Firestick, p.4
Firestick, page 4
“Bronc stompers?”
“Men who will ride a horse to death in their hurry to break it, rather than take a little extra time and allow the animal the chance to adjust to what is going on, what is being asked of it.”
Jesus scowled. “Breaking a horse by riding it to death accomplishes nothing.”
“Least of all for the horse,” said Beartooth.
Jesus turned his head and looked at the black. Their eyes locked and held for a long moment—until Jesus said, in a low voice, “Tomorrow.”
The black chuffed and dug at the ground with one of its front hooves.
Miguel smiled. “He says he will be waiting and is looking forward to it.”
Beartooth straightened back up. “Tomorrow it is, then. I’ll go ahead and unsaddle the black, then turn him out with the others. When Jesus’s rattled bones have finished settlin’ back into place, you two go on to the bunkhouse and get cleaned up for supper. Take it easy for a while, until Miss Victoria rings the bell to come eat.”
* * *
After he’d seen to the black and put away the saddle and bridle Jesus had been using, Beartooth left the corral area and headed for the main house of the Double M Ranch headquarters. The house was a two-story, wood-frame structure, something a bit uncommon to the area. It was built straight and true and solid, always with a fresh coat of whitewash, trimmed in bright green. When Beartooth and his companions had made the decision to quit being mountain men and settle into more conventional lives, they had agreed that wherever they put down roots, they would build and maintain a fine, substantial home. The main house at the Double M was the result, and each man took pride and worked hard to make sure it always lived up to their goal.
The sinking sun of late afternoon cast a long shadow ahead of Beartooth as he strode along. By his reckoning, he had endured fifty winters in his lifetime, give or take a couple either way. He was a sliver under six feet tall, square-shouldered, lean and solid. Unlike Firestick, there was no gray in his reddish-brown hair. His clean-shaven face was too narrow and his green eyes too intense and probing for him to be considered classically handsome. But he had an easy grin, with a slightly roguish slant to it, that made men want to be pals with him, and certain kinds of women—especially given how the grin came combined with a deeply dimpled chin—want to learn more about what was behind that roguish slant.
As he stepped up onto the front porch, Beartooth was met by a wave of delicious-smelling cooking coming from inside the house. He detected roast pork, cabbage, fresh-baked bread, and some kind of pie. Peach, he thought. He was sure of the first three; the pie might have been more a case of wishful thinking as far as exactly what kind it would turn out to be. In any case, he knew it was sure to taste great thanks to the kitchen talents of Victoria Kingsley, the Double M’s cook and housekeeper.
Entering the house and passing through the parlor, Beartooth paused in the kitchen doorway to breathe in more of the delightful aromas and at the same time drink in the equally pleasing sight of Victoria. She wore a short-sleeved brown blouse buttoned at the throat, a full-length flower-patterned skirt, and a white apron tied at the waist. Beartooth preferred seeing her in this kind of apron rather than the bib-style ones, with shoulder straps that muted her mature, all-over-womanly curves. Victoria was nearing thirty and no longer willowy, but to Beartooth’s eyes—and to those of any red-blooded male with a lick of sense—she was still a mighty fine-looking gal. Her chestnut hair was thick and rich, her face was unlined and finely sculpted, and she had eyes as blue and sparkling as the deepest, purest mountain pool Beartooth had ever looked into.
Sensing his presence in the doorway after she had placed two loaves of bread in the warmer, she turned her head and glanced back over her shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Victoria gave a faint shake of her head. “You didn’t. I think I’ve finally gotten used to how quietly you, Firestick, and Moosejaw move . . . especially for such large men. Whenever I turn around, I’m prepared to find that one of you has entered the room while I was looking away.”
She spoke with an English accent, at times stronger than others, as befitting the land of her birth before coming to America and eventually to the West with a spirited cousin who was a dreamer and a hopeless romantic. That cousin—her name was Estelle, and she’d been closer than a sister ever since childhood—had convinced Victoria without a great deal of difficulty that the arranged marriage her parents were pushing her into with a man for whom she felt no love would be a tragedy she’d regret for the rest of her life. So the pair had fled together to the hopes and thrills and promises of a new country.
