Texas Loving (The Cowboys) Page 15

  “You can let the colt go,” he said.

  It took all of Eden’s skill to get the rope off the bucking, fighting youngster. Having been caught, the mare stood quietly, nuzzling her colt to reassure him.

  “I’ve got to learn to handle a lasso.” Edward had tied his rope to the mare’s bridle. “I would have been helpless if you hadn’t been here.”

  “You’d have figured out something,” Eden said.

  “Maybe you ought to ride with me,” Edward said. “Finn can do the cooking and cleaning.”

  Eden laughed. “I don’t think Suzette would agree to that. She’s not very fond of Finn.”

  “Neither am I,” Edward said, “but I hardly know him.”

  “Texans don’t like people they think look down on them. Your aristocratic background is a red flag to people like Finn. You can change your clothes, but you can’t change the way you speak or your inbred attitude of command. I’m surprised Zeke and Hawk hired you.”

  “It took some doing, but I won them over with my knowledge of horses. And a promise to let them breed to Crusader after he wins the race.”

  “What will you do with the money if you win?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s not enough to buy the land I need, but I can’t buy stock until I have a place to keep them.”

  “Maybe Dad or one of my brothers will let you use some of their land until you can find a way to get the rest of the money you need.”

  “I’m going to use all the money I have left to bet on the race,” Edward said. “Hawk said I could get really good odds since nobody knows anything about Crusader.”

  “But you could lose,” Eden warned. “Somebody is bound to bring in a horse from New Orleans. It was an outside horse that beat Black Cloud last year.”

  “I have faith in Crusader. Besides, it’s the only way I’ll ever get enough money to have the ranch I want and be able to buy good stock.”

  Eden started to suggest that he ask his family for money, but she suspected Patrick had already offered and Edward had turned him down. She didn’t know how much the escaped mare he was leading had cost Zeke and Hawk, but they’d banked their earnings for twenty years before they had enough to buy horses and land. Edward wasn’t willing to wait that long.

  “I’m going to do my best to beat you,” she warned him.

  “I’m going to do my best to beat you,” she warned him.

  His smile was surprisingly warm. “I wouldn’t expect anything less, but will your father let you ride?”

  “He will, but he won’t like it.”

  After the way her jockey had misjudged the race last year, her mother would make certain of it. Isabelle didn’t like horses any more than she liked cows, but she liked an incompetent jockey even less. She swore he must have been paid off. Eden wouldn’t have been surprised if that was true. Despite the size of the purse, the real money was in bets on the race. Several hundred thousand dollars would change hands.

  As they left the cover of the trees along the riverbank and the ranch house came into sight, Eden was surprised to see her father’s horse at the house. It wasn’t unusual for him to visit the various family ranches, but he’d have had to set out at the crack of dawn to have reached Hawk and Zeke’s ranch this early in the day.

  “I don’t know that horse,” Edward said.

  “It’s Dad’s.” Eden urged her mount forward. She had a feeling something wasn’t right. Her father and brothers, along with Finn and Brady, were in deep conversation under the large walnut tree next to the corral. When they saw the mare and colt, the group broke up.

  “What are you doing with that mare?” Zeke appeared poised between anger and confusion.

  “We found her down by the river,” Eden told him. “I don’t know how she got out.”

  Hawk was already running his hands over the mare’s body. After giving the colt a similar going-over, he said, “They don’t appear to be hurt.” He turned to Finn. “Did you make sure to fasten the gate?”

  “Sure. I slid the bar through and put the chain on it. They didn’t get out through the gate.”

  “I don’t think she could jump the fence,” Hawk said. “I know the colt couldn’t.”

  “I’ll see if I can figure out what happened,” Zeke said. “Brady, you and Finn take the mare and colt and put them in the corral. I’ll be back in half an hour,” he said to Hawk.

  “What are you doing here this early?” Eden asked her father.

  “We’ve been having some trouble with stock at several of the ranches,” Jake said. “At first we thought it was just accidents, but there have been too many.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Eden asked.

  “Little stuff. Fences down, a cow in a bog, some poisoned by eating loco weed, the kind of stuff that happens all the time, but not all at once. It looks like somebody has a grudge against us.”

  “Do you think the person is dangerous?” Edward asked.

  “No. Probably a hand who got fired and is trying to get back at us.”

  “You hardly ever fire anyone,” Eden reminded him.

  “People can still have grievances,” Edward pointed out. “It happened to me at Worlege.”

  She kept forgetting Edward had occupied a similar position to her father’s. Did she want to forget his past because it separated him from her or because of her part in his losing it?

  “I’ll tell the boys to keep a close eye out,” Hawk said. “I doubt the mare’s escape has anything to do with what’s been happening on the other ranches. We haven’t had any trouble here.”

  “The horses need to be rubbed down and cooled out.” Edward reached for Black Cloud’s reins. “I’ll take care of both of them.”

  Eden didn’t let go of the reins. “Daddy says a good cowhand takes care of his own horse. That way he knows he can depend on his mount when the time comes.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Edward asked.

  “That’s not the point. I take care of my own horse. Do you want me to take care of Crusader, too?”

