Pete (The Cowboys) Read Online Free Page B

time, as if she’d expected him to know everything. “I don’t mean what was in your letters,” he said quickly. “There must be lots of bits and pieces you didn’t tell me. Seeing that man about to haul you off gave me quite a turn.”
    “My uncle never liked me. He didn’t want Papa to marry Mama. After Papa was killed, he was mean to us. After Mama died, he threatened to sell me.”
    “Looks like he did sell you to that burned-up-looking scrap of a man. Wouldn’t be surprised if he gives his horse a bad fright every morning.”
    Anne giggled. “He is old and little, but he owns a big ranch. Eddie says he’s very rich.”
    “Only in cows and sagebrush. How long has your uncle been trying to marry you off? I know you wrote and told me, but my memory’s not too good. I forget all kinds of things.”
    “Is that why you weren’t doing so well in the hardware business?”
    “What? Oh, yeah, something like that.” He was going to have to start paying close attention to what he said. Belser was just waiting for him to make a mistake.
    “Why didn’t Belser stop him?”
    “He doesn’t like me. He said I’d have to leave anyway when he took over.”
    “That’s just the kind of cowardly double-cross he’d pull,” Pete said.
    “I’ve lived here ever since my parents died. Uncle Carl said I’d always be safe. I was until he died. I told my uncle you’d married me, that you were coming soon and you’d have the sheriff put him in jail if he so much as laid a finger on me. But when you didn’t come and didn’t come, he decided I was lying. Why are you so late? I was afraid you’d decided you didn’t want to marry me after all.”
    “What? And give up a ranch for such a paltry reason as that?”
    Anne’s face registered shock.
    “I mean I’d have given up the ranch before I’d have done anything like that. A promise is a promise. I would have been here on time if I hadn’t been shot.”
    Her quick smile was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I should have known something terrible happened. You always were very nice to me.”
    Pete got the feeling he was sinking deeper and deeper into a pool of quicksand of unknown depth. It seemed every time he opened his mouth, he landed on unsound ground. He’d done the chivalrous thing so he could find his money. But being a husband was getting complicated already, and he hadn’t been married for thirty minutes. He didn’t know how people stood it for years at a time. If he didn’t get things straightened out soon, he would put his head in a noose.
    “I was terribly sorry to hear your brother had been killed,” Anne said.
    “Huh?” Pete didn’t know anything about a brother. How much more family could Peter have?
    “I said I was sorry to hear Gary died in that blizzard,” Anne said. “I know you two hadn’t seen each other for years, but it must have been very painful.”
    “Yeah, sure.” Hell, he didn’t even know his brother’s name. He wondered about the whereabouts of his father and mother. Other brothers and sisters. He could have a biblical tribe on his heels right now. Why hadn’t Peter written all of that stuff in his Bible?
    “I never liked the way Uncle Carl preferred him to you. He was going to leave the ranch to Gary, not leave you a thing. I know Gary liked the ranch, but he was always quarreling with Uncle Carl. If he hadn’t lost his temper so often, he wouldn’t have run away, and he wouldn’t have died. I’m sorry about Gary, I truly am, but I’m glad you got the ranch.”
    “Why was Uncle Carl going to do that?” Pete asked before he had time to think. “I mean, I don’t think anybody ever told me. Not exactly.”
    “I don’t suppose you remember it. Or want to. I remember every word he said. ‘You’re a soft, weaselly, fella,’ he told you that day. “You don’t like work, you’re afraid of cows, and you haven’t got the sense God gave a woman. I’d be a fool to leave you so much as a foot of