Last Chance Cowboys Read online

  He forced himself to put those thoughts aside for now.

  Convinced he would get no sleep, he started another picture of Nell, this time out on the range, her hair wild around her. The long hours of thinking about holding her had made him realize his feelings for her had little to do with finding a way for herders and ranchers to live in peace. No, he wanted her, wanted to spend his days—and nights—with her, hear her laughter, listen to her talk.

  Hadn’t everybody been saying it was high time he found himself a good woman and settled down? Well, the way he looked at it, Nell Stokes was about as close to a perfect match as he was likely to find. She certainly was the first woman who had him losing sleep. He considered his original idea—the one about joining forces with her in business. That might be the best way to start getting better acquainted. And if she got to know him and didn’t want more from him, well, he’d respect that.

  Besides, if they did join forces, it might help pave the way for this meeting between the herders and the cattlemen. It might show everyone there was another way to cut through all their differences.

  He stretched and closed his sketchbook. Morning was hours away, and he knew he would get no sleep. Restlessly, he wandered the rooms of the house. What if he went to see her? He’d have to make sure her brother wasn’t around if he hoped to talk to her about joining forces. She might turn him down flat, but he had to try. He grabbed his hat and headed for the corral. If he rode hard, he could be at her place well before dawn.

  * * *

  Juanita was standing at the window of her bedroom when she saw Trey go riding off in the middle of the night. Earlier, she had watched Javier do the same thing, although he’d been headed in the opposite direction.

  When Trey’s mother was dying, Constance had gripped Juanita’s hand and exacted a promise.

  “Trey lives in a world of his own creation,” she had said. “He believes the world is fair and just. My fear is someday that belief will be tested, and he will be destroyed. Promise me you’ll keep watching over him.”

  Juanita had assured her friend and employer she had no reason to worry. “You raised all your children to be strong and do what’s right,” she had reminded Constance. “Trey will find his way as they all have.”

  “He’s a dreamer, Nita.”

  And because she couldn’t argue with that, Juanita had promised. Now, as she watched Trey go riding off to who knew where, she wondered if she had the strength to keep her vow.

  Behind her, she heard Eduardo sigh. “Querida, what is it?”

  “The boys have ridden off,” she said. “Not together.”

  “You have to trust that they will find their way, Nita.”

  She went back to the bed and sat, leaning against her husband for the strength she no longer had. “I do trust them,” she said softly. “It’s others I don’t trust—this range war. Everyone is so bitter and angry, everyone taking sides. ‘Them,’ ‘those people’—it used to be that was for us, those with a different color of skin. But now those are names they call one another. Our boys are in the middle of that, Eduardo, and I am afraid for both of them.”

  And when Eduardo did not reply but simply wrapped his arms around her and held her close, she understood that he too was afraid.

  * * *

  Nell had just checked on Joshua and returned to the kitchen to warm herself a cup of milk when a soft tapping sounded at the back door. She inched the lace curtain aside and saw the figure of a man—a cowboy, judging by the wide-brimmed hat he wore. She reached for the rifle.

  “Nell?”

  The voice was deep, husky, and familiar. It was the voice she’d heard in her dreams in the nights that had passed since Trey Porterfield had rescued her.

  “It’s me, Trey. Put the gun down and let me in,” he said, and there was a hint of humor in his tone.

  She loosened her grip on the gun but did not put it away. “What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “Why? It’s the middle of the night.”

  She thought she heard an audible release of his breath, but it could have been the wind.

  “Because I… Come on, Nellie, let me in.”

  No one ever called her “Nellie.” Coming from his mouth, it sounded like an endearment.

  She opened the door enough so that he was able to sidle into the kitchen. “You can’t stay,” she said, suddenly nervous being alone with him in the deep shadows of a room lit only by the lantern on the table near the stairs. “My nephew is in the barn and…”

  “That’s part of why we need to talk. He’s sound asleep—hardly the watchman you need these days.”

  She didn’t know what to do. He was standing so near and yet not near enough. She could hear his even breathing. “I can’t expect him to stay awake through the night,” she said.

  “That’s exactly what you should expect. What good is having someone on guard otherwise? If he were out watching over the sheep, would his father put up with him sleeping?”

  He had a point. “Did you come to check up on me?” she asked.

  “Partially. I also want to talk about how we might prevent this range war that’s about to destroy us all. I’ve got an idea about how you and I might work together to head things off before somebody else ends up dead. I’d like your opinion.”

  No man had ever sought her opinion on anything more serious than whether to put another log on the fire. “Why me?”

  Trey let out a long breath and placed his hat on the table. “Can we sit?”

  She nodded. “Do you want coffee? It’s cold but—”

  “No, thanks.” He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and waited for her to be seated before taking the chair next to her. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “It occurs to me that of all the people around here who raise sheep, you are the only one who has made any connection with those outside of your own community.”