  “I can’t let a woman care for my horse.”

  “I’m going to see how Suzette’s doing.” Hawk could sense a fight brewing. “She was feeling rotten after breakfast. You want some coffee before you head out?” he asked Jake, who appeared equally relieved to depart before the storm broke. They both knew how Eden would react to anybody telling her she couldn’t do something because she was a woman.

  “Are you saying I’m not good enough to care for your horse?” Eden demanded.

  Edward looked disconcerted. “Of course not.”

  “That’s what it sounded like.”

  “An Englishman would never expect a woman to curry her own horse, much less his. Not because women are incapable,” he added quickly. “It’s considered improper to require a lady to care for her horse in any manner.”

  Eden’s temper started to cool. Another difference between England and Texas, another time when Edward didn’t realize his words had offended her. She wondered if it was possible for him to learn to live in Texas. She wouldn’t be surprised to see him turn around in a couple of weeks and head back to England. Still, if he went back, he’d have to divulge a truth that would destroy his family’s reputation. She knew enough of his character to know he couldn’t do that to people he loved, or even to people he didn’t.

  “I know you want to raise horses,” she said, “but what kind of horses? Who will buy them? What kind of prices will they bring? Is this the best part of the country, or should you go to someplace like Virginia or Kentucky?”

  They had walked their horses to a corral in a grove of trees by a creek that flowed into the Medina River. They led them up a chute that connected the corral to the barn on the hillside, above the reach of periodic floods.

  “I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do,” Edward said, “but now that I’m here, I’m not sure.”

  Standing under the shed, they unsaddled their horses and washed them down with buckets of water drawn from a cistern fed
by a pipe from the creek. They rubbed the animals dry with soft cloths, then walked them in a sunny pasture behind the barn to let the sun finish drying them.

  “I still want to breed Thoroughbreds,” Edward said, “but I love that Morgan mare. I saw some other horses in New Orleans I liked, too, Tennessee Walkers.”

  Eden smothered a smile. His enthusiasm was incredible, but he would soon learn he couldn’t do everything and succeed.

  “I have an idea I believe will be important in the future,” Eden said, “but I can’t get anyone to agree with me.”

  “What’s that?”

  The horses had cooled down and started to graze. They released them into their corrals and headed back to the barn.

  “The only true Texas horse is the cow pony. Rich people have Thoroughbreds, fancy saddle horses, even Tennessee Walkers, but everybody, young or old, male or female, rich or poor, can own a cow pony. Each person thinks his pony is the fastest, the most agile, the best cutting horse. A good cow pony won’t bring as much money as a Thoroughbred or a good riding horse, but you can sell a lot more of them.”

  “If it’s such a good idea, why isn’t anyone in your family interested in doing it?”

  “Most of them are too busy with cows to be interested. Bret’s wife, Emily, and I are the only two interested in this kind of competition, so the men say only women are interested in playing with a working horse. They think we’ll ruin them for real work.”

  “Would you ruin them?”

  “Of course! Who would risk a show horse chasing after some loco steer who’d just as soon gore him, then throw you on the ground and stomp you to death?”

  Edward laughed. “It looks like you just proved their argument.”

  “Maybe I did, but you’re missing the point. When a woman buys an everyday dress, she wants to make sure it looks nice on her, but she’s more concerned about how it functions. When she buys a really nice dress, she’s also concerned about how it functions, but she’s more concerned about how it looks on her, so she’s not going to expose it to the hazards of everyday life. It’s the same with cow ponies for work and for show.”

  “We do pretty much the same in England. We keep hunters who eat their heads off most of the year just for the few weeks when we go fox hunting, but no one begrudges the expense.”

  “Exactly,” Eden exclaimed. “Are you interested?”

  “Will you help me?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Eden didn’t know how to answer. It wasn’t that she wasn’t willing to help Edward breed cow ponies for show. She just wasn’t sure what he meant by helping. Besides, her teaching responsibilities wouldn’t leave her much time. She couldn’t travel every day from the schoolhouse to Hawk and Zeke’s ranch and then back again.

  “You really ought to talk to Emily. She knows more about training cow ponies than I do.”

  “I don’t know Emily. I don’t even know where she lives.”

  “I can arrange for you to meet her at my house.”

  “I thought you’d want to help me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to help you.”

  “Then what is it?”

  She was going to tell him about the logistics, how it wasn’t possible to be in two places at one time, but she had a nagging feeling that wasn’t the only reason she was holding back. She didn’t want to admit it, but she liked Edward more than was good for her. The fact that she knew he liked her, too, only made things worse. They weren’t good for each other for too many reasons to catalog, not that she expected Edward to stay in Texas for long. She didn’t know where he’d go or what he would do, but she was certain he’d be gone before the end of the year.

  “We can work around that,” Edward said after Eden had explained the problems caused by distance and time.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve just been here a few weeks. I don’t even know how to find your house, but we could work out something. Besides, you have a responsibility to help me.” He said it with a sheepish grin.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “It was your description of Texas that convinced me to come here instead of going to Virginia or Kentucky.”

  “If you’d been planning to concentrate on Thoroughbreds, you should have gone to Kentucky or Virginia.”

