QUEENS UP
by
copyright 2011, Andrea Dale
Published by Soul’s Road Press
Discover other titles by this author on Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
QUEENS UP
by
It was my daddy who taught me to play poker.
He was a good father as fathers go, I suppose, especially considering my mother died when I was four and he had his hands full raising me. He was also a very good teacher, and I was hustling the ranch hands before some of them realized the ragged moppet who dogged their heels was not, in fact, of the male persuasion.
(Took them a right long while, too, considering how I’d been so modest about peeing in front of ‘em.)
I tended towards wearing men’s clothes even as I grew older, because it was much easier roping cattle in breeches than a skirt, and skirts were just nuisances anyway, not to mention stockings and petticoats, and besides, there was no one around to properly lace me into a corset.
Even my childhood playmate Margaret Compton didn’t know when we were children, which is why when we grew older things grew a mite complicated. Because I had a crush on her, you see.
In the end, though, it worked out fine, because sweet Margaret Compton wasn’t about to go getting any crushes on men, either, and when she found out my secret, well, we then had a delicious secret to share, just between us two. If you understand my meaning.
But I was talking about my daddy.
For all he was a good man at heart, the problem was simple. There was one other thing that he was good at, and that was drinking. So as you might guess, for all his good teaching of the cards, my father wasn’t a very good poker player at all.
Which is how he came to lose our family’s ranch to one Mister Samuel Owens.
By the time this happened, I’d been running the ranch for years, not that anyone outside knew that. Wasn’t proper for a woman to be making such decisions—what did a pretty thing know about cattle and budgets and weather patterns and ordering men around? So my daddy was the figurehead, the one who went to the bank and the auctions (on mornings after I’d hidden his bottles so his head would be clear). Me, I balanced the books and wrote up orders for supplies and, yes, bossed the men around, but by that time they knew I was capable and cared enough about the ranch to keep our secret safe.
God took pity on me the next morning when Samuel came out the ranch to take a good, long appraising look at his new ownings (not that I knew the reason for his visit as yet): I wasn’t riding out on the back forty or forking hay off a wagon.
Instead, I was inside catching up on some business correspondence for my daddy to sign when he woke up from last night’s binge, and Margaret had time to run in and let me know company was approaching.
I’d have to play hostess while someone roused Daddy and stuck his head under the pump to shock some soberness into him.
Margaret was more versed in the intricacies of women’s clothing than I, so she rushed about gathering skirts and boots with tiny buttons and whatever else I’d need to shoehorn myself into.
At that point in our relationship, we had to keep things pretty quiet, so Margaret slept in the servants’ quarters and our trysts were rare, stolen moments. Her own daddy had died coming up on two years ago, and I’d promised him that we’d take care of Margaret as if she were one of my own. (And she was my own—she had my heart, and I hers.) By outside appearances, she was our maid and cook, and when the occasional hand took a fancy to courting her, she smiled and gently eased his attentions aside.