Colorado Bride (29 page)

“How long ago was that?”

“Last fall sometime. Must have been about six months ago.”

“Are you Willis McCoy?” Carrie asked Found, but he merely hung his head. “Did something happen to your parents? Are they sick?” Found raised his head and the empty, lost look in his eyes told Carrie they were more than sick. “They’re dead, aren’t they?” she asked, her voice soft and full of sympathy. Found dropped his head again. “What happened to them? Can’t you tell me?”

“He could talk if he chose to,” Katie said, some of her earlier antipathy dissolved by the moving plight of the boy.

“Let me have a go at him,” Jake said, making a threatening move toward Found. “I bet I can loosen his tongue.”

“You lay one finger on this child, Jake Bemis, and I’ll horsewhip you with one of your own harnesses,” Carrie said with such fierce anger Jake stopped in his tracks and stared at her in surprise. “He will talk when and if he wants to, but until then you’re both to treat him with kindness. And don’t you dare threaten or frighten him, or you’ll have me to deal with, and I don’t frighten very easily.”

“I didn’t know anybody thought you did, but why do you feel the need to announce it so fiercely? Are you expecting trouble?” It was Lucas, and he was smiling endearingly at Carrie. Her anger melted and color rushed to her face, but she refused to let her disconcerting reaction to him shake her determination to ensure Found’s well-being.

“I was just making it clear to Katie and Jake that they’re to be gentle with this child. They don’t seem to think he can be trusted.”

Lucas walked over to Found and lifted his face by putting his hand under his chin. “I don’t know why not. He looks like a right good specimen of the human race to me. Might even be handsome if he was cleaned up and properly clodied.”

“He most certainly will be, and don’t you call him a specimen again. His name is Willis McCoy.” Found shook his head vigorously.

“It’s not your name?” Carrie asked. “I guess Jake meant that was your father’s.” Found shook his head again. “Then what is your name?” He was still.

“I think he’s trying to tell you he doesn’t like his name,” Lucas said. “Is that it?” Found nodded.

“What do you want us to call you?” Found looked up at Carrie, his big brown eyes open and trusting. “I was only calling you Found until you could tell me your real name.” Found nodded his head vigorously. “You want to be called Found?” she asked, surprise in her voice. Found nodded again.

“Faith, that’s peculiar,” Katie commented. “I wonder why?”

“You never know with a squatter’s kid” Jake said. They’re a shiftless bunch set on stealing anything that’s not tied down.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Jake Bemis, lumping everybody into one category just like nice people can’t be poor.”

“He can’t help it, Mrs. Simpson. Scamps and rascals is all he knows anything about,” Katie said scathingly. “He’s after judging others by what he knows himself.”

“I’m not surprised you were run out of Ireland,” Jake said, sitting down at the table so he could see Katie out of the corner of his eye and pulling one of the full plates toward him. “With a tongue like yours, you could stir up a full-scale rebellion all by yourself.” Lucas caught Carrie’s eye over Found’s head and winked. She smiled and blushed in return.

“I took out of Ireland because it was full of drunkards and shiftless no-accounts,” Katie replied promptly, “too many of them blessed with a handsome smile and a tongue ready to wrap itself around any handy lie. If I’d known I was going to meet the same kind of varmint in Colorado, I’d have taken meself off somewhere else.”

“If travel is what you’ve set your heart on,” Jake said, filling his mouth with as much food as he could fit inside at one time, “then you go settle your tongue on Fort Malone. I’ll wager a month’s pay that inside a week they’ll be taking up a collection to send you anywhere you want to go.”

“You two can abuse each other some other time,” Carrie admonished, trying to suppress a smile. “Right now I’m more interested in deciding what to do with Found.”

“I don’t want to do nothing with him,” Jake insisted. “I ain’t got time to teach him how to live indoors like a human, not with me worrying every minute that he might be stealing the bits out of the horses’ mouths.”

“I’ll take him,” Lucas offered. “He looks like a handy boy to have around.” He glanced over at Jake. “Besides, there’s nothing over at my place to steal. You like horses?” he asked Found, and the boy nodded shyly. “Good. I’ve got a dozen to break to harness, and I could use some help.”

“I’m glad that’s setded,” Carrie said, hard-pressed to keep from gazing in a decidedly love-sick manner at Lucas, “but he’s going to have to sleep in the barn with Jake. There’s no room at your cabin or ours. And I don’t want him sleeping at the station by himself, not at first anyway.”

“Where am I going to put him?” Jake asked plaintively. “There ain’t but one bed in the tack room.”

“Let him sleep in the loft if you like, but I don’t want him sleeping by himself until he gets used to being here.”

“I don’t know why. If his parents are dead, instead of gone off and left him, which wouldn’t surprise me at all, squatters being the sorry lot they are, he’s plenty used to being by himself.”

“I’ll have no more argument,” Carrie stated firmly. “He stays with you.”

After that, the conversation turned to other topics even though Jake continued to mumble periodically under his breath, but when the meal was ended, he stood up and spoke roughly to Found. “Get your things and come on with me if you’re coming. I ain’t got time to waste waiting on no orphan boy.”

“I’d like to know just what it is you’re in such a hurry to do, you being so important and all?” Katie asked scornfully.

Jake turned to Katie and deliberately started to scratch the small of his back while he glared at her with an assumed posture of male arrogance. “It’d be a waste of my time to try and explain it to you. God didn’t make women with an understanding of a man’s business, with the exception of Mrs. Simpson here,” he added hurriedly. “Now you gather up your belongings, young Found, and let’s be about our business so others can do the same,” he finished up with a meaningful glance at Katie.

