Wed to the Montana Cowboy Read online

  Fancy Francie must have been a very special bovine to have everyone in such an uproar. Even Barstow sped past them toward the barn, his short legs stirring up the dust.

  From the looks of the sky there wouldn’t be dust much longer. Rain was coming and if the heavy black clouds were anything to go by, there would be a lot of it.

  Inside the barn, lanterns were lit, giving the big building a soft amber glow.

  “There’s my good girl, Francie.” Her grandfather hurried to the cow and laid his hand on her wide forehead. He stroked each of her brown ears then kissed the white spot between her eyes. “Everything is going to be just fine.”

  Barstow ran his hand across the cow’s big, taut belly. “There will be a nice fat baby suckling you in no time at all.”

  During the short time that she had lived here, many cows had given birth, but none of them with this fanfare. Not to mention, they had all been nameless.

  “Jeeter,” she said to the young cowhand standing beside her. “Why is this cow so special?”

  Fancy Francie seemed like a perfectly ordinary brown cow with big soft eyes. If there was anything fancy about her it was not in her appearance.

  “She saved Hershal’s life, is why.” Jeeter blinked his blue, red-lashed eyes at her.

  “Well, by George, that is extraordinary!”

  “There’s not a cow like her in all the world.”

  To her knowledge she had never heard of a cow saving a life.

  “My word, how did she do that?”

  “Fought off a bear and a cougar at the same time, then she pulled Hershal from waist-deep mud.”

  Men of the West were known for telling tall tales. Clearly this had to be one. It would simply not be possible for a cow to do such a thing.

  “Jeeter, I’m not that green. Really, how did she do it?”

  “Old Hershal got himself stuck in the mud up to his hips going after Francie’s calf. There was a bear eyeballing what was going on and it made our girl nervous. She set to bellowing so loud that it caught Lantree’s attention. He galloped in to see Francie pawing the ground. She charged that big old bear. When Lantree fired his gun at a tree the bear took off like he had a bee up his butt.”

  She did know something about Lantree Walker shooting at trees.

  “What about the cougar?”

  “There probably was one. Whose to say? The gunshot blast would have sent it running, too.”

  She also knew something about cougars creeping along branches.

  “And then Francie somehow pulled my grandfather from the mud?” She watched the cow pace about her stall, doubting this feat would even be possible.

  “I swear it’s the truth.” Jeeter nodded his head, setting a mass of silky-looking red curls to jiggling. “Strike me dead if it ain’t.”

  A clap of thunder rolled across the barn roof. Grandfather and Barstow glanced at Jeeter with concern.

  “That’s the truth, to an extent,” Grandfather clarified. “She did pull me and her calf from the mud, but with the help of Lantree. He’s the one lassoed me and the calf and urged Fancy to pull us out.”

  “Regardless of the details, it did happen,” Barstow declared. “It’s been decreed by Mr. Hershal and agreed on by us all, that none of her calves will fill a stew pot. Because of her service to the family she will never become a steak.”

  Fancy Francie let out a moo, long and sorrowful sounding. She lay down, but just for a moment. She struggled to her feet to pace the confines of her stall.

  “Poor Francie,” she murmured.

  “Everything looks like it should,” Hershal assured her. “Just give it an hour or two and you’ll see the joy of motherhood glowing in her eyes. There’s nothing quite as wonderful.”

  “Since everything looks normal,” Barstow declared, “Jeeter and I will get back to our chores.”

  “I wouldn’t mind staying,” Jeeter put in.

  “Reckon you wouldn’t,” Grandfather said. “But Lantree’s still looking for heifers near their time. If you help him, he might get back before the storm hits.”

  With a hefty sigh of resignation Jeeter followed Barstow out of the barn.

  Grandfather sat down on an overturned barrel. She sat beside him on another barrel a few inches shorter. This was nice. It put them at eye level.

  “It’s peaceful in here,” she said. “Nice and cozy with the lamps making things look all mellow...and the sound of the wind blowing under the eaves.”

  “For us, but I don’t know if Francie understands that. I worry that she will be spooked by the thunder... Makes it harder to do her job.”

  “I reckon nature knows the way, Grandfather, storm or not.”

  He nodded. “Most of the time that’s true. And this is her third calf. It’s just that she’s a special girl.”

  Even knowing what she did about the cow’s heroics, Fancy Francie looked perfectly ordinary.

  “Grandfather,” she said because they were alone, the barn was quiet, and she wondered if... “I just was wondering...did you ever meet my mother?”

  He turned his concerned stare from Francie to her. “I never did have that pleasure. I’d have liked nothing more though. I’m sure she was lovely.”

  “My memories see her as a doll, fair and pink-cheeked. Men always called her pretty...I remember that much. But as Aunt Eunice tells it, she was lovely in her appearance but Momma was a wild rose. She was a thorn in my aunt’s side, even when they were growing up.”

  Grandfather nodded, his bushy white eyebrows drawn. “It’s a hard thing, loving someone and watching them make wrong decisions.”

