Page 3 of Heart of Stone

“I’d appreciate some water, if ain’t an imposition.” Stone settled down gingerly on the sofa. He was a little surprised at how casually Mr. Reynolds referred to his aunt, but then again, they’d probably been close if she’d been so sick that she’d had to turn her duties over to her foreman.

“Sure thing, Mr. Harrison.” Luke smiled at him again, and Stone thought perhaps Luke’s gaze lingered a little longer than it ought to before he sauntered out of the room. He returned a few minutes later with a tall glass of water, so cold that Stone could see condensation beading on the sides. “Straight from the well out back,” Luke explained as he handed over the glass. “This close to the mountains, the water underground is right cold all year round.”

“Much obliged,” Stone replied, taking the glass and sipping at the water gratefully, appreciating its coolness, as well as the distraction it gave him. He wasn’t a talkative man by nature, and he was feeling as out of place as a turkey in a henhouse. Part of him wondered if it was too late to just forget the whole thing and head back to Yellow Knife, but he knew he’d never run out on anything in his life, so he was just going to have to tighten his belt and deal with it.

Lowering the glass, he turned to Mr. Reynolds. “So how about you have a seat and tell me what I’ve gotten myself into?”

Luke claimed one of the chairs, settling in with more apparent ease than Stone felt, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankle. “What you’ve got, Mr. Harrison, is a right large chunk of land that’s doin’ well for itself. If you’ve got half the sense your aunt had in runnin’ this place, you’ll be set for life.”

Stone thought about that for a minute and nodded. “Well, I’m plannin’ to give it a try.” The thought of his father crossed his mind again, making him scowl. “And call me Stone. Don’t know how much sense my aunt had, but I reckon it must have been a fair bit to have kept this place so nice. Hope I’ve got enough not to mess that up.”

“You can call me Luke, and I hope you don’t mess it up, too.” There was a mischievous twinkle in Luke’s eyes that suggested he was teasing. “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you what you need to know.”

“All right, Luke.” The teasing took Stone by surprise and he wasn’t certain how to respond. No one had ever really teased him but his mother, and that had been a long time ago. “Why don’t you start by tellin’ me who all is around the ranch?” He grimaced. “I suppose I’m goin’ to have to talk to a lot of people.”

“Or you could make me talk to them.” Luke said easily. “Yeah, you need to learn who’s who if you’re goin’ to be in charge, but if you want to delegate somethin’ to me, well, that’s what a foreman is for.”

Stone frowned. He didn’t know Luke at all, so he couldn’t be sure if he could take the offer at face value or not. Maybe his aunt had let Luke do what he wanted around the place, and now Luke didn’t want a new owner coming in and having ideas of his own. Whatever the reason, Stone felt his hackles rising.

“I don’t have nothin’ else to do but learn how to do this job.” Stone lifted his chin and looked Luke squarely in the eye. “I don’t know what Mrs. Rivers may have told you about my pa, but she sure didn’t know me, and I ain’t nothin’ like he was.”

Luke raised both hands in an attitude of surrender. “I ain’t got no ideas about you or your pa. Priss didn’t much like talkin’ about her brother, and she never said nothin’ about you. If you do right by this ranch and the people who work here, you and me won’t have any problems. I just don’t want to see all her hard work go to ruin, that’s all.”

Stone set his jaw stubbornly. Maybe his aunt hadn’t talked much about her no-account brother to Luke, but that didn’t mean that people didn’t know, since presumably Paul Harrison had grown up here the same as his sister. “I know all about hard work. And I’d rather give this ranch to someone else than wreck it. I treat other folks like I want to be treated, so if that’s doin’ right by them in your opinion, we should get along all right.”

“So we should,” Luke agreed, appearing unruffled by Stone’s prickliness. If anything, he seemed amused by their conversation. “I reckon it’s a bit late in the day for a tour, but I can start showin’ you around first thing in the mornin’. This is your place now, so you can have Priss’ old room if you want it.”

That gave Stone pause; he’d not really thought about the fact that he’d be living in the ranch house, not out in the bunk house. But the thought of staying in the room of a woman, one he’d never met to boot, didn’t set well with him, and he shifted uncomfortably. “Is there another room?” He lowered his gaze. “I sure don’t need nothin’ fancy or big.”

Luke nodded. “There’s a guest bedroom. We don’t get a lot of guests anyway, and we can turn Priss’ room into the guest bedroom if you rather, or there’s Sarah’s old room. She was the housekeeper. You can have either of those, if that suits you better.”

