Chapter Two

Nick

The relentless rain drenched his coat, weighing down the rough fabric and driving the chill deeper until he could feel it in his bones. He wished now that he’d worn his slicker. All afternoon, he’d been riding and searching. He still hadn’t found the mother and calf. He urged his horse across the flooded arroyo. When he crested the top of the steep embankment, he stopped and scanned the landscape in the fading light.

He muttered a curse. If he didn’t find the cow, she’d spend the night alone. Away from the herd, she and the calf would be vulnerable to predators. He pushed on through the driving rain, wishing he weren’t going home to an empty house and cold bed.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A few months back, he exchanged letters with a mail-order bride. Even though he wrote the letters at the urging of his sisters-in-law, he’d begun to look forward to marriage. It was plain to see how happy his brothers were since they’d married. But the arrangement hadn’t worked out. The day Louisa was to arrive, a letter arrived instead. She wrote that she’d changed her mind. She’d married another and was expecting a baby.

It surprised and insulted him. The letters she’d written had been so sweet, promising to do her best to be a good and dutiful wife. And all the while, she had a beau, a man she was having relations with.

He growled at the memory and spat. That wasn’t the first time a woman had lied to him. But it would be the last, that was for damned sure. Neighbors and friends might push their sisters and daughters at him, but there wasn’t anyone he wanted. None of them were the one. For some time now, he’d grown more and more certain that woman, that one woman, didn’t exist.

If she did exist somewhere, she’d probably be a blonde, he decided as he plodded through rain. The thought brought a momentary smile to his lips. She’d have a gentle spirit and biddable nature. A woman who would allow him to spoil her and in return would yearn to please him. A woman who loved the life of a ranch wife, but had the refinement of a lady. No, he didn’t suppose he’d find her anytime soon. He had the best tracking skills in Colter Canyon, but a man couldn’t go after what didn’t exist.

As a boy, he’d entertained foolish notions about love. He could still remember the day he’d told his older brothers about how there was one, single woman out there. She was destined for him and he was destined for her. He’d been about seven or eight but felt the truth of his words in the depth of his hopeful and naïve heart.

“Just one,” he’d told Seth and Will, holding up his index finger.

They’d been loading hay into the loft, a hot, dusty, thankless job. His brothers had both nodded solemnly. Muttering the part about ‘just one’ they’d raised their middle finger to each other and burst into laughter.

Twenty years later, he hardly ever revisited the idea. It was easier to put foolish hopes aside and worry about immediate concerns, like finding a mother cow and calf, and getting out of the pouring rain.

His horse pricked his ears and Nick urged the animal into a trot. Nick might pride himself on his tracking skill, but in truth, many of his achievements were due to his gelding, Halston. The strawberry roan had been a hair’s breadth from being destroyed when Nick talked a rancher into selling him years ago. Halston was getting on in years and Nick hardly ever rode him unless he needed to find one of his animals.

He trotted into a clearing. The mother and her calf stood in the mud. She lifted her head and bawled in misery. Her calf was too wet and cold to do much more than stare. Nick circled the pair and coaxed them into a slow walk back to the barn. If he needed to, he could lasso the cow, but she was more than ready to follow him home.

Nick patted the gelding’s neck. “Atta way, Halston. That calf wouldn’t have made it through the night without you.”

An hour later, they arrived at the barn. The cow followed him inside with her calf trailing behind. After he untacked Halston and rubbed him down with a rag, he gave the cow an extra ration of grain. He dried the calf but wouldn’t bother with the momma cow. Cows with new calves could be extra ornery and she might kick if he tried to be too helpful.

He returned to his home and lit a fire in the fireplace. After he washed and changed into dry clothes, he made himself a pot of coffee. He took a mug and sat in his study to go over the numbers from the latest cattle auction. A knock on the door drew his attention away from his work. He found a young man on his porch, soaked to the bone, water streaming off his cowboy hat.

Nick opened the door.

The boy took off his hat. “Mr. Travis, I’m Henry Tarrant. My father sent me to make a payment.”

Had he heard the boy right? The mud was deep enough to swallow a horse and rider, with more rain on the way from the looks of things. The boy’s lips had a bluish color.

“Your daddy sent you in this weather? Why would he send you today?”

“I was supposed to do it this morning, but one of my brothers was sick. I needed to help get his fever down. My father’s gone. He left me in charge until he gets back, and he told me the payment was already late.”

The money had been late last week already, and Nick had meant to pay his neighbor a visit. Despite that, he didn’t care to see the scrawny boy shivering in the rain, just to pay his father’s debt.

“Come inside a spell, Henry. You’d best warm yourself by the fire.”

The boy shook his head. “I’m expected back. My pa’s expected back soon and he’ll have my hide if I’m not home.”

Nick opened the door wider. “I won’t keep you. Step inside. Take off your boots and sit by the fire for a moment or two. Warm up a bit.”

The boy ducked his head, but did as he was told. He stepped inside, pulled off his boots and followed Nick into the study. The fire crackled in the hearth and the boy moved to it with his hands outstretched.

Nick went to the kitchen and returned with a mug of coffee. “I sweetened it with extra sugar and a good shot of fresh cream.”

The boy took the mug and held it between his palms. “I set the money on the table yonder. My daddy said he could only pay half.”

