Prarie Fire Part 12

Sarah and Devlin crouched down, using hand signals to communicate as they crept around the west side of the house.

Mrs. Henley and Hannah were walking through the parlor. Lace curtains covered the windows, making it difficult to see in but easy enough to see outside. Mrs. Henley paused, watching the women outside creep around as if they were characters in a penny novel.

"Are yer moms slow-witted or something?" she asked.

"Huh?" Hannah asked.

"Never mind. Let's go sit on the porch. I reckon it's warm enough for it. Bundle yer coat up there, prairie dog, or you'll catch yer death." She checked on the progress of the women outside and shook her head. "I expect they'll find us on the porch sooner or later. Gotta say, though, they sure don't act like the two sharpest ears of corn on the stalk, that's fer sure."

Finding the back of the house deserted, Devlin turned to Sarah. "I hear voices."

"Me too. Up front?"

They didn't waste any time rus.h.i.+ng back the way they'd come moments before. The sight that met them rendered both women speechless.

Hannah sat in the lap of a woman who looked to be at least eighty years old. Hannah was relating how Devlin had saved Dolly from a fate worse than death by retrieving her from the jaws of Rupert, Art Winston's old hunting dog. Mrs. Henley was listening intently, interjecting the appropriate responses.

"Hannah!" Sarah cried out.

"Mama!" Hannah smiled from her perch in the woman's lap. "I found you."

"Oh, you found us, did you?" Sarah tried not to smile, but she could rarely stay angry with Hannah for long. She was too much like Sarah had been at that age to hold it against her.

"Come here, you," Devlin said. She stepped onto the porch and moved to lift Hannah up when she promptly got her knuckles rapped. "Ow."

"She seems pretty comfortable where she is," Mrs. Henley snapped.

"Mrs. Henley, I'm-" Sarah began, holding out her hand.

"Sarah Tolliver. And you're Devlin Brown. Yep, I know who ya are, but what I don't know is why you come callin' when yer not welcome."

"Look, Mrs. Henley, we-" Devlin started.

"And bringin' a hired gun with you don't help yer case any," Mrs. Henley added.

"Now you wait just a minute." Sarah stepped forward to confront the woman. "Devlin is not a hired gun."

"No? Then what is she to ya?" Mrs. Henley's eyes gleamed with mirth as she set the trap.

"She's my-"

"Look, we don't want any trouble," Devlin interrupted. She gently held Sarah by the shoulders. "If you don't want us here, we'll just be on our way. I don't see any reason to get into name-calling."

"Oh, don't go gettin' your tail feathers ruffled," Mrs. Henley said. "You're here now, might as well stay a spell. You hungry?" she asked Hannah.

Hannah smiled and nodded. "My tummy says feed me, please."

"Me too." Mrs. Henley settled Hannah on her feet and led the way into the house. Pausing at the front door, she turned slightly. "I reckon ya expect me to feed you, too. Well, come on then. Two moms indeed." She chuckled.

"Do you have any idea what just happened here?" Sarah turned to Devlin.

"Nope." Devlin shook her head. "I say we don't look a gift horse in the mouth, though."

Sarah had a thought, ran back to the wagon, and grabbed their picnic basket. She and Devlin cautiously entered the house. It was a beautiful home with furniture and gla.s.sware that had obviously come from back east. Old portraits hung on the walls and a spinet stood in one corner of the parlor. The house looked expensive to Devlin, and she was afraid to touch anything.

"We have lunch." Sarah held up the basket. "Would you like to share it with us?"

"I reckon that's about the best idea you had so far, little lady," Mrs. Henley said.

It was a short, uncomfortable meal for Devlin. If Hannah hadn't carried the bulk of the conversation, the two sides probably wouldn't have spoken at all.

Mrs. Henley rose and walked into the kitchen.

"Sarah Tolliver, come on in here and make your young self useful," she called out.

Sarah rolled her eyes at Devlin and rose to follow the sound of Mrs. Henley's voice. When Sarah returned, she was carrying a tray with a coffeepot and three delicate china cups. She poured the coffee, which didn't get an argument from Mrs. Henley.

"Devlin, open that door just a ways behind you." Mrs. Henley indicated a side door near the entrance to the sitting room.

