Rebellion in the Valley Page 13

  Chapter 19

  “Heave-ho! Someone needs to shove a little harder over there,” Duffy grunted under the weight of the animal.

  After drawing sticks for who received the honor of carting the critter back to the ranch, the hatless man pulled the longest one.

  “Heck yeah! I win, fellas,” he wiggled the stick in the air for full impact of his reward. His victory-shout echoed through the trees as he chucked the stick over his head.

  That victorious win proved short-lived, however. After several miles of the horse trotting away over uneven dirt roads, the weight of the cat shifted at least twenty times, either pushing the man farther back on his saddle or causing the cat to droop to one side or the other of the horse, forcing the man to strain his back in order to yank the critter back up and into a more sturdy position. Then there was the other issue of the blood; once Duffy gutted the animal back in the canyon, it left an opening on her belly gushing with the life-liquid for the better portion of half an hour. By the time the men hit Hardscrabble Pass, the man’s dungarees - and his horse – were in the need of a bath from the blood still sloshing out of the animal.

  Running a hand down the length of the cat, the man sat up a bit taller in the saddle and shoved the animal farther toward the saddle horn; he twisted himself in a sharp jab to his left in an apparent attempt to work the kinks out of his back before nodding his head and breaking the silence by announcing, “Another hour and a half, and I part ways with this stinkin’ thing!”

  His friend grinned. “Yeah, I figured the glory would wear off before we made it to the gates; you did real good with her, though, especially being your first time,” he added as a bonus for keeping her from slipping off.

  “I’m gonna be fillin’ my gut with something warm tonight, that’s all I know,” Duffy said out loud.

  Not too long after making that statement, they turned down the last curve in the road leading them home. Riding along in silence, Duffy had skillfully managed to kill the mood with his angry words and rude looks a long time before they brought the mountain lion down; as they neared the Red Bone Ranch without their boss and friend, the full impact of what happened out there on that trail came bearing down hard on their minds and in their hearts.

  P

  Duffy wasted no time in making his way to the back door of the main house, popping his head into the kitchen. He knew Richard had both seen and heard the trio of men when they reached the top of the hill, but he still made his presence known.

  “We got the cat,” he told Richard with a smug look on his face. “You wanna come out and take a look?”

  Richard just looked at him.

  “What I’d really like to be looking at right now is Bruce. Can you tell me how bad the fall was before Hailee runs down here? That girl hasn’t eaten more than a handful of food since we heard the news.”

  Duffy pulled himself all the way into the kitchen and shrugged his shoulders. “It wasn’t good, I can tell ya that much. Toppled right over the edge of the canyon wall, plumb down to the bottom I suppose. But I wouldn’t spend much time worryin’ over it,” he almost mumbled. “I imagine the doc’s got it under control by now, don’t you?”

  Taken back by the lack of concern for not only his boss – but his friend – Richard shook his head as if he were clearing it.

  “Doctor Amerley and the sheriff ought to be able to handle the situation, yes, but I would have thought that you could have stayed behind to help Tobias with –“

  “Tobias this and Tobias that! A man gets mighty sick of hearing that name by the end of the day! He took control and went fetchin’ after Bruce all by himself, didn’t ask nobody for no help, either. You weren’t there and you don’t know what happened, so you don’t have no right buttin’ in and accusing me of things you don’t know nothin’ about!”

  Duffy turned, his face reddened with anger, letting the door slam behind himself.

  Just as Richard opened his mouth to say something to him, he heard Hailee.

  “What’s got him so worked up? And why didn’t he stay to tell me what happened to Daddy? What did he say to you?”

  “He’s got the cat out there …”

  “I don’t care about that stupid cat – that cat is what got my father into this mess in the first place! Would somebody just please tell me what is going on here?” Hailee raised both hands to her face, bringing her fingers across her nose and over her eyes in one liquid motion; she shut her eyes and allowed her fingertips to find their way over her eyelids.

  Richard shook his head.

  “I know just as much as you do at this point, Hailee; Duffy didn’t tell me anything, either, just seemed irritated that I didn’t care to make my way out there to take a look at the cat. Didn’t mention what happened to your father, not really.”

  They stood in the quiet kitchen for a few moments, each with looks on their faces as if they were trying to makes sense of the events, when out of nowhere, they both heard loud voices coming from the direction of the barn.

  “Daddy?”

  Richard wiped his hands on a dish cloth, taking it along as they scurried out the door.

  What they saw stopped them both cold.

  Duffy and some others had the mountain lion pulled off the horse and had her torso pulled out straight on the ground, full length from her ears to end of her tail; Richard whistled at the sight of it.

  Hailee gasped audibly. “I had no idea she was so big!”

  “It’s been quite a few years since the last time I came this close to one of these,” Richard reflected. “Good work, everyone.”

  Duffy snorted in disgust, much to the surprise of everyone gathered around the animal.

  “Yeah, well, she’s pretty and all, but she ain’t gonna skin herself. Someone needs to get my block and tackle ready,” he added to nobody in particular.

