Chapter Twenty-Four
Aidan jabbed the pitchfork into the straw, lifting the soiled clumps out and tossing them into the wheelbarrow parked outside of the stall.
He repeated the motion again and again. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that he enjoyed mucking out the stable, but he did enjoy the quiet, the solitude, and the mindless simplicity of the task.
Ever since he’d had to let the ranch hands go, he’d had to get real familiar with a lot of jobs that he’d put behind him once the ranch started turning a profit.
His father had trained horses for other men his whole life and had never once let the boys shirk a chore, less out of hardness than because he meant them to know the whole of the work.
They needed to get acquainted with the running of things, and so had put a lot of the manual labor behind them.
Aidan used the pitchfork to build up the remaining clean straw around the edges of the stall so that the horse wouldn’t get stuck if it lay down or decided to have a roll.
Sort of a moot point now, he grumbled inwardly. The price of straw was only going up as the town grew, and with how tight money was on the ranch, the horses were largely sleeping outside at night. If anyone asked, Aidan had a ready explanation: it helped toughen them and keep their constitution up.
One stall clean, he propped his pitchfork in the wheelbarrow and moved to the next stall. His mind wandered, as it always did at such work. It used to be that his thoughts turned to the future, to the grand plans he would enact. Those had become bitter dreams now, out of reach.
No, these days his thoughts had a truly annoying tendency to wander toward Alexandra. It could have been that she was still the newest thing around the ranch. He liked to tell himself that, but it always seemed like a half-truth.
The crux of it seemed to be that she was constantly surprising him.
From the moment she’d arrived, he’d assumed from her bookish habits and soft appearance that she would be a timid, impressionable woman.
Every time that she stood up to him, her anger and irritation stoked, it was an unexpected delight.
He wasn’t needling her on purpose; he just enjoyed her spirit. He could see her now, her eyes blazing, nostrils flaring, as magnificent as a wild horse out on the plains. It wasn’t clear where it came from, but she clearly had a will of iron as strong as his own.
She’d need one, dealing with this lot, he thought wryly.
A frown worked its way onto his face. What he hadn’t counted on was that she would take matters into her own hands.
When trouble showed up at their doorstep, she demanded answers that he couldn’t provide, so she’d gone off in search of them on her own.
What was he supposed to say to her? The whole business with Kevin Black—the man’s name made his lip curl even just from thinking it—was so unseemly.
The proverbial wolf was at the door, and Alexandra had faced him on her own. She had opened the front door to that man with three children behind her in the kitchen. Aidan put the thought down before it could finish itself.
Aidan stabbed his pitchfork into the straw harder than he needed to. He lifted the wet straw and flung it hard into the wheelbarrow.
“Hey, whoa there!” Antony said from outside the stall. He put his hands up just around the corner. “Hold your fire.”
“Oh,” Aidan said, pulled from his musing. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”
Antony peered into the stall. “You want a hand? It’ll go twice as fast with the two of us.” He tipped his head back toward the house. “Young ones are up at the house. Girl’s stopped crying, more or less.”
“I suppose,” Aidan said without enthusiasm.
Antony took this in stride, fetching a pitchfork from the rack at the end of the stable aisle. He joined Aidan in the stall, and the two men worked together in silence, the only sounds the rustle of the straw and the dull thud as they forked it into the wheelbarrow.
“Hot today,” Antony remarked.
“Mm,” Aidan said, only half-listening.
“My shoulder says we’re apt to get some rain soon, though,” Antony continued. “Maybe tonight or tomorrow.”
“Mm.”
“That’ll be a welcome change,” Antony said, maneuvering around Aidan. “Might cool things down a little.”
“Hm.”
“And then I thought I might run into town, see if the saloon has a new opening for a dancing girl. I think I have the legs for it,” Antony continued conversationally.
“Sounds good,” Aidan said absently, shifting the straw to look for any manure he missed. He looked up suddenly, registering what Antony said. “What?”
“Uh huh,” Antony said, a bemused look on his face. “Something on your mind there, hoss?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Aidan said, turning back to the task at hand. He vigorously lifted two forkfuls of straw in quick succession.
“Of course you don’t,” Antony said in the manner of a parent soothing an angry child. “It definitely doesn’t have something to do with that fiery bit of calico up at the house.”
Aidan glared, which made Antony grin, his mustache lifting.
