Christmas On The Range: Winter Roses

“Space,” Ivy murmured.

“Outer?”

“No. Personal space,” Ivy qualified the answer. “I was thinking that how much space you have depends on how much money you have. I’d love to have just a yard. And maybe a fish pond,” she added.

“You can feed our Chinese goldfish any time you want to,” the other girl offered.

Ivy didn’t reply. She noticed, not for the first time, how much Merrie resembled her older brother. They were both tall and slender, with jet-black hair. Merrie wore her hair long, but Stuart’s was short and conventionally cut. Her eyes, pale blue like Stuart’s, could take on a steely, dangerous quality when she was angry. Not that Merrie could hold a candle to Stuart in a temper. Ivy had seen grown men hide in the barn when he passed by. Stuart’s pale, deep-set eyes weren’t the only indication of bad temper. His walk was just as good a measure of ill humor. He usually glided like a runner. But when he was angry, his walk slowed. The slower the walk, the worse the temper.

Ivy had learned early in her friendship with Merrie to see how fast Stuart was moving before she approached any room he was in. One memorable day when he’d lost a prize cattle dog to a coyote, she actually pleaded a migraine headache she didn’t have to avoid sitting at the supper table with him.

It was a nasty habit of his to be bitingly sarcastic to anyone within range when he was mad, especially if the object of his anger was out of reach.

Merrie led Ivy into the bedroom that adjoined hers and watched as Ivy opened the small bag and brought out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt. She frowned. “No nightgown?”

Ivy winced. “Rachel upset me. I forgot.”

“No problem. You can borrow one of mine. It will drag the floor behind you like a train, of course, but it will fit most everywhere else.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose Rachel is after the money.”

Ivy nodded, looking down into her small bag. “She was good at convincing Daddy I didn’t deserve anything.”

“She told lies.”

Ivy nodded again. “But he believed her. Rachel could be so sweet and loving when she wanted something. He drank...” She stopped at once.

Merrie sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “I know he drank, Ivy,” she said gently. “Stuart had him investigated.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”

Merrie bit her lower lip. “I can’t tell you why, so don’t even ask. Suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience.”

Ivy wondered how much information Stuart’s private detective had ferreted out about the private lives of the Conley family.

“We just knew that he drank,” Merrie said at once, when she saw her friend’s tortured expression. She patted Ivy’s hand. “Nobody has that perfect childhood they put in motion pictures, you know. Dad wanted Stuart to raise thoroughbreds to race in competition. It was something he’d never been able to do. He tried to force Stuart through agricultural college.” She laughed hollowly. “Nobody could force my brother to do anything, not even Dad.”

“Were they very much alike?” Ivy asked, because she’d only met the elder York a few times.

“No. Well, in one way they were,” she corrected. “Dad in a bad temper could cost us good hired men. Stuart cost us our best, and oldest, horse wrangler last week.”

“How?”

“He made a remark Stuart didn’t like when Stuart ran the Jaguar through the barn and into its back wall.”

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Ivy could hardly contain her amusement. Merrie’s brother was one of the most self-contained people she’d ever known. He never lost control of himself. “Stuart ran the Jag through the barn? The new Jaguar, the XJ?”

Merrie grimaced. “I’m afraid so. He was talking on his cell phone at the time.”

“About what, for heaven’s sake?”

“One of the managers at the Jacobsville sales barn mixed up the lot numbers and sold Stuart’s purebred cows, all of whom were pregnant by Big Blue, for the price of open heifers,” she added, the term “open heifer” denoting a two-year-old female who wasn’t pregnant. Big Blue was a champion Black Angus herd sire.

“That was an expensive mistake,” Ivy commented.

“And not only for us,” Merrie added, tongue-in-cheek. “Stuart took every cattle trailer we had and every one he could borrow, complete with drivers, went to the sale barn and brought back every single remaining bull or cow or calf he was offering for sale. Then he shipped them to another sale barn in Oklahoma by train. That’s why he’s in Oklahoma. He said this time, they’re going to be certain which lots they’re selling at which price, because he’s having it written on their hides in magic marker.”

Ivy just grinned. She knew Stuart would do no such thing, even if he felt like it.

