Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) (11 page)

I
am not shearing sheep.” Bailey slid on her leather gloves and glared at her sister at the same time.

Kylie didn’t want to help either, but she left the haggling to Bailey and Shannon. She’d had enough to worry about with getting their breakfast ready that morning.

“It won’t take long,” promised Shannon. “I already sheared most of them in the spring, but Mrs. Langley’s offered to buy more wool, and that will give me money enough to get my milk cow. I warned her that the wool is short still. She didn’t seem to care. The woman sounded desperate for more yarn. Her baby’s coming in September, and she’s got to have most things done by then. She said a little one, plus running the diner and four other children, will leave her little time for knitting.”

“Well, I’ve got a bronc to break.” Bailey stood from the table. “I’ve got to move my young longhorn bull to a different pasture. He’s been fighting with an old bull, and one of ’em isn’t gonna survive. I’ve got hay to cut, a fence
to mend, and a creek to dam. And I’m hoping to start building a chicken coop.”

Kylie felt dizzy. “I can’t believe you do all those things. All men’s work.”

Bailey rolled her eyes.

Shannon was undeterred. “I’ll come back with you after the noon meal. I’m not a hand with broncs, but I can cut hay and mend fence. If you give me a half day’s work this morning, I’ll give you a half day this afternoon. But I need the cash money from this wool.”

Bailey let out a sigh. “Fine, Shannon, I’ll come. But I’m holding you to the afternoon’s work. I’ll probably have to burn my clothes and make new.”

“The work’s not that rough,” Shannon said.

“But I’ll stink, and that sheep stink doesn’t come out easily.”

Shannon laughed. She was used to the teasing over her precious sheep. “Thank you. You and Kylie are good help. I know you’re not fond of my sheep, but you handle them well.”

They made short work of cleaning up the breakfast dishes and headed out. As usual, Shannon started saddling a horse for Kylie.

“Let Kylie do that herself,” Bailey told her. “She’s got to learn.”

“I know how to saddle a horse. I’m just slow, and Shannon’s in a hurry.”

Shannon smiled. “You’ll get faster as time passes. A person can’t help learning skills she practices. And I am in a hurry. We’ve got three days’ work to do before sunset. We’re going to have to press hard to get to it all.”

They were leaving Bailey’s place when Aaron rode in. Kylie’s heart sped up. She hadn’t seen him in almost a week. She’d stayed with Bailey like a good girl, yet she was tired of being underfoot at her sister’s, even while she was too scared to go home.

He looked handsome and strong, and she knew he was an honest, kind man. He was everything a woman could want in a husband. It was a shame she couldn’t have him. For she wasn’t about to spend her life stuck on some mountaintop, not even with such a decent and protective man. Not even if he saddled her horse for her.

“Morning, ladies,” Aaron said while tipping his hat.

Kylie saw both her sisters tense up. They were used to acting like men. Kylie felt sorry for them. Here she sat on her horse, wearing her skirts with her hair pulled back in a neat bun at the base of her neck, and there they were in britches.

Bailey seemed to like it, but Kylie wondered about Shannon. With her maternal love of animals, how could Shannon not be unhappy passing herself off as a man? It had to go against her most basic motherly nature.

“I don’t want to hear you say anything like that again, Masterson. If you get in the habit, you’ll slip.”

Aaron smirked. “Where are you pretty little ladies off to this morning?”

A move to Kylie’s left drew her attention to Shannon, who had a sweet smile on her face that only someone who knew her really well could tell was not sweet but diabolical.

“Why, we ‘pretty little ladies’ are off to do a really hard job, and we could certainly use some help.”

“I’d be glad to help you, Miss Shannon. What is it you need?”

“I reckon I had this coming,” Aaron said to no one in particular.

The ram bleated and charged. He knew the critter wasn’t up to killing him, but that didn’t mean taking one of those small curved horns in the belly wouldn’t hurt.

The ram was the last of them and didn’t take to being sheared any better than the others. Aaron figured he deserved this for wanting so badly to see Kylie. He should’ve just let these contrary women have at their shearing, but he’d said he’d help and he’d be bruised for two weeks, thanks to his big mouth.

