She managed not to smile. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would be, Whit?”
“No, miss.”
He gave her a shy, respectful nod, tugged the hat on, and shuffled off, spurs jingling. Then she heard him stop, say, “Sir,” and move on. She stepped out of the stall for a look, and big Burt O’Malley was approaching, that lazy, loping way of his compromised by an expression clenched with concern.
“Uncle Burt,” she said with a nod and returned to the stall and her work.
With a body brush, Willa began applying long, even strokes to Daisy’s coat, smoothing out her hair, getting off any residue of dirt.
O’Malley was at the mouth of the stall now, arms folded, a grave expression carved into the oblong, salt-and-pepper-bearded face. “That help, child? Workin’ yourself to a frazzle like that?”
Her eyes were on her efforts. “You prefer I go cry my eyes out in my room?”
“Might,” he admitted, approaching. “Might. Bottlin’ it up won’t do you a lick of good. You don’t let sorrow out, it festers.”
Her back was to him. “I don’t see what good crying would do. If I was a son, not a daughter, would you say such things to me?”
Daisy’s coat was getting nice and shiny.
“I believe I would,” O’Malley said. “A son would cry. Behind closed doors, maybe. But grieving is natural. Not a male or female thing.”
“I’ll do it in my own way, then.”
He drew closer but didn’t crowd her. She was using a mane comb now, untangling Daisy’s tail. Such work required a gentleness, and she sometimes paused to use her fingers for untangling.
The big man said, “I overheard some of what Whit had to say.”
“Did you? Eavesdropping doesn’t become a man. More a woman’s thing, don’t you think?”
Why did she feel so angry? Why was she treating Uncle Burt like this?
But O’Malley ignored her rudeness. “You’re the Bar-O now, Willa. Your father didn’t have a son, so a daughter’ll have to do. Whit’s opinion ain’t worth spit. Mine neither. It’s all down to you, girl.”
She shifted to a dandy brush to bring further softness to Daisy’s tail, but she dropped the thing in the process. O’Malley was right there to pick it up and hand it to her, both of them on their haunches, looking right at the other.
They stood.
The irritation was out of her tone as she said, “I’m in a bad place, Uncle Burt.”
He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Of course you are, child. I ain’t in the sunshine my own self. All these years and I finally get my old partner back, and now he’s lost to me forever. Ain’t nohow easy.”
She sighed. Moved away, returning to Daisy. She kept working, and O’Malley just stood and watched. She used the brush on the animal’s mane, and the beast almost purred. Finally, she began cleaning Daisy’s hooves, standing next to her, bending, and supporting one hoof at a time. With a hoof pick, she worked out rocks and turf there, scraping away from herself, not particularly wanting any of that stuff to get flung in her face.
“You know your way around horseflesh,” O’Malley said.
“I should. I lived on this ranch all my life. Was riding before I could walk.”
“You want to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why it is you’re in a ‘bad place.’ I don’t mean losing your daddy. I mean the position that losin’ your daddy has put you in.”
She leaned against the side of the stall. He came over and leaned in next to her, their backs to the wood.
“I never told Papa,” she said, almost whispering, as if her late parent might overhear, “but we didn’t see eye to eye on the Santa Fe spur.”
He frowned, studying her. “You mean... you were in favor of it?”
She nodded. “No reason not to be. You can’t keep the future from your door. Times change whether you want ’em to or not.”
“No kiddin’,” the big man said with a grin and a deep chuckle. “I hardly recognized the Bar-O when that buckboard brought me out here. Trouble was, I think, once his outside vision left him, your papa’s inside vision left him, too. By which I mean his ability to see the possibilities that lay ahead.”
She looked at him curiously. “I thought you were on Daddy’s side of this, Uncle Burt. Heard you tell him myself how you agreed with him about blocking the spur.”
His grin wore embarrassment. “Would you think less of me, child, if I admitted I told him what he wanted to hear? Last thing I was after was to ride in and get on the wrong side of that beautiful, stubborn old man.”
“You wanted your friendship back.”
He nodded. “I wanted my friendship back. I’d have stood with him on any side of about any issue he wanted me to. Some of that was selfish. Your papa was my way into respectability after wastin’ so much of my life behind bars.”
She shook her head. “You didn’t have to play that game with him, Uncle Burt. He would have been glad to help, in any case. Like I’ll be glad to help.”
Something pixieish came into the white-beard-framed smile. “Well, then, why don’t we put that Cullen/O’Malley partnership back together, girl? Instead of sellin’ me one of them smaller spreads, let me sink all that money your daddy put away for me back into the Bar-O itself.”
“Uncle Burt...”
He raised a gentle hand. “Now hear me out. With George Cullen gone, don’t you think Willa Cullen could use a strong male right hand? And I don’t mean Whit Murphy, who makes a decent foreman, I’m sure, but is sure as hell no George Cullen, forgive my language.”
Almost irritated again, she asked, “But you are?”
He shook his head once, firmly. “No. Nobody could replace your daddy. But I could be right there beside you, with some helpful words and a strong arm... and besides which, these fools that can’t accept a woman like yourself runnin’ things? My presence might smooth things out a bit for ’em.”
She gave him an unblinking gaze. “I intend to run this ranch myself, Uncle Burt.”
“And if you want me to be a part of things, you still would be. I’d be your ramrod here at the ranch, and I don’t mean just on cattle drives. Anyway, I’m only offerin’ this as somethin’ you might consider. You don’t see me as part of the Bar-O, I’ll be more than happy with that little spread you and your daddy picked out for me.”
Of course, Burt O’Malley was the O in Bar-O...
“It’s kind of you, Uncle Burt. But let me think on it some.”
“Naturally.”
She sighed. “Papa dying means I can do what I want where that railroad right of passage goes.”
“That’s so.”
“But that troubles me most of all.”
“Why?”
She mulled it a few moments. Was it all right to talk of this before it became public? Well, it would be out there soon enough...
“Papa was murdered,” she said.
O’Malley lurched forward from where he’d been leaning beside her on the wooden stall frame. Turned to look directly at her. “So he wasn’t thrown.”
“He wasn’t thrown. We just saw something that we were supposed to take that way.”
She shared with O’Malley what she’d overheard when Caleb and Doc Miller, doing their detective work, had been talking over her father’s body.
“Murdered,” O’Malley said, tasting the word and not at all liking the flavor. “Why in hell? Because... because of his stand on the spur, you think?”
She sighed. “Must be. No one else had any grudge against him. But if he was killed to clear the path for that branchline, I can’t in good conscience go along with the Santa Fe’s efforts. Doesn’t matter that he and I were on opposite sides of the thing — I have to honor his wishes.”