Devlin complied and looked back at her. The door appeared to lead into a storage closet.

"There, that small chest, the one on the top shelf. Bring that one down for the young'un."

Devlin pulled down the chest, quickly becoming annoyed that this woman was ordering her around like some hired hand. She placed the box on the table.

Mrs. Henley unbuckled the leather strap that kept the lid closed. "Come here, little prairie dog." She opened the top to reveal a.s.sorted rag dolls with tiny outfits, all in different colors and patterns.

"Dollies!" Hannah exclaimed. Sarah smiled at her response. She could never understand why something so simple as dolls delighted Hannah so much.

"Now, Devlin, you take these and put 'em on the rug in the sittin' room. You can play with them in there," she said to Hannah.

"They're too nice to play with, I don't want her to-" Sarah began.

"Nonsense. No sense lettin' the moths make a feast of 'em. Go on," she ordered Devlin.

"What do you say, Hannah?" Sarah asked.

"Thank you, Missus...I don't know your name," Hannah blurted out.

Mrs. Henley chuckled. "My name is Cordelia Leander Henley." She laughed again as Hannah tried to wrap her tongue around the name. "Why don't you just call me Cordy? That's what my friends used to call me."

"Thank you, Cordy." Hannah beamed. She happily followed Devlin into the next room.

"Oh, you'll have trouble with that one. She's a charmer, she is," Mrs. Henley said.

"The face of an angel and the ways of a devil." Sarah blushed when Mrs. Henley looked up with an odd expression on her face. "It's...well, it's what my father used to say to me."

Mrs. Henley found that amusing and laughed loud and long. "I bet this one found that out the hard way, eh?" She indicated Devlin, who had just taken her seat.

"Did I miss something?" Devlin asked.

"Just an old woman's friendly bite is all. So, Sarah Tolliver and Devlin Brown, now that little ears are out of the way, what say we lay our cards on the table? I'll tell you right off. My fences come down over my dead body."

"That could be arranged," Devlin muttered in a low voice.

"What's that?" Mrs. Henley asked.

Sarah kicked Devlin's s.h.i.+n under the table.

"Ow! Um, it's a nice day on the range," Devlin said.

"Mm-hmm." Mrs. Henley raised a skeptical eyebrow at Devlin. "I'm old, but I ain't deaf."

Devlin at least had the good sense to blush at her error. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"

"'Course ya did, but that's neither here nor there. Now word is, you want ranchers to take down their wire. I can partly see the sense in it. My husband never put up fences at all, even wood. In those days, a rider's salt was if he could keep his herd in check. Times are different, though, and I got a hundred times the size of the herd we started with here. If'n I hired all the riders it would take to keep my herds in check, I'd soon be a poor woman. Now suppose you start by tellin' me why I should want the fences down."

Sarah looked at Devlin, and Devlin's face changed. The pale eyes turned a warm sky blue and the hard line of Devlin's mouth curved into a slight smile. It was as if something lit Devlin from within when she looked at Sarah.

After an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement from Devlin, Sarah turned back toward Mrs. Henley and told the story. Sarah knew that she was opening herself up to humiliation and ridicule by relating her vision, but she and Devlin agreed on one thing. If it didn't feel right, depending on who they were talking to at the time, they wouldn't tell more than they had to. Even though the widow was an ornery curmudgeon, Sarah and Devlin felt as if she might be receptive to the whole truth.

Nearly an hour later, Sarah leaned back in her chair. Mrs. Henley stared at Sarah and Devlin.

"And you expect me to believe this?" Mrs. Henley asked.

"Well, all I can say is that it's true. As for you believing, I guess that's another matter," Sarah said.

"It's so crazy I reckon it must be true. Who else have you told this to?"

"You're the first," Devlin said. "We tried to tell the a.s.sociation, but we didn't get very far. We haven't told the whole story to anyone else yet."

"Well, don't. They'll think you're nuttier than a hickory grove, and it won't get ya nowhere."

"But how will we get the ranchers to join with us?" Sarah asked.

"Young woman, I look at you and I see you know a fair piece 'bout cattle. I know this rider's 'bout as good as they come, too. I been on this land since the only other woman in the territory was an Indian squaw. There's only one thing the ranchers in the territory respond to, and that's money. You can tell all the stories and make all the predictions you want, but there'll be only one reason them men'll follow you, and that'll be 'cause there's somethin' in it for them."

