December and Mae, page 7
Contrary, Hell-Fire bucked rear legs and Mae’s slight body near sailed over the rusty mane to be dashed to the ground, if she hadn’t clutched it in a death grip and wrapped her thighs tight. Her eyes were big with fear—and, he detected distractedly—delight. Hell-Fire once more kicked front hooves out, near taking Curly’s head off—and tossing Mae like a rag doll back in the saddle with a resounding whump, then sailed over the fence in one graceful, powerful leap, thudding wildly off in a harebrained pattern, and within a flash in the pan, Hell-Fire was a careening dot with Mae’s tiny figure hunched on top, bouncing and clutching his mane for all she was worth. Luke dashed for the nearest mount—slow-plodding Betsy, as it turned out. He growled, glaring at Curly, “Consarn it!”
“She ast me to!” Curly quailed under the onslaught of Luke’s scowl.
No time. Rein-lashing startled Betsy, Luke tore after Mae.
He prodded poor old Betsy hard. Mae in the far distance barely hung on even though Hell-Fire gave her a fine gallop. Luke caught up after a few bone-rattling miles in time to see Mae thrown over the half-wild horse’s head and landing hard, splayed, tumbling beneath Hell-Fire, where she narrowly missed being trampled by tons of horseflesh as Hell-Fire, kenning a despised green rider on his back, stamped and reared high. Iron-hard hooves with razor-sharp edges thudded inches from Mae’s face, after which the mount from Hades thundered off, hell-bent for freedom.
With a fierce tug of reins, Luke leapt off Betsy before she skidded to a stop, and ran to what seemed a crumpled heap of rags sprawled across prickle grass and rocks. Mae’s chest was still as a grave. A bloody gash marred her forehead near the hairline. Pale as a sleeping angel, she appeared dead.
Luke studied her quiet form, dreading to move or touch her for fear of what he’d find—an inert body cooling as he touched, yet he felt urged to do it, to crush her slight form to his chest, enfold her, keep her safe. Kiss her hair.
“Mae…Mae!” Dammit. Wake up! You fool girl!
He patted her hand—her face. Angry and scared, and angry with himself for being so. She sucked deep in a long shuddering pain-filled sigh.
“Don’t move,” he growled. Gingerly running his hand down her back, Luke checked her slight bones. He probed her foot. Her neck. He once had a wrangler frozen in place from a broke neck in a fall too similar. The man wasted away with withered limbs till he passed on two years later, a shrunken wreck. “You feel this?” He barked at her without meaning to.
She nodded as if waking from a dream. “Wanted to learn…ride proper…for when we all go out cattle drivin’,” she slurred. “Wanted…t’ help…be with…”
“Damnation! Why’d ya let Curly put you on that devil?”
He felt a rib. Mae sucked in, wincing. “Just wanted—” She gasped. “…surprise you.”
“Dammit, girl! I’ll teach you to ride! Let’s see the damage.”
Too gruff, Luke turned her over and pulled up her shirt, gently probing her ribcage with strong, knowledgeable fingers. Already her left side turned the shade of a beet. Forehead and hip and upper arms bore ugly scrapes where Hell-Fire had dragged her across the rocky scree with her foot caught in the stirrups. Her skin and clothes were stuck with cockle burrs like cloves in a ham. One by one Luke plucked them out.
He couldn’t help but notice, he told himself, when her body was relieved of layers of cloth, her figure was anything but childish. Under all that, her waist was a handspan, his handspan, elegantly swelling into trim but womanly hips. With a rush of feeling, he noted dimples above her buttocks close to the spine. Hastily Luke lowered and neatened her clothes. No wonder Liz wanted to keep her covered.
Breathing too hard, Luke eased her up.
Mae remained stoic and chastened, even though her face was knitted in pain.
“You’ll need alcohol on those. Sting like a bear,” he threatened. A black eye, too, Luke surmised. Lord alone kenned what the rest of her resembled, inside and out. Yet the land was thick with scrub; that helped some, he figured. When she took a step, the wince was visible, along with the bit lip and a hitch.
Scooping her up, he cradled her under his chin. She had the weight of a lofting feather, her tiny body nestled against his huge burly chest like a sprite to a bear. He draped her gently across Betsy’s saddle, then stirruped his boot and swung a leg over before settling Mae, moaning while striving not to, behind the pommel with her back to his chest.
