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Peach Blossom Rancher

By Ada Brownell

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CHAPTER ONE

March 1, 1909
“Come on, boy. Your hard life is over.”
The sleek stallion pulled back, snorted, grunted, yanked his head upward, and tried to whirl away. John Lincoln Parks held the reins tight. “Come on. The judge isn’t here. The whip’s in your past.”
Bringing the animal all the way from Colorado’s Eastern Slope after the judge’s death hadn’t been easy and tiredness hung from him. The judge, John’s uncle, murdered near Yucca Blossom, would never return to the horse ranch and acres of peach orchards he expected to inherit from John’s father.
“He look like he a good ’un to breed.” Sweat glistened on Abe’s crinkled chocolate brow. “But an animal abused like ’im usually disobedient or loses his spirit.”
John rubbed the stallion’s neck and then extended a sugar cube in his hand. “I don’t want to give up on him yet. Come on, boy. We’re friends. You should be tired and hungry after your train trip.”
A long red tongue licked the sugar cube into the toothy mouth.
Abe followed John to the horse barn. “I’ll get ’im some oats and fill the water trough. He a right pretty animal except fa the welts the judge left on ’im.”
“If I’d stayed with the judge, my back would look like his. But you know more about whippings than I do since you went to work on that plantation after Papa became ill and the owner couldn’t get it through his head you’re not a slave. I’m so sorry. Where’s Polly? I hope she’s made chicken and noodles and apple pie.”
“That woman so happy to have you back, boy. She grieved for Jenny too when she go. But when I came back and walk into this place, that made up for it. Took me too long. She know you coming and is stirring up chicken and dumplin’s. Ya like peach cobbler and ice cream? Soon as I’m through here, I need to start turning the freezer.”
John tugged the reins gently and guided the stallion into a sturdy stall with an open window out the other side. The horse’s head shot up as he kicked, breaking a board in the stall wall.
“Steady there.” John touched the animal whose nostrils flared as he snorted. “Don’t break a leg.”
He extended another sugar lump. The toothy mouth opened, and the treat disappeared.
“Let him settle down before you feed him,” Abe advised as he secured the stall gate. “He probably remembers this barn.”
The animal flicked his head, tossing a glorious mane and testing the ground with his hooves. John smiled. “We’ll need to make new memories. After tonight, we set him free in the pasture for a week or so. He’ll probably get acquainted with the mares.”
“Will do, seh.”
“Don’t call me sir,” John said. “We’re friends and family.”
“Tha’s right. Thank you, s … John.”
John turned to go to the house. A strange, deep noise trickled from the barn loft. John blinked and listened, lifting his chin.
“Is that a human groan?” Head cocked, he stepped to the ladder.
The moan sounded again, and then a feminine sob assaulted his ears.
When John’s eyes were just above the loft floor, he saw a stranger sat nearby, her arms grasped around her knees crinkling a faded dress. Messy red hair circled her head. Tears sprinkled freckled cheeks. Eyes opened almost as wide as the stallion’s had been. With another groan, she flopped over on a pile of hay, hugging her protruding stomach.
“Abe!” he yelled. “There’s a young lady up here, and I think she’s having a baby.”
Long wet lashes fringed her tightly shut eyes as she braced for another pain. “Please let me stay here until it comes.” She groaned again.
John’s mouth dropped open. He blew out his breath.
She settled, the pain apparently letting up for a minute. Rubbing her belly, she looked hard at him. “Please—”
Another pain contorted her features.
John dropped his feet a rung lower on the ladder. “You need help. I’ll get Polly.”
This had been a stressful day. First, the hard time controlling the stallion and now a pregnant woman about to give birth? He sprinted to the house and banged open the kitchen door.
Polly stood by the sink cutting stewed chicken into small pieces.
“We need you in the barn.” John clutched the cold doorknob. “A girl out there’s about to have a baby.”
“What?” Polly frowned.
He repeated what he said. “She might let you assist.”
“Lawd know the barn be good enough for a calf or a colt, but not a human young’un.” She moved the pot on the stove to the side and then wiped her hands on a white dishtowel. “Take me to her.” She headed outside.
He followed her run-over, nearly worn-out shoes. “You’re not able to go up in the loft. Talk to her through the slats.”
“She’s comin’ ta the house, boy.” Polly’s dark eyes snapped as she turned to him.
Screams filled the barnyard before Polly reached the door.
The young lady yelled, “Oh, God, have mercy on me. Wash away my sins. Help me forgive the man who took advantage of me! Let the child live.”
The deep sob and another scream put pain in John’s bones. He wanted to plug his ears, but Polly gave him a look that would wilt a cactus. A prayer bubbled out of his soul in silence, God, help this girl in her suffering. Who on earth is she? Where did she come from?
The screams stopped, but muffled noises continued.
“Miss?” John called. He looked up toward the loft. “Polly, our cook, has delivered babies, and she’s here to help.”
“Yes,” Polly said. “You come down where we is, and we’ll help you into the house.”
“I’ll be fine here,” a soft voice answered.
“You’re not having a baby up there.” Polly’s voice echoed against the rafters. “I’m no young’un, and if you can’t get down here, I’m goin’ up.”
John stepped on the ladder. “I’ll help you. We’ll go between pains.”
“Don’t you touch me!” the redhead yelled, grabbing her belly again.
John shook his head, raised his eyebrows, and rubbed his forehead. The woman’s prayer went through his mind again: Forgive the man who took advantage of me.
“Will you let Polly’s husband help you down?”
“Is he old?”
