Petticoat Ranch Read Online Free PDF Page A

reverence of a prayer.
    Mandy added her tears in next. “I c–can see it’s him, but I saw you bury him. We all helped wr–wrap him”—Mandy’s face crumpled—“in the quilt. How can this be, Ma?”
    Sophie noticed several things about the man. He was more muscular than Cliff. He had an ugly round scar high up on one shoulder that could be nothing else but an old bullet wound. He had three slashing cuts on his right arm that were scarred but looked pink and fairly new. Cliff had none of these things. But that proved nothing. A man could build a lot of muscle in two years. And he could get himself shot and stabbed. Sophie remembered that sense of familiarity when she’d been bathing and doctoring his chest. The reason it had seemed familiar was, despite the bigger muscles, the man had hair on his chest the exact color, texture, and thickness of Cliff Edwards’s.
    With a sudden start, she thought of Cliff ’s birthmark on his right shoulder blade. “Help me roll him over. Your pa had a mole.” All three girls added their strength, and they lifted the heavily muscled man a bit.
    What they saw was an exit wound from the bullet. In the exact spot where Cliff had a large black mole, nearly an inch across. Or was it the exact spot? The wound was close enough that she couldn’t be sure.
    “Let him lie back, girls.” Sophie sank from her knees to sit fully onthe shed floor. Feeling boneless from the shock, she almost sank all the way down. The girls were all crying softly, and with a start, she realized she was, too.
    She shook her head to clear away the fog, and then she gathered her senses. “I know one thing.” The girls tore their eyes away from where they drank in the sight of their father and looked at her. “Your father is dead.”
    Sally shook her head. Sally had always been Daddy’s girl, more than the rest of them. He’d left when Sally was too young to remember him, but in his absence, he’d grown into a heroic figure in her mind. And he’d only been back a few short months when he’d died—just long enough to get that longed-for son to growing in Sophie’s belly, the one that turned out to be another girl.
    Sophie had tried to help Sally see Cliff as he was, without harming her little girl’s love for her father. But Sally had never been able to protect her heart from Cliff ’s small cruelties. She’d believed her pa’s criticisms were just and tried harder than ever to win his love. She had been the one to be the tomboy. To be the son they’d never had. She’d carved out a special place in her pa’s heart by tagging along with him everywhere for the little time they’d had together after the war. And it was no small trick to carve out a place in Cliff ’s heart. He wasn’t a demonstrative man. He was a decent, honest man, but he was given to dark moods and sarcasm. Now, Sally had her pa back. She wasn’t giving him up easily.
    “It’s him, Ma. We know our own pa!”
    “It’s. . .it’s. . .” Sophie struggled to let go of the wild surge of hope that was building in her. Although their marriage hadn’t been perfect, she’d loved her husband, at least to the extent he would allow it. But she couldn’t build her life on a fantasy. “I’ve heard it said that for each of us, somewhere in the world, there is a double. Now, I’ve never put much stock in that myself, just because I’ve never seen any evidence of it. I’ve never seen two people who looked exactly like each other, except sometimes brothers or sisters come close, or a parent and child. Butmaybe it’s true. Maybe—no, definitely—your pa has a double. Because here he is.”
    “Did Pa have a brother?” Mandy, the analyzer, asked.
    “No. He was an only child and his pa died when he was little. His ma had passed on several months before I met him. He told me there was no one. Not even cousins. No, this man can’t be a relative. At least not a close one. That’s one of the reasons we ended up here after Pa