He snagged the feisty ram and dragged it into the fast-moving river, where he, fully dressed, began soaping the animal up. After the river had rinsed the ram clean, he hugged it against him and hauled it dripping wet over to a grassy pen. Shannon stood waiting beside the pen, also dripping wet from all the sheep that had shook the water out of their hides. She held her shears ready.

Bailey stood back, scowling.

They’d developed a system that had worked pretty well. Kylie herded a sheep to the water’s edge. Aaron grabbed it, wrestled it into the water, soaped it up and rinsed it. Afterward he carried it to Shannon.

It gave him some pleasure to watch her get soaked as each sheep shook its wool somewhat dry.

Yet Shannon didn’t seem to mind. She just laughed, her
eyes bright and smiling. All that affection, and it was all for her sheep.

Once she was done shearing, Bailey caught the fleece and rolled it up. Meanwhile Kylie herded in another sheep.

It was like clockwork with sheep slobber.

Aaron envied Kylie her part of the job, which left her hands and clothes as clean as a mountain breeze.

Shannon was drenched and coated in wool fluff and had taken a few cloven hooves to the gut.

And Bailey had a tough job bundling the small fleeces into a roll, as the sheep weren’t ready to be sheared. Though Aaron knew little about sheep, he knew that much. Shannon had herself admitted she’d sheared them already in the spring.

The skimpy amount of wool made the bundles fall apart, so that when it was over, Bailey was so tufted she looked more sheep than woman.

But Aaron had come out the worst. He looked like he’d been shoved over a waterfall, then run over by a sheep stampede, which actually described the last hour pretty well. Normally he’d have stripped off his shirt to keep it dry, but he wasn’t about to do that with three women watching. So he was soaked to the skin with nothing to do about it but let the air dry him, clothes and all.

Shannon tossed the last fleece to Bailey and then gave the cantankerous short-haired old ram a hug. Aaron looked at Bailey and rolled his eyes. She smiled, then quickly made her lips into a line again.

Aaron and Bailey saw eye to eye on a surprising number
of things, including their dislike of sheep and thinking Shannon had a strange way of behaving toward animals.

“We got done in half the time, thanks to you, Mr. Masterson.” Despite tricking him into this, Shannon had thanked him graciously several times.

“Considering I’ve got bruises in the shape of sheep hooves forming over half my body, I think you can call me Aaron.” He picked up his boots and holster and everything else he’d shed when, in horror, he realized what his offer of help was going to amount to.

Shannon grinned. “I think you’ve earned yourself some coffee and a slice of pound cake, Aaron.” She glanced at her sisters. “All of you have. I’d have been days doing this alone, and the three of us would never have gotten it done in one morning. Now we’re done early enough I can help you a lot this afternoon, Bailey. I can fix dinner if you’ve a mind to eat a bit early. I’ve got eggs and cheese and I baked bread just yesterday.”

“I put a venison roast on this morning, Shannon.” Bailey began brushing off the tufts of wool on her clothes. “When a woman works her heart out for fifteen hours a day, she needs a little meat to give her strength.”

As they walked toward the house, Aaron asked, “How’d you talk with Erica to sell the wool? Are you saying you saw her face-to-face and she came away from that thinking you’re a man?”

Shannon’s cheeks turned pink. “Um . . . well, no. There was a note tacked on my front door. I figured I’d just take the wool in myself, but you’ve got me worried about my disguise. So I’ve been wondering, Aaron, if you wouldn’t mind delivering it for me and also fetch my money.”

“And while you’re there, I’ve got a list of groceries I need,” Bailey said.

The women looked a little . . . well, Aaron had to say it. They both looked sheepish. “Of course I’ll do that for you, but keeping my mouth shut about you being women is not the same as taking on the job of helping you hide. I’ve got work of my own to do, you know.”

“Thank you.” Shannon smiled that pretty smile of hers.

Kylie patted him on his soggy arm.

Aaron figured he’d probably do about anything they asked.

They got to Shannon’s cabin, bigger than Kylie’s, smaller than Bailey’s and like the other two, very well built. “Did you ladies build these cabins yourselves?”

