The Rawhide Man Read Free

Everyone knew it, too. They fought like cats and dogs, and people moved out of the way at Langston family get-togethers when they were both present.
    The reunion two summers ago was the reason Bess had stayed away from the most recent gathering. She and Jude had gotten into a horrible fight about Katy. She could still blush at the language he’d used; the fact that there had been bystanders present hadn’t slowed him down one iota.
    Katy had told Bess about a fight she’d been in at school, stating proudly that she’d done just like Daddy, she’d pounded the hell out of a boy twice her size, and wasn’t that super? “Super” had been Katy’s latest word; it described everything from her dog, Pal, to the calf Jude had given her to raise for 4-H.
    Bess hadn’t thought it was super now that Katy was eight. She’d thought it was terrible, and she’d told Jude so later as they were sitting together having dinner with some of the other family members at a restaurant on the Paseo del Rio. Traditionally, they always concluded the annual picnic and rodeo at the restaurant, which Jude would book for an arm and a leg and the family would fill.
    “What’s wrong with Katy sticking up for herself?” he’d demanded. “The damned boy hit her first.”
    “She’s a girl,” Bess had burst out, exasperated with him. “For heaven’s sake, she already dresses and talks like a boy. What are you trying to do to her?”
    “Teach her to stand up for herself,” he’d replied coolly, and had gone back to sipping his whiskey, raising his hand as another male member of the family entered the restaurant.
    “Teaching her to be a freak,” Bess had said under her breath.
    That had set him off. She could still see him rising, as slowly as a rattlesnake coiling, his eyes glittering and dangerous, his face taut.
    “Katy is my daughter,” he’d said with a cold smile. “I decide what’s good or bad for her, and I don’t need help from some dainty little society lady who couldn’t fight her way out of an eclair! Who the hell do you think you are to tell me how to raise my daughter? What qualifies you to be anybody’s mother?” His voice was raised just enough to carry to the other tables, and there was a sudden hush, broken only by the sound of the river and the muffled voices of strolling passersby on the river walk. Bess had wanted to cringe.
    “People are staring,” Bess had said under her breath.
    “Well, my God, let them stare!” he’d boomed, scowling down at her. “If you’re so free with your damned advice on child raising, let’s tell everybody. Go ahead, Miss White, do advise me on the behavior of my child!”
    Her face was white with embarrassment and humiliation, but she held her head up and stared back at him. “I don’t think I need to repeat it,” she said very calmly.
    It made him even angrier that he couldn’t make her lose her composure entirely. That was when he’d started cursing. “You damned little prig,” he’d tacked on at the end, and by that time her face was as red as it had been white earlier. “Why don’t you get married and have kids of your own? Can’t you find a man good enough?” He’d laughed coldly and looked over her body with contempt. “Or can’t you find a man?”
    And he’d turned and walked away, leaving her sitting there with tears stinging her eyes. The family had lost interest then and gone on to other topics. Bess had gone back to her hotel and packed. It was the last time she’d had any contact with Jude, until now.
    “So quiet, Miss White,” he taunted, jerking her out of her reveries. “So ladylike. You didn’t even kick and scream. Is that kind of behavior too human for you?”
    She lifted her chin, her perfect composure intact, and looked at him. “Look who’s talking about being human,” she said with a cool smile.
    One of his thick eyebrows jerked. “But, then, I never claimed to be, did I?”
    She averted her eyes. “If I’d had any doubts