She Got the Chuck Wagon as a Punishment — One Roundup Later the Trail Bosses Fought Over Her
Chapter 3
Eleanor found it restful. Here was a man who wasn’t going to pretend.
What Eleanor didn’t know—not yet—was that her arrival had disrupted a plan.
Colt Brennan had been running the Twin Creek’s daily business for three years, ever since grief had hollowed his cousin out. And Colt had grown fond of the running. He’d had it all arranged. Benjamin would marry Caroline Ashford, the banker’s daughter. The ranch’s debt would soften into family money. And Colt would remain the man who truly held the reins.
A thirty-four-year-old spinster from Missouri in a travel-stained dress fit into that plan the way a stone fits into a boot.
So Colt did what men like Colt do.
He didn’t rage.
He smiled.
And he waited.
The moment came two weeks before spring roundup when old Porter, the ranch cook for nineteen years, slipped on a wet wheel hub and broke his arm in two places.
Spring roundup on the Twin Creek meant six weeks of gather and brand. Thirty-some men, counting the reps from neighboring outfits. Five pots of coffee and three full meals every day, cooked out of a wagon in open country in whatever weather God sent.
There was no cook to be hired in time.
And Colt Brennan stood in the middle of the yard with every hand watching, and he made sure his voice carried.
“Well,” he said, “we’ve got a woman here eating Twin Creek beef and calling herself a bride. She wants to be a ranch wife so bad—let her feed a ranch. Give her the wagon.”
A couple of the younger hands laughed.
It was a punishment, and every soul in that yard knew it. Brutal work meant for a leathery old man, handed to a town-dressed woman on the open bet that she’d quit inside a week and spare everyone the embarrassment.
Benjamin’s head came up. He said, “Colt—” just one word, low, with weight behind it.
And that’s when Eleanor Cade stepped off the porch, wiped her hands on her apron, and said in a voice as level as a plumb line:
“I’ll take the wagon.”
The yard went quiet.
Colt smiled his smooth smile, and as he turned away, she heard him say it soft to the man beside him:
“She won’t last a week.”
Remember that sentence.