“I think you ought to consider new sleeping quarters for Jake,” Lucas intervened hurriedly before Katie could respond to Jake’s barb. “With this many people working here, it might be a good idea for someone to sleep at the station. It’d be best for security.”

“Don’t you be looking at me,” Jake said. “I prefer horses to people.”

“Seems a little unfair to the horses,” Katie observed without pausing in her clearing of the table.

“We’ll work that out later,” Carrie said, encouraging Jake and Found to leave before Katie could think of anything else to say. Lucas got up to follow them, but when Katie turned her back, he winked at Carrie and nodded his head in the direction of the door, indicating he wanted to see her outside. Carrie flushed in spite of herself, but a minute after he left, she excused herself and hurried outside. He was waiting for her on the porch.

“I never got a chance to talk to you this morning.”

“I know, but there didn’t really seem to be anything to say.”

Lucas looked at her questioningly.

“I thought I made it very plain how I felt about you,” she said, swallowing with difficulty. “I don’t know much about how men think of their relations with women, and from what I have seen, I don’t think I want to know any more, but when a woman gives herself to a man, she’s given all there is.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to. I’m not going to start acting possessive …”

“Now look here,” Lucas said sharply, taking Carrie by the shoulders and spinning her around to face him, “I will not be lumped with any other man you’ve known. I neither know nor care what they would do, or what you think of men in general. I act for myself and don’t need to follow anybody’s lead.”

“If all this is leading up to an offer to make an honest woman of me, you can save your breadth,” Carrie said, almost choking on her words. “I didn’t ask anything from you last night, and I don’t intend to start today.”

“Yes, you did ask something of me. You asked for the most valuable and important thing a man can give to a woman.”

“I wanted it, but I didn’t ask for it,” Carrie whispered, not daring to look up. She was so acutely aware of Lucas standing next to her, her arms still held in his powerful grip, his powerful body forming a shield between her and the rest of the world, that she had trouble keeping her mind on her thoughts.

“I want to give you what you never asked for,” Lucas said, emotion making his voice tense. “I want to learn to give you as much as you have given me. I’m not very good at it, I’ve never tried before, but I want to learn. Will you help me?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“Of course. Why would you doubt it?” Carrie found herself staring at the buttons on his shirt.

“I can love you and you can love me just as we are now, and things may stay the same. But if you start trying to love me and I keep on loving you more each day, then after a while you may find things aren’t what you want them to be. You say you’re a drifter. I don’t think you are. You’re something else, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you’ve never been tied down and you don’t want to be tied to me. I could stand it if you decided to leave now. It would hurt, but I could stand it. If you stay around studying how to love me more, I think your leaving would drive me crazy.” Lucas started to speak, but she put her fingers to his lips. “I haven’t asked anything of you and I don’t mean to now, but I’m not made of stone. We’re too different. We’ve already been over that. Let’s just take what we have while we can.”

“Do you really want that?”

“Why not?” Carrie asked, not daring to raise her eyes.

“Look at me,” Lucas demanded. Carrie’s eyes remained glued to his vest and he had to force her head up. “Do you think I just want to make love to you until these horses are broken and then disappear?”

“I don’t know what you want from me. You never told me.”

“Yes I did.”

“No you didn’t,” Carrie replied with spirit. “You painted some preposterous picture of connubial bliss which seemed to have you married to a mindless slave, possibly one of those Eastern harem girls who are used to the slave-and-master routine, who would wait patiently at home while you gallivanted about the world, who would take care of your children and see that everything ran perfectly in your absence, and who would be perfectly happy on your return to act like she had no brain at all and couldn’t do a thing without you. Somehow I can’t see myself fitting into that picture.”

“I don’t see myself in it either. Even though you make that compliant harem girl sound mighty attractive, I’ve already set my heart on a pint-sized redhead with blue eyes and a nagging temper who promises to make me miserable for the rest of my life.”

“I’m not promising you anything for the rest of my life.”

“But you said you loved me …”

“I do, and I expect I always will, but I’m still not ready to make a life-long commitment to you.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucas said. “If you love me and I love you …”

“Then we’re two people in love. That’s all it means.”

“But didn’t you expect to marry the man you fell in love with?”

“I did until I was prepared to marry Robert without it,” Carried admitted candidly. “Now I’m not sure, not that you’ve asked me or that I expect you to, but one doesn’t have to follow the other.”

“I thought they did in every woman’s mind.”

“Now who’s lumping everyone into the same boat. I haven’t gotten used to loving you and I haven’t given up on being married, but after our talk the other night, I realize it will take a great deal more than love for us to make a successful marriage.”

“Such as?”

“First there has to be total honesty between us. Second, there must be a commonality of goals, and third, there has to be agreement on how to reach those goals. As far as the first is concerned, I’ve finally been honest with you, but you still haven’t told me anything about yourself?” Lucas had the grace to look uncomfortable. “And we haven’t even discussed the others.”

“Must we complete each step before we go on to the others?” Lucas felt it wasn’t yet time to tell her the whole truth.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore.”

“Does that mean you won’t come up to the cabin again?”

“No, but it does mean you can’t ask any more of me than you’re ready to give of yourself.”

Their attention had been so tightly focused on each other that they hadn’t heard Jake approaching until he was practically at the porch. He was dragging Found by the ear with one hand and holding a small leather bag with the other.

“I told you he was a no-good thief. Look what I found wrapped in one of his shirts.” Found made a grab for the leather bag, but Jake held it up out of his reach. It’s a leather pouch of some kind with the initials J.B. on it and it’s full of money.
Gold
money, I’ll have you know. Now where would a kid like him be getting gold, let alone it’s not his leather pouch.”

“Give it to me,” Carrie said, stretching out her hand, “arid let go of his ear. It must be uncomfortable.”