“I am not marrying Caleb Beckett. Either way, he doesn’t exactly strike me as the type of man anyone could put a claim to.” His unexplained absence at the ranch this morning spoke volumes.
“Well, you best do something ’afore Mr. Kirkpatrick come sniffing back around here.”
“I have done something. I told you, Mr. Beckett is giving me a salary—to continue doing what I normally do, overseeing things and such. I’ll use that to pay off what we owe Shamus.”
Freedom snorted. “You’ll be working till you’re sixty to save up enough for that! And how’s Mr. Beckett gonna pay you if’n he ain’t even here? You marry him, and he’s got reason to stay.”
“He owns the land. That’s reason enough,” Rachel said. Or it should be. But what if it wasn’t?
She scrubbed harder. This situation grew worse by the minute. What would she do if he didn’t return? If Shamus showed up demanding the land as payment and Caleb was nowhere to be found, what then? Once Shamus discovered the deed had changed hands he’d track down the circuit judge in a heartbeat and demand...what? Could the judge give Shamus the land if the owner was absent and considered to have vacated the area? Fear painted her worry with dark strokes.
Rachel stepped away from the sink. “Can you finish the dishes, Free? I’m going to change and head down to the barn to start to work there.”
She needed some distance from everyone. Especially Freedom’s crazy ideas about how to solve her problem. And she needed to determine what the heck they were going to do now that Caleb had seen fit to drift off to parts unknown and leave her in the lurch.
Chapter Eight
In the distance, Rachel heard the sound of a wagon rumbling toward the house. She stopped brushing down Old Molly and listened. The paint snorted as her attention strayed to the window across from his stall. She couldn’t see anything from inside the barn. Likely it was Foster and Ethan done at the creek and loading the wagon up to take a hearty lunch out to the men. Rachel knew they could easily have packed something in their saddlebags to tide them over until dinner, but she liked doing this for them. They worked hard and deserved a decent noontime meal, and it gave Foster something useful to do now that he was getting older and could no longer spend hours in the saddle like the younger men.
Rachel took an extra minute to enjoy the feel of the afternoon sun radiating a welcome warmth through the window before giving the paint a swat on the hindquarters and backing him out of the stall.
Seeing Caleb’s horse when she arrived a couple of hours earlier filled her with relief. Although the buckboard and draft horse were gone, she was certain Caleb wouldn’t have left the paint behind. So long as Jasper remained, Caleb would return.
Though this knowledge did not quell the anger growing inside of her. With each passing moment it grew in proportion to the worry Caleb’s potential desertion had evoked.
Rachel pitched her shovel into the stall and scooped up a pile of horse dung and trampled hay, tossing it into the waiting wheelbarrow. The constant physical motion did little to sooth her jangled nerves.
Did Caleb not consider how she would feel if, upon waking, she discovered he’d gone? No message, no note, nothing to indicate his whereabouts or his intentions. Did he not think how she might worry, contemplate what it meant, fear the worst?
Of course he didn’t. Why would he? They were nothing to him. It was ridiculous to think otherwise. Whatever he had agreed to thus far was for his own benefit, not because he put other people’s troubles ahead of his own wants and needs.
She shoveled faster.
He was a drifter, for crying out loud. A gambler, obviously. Heck he could even be an outlaw wanted in several territories for all she knew, and here she was forced by a turn of the cards to stay here with him until she managed to pay off Kirkpatrick and start over, or until Caleb decided they were no longer welcome.
She set aside the shovel and picked up the pitchfork, replacing the old hay with fresh.
The whole situation was maddening! This limbo she now lived in put her emotions through the wringer like every day was wash day. How much of this could she stand, wondering every minute if today would be the day Caleb changed his mind and left her and the boys high and dry? He didn’t owe her a thing. They were here on his largesse and how could she determine how far that would stretch?
Maybe he did own the land, but she at least had the right to know what his intentions were with respect to how it affected her family. She would give him a piece of her mind and force him to draw a clearer picture of those intentions, and if he refused, then...then...
The last bit of hay slid off the end of the pitchfork onto the floor of the stall.