Cowboy Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #3, Kitty and Lukes story) (2 page)

             
"I'm Kathryn Collins," I said, as if that explained anything.  Sarah used her new name in Redding.  "I'm Sarah Kennedy's sister."

             
For some reason, this made him stop frowning and start smiling.  He wasn't much older than I was, maybe in his early 20s, but he suddenly looked as if he were about to ask me all the same sorts of things my mother might and give me all the same kinds of advice Sarah might.  Well, advice was why I'd come. 

             
"You're a mite young to be traveling on your own, Miss Kathryn," he said, extending a hand to shake mine.  Inside my lace gloves, my hands were damp and shaking.  "Your sister has told me about you."               

             
"Oh, dear."  I said it without thinking and then blushed again as I reclaimed my hand.

             
He laughed.  "Your secrets are safe with me.  Though not, I think, with your sister."  He glanced toward the west, where the sun was plunging into muddy clouds, from which it looked unlikely to resurface.  "Mrs. Kennedy's on the ranch, but her husband is away.  He's driving a thousand head of cattle to Oregon, won't be back for a few weeks."

             
Mr. Lord had a small covered wagon at his disposal and, as I'd already gathered (and re-gathered, several times) my belongings, he indicated he'd be happy to escort me to Big Sky Ranch.

             
"I wasn't looking to inconvenience you, sir," I said.  "If there's a way I can hire a wagon or send word to my sister, I'd be happy to take my leave."

             
More than happy, truth be told.  He was quiet, confident and handsome. In such company, all my worst, loudest and most clumsy traits make themselves known.  A ride with any of the kindly women passing by with children would be healthier for all involved.

             
Except, as we had spoken, the station had cleared.  The station master had closed plain wooden shutters over the windows to the station house and, although I assumed he was still somewhere within, there was no evidence of him.  My options were vanishing as quickly as the sun that slid ever closer to the Cascade Mountains.

             
"Miss Collins, I can't in good conscience leave you out here.  My ranch is about six miles from The Big Sky, and both are to the west.  I'll be less inconvenienced if you'll allow me to escort you."

             
At some point, my mother taught me that protesting that you don't wish to be a bother can become more of a bother than just letting someone do you a good turn.  Mr. Lord worked for The Big Sky Ranch.  He was headed west anyway.  I didn't know him, though Sarah had mentioned him once in passing ("William spends so much time cosseted with his manager, a Mr. David Lord") and I wouldn't know anyone else I rode with, either.

             
Graciously, awkwardly, I accepted.

              David Lord turned the wagon away from the town of Redding before I really had a good look.  I knew from Sarah's earlier letters there was a school, a post office and two grocers who frequently warred with each other for the town's trade, a laundry, more saloons than it seemed a town of 800 could use, a couple of small hotels and a bakery.  I didn't think there was much else, but I still wanted to see it.

             
We turned to the west, though, following the bank of a willow-lined river.  Wagons loaded with logs stood, horses detached and led away somewhere, the trees felled and waiting transport to somewhere else.  Magpies and blue jays flitted about in a cloudless blue sky.  Half a dozen cowboys on horseback came down the same river path, tipping their hats to us as they passed.  Their horses pranced, impatient, tails swatting at flies.

             
"What brings you to Redding, Miss Collins?" Mr. Lord asked. 

             
I should have anticipated the question, but really had no way to answer.  My mother would soon marry and my stepfather was making demands and the man I had thought to marry was, indeed, preparing for his wedding, only not to me.

             
None of which I was prepared to say aloud.  I may still exhibit the occasional need to climb a particularly challenging looking tree but, in other ways, my pride stands between me and my foolishness.

             
"My sister stopped writing regular letters," I said, sounding foolish, but not in the way I had feared. 

             
Mr. Lord nodded thoughtfully and wisely didn't respond.  We followed the river and I could see from the banks the water had fallen below previous levels—lines of color and salt marked where the river had leveled in previous years.

             
The air was hot and dry and smelled of dirt until we caught up with a knot of cowboys making their way in the same direction we were.  They herded four head of cattle, giving off a ripe, dusty smell that seemed to linger even after we overtook and passed them.

             
Gradually, we left the town behind, the houses built along the borders of Redding, and the woods became thicker.  Following the river, we moved north and west, passing wagons heaped with cut trees and cowboys heading in either direction and headed deeper into a long, valley surrounded on three sides by mountains.  Fields of alfalfa came into view, and ranch houses widely separated by pastures full of cattle and horses and hay, the hay waiting for baling. The air smelled sweet here, like honey and hay and warm dirt and trees.  Mr. Lord didn't talk overly much, which suited me, because I can never think how to make conversation with people I've just met.  I contented myself with not dropping anything or saying anything careless.

             
Partway into the hour, he did ask what Virginia City was like, and that I discoursed on happily.

             
"Sage," I said.  "There's foothills and mountains, the Sierra a ways away and Mount Davidson Virginia City is built on.  They call our railroad the Very Crooked and Terribly Rough because the railroad up to town is so switch backed.  There are accidents there, all the time, horses running off with wagons, and sometimes you see camels."

             
"Camels?"  He looked as if he thought I was teasing him.

             
I nodded empathically and felt my auburn curls trying to escape the confines of both the braids I'd rolled it into and my hat.  "A businessman brought camels to Virginia City for the silver mines. 
No one
likes them because they're mean and because they scare the horses, but they're so fantastic looking."