  “You’re talking about Addie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She reached out to me, just stopped by one day after Calvin died. Said she was in the neighborhood and thought she’d see how Joshua and I were doing.”

  “And you let her in—into your house and into your life,” Trey pointed out. “You did the same with me. And the other day, even though you knew Javier had ridden with those cowboys, you didn’t give him away to your brother.”

  “There was no point. Henry would have—”

  “That’s my contention. You kept the situation from escalating.” He took hold of her hand. “Nell, if we work together, I think there might be a way we can broker some form of a peace.”

  She was sure the passion of his words lay behind the spontaneous physical contact, and yet she couldn’t ignore how intimate it felt with his hand covering hers, more so because they were sitting in the near-darkness. Slowly, she withdrew her hand. “I thought when you mentioned working together you were speaking of sheep and cattle ranchers—the men. I can’t think how I might make any difference at all.”

  “What if we joined up?”

  She pushed back her chair and stood. She walked to the dry sink and stared out the window at the darkness. “I don’t understand. What are you suggesting?”

  “We could work together, make your ranch and mine one big operation that raises cattle and sheep.”

  “Henry would never stand for that.”

  “It’s your land, your place, Nell.”

  “My late husband left instructions that put Henry in charge.” She continued staring out the window, and he remained seated.

  “But this place belongs to you—and Joshua. If we became partners, then—”

  “Your intentions are admirable, Trey, but you have to be realistic. It’s not going to be that simple, working things out,” she said. “I mean, the feud has deep roots and—”

  She heard the scrape of his
chair on the wooden floor and seconds later felt him standing behind her. “There’s another way,” he said softly. “It’s gonna sound crazy, but hear me out.”

  Her curiosity piqued, she faced him.

  He took a deep breath. “If you and me got married, then neither Henry nor any other man would have a say in what you do with this place.”

  She was so shocked by his suggestion that words failed her. Suddenly, she realized the position she had allowed him to place her in—alone, middle of the night, no one to hear should he try to…

  “I have to go check on my son,” she said, brushing past him, barely noting that he stepped aside and made no move to detain her. But instead of heading for the stairs, she picked up the rifle she’d left by the door and aimed it at him. “You should go, Mr. Porterfield.”

  He raised his hands to shoulder height, retrieved his hat from the table, and walked to the door. “I mean you no harm, Nell. Just please think about what I’ve said. Joining forces, whether as a business arrangement or through matrimony, would—”

  She lowered the gun and her head. “Just go,” she whispered and waited for the click of the door.

  Four

  What could he have been thinking? He was not an impulsive man—that was Jess’s role. But blurting out a proposal like that without thinking it through? Not that he hadn’t thought about the two of them as more than just business partners, but acting on such thoughts? All of a sudden, he found himself proposing, probably destroying any chance he might have of persuading her to join with him in a dual ranching venture. No, it wasn’t his finest hour. On the other hand, the more he thought about it, the more he realized marriage was the only answer. It took her half brother and his cronies out of the mix altogether.

  But on the ride back to his ranch, Trey was forced to admit that seeing her tonight, the two of them alone like that, set him to thinking about what it might be like to spend every day—and night—with Nell. And that possibility had overpowered whatever common sense he had. It wasn’t like Trey to think of what he might want. He tended toward letting life come to him. But all of that went straight out the window when it came to Nell Stokes.

  Of course, maybe she didn’t feel what he felt. She liked him all right—he was pretty sure about that. But maybe she was still grieving her late husband. Maybe she had somebody else in mind if she was to remarry.

  And that brought him around to thinking about Javier and George Johnson’s daughter, Helen. Her parents had tolerated Javier mainly because of his close association to the Porterfield family, but they would never have allowed a union between those two. Especially not after Javier’s brother, Rico, and Helen’s older sister, Louisa, ignored her father’s threats to disown her and eloped. Not even after George Johnson died. Everyone knew Javier could have run that ranch as well as any white man, but Mrs. Johnson had been adamant. She’d had enough of ranch life. She and Helen were going home to Ohio. Helen hadn’t exactly put up a fight to stay, and that told Trey her feelings for his friend did not run as deep as Javier thought.

  The differences between Nell and him might be less obvious, but they were just as ironclad in the eyes of some—on either side. Trey had to acknowledge that Henry Galway would not be the only one against such a union. The other ranchers wouldn’t like it either, and that didn’t begin to consider what Jess might think of the idea. At least he could count on Addie to be on his side.

  Of course, the whole topic was moot now. Once she grabbed the gun, he hadn’t for one minute thought she would intentionally pull the trigger. But the way her hands were shaking, there was every possibility she might have shot him by accident. The repercussions of that could have been disturbing to say the least. While Calvin Stokes’s death had not caused a total range war, the death of a Porterfield at the hands of a herder certainly would.