Let Hell-Fire wander home on his own, or go to the devil.
Shortly after arriving back at the ranch, Luke strode out with a bottle of Doctor Hartshorn’s Number 8 Liniment. His hands already anticipated silky warm skin and smoothing down that ethereal slope of waist to hip, the small cup of her back…when he looked down at his hands. He looked off. Suddenly Luke strode back, wordlessly thrusting the bottle to Liz, jerked his head to the stable.
“Gal needs attention.”
Liz raised a brow but nodded, grabbed up a cloth and headed out.
Mae relaxed all day, restless, and on the second morning was pitching hay, joshing with the hands, and striving not to limp in his presence. Curly was sent to muck out the privy.
Hell-Fire ambled back of his own accord but did not appear chastened.
****
Mae was at the far end of the stable attaching a feed bucket to the roan mare ready to foal. Luke fumbled a length of rope and straightened a bridle on the wall.
Mae glanced at him shyly. She dropped a bucket of oats and swiped her forehead. “Mr. Luke? I’m thankin’ you for yesterday.”
Luke nodded and nudged the bridle where it hung, an inch to the left and fiddled with a halter. Be damned if he could think of a thing to say. She waited.
“It’s been brought to my attention…” he began, stiff as cold leather—actually Liz had argued, “The gal hasn’t been to church on Sundays!” And in her contrary way, snorted and s’posed again that the girl hadn’t ever set foot inside a church, and that the whole building would cave in if any Saurbachs sat in one of the new pews.
“That you haven’t been off the place,” Luke ended lamely, shuffling one boot in the straw. “Reckon it isn’t proper for you to head in with the hands when they go a-roistering.”
“No, sir. I’m right happy, Mr. Farnsworth. I mean Luke.” She cast her gaze down. “I play with the kittens and I’m sewing me a dress. Miss Liz gave it to me.” Hands behind her, twisting her upper body back and forth, Mae seemed pleased as a June bug.
Luke looked on bemused. “Oh, ah, well. I look forward to the grand entrance.” Maybe Liz had done the right thing. “Bet it’ll be the prettiest dress in all Laramie.”
That iced the cake a bit thick.
“Hope so, Mr. Luke.”
“Oh. Sure as shootin’,” he lied.
“Never had me a dress.” Mae wiggled with pleasure. “Guess I’d best be gettin’ on with it then.” She twisted her hands together and blushed like a wild rose.
Luke swallowed hard. “Maybe you can wear it into, um, a church meeting, or pot luck, or there’s a big harvest do coming up soon… Most everybody above earth around here kicks up their heels.” The harvest hoedown was the social event of the season, attracting bigwigs from both Laramie and Red Butte, all and sundry to the furthest out and the poorest clodhoppers.
Luke hid his hands in his back pockets. For some reason they trembled. He was aware his speech tumbled out like rocks down a waterfall, or maybe like a runaway freight train on broken tracks. He felt sweat down his back.
“Is that something you might like?”
He bent to pick up a nail so she couldn’t see his face.
Mae looked suddenly grave. “I—I reckon I would be liking that mighty fine, Mr. Luke. But I ain’t…never learned to dance none.”
Luke looked down at her small graceful figure, feeling his rough hands about her waist and her pressed to him, circling her around a dance floor. “I can take care of that. Could dance up a storm, in my day, long as I don’t step on toes,” he demurred. “We—we’ll have to, ah, do that then.”
Her face lightened. A ray of sun hit Mae’s head. Sparkles of dust circled like a halo, her shirt open to the third button, with one hanging off, revealed the gentle slope of her long pale column of neck and gentle round of a paper-white bosom.
Luke, framed in the stable doorway, looked away. Couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was breathing hard. What the Sam Hill was wrong with him! He walked off, unsettled, then turned back, striding purposefully now.
Pitching a forkful of dirty straw into a barrow, Mae looked up anxiously at his stony expression. Shading her eyes, she stepped out of the light. “Yes, Mr. Luke? Somethin’ wrong?”
“I was wondering too…” Luke looked up to the lofty rafters for help and back at Mae. “Maybe time we went riding. I mentioned I could maybe teach you. Proper-like.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Been a long time since I inspected my spread. Fences and such,” he ended, for want of a reason. “Good time to acquaint yourself with the workings of a big ranch like this, good time to learn, if you’re, ah, going to stay on.”
