No. It was too late for that now. She had made her decision and she wasn’t going back on it.
Carrying through with her plan, she saddled her personal horse, then led him away from the barn. She glanced toward the two bunkhouses, their white paint gleaming in the reflection of the moonlight. Tom was in one of them right now, no doubt sleeping the sleep of the innocent, unaware that she was leaving.
What if she went there, right now, awakened him, and asked him to leave with her?
For one insane and wonderful moment, Rebecca considered that. But she knew that he wouldn’t agree to it. In his mind he would think that he was the cause of her losing her family and her birthright. And in some sense of “doing the right thing,” he would insist that he leave instead, and she stay.
Abandoning that idea, Rebecca walked her horse through the compound of house and outbuildings until she believed she was far enough away to be able to ride without being heard. Mounting her horse, she rode him at a brisk trot over the three miles that separated the two ranches. When she reached the Rocking H Ranch, she dismounted, removed the saddle, then turned her horse loose and smacked it on the rump, knowing it would return home. Then, finding a hay-softened spot in Walter Hannah’s barn, she slept.
CHAPTER SIX
“What are you doing here, boy?” a man’s gruff voice asked.
Opening her eyes, Rebecca saw that it was daylight.
“I want to go on the trail drive,” Rebecca said.
The man who had awakened her was John Cornett, the Rocking H foreman. Cornett had known Rebecca for most of her life, so this would be a really good test as to whether or not her disguise was working.
Cornett chuckled. “Well you damn near slept through it,” he said. “Better get on out there, Mr. Hannah is signing on the riders now.”
“Thanks,” Rebecca said, smiling with relief that she had not been recognized. She picked up the little canvas bag that held her other clothes, then went outside. There were ten or eleven young men standing around a table. Walter Hannah was at the table, signing them up.
“Who’s next?” Hannah called.
When nobody else stepped up to the table, Rebecca did. Hannah looked up at her and for a moment, she thought she saw recognition in his eyes. But thankfully, that moment passed.
“How old are you, boy?” he asked.
“I’m sixteen.”
“You think you can handle the work?”
Rebecca was an excellent horsewoman, and she had cut cows at her father’s ranch many times.
“Yes, sir, I’m certain I can,” she replied.
Hannah stared at her for a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up his pen.
“Pay is ten dollars a week, and found,” Hannah said. “Figure six weeks there. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes, sir,” Rebecca said.
“What’s your name?”
Rebecca had already thought this out. Her saddle had the initials RC worked into the side flaps.
“Ron,” she answered. “Ron Carmody.”
“All right, Carmody. Go see Julius Jackson. He’s the wrangler, and he’ll help you select your string. You have a saddle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Julius was a black man, shorter even than Rebecca. He helped her pick out three horses, which she would rotate during the drive. He, on the other hand, as the wrangler, would be responsible for keeping the remuda together for Rebecca and the other cowboys.
“Gracious Lord, boy,” Julius said when he saw Rebecca’s saddle. “That is one bodacious saddle.”
Live Oaks, July 5
“Rebecca hasn’t come down for breakfast yet?” Big Ben asked as he split open a biscuit and lathered butter onto it. “That’s odd, she’s always an early riser.”
“Well, we did stay up late last night for the fireworks display,” Julia said. “Perhaps she is just tired.”
At forty-eight years old, Julia’s blonde hair was now showing flashes of gray. She was five feet six inches tall, more than a full foot shorter than her husband. But if they were mismatched in size, they were a perfect match in background, for Julia had come from a very wealthy family. Her father, Justin Caldwell, owned a bank in Fort Worth.
“Go check on her,” Big Ben said.
Though Big Ben didn’t say anything about it, he was thinking about the discussion he and Rebecca had had last night, and he had a bad feeling about it.
That feeling was confirmed when Julia came back into the dining room a minute later with a confused and worried look on her face.
“She isn’t there,” Julia said. “Rebecca isn’t in her room.”
“I knew it!” Big Ben said, slapping the table. “Damn it, I knew it!”
“You knew what? Ben, what is wrong? Where is Rebecca? What has happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Big Ben said. “But I intend to find out.”
Big Ben walked out to the cookhouse. He could smell the biscuits and coffee before he got there, and he could hear the conversations and laughter from the cowboys at their breakfast. When he stepped inside the cookhouse most of the conversation stopped, and all the cowboys looked toward the ranch owner, curious as to why he might have come into the building. Though he owned the building and had every right to come into it any time he wanted, the cookhouse, like the bunkhouses, were generally regarded as the private domain of the cowboys.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Conyers,” Dusty said. “Do you need something?”
Big Ben looked around the cookhouse and saw Tom Whitman at the table with Dusty, Mo, and a half-dozen other cowboys. Seeing Tom here surprised him, because he was almost certain that Rebecca had run off with him. Big Ben studied Tom’s face for a long moment to see if he could detect a look of guilt or nervousness, but he saw nothing.
“Uh, no, nothing,” Big Ben said.
Beyond the cookhouse and the two bunkhouses sat a row of ten small, green-painted clapboard houses. Most of them were one-room houses, with the bedroom, kitchen, dining, and sitting rooms combined. But one house, considerably bigger than the others, had three rooms: a bedroom, sitting room, and kitchen-dining room combination. This was the house of Clay Ramsey, the foreman of Live Oaks.
At the moment, Clay was having breakfast with his wife, Maria. Without being asked, she got up from the table and poured a second cup of coffee for Clay.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Clay said.
“I made some cinnamon sopapillas,” Maria said. “Would you like one?”
“You are being awfully sweet to me this morning, Maria, pouring my coffee and offering me sopapillas. Is there something I should know?”
Maria sat down across the table from him and as she looked at him, a huge smile spread across her face.
“Estoy embarazada!” Maria was so excited that she spoke the words in Spanish, then translated. “I am with child!” she said.
“What? Are you sure?” Clay asked, his smile now as wide as Maria’s.
“Si! I have thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I talked to Mama and she said it is so.”
Clay walked around the table, and when she started to get up, he put his hand on her shoulder.
“No, you should be careful now,” he said. “I will come down to you.”
Clay leaned over and embraced his young wife.
“Are you happy, my husband?” Maria asked.
“Happier than I can tell you, Maria,” he said. “And I don’t care if it is a boy or a girl.”
“It will be a boy,” Maria said.
“How do you know it will be a boy?”
“Because I had a dream. And in my dream, my abuelo came to visit me, and he said it would be a boy.”