Short Straw Bride. Dallas Schulze

and then did the same for Luke. “We’ve put a lot of work into this place. If something happens to us, the ranch’ll be sold to some stranger. Neither of us wants to see that.”

      Luke could have pointed out that, under those circumstances, they wouldn’t actually see the ranch fall into someone else’s hands, but he didn’t. Daniel’s logic might be slightly skewed but there was a basic truth in what he was saying.

      “A son. That’s what we gotta have, Luke. One of us has to have a son to take over when we’re gone.”

      “It isn’t like either one of us has a foot in the grave,” Luke said with some annoyance. At thirty, he didn’t consider himself yet on a nodding acquaintance with eternity. “We’ve got plenty of time to think about wives and sons and who’s going to take over when we’re gone.”

      “Maybe.” Daniel’s expression was solemn. “But Heck Sloane was younger than both of us and Bill Parley wasn’t even thirty-five. Look at them.”

      In point of fact, no one could actually look at either man. They’d both met their demise in the past six months.

      “Heck was a fool to take on that shootist. Him and those damned pearl-handled Colts of his were just looking for an excuse to die young.”

      “Bill didn’t have pearl-handled Colts,” Daniel noted gloomily. He was well into his third glass of whiskey and clearly feeling the fell hand of fate on his shoulder.

      “No, but he had that hammerhead roan. Meanest horse this side of Julesburg. It’s a wonder he didn’t throw Bill into a wall years ago.”

      “It could have happened to either one of us,” Daniel said, reaching for the whiskey bottle.

      “Not unless one of us is stupid enough to get on a horse that’s half rattler and the other half just plain mean,” Luke said. But the words lacked conviction.

      The fact was that it didn’t take a mean horse or overestimating your talent with a gun to get a man killed, and they both knew it. Even a good horse could step in a prairie dog hole or get spooked by a rattlesnake. A man left alone on the prairie, without a horse and far from home, stood a fair chance of dying of thirst or exposure. Hell, it didn’t even take anything dramatic to end a life. Their own father, as tough a man as Luke had ever known, had torn open his hand on a nail and died of blood poisoning a week later.

      Luke frowned at the scarred surface of the kitchen table. He reached for the makings and rolled himself a cigarette, scraping a match across the tabletop. He frowned at the mark it left behind. If their mother were alive she’d have skinned him alive for leaving a mark on her clean table and then she’d have done it again for daring to smoke in her kitchen. But she’d been dead for three years now and the once-immaculate room bore evidence of its neglect since then.

      The thin lamplight revealed that neglect with merciless clarity. The big iron stove was covered with a thick layer of baked-on grease, bits of food and soot. The muslin curtains that had once hung in crisp white panels in front of the windows were gray with dirt. Not that it mattered much, since the window behind them hadn’t been washed in three years. The wooden floor his mother had been so proud of, that had been brought in from Denver, was obscured by the same layer of filth that covered everything else.

      Luke stirred uneasily and reached out to rub his thumb over the black streak the match had left. Erasing it left a slightly cleaner spot on the dirty tabletop. He could almost see his mother’s accusing eyes, feel her disapproval. Though the whole house would just about have fit into the ballroom of her father’s home in Virginia, Lucinda McLain had been proud of this house, proud of the work her husband and sons had put into building it for her.

      The McLains might have lost almost every material possession in the War Between the States but they hadn’t lost the most important things—their pride and determination. At the war’s end they’d sold what they could, abandoned what couldn’t be sold or brought with them and moved west, chasing the dream of a new life, just as it seemed half the country was doing.

      They’d lived in a soddy at first, literally building their home from the land around them.

      He and Daniel had broken wild horses to sell to the army and used the money to buy cattle. Those first years had been hard. All four of them had worked from sunrise to sunset—can see to can’t see.

      Before the war Lucinda McLain had never had to dirty her hands on anything outside the home, and even there, she’d had servants to help her. But she’d learned to milk a cow and use a hammer. Her hands had grown callused and her pale skin had burned in the hot sun but she’d never forgotten that she was a lady and she’d never let her sons forget that they were gentlemen. They might have been eating day-old bread and beans but there was always a linen tablecloth, even if the table was a wooden crate. And no matter how many hours she’d put in working outside, she’d still made sure her husband and sons had clean clothes, even if they were mended.

      Luke frowned and picked at a three-corner tear just above the knee of his jeans. When had they last been washed? he wondered uneasily.

      “Thinking about Mother?” Daniel asked, reading his older brother’s mind.

      “Place doesn’t look the way it did when she was alive,” Luke said.

      Daniel followed his gaze around the kitchen, taking in the dirt that covered every exposed surface. The rest of the house was in slightly better shape, but only because they didn’t spend much time in any of the other rooms.

      “She’d box both our ears,” Daniel admitted, looking uneasily over his shoulder as if expecting to see his mother’s shade bearing down on them.

      “We could hire a housekeeper,” Luke suggested.

      “We tried that. Twice. The first one drank every drop of liquor in the house and damn near burned the place down. The second was more interested in finding a husband than in cooking a meal.”

      “As I recall, you were the husband she had in mind. She might have caught you, too, if you’d been a mite slower.” Luke grinned at the memory of his brother’s panicked reaction to the housekeeper’s blatant pursuit.

      “You didn’t think it was so funny when she turned her sights on you,” Daniel observed. “Besides, a housekeeper isn’t going to solve the problem of having a son to leave the ranch to.”

      “I wish you’d stop talking like we both had one foot in the grave,” Luke said irritably.

      “We aren’t getting any younger, and having a son isn’t like ordering a new saddle. It can take a little time.”

      “Nine months, last I’d heard.” Luke ground the end of his cigarette out in a plate left over from breakfast. Or was it supper the night before?

      “First you’ve got to find a wife. And then you’ve got to go about the business of making babies. It took Dick Billings and his wife almost five years to have their first.”

      “If I had a wife as pretty as Almira Billings, I don’t think I’d mind five years of trying,” Luke said with a grin. “Besides, all that practice must have paid off, since they’re working on their third in six years.”

      “All we need to do is find you a pretty girl, then,” Daniel said cheerfully.

      Luke choked on a mouthful of whiskey. During the ensuing fit of coughing, his brother pounded him on the back with helpful force, nearly dislocating a shoulder in the process.

      “Find me a pretty girl?” Luke wheezed when he regained enough breath for speech. “Since when am I in the market for a wife?”

      “I thought you agreed that we need a wife.” Daniel’s dark eyes widened in surprise.

      “If we need a wife, why am I the one getting one?”

      “You’re the oldest. It’s only fitting that you get to marry first.”

      “Get to marry first?” Luke