Lord, lame as a hobbled horse.
Her questioning eyes were on him. A stray beam through the rafter lit her face. She really was fetching, so young, he mused. Even more. Pretty inside. Her lips, the same color as the polished coral pin Liz prized, satiny moist as she ran her tongue along them. Cheeks smooth as fresh cream. Large eyes of undefinable color, like rain water on window glass, irises ringed in black, as were her eyes, with thick inky featherings of lashes fanning cheeks, as blushed as tea roses and filled out some since she had proper vittles, he noted.
Luke realized the face looking back had bloomed from a grubby child-like female to a youngish…woman? No. Not quite. Somewhere in between.
Lost in Mae’s face, still upturned with a look of consternation and wonder, Luke didn’t hear her response, if she made one. He suddenly, with unquenchable yearning, wanted to kiss that soft mouth. Feel the silky cool smoothness against his own. Tickle her with his mustache. Hold her slim waist tightly against him. Feel her small bosoms pressing his chest.
He suddenly felt sick of himself.
Luke’s ardor faded like ashes in the wind. Lord, no better than those randy roustabouts, or that old reprobate Nate Solomon. He should be horse-whipped in front of the whole Baptist congregation. Mae still studied him disconcertedly, head cocked, her hair grown out some like a black waterfall, hanging sideways past her shoulders.
She broke the spell as she looked down, scruffing a toe and twisting one hand in the other, saying softly. “Iffen you think so, I’d purely be happy to go on a ride and learn quick as I can.”
“Settled then.” Luke backed awkwardly. She called when he was at the wide doors. “When, Mr. Luke?”
Damnation, he had a mare to foal any day now. Couldn’t leave it all to Joe or Old Tom. His voice suddenly stern and boss-like, growled, “Soon. I’ll have Liz fetch us some grub. We’ll make a day of it. Be ready.”
As he stalked off, he heard her address the scruffy one-eared mouser. “That’s my boss, cat! That’s Mr. Luke! He runs this whole great big ranch all by hisself! He owns everything, from here to Kingdom Come!”
More than that. More than a boss.
He smiled gloomily, shaking his head. Swacked his old work Stetson against his thigh. Straightened it reasonably well and clapped it back on. Wasn’t conscious he wore his best workaday shirt of gray cambric, the one Liz said matched his eyes. Wasn’t aware his long legs moved easily in well-worn jeans the shade of a winter sky, fit tight across his butt, or that his shirt was strapping tight across work-broadened shoulders, or wondered if Mae watched as he strode off. Wasn’t in his nature. But she was.
Mae sat with her nimble knees below her chin, hands clasped, gazing out of her barn loft window, watching him go. The setting sun cast a bronze glow to her usually pale face making her eyes the shade of gold, They stood out startling and clear. She felt warm, an unusual situation for her—to feel safe. Welcomed. Noticed.
“Luke,” she whispered.
She hugged herself.
Below, the roustabouts argued, joshing, ribbing. She didn’t envy their companionship. Didn’t know men that well. Only brothers and odd uncles, and her pa of course, but they were “cut from a different cloth” she overheard Liz say once about one of them.
These young wranglers were healthy in a raw sunburnt way, some even good-looking, with lean, whip-thin bodies, work-broadened shoulders and narrow hips, thighs bulging with muscle from all the riding, obvious in the bow-legged way they swaggered in their boots, and then her eye rested on the one odd figure, not odd in a bad way, but different.
Luke. Her boss.
She watched his figure as he strode to the house, long taut muscles, flexing, unflexing, neck thickened with cords and muscle, thick hair glinting silver like moonlight. His outline, bulkier, more solid, work-hardened hands swinging easily at his sides, recalling the deep squint lines between his nose and mouth. In place of age, he seemed carved from granite, bronzed and broken-nosed, a jaw made of iron.
Mae grinned, fiddling with her toes. He looked as if he could rope a bull, or kill snakes and things that lurked under a bed. Luke’s was the form that favorably filled her thoughts, pleasured her mind, and lifted her wide smile, without her kenning. She would never dream of it, as not fitting.