“The guest bedroom would be fine.” Stone looked at Luke with a frown. “There’s no housekeeper here now?” He gestured at the room, which was clean and didn’t seem to be dusty or cluttered. “Who takes care of the place, then? I sure don’t know nothin’ about cleanin’ up a place this big.”

“Well, I do look right pretty in a ruffled apron,” Luke drawled, and then he laughed at the look on Stone’s face. “Naw, after Sarah left, I hired a girl from town to come in and do the cookin’, cleanin’, and washin’, but she leaves when she’s done for the day.”

Apparently Luke was a bit of a joker, and Stone sighed quietly, telling himself he was just going to have to put up with it, since he needed Luke’s help. “Well if that suits you, it’s fine with me.” Something occurred to him, and he regarded Luke questioningly. “Does that mean you live in this house, too?”

“Indeed I do,” Luke affirmed. “I worked for Miss Priss a long time, and we got to be close. Almost like family, you might say. She stopped treatin’ me like just a foreman a while back, and then when she got sick, me being right here in the house made helpin’ Sarah take care of her a lot easier.”

“Makes sense.” Stone nodded. It was unusual for the foreman to stay in the main house, but then his aunt hadn’t had any family to take care of her, so Luke had stepped in, which was nice of him. “Well, it’s a big place, and I’ve been livin’ in bunkhouses for the last ten years, so if you want to stay here, it won’t bother me. Although….” he paused, knowing that his neck was probably turning red, but he needed to get it out in the open. “If you want to do any courtin’, I’d be obliged if you’d do it at the foreman’s house.”

Luke laughed, although Stone couldn’t see what was so funny. It was almost like Luke was amused by a joke only he knew about. “I ain’t of a mind to go courtin’.” He was still smiling, although Stone didn’t get the impression that Luke was making fun of him. “None of the girls round here interest me much.”

“All right.” Stone wondered what Luke meant, but he wasn’t going to ask, taking his words at face value instead. Apparently Luke was picky about his women, which was fine with Stone. He had no use for women whatsoever, at least not in the way that men usually did. Not that he wanted anyone to know that; information like that getting out could ruin a man’s life, and Stone had enough to deal with just being part Indian. He stood up, deciding he’d had enough small talk for one night. “Well, then, I suppose I ought to get my horse taken care of and then find somethin’ to eat before bed.”

Luke rose as well. “There’s some cold fried chicken and cornbread in the kitchen. I’m willin’ to bet there’s pie, too. Mary always leaves too much for my supper, and I don’t mind sharin’.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.” Stone loosened up enough to smile. Fried chicken and pie sounded like heaven, since he’d eaten nothing but cold bread and beans that morning in his hurry to get to the ranch. “But Raider comes first.”

“Of course.” Luke nodded, as if Stone’s attitude was the most sensible thing in the world, which set Stone’s mind more at ease. The man understood the importance of a good horse, at least. “There’s plenty of empty stalls, so take whichever one you want. I’ll dish up the food. Just come on back to the kitchen when you’re done.”

“All right, thanks.” Stone walked through the parlor and out the front door. It felt odd, seeing himself out that way, but that’s what you did in your own place, of course. He hadn’t had a place to call his own in a very long time, and he hadn’t even realized how much he missed it until he stood there on the wide porch of the ranch house, looking out over the serene blue waters of Copper Lake and missing his mother with a soul-deep ache. He was a loner by nature, but even loners could want a place to call their own. Somehow this place felt right to him, as though he could actually belong. As though he could make it a home.

Raider saw him and snorted, and Stone wasted no time jamming his hat back on his head. “I’m comin’. I ain’t forgot you.” He hurried down the stairs and patted the horse fondly on the nose. “Let’s go see if your new place is as nice as mine seems to be.”

Indeed, the barn behind the house was large and well stocked, and Stone found everything he needed to make his horse comfortable. He couldn’t resist a peek in the other stalls, with a cowboy’s innate interest in good horseflesh. There were over thirty stalls in the barn, all of them empty except for three, which meant that the men hadn’t come back from the day’s work yet.

One stall held a beautiful, pregnant grey mare with the softest eyes Stone had ever seen, and she whinnied to him until he stroked her on the nose. “Hey, girl, you’re a pretty thing.” She agreed, apparently, and nudged him pointedly until he chuckled and got an apple for her out of a nearby bushel basket.

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