The Rancher's Courtship

“Yeah, Papa. After all, we were going to stay with her and Uncle Pete while you were gone, anyway. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you stayed there, too.”

When pigs fly, he thought. She’d apologized for her heated reaction and politely offered them lodging, but he was sure she was relieved he hadn’t taken her up on it. He’d be about as welcome under that woman’s roof as fire ants at a picnic.

“Girls, Miss Caroline doesn’t have a house of her own, since Uncle Pete died. She lives with her parents. I—I’m not sure there’d be room,” he said, feeling guilty because Caroline had invited them, so there must be room enough.

Amelia shrugged, as if to say, So?

Then thunder rumbled overhead, and Abby cast a fearful eye upward. “Papa, it’s going to rain,” she said uneasily. “Can we ask her, please?”

It was the last word, desperately uttered, as if she was fighting tears again, that did in his resolve. Lucinda, their mother, had died during a thunderstorm, and though his daughter didn’t realize that was the source of her fear, Jack knew it, and he knew he was going to have to do the very thing he least wanted to do—swallow his pride, go back and take Caroline up on her offer.

He sighed. “All right, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he said, and they walked down Simpson Creek’s Main Street back toward the school again.

Caroline had just seen her last pupil, Billy Joe Henderson, out the door. She’d had to keep him after class long enough for him to write a list of ten reasons “Why I Should Not Throw Spitballs in Class.” After erasing his hurriedly scrawled list on the chalkboard, she was clapping the erasers together outside the window and wishing she’d assigned Billy Joe this chore too when she heard footfalls on the steps outside.

Billy Joe must have returned for his slingshot, which he’d left on top of his desk.

“I thought you might be back,” she murmured as she turned around, only to see it wasn’t Billy Joe at all.

Jack Collier stood there, and once again, he had a hand on each of his daughters’ shoulders. His face was drawn and his blue eyes red-rimmed, and the twins’ faces were puffy from recent crying. The girls stared at her, eyes huge in their pale faces.

So he’s told them about Pete’s death, she thought with a pang, remembering how awful those first few hours of grief had been for her. Their mourning was just beginning.

Caroline’s eyes were a bit swollen, Jack noted, and he wondered how hard it had been to carry on with class as if nothing had happened after their emotional confrontation.

“Miss Wallace, I—I wonder if it’s too late for me to take you up on your offer of a bed for the night? The hotel doesn’t have any rooms available, and the boardinghouse couldn’t accommodate all three of us.”

She looked at him, then at the girls, then back at him again. “All right. I was just about to go home, so it’s good that you came just now.” As he watched, she gathered up a handful of slates, tucking them into a poke bag, and took her bonnet and shawl down from hooks by the door.

“I’ll take that,” he said, indicating her poke, and held the door for her.

She gave him an inscrutable, measuring look. “Thank you, Mr. Collier.”

He untied the horses from the hitching post. “Is there a livery where I can board the horses overnight?”

She nodded. “Calhoun’s, on Travis Street, near where I live.” Then she turned to the girls. “My father is the postmaster,” she said as they all walked out of the schoolyard and onto the street that led back into town, “so we live right behind the post office. Papa and Mama will sure be happy to have some children to spoil tonight,” she told them. “My brother Dan’s still at home, but he finished his schooling last year and works at the livery, so he fancies himself a young man now, too old to be cosseted.” Jack thought there was something in her gaze that hinted she’d be happy to have the children around, too, if only for one night.

“How old is he?” Abby asked.

“Thirteen,” Caroline said. “And how old are you two? I’m guessing six?”

“Right!” Amelia crowed, taking her hand impulsively. “How did you know, Aunt Caroline?”

“I’m the oldest,” Abby informed Caroline proudly, taking her other hand. “By ten minutes.”

“Is that a fact?” Caroline looked suitably impressed.

He was touched by the way she’d taken to his children, even if she’d decided he had about as much sense as last year’s bird nest, Jack thought as he followed behind them leading the horses.

He was dreading the meeting with her parents, knowing he’d be unfavorably compared with Pete, who had always been so wise in everything he’d done. Pete would have never been so foolish as to set out for Montana so late in the year with a herd of half-wild cattle. The only remotely impulsive thing Pete had ever done was moving to Simpson Creek to court the very woman Jack now followed.

And yet Jack also looked forward meeting the Wallaces, hoping they would tell him about Pete’s life during the months he’d spent in this little town before his death. He’d probably hear more about it from them than he would from Caroline, for she was still a little stiff with him.