  “But I didn’t,” he pointed out, “and it’s your fault.”

  Even if she could have convinced herself she’d had nothing to do with his choosing Texas—she hadn’t thought her descriptions were that numerous or that enticing—she knew she was directly responsible for his decision to leave England. That alone carried a heavy load of responsibility.

  “Okay, I agree to help, but I’m not making any promises. Now I need to get back to the house and you need to get to work.”

  As they walked to the house from the barn, Edward plied her with questions about cow ponies and the kind of things people liked to see in competition. She’d been gathering information all her life, but she hadn’t realized she knew so much about the bush league circuit until now. Before they reached the house, she was becoming excited about the prospects.

  “That mare’s escape wasn’t an accident,” Hawk announced as soon as they entered the house where he, Zeke, and her father were gathered. “The fence was cut.” Josie was making more coffee, but Suzette was absent, which Eden found unusual. Suzette liked to be near Hawk as much as possible.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Eden said. “Why would somebody cut the fence but not steal the mare or colt?”

  “It makes about as much sense as what’s been happening at the other ranches,” her father said. “It seems like somebody’s got a grudge against the whole family.”

  “That must be it,” Hawk said. “Zeke and I haven’t lived here for twenty years, so they can’t have anything against us. It’s pretty much the same for Luke and Pete, but we’ve all been hit.”

  Eden wasn’t pleased to think someone had a grudge against the family, but she didn’t see much to get upset about. “I’ll leave this to you. Where’s Suzette?”

  “Lying down,” Hawk said. “She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “I think I’ll check on her.”

  “Don’t wake her up if she’s sleeping,” Hawk said. “She hardly gets any rest at night.”

  Suzette was sitting up in bed when Eden eased the door open and peeped in. “Are you okay?” she asked as she advanced into the room.

  “I don’t know,” Suzette said with a wan smile. “I’ve never been pregnant before. All I have to go by is Josie, and she doesn’t feel the same way.”

  Suzette didn’t look sick, but she looked tired, as if she’d worked too hard and rested too little. “You ought to see Ward,” Eden suggested. “He’s delivered every baby in the family.”

  “I’ve already seen him. He said if I didn’t start feeling better soon, he wanted me to go into San Antonio so I’d be close to a hospital.”

  “Does he think something is wrong?” Some of the wives had suffered small problems during pregnancy but nothing serious. After both Hawk and Suzette had given up on ever having their own family, Eden hated to think anything might happen to this child.

  “He said he couldn’t be sure, but he thought all I needed was plenty of rest. Hawk practically stands over me every time I get out of bed. I’m glad you’re here. Maybe now he won’t be so anxious.”

  “Stop worrying and go to sleep.” Knowing Hawk as she did, Eden was certain he wouldn’t stop worrying until the baby was safely delivered.

  Over the next ten minutes, as she watched Suzette sink into a peaceful slumber, she couldn’t help wondering if this would ever happen to her. She’d always assumed she’d get married and have a family, but it had never happened. Her mother said she was being too picky; her father said she was being sensible; her brothers didn’t care who she married as long as they approved of him. Eden figured that stipulation alone guaranteed she’d never marry.

  She wondered if Edward would ever fin
d a wife, settle down, and raise a family. If he didn’t, it would be one more thing to add to her load of guilt. Why had she ever assumed she knew what was best for someone else?

  She hadn’t done a spectacular job with her own life. She would be twenty-two on her next birthday, was living at home, had no prospects for a husband, and no plan to find one. The logical thing would have been to move to San Antonio or Dallas, or better still, Galveston—New Orleans if she got really desperate—but she hadn’t wanted to live so far from her family. She had missed them terribly when she was away at school. Her schoolmates had made it clear her family wasn’t like any they’d ever heard of, but Eden was convinced there was more love among her adopted siblings than among any of the natural siblings her schoolmates complained of so frequently.

  And now she was responsible for Edward being a virtual orphan, looking for a home, a place to start over, a way to discover who he was and where he belonged. She wondered if her family would take him in as well. Maybe they’d made a start by giving him a job, but she didn’t know if she wanted the family to do anything more. Her feelings were so mixed up with guilt, it was hard to know what she wanted to do or why.

  She shook her head to clear it. She needed to remember she was here to help Suzette and Josie. Once they had their babies, she’d go home and start teaching school. It was possible she would see Edward only a couple of times after that. In a few months, he’d be more comfortable and wouldn’t need to depend on her, or he’d be so miserable he’d go back to England. Either way, he didn’t fit into her future. It was time to stop thinking he might.

  Eden didn’t like training Black Cloud by herself, but the cut fence had changed everybody’s routine. Hawk and Zeke wanted constant patrols of every field, pasture, corral, and enclosure on their ranch. Because of Suzette’s condition, Hawk refused to be more than a few minutes from the house. Zeke wouldn’t go much farther. That meant Edward, Finn, and Brady had to be in the saddle the minute breakfast was over. Edward got up before dawn so he would have time to train Crusader before breakfast. Eden wasn’t free to leave the house until she’d cleaned up after breakfast and made supper plans.