“The local sale barn is never going to be the same,” Merrie added. “Stuart told them they’d be having snowball fights in hell before he sent another lot of cattle to them for an auction.”

“Your brother is not a forgiving person,” Ivy said quietly.

The other girl nodded. “But there’s a reason for the way he is, Ivy,” she said. “Our father expected Stuart to follow in his footsteps and become a professional athlete. Dad never made it out of semipro football, but he was certain that Stuart would. He started making him play football before he was even in grammar school. Stuart hated it,” she recalled sadly. “He deliberately missed practices, and when he did, Dad would go at him with a doubled-up belt. Stuart had bruises all over his back and legs, but it made him that much more determined to avoid sports. When he was thirteen, he dug his heels in and told Dad he was going into rodeo and that if the belt came out again, he was going to call Dallas Carson and have him arrested for beating him. Dallas,” she reminded Ivy, “was Hayes Carson’s father. He was our sheriff long before Hayes went into law enforcement. It was unusual for someone to be arrested for spanking a child twenty years ago, but Dallas would have done it. He loved Stuart like a son.”

It took Ivy a minute to answer. She knew more about corporal punishment than she was ever going to admit, even to Merrie. “I always liked Dallas. Hayes is hard-going sometimes. What did your father say to that?” she asked.

“He didn’t say anything. He got Stuart in the car and drove him to football practice. Five minutes after he left, Stuart hitched a ride to the Jacobsville rodeo arena and borrowed a horse for the junior bulldogging competition. He and his best friend, Martin, came in second place. Dad was livid. When Stuart put his trophy on the mantel, Dad smashed it with a fire poker. He never took the belt to Stuart again, but he browbeat him and demeaned him every chance he got. It wasn’t until Stuart went away to college that I stopped dreading the times we were home from school.”

Involuntarily, Ivy’s eyes went to the painting of Merrie and Stuart’s father that hung over the fireplace. Stuart resembled Jake York, but the older man had a stubborn jaw and a cruel glimmer in his pale blue eyes. Like Stuart, he’d been a tall man, lean and muscular. The children had been without a mother, who died giving birth to Merrie. Their mother’s sister had stayed with the family and cared for Merrie until she was in grammar school. She and the elder York had argued about his treatment of Stuart, which had ended in her departure. After that, tenderness and unconditional love were things the York kids read about. They learned nothing of them from their taciturn, demanding father. Stuart’s defiance only made him more bitter and ruthless.

“But your father built this ranch,” Ivy said. “Surely he had to like cattle.”

“He did. It was just that football was his whole life,” Merrie replied. “You might have noticed that you don’t ever see football games here. Stuart cuts off the television at the first mention of it.”

“I can see why.”

“Dad spent the time between football games running the ranch and his real estate company. He died of a heart attack when I was thirteen, sitting at the boardroom table. He had a violent argument with one of his directors about some proposed expansions that would have placed the company dangerously close to bankruptcy. He was a gambler. Stuart isn’t. He always calculates the odds before he makes any decision. He never has arguments with the board of directors.” She frowned. “Well, there was one. They insisted that he hire a pilot to fly him to business meetings.”

“Why?”

Merrie chuckled. “To stop him from driving himself to them. Didn’t I mention that this is his second new XJ in six months?”

Ivy lifted her eyebrows. “What happened to the first one?”

“Slow traffic.”

“Come again?”

“He was in a hurry to a called meeting of the board of directors,” Merrie said. “There was a little old man driving a motor home about twenty miles an hour up a hill on a blind curve. Stuart tried to pass him. He almost made it, too,” she added. “Except that Hayes Carson was coming down the hill on the other side of the road in his squad car.”

“What happened?” Ivy prompted when Merrie sat silently.

“Stuart really is a good driver,” his sister asserted, “even if he makes insane decisions about where to pass. He spun the car around and stopped it neatly on the shoulder before Hayes got anywhere near him. But Hayes said he could have killed somebody and he wasn’t getting out of a ticket. The only way he got his license back was that he promised to go to traffic school and do public service.”

“That doesn’t sound like your brother.”

Merrie shrugged. “He did go to traffic school twice, and then he went to the sheriff’s department and showed Hayes Carson how to reorganize his department so that it operated more efficiently.”