He was acutely conscious of the ring that she’d flung at him riding in his pocket. Though it weighed almost nothing, it seemed to burn him like a hot coal—as if he’d stolen it from her.

After leaving the horses at Calhoun’s, they reached the Wallaces’ small tin-roofed frame house, which was attached to the post office.

“Perhaps I should go ahead into the kitchen and explain,” she began, letting go of the twins’ hands to open the door. They stepped into a simple room with a stone fireplace, two rocking chairs and a horsehair sofa.

“Papa, Mama—” she began to call and then was clearly startled when an older man rose from one of the rocking chairs, laying aside a book he’d been reading. She apparently hadn’t expected him to be there.

“Hello, Caroline,” he said. “And who do you have here?”

Before she could answer, however, a woman who had to be Caroline’s mother bustled in. She must have come from the kitchen, for she still wore an apron and held a big stirring spoon in one hand. Both of them looked at the girls with obvious delight, but when Mrs. Wallace shifted her eyes from the twins to Jack, she stared at him before her gaze darted uncertainly back to Caroline.

Caroline knew her mother had noticed Jack’s striking resemblance to Pete.

Chapter Three

“Mama, Papa, this is Jack, Pete’s brother, and his daughters, Amelia and Abigail.” Caroline could understand her mother’s reaction, for she’d had a similar one herself. Her mother blinked and tried to smile a welcome at Jack and the two girls.

“Jack, h-how nice to meet you,” she began in a quavery voice. “And your girls. I…”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Wallace. I know I look like my brother,” he said, taking the trembling hand the older woman extended to him, before taking Caroline’s father’s in turn.

“That you do, Jack,” her father said, shaking Jack’s hand. “Pete told us about you, of course, but you understand that it’s still a surprise to…” His voice trailed off and his gaze fell. Then he looked up at Jack again. “We set great store by your brother Pete. He was a good man, and we miss him.”

“Yes, he was mighty good to our Caroline,” Mama said, her gaze caressing her daughter for a moment. “We were so proud he chose our daughter.”

Jack’s throat felt tight, but he managed to say, “Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace.”

“Your coming is such a nice surprise,” Mrs. Wallace went on, with an attempt at a sociable smile. “Please, won’t you sit down?” She gestured to the horsehair couch. “Caroline, why don’t you bring in a chair from the kitchen?”

Caroline went to fetch it, wishing as she walked down the hallway that her brother would show up so he could take the twins out of the room to see the kittens in the shed while she explained what had happened—some of it, anyway. She wasn’t about to tell her parents about the angry conversation she’d had with Jack before he’d left the schoolhouse the first time. But she did want to tell them about Jack’s traveling plans, to see if they could help her to change his mind. She didn’t want to bring it up with the girls there, yet! Even though it was nearly time for supper, and Dan was always “starving,” he hadn’t put in an appearance. She hadn’t seen him at the livery stable when they’d dropped off Jack’s horses, so maybe he was lounging by the creek with the trio of boys he ran around with.

She couldn’t send Jack’s daughters out to find the kittens by themselves, so she’d have to explain the situation in front of them. By the time she’d brought in the chair for herself, Jack and the girls were settled on the sofa and her parents in their rocking chairs. Caroline took a deep breath and said, “Mama, Papa, Mr. Collier didn’t know about his brother’s death. He apparently didn’t get the letter I sent after Pete passed away.”

Her mother gasped and clapped two hands to her cheeks. “Oh, Mr. Collier, I’m so sorry! What a shock that must have been, to come all this way, and…Amos Wallace, I told you we should have sent someone down there to find him,” she added with a touch of asperity.

“No sense worryin’ about that now, dear,” her father said, patting his wife’s hand soothingly. “What’s done is done. Yes, I’m sorry that you got the bad news that way, Mr. Collier—may I call you Jack? Pete was already like a son to us, so I don’t feel like we need to stand on ceremony with you.”

“Jack is fine,” Jack assured them. “Yes, it was a shock, all right. But I reckon I should have suspected something when I never got the wedding invitation. I was busy getting ready to sell the ranch, and—”

Her father interrupted. “You’re selling your ranch? Why’s that?”

Jack flashed a glance at her. Caroline couldn’t tell if he wanted her to tell the rest or if he was merely pleading that she not reveal how little she thought of his scheme. She kept her silence, thinking Jack Collier richly deserved to explain his half-baked plan without her assistance.

“I’ve sold it, actually,” Jack said. “I—we—are on the way to Montana with my herd to join my partners. They bought a big ranch up there, and they asked me to throw in with them.”