Rebellion in the Valley

Rebellion

in the

Valley

By

Robyn Leatherman

Thanks to Edna for not only volunteering to
be my beta reader, but also for your constant support!

Published by
Robyn Leatherman
Smashwords Edition
62,572 words
Copyright 2013 Robyn Leatherman
Edited by Kim Diehl

Cover design arrangement done by Lindsay
Kayser;

actual photograph owned exclusively by

Daniel Speck of FreeStockPhotos . com

and used with permission (see terms of use on
website).
Contact Lindsay for your own cover design
at:
lindsaykkayser @ gmail . com
Disclaimer from the author:

This western story does contain some
historical points,

however, it is not meant to be read as a
history lesson.

Some of the names, characters and events in
this work of fiction

are from parts of history,

and some names are used with permission by
people I know personally.

In any case, my intention is for my readers
to just enjoy the story.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This e-book may not be resold or given away
to other people.

If you would like to share this book with
another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each person you share
it
with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or
it
was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to
Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work

of this and every other Smashwords
author.

Chapter 1

B
ruce Johnson allowed
his eyes to roll around the room, over the tapestry-covered chair
and out the window to the Red Bone Ranch he shared with his
daughter. Without looking down, he tilted the snifter in his hand
and swirled the brandy around a few times. A long, slow sip felt
its way through his throat; his nostrils flared as the liquid
warmed his chest.

A portrait of his beloved late wife, Camilla,
hung reverently on the wall opposite the fireplace, but before his
thoughts found an opportunity to run away with him, their daughter,
Hailee, bounced into the room, reminding him of the
here-and-now.

She wrapped one of her pale blonde curls
around her finger and let go, amused with her own locks, before
approaching him with the conversation he sensed would be coming
sooner or later.

“Daddy, are we going into town soon? I
overheard Duffy and Tobias talking out in the barn, and they said
the wagons might be finished by Thursday morning. I sure could use
some more burgundy yarn, and I’m almost completely out of …”
Hailee’s latest rambling found itself stopped a little short by the
familiar sound of the dinner bell ringing just outside the kitchen
door.

“Ah ha!” Bruce teased. “Saved by the dinner
bell, I am!”

He sat the brandy glass down on the catalog
table, making a mental note to come back and finish his
well-deserved drink after he finished eating. Feigning a doubled-up
fist to bonk his daughter on top of her head, Bruce escorted his
daughter into the kitchen.

A white-aproned gentleman who appeared to be
in his late sixties stood half-slumped over the dish-washing sink,
his time-weathered hands scrubbing the pan he'd just cooked a few
steaks to perfection in.

Experience allowed the cook to reach in a
fluid movement to pans hanging from the semi-abused wagon wheel
that had seen better days. Compliments of a couple of the ranch
hands, it now served as a reconstructed pots-and-pans distribution
center.

Richard Blake had been cooking for the Red
Bone Ranch for the past twenty years - ever since he lost that bet
with Bruce.

The whole thing started with a game of gin
rummy, and the wages were high; whoever came out with the losing
hand agreed to cooked that entire weekend. After a couple of days
of coffee without grinds, pancakes that were actually done clean to
the middles, and dinner that satisfied down to his bones, Bruce
offered Richard a deal to stay on as the ranch cook.

Whether Bruce knew it or not, Richard had no
other place to go. After twenty of some of his most pleasant years,
it hardly seemed to matter anymore.

Hailee sniffed at the air and wrapped an arm
around Richard’s shoulder.

“You made some of those yummy yeast rolls; I
can smell them hiding in here somewhere!”

He stepped back and opened the oven door, a
warm blast of air catching her face as she bent down to take a
sniff.

Most of the hired hands had known the girl
for several years, if not her whole life, and for the most part,
she held them in high regard. Over the years, their conduct had
earned a mark of trustworthiness and Hailee’s confidence in the
majority of the men was strong - but the actual enjoyment of
working side-by-side with her father’s hired hands had been limited
to only a few.

For a fact, Richard was one of the elite.

As soon as the man placed the baker’s tray on
the butcher-block counter, there she stood, plate ready to scoop up
her share of the night’s dinner.

Richard grinned. He enjoyed watching that
girl fill her plate up clean to the edges; she worked every bit as
hard as the men folk some days and ate like them when she put in a
full day around the ranch.

“Girl, you’re dripping’ off the side of your
plate,” Richard teased, pointing to the stream of milk gravy
pooling up on the counter.

“No worries,” she retorted, bringing the
plate to her mouth and sucking up the drippings. “That is so
yummy!” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, emphasizing a
factual statement and not her personal opinion.

Bruce shook his head. He just knew Camilla
would have utilized countless moments such as this one to mold
their daughter into a more feminine creature. Nevertheless, he took
pleasure in observing the young woman their daughter was evolving
into all on her own.

Richard placed a dinner roll on top of her
steak. “There you are, Hailee. Enjoy your supper - but you save
enough room for my chocolate mess cake, you hear me?”

“I always do!” she hollered out as she
vacated the kitchen for the separate dining room, which was simply
an extension of the kitchen and not meant to set Hailee or her
father apart from any of the ranch hands. The fact was, once the
entire lot of workers gathered to eat, there was not enough room
for everyone to eat at the same table. Several times when Bruce had
come in with the last of his hired men, he could be found eating in
the kitchen in one of the few still-available chairs, jawing with
the men-folk in there while Hailee and others ate in the dining
room, absorbed in their own conversations.