****
Before heading in for his usual evening with Liz, Luke leaned on a split rail corral fence, gazing out over his spread, clear to the far setting sun, making the whole shebang look like from another planet. That red one called Mars, past heaven’s gates. Prairie grass and shrubs, the juniper trees rimmed in sulphureous fire, cast black shadows all pointing toward him. Twenty acres or so of scrub was all he inherited from his mule-skinner pa, plus half a lean-to, the one he and his sister were raised in by a feckless dad, and a ma long gone to her reward.
The lean-to was still extant, humbled beneath showy, expensive yet gracious add-ons of stone and timber and slate roofs. All the rest he’d done himself, beginning with the starter-dough of his lucky gamble—going in on the copper mine.
Luke grunted, quelling a joyful laugh as not seemly. Nevertheless, he now owned a spread of over forty thousand acres, all his, and a house grand as anything he saw in that one trip back east to far-off Chicago, on a street called Lakeshore Drive, with proper windows, gables and dormers, rich rugs, polished floors. Good glass panes, and one of stained glass sporting a proud stallion, the Farnsworth name, and his branding symbol. He would defend all of it to his last breath.
A pity and a shame he had none to pass it on to except his son-in-law—who was, truth be told, not the savviest rancher this side of Cheyenne, or their boy, who might not take to ranching at all.
Mae’s face floated across his mind for some vexatious reason. Luke shook his leonine head as if to swat a gnat and stomped up on the porch as the sun painted his back scarlet.
Chapter Five: The Dress
Mae fumbled with the needle, her pink tongue stuck out the side of her mouth in fierce concentration as she stabbed at muddy brown cloth. Wisht she had a big old mirror. She peered in the horse trough when she brushed her hair, but maybe she could buy a little one with her first pay, next time Nate drove by. Mae’s face lit up, imagining. Never earned cash money before or bought anything in her whole entire life.
She mentally inventoried his stock, small items set out in lidded bins along his wagon sides or stuffed in trunks, and the dull aprons and house dresses or men’s denim jackets and long johns hauled out of boxes and hung from a rail whenever he halted. Mayhap ribbons and stick candy, lemon drops, or horehound.
She shook her head. “That’s for little ’uns. Best get me some lavender toilet water.”
More grown up.
Working at night by lantern light, the dress took most of the month whilst Mr. Luke was off with his cattle run to Cheyenne depot and other business in Laramie. She’d overheard one of the roustabouts jaw over the trip.
Mae spread the material over her lap. Miz Liz was nice to give her a whole dress to make over. Didn’t cotton much for the color, and the thread Liz gave her was bright yellow, but it was the first honest-to-gosh grownup rig she ever owned. Didn’t think to ask Liz to help, nor did Miss Elizabeth offer.
Mae ripped it out several times when she couldn’t get the waist to fit right, and hemmed it up some. Now, at last, she stood with the sweep of a lopsided skirt pooling at her toes.
A bit long, but with shoes? Wisht she had proper shoes. The waist was nice and snug, though the top ballooned over her small breasts some, but that was okay; she looked like a lady.
Newly hemmed gown on, Mae twirled in the lamplight.
“Oohh!” She cried in fright when she nearly knocked over the lantern. Nevertheless, the skirts whipped about pleasurably, and she succeeded in not burning down the stable.
Mae laughed aloud. She considered her image bit by bit in the small piece of cracked mirror scavenged yesterday in the ranch’s dump, in a little gully beyond the stable. She cocked her head. Maybe a little old bit of lace, if she had some, or embroider flowers or somethin’ to take away the mud brown.
She eyed the yellow thread. Sure would like to learn fancy stitching like she saw Miss Elizabeth do. Maybe around the neck and wrist bands…
****
The month was hectic for Luke.
He and the hands had bushwacked three suspected cattle rustlers and hustled them into Laramie’s newly elected sheriff’s office—the same Jimson boys caught harrying off a pregnant heifer and three yearlings last year. Plus he’d stalked his spread with the part-Arapaho water diviner for a new well closer to northern pastures. Then met again with the sheriff to talk him out of jailing his best hand, Roscoe, over a saloon fight that hadn’t killed anyone or done much damage outside of a dented spittoon that somehow found itself wedged on Roscoe’s opponent’s head. That was, of course, after the Cheyenne run. And then haggling over some new rich bottom land…