             
I told him about the snows in the winter and the places in Virginia City where they say you can see out over the valley 100 miles, though I don’t know if anyone's ever proved it.  I told him about The Faro Queen my uncles had bought and saved from fire damage, and about Gold Hill, and I almost told him about Johnny, except that wouldn't be proper, nor would it be ladylike to tell him what I thought about Sissy Tompkins.

             
Sometime later, having realized I now felt comfortable with him, and that I had talked for about half an hour straight, I asked him about Redding.

             
"I've been here about two years," he said, thoughtfully.  "Your new brother's been in Redding five years or so and his ranch is quite a spread, about 10,000 acres."

             
I tried to imagine that and failed.  I'd stood and looked from C Street in Virginia City across a valley rumored to be 100 miles, but that didn't help me imagine what 10,000 acres was like.

             
"Mr. Kennedy's taken the cattle because there's a drought here," Mr. Lord said, pointing to the river as we passed.  "Cattle die in summers like this; makes sense to sell them before that happens, when they've still got some meat on them."  He said this as if it were an argument he'd made to Sarah's husband, one he'd only just won, and looked away from the road to look at me.  "Water rights in this part of the world see a lot of folks in court, and a few in worse places.  When they're not fighting over water, they're fighting over fences and who's responsible for keeping cattle off of whose land."

             
I nodded at him, thinking it wasn't that different in Virginia City, and that this place looked a lot less desert than where I'd just come from.

             
"So, you know much about working on a ranch?" he asked, with a smile that suggested he might be teasing me, but I wasn't certain, and I turned tongue-tied again and stammered a bit.  I didn't intend to work the farm but, then, I didn't intend for my sister to just put me up indefinitely.  In fact, very little of what I'd done since I'd left home three days ago had been intentional at all.

             
Had I known Mr. Lord, I might have asked him what he knew about silver mining, because I knew quite a bit, had grown up with it, and I understood how to run a grocery store, something I never intended to do but I'd seen my father with his store. 

             
Mr. Lord was a stranger.  I didn't feel full of sass, or confidence, or common sense.  I shook my head and didn't answer, and it didn't matter then because we came out of the trees, leaving the river behind, and into the long valley and instantly saw the smoke.  My heart leapt.  In the desert, smoke means wildfire.  I had no idea if it meant the same here.

             
"Is that—" I started, pointing.

             
"—Fire," he said.  "Hold on."

             
Mr. Lord had two horses on the traces.  He shouted them into a gallop.  We weren't far away; we were close enough to run to the source of the smoke.  Trees and grasses whipped by us.  I held my hat with one hand, clung to the wagon with the other.  The outbuildings weren't burning, at least I couldn't see any flames against the hot blue sky, and the ranch houses coming into view—one of which I assumed was my sister's and the others, probably bunkhouses for the ranch hands—none of those appeared to be burning.

             
"What is it?" I asked, unable to frame a question he couldn't answer by just saying, "Fire."

             
"The field."

             
I had turned my head to look at him.  Now, I looked forward again, saw the flames this time because I looked closer to the ground. 

             
It had just started and, even as we tore across the stony ground, I could hear a bell ringing frantically and the distant shouts of men.  How many hands could be left on the ranch if William had taken 1,000 head of cattle north?

             
The wagon bounced over the dirt and stones and Mr. Lord slowed the horses before we were much closer.  I jumped down without thinking, left everything I had traveled with and ran toward the flames.  I could shovel dirt, if there was a shovel anywhere near, or dig and throw if I had to.  I could bucket brigade, I'd done it in Virginia City when someone tried to burn The Faro Queen, or I had until I'd been caught by
my brother and sent away for being a girl.

             
I ran hard toward the flames, catching sight of Sarah running toward me from one of the houses.  She hadn't seen me yet, she was still focusing on the fire.  There were men running with her, cowboys with shovels and people were shouting about priming the well
and getting the buckets.

             
I made it to the fire line before Mr. Lord made it out of the wagon.  Tongues of fire were starting to shoot up into the afternoon air and creepers were making their way through drying grass, spreading toward cottonwoods and apple trees and bushes, and everything looked dry.  Everything looked like tinder.

             
A line of fire raced at me through the grasses and I stomped, shuffling with my boots, scratching soft meadow dirt over them, catching a toe and starting to fall.  Someone caught my arm, pulled me back, and handed me a shovel.  He was tall, rangy and dark, with a sun burnt neck, a red bandana around his throat and over his nose and mouth.  He nodded at the flames. 

             
As if I needed to be told.  The shovel handle was splintery and old.  I shoved the point into the ground, stomped on it, brought it up hard and brought up a shovelful of dirt.  The creeper coming my way went out, a little serpent of fire going dark.  More creepers followed and I tramped down the spots I'd shoveled dirt onto, aware that a larger conflagration burned just beyond me.  I concentrated on what was directly in front of me, throwing dirt, shouting when something got by me.  I beat down a couple sparks that went up into the air, saw the wind was picking up and shoveled faster.

             
Nearby, I could hear Sarah, shouting for others to come out.  She was digging too, as were the men around her, and buckets were being filled and brought, people running with them, spilling water as they came, dirt would probably make the difference and the water would make certain the flames didn't come back.

             
Mr. Lord passed me, moving closer to the flames.  Someone passed him a shovel and he dug faster than I could, dumped more earth than I did, and the creepers of flame stopped coming through the grass to me.

             
I took a breath, looked around.

             
Sarah stood, staring at me.