Song of the Road (46 page)

Jake cradled Scotty in one arm and with his other hand held Mary Lee possessively close as they walked to the house. Junior Miller was at the door to let them in. The house was cool and quiet. Mary Lee looked around at the heavy, dark furniture, the colorful rugs on the floor and the enormous cobblestone fireplace. It was spotlessly clean, but to Mary Lee it seemed more like the lobby of a fancy hotel than a home.

“Hang your hat there on the hall tree, Jake.”

“Hola.”
A smiling Mexican woman came from the back of the house to greet them. “I am María. I keep house for
Señor
Clawson.”

“Hello.” Mary Lee couldn’t help but smile back at the pleasant-faced woman.

“Ah, such a
bello niño
!” She peeked at Scotty, nestled in the crook of Jake’s arm. Scotty obliged her with a wide yawn.

“We think so,” Jake said.

“You want I take?”

“No, thank you,” Mary Lee said hastily. “I’ll keep him with me. He . . . might get hungry.”

The woman smiled, nodded and backed away.

Junior motioned for them to follow. They walked through an archway and into an alcove. The first thing they saw was Ocie, sitting in a high-backed chair with large wheels and a footrest. His face was drawn, his eyes sunken. He had lost considerable weight.

“Come on in. I’m not going to bite,” he barked when they hesitated beneath the archway.

William Miller got painfully to his feet. He greeted first Mary Lee and then Jake with a handshake.

“And what do we have here?” he said, pulling the light blanket back from Scotty’s face.

“This is our son, Scott Jacob,” Jake said firmly. When Ocie snorted, he added, “Ramero.”

“Well, now,” Mr. Miller said, “he’s a handsome boy.”

“We think so.” Mary Lee echoed the words Jake had said earlier. She reached for the baby. “I’ll wait in the other room.”

“No need for that, my dear. Stay with your husband.” Mary Lee had seen the anxious way Ocie’s eyes had clung to the baby, and something inside her washed away her resentment of him.

“Would you like to see him, Mr. Clawson?” Without waiting for an answer or looking at Jake, she removed the blanket from around the baby and crossed the room to where he sat in the chair. “He’s a big boy. He weighed nine pounds when he was born. He doesn’t have much hair yet, but what he has is dark. His eyes are going to be blue, I think. You can’t tell until he’s a little older.”

Ocie’s eyes were on the child in her arms. She lifted the gown and showed him Scotty’s chubby feet and legs.

“He’s a good baby. He seldom cries, but when he does, his daddy is right there picking him up. I have to watch Jake and Eli or they’ll have him spoiled rotten.”

Mary Lee looked over her shoulder at Jake. From his expression she couldn’t tell if he approved of what she was doing. She looked back at the man in the chair. His lids were lowered, but she saw moisture in the corners of his eyes.

“Would you like to hold him, Mr. Clawson?”

Ocie shook his head. “Naw.” His voice was husky. “I might drop him.”

Mr. Miller had sat down behind a long library table. Junior Miller got behind Ocie’s chair and moved him to the end and indicated a chair in between for Jake. Before he sat down, Jake looked to see where Mary Lee would be. Her chair was away from the table but where he could see her.

Mr. Miller took a heavy brown envelope from his briefcase and placed it on the table.

“Ocie, I’m sure that you know that your papa and I were friends long before you were born. I grieved with him when your mama died and through the lonely years that followed. He gave a lot of thought to making out his wills. Yes, he made out two wills. After Temple died you saw the first one. He left the ranch and all his worldly possessions to you.”

The old man’s brown-spotted hands opened the envelope on the table and spilled out the contents.

“There was a second will, however, that I was not to make known or probate until after your death, or if you became so incapacitated that you were unable to manage the affairs of the ranch.”

“Goddammit! Just ’cause I can’t walk don’t mean my brains ain’t workin’.”

“I know that and so does everyone else. But, Ocie, you must admit that you are no longer able to be out and about to see to the workings of this ranch.”