The dinner rush began as ranch hands piled
into the kitchen through the rear door, filling the room with more
noise of voices, boots clacking across the wooden floor, and chairs
scooting from under the table. The familiar sounds reminded Bruce
that most of these men were more than just the hired help; a few of
them had become more like extended family over the years that they
had been living and working on the Red Bone.

The ranch owner felt his eyes sweep over the
crowd gathering in his kitchen and understood why the women folk
often stated that the kitchen was the heart of the home.

“Bruce! Good thing you’re still here,” Tobias
began, removing his hat and hanging it on the coat rack by the door
as he’d done hundreds of times before. He headed over to the
hand-scrubbing bucket of warm sudsy water and continued without
interruption.

“That conversation of ours about the fence
out on the back forty? Yeah, well, I found a section that’s a good
twenty feet long, and it’s just not repairable anymore. Too rotted.
Gonna hafta be pulled down and replaced - all of it,” he explained.
“And that’s not all. That cat’s been back. I saw the leftovers of
one of its dinners up near that cluster of boulders again.”

Bruce grunted his disapproval.

“How many did we lose this time?” he wanted
to know.

“Best I could tell, maybe a calf and a couple
of goats. But that don’t mean there ain’t more,” he reminded his
boss as he reached for a plate. “I didn’t see the tracks til right
before the sun started to drop, so I was planning on tracking it
first thing in the morning, soon as the sun comes back up.”

Tobias stabbed at a thick steak and plopped
it on his plate, then grabbed the spoon standing out of the pot
with the mashed potatoes and dropped a healthy serving. He hunted
around for the gravy, and as he located it on the other side of the
stove, Hailee walked back into the kitchen.

His heart skipped a beat when their eyes
met.

“Hi, Tobias! S’cuse me, I just came in for my
milk. Didn’t mean to interrupt you fellas,” she tested to see if he
would mind her staying in there a few more minutes.

Hailee thought Tobias was just as fine a man
as she had ever met, and three times the looker. She'd come to know
him as a hard worker with a gentle streak she'd seen many times
over.

The deep cocoa in his eyes invited Hailee to
linger and sip at her milk; his perfect smile made sure that she
did.

Tobias sat down with his meal and told Bruce
he would have to go into town for some extra fencing supplies
within a few days.

“It’ll hold up for a few more days, but I
don’t want to chance the cattle getting out if we get a strong
wind,” he explained.

Hailee stood up a little bit taller in her
boots and exclaimed without thinking, “That’s perfect! Daddy and I
are heading into town soon as the wagons are repaired. We could all
go together and make a day of it!”

Embarrassed once she realized that she had
spoken out of turn, Hailee looked to her father for help.

“Well, that is a fine idea. Richard, now that
I'm thinking about it, why don’t you plan to come along, too? Get
the pantries stocked up. I hear corn’s holding steady at ten cents
a bushel and if rumor has it right, hogs aren’t any more’n three
and a half dollars per hundred weight, so plan what we’ll need for
the winter through.”

Bruce Johnson waved a hand toward the other
ranch hands in the kitchen and suggested, “Heck, why not everyone
make up a supply list and a bunch of us can all head in together.
I’ll treat us to supper at that fancy restaurant while we’re in
town,” Bruce offered.

Hailee gulped down the rest of her milk and
noticed Tobias smiling at her. He pointed his fork at her and shook
his grinning head. He laughed to himself when she almost choked on
her milk.

He concentrated his eyes on Hailee and could
almost feel the breath she tried to hide in her chest as she
realized he was staring at her.

“Sounds like a plan, Boss, sounds like a
plan,” the man said aloud as he shoved a bite-sized piece of steak
into his mouth.

His eyes were still resting on Hailee.

Chapter 2

H
oward J. Duffman stood in the tool shed, taking an inventory
of which meat-cutting tools he should think about replacing and
which ones could get by with just a good sharpening.

Duffy, as he was known, was the one ranch
hand in charge of handling the butchery - a profession passed down
to him by his father, and since nobody else cared for the job, it
became exclusively his duty.

He didn’t mind. This appointed position gave
him an air of self-importance he felt set him aside from all the
other men. Duffy figured having business in the tool shed gave him
the excuse of getting out of such duties as stall mucking and pig
slopping; since nobody else knew how long it actually took to
sharpen tools and meat saws, Duffy possessed a way out of almost
anything he didn’t care to do.

Tobias and a couple of the other men were
near the barn and shooting the breeze in between chores; Duffy
overheard the punch line of a joke one of them told and chuckled,
although the thought of them standing around doing nothing, in his
eyes, caused his blood pressure to raise a bit. It wasn’t so much
that Duffy was thinking of all the ranch duties and chores, but
mostly it buffed his hide he was never included in their
conversations.

Duffy was the second oldest ranch hand, next
in line to Richard. Sometimes it irritated him that he had slaved
away and worked so hard for another man’s home and land, while he
never even owned one single acre in his entire life.

“Just ain’t fair,” he would sometimes grumble
to himself whenever he was having a

bad day.

Just as those very words crept across his
brain, a cupped hand slapped him square on the shoulder, causing
his mind to surface from his deep thoughts.