Softly Falling by Carla Kelly Page B

would also tell if he had been a fool to sink so much money into an English bull, when fortunes were being made in these northern territories on scrub stock trailed up from Texas on yearly drives. Maybe only a fool would invest in a purebred bull, when money was being made from lesser beef.
    Still . . . for someone from Georgia who had come out West in 1866 knowing next to nothing about cattle and even horses, he had learned from his hard school. Wartime experience had taught him to never say no to an opportunity, no matter how little he knew. Most important was his willingness to give his all, get up, and try again. He understood horses, and cattle weren’t so bright.
    Hard choices on the open range had shaped Jack Sinclair even more than the war. Marching and fighting and obeying orders hadn’t required much skill. Making good decisions, even the small ones at first, had turned him into a foreman whose word was law, and who had confidence to spare.
    He had thought that winning the little ranch and buying the bull had required the payment of all his bravado, but maybe he was wrong. There seemed to be a little more confidence lurking in the corner of his heart, just enough to allow the smallest thought of a home of his own, and maybe someday a wife to manage it. The thought made him glance into his front room and look at his one easy chair. “I’ll need another chair,” he said out loud, then laughed. You’ll need more than that , he thought, squelching such nonsense. Some things weren’t going to come his way now, especially in a territory with so few women, and even fewer of them ladies. And he wanted a lady.
    “My dears,” he said, “I’m glad you found a new wall.”
    He got dressed and stopped on his front porch, breathing deep and drawing advancing autumn into his lungs, even if his calendar said early September. He felt the momentary satisfaction he always enjoyed—looking at a well-run ranch from his doorstep. The place was buttoned down for winter, with most of the hands let go to ride the grubline and come back in the spring, when the early work began. He’d find enough to keep his four remaining hands busy. There were harnesses to mend and horses to water, doctor, and cajole. Preacher was good at duties around the big house, since the Buxtons’ cook complained more and more of aching joints. There would be cattle to coax away from air holes when the snow came and covered those treacherous patches by the river. He and Indian could handle that, even those Texas cattle that took exception to their first winter in the north and tried to drift south where they remembered warmth.
    Stretch and Will had already left for town to bring back barrels of apples, potatoes, and flour. Jack had told Stretch to keep an eye on Will, who had a saloon habit. He had only agreed to keep Will on through the winter because he was Mr. Buxton’s cousin.
    Jack looked toward the cookshack, unable to help that the habitual frown between his eyes deepened. He was a man of some imagination, but it took no creativity to remember the piercing screams from the cookshack when Oliver Buxton told Madeleine Sansever, in his usual ham-handed way, that her man had died breaking horses. Ordinarily so careful around green horses, Jean Baptiste Sansever had just looked away long enough to get a kick to the head that broke his neck. Everyone in the corral heard the snap.
    After he and Preacher brought Jean to the cookshack on a plank, Jack had stayed to hold little Chantal on his lap as she wet his shirt with her tears. Her older sister, Amelie, had grown even quieter in the face of her mother’s agony. And Nicholas? Only twelve, Nick had taken a gun from somewhere and killed the horse. Then he ran away. Manuel had found him two days later, crouched in Bismarck’s hay barn, all cried out and grim.
    You people are my family , Jack thought, as he walked toward the cookshack.
    Preacher and Indian were already seated at their benches in the