  Hailee yanked her skirt up a couple of inches. “I don’t mind getting up there,” she announced before anyone else could say anything. “It’ll give me something to do while I wait for Daddy to get home.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d made her way up the ladder Bruce built; as a father raising a child without her mother, Bruce soon discovered the need for a way to keep the toddler occupied and out of trouble; he spent almost every minute of his day outside tending to things around the ranch and his daughter enjoyed being with him instead of being cooped up in the house, so her favorite childhood toy had been born out of the need for a babysitter - a swing built right in the dead center of the barn entrance.

  Right after he built he swing, his daughter sat on it just about every day, whether it was for play or just a place to read a book. But as the years wore on and Hailee grew from being a toddler to a little girl entering school and then into a stunning young lady, she spent less and less time sitting there in her swing, opting instead to either read in the parlor or the privacy of her own bedroom.

  As the years passed and Bruce acquired a few more hundred acres, hired more and more hands, Richard also acquired more mouths to feed and Duffy had more and more meat to keep up with. The old swing converted into the block and tackle Hailee had become so familiar with.

  “Okay, here she comes,” she warned right before lifting the hook keeping the large wooden apparatus secured above the barn’s entryway. It swung downward, making a swooshing sound on the way, clanking as the chain and hook strained mid-air.

  A couple of men stopped the hook from swaying and pushed it to the side in order to move it and fetch the burlap sacks which were to be laid underneath the cat as the pelt was peeled away from the animal.

  Hailee always opted out of that ranch activity; she’d heard the men-folk talking about what happened, and the hearing about it was plenty enough for her. She was thankful her father trained his help to always lay the sacks down before they began the pelting; if she were to step in a big puddle the next day…the thought sent a chill down her spine.

  “You yank the tail over in that direction and hold some decent tension whi
le I start peeling the flesh away,” he barked at the youngest man as the trio exchanged looks. “Ready?”

  Duffy knew the young man had never in his entire life skinned a wild cat before; somehow he managed to give the impression that it almost gave him a thrill to watch the young ranch hand squirm as he split the cat’s flesh open at the breastbone. With the initial piercing of its flesh complete, he continued right down the center of the animal, slicing through to the end of the tail. The young man held the length of fur in place for Duffy until he had finished the task, but averted his eyes as much as possible.

  Slicing and peeling the flesh back a few inches at a time gave Duffy a rush that the others saw as chilling, almost, but they said nothing to him about it. Instead, they gave one another looks and shook their heads whenever he would chuckle at hitting another vein.

  When one of the men would reach for an old rag to wipe himself clean, Duffy would reprimand him, saying that it took a real man to skin a cat.

  “Don’t any of you even look like you know what’s going on here. Why don’t you just step back and let me handle this,” he growled.

  After the better part of a couple of hours had crawled its way down the length of the dead animal and the group stood over a lump of golden fur, Duffy barked out yet another strand of commands.

  “Someone pull up on the hide over here – come on!” his lips twisted.

  When none of the men moved, Duffy stopped his work and plunged his knife into the ground before looking up.

  Before he could even think of an insult to whirl in their direction, one of the men took a step closer to Duffy and spoke up for the group as a whole.

  “Now you look here, Duffman. You are not our boss and you do not own this ranch,” he lashed out with a wave of his hand. “You are as much a hired hand as the rest of us and we don’t know what’s gotten into you over the last few months, but we ain’t gonna take it anymore.”

  The others chimed in with a chorus of agreement, setting Duffy on guard.

  He spat on the dirt floor of the barn and looked around before grinning.

  “I’ve put in more time on this ranch than any of you. I’ve paid my dues.”

  The group of men gave one another questioning glances; what could he possibly mean by that statement?

  “You’re all gonna find out what’s what soon enough,” he mumbled.

  “All I know is, we’re done here. Skin the rest of this cat by yourself, Duffman. You seem to be good at doing things all by yourself anyhow. And you be sure to take full credit of this kill when the boss gets back home, will ya?”

  The group of men disappeared through the barn door, heading toward to back entrance of the kitchen. So they could all sit with Richard and whine about the fate of the ranch, he supposed.

  Duffy grinned as he reached over for the knife and looked at the pelt again.

  “Yes sir. This will look darn good on the parlor room wall,” he mentioned out loud.

  Chapter 20

  Richard dipped the last of the skillets into his bucket of rinse water and laid them out on a clean dish towel to air dry, paying close attention to every single word the men muttered in complaint against Duffy as they all sat huddled up around the table.

  Towel in hand, the cook made his way over to the end of the butcher block counter and left the half-damp cloth folded in half over a glass jar. Shaking his head of gray hair, he admitted to the group of men, “I hate to say it, but you’re right. He has changed over the past few months–I thought at first, maybe he was going through something personal, so I left it alone. But he’s gotten downright ornery.”

  “Like he thinks he’s better than the rest of us,” someone added.

  Without Bruce there to bounce any ideas against, the ranch hands and cook found themselves in the position of having to put up with everything Duffy shoveled their way, and the problem with that was, the man was very well aware of that fact.

