The image of Bruce riding away with Jude blurred before her eyes. She wiped a tear away with her fingers. Then she heard the step of Allegra’s horse moving up next to her. “Don’t worry,” Allegra assured her. “They can’t get into too much trouble out here.”
Amelia broke down in sobs. “He’s been so cruel to Bruce ever since they met yesterday. I shudder to think what he’ll say to him, now that I’m not around to stop him.”
“It’s just words,” Allegra told her.
“Words can hurt,” Amelia cried. “Haven’t you seen how he’s got Bruce half beaten already? He laughs at him and makes fun of his size. He’s taken every opportunity to hurt him every way he can. I never knew a man could be so cruel.”
“He’s just joking around,” Allegra replied. “I’m sure he doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s not as though he’s beaten Bruce up or something.”
“He wouldn’t dare!” Amelia snapped. “He knows he could never take Bruce in a fight, so he’s beating him down with taunts and insults. Didn’t you see the way Bruce shrank up to nothing when Jude said he was disappointed in him? Bruce is too sensitive to fight back.”
Allegra reached over and rested her hand on Amelia’s arm. “You’re thinking about this too much. Bruce is a grown man. He’ll handle Jude in his own way. Now, we gotta get up to the range before it gets any later. The cattle are waiting for us, and the men will be halfway there.”
Amelia shook the tears out of her eyes. She didn’t spur her horse, but he took off after Allegra’s mount when she started. Amelia held on with her legs and let her horse run. He knew the way out to the pasture without any help from her.
Allegra didn’t stop at the top of the hill the way they usually did. She kept galloping down the other side. By this time, Amelia’s vision cleared enough to see two other riders in the distance, circling the cattle herd around the edges of the plane.
Now Amelia urged her horse forward and steered him to her left, along the flank of hills that served as their perimeter. She waved her hat in the air and shouted and whistled, and the cattle ran away from her toward the middle of the circle. On the other side of the valley, Allegra, Bruce, and Jude did the same thing, until the herd converged in the middle of their circle.
The riders closed in and the cattle ran toward the gulley that acted as a chute down to the river. The first animals ran into the familiar gap with the rest driving them forward from behind. The two sisters and brothers-in-law met at the bottom of the hill with their cheeks glowing and the wind whipping through their hair.
Amelia flashed Bruce a smile. “I knew you’d pick it up in no time.”
Bruce didn’t return her smile, but his eyes skated across toward Jude. “Nothin’ to it.”
The smile melted off Amelia’s face. She frowned at the ashen grey pallor of his skin. One glance at Jude’s smug expression told her all she needed to know about any man-to-man talk they had on the way up here. Jude smiled at her, but his smile was the tooth-studded grin of a reptile before it attacks its mesmerized prey.
“That’s all there is to it,” Allegra was saying. “They’ll meander back here when they finish watering. We can head for the barn for the night.”
“I’m starving,” Jude announced. “Alma’s cookin’ supper tonight, so we should be in for a good feed.”
Allegra glanced around the circle of faces. “I’ll ride back with you, Jude. Come on. I’ll race you to the barn.” Without waiting for his reply, she planted her spurs in her horse’s flanks and bolted away.
Jude stole one last look at Bruce and Amelia before he ran after Allegra, leaving the newlyweds alone.
Amelia sighed when he was gone. Then she turned on Bruce. “What did he say to you?”
“Nothin’,” Bruce told her. “He didn’t say anything to me.”
She almost shouted at him to tell her everything before she wrung it out of him with her bare hands, but she stopped herself. She forced herself to let a lengthy silence pass before she tried again. “I’m worried about you.”
“You don’t need to worry,” he replied. “I’m okay.”
“I just don’t want anyone to hurt you,” she told him. “I want to protect you.”
“I don’t need protecting,” he insisted. “I’m okay. No one’s gonna hurt me.”
Amelia shook her head. “I just wish I could believe that.”
“And you don’t need to worry about Jude, either,” Bruce added. “He isn’t trying to hurt me, or take advantage of me, or anything else. He’s just trying to help me fit into this family better. That’s all. We should both be thanking him.”
Amelia gritted her teeth. Thanking him! That was a good joke. She would thank him with her knuckles in his teeth.
“He told me,” Bruce admitted, “that he’s worried about you.”
“Me!” Amelia cried. “What’s he worried about me for?”
“He’s worried you’re gonna try to work the ranch when you can’t do it anymore,” Bruce told her, “and that you’ll drive yourself too hard, and that you’ll wind up hurting or killing yourself because you won’t give up your work when you should be resting and stayin’ home. That’s what he said.”
“I’ll be the one to decide when I need to rest and stay home,” Amelia growled. “You and I will decide that, not him.”
“You have to admit he has a point,” Bruce replied. “And I’m not above taking advice from someone who knows better than me.”
Amelia stared at him. “Knows better than you! Is that what he said? I’ll have his head on a platter!”
“He didn’t say it,” Bruce shot back. “He didn’t have to say it. You can tell just from talking to him. He knows a lot more about a lot a’ things than I do. We would both do well to listen to him.”
Amelia shook her head. “He’s really done a number on your head, hasn’t he? He doesn’t know squat more about anything than you do, or I do, or anybody else does. He’s got his own opinion—nothing more. He sure as blazes doesn’t know better than anyone else about what’s best for me, or us, or the ranch. When are you going to realize that just because he said it, doesn’t make it the best idea in the world.”
Bruce shook his head, too. “I can tell he’s got a better idea about how to handle this situation than I do, and I’m willing to listen to him. You should do the same thing.”
“I’ll drop dead first,” Amelia snapped. “If he tries to put one of his daffy ideas over on me again, he’s gonna have a lot more than he bargained for. I told him he wasn’t going to get away with this. What I can’t figure out is why you’re bowing down to him this way. You’re smarter than he is, and you’re a better man than him in a million ways. He should be listening to you, not the other way around.”
“I’m nothing compared to him,” Bruce murmured. “I should have realized that. I started to buck against him when he first started saying things at the dinner yesterday, but I know better now. I’m willing to go along with whatever he wants to do.”
Amelia threw up her hands. “Well, that’s our idea of building our own house out the window, then.”
Bruce straightened up. “What do you mean? We could still do it.”
“No, we can’t,” Amelia maintained. “If none of us can work the ranch, if we have to hand over all the ranching to you two, that puts an end to the idea that you two could build your houses while me and my sisters handle the ranch. Don’t you remember? The whole plan hinges on us covering for you when it comes to taking care of the stock.”
Bruce frowned toward the horizon. “I forgot about that.”
“You see?” Amelia pointed out. “He doesn’t have the greatest ideas about everything after all.”
Bruce waved her objections away. “I’ll ask him about it. I’m sure we can figure out a way to do it that will satisfy everyone.”
“That’s right,” Amelia shot back. “We can do it by me and my sisters running the ranch while you and Jude building the houses. That’s the way it will work to satisfy everyone. And while I’m at it, let me remind you and him that Allegra has no intention of backing off on her ranch work. You and Jude won’t be taking over and having a cozy little men’s operation all to yourselves. You’ll have to deal with her and take her opinions and methods into account. Nobody—not you or Jude or anybody—is taking over from her, and nobody is going to tell her how to run this ranch after she’s been doing it for six years.”
“I know that,” Bruce grumbled. “I never said they were.”
“Good,” Amelia returned. “Just so you and Jude understand that very clearly, because if anyone is going to have the final say in how things get done around here, it’s Allegra. Jude can take over from Alma, and you can take over from me, but neither of you is going to set Allegra aside.”
“I know,” Bruce mumbled again.
“Good,” Amelia snapped.