“I’ll hire a manager.”

No doubt like your last lying foreman.
Jake’s face was expressionless in spite of his thoughts.

Mr. Miller continued. “Temple left a letter for you, Ocie, and one for Jake. But first I want to read to you a portion of the second will, which I will probate according to Temple’s wishes.

“By leaving two wills with my friend, William Miller, I have attempted to be fair to both of my sons. In the first will I left all of my worldly goods to my elder son, Ocie Lamar Clawson. He has been a good son and has worked hard to build and maintain the Circle C. Ranch.
”

“Pa never had another son.”

Mr. Miller ignored Ocie’s outburst and continued to read:

“However, when Ocie dies, or if the time comes that he becomes incapacitated, for any reason, and in a way that will hinder his day-to-day operation of the ranch, I leave my entire holdings and all they entail to my other son, Jacob Ramero Clawson —”

“What!” Jake jumped to his feet. “I don’t believe this!”

“Godalmighty!” Ocie exclaimed. “I wondered at the time, but —”

Mr. Miller read on:
“. . . with the provision that he come and live in the house where he was conceived and that his brother, Ocie, and any family that he may have, continue to live on at the ranch where he was born and spent his childhood.”

“My mother never married him!” Jake blurted.

“Yes, she did, Jake. The marriage certificate is with the letter Temple left you.”

“Why didn’t they tell me?”

“I don’t know. It may be in the letter. I do know that Temple fell in love with a girl thirty years his junior and she with him. They feared ridicule and chose to keep their love for each other to themselves. Temple thought Ocie would resent his marrying a young girl and think he was bringing her in to take his mother’s place. And besides, Juanita wouldn’t come near the ranch house because of Edith, Ocie’s wife. She wanted only to live in the small house Temple had provided for her and their son.

“There’s one other thing. Ocie, I think both you and Jake know how important it was to Temple that the ownership of the Circle C stay in the Clawson family. The will states, however, that should the two of you be unable to live and work together here on the Circle C, the ranch is to be sold. Each of you will receive one dollar, and the rest of the money will go to the state of New Mexico.”

Jake stood. “That settles that. Come on, honey. Let’s go. I wasn’t wanted here when I was a kid. I don’t want to be here now.”

“Don’t be hasty, Jake. You owe it to your wife and your son to think this over carefully. You and Ocie are brothers. Each of you would benefit from the other’s experiences. Temple loved both of you. Take his letter. Let me know within the next day or two what you want to do.”

“Hell,” Ocie said. “What choice do I have? I either work with the jailbird or get thrown out of my home.”

“Goes against the grain, does it, to be related to a jailbird?” Jake taunted. “Well, it doesn’t sit well with me to be related to a first-class asshole like you.”

“I had three men swear on the Bible that you stole my cattle!” Ocie shouted.

“I don’t care if a hundred men swore on a hundred Bibles. They lied.” Jake’s voice rang out loud and clear. “I want my name cleared for the sake of my wife and my son. That is more important to me than this whole damn ranch and everything in it.”

“Lon is dead, but I know where the other two are,” Ocie admitted grudgingly.

“I’ll talk to Pleggenkuhle,” Junior said. “If we can get the other two men to retract their testimony, we can ask the judge to wipe the conviction from Jake’s record.”

Mr. Miller got painfully to his feet. “Do a favor for an old man who loved your father like a brother. The two of you spend thirty minutes alone together before Jake leaves. Mary Lee and I will wait in the other room. I want to get acquainted with Temple’s grandson.”

“I hear the truck. Deke is coming in.” Mary Lee sighed contentedly in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Wrapped in his arms, she felt the thump of his powerful heart against hers.

“He’s as happy as a kid with a new slingshot and a pocketful of rocks.” Jake reached for her leg and pulled her thigh up over his. “
Amante,
I’m torn up inside. I grew up thinking my father was the cowboy my mother was married to for only a few days before he was killed. Then I’m told that I’m Temple Clawson’s son and that he and my mother married.”

