A Cattleman for Cora Read online

  When Tenny finally brought the wagon to a stop, she turned to him, astonished. “All this belongs to the Lazy Q?”

  “That’s right—everything we’ve just driven past. That fence up there marks the boundary.” Tenny held out both arms. “And everything on either side, too.”

  “Oh, my. I didn’t realize.” She gazed around, trying to take it in. “No wonder you’re all so tired all the time. It must be hard work, staying on top of this.”

  “We do work hard, but we have our fun too. Like taking pretty ladies for drives.” He smiled at her again. “So, we chiefly do two things on the Lazy Q. We breed and sell cattle, and we raise hay and alfalfa to feed the cattle. We have a dozen horses, but those are for transportation—we don’t sell those as part of the business, although we do replace ’em when we wear ’em out.”

  “I see.” She craned her neck to see better. “How many cows do you have?”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, first off, the whole lot of them are called cattle. The females are the cows.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize.” Her first question, and she already sounded so foolish.

  “That’s all right, Miss Cora. Right now, all told, we have about a thousand.”

  Her eyes went wide. “A thousand? Oh, my goodness. How do you keep track of them all?”

  “It gets tricky, that’s for sure. To begin with, we have different pastures for the different sorts of cattle. This pasture here is for all the cows currently gestating.” He must have interpreted her confused expression. “The ones expecting calves.”

  “Oh.” She tried to act more confident about the subject matter than she felt, but her cheeks were already warm. “I remember you were all getting ready to breed them when we got here.”

  “That’s right. These are the ones that took.” He turned and motioned to the pasture on the other side of the road. “Those are the cows we’ll breed next. Notice the fences going down the center of each pasture? We try to keep them sectioned off about a hundred per section—makes ’em easier to count.”

  “An exact hundred?”

  “As near as we can get. ‘Course, there are always gonna be odd numbers popping up, and as we breed and sell, things change. That’s why I said that at the moment we have around a thousand.”

  He hopped down, then came around to help her out of the wagon as well.

  “Do you lose a lot of cows to illness?” she asked once she’d gained her footing.

  “Not as many as you might expect in an operation this size. Wade insists that every animal on this land gets the best possible treatment, and we all agree with him, so we do all right.”

  He spoke simply, but his modest words couldn’t hide the satisfaction he felt at a job well done.

  “And where are the male cows?”

  He smiled. “The bulls?”

  “That’s right. You’ll have to teach me all these terms.”

  “They’re down the road aways. We passed them on the way here, but they weren’t near the fence to be seen easily. We have about eighty right now.”

  Cora quirked an eyebrow. “You have a thousand cows—er, cattle—and only eighty are male?”

  “Only eighty are bulls.”

  “But . . . aren’t the bulls the boys?”

  He smiled again, and she couldn’t tell if he thought she was silly or if she was amusing him. Maybe both. “The bulls are the males we use for breedin’. The rest of the males—the ones we sell for meat—are steers.”

  “Steers?”

  Tenny glanced down at the ground, then back up. “Bulls that have been castrated, Miss Cora.”

  “Oh.” She’d never had such an uncomfortable conversation in her life.

  Her original plan had been to stay until Margaret had her baby and then apply to nursing school again, hoping to have better luck the second time around. The more time she spent on the ranch, though, the more she felt connected to it, and the idea of nursing school was fading into the background. And now with Tenny stating his intention to court her . . . Not that she had to accept his offer . . . Oh, she didn’t know what she wanted. Things were much less confusing before she’d boarded the train for Kansas.

  “So, tell me what a typical day is like for you,” she said.

  “Well, I get up and eat some of Miss Fiona’s delicious cookin’, and then I head out here. I usually ride Ol’ Buckeye, a big brown gelding, and we visit the various pastures. I keep an eye out for any cows that appear to be ill, and I make sure there’s enough grass for them to graze. Then comes the matter of refillin’ the water troughs and whatnot—there’s a well dug out here, thank goodness, but it still takes a while and several of the men to haul the water where all it needs to be.” He motioned off to the side. “That barn over there is where we store the alfalfa. It keeps the milk rich and the cows healthy and happy.”

  “Where does the milking happen? Not out here in the fields, surely . . .”

  Tenny pointed. “See those sheds?”

  Cora squinted, but the sheds blended into the tree line, and she could barely make them out.

  “The milking cows are in the pasture there closest to the sheds, and we bring them in, milk them, and send them back out through a different gate. It takes several of us a while to get that particular task done. I’d say we spend most of our time feeding, watering, and milking. Except for those who are working on the crops, of course. Hay and alfalfa, mostly. Some vegetables just for use here on the ranch.”

  “I see.” Cora didn’t actually see—she just said that to be polite—but she assumed she’d figure it out eventually. “It sounds like you get quite a lot of milk.”

  “We do—far more than we need. Some of it comes back to the ranch kitchens, but we sell some to the next property there, adjoining us at the fence. That’s why you’ve never seen what happens to the milk—it goes out that way rather than through the front gates.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, trying to look enlightened. “I wonder, Tenny, if you don’t mind my asking . . .”