  The sun was just coming up when Trey dismounted and walked his horse the rest of the way to the barn. Javier was giving instructions to a group of hands leaving for the day shift. Trey acknowledged the group with a tip of his hat but kept on walking, leading his horse to a stall in the back of the barn.

  “Want me to brush her down for you, Trey?” Eduardo stepped out of an adjoining stall.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Normally, Eduardo would be out with the others. He drove the cook wagon and served the meals the men ate when out on the trail. But this was branding season, and the day’s work was closer to home.

  “Juanita’s got your breakfast waitin’,” Eduardo added. “She was worried.”

  No more needed to be said. The older man did not like seeing his wife upset. “I’ll apologize,” Trey said as he pulled the saddle from his horse and rested it on a sawhorse nearby.

  But once he reached the house, it was obvious that a simple apology was not going to satisfy Juanita. She greeted him with a snort of derision before turning her back on him and dishing up breakfast. “You determined to get yourself killed or what, Trey Porterfield? If your Mama—God rest her soul—were still alive, she would not tolerate you running around all night, and if I’m to keep my promise to her to take care of you, neither will I. Now where were you and why?”

  “I went to see Nell Stokes.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” He grinned sheepishly at the housekeeper but realized he was not going to charm her out of her tirade.

  “And not for a minute did you consider that her brother might be there and you might get yourself shot. And furthermore, not for one minute do you seem to have considered the damage you might have done to her reputation if anyone saw you there. She’s a good woman from what Addie tells me, and I won’t have you adding to her troubles.”

  “I just went to talk to her, Nita. I thought—”

  “That’s just the point—you did not think. Jess was the one always going off half-cocked. Come to that, your sisters are just as bad. I don’t know how the three of them lived through childhood. But you? This isn’t like you, Trey.” She refilled his coffee and pushed a dish of peach preserves closer to his plate. “Want me to warm up those biscuits?”

  “They’re fine.” He took a tentative sip of the steaming coffee. “I asked her to marry me.”

  If charm had failed him, shock did the trick. Juanita stared at him for a long moment, her hand still clutching the coffeepot. Then she set the pot back on the stove, pulled out the chair next to his, and sat down as if her arthritic knees would no longer hold her upright.

  “You have lost your mind.”

  He did not miss the fact that she posed this thought as a statement—not a question and definitely not up for debate.

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  “Tell me she didn’t say yes.”

  “She threw me out.”

  Juanita breathed a long sigh of relief. “Well, at least one of you has the good sense God gave you. What were you thinking?”

  “Nita, we have to find some way around this feud.”

  “And you think marrying up with one of them is the way to do that?”

  “That’s just it. There’s no ‘them’ that’s all that different from ‘us.’ You and Mama taught us that way back when we were just kids. Then, it was a question of skin color. Now, it’s sheep versus cows and the men who raise them.”

  Juanita shook her head. “You have always been a romantic, mi’jito. I blame your mama for that—filling your head with all those stories and praising you every time you drew the world the way we wanted it to be instead of the way it was. But that’s the past. You need to face facts and deal with what’s real, and this fight between cattlemen and sheepherders won’t be solved by you marrying the widow.”

  “I never thought it would solve it. I just thought it would be a first step.”

  “A step that could end up getting you both killed, so just get such nonsense straight out of your hea
d. You’ve got a ranch to run, and I’ve got laundry to do.” And with that, certain she’d had the last word as usual, Juanita left the kitchen.

  But the more Trey thought about it, the more he was convinced joining forces with Nell Stokes was exactly what was needed. He just had to find a way to plead his case so that Nell might someday come to agree.

  * * *

  The more Nell thought about it, the more she had to admit Trey might have a point. If a cattleman and a sheep rancher were to become partners, surely that would at least start a proper conversation. Of course, marriage was out of the question.

  Or was it?

  Certainly, people married for convenience, especially out here on the frontier. She knew of at least one mail-order bride living in the area. Of course, Trey might not be so interested now that she had threatened to shoot him. But even if she were willing to go along with his original idea of becoming business partners, Henry would never stand for that. Calvin had given her half brother power when he’d named him executor to his will. And in that will, he had stated that while Nell was free to sell the ranch and live elsewhere, under no circumstances was she to sell their property to a cattle rancher.

  Well, he hadn’t said anything about marrying a cattleman, had he? And with Trey managing her property as well as his own, she and Joshua were bound to be safe. The more she thought about it, the more sense Trey’s proposal seemed to make. But how to be sure she had considered the matter from every possible angle? She wished she could discuss it with Addie, but as Trey’s sister-in-law, Addie was bound to be biased—that much was obvious by that business with the cake auction. She couldn’t speak to Lottie either, but perhaps Reverend Moore would listen and offer the counsel she needed.

  So on Sunday, just before services, she left a note for the minister with his wife. “If he has time after services, perhaps we could meet in the church?”