“Look, why don’t you just tell me what’s bothering you?” Antony suggested. “It might make you feel better.”
Aidan turned and stabbed his fork into the straw again, pretending to be greatly interested in it. Antony, meanwhile, leaned on his own pitchfork, looking like a man who had all the time in the world.
Relenting, Aidan sighed. “It’s not particularly peaceful up at the big house just now,” Aidan admitted. “Alexandra found out some information that… well, I’d hoped wouldn’t ever be a problem that she’d have to deal with.”
Antony’s mustache twitched as he considered this. “Have you ever given any thought to the idea that she might be one to share your burdens with?”
“How do you mean?” Aidan asked.
“Well,” Antony drawled slowly, pushing his hat back on his head, “a woman like that, she’s used to being busy, and being useful. I imagine she’s the sort that needs something to really stimulate her mind to be happy. I think she’d enjoy helping you with your problems.”
“That’s not why I brought her out here,” Aidan objected. He put his pitchfork into the wheelbarrow and drove both over to a stall across the aisle.
“No? I thought she was here to do nothing but solve problems,” Antony commented, strolling after Aidan.
“Not these problems,” Aidan said firmly. “Besides, that’s not even really—that’s just one thing,” he said, taking the pitchfork up again and aggressively shoveling straw.
“No?” Antony said. He stood outside the stall, leaning on his pitchfork again.
“She doesn’t seem to like me very much,” Aidan said, his voice unexpectedly quiet.
Silence followed, which he filled by hurriedly shoveling in more straw.
“I guess I’d hoped… It’s been two months now,” he said, pausing again.
“I thought she might have developed some sort of… I don’t know, a tolerance for me, at least.”
“Mm,” Antony hummed. “Am I to take this to mean that you’ve developed an affection for her?”
“That’s not the point,” Aidan said quickly, turning his back under the guise of mucking so that Antony wouldn’t see him blush.
“Right,” Antony said dryly.
“Look, are you going to help me or not?” Aidan said, whirling back around. It was unclear whether he meant his domestic problems or mucking out the stalls.
Antony joined Aidan in the stall, and they began to shovel together. It was quiet for a few moments, the only sounds their pitchforks and the occasional stamp and snort from the horses they had indoors.
“I think you could agree that I’ve known you for a long time now,” Antony began. “Since you were just a little slip of a boy.”
“That’s true,” Aidan said, eyeing Antony warily.
“I know what you’re really like,” Antony continued. “Especially before your brother was taken. I know when you’re joshing and having fun, even when you’re trying to play it straight.”
“What’s your point?” Aidan asked, his patience wearing thin.
“Just this,” Antony said, shifting his pitchfork into one hand and putting his work-gloved hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “She doesn’t know you, not yet. All she’s got to go on is the prickly cuss you’ve become. She doesn’t know when you’re playing with her.”
Aidan inhaled, ready to object to Antony’s point, but a dour look stopped him. He let the breath go. “Be that as it may, she doesn’t have to rise to the occasion of arguing so much.”
Antony threw his head back and laughed, slapping Aidan on the back so hard as to sting. Aidan stumbled forward, catching himself on his pitchfork.
“Aidan, son,” Antony said, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, “you were just about the fightingest little whippersnapper that ever drew breath. How many times did Pastor march you home for fighting in Sunday school?”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Aidan mumbled, unconsciously rubbing at his ear. He could still feel the pastor’s grip on it.
“You learned to use your wits to get out of fights,” Antony continued. “When all the fun went out of your life, you only had anger left.”
Aidan stared at Antony. “When did you become such a philosopher?”
“March 21st, 1862,” he replied snappily, not missing a beat.
“It’s not complicated. Fellas like to pretend that women are some strange species of animal outside of our scope of understanding, but that’s just foolishness.
Treat her with kindness, and above all, honesty.
” When Mary and I fought, we’d always sit down and try to work it out.
It was a problem we both needed to solve, not a reason to attack each other. ”
Aidan continued to stare at Antony, partly because it was the longest speech he’d ever heard the man make. The other reason was that he spoke so rarely about his late wife.
“I forgot that you were married,” Aidan admitted.
Antony offered him a smile with his mouth, while his eyes grew wistful. “Mary was a good girl. She married me before the war, and then it separated us—influenza moved about the country faster than the army did.”