  “Aunt Eunice wasn’t pleased when Momma came home, knocked on the door then pointed to me and Kiwi Clyde and declared that she could no longer care for us. Her husband—that’s what she called him but Aunt Eunice never believed it—was gone and she didn’t know where. Dead for all she knew.”

  “He wasn’t dead, at least not then.”

  Her grandfather didn’t look away while he spoke even though his eyes turned a moist blue. He took her hand in his large, rough fingers.

  “He is now, though.” He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “I reckon you want to know about your pa.”

  Did she? Not if he was as wicked as Aunt Eunice said. Better to believe in the few fantasies she had spun about him.

  “Only if it’s not painful for you to talk about him.”

  “I reckon it will always be that, but Rebecca, having you here helps to make all the past ugliness make sense. Because without all of that, there wouldn’t be you.”

  “My aunt, she holds on to resentments, and one of them is my papa. I’d like to know something better of him than what she had to say.”

  “Don’t go thinking too harshly of your aunt. I’m sure she loved your mother and then along came a man who... Well, I’m sure Eunice was not all wrong in her opinion...and grief can be hard on the heart.”

  Grandfather took a long breath and let it out in a low hiss.

  “Your father was a handsome little boy, always full of the dickens, but in a way that charmed. He learned to get his way with a smile or a laugh, even if what he wanted he shouldn’t have had. Your grandmother was wise to his ways, but most folks liked to indulge him.”

  Grandfather stood up, stretched then walked to the barn door and looked out.

  “It’s beginning to rain,” he announced, then returned to sit on the upended barrel. “He became spoiled, always getting what he wanted by conning others. The fact is, he might have gotten by in life, gone to Washington and become a politician, even. He was that much of a smooth talker. Well, when he was twelve years old, life gave him a turn.”

  From her stall, Francie gave a long moo which to Rebecca’s mind sounded distressed.

  “He had a close friend, a
good boy from a fine family,” Grandfather went on, apparently not overly concerned that anything might be wrong with his favorite cow. “One day the boys went to a swimming hole all the boys used to go to. No one much worried. I reckon we should have... Willie’s friend got bit by a water moccasin. He got bit while tossing it away from Willie.

  “Your father was never the same after that. Don’t think that he was bad-natured, Rebecca. He just needed to be in control of everything and everyone. Well, he damn sure was not going to control me. He became a rebel to all authority. We knocked heads over everything. He ignored his mother’s tears and my threats... Did whatever he pleased. One day when he was eighteen and we’d had a big set-to, he ran off with my sock money and the bird.”

  “That’s when he met my mother, I suppose?”

  He nodded. “A couple of years later. That is my understanding. I believe he did care for her.”

  “Aunt Eunice didn’t think so. She swore they were both cursed.”

  “I don’t believe that and you shouldn’t, either.” Grandfather glanced at the cow. She had begun to tremble. He frowned but continued to talk. “We’re all just God’s children with faults and virtues.”

  “Did you see him again?”

  “Years later he came home to seek forgiveness...and to die.”

  In spite of the fact that she had never met her father, had only known him as that Moreland Devil, her heart ached. A lump swelled in her throat.

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather.” A man would still love his son even if they came to blows.

  He nodded, she guessed, because he was also sorry.

  “The boy was sick, run down from sinful living. He died in your grandmother’s arms with her tears on his face. It was after that, that she took up the violin. Helped her cope, she said because she believed he could hear it on the other side. Until that time no one knew she had such a gift for music. Her playing was a comfort to us all.”

  “Did he know...” She almost couldn’t say this past the lump in her throat. “What happened to my mother?”

  He shook his head. “When you were born, he didn’t want the responsibility so he lit out... He regretted it with his last breath, Rebecca. And I am sorry, but he didn’t know anything about what had become of your mother.”

  “Aunt Eunice would say that Miss Francie was a better mother—” Something was happening in the stall. “Grandfather, I think the calf is coming!”

  She leaped from the barrel and dashed to the stall.

  “Look at those tiny hooves!” How astonishing! There was Francie, as normal looking as before but with a new life beginning to emerge from her body.

  Grandfather spoke sweetly to his cow, using calm, soothing words.

  “Rebecca, the calf’s hooves are pointing up instead of down. It’s breach. Find Barstow and have him fetch Lantree. I wouldn’t ask you to go out in the rain but the situation is urgent.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rebecca closed the barn door on Grandfather’s string of cusswords. The cow was clearly in trouble.

  Cold rain smattered her face and trickled down her scalp. She plucked up her skirt, tucked it in the crooks of her elbows then dashed toward the house, where Barstow was sure to be preparing supper.

  How the cook would know where Lantree might be, she couldn’t imagine. Barstow rarely left the house while Lantree spent most of his time outdoors.

  But Grandfather had sent her to Barstow so she slogged her way through the mud.

  A figure rounded the corner of the house. Jeeter seemed not to see her in his hurry to get out of the rain.

  “Jeeter!” she called. “Have you seen Lantree?”

  “In his cabin!”

  The boy continued his dash to the bunkhouse, but too late to avoid the sudden downpour that suddenly crashed down on their heads.

  Water dripped from her chin and her nose. Her progress toward Lantree’s cabin was slow and slippery.