Shannon waved them to her table while she headed for the coffeepot hanging from a hook in the fireplace.

Bailey threw him a towel, then went outside and washed in a basin. When Aaron was as dry as he was going to get, he pulled on his boots and sat down. He noticed Shannon had four chairs, not two like Kylie. He wondered if that meant this house was more the family gathering spot.

Bailey came back in with clean hands and face, looking only slightly less woolly, and sat down.

“Bailey does the building.” Shannon poured coffee as they settled in.

“Shannon does the detail work and the furniture.” Bailey picked up her cup and slouched back in her chair, her legs splayed and her hair short. She moved in a manly way most of the time, with long strides, shoulders squared. But Aaron saw her delicate hands and the fine bones of her face and gave a mental shake.

Shannon brought a cake, shaped into a loaf, and began slicing it. “Kylie helps us with everything and makes it pretty.”

Kylie laughed. “I do if you two will give me time. You need curtains in here, Shannon. And Bailey, if you’d plant flowers out front of your cabin—”

“Stop with the flowers.” Bailey cut her off, but she did it good-naturedly.

Aaron wasn’t sure if they’d welcome it, but he was so curious about their war service he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “You really fought in the war? You were in battles? How did you survive it? I know you dressed as men but—”

“We got spread far and wide,” Bailey said, cutting him off, frowning into her cup, “mainly because we enlisted at different times. I’d hoped me going was enough for Pa. When Jimmy died, he worked us all into a fever. All I could think of was fighting in his place. Getting revenge on the Rebs, who killed my brother. I knew later that Pa had stirred all that up in me, and at the time I was in full agreement with him.”

“Bailey told us she’d fight for the family,” Shannon said quietly. “Pa was prodding all of us, but she didn’t want anyone else to go. She said she’d carry the name into war for the family. I was all worked up too, though not as eager to fight as Bailey. After she left, Pa kept at me until I wanted in. I delayed a year. I was too young, but that’s not what stopped me. I hated leaving Kylie. She needed someone there to buffer things between her and Pa.”

Kylie smiled like someone who was so used to a sad tale it was simply an old memory now. “Pa liked Jimmy best,
and he always goaded us to help outside and not dally with foolish womanly ways. I gave him the most trouble. Part of it was just liking dresses and staying to the house, but there was more. Bailey would take him on, be all direct. Fight him toe-to-toe.”

Bailey jerked a shoulder in a smug way. “I never was much afraid of the old coot.”

“Shannon was a sneak.”

With a casual two-fingered salute, Shannon said, “And proud of it. I learned to agree with him and then go do as I pleased mostly. I think there’s a Bible story about that. The son who agreed to help, then didn’t, and the son who refused to help and then did. I’m pretty sure I’m on the wrong side of that story, but then so is Pa if he thinks I’m his son.”

“I did my best to charm him out of his nonsense to the extent anyone could.” Kylie acted mighty proud of that. “I learned to trick a smile out of him and make his favorite foods.”

“You should see her bat those eyelashes when she wants her way,” Bailey said dryly.

Aaron looked at Kylie. “I think I’ve come under fire from those lashes.”

Kylie just smiled. She got up and refilled their cups.

“About the war, I know what the enlisted men lived like, the close quarters, no privacy. And the battles. To imagine a woman enduring that is beyond comprehension.”

That shut them all up, and Aaron remembered the way Bailey had cut him off. It wasn’t because she was eager to talk; it was because she wanted to talk about something else. The somber look on their faces made Aaron regret bringing it up.

Finally, Bailey said quietly, “My only answer to that is . . . how does anyone endure it? When in a battle, how is my being a woman any different than the man beside me. The fear is so big that being a woman or man doesn’t matter. Maybe some women are weaker than some men, more easily frightened, but this isn’t a little thing, like being startled by a mouse or jumping when you see a snake. This is different. This is a monstrous kind of terror. Exploding cannons, flying bayonets. Severed limbs and reloading rifles while lead whizzes past your face. How much sooner would a woman run from battle than a man? All I know is I never did.”