“What’s that?”
“How come that blasted Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves didn’t ask us to dance last night? What’s wrong with them?”
Sandy laughed. “Some girls would be asking what was wrong with themselves if a couple of boys they liked didn’t ask them to dance.”
Jessie gave a defiant toss of her head. “There’s nothing wrong with us, and you know it.”
“I reckon they must’ve thought they shouldn’t be dancing, since they were there to help the marshal.”
“Marshal Standish danced with that little schoolmarm. I saw him.”
“Yeah, but Matt and Sam didn’t dance with anybody,” Sandy pointed out. “At least, not that I saw.”
“Well, Matt Bodine just missed his chance, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Yeah, sure,” Sandy said with a smile. “If he asks you next time there’s a social, you’ll fall all over yourself saying yes, Jessie.”
“I will not! Why, Matt Bodine can go climb a stump as far as I care—”
The swift rataplan of more hoofbeats silenced her, and made both young women turn in their saddles to look in the direction of the sound, which was back toward the headquarters of the Double C. Half-a-dozen riders were coming toward them, trailed by a wagon carrying posts, rolls of wire, and several more cowboys.
“Oh, Lord,” Jessie breathed as she recognized the big figure leading the party. “What’s Pa up to now?”
Shadrach Colton was the source of the red hair that Jessie and her younger brothers and sisters had inherited, although Colton’s still-thick and shaggy mane was shot through with gray. He had the burly build and rugged face of a man who had worked outdoors and worked hard most of his life. As he and the other riders came up to the creek, he reined in and looked at his daughter and Sandy with hard, pale blue eyes.
“Miss Paxton,” he said as he gave Sandy a polite nod.
“Hello, Uncle Shad,” she replied. Even though Colton wasn’t really her uncle, as a child she had referred to him that way, just as Jessie had called Sandy’s father Uncle Esau.
“You’d better ride on back home now,” Colton told her.
“Sandy doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to!” Jessie flared.
“It’s all right,” Sandy said. “I’m on Double C range on this side of the creek, after all.”
With gruff courtesy, Colton said, “It ain’t that, Sandy. You’re welcome over here any time. You know that. So’s your ma.”
“What about Royce and Dave?” Sandy asked, referring to her twin brothers who were two years younger than her.
Colton’s mouth tightened. “They stand with your pa, I reckon. Couldn’t be any other way, with Esau raisin’ ’em.”
“What are you going to do?” Jessie demanded. “What are all those posts and wire for?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” her father said. “Get on back home now.”
“Not until you tell me what this is all about,” Jessie shot back. Her jaw was tight, too, and her green eyes blazed with defiance. She was her father’s daughter, no doubt about that. She jerked a hand toward the wagon and went on. “You always said you’d never have any truck with that…that devil wire, you called it. This is open-range country. Always has been and always will be.”
Colton sat stiffly in his saddle for a moment, then spat and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth as if he were trying to get rid of a bad taste. “I wish it was still that way,” he said, “but the time’s come to put up a fence.”
“Where? The creek’s always been the boundary line between the two ranches.”
Colton shook his head. “Nope. Accordin’ to the papers filed at the county seat, the boundary is the east bank of the creek, and then a line due north from the spring where it rises.”
Sandy’s eyes widened with surprise as his meaning sunk in. “You’re going to put a fence on the other side of the creek? On my father’s land?”
“Pax range stops where the creek starts. That’s where the fence is gonna go.”
“But…but then our cattle can’t get to it!” Sandy protested. “What’ll they do for water?”
“You got a creek on your range,” Colton said with a nod in that direction.
“But it dries up half the year! It’s almost dry now! Our stock has always used this creek!”
Colton shook his head. “Not any more.”
Jessie spoke up again, saying hotly, “Pa, this ain’t right—”
“Good Lord, gal!” her father exploded. “What kind o’ talk is that? Didn’t I send you to school so you could learn how to talk like a proper lady?”
“All right, then,” Jessie said through gritted teeth. “Father, this isn’t right. It isn’t proper behavior. And it certainly isn’t fair to Mr. Paxton.” She took a deep breath. “It’s a bunch o’ damn bullshit, that’s what it is!”
Colton flung a hand toward the Double C headquarters, several miles to the west. “Git!” he shouted at Jessie. “Go on home before I forget that you’re damned near growed and paddle you like the spoiled brat you’re actin’ like!”
Jessie folded her arms across her chest and glared coldly at him. “I’d like to see you try it,” she grated.
Father and daughter glowered at each other for a moment before Colton turned and bellowed at the hands who had accompanied him, “Get to work! I want a good stretch o’ that fence up before sundown today!” He swung his horse toward Sandy again and went on. “Sandy, gal, you got to go now. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going, Uncle Shad,” she said, “but I don’t believe you’re really sorry, or you wouldn’t be doing this. I’m going to see what my pa has to say about it. I can’t believe he’d ever agree to this!”
She heeled her horse into motion and splashed back across the creek. “So long, Sandy!” Jessie called after her, but Sandy didn’t acknowledge the farewell.
The Double C hands who had ridden out on the wagon hopped down, and the ones on horseback dismounted. They showed an obvious reluctance for working with the newfangled barbed wire, which had been introduced several years earlier but was still quite unpopular in Texas. The fact that Shad Colton would resort to using the devil wire was a sign of just how deep his ill feelings toward Esau Paxton really ran.
Jessie watched in dismay as the cowboys began sinking posts along the far bank of the creek and stringing wire between them. Shad Colton dismounted and worked alongside them. He had never been the sort of hombre to ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, which was one reason they felt such fierce loyalty to him.
The work was slow and hard, and it hadn’t progressed very far by late morning. That was when Jessie spotted the dust cloud in the distance to the east, on Pax range, and unbent from her anger long enough to say, “Riders comin’, Pa.”
Colton lowered the fence post he was holding and looked where Jessie was pointing. He grunted and took off the work gloves he had donned earlier. Then he came over to where Jessie still sat on her horse under the cottonwoods and put a hand on the animal’s shoulder.
“Jessie, I mean it now,” he said in a soft but urgent voice. “I want you to go home. There’s liable to be some trouble, and I don’t want you anywhere around here.”
“Gun trouble, you mean,” Jessie said, trying to keep her voice from trembling with the nervousness she felt. That tension had been growing ever since Sandy rode off. Jessie knew Esau Paxton well enough to be certain that he wouldn’t sit still for having his cattle fenced off from water. He would ride out here with some of his men to see for himself what was going on…and they would come armed.
Colton shook his head. “I don’t reckon it’ll come to that—”
“You know better, Pa.”
Stubbornly, Colton repeated, “I don’t reckon it’ll come to that, but if it does, I want you safe, girl.”
Jessie reached for the butt of the Winchester that stuck up from the sheath strapped to her saddle. She never went riding without a rifle. She would have felt naked out on the range without a gun.