Sarah and Devlin listened in rapt fascination. The widow had been here before any of them, and she had experience dealing with ranchers. If Mrs. Henley had a way to work this out, they were willing to listen.

"You say that this big fire's supposed to come in the fall?" Mrs. Henley asked.

"As near as I can tell," Sarah said, "but that's not for sure. I mean, I could be wrong. It could be in the summer even."

Mrs. Henley seemed to consider this. "What were you gonna do with yer stock? You got an awful lot of beef on the hoof at the Double Deuce."

"We planned to sell just about all of them at market price. We'll drive them into the stockyard in the spring. That's only forty miles away," Devlin said.

"And what'll that thief Charlie Roberts give ya up at the yard?"

"Three, maybe four dollars a head," Devlin said.

"You'd get nearly forty dollars a head in Abilene. I hear they got a new cattle market up there."

"I suppose we would," Sarah said, "but it's a long way between here and Kansas. We'd be talking about a cattle drive we don't need to make. Sure, we'd make a small fortune, but we don't need the money."

"You don't, but a lot of other folks do. Take a listen to my proposition. Next to you, I got the biggest ranch around. If'n I spread the word, say I'm puttin' in with you, then you can bet there won't be a rancher who'll stand against us."

"In return for?" Devlin asked.

"You put together the drovers to drive all their cattle to Abilene in the spring or early summer, with you as trail boss," Mrs. Henley said, pointing to Devlin.

"Are you crazy?" Devlin raised her voice. "Do you know how many cattle you're talking? No one's ever driven that many. Most I ever trailed at one time was five thousand head. You're talking forty, maybe fifty thousand head of beef!"

"It's too dangerous, a drive of that size. It'll take all summer," Sarah said.

"I'm just tellin' ya what kind of a deal we can make. It's up to you to think out the particulars. All I'm sayin' is if you tell these ranchers you can get them ten times what their beef is worth around here, you'll have a deal. Money is the bottom line."

"And what's your bottom line?" Sarah asked. "What do you want out of this?"

"More money. Look here. I'll give you my cattle to sell in Abilene and I'll give you every man on my ranch that wants to go with. I got fifty good men you can count on and I'll pay 'em from my share. When the deal's done and yer rider gets back home, I'll sell you every acre of land I own at thirty cents on the dollar."

"I don't understand. Why would you sell us your land?" Sarah asked.

"In case ya haven't noticed, I'm gettin' on in years." She smiled. "My mother met her maker at one hundred and two years old. My grandmother was one hundred and sixteen and her mother before her was one hundred and nine when she pa.s.sed. We're a bunch that likes to stick around some. I think I'd like to take my fortune and buy one of them fancy houses in Kansas City. Have servants and such to fetch and carry for me. I figure I want my last days to be easy ones. Plus, I wouldn't give ya a plug nickel for even one of them ranchers in that a.s.sociation. I ain't about to leave one acre to any of those idiots."

Sarah and Devlin smiled at Mrs. Henley's wish. "Dev?" Sarah asked.

"It'll be one h.e.l.l of a trail ride." Devlin grinned before her face turned serious. "I don't see much way around it. Maybe this is the way it was meant to be." She shrugged.

"Then I suppose we have a deal, Mrs. Henley." Sarah offered her hand.

"I reckon since we're business partners, you best call me Cordelia."

They shook hands and spoke for a while longer about how best to let the other ranchers know of their deal. Cordelia told them to let her take care of the others. Devlin grinned, imagining that she had a way with ranchers.

Devlin scooped up the now sleeping Hannah and stopped to shake Mrs. Henley's hand. Cordelia insisted they take the chest of dolls along for Hannah. Sarah carried the chest ahead of Devlin. Sarah paused, then turned back to Cordelia.

"You know, Cordelia," Sarah began, "my Uncle Art and I came up here to visit when I was a girl. You shot at us."

"Did I hit ya?" Mrs. Henley had a gleam in her eye.

"No." Sarah chuckled.

"Then I wasn't shootin' at ya." Her laughter carried a long way out onto the late afternoon prairie.