  Richard rolled the heavy flour barrel over to the edge of the table, sat down and leaned over toward the men, plopping his elbows down to rest his chin on the backs of his old hands while they talked.

  “Soon as Bruce gets back home, he oughtta have a long sit-down meeting with that man; this business of feeling like we’re in Duffy’s way doesn’t sit very well with any of us. We’ve got chores to get done, and how do ya expect us to go about the day when he’s gawking at every move we make and trying to make more out of what we say than there is to it?”

  The man at the end of the table pulled his coffee tin from his lips and nodded. “Yeah, me and Tobias were talking about something the other day and he comes up behind us, only heard half of what we said and lost his temper. Saying we were all against him. Never saw anything like it.”

  Richard nodded. “At least I only have to deal with him when he comes inside for meals; I bet it’s double hard on all of you. And it’s only been a day of having to put up with him without Bruce on the place, so the sooner he gets home, the better we’ll all –“

  The cook wasn’t able to finish what he was saying, as the subject of those words stood at the kitchen door. He’d overheard the men talking about him, but made no attempt to come inside, made no attempt at defending himself. Instead, he stood his ground and let out a chuckle before turning around and walking off.

  Richard shook his head and the crease between his eyes deepened.

  “Could someone please tell me what that was about?”

  The youngest ranch hand hunched his shoulders up and rolled his eyes toward the door. “Who knows? That’s pretty much what we dealt with the entire time we were out on the road with the man. It’s almost like he’s mad about something and expects us to know what it is, but none of us have ever done Duffy wrong. If anything, we’ve kept our tongue and don’t even say much of anything at all around him. Not anymore.”

  “Didn’t use to be that way when I first came up to work on the ranch,” the man next to him added. “Something has started eating at the guy, though, that’s for sure.”

  Richard wanted to pass the whole thing off, but after seeing for himself what the others had been complaining about, there was little he could do except bring it to Bruce’s attention. Duffy’s attitude couldn’t be left unattended or every worker on the place would find his wages earned elsewhere.

  “Bruce will probably be sore and tired by the time he and Tobias get home, so if I don’t talk to him tonight, we’ll have us a little chat first thing in the morning. If I know Bruce at all, he’ll get it taken care of and everything will get back to normal around here.”

  The men knew they had procrastinated for long enough. Until Bruce took care of the situation at hand, it was probably best to work with someone else in the event Duffy tried to start any more trouble, so out of the kitchen the men trudged, putting the chickens to bed and closing the horse stalls for the evening, working side by side in pairs.

  P

  Hailee’s head lay on her pillow, blonde curls scattering over the pillowcase and half her face, eyes wide open and focused on the shadows falling across tree limbs outside her bedroom window.

  Blowing out a breath of air, she flipped a few strands of hair away from her eyelashes but made no other movement for several moments.

  As the silence in her bedroom nearly choked the last bit of her energy away, the girl visibly forced herself to a sitting position at the edge of her bed and turned her head toward the blue porcelain clock on her dresser.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Six fifteen.

  “I imagine there’s ten different things I could or should be doing right now,” she mumbled to nobody at all. “And I don’t even care; the whole day can stay on hold until Daddy walks through the door.”

  Her eyes caught sight of the book she’d bought in Canon City and she almost pulled it off the bedside table. Then in a move resembling a lazy puppy, she flopped her hand down on the bedspread and tucked it back under her pillow.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Six seventeen.
>
  The smell of dinner had long since drifted into her room, but the girl couldn't have cared any less about eating; she closed her eyes and began to rock herself side-to-side on the edge of her bed. After the third yawn, Hailee slowed the rocking motion to lay back down, drifting off into a world she could always escape into when the real one became too scary.

  P

  Duffy opted to skip his dinner altogether that first night back from the hunt, choosing instead to spend the time in his bunk house with his only companion being the fire he built in the small-yet-efficient stone fireplace; the grumpy-looking man pulled his chair up in front of the flames only a few feet away from his stocking-clad feet, pulling an old green crocheted afghan across his shoulders. Biting the tip of the pencil in his hand and tapping it a few times against the paper tablet in his lap, Duffy’s face reflected the growing flames.

  The pencil began scratching its way across the tablet until finally the man’s face twisted in a slow, slight grin as if an idea–or plot–had begun to take root.

  An evil chuckle almost rippled from in between his lips as he listened to the pine needles crackle at the center of the logs, his eyes still squinted as he sat in the broken down chair with the flicker of a wood fire splashing orange hues against his semi-bearded face.

  Chapter 21

  The day had long-since given way to moonlight when Tobias opened the kitchen door real slow and peeped inside, grateful the squeak had been taken care of with that bar of lye soap some weeks earlier; this was not the best time to alert Hailee of his return.

  Just as Richard whipped around the corner with a flour sack for the following day, Tobias held one finger against his lips and shook his head. With one hand, he made the ‘no’ sign by gliding his outstretched fingers across his throat and pointing upward as he mouthed Hailee’s name.

  Understanding what he meant, Richard only nodded when Tobias tugged his head toward the door.

  The old cook laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder and whispered, “Where’s Bruce?”