Dawn Comes Early (10 page)

Initially, Miss Walker had pulled the longer thorns from her arms and legs. She then ordered Kate to her room to undress. Now the ranch owner lifted a large needle out of her basket and wielded it in the air. “Bend over.”

Kate stared at the needle but didn't move.

“Oh, for goodness' sakes, forget your modesty. You can't remove the thorns by yourself. If I see something I haven't seen before I'll throw a boot at it.”

Face ablaze, Kate turned. As humiliating as it was to stand in front of the ranch owner stark naked, she would do anything to stop the pain. She let the towel drop and leaned over the back of her wooden desk chair.

Miss Walker immediately got to work. She picked what thorns she could by hand and dug out others with the sewing needle.

Tears rolled down Kate's cheeks, and despite her best efforts to hold her tongue she couldn't help but cry out on occasion, “Ouch!”

“Do keep still,” Miss Walker ordered, her voice lacking any sort of sympathy or compassion.

“It hurts.”

“Of course it hurts. They don't call it the devil's tongue for nothing.” Miss Walker lifted her voice. “Rosita! What's taking so long?”

The bedroom door flung open, and Rosita scurried across the room and handed a small basin to Miss Walker. Her eyes grew wide as she glanced at Kate's bare bottom. She then turned and hurried from the room as if running away from a contagious disease.

“This will get the hairy spines out,” Miss Walker explained, pouring something that felt wet and cold on her back and legs.

“What horrible plants. What terrible, horrible plants,” Kate wailed.

“If you think this is bad, wait till you meet up with a jumping cholla,” Miss Walker said. “I swear that thing can jump out and grab you as you pass by.”

Kate groaned at the thought. Jumping plants? What would be next?

“In any case, the prickly pear is a useful plant,” Miss Walker continued. Having finished plastering Kate's back and arms with some sort of paste, she walked to the washstand and poured water from the pitcher into the basin. “The juice has many medicinal qualities and Indians use it to purify water. The fruit is quite good, actually. A few prickly spines seem like a small price to pay for such a useful plant, wouldn't you say?” She washed and dried her hands.

For an answer Kate moaned. The glue on her back began to harden and her skin felt taut, but the coolness had relieved some of the itching, or at least made it bearable.

After several moments, Miss Walker peeled off the glue and tossed the papery strips into the wastebasket. She then proceeded to apply a poultice to Kate's skin.

“This is an old family recipe made from dried bread crumbs and sweet oil,” she explained. After she had completed the task, she said, “That should do it. It'll feel uncomfortable for a day or two, but I think we got them all.”

Kate grabbed the towel and held it up in front of her. “Thank you,” she murmured. Now that the worst was over, she feared Miss Walker would tell her to pack her bags and leave.

Instead, Miss Walker gathered up her supplies and started for the door. “Get dressed. There's work to be done. We've got to get ready to start pulling calves.” With that she was gone, leaving only the sound of her footsteps fading away.

Kate stared at the closed door.
That's it? Get to work? No time off to recover?
She frowned.
And what an odd term, pulling calves. What could it possibly mean? How does one pull a calf?

Chapter 7

Brandon scooped a pitchfork of straw and tossed it into the wheelbarrow with one easy move. He had mucked out all thirty-five horse stalls in less than two hours. She greeted him with a smile and fell into his arms. He smelled like the sun and rain all rolled into one . . .

H
orse dung! That's what she smelled like. It was in her nose and hair and even her mouth. It seeped into her pores like water in a hole, along with the horsey smell of soggy hay and stinky urine.

Her body still sore from yesterday's horrid ride, her muscles ached as she swung the last pitchfork of soiled hay into the wheelbarrow. Her skin still felt prickly from the cactus needles. Though the burning had all but disappeared, her embarrassment at having to bend over naked in front of Miss Walker remained.

The relatively tame horseback rides she'd endured at college were nothing compared to the kind of riding expected on the ranch. Certainly she'd never been on a horse as large or fast as that gelding, Decker. Ruckus said it was old and slow. A racehorse should be that slow!

She collapsed against the wooden side of the stable. Two days felt like two years.

As usual, whenever she stopped working Ruckus appeared as if able to see through the walls that divided the stalls. He glanced around and pulled out his pocket watch. “Forty-six minutes,” he announced in his gravelly voice.

“That's good, isn't it?” she asked, although at the moment she was too hot to care. It had been one mishap after another. Why hadn't Ruckus told her to remove the horse
before
cleaning the stall? And how was she supposed to know to turn the wheelbarrow in the direction you wanted to go
before
filling it?

“God created the world in only seven days.
That
was good,” he said, and not even his drawl could hide the sarcasm. “At the rate you're going you won't have the rest of the stalls mucked out until next month sometime.”

“The rest? You mean I have to clean them
all
?”

Hat tilted over his forehead, he scratched the back of his neck. “Yep,” he said cheerfully. “All thirty-four of them.”