On the way west, to a wildly expanding world of cattle empires and endless opportunities such as Estelle had read about in books, she contracted pneumonia and died. This left Victoria jarringly alone and needing to fend for herself on the Texas frontier. Her pride refused to let her contact her family back in England for aid. She vowed to forge on in pursuit of all that she and Estelle had set out after. With her looks, she could have easily succumbed to any number of marriage proposals, but she wanted something more than to settle for an arrangement of convenience—the very thing she had escaped—as a means to simply be taken care of by someone.
So instead she sought whatever socially acceptable “woman’s work” she could find—washing, mending, cleaning, cooking—in order to get by independently. Eventually this led to her hiring on as cook and housekeeper for the men of the Double M. It wasn’t the culmination of her dreams, to be sure, but it was a safe, acceptable position, one she often had to remind herself not to become too complacent with.
“Hope you understand we don’t move the way we do to unnerve you,” Beartooth was explaining. “It’s just that, the way we lived out in the wild and up in the mountains for all those years, we learned to move silently or we might sudden-like quit livin’ at all.”
“I understand,” Victoria said. “I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would want to pursue that extreme lifestyle, but I understand how you had to adapt in order to survive.”
Beartooth smiled. “Nobody can ever appreciate that lifestyle unless they’ve felt the urge and gone on to live it. It ain’t something you can sit down and reason out as a good idea or a smart way to live. It’s something that’s either in you or it ain’t.”
“And to this day it remains in all three of you, doesn’t it?” Victoria said with a faint smile of her own. “The love for that life and those times, I mean.”
“Yeah, I reckon it does,” Beartooth admitted, somewhat surprised to hear himself say so. “But, barrin’ something drastic, I don’t see any of us ever returnin’ to it. There are plenty of old-timers still walkin’ the mountain paths and trappin’ the streams, but it’s really a young man’s game. Me and my pards, we decided we were a little long in the tooth to keep after it.”
“Nonsense. The passage of years means little to hardy men like you three.”
“Maybe not. But there are other ways to prove it.” Beartooth shrugged. “You’re right, though, about the love for that life—the savorin’ of it, I guess you could say—still bein’ in all of us. I’m pretty sure Firestick and Moosejaw feel the same way. Only, like I said, barrin’ something drastic, I don’t see any of us returnin’ to it.”
“Let’s hope not,” Victoria said. “Surely you must know there are many in these parts who would hate to see you leave.”
Her words left Beartooth at a loss for how to respond. Since settling here in the Buffalo Peak area, Firestick and Moosejaw had each found romantic interests in town. To them, Victoria was a welcome addition to their ranch life—competent and eye-pleasing in her role—but that was as far as it went. Beartooth’s feelings toward her, however, had grown into something more. And there’d been indications she might have similar feelings toward him, but as of yet, neither had gotten around to expressing anything with words.
So, Beartooth wondered, when Victoria responded to the possibility of him and his friends returning to the mountains by saying, “Let’s hope not,” then adding how there were many who would “hate to see you leave” . . . was she speaking only for the “many”—or was she including herself? Or was she perhaps speaking mainly for herself?
It was ironic, considering how Beartooth always had a smooth, easy way with women—albeit the certain kind he’d mostly come in contact with before—that here he was feeling flummoxed, not sure how to act or what to say, when it came to the first woman who might truly mean something to him. Flummoxation like this was enough to actually drive a man back up into the mountains!
With Beartooth momentarily tongue-tied, Victoria followed up on her own remark by saying, “Before you wash up for supper, would you mind bringing in some fuel for the stove’s wood bin? Otherwise I might forget and then run short for tomorrow’s breakfast. And I really dread going out to the woodpile in the predawn hour.”
“Sure. No problem,” Beartooth replied, grateful for the disruption of his awkward silence. “With all the chores you do around here, us fellas ought to do a better job of keepin’ that bin full for you—without havin’ to be asked.”