“You could say so,” Abe answered behind John. “I’ll be glad to help.”
Helping the girl down from the barn loft and into the house strained John’s patience as much as his muscles. Abe’s strong arms assisted John.
Polly hurried with the energy of a much younger woman, opening drawers, grabbing towels and sheets. Then she turned to go to the back bedroom where the stranger lay.
Polly planted her hands on her ample hips. “Now you men git out of here. Somebody needs to stir the pot on the stove, and one of you go to the porch and turn the ice cream freezer.”
John picked the porch. The further he got away from the screams, the better. “Where’d that redhead come from, Abe?”
“No ideer. Never see’d her as I know.”
“You think she could be the person who stole things from the house?”
Abe didn’t answer.
John dropped into the old blue chair beside the freezer, checked the ice, sprinkled on rock salt and turned the handle.
A horse and carriage clattered up beside where he worked. “Get your new stallion home okay, John?” Edwina Jorgenson greeted. She jumped from the carriage and trotted to the porch, her slim figure moving with poetry. “I can’t wait to put him with my black mare. She’ll probably be ready in two or three weeks.”
“Hello to you, too, Ed,” John said, frowning. Now wasn’t a good time to talk to this woman. “That horse is pretty wild yet. Been abused too much. We—”
A scream came from the house. A frown pinched Edwina’s flawless, suntanned face as she bounded up the porch steps and opened the screen door. “What’s happening to Polly? We’d better go see.”
He dropped the freezer handle and grasped Ed’s arm. “A lady in there is having a baby.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. We found her in the barn.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“I think Polly has it under control.”
Ed twisted away from his hold, grabbed the doorknob and darted into the house before he could protest.
Well, let her go in and listen to her scream. He wouldn’t go inside again with all that racket. But the screams soon stopped, and a baby’s cry took their place. Even though his stomach rumbled, he still wasn’t going in.
The freezer handle became difficult to turn, and with each additional crank, he confirmed the delicious frozen dessert was ready. He piled gunnysacks on top of the freezer to keep the ice cream from melting. Then he stepped down to go to the barn.
Edwina burst out of the house smiling from ear to ear. “It’s a boy! A cute little fellow, and his mama is doing okay. Polly did a great job delivering him.”
John motioned, “Let’s go out by the fence to talk.”
She mashed her cowboy hat on her head, and a silly grin pulled at Edwina’s face. John guessed she wanted him to ask her to the church picnic, but when they walked to the barnyard, he said, “Do you know that girl and where she came from?”
“Oh, haven’t you seen her around? She worked as a maid for the Davenports. I heard she had an affair with Wellington Davenport, and Mrs. Davenport threw her out. Her name is Roberta Bellea Peabody.”
She pointed an index finger at John. “You should remember her. She was in our class at school. I heard she’s going by Bellea instead of Roberta now.”
The gal moved a little closer to John and looked up in his face.
“She grew up rich, but her parents died of pneumonia or flu—I don’t remember which. Seems the person who handled the Peabodys’ financial affairs got away with all the property and money since she was too young to inherit.” She shook her head, “I sure wouldn’t have let them by with that. I’d have created a ruckus they’d never forget.”
The young lady rancher flipped her blonde braid over her shoulder. “But I wouldn’t keep her around here. She has a temper to match her red hair. Yet, after her parents died, she lost her spunk. Claims Wellington compromised her, but nobody believed it.”
John took his knife out of his pocket and began grooming his fingernails. “She was doing a lot of praying when we found her, and she wanted me and Abe to leave her alone. Soon as I understood a baby was on the way, I went for Polly.”
Edwina wrinkled her little turned-up nose. “What’s that terrible odor?”
John stepped to the fence. “Might be coming from my prize pigs. See the big one over there I call Gertie?”
Gertie trotted close and rubbed her prickly mud-covered back on the hog wire.
“I expect to make big money from pork while I rebuild the horse herd and work in the peach orchards. You ought to try a few pigs. You get a quicker turnover with your money than with horses. Your papa used to raise them. Besides, it’s always nice to have smoked ham and bacon available.”
Edwina leaned over the fence. The pigs grappled with each other over the slop, snorting and grunting. “I might get some. The little ones are cute. Since my papa is in the wheelchair, I’m running everything. How is the pork market doing?”
“It sounded great to me. It …”
Gertie stuck her snout through the fence and sucked Edwina’s lacy pink dress. Edwina jerked the skirt out of the slimy jaws and then, stringy pig saliva slid down her pretty legs.
“Eeeeewwww!” she squealed, holding her dress out away from her. “I didn’t know pigs would eat clothing.”
Laughter almost escaped John’s lips. He pressed his fist over his mouth until his insides quit quaking in case she was mad enough to use the gun strapped on her slim middle. “Gertie probably smelled the cornstarch you used to starch your dress. I’d guess for her it was quite tasty. I’ll get you a towel.”
“Don’t bother.” She grabbed a big blue handkerchief from the buggy, wiped at her legs and jumped in the driver’s seat. “You probably wanted me to stand over by the fence so that would happen. You are incorrigible, John Parks. Get someone else to go to the church picnic with you!”
As the dust rose from her departure, she almost ran into the mailman.
John meandered to the mailbox. Strange. He hadn’t asked her to the picnic. He never intended to.
 

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