“You’re still the Jake Ramero I fell in love with and married. Nothing will change that.” Her fingertips turned his face to hers so she could kiss his lips.

“Did you read the inscription inside your ring?”

“I haven’t taken it off.”

“It says,
‘Juanita, mi querida.
T. C. 1910.’ That was the year I was born.”

“I wish he had told you that he was your father.”

“I’ve been thinking about the many times he came to our house bringing meat and groceries. He ate with us a lot of the time and played with me afterward. I don’t remember if he spent the night. My mother was always happy when he was there.”

Mary Lee patted his cheeks with her fingertips, encouraging him to talk.

“He always took up for me when Bobby tried to get me in trouble. And the time I was left out on the range without my boots and walked here to the court, he was very angry and wanted to know who left me there. I was afraid to tell him it was Lon, because Lon had said if I told, some night our house would burn with me and Mama in it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I’d slid off my pony and he had run off.” He pulled her over on top of him, spread her thighs on each side of his and pressed her breasts to his chest. His lips nuzzled the side of her face as he ran his hands up and down her back and over her buttocks. “You feel so good. Maybe Lon did me a favor. I met my angel that day.”

“I don’t understand why Temple didn’t acknowledge you as his son, but I was not walking in his shoes at the time. I don’t know why my daddy put up with my mother for all those years. We just have to accept things as they are, my love, and go on.”

“I’m kind of ashamed of thinking only of myself,
querida.
I resent it that I grew up feeling an outcast when I had as much right to be on the Circle C as Ocie and Bobby. But now I know that I had a father who cared for me, I have a wife and baby and Eli who love me. Ocie has lost his legs, his son, his grandson and now his ranch. I can’t walk away and leave the man, force him to move out of his home, even if I don’t like him very much.”

“Then you’ve decided?”

“I told him that I didn’t know anything about running a big spread. And he said that if I wouldn’t be so bullheaded he would tell me how. I told him I would raise quarter horses. He said he didn’t care how many damn horses I had as long as there was the usual quota of beef cattle on the Circle C.” Jake chuckled, his breath warm against her face. “I imagine we’ll have some good battles.”

“Who is taking care of things now?”

“He said Ben, the man who shot Lon, and a couple other old-timers, were doing the best they could to hold things together. Some of Lon’s friends have left. I imagine they took a few head of cattle with them.”

“What about Mr. Quitman’s horses?”

“I’ll take them to the Circle C. I’m not letting that man down. He’s been my friend through thick and thin. But what’s more important . . . are you willing to leave the motor court, take Scotty and Eli and live out at the ranch?”

“Scotty, Eli and I go where you go . . . and willingly. You’re our mainstay, our harbor in a storm, my husband, the boys’ father. We love you and will abide by your decision.”

She moved up, then down, allowing him to enter her slowly, reverently. His great body trembled with the effort it took to hold back. He penetrated deeper and deeper, making no sharp or hard thrusts. Only slow, sensuous motion, deliberate and controlled. When he was embedded to the hilt, the long release of his breath warmed her mouth.

“Look at me,
querida,
” he whispered hoarsely. “I’ll love you until the day I die.”

“You are my love. Mine forever.” They spoke mouth to mouth, sharing breaths and quick, hard kisses.

Then the movement of her hips drove him over the edge into blazing rapture. The joyous fulfillment raced through them, alive, pulsating, taking their breath. When they reached earth again, he gazed at her with intense delight, glorying in the loveliness of her face. Again and again he pressed gentle, sweet kisses upon her soft mouth. She wiggled and released a soft, purring sigh as she spread her fingers through his chest hair and tugged.

“That was for not telling me you loved me when you were ten years old.”

Their laughter was low and wonderfully happy.

Epilogue

Thanksgiving, 1940
Circle C Ranch