“I don’t mind fetching some for myself, except, like I said, early in the morning. A rat jumped out at me one time when it was still too dark to see well, and I’ve been skittish ever since. And right now I need to stay here and keep an eye on those pies in the oven.”
Beartooth’s eyebrows lifted. “Pies, as in more than one? I thought that was part of what I smelled. Peach, right?”
“Sorry, but no,” Victoria said, knowing how fond he was of peach pie. “They’re both blueberry this time. But I promise to make peach next, before the end of the week. All right?”
Picking up the bucket for hauling in the wood for the stove, Beartooth said, “I’ll hold you to it. And I aim to make sure you’ll have plenty of wood for the baking. In the meantime, though, blueberry ain’t exactly a hard sacrifice. So, you stay here and guard ’em good while I commence to fetchin’ your fuel.”
CHAPTER 6
“The boss sure ain’t gonna like it, I can tell you that much. Hell, I can guarantee it. He ain’t gonna like it one damn bit!”
Firestick scowled fiercely in response to these words. “Your boss ‘don’t like it’?” he mimicked. “You think me or anybody else in this town likes those three jackasses showin’ up every two, three weeks and startin’ some new kind of trouble? Well, here’s a guarantee right back at you—nobody does. Least of all me. Tolsvord’s had plenty of chances to rein in the Dunlaps and Woolsey, but all he ever does is pay their fines and wag his finger at them and then turn ’em loose to come around and stir something up all over again.”
“And that’s what he’ll do again this time. Pay their fines, I mean. Just tell me how much it is so I can let him know, and he’ll send somebody around with the money first thing tomorrow.”
Firestick shook his head stubbornly. “Nope. I ain’t gonna make it that easy. Not this time. Oh, there’ll still be fines, don’t worry about that. Stiff ones, too. But they’re also gonna serve some time behind bars. If Tolsvord ain’t willin’ to tie some knots in their tails, by God, I am. Since they go around actin’ like what little brains they got is in their asses, maybe a knot down there close will help straighten out their thinkin’ a little.”
Cleve Boynton was a tall, rawboned individual with bushy, prematurely white sideburns bracketing a weathered face that, more often than not, was gripped by a stern expression. The cause for the latter, at least part of the time, had to do with the fact he was the foreman for Gerald Tolsvord’s Box T Ranch and had wranglers like the Dunlaps and Newt Woolsey to deal with.
“Doggone it, Firestick,” he lamented now, as he stood before the marshal’s desk in the front office area of the jail building, “you know the pickle I’m in with those three. You think I ain’t full aware they’re a bunch of . . .” He hesitated, eyeing the heavy wooden door that led back to the cell block. The fact that the door was closed gave him reassurance the men back there couldn’t hear him, so he continued, “Well, they’re jackasses, just like you said. But you also know the rest of the story—how the Dunlaps are kin to Boss Tolsvord’s wife. Her brother’s boys, I think. Anyway, she rides Tolsvord to keep cuttin’ ’em slack, and he rides me to keep tryin’ to get something re-semblin’ work out of ’em.”
Firestick sighed. “I can appreciate the fix you’re in, Cleve. And, for that part, I’m sorry. But that don’t change a dang thing. I aim to send a message to them three, and Tolsvord, as well. You go ahead and tell him that. Put it all on me. That should leave you clear from takin’ any blame.”
“I don’t know about that. I go back to the ranch without ’em, no matter what my story, the boss is bound to be plenty sore,” said Boynton. “Plus, I had work lined up for those yahoos tomorrow morning. Not having ’em there to take care of it—even given the half-assed job they usually do—will either leave it undone or force me to pull somebody from some other job.”
“Like I said, I’m sorry for how it lands on you, Cleve,” Firestick told him. “But my mind’s made up. I ain’t gonna go easy on ’em, not this time.”
“Okay. If your mind’s made up, I guess that’s all there is to it,” said Boynton, his shoulders sagging somewhat in defeat. He started to turn away, then once again hesitated. “The boss is bound to ask, so what do I tell him as far as how long you figure to keep ’em locked up? And you said there’ll still be a fine, too?”