  “You can ask anything you want, Miss Cora.”

  The trouble was, she didn’t actually know if she wanted to ask this question. “You mention . . . castration . . . quite a lot. The male cows and the horses . . . Why is that necessary?”

  Tenny scratched his chin. “Most of the time, we castrate the animals that are the meanest and orneriest. It keeps them calmer.”

  “Oh,” she said again. She had no response for that. “And . . . and why aren’t all the cows giving milk?”

  “Well now, that all depends on which cows are mothers and which aren’t. The mama cows produce milk, of course, but if it’s been a while since she calved, a cow might stop producing until she calves again.” He looked down at the ground and scuffed the dirt with the toe of his boot. “And I’m certainly sorry for bringing you out here and telling you all these things that must seem mighty personal, Miss Cora, but again, that’s just how life is out here, and that’s what we do.”

  “I understand that, Tenny, I really do. And I’m sorry if I seem squeamish about it. You should know, I was raised in a home where things like this were absolutely never mentioned, and if someone had a child, my mother made it sound like some sort of catalog purchase or birthday gift or something. Our cat gave birth one morning, and it was whisked out to the barn until the kittens were weaned. It wasn’t until years later that I understood why.”

  “That’s just how it is in the more genteel households. There was nothin’ genteel about how I was brought up.” Tenny chuckled.

  “Do you think I could come out here again sometime? Maybe I could help you look for sick cows, or you could teach me how to milk.” Both those suggestions made Cora uncomfortable and she couldn’t believe she was even saying the words, but she felt it was important for her to understand Tenny’s world and to expand her own. If they were courting, she should know all she could about him.

  “I’d enjoy bringing you out here again, Miss Cora. It’s hard work, but there’s a great deal o
f satisfaction in it too.” Tenny raised his hand to greet Abel, who was riding over by the milking sheds. “Being out here in the sunshine and working with God’s creatures—doesn’t get much more peaceful than that.”

  As Cora listened to him, she could feel his love of the land and his dedication to his work, and she admired that. There was something quite attractive about a man who took his duties seriously.

  And of course, the dimple.

  Definitely the dimple.

  Chapter Three

  Tenny hoped he wasn’t boring Miss Cora—he’d been rambling on about this, that, and the other for quite some time now, but she seemed to be interested. At least, he hoped she was because it was important to him, and he wanted to be able to share this part of his life with her. Ah, shoot—who was he fooling? He had no other life than this. That’s why he wanted to get married—so there would be more to him than cattle and alfalfa.

  He’d never realized until now just how many of the details of his work might embarrass her. Growing up in a proper home like she did, with a mother who hid the new kittens from her—of course she’d be shy about such things when they were simply every day for him. He and Cora came from entirely different worlds . . . He hoped they’d find a way to bridge that gap.

  He had to applaud her for overcoming her fear of horses long enough to take this wagon ride with him. She was still eyeing the creature like she thought it might eat her, but she was making progress.

  “I’m still amazed at how many cattle you have,” she said, turning around to see the animals on all sides. “How do you take care of them in the winter? They don’t stay out here, do they?”

  “No, it gets mighty cold here in the winter, and they wouldn’t fare well. We sell quite a few of them in the fall, and the rest are housed over there.” He pointed to another row of buildings off in the distance.

  “I’d like to drive around sometime and see those buildings,” she replied. Her tone was a little doubtful, like she was having to convince herself that she meant what she said, but Tenny would take it as a good sign that she was making the effort. That had to mean she was interested in him, didn’t it? He needed to know because she hadn’t dropped any hints whatsoever, and while she had agreed to the courtship, he couldn’t tell if she was actually enjoying the idea or just enduring it.

  “I’ll show them to you if you like, but I’ve gotta be honest, Miss Cora. You and your dainty clothes . . . You always look beautiful, of course, if you’re gonna be out here, you might want some things that are a little bit sturdier.” He paused, hoping his bluntness hadn’t just ruined everything. “I don’t mean to offend you . . .”

  Cora nodded. “Not at all—I was just having the same thought. I packed to attend nursing school, not to live on a ranch, so of course my things aren’t suitable. The next time someone goes into town for supplies, I’ll ask to go along so I can pick up some fabric and some boots.”

  “Turns out, there’s a trip planned for tomorrow,” Tenny said. “Jack and Sully are headin’ in, and maybe you and I could go along with them.”

  “You’d come too?” She looked doubtful.

  “Sure would. Unless you’d rather I didn’t,” he hurried to add.

  “Oh, of course I’d like you to come. I just didn’t know if you’d be too busy out here with the cows. And shopping is such a feminine thing to do . . .”

  “Don’t let Sully hear you say that,” Tenny replied with a chuckle.

  “I didn’t mean him—I just meant—oh, gracious, Tenny. You’ve got me all flustered.”

  “Do I?”

  He met her gaze and held it for a long minute. There was no accounting for the way his heart suddenly sped up—he’d faced eight angry bulls before and didn’t get as worked up as he was right in that moment. Of course, those eight angry bulls weren’t looking at him with eyes as soft and wide as a doe’s, and they didn’t have sweet pink lips . . .

