Free Petticoat Ranch by Mary Connealy Page A

Parson.”
    “Get the house packed up,” Clay said brusquely. “We’re getting out of here.”
    Sophie opened her mouth and looked from Clay to the parson to Hector. None of them were any help.
    “Where are we going?” Mandy, always calm and sensible, asked.
    “I went to town looking for a better place for us to live. It turns out Cliff ’s ranch was for sale, so I bought it back. We’re moving. I want to be over there before sunset.”
    Sally squealed and ran into the cabin. “I’ll have my stuff packed in ten minutes, Uncle Clay.”
    Sophie was abstractly aware that she kept opening and closing her mouth, not unlike a landed catfish. She just didn’t know what to say. Sally ran past her with her arms full of clothing, and Sophie realized they could indeed leave this place in about ten minutes.
    “Y–you bought the ranch back?” Sophie finally managed.
    Sally dumped her things in the wagon and ran back in the house. The other girls were hard on her heels.
    Clay was wearing new clothes. There was no sign of Cliff ’s old clothing anywhere. He swung down off Hector’s back and yanked the front of his new Stetson in an abbreviated tip-of-the-hat to her. “The owners had taken off a few weeks back, owing on the mortgage. No one else has shown any interest in it. I bought it.”
    “With what money?” Sophie asked. “You left here in borrowed clothes with no horse or saddle.”
    “I had my bank in Denver telegraph the one in Mosqueros confirming my draft was good.” Clay headed into the cabin. Sophie followed after him. She was slowed by her girls passing her with the kitchen pots and Laura’s crib. By the time she got inside, Clay was carrying the kitchen table outside. She almost got knocked back down the stairs. She stepped inside, and the girls dashed past her to grab bedding and the kitchen chairs and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. Beth even thought to grab the cooling biscuits. Sophie noticed Mandy pull up the loose floorboard and take out the meager family purse.
    Beth disappeared into the thicket for a minute, and when she came back, she said, “I tore down the snares so’s we won’t catch a rabbit and leave it to starve to death.”
    Clay came back in to the nearly empty little house and grabbed the milk pail with Sophie’s Hector scarf in it. He pulled open the lid anddropped the pail with a gasp of shock.
    He looked wildly around the room. The girls were stripping the last of their things out and running past him.
    “Leave it and get out while you can,” Beth yelled as she dashed past him.
    Clay grabbed Sophie’s arm and dragged her out of the empty cabin.
    Sophie found herself plunked into the back of the wagon. The parson and his wife sat on the bench. Sally sat in front of Clay on Hector, chattering away. Clay had untied the horses from the back of the wagon and put Mandy and Elizabeth each on horseback so they could ride along beside him. Sophie held Laura.
    Sophie heard Clay say to Sally, “What do you mean ‘disguise’?” as they disappeared down the trail.
    The steady rocking of the wagon lulled Laura to sleep almost immediately. Sophie sat quietly so the baby could sleep, even though she was fuming at being moved without being consulted.
    Of course, she’d have gladly moved. She wanted to move! She couldn’t wait to get out of that shack they were living in. But couldn’t Clay have said something? Talked to her like she was a competent, thinking adult instead of just issuing orders?
    They were thirty minutes down the trail when Sophie’s jaw finally unclenched enough that she could say to Parson Roscoe, “Where did you meet up with Clay?”
    The parson chuckled. “Word travels fast around a town the size of Mosqueros. I came out to see Cliff Edwards come back to life, and by then he’d been to the telegraph office, the general store, and the bank to buy his ranch back. I approached him and asked him who he was. He laughed and asked me, ‘Don’t you think I’m