Around the dance floor sat those who were without partners, looking on wistfully. At the punch bowl table, cowboys continued to add their own ingredients, and though many drank from the punch bowl, the contents of the punch bowl never seemed to diminish.
“Tell me, Tom,” Rebecca said after about the fourth dance. “Would an Eastern girl ever ask a man to take her for a walk? Or is that something only a Western girl would do?”
“A gentleman would welcome the invitation whether it came from an Eastern girl or a Western girl,” Tom replied. He offered her his arm.
“Thank you for that considerate response, sir,” she answered with a smile, putting her hand through his arm.
Leaving the dance floor, they stepped up onto the boardwalk, then walked, arm in arm, south down North Main Street.
Behind them, the lights around the dance floor glittered brightly. The rest of the town was dark, or nearly so. Overhead there was just the barest sliver of a moon, but the sky was filled with stars.
“Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Rebecca asked.
“No,” Tom replied. “I haven’t.”
There was something in the tone of Tom’s voice that caused Rebecca to look back at him and when she did, she saw that he was staring at her.
“I mean the sky,” she said, self consciously.
Tom looked up. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That too.”
Rebecca smiled. “Maybe we should get back to the dance,” she suggested.
“All right. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
Rebecca did feel uncomfortable, but not for the reason Tom was suggesting. She was uncomfortable with herself. She felt a very strong attraction to him, and she knew that it could only lead to a dead end.
When they returned to the dance floor, the dancing had stopped because of some sort of disturbance.
“I wonder what’s going on?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know, I—oh dear, it’s Dalton.”
Dalton, Rebecca’s younger brother, was her half-brother, actually, since they shared the same father but different mothers.
There were several cowboys gathered around Dalton, and they were yelling at him.
“What we ought to do is take you over to the stock barn and string you up,” one of the cowboys said.
“What’s wrong? What did my brother do?” Rebecca said, stepping into the middle of them, putting herself between the angry cowboys and Dalton.
“He, uh, well, I don’t want to say it,” one of the cowboys said.
“Ask him what he done,” one of the other cowboys said. “See if he’s man enough to tell you.”
Rebecca turned toward Dalton, who was standing there rather sheepishly. “What did you do, Dalton?” she asked.
“It was a joke,” Dalton said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a joke, that’s all.”
“What did you do?” Rebecca asked again.
“I—uh—peed in the punchbowl.”
“You did what?” Rebecca shouted at him.
“It was a joke,” Dalton said again.
“Dalton, you’re my brother, so I’m bound to take your side,” Rebecca said. She pointed to the angry cowboys. “But if they beat you to within an inch of your life, I wouldn’t blame them one bit. That was a despicable thing to do!”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Dalton said again.
“Dusty?”
“Yes, ma’am?” Dusty replied. Dusty was the oldest of all the cowboys who worked at Live Oaks.
“Please take my brother home.”
“I ain’t ready to go home yet,” Dalton said.
“You aren’t ready?”
“No, I’m not. And you can’t make me go home.”
“I guess you’re right. I can’t make you go home,” Rebecca said. “But I can’t protect you either. So if these gentlemen feel they have a score to settle with you, there is nothing I can do to stop them.” She turned toward the angry cowboys. “Go ahead, gentlemen,” she said. “I’m sorry I interrupted.”
“No! Sis! Wait!” Dalton shouted. “No need for that. I’ll go home with Dusty.”
“I thought you might feel that way,” Rebecca said. By now it wasn’t just the cowboys, but everyone at the dance who had gathered around to watch the drama play out before them.
“Go on back to enjoy the dance,” Rebecca said to the others. “I’ll get a new punch bowl and replace the punch.”
“Miss Rebecca, how are you goin’ to replace the punch? There must’ve been ten bottles of whiskey in it,” one of the others asked.
His question was greeted with laughter which, fortunately, broke the tension.
“Dalton does find ways to get himself into trouble, doesn’t he?” Dusty commented that night after they had all returned to the bunkhouse and were getting ready for bed.
“He’s a good man,” Mo said.
“How can you say that?” One of the other cowboys asked. “Like you say, he’s always into first one thing and then another.”
“I mean when you consider that me ’n him are good friends, what with him bein’ rich and me bein’ nothin’ but a cowboy.”
“Good men don’t pee into a punch bowl,” Tom said.
“He just needs a little discipline is all,” Dusty said. “But I think Mo is right. I think that deep down, he is a good kid. What I don’t understand is why he is like he is. I mean, he’s got everything anyone his age could possibly want, but somehow it don’t seem to be enough for him.”
“It isn’t a condition that is entirely unheard of,” Tom said.
Tom didn’t elaborate, but he could have. He had seen many a young man, and woman, children of the very wealthy, who for some inexplicable reason were spoiled rotten. Dalton was proof that this particular syndrome was not limited to Boston.
After Tom got to bed he lay there far into the night, thinking of Rebecca. He was sure that if he had wanted to, he could have kissed her that night.
What was he talking about? He did want to kiss her. He wanted to very much. But he knew that if he had, it could open up a can of worms that he wouldn’t be able to close again. He was not ready for love—not yet—maybe never again. Not after what happened to Martha. Tom was beginning to think that he should not have gotten off the train in Fort Worth.
Live Oaks, June 1
“Look at that,” Mo said, pointing to a broken spoke on the right rear wheel of one of the three heavy freight wagons that belonged to the ranch. “That wheel is going to have to be replaced.”
“I’ll help you,” Tom said.
“Well, the first thing we have to do is get it up on a stand,” Mo said. “I’ll get the stand and the lever.”
A moment later, Mo came back from the barn with a stand, a long lever, and a block. Putting the block and lever in place, Mo picked up the jack stand.
“I’m smaller than you are, and I can get under the wagon easier,” he said. “You lever it up, and I’ll get the jack stand set in place.”
“All right,” Tom agreed.
A moment later, with the right-rear wheel of the wagon levered up from the ground, Mo crawled under the wagon and put the jack in place. Tom lowered the wagon onto the stand, which still kept the wheel clear of the ground.
They pulled the wheel off, took it into the machine shed, and replaced the broken spoke. When they came back, Mo tried to put the wheel back onto the axle, but there was an obstruction underneath that prevented it.
“I’ll crawl under there and clear that away,” Mo said. “As long as it is on the jack stand, it’ll be all right.”
It would have been all right, but some of the obstruction was caught under the jack stand itself, and when Mo tried to move it, the jack stand started to fall over.
“It’s falling on me!” Mo shouted at the top of his voice.