Luke Adams hunted through his scrap pile. The waist-high mound was made up mostly of discarded horseshoes, old nails, worn-out gun barrels, and other scraps of metal. Railroads had lowered the cost of transporting iron in recent years, but he enjoyed the challenge of twisting and turning old iron into something new.

Every door latch, windmill rod—even Doc Masterson's scalpels—had once been forged exclusively in his shop, first by his uncle and then by him.

Uncle Sam was fond of saying that the blacksmith was the heart and soul of the community. He and the town's former preacher had some lively disagreements over that one.

Things had changed in recent years and not necessarily for the better. Everything from kitchen utensils to farm tools could now be ordered through Montgomery Ward's catalog. The quality wasn't as good, but the novelty of ordering through a catalog and waiting for its arrival took precedence over workmanship. It was this lack of craft that had turned Adams Blacksmithing into little more than a fix-it shop. He no longer made tools; he repaired them.

Finding a piece of metal he wanted, he returned to his workbench.

Homer let out a bark, tail wagging. He put his nose to the crack beneath the door and sniffed.

“What is it, boy?” Luke asked. “Do we have company?”

Just then his two aunts walked in. Aunt Bessie stopped to pet Homer, whose entire rear end followed his tail in greeting.

“How is my nephew treating you?” she said in an unnaturally high voice reserved for babies, animals, and anyone she deemed hard of hearing.

She straightened and glanced around. She was a hefty woman with birdlike legs and arms. Her bow-shaped mouth pursed thoughtfully upon a stack of three chins, her features drawing together in a knowing frown.

“Where's Michael?”

“Running an errand,” Luke said. He hated lying, but if he told her that his brother was up to his old tricks it would only worry her.

Aunt Bessie's eyes sharpened as if she picked up some signal he gave off without knowing. “Fighting again, eh?”

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to.” She wagged her finger. “The trouble with you two is you don't talk to each other.”

“We talk,” Luke muttered, “but the moment he hears the word
work
he runs the other way.”

Aunt Bessie heaved her ample bosom and stared at him with haughty rebuke. “There's nothing wrong with your brother that a good wife won't fix.”

Luke clamped his jaw tight. According to his aunt, a wife was the cure-all for everything from gout to heart failure.

Sensing she was gearing up to deliver one of her oft-repeated lectures on brotherly love and family obligations, he quickly changed the subject.

“So what brings you two to town?” Despite his aunts' obsession with finding him a wife, he was glad to see them.

“You tell him.” Aunt Lula-Belle nudged her older sister. “It was
your
idea.”

The shorter of the two, she was as thin as Aunt Bessie was wide, her snowy hair wound in tight springy curls. Her red frilly hat sat atop her head like a cherry on a mound of whipped cream.

“Oh, all right,” Aunt Bessie said, speaking in her normal throaty voice that made him suspect she still smoked cheroots on occasion even though she had promised to stop.

Her habit of putting her nose where it didn't belong would try a saint, and Luke was anything but one. She meant well, of course, even though she did delve a little too deeply into his personal affairs. They both did, though Aunt Lula-Belle was more of an accomplice than an instigator.

Aunt Bessie cleared her throat. “Remember the woman we met on the day that Cactus Joe tried to rob the mercantile?” she asked.

Luke grimaced at the memory. He hadn't known his aunts were in town during the attempted holdup until two days later. It was bad enough that they interfered in his life, but he still shuddered to think they tried to take on an outlaw.

“The day my hat was ruined,” Aunt Lula-Belle added with a woeful sigh.

Aunt Bessie rolled her eyes. “Would you stop complaining about your hat? Losing it was the best thing that happened to you since Murphy gave up playing the fiddle.”

Aunt Bessie turned her attention back to Luke. “I'm talking about the woman you saved.”

That wasn't exactly accurate, but Luke let it slip by. Instead, he leaned against his workbench, arms crossed. “What about her?”

Was she still in town? It had been nearly two weeks. That meant she had lasted longer than any of the others. That was a surprise. A big surprise.

Aunt Bessie's hand fluttered to her chest. “You won't believe this, but she took the trouble to find out our names and wrote a lovely note inquiring as to our well-being. Wasn't that thoughtful of her?”

“Yes, it was.” He still remembered how she looked sitting on this very workbench, all soft and pretty and more than anything, vulnerable. Of course she seemed more scared than vulnerable when they reached the ranch house, though she did her best to hide it. Not that he blamed her. Facing Cactus Joe
and
Miss Walker on the same day was enough to scare anyone.

“And so we were thinking”—she glanced at Aunt Lula-Belle—“that maybe we should get to know her better. Perhaps invite her to supper. And of course we think you should be there too. I'm sure she would love to see you again.”

So that was the reason for their visit. He should have known they were up to their usual matchmaking tricks. “I don't think that's a good idea,” he said.