Free Petticoat Ranch by Mary Connealy

out of Mosqueros.
    Clay snapped, “Let ’em try!”
    He headed toward the back of the house without another word. Sophie exchanged anxious looks with her daughters then she hurried after him. They found him dropping a halter over Hector’s head. Sophie waited for Clay to get bucked off into a thornbush. She was still waiting when he rode the disagreeable mule around the house. He headed forthe gap in the thicket, and just as he rode out of sight, he stopped and turned Hector around without any effort, steering mostly with pressure from his knees.
    He looked straight at Sophie for a long minute. “You know what needs to be done here, Sophie?”
    Sophie most certainly did know what needed to be done. She’d been managing her life and seeing to her girls single-handedly for. . . well, honestly forever. She felt herself puff up with indignation. What did he think? Was he planning to give her instructions on what chores to do while he was gone?
    She said waspishly, “Of course I know!”
    “And you’re willing?” Clay asked.
    “Of course I’m willing. You didn’t even need to ask.”
    Clay nodded silently for too long. “Then so be it. I’ll see to it.”
    Sophie wondered what he’d “see” to. She opened her mouth to ask when Clay said, “Are you a God-fearing woman?”
    Anything she’d been going to ask fled her mind when she pondered the question that seemed to come out of the blue. “I am, Clay. God is who has helped me through these last hard years.”
    Clay nodded again as he sat on Hector’s back and seemed to consider all the great questions of the universe. Finally he quit nodding as if he’d worked it all out. “I’m a believer myself. I reckon it wouldn’t have mattered. Taking care of you and the girls. . .well, I have it to do. But it’s for the best, as far as raising the girls, that we agree on doing right by God.” He nudged Hector, and the old mule obeyed Clay like the gentlest of lambs. Hector turned and Clay rode into the thicket.
    He was gone before Sophie thought to call out, “What is it you have to do?”
    There was no answer, but she assumed he meant something about helping with the chores later on. Sophie sniffed. She wasn’t about to wait around for him.
    She dusted her hands together. “Girls, let’s get on with our day’s work.”
    Sally set up a clamor about Clay leaving. Laura picked that moment to start crying her lungs out.
    Beth’s shoulders drooped as she headed for the house. “I’ll get some dinner cooking.”
    Mandy bounced Laura and rubbed Sally’s back and exchanged a very adult look with her mother. “Whatever he’s up to, I’m planning to go along with it if it means we don’t have to keep that mule scarf in the cabin no more.”
    Sophie shrugged and nodded. “Stay with the girls until they cheer up, Mandy. I’ll go see to tidying the house.”
    She and the girls spent the next few hours pretending things were normal. They did their chores and ate a noon meal none of them wanted. Sophie scrubbed Clay’s torn-up, muddy clothes and draped them over a bush to dry. Mandy and Beth explored downstream of the now-receded creek for over a mile, looking for any lost possessions that could be Clay’s. They found nothing of his, but they did bring back a decrepit wooden pail with no handle and a tin coffee cup. Treasure.
    The day wore on and Sophie was preparing their biscuits for supper when she heard a wagon come creaking into the yard. Branches from the bramble slapped back as the wagon squeezed though the thicket trail. The wagon had two horses tied on the back.
    She pulled her biscuits out of the fire and ran out to see who’d come by. It was Clay with Parson Roscoe and his wife. Clay rode Hector like the old firebrand was a house pet.
    She walked out to meet the parson, with the girls scrambling past her sedate walk. As she passed the unusually obedient Hector, she whispered, “Traitor!”
    Speaking normally she said, “Howdy, Mrs. Roscoe.