  Visions of Fancy Francie, her calf’s hooves facing the wrong way, chilled her. Her heart raced faster than her feet. She stopped to take off her boots. Stocking feet were bound to move more quickly than footwear that stuck to the earth like they were caked in gum.

  Lantree’s cabin was not far away. She spotted it nestled in a stand of trees, appearing blurry in the drenching rain.

  It seemed to take forever but she arrived at the front steps. Stomping mud from her stockings, she crossed the porch then pounded on the door.

  No response. She slammed her boots against the wood. Still no response.

  By George, there was nothing for it but to act boldly. A cow and a calf depended upon her...lives hung in the balance!

  She opened the door without invitation and stepped inside. Her feet left long smears of mud on the polished floor.

  “Lantree...?” she called softly, feeling shy about invading his space.

  Hopefully Jeeter had not been mistaken about him being here, but silence met her inquiry.

  “Lantree Walker?” she called louder this time.

  Whether he was home or not was something that she would not know until she searched every room. And circumstances being what they were, she absolutely had to know.

  The cabin was small. He should not be hard to find. A quick glance told her that he was not in the bedroom. What a relief, she did not want to intrude upon him in that private space.

  He was not in the cozily furnished main room of the house. The fire in the hearth had not been kindled.

  If he was home, he had to be in the kitchen.

  Safe enough. Surprising someone in the kitchen did not seem half as invasive as coming upon them in the bedroom.

  And that would have been true had the kitchen not had a bathtub smack in the center...a bathtub with a naked Viking sprawled in it...who appeared to be deeply asleep.

  She gawked at Lantree for a moment because her wits had scattered and she was helpless to do anything else.

  His head lay back against the rim of the tub. His mouth was open, but just barely. The muscles of his neck flexed when he swallowed in his sleep.

  Being a large man, the copper bathtub was not quite adequate to hold him. Great muscular arms hung over the sides. His fingers seemed relaxed with water still dripping from the tips. Long, powerful-looking legs draped over the tub lip, nearly touching the floor.

  Any well-bred spinster would have looked demurely away before she noticed that...well...that an intimate part of him lay flaccid under the water.

  She gulped, she blinked and she stared.

  And what woman facing Rebecca’s future would not? There might never be another opportunity for her to observe a man in all his glory. What a shame it would be to go her whole life and not know the way a man’s hair grew beneath his clothing. How it dusted his thighs and curled on well-shaped calves, how it spread across his chest then narrowed to an arrow shooting straight at his—

  What a wicked, wanton person she had become. Her father’s child perhaps. Certainly her mother’s.

  The modest thing to do would be to tiptoe out of the kitchen, pretend that she had never come upon him. But Grandfather was counting upon his help with the cow.

  Feeling flushed, she backed out of the room. From the parlor, she called his name softly.

  No response.

  “Lantree!” she shouted.

  Silence, silence and more silence.

  Very well, there was nothing left to do but shake him awake, to touch his naked shoulder with her bare fingers and jostle him until he opened his eyes.

  The man was about to get the surprise of his life, but there was nothing she could do about that.

  Rounding the kitchen door, she spotted a clean-looking dishcloth and snatched it up. She leaned over the tub and dropped it over his... A well-bred young lady should not even
think the word.

  With any luck, he wouldn’t guess that she had glimpsed...well, to be honest, gawked at it.

  By accident.

  More or less.

  Somehow she was going to have to erase that vision from her mind. If she didn’t she would look guilty and he would know that she had only dropped the cloth after appraising his... Oh, by the saints!

  She bent at the waist and shook his shoulder.

  He smiled in his sleep but didn’t wake up. She shook him again, harder this time.

  “Lantree!”

  He raised his hand to his shoulder and gave hers a squeeze. Was he, she could not help but wonder, dreaming of someone?

  All of a sudden his other arm snaked around her waist and he toppled her down into the water. Her derriere hit smack on top of that little bitty dishcloth.

  “Could be I was dreaming of you.”

  She certainly had not voiced that thought aloud...had she?

  “You’re awake!” Well, of course he was. What an idiotic thing to say.

  “Have been since you set your boots to hammering my front door.”

  “You might have said something!” She scrambled to get out of the tub but only slipped about like a landed fish.

  “I might have, but no matter if I spoke up or not, you were going to find me unfit company. I hoped you might go away.”

  “You might have warned me away.”

  He grinned. “If I had, I’d never know how pretty you look when you’re flustered.”

  “Pretty! I will overlook the insult.” Not that it would not still sting. “Because I did invade your bath.”

  “Why did you invade my bath?”

  This time when she tried to get out of the tub he allowed it.

  “There’s trouble with Fancy’s calf. Grandfather sent me to bring you to the barn.”

  All of a sudden the playfulness went out of his expression.

  He rose from the water, holding the cloth in place.

  She spun about and covered her eyes, even though the damage had long been done. “I’ll meet you back in the barn.”

  “You’ll wait for me.” It sounded as if his voice was now coming from another room so she uncovered her face. “Your grandpappy would have my hide if I let you drown.”