  “Do . . . do you what? I’ve forgotten the question.”

  “So have I.” He reached down and took her hand. “How does it feel?”

  “How does what feel?”

  “Your hand.”

  “Oh. I thought you were asking me how it felt to be flustered, and I didn’t know what to say.”

  The touch of her skin on his palm reminded him of holding rose petals. “Doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.”

  “No, I think it stopped quite a long time ago. You took good care of me . . . of it. You took good care of it.” She looked up into his eyes again, and he swallowed.

  “Would you like some water?” He was suddenly thirstier than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Do you have some water that’s not from a trough?” she asked, and he heard a spot of humor in her voice.

  “Well now, I won’t make you drink from a trough until your third or fourth day out here,” he teased. “In the meantime, I brought some along.” He walked around to the back of the wagon and opened up the basket he’d brought along. Inside were two jars of water. He loosened the lid on one and handed it to Cora, keeping the other one for himself.

  “Thank you,” she said after she’d taken a long drink. “It’s getting rather warm out here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. Summer days in Kansas are scorchers. At least we have some trees for shelter near the cabins—that keeps things less toasty there.” He nodded back the way they’d come. “Let’s plan on leaving tomorrow soon after breakfast. I’ll let the men know I’ll be gone—they can all do my job in their sleep, and they won’t even miss me.”

  “Then let’s plan on it.” Cora offered up a smile.

  They climbed back into the wagon and made the return trip, again quiet as the wheels on the road caused quite a lot of racket. Tenny kept reliving the feeling of her hand in his. What was this woman doing to him? He’d thought he would never be able to overcome her irritating ways, but now he found them somewhat charming. He’d thought he’d never be good enough for her high-and-mighty self, but now he wanted to learn more about her and find things they had in common. And why was his heart still running like a gopher trying to escape a hawk?

  ***

  Cora wasn’t sure what to think about anything that had happened that morning. She’d been startled to find herself suddenly attracted to Tenny in a way she never had been before, and they were talking about ranch life as though it had been decided that she was going to stay. But she still had some freedom left, didn’t she? Agreeing to let someone court her wasn’t the same as accepting a proposal, and even proposals could be broken.

  Then again, why was she trying to figure out a way to escape this arrangement? Didn’t she like Tenny, and wasn’t he doing everything he could to make her feel comfortable and welcome? And he certainly did make her stomach flip-flop when he smiled at her.

  The noise of the wagon wheels and the heat of the sun were starting to press down on her, and the confusion in her brain certainly wasn’t helping. The ride that had only seemed to take twenty minutes before now stretched on forever. A dull ache began to press behind her eyes, growing until it was a sharper pain. She looked ahead, glad that she could see the main house and smaller cabins up ahead. It wouldn’t be too long until she could lie down.

  When they pulled up in front of the stables, Tenny jumped down from the seat and came around to help Cora to the ground. The pain in her head had become quite bad, though, and a wave of dizziness washed over her as she slid down. Tenny’s arms tightened around her and kept her from tumbling into the dirt, clutching her close to him. That would have been quite romantic if it hadn’t been so embarrassing.

  “Miss Cora, are you all right?”

  “I have the most awful headache. I think I need to lie down for a while.”

  He nodded, not loosening his grip on her. That was a wise choice—she didn’t think she could hold herself upright without his help. “I’ll take you over to your cabin. Do you know if any of your friends will be there? You need looking after.”

  “I don’t know,
” she replied. She couldn’t even remember what time it was or who was sitting with Margaret that day.

  Tenny walked her to her cabin, and as they drew near to it, Wynonna came running across the grass toward them. “Cora! What’s the matter?”

  “She’s got quite a bad headache, Miss Wynonna. I tired her out too much this morning.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Tenny. I think it was just too much sun,” Cora tried to reassure him.

  Wynonna opened the door of the cabin, and Tenny helped Cora inside and to the nearest chair. Then he stood there, looking worried and anxious, not knowing what else to do.

  “I’ll take care of her, Tenny,” Wynonna told him.

  “Thank you, Miss Wynonna. Please let me know if you need anything.” He gave Cora a nod and backed out, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “We need to get you cooled off,” Wynonna said. She helped Cora stand and walk into the bedroom, then to take off her dress and petticoats. Once she wore only her chemise and bloomers, Wynonna brought a cool cloth, and Cora sponged her arms and face.

  “Your skin is holding in a lot of heat,” Wynonna said after touching Cora’s forehead. “Have you always been this sensitive to the sun?”

  “I don’t really know,” Cora replied. “My mother always said that the sun would wrinkle me like a prune, so I was never allowed to spend much time in it.” She was already starting to feel a little better without the layers upon layers of fabric she’d been wearing, but she did need to lie down.

  “Here you are,” Wynonna said, motioning toward the bed. She’d pulled back the blankets, and the cool sheets looked so inviting. Cora lay down and took a deep breath. Yes, that was so much better.