Now it was Firestick who seemed to hesitate. His brows puckered for a moment as if in deep thought. Then he said, “Okay. Tell him this. Three days and thirty dollars for each of the Dunlaps; four days and forty dollars for that weasel, Woolsey.”
“That seems a mite steep, if you don’t mind my sayin’,” responded Boynton, frowning. “And why more for Newt than the other two?”
“Because the little bastard sucker-butted me and loosened four of my front teeth, that’s why,” Firestick snapped back. “Likely be near a week before I can chomp into a good steak again. As far as the fines . . . well, that’s what they are, and that’s all I got to say on it.”
Boynton’s frown stayed in place. “You basin’ any of that on some kind of legal rules or regulations that are in place? Or are you makin’ it up just to suit yourself?”
“Hell, Cleve, you know Buffalo Peak ain’t got no legal mumbo jumbo in place on the books. The town council handed me and my pards some badges and hired us to keep a lid on things. So that’s what we’re doin’ to the best of our abilities and, in some cases, yeah, we’re makin’ it up as we go along.” Firestick paused, took a deep breath, and then exhaled through his nose. “Now, I’ve said what I got to say, and I ain’t in the mood for no more explainin’. So, go tell it to Tolsvord. If that don’t satisfy him, tell him to haul his ass in here to town and I’ll tell him to his face. Otherwise, all he’s got to do is send the money and I’ll turn his men loose as soon as they’ve served their time.”
Boynton turned and stomped out, clearly not happy with the answer and not looking forward to passing it on to Tolsvord.
After he was gone, Moosejaw, who’d been looking on silently from where he was seated in a chair tilted back against a side wall of the office area, said, “I kinda feel sorry for ol’ Cleve, the fix he’s in. He ain’t really a bad sort.”
“Nobody said he was,” Firestick replied. “And I don’t like seein’ him squeezed in the middle, neither. But I can’t help it. The whole thing really falls back on Tolsvord not havin’ the backbone to stand up to his wife. If he did that, and then backed Cleve to make those three blockheads toe the mark like he does the rest of his crew, everybody’d be better off.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. In more ways than one,” Moosejaw allowed. “Nothing any good ever comes from a man lettin’ a woman run roughshod over him. It plumb ain’t natural.”
Firestick eyed him under a sharply cocked brow. “You tellin’ me you’ve made those kinds of feelin’s clear between you and Daisy?”
Moosejaw’s chair dropped down flat with a hollow thump. His round, smooth-shaven face went from an expression of bold certainty when he was making his declaration, to abruptly looking not so sure. “Here now. Ain’t nobody talkin’ about me and Daisy. In the first place, it ain’t like we’re hitched or anything. In the second place, when it comes to a gal like Daisy, well, there’s things you got to keep in mind. I mean, you gotta admit, my Daisy ain’t like most regular gals.”
“That’s true enough,” Firestick said, grinning at the way he had his big friend squirming a little. “Most gals can’t bend a horseshoe straight or drink their weight in firewater or out–arm wrestle ninety percent of the men in town. Little things like that, you’re talkin’ about, right?”
“Along those lines, I reckon. Yeah.”
“And also maybe along the lines of—if she ever heard you talkin’ about how no gal has the right to run roughshod over a fella—she might haul off and throw a punch at you?”
The Daisy in question was Daisy Rawling, who owned and operated the town blacksmith shop, which she had taken over from her late husband. She was a sawed-off slice of femaleness, standing only five-foot-two by standard measurement, but about a foot and a half taller when you factored in attitude and sass. A cap of butter-yellow curls, worn functionally short, framed a face that was actually quite pretty. Pug nose, ready smile, and big, luminous brown eyes. Her build was what could be called chunky but not fat, certainly not in the sense of being soft; it was more like she had a layer of rubbery muscle over womanly curves. Anyone who’d ever seen her handle the tools and tasks of her trade could attest to those muscles being more than just for show.
Nor was Firestick’s remark about her throwing a punch merely part of needling Moosejaw—a handful of loudmouths who’d made the mistake of commenting disparagingly about a woman blacksmith within earshot of Daisy had found themselves flattened for their trouble.
