them shots so we don’t get it too.”

Caleb rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. Gold fever or its equivalent was probably the oldest disease known to mankind, the main symptom being greed, but it was the first he’d heard of it being a medical problem.

“If you want a cure for gold fever, you’re in the wrong place,” he said, lifting his voice to be heard at the far end of the line. “Church has a better cure than I do.”

“We ain’t talking about
that
kind of gold fever,” another man yelled out. “We’re talking about the kind that kills animals.”

Mr. Green nodded. “Hundreds of Last Chance cattle have died.”

That was news to Caleb. He was at the ranch yesterday working with Donny and no one mentioned a word to him about dead cattle.

“Yeah,” someone yelled. “And we don’t want to catch it.” He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. “So we’re ready to be evaporated.”

The crowd murmured agreement.

“I think you mean vaccinated,” Caleb said, shaking his head. The very same people who refused to be vaccinated for small pox or malaria now demanded to be vaccinated for a disease that, as far as he knew, didn’t physically exist.

“You can’t catch a disease from steer unless you eat the meat.”

“You catch chicken pox from chickens,” someone argued.

“Not true,” Caleb said, but everyone started talking at once again and drowned him out. Some people still didn’t believe that germs caused infection, nor understood that viruses and bacteria led to disease. Almost every new discovery in the medical field was met with skepticism and resistance, even among some doctors and scientists.

“Quiet!” He waited until he had their attention. “I’ll check this out and if there is any danger to you and your families, I will let you know.”

He stepped into his office amid a chorus of protests and after Magic skittered inside, slammed the door shut.

Molly stood as far away from the mare as the horse stall allowed and didn’t move. This was the first Brodie had allowed her to work with horses since the day she froze in front of the stallion. Her job was to get the horse used to being around people, nothing more.

The paint stared at her for maybe two or three minutes before turning her head away with a swish of her tail. Molly took another step closer and the horse regarded her again. Her ears flickered and she pawed the ground.

Training a wild horse required infinite patience, and that had never been Molly’s strong suit. Whenever she showed impatience as a child, her father would always say, “All in God’s time, child, all in God’s time.” It was his stock answer for everything.

“When will we live in a real house?” she’d asked him, weary of the tent they called home.

“All in God’s time.”

“When will Mama get well?”

“All in God’s time.”

God’s time wasn’t her time and after her mother’s death, she wondered if such a thing even existed. It irritated her that her father accepted no responsibility for what happened or didn’t happen. Instead of saving his hard-earned money for a house, he spent it foolishly at saloons and gambling halls, leaving them precious little to live on.

She tried to learn patience—prayed almost daily to accept her lot in life without complaint. But her annoyance grew along with exhaustion.

When Donny dawdled over the wash sink or took forever to brush his teeth, it was hard not to snap at him. Her body ached so much that she was sorely tempted at times to leave him in his wheelchair rather than battle him into bed.

Caleb insisted Donny had made progress, but in what way? He required constant care and still couldn’t do anything much for himself. If anything, he seemed more helpless with each passing day . . . or perhaps she simply expected more of him.

She shook her thoughts away but the guilt remained, shrouding her like a second skin. She could walk and Donny could not. She could run and dance and jump and hop, but Donny could not. She squeezed her eyes tight. Nothing she wanted, nothing she wished for, was more important than caring for Donny and making certain he always had a home.

Sighing, she took another step closer to the mare. Predictably, the animal lifted its head and gazed at her.

“Talk to her,”
Brodie had instructed.
“Let her get used to your voice.”

And so she sang, her voice barely more than a whisper. Stopping to clear her throat, she dug in her pocket for a lemon drop and popped it in her mouth. After a couple of minutes she tried again. This time her voice sounded smoother.

She sang just as she did each morning for Orbit. “Ha, ha, ha, you and me, little brown horse, don’t I love thee!” Lately she’d started changing some of the words to the saloon songs to make them less bawdy, and she wondered why she hadn’t thought to do so before.

She sang softly at first so as not to strain her voice or startle the mare. She ventured a dance step or two. The horse continued to graze on hay, paying her no mind. Encouraged, she took a couple of side steps, sashayed her hips, kicked up her leg, and turned. “Ha, ha, ha, you and me . . .”

Caleb walked toward the stables looking for Molly. Surely she could explain the rumors in town. Donny knew nothing about dead cattle or gold fever.

Caleb hated to admit it but the stables drew him like a magnet, and every chance he got, he went there. He enjoyed making Molly happy. It didn’t take much. The least bit of encouragement he offered on her brother’s progress made her eyes sparkle and brought a beautiful wide smile to her face.

He’d exaggerated Donny’s progress, God forgive him, but he couldn’t help it. Molly looked so forlorn at times, so downhearted and worried. How could he possibly tell her the truth? How could he let her know that Donny’s progress was slow if not altogether nonexistent?

He heard the voice before he saw the singer but knew immediately that it belonged to Molly. Her voice sounded smoky but no less sweet. He’d never heard the song sung with so much passion and enthusiasm.

“Ha, ha, ha . . .”

Grinning, he walked with quiet steps until he spotted her inside the stall. Not only was she singing but dancing and his grin widened. Hands on her waist, she moved with easy grace, shaking her shoulders and swaying her hips. Her red shirtwaist was as bright as the flower of an ocotillo. Wisps of hair had worked loose from her braided bun. “The Little Brown Jug” never sounded so good—or looked so tempting.

She finished her song and he clapped. She spun around, her green eyes as dark as the disapproval on her face. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but she came charging at him like a raging bull.

She let herself out of the horse stall and swung around to face him. “Don’t ever do that again while I’m training a horse.”

“That’s what you were doing? Training a horse?” They sure did do things different out here in Arizona Territory. “I think the horse can manage the steps but I’m not sure about the shoulder movements.”

She stared at him for a full moment before bursting into laughter. “Everyone has trouble with the shoulder movements,” she said.

He grinned back at her. “I knew you were a singer, but I didn’t know you were also a dancer.”

She arched a fine eyebrow. “How did you know I was a singer?”

He shrugged. “Small town.”

Her face softened. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. Teaching that paint to get used to my voice is part of her training.”

“Lucky horse,” he said.

Her pretty pink cheeks grew a shade darker. Aware that he stared, he said, “I heard that you had some trouble out here.”

She looked confused. “Trouble?”

“With the cattle. Something about thousands dying of . . . gold fever.” He tilted his head. “I thought that particular affliction was unique to us humans.”

She laughed. “Thousands, eh? So our plan worked.”

“Plan?”

She studied him. “Swear you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“Anything you say to me will be treated in the strictest of confidence.”

“Even though I’m not your patient?” she asked.

“Your brother is.”

She seemed satisfied with his answer and quickly explained
about the ranch’s dispute with eastern investors. “Miss Walker is against a big cattle company moving in. The ones already here keep cutting our fences and using our water. She thinks that’s why Baxter got sick.”

“She could be right.” None of the other ranchers had complained about sick horses, but that wasn’t too surprising. Illness could ruin a ranch’s reputation and hurt cattle sales. For that reason, ranchers often didn’t speak up until a problem got out of hand. Miss Walker was the exception.