That sounded just like David Tarrant. “When’s he going to pay me the other half?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Nick felt a flare of irritation. Tarrant owed him fifty dollars for a bull, a transaction from several months ago. There was always some excuse or another why he couldn’t pay. He need to buy provisions, or the bank insisted on calling in a loan, or his youngest needed to see the doc in town, or beef prices were down. On and on.

The real reason Tarrant never had two nickels to rub together wasn’t because of bank loans or doctor bills or even because he had kids to feed. The reason was because he spent every night drinking and whoring at the Magnolia. There’d been a time when he owned two hundred acres, but over the years he’d sold a piece here and a piece there. Now he probably had no more than fifty acres left. He told Nick he was lonesome ever since he’d lost his second wife in childbirth. He claimed he’d be a better man once his mail-order bride came along.

Nick would believe that when he saw it. David Tarrant was a man controlled by his appetites. Even when he’d been married with a child on the way, he’d caroused and gambled.

“Your father ought to stay home a little more,” he grumbled, talking more to himself than the boy.

“He plans to, sir, when his bride comes from Boston.”

“When’s she coming?”

“Just a few weeks. He needed the money, so he could pay her train ticket.”

“You telling me, that my money went to pay for your Daddy’s bride to come to Colter Canyon?”

The boy nodded. A slow smile tilted his lips and his eyes shone. “We can hardly wait, Mr. Travis. She’s going to cook and clean and everything’s going to be better when she comes. We need a momma something fierce. Especially the twins.”

Nick couldn’t argue with that. The Tarrant kids didn’t have a mother or a father, truth be told.

The boy glanced around the study and Nick didn’t miss the way he eyed the disarray. Books littered the chesterfield. A plate with a half-eaten sandwich from a few days ago sat on a table amidst papers and ranch documents. Over the last few months, he’d lost several housekeepers. When the last one left, he hadn’t bothered to replace her.

“I suppose women sort of civilize a place, don’t they?” Nick muttered.

“Yes, sir. My daddy says he can hardly wait. He’s fretting a little that she might have a little one with her. That happens with them mail-ordered brides. He says he doesn’t want to raise some other fella’s brat.”

“Does she know she’s going to be caring for his children?”

“I dunno.”

Nick tried to imagine the woman arriving to Colter Canyon and walking into the Tarrant home. The household hadn’t had a woman’s touch in over a year, Nick wagered. She’d probably take one look, turn around and walk right out. The money Tarrant should have paid him for the bull would be wasted on false hope, and the Tarrant children would still be motherless.

The boy sipped his coffee while Nick seethed silently about his money. That damn bull would probably never be paid for. One day, and one day soon, he’d likely have to reclaim it. In the meantime, Tarrant would be getting free stud service. What annoyed him just as much was the idea that some girl probably had stars in her eyes about Colter Canyon and a no-good drunk like David Tarrant.

Then again, she might not even show up. Louisa had written entire letters in rhymed verse with hearts doodled in the margins. She’d changed her mind, throwing him over for something that looked better to her and getting herself in the family way to boot.

His attention drifted back to the boy. Now that he’d finished his mug of coffee, he looked cold again. Thin and pale, he wrapped his arms around himself, hugging himself to try and get warm, despite the heat of the fireplace. He gazed into the flames with a rapturous look on his face.

Nick gritted his teeth. Henry seemed like a decent kid. He’d braved the rain without complaint and that was saying something. It irked Nick that the boy was getting his hopes up for what might turn out to be nothing. The woman might never step off the train, and even if she did, she’d be none too pleased to see what she’d signed up for.

Henry’s teeth chattered, yet he still looked happy as a pig in mud, which wasn’t too far from the state of things. He couldn’t send the boy back out into the rain in a soaking wet shirt and no coat.

Nick tugged his shirt over his head and held it out to the astonished child. “Take off your wet shirt, boy. You need to wear something dry on the way home, so you don’t catch your death.”

The boy’s jaw dropped. “I can’t take your shirt, Mr. Travis.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Put this on and I’m going to dig up one of my slickers and you’re going to wear that too.”

Henry lifted his hands and took the shirt. A look of disbelief crept over his features. He acted as if the shirt might bite him, or that Nick might snatch it away.

Nick left him and went to the wooden chest in the front hall where he kept coats and hats and gloves. When he found what he was looking for, he returned to the study. The boy wore his shirt. The tails practically reached his knees, but he grinned and no longer looked pinched with cold.

“Put this on. It’ll help keep you dry. If you like it, you can keep it. I have a few. I practically never remember to wear one, anyway.”

After Henry had the coat on, Nick walked him back to the front door. The boy pulled on his boots. Nick had wanted to send a message to David Tarrant that he’d come for his bull in a few weeks’ time if David didn’t pay up, but he didn’t want to burden the boy with the responsibility. David Tarrant was none too patient with anybody, especially not his children. Nick’s message would likely just earn the boy more troubles.

“Thank you, sir.” The boy gave him a lopsided smile.

“That’s fine. You’re a good kid, riding all this way in the rain. You get a little older, come and see me. Either me or my brothers might have a job for a hard worker like you.”

The boy mounted his horse, a sway-backed nag that had seen better days. He turned for home, waved and shouted a thank you before he vanished in the downpour.