Dorothy Garlock - [Wyoming Frontier] (12 page)

As Sam approached the McCall ranch, he slowly unwrapped the white strips from about his palms and put them in his pocket. It hurt like hell to hold the reins with his burned fingers, but it wouldn’t be wise, he decided, to let Sporty Howard, or any of the men that came to the hideout, know that there was anything wrong with his hand that would slow him down if he pulled his gun.

*  *  *

Sam Sparks and his horse were only a blur to Emily Rivers, but her ears were atuned to every sound.

“Why did he stop?”

“He waved.” Charlie felt a strange uneasiness when he saw the look of sadness on his sister’s face.

“I wish you’d told me. I would have waved to him.”

For the first time in a long while Emily wished that she could see like other people. She had grown accustomed to the small world she lived in and only at times thought about what her life would have been like if she could see and if that . . . other thing had not happened. Most women were married and had several children by the time they reached her age. She thought she had reconciled herself to the fact that she would never know the love of a man or have his children.

Sam Sparks had been different from any man she had ever met. He had not once mentioned her poor eyesight. She liked his voice, the polite way he spoke. He was a clean man. The only smell about him was of saddle leather and tobacco. His hands were long, slender, twice the size of hers, and she had felt him trembling when the back of his hand lay in the palm of hers, almost as if he were not used to having a woman hold his hand. It had been a long time since she had been close to any man other than Pack and her brother.

Once she had lifted her head as Sam bent to look at his palm, and his face had come into the perimeter of her vision. His cheeks were smooth, as if he had shaved that morning. His mouth was wide and firm, his chin square. She remembered dark brows, white teeth, and hair that curled down on his forehead. But what she remembered most of all was his warm breath on her lips. It was almost as if he had kissed her.

“He was nice, wasn’t he, Charlie?”

“I guess so . . . for a drifter. He didn’t say much about himself.”

“He said he was from Texas, and that he had a sister.”

“Most men are from somewhere and most of them have a sister. Sam Sparks will take Pack’s stuff to him and ride on, if I read him right.”

Charlie Rivers looked at his sister standing against the porch post. He had detected a longing in her voice that tore at his heart. Had he been wrong to bring her to this lonely place? But dear God, what would she have done without him? He couldn’t stay where he was. Alone, she would have been taken, used, degraded. There were very few men who would take a blind woman for a wife, love her, cherish her. For awhile Charlie had hoped that Emily and Pack would come to love one another; but after a friendship of four years, there was no sign that they were more than friends.

“We’ll take Pack’s horse over to the McCalls in a few days, and you can visit with Mrs. McCall and Mara McCall if she is still there,” Charlie said in an attempt to lighten Emily’s spirits.

“Pack seemed to be angry because she was coming. He was going to head her off at Sheffield Station and send her back to Denver. I wonder what happened?”

“That bunch of no-goods from Laramie who wanted him to throw the fight caught up with him before she got there. That’s what happened. It was lucky for him the girl came along. I might not have found him before he bled to death.”

“I wonder if Mara McCall is pretty,” Emily murmured absently.

“Pack has never said anything about her other than that she was the daughter of an old friend and her father had put her in the school so she could learn how to be a lady.” Charlie snorted with disgust. “People get a distorted idea of the word.”

“Do you miss your old life?”

Charlie was surprised by his sister’s question. They seldom talked about the old life.

“At times, but not enough to make me want to go back.”

“Poor Charlie. You would have had a brilliant career if not for your blind sister.”

“You’re indulging yourself in a spell of self-pity, Sister.” His voice was stern. “You’ll get no sympathy from me. I’ve seen men with both arms and legs shot off and head wounds that made them look like animals. What if you had no mind, Sister? The insane asylums are full of people who have no more mind than a chicken. And you pity yourself because you can’t see clearly beyond a few feet. You—”

“Should be ashamed of yourself!” Emily finished, and laughed. “Charlie, dear, I hear that same speech every time I get down in the dumps. Please think of a new one!”

“Really? I didn’t think I’d said that over a time or two.” Charlie chuckled.

“Well, you have. Would you like to hear my speech about how lucky you are that you have one good leg?”

“Heavens no! I’ve heard it a hundred times.”

Emily laughed again. Charlie smiled with relief. Things were back to normal once more.

SIX

Mara had been at the homestead a week before she met Steamboat. He came reluctantly when she sent for him. She invited him into the kitchen, seated him at the cloth-covered table, and served him coffee and slices of bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. She had dreaded meeting him, thinking she might have been eating food prepared by a slovenly cook; but he was a quiet, clean, stoop-shouldered man, and she liked him. By the time he left the house, he and Mara had an understanding. Steamboat would milk the cow and bring the milk to the house. Mara would churn, and they would share the butter and milk. The hens were laying eight to ten eggs a day. Mara said she wanted four of them in order to make nourishing meals for Brita.

When she inquired about the garden, he told her that he had planted onions, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, kale and a small patch of corn.

“The next time you go to town for supplies, I’d like to go with you. I’ve not had experience managing a house, but I’ll learn . . . if you’ll help me.” Mara smiled so sweetly she could have asked for ten years of his life and he would have given them to her.

“I’d be jist plumb tickled to escort ya to town ’n show ya around, ma’am. I’ll see to it that nobody cheats ya.”

Pack, lying on the bunk in his mother’s room, rolled his eyes to the ceiling as he listened to Mara sweet-talk the cook. The old fool would roll over and play dead if she asked him. This was just going to make it all the harder for him to jar her away from this place.

During the next few days Pack spent most of his time on the porch. He walked to and from the privy and up and down in front of the house trying to work the stiffness out of his joints. Sam came to talk to him, and sometimes he played cards with Trellis or Travor to pass the time. Travor was still resentful of Mara.

One afternoon Mara came out onto the porch just as Travor sank his knife into one of the turned porch posts and cut off a sliver of wood.

“Don’t do that, Travor,” she said sharply. “I’ve asked you any number of times not to damage the post with your knife.”

“Don’t do that, Travor. Don’t do that, Travor,” he mimicked. “Is there anythin’ ’round here I can do?”

Bluntly Mara answered him. “You can cut wood for the cookstove. The box is empty.”

“Cut yore own damn wood, Miss Prissy Ass!”

Pack’s hand lashed out, closed about the boy’s arm and jerked him close to him. He gave him a vicious shake.

“If I hear you talk to your cousin like that again, boy, you’ll think you’ve run into a hornets’ nest.” For an endless moment Travor stared, his senses shocked by the anger in his half brother’s face and the savagery of his tone.

“I . . . I ain’t—” He started to say something more, but Pack shook him again.

“That’s right, you ain’t! You’ll not be giving Mara or Ma any more of your sass. Do you understand? If you don’t, I can make it plainer.”

Travor’s face turned a fiery red. “She don’t . . . let a man do nothin’.”

“You call yourself a man? You’re a smart-mouthed, wet-eared kid trying to act like some of the trash that hangs out at the bunkhouse. A
man
doesn’t talk to his womenfolk the way you’ve done. Give your mouth the rest of the day off, boy, and fill that woodbox.” Pack pushed the boy from him.

Mara watched Travor until he disappeared around the side of the house.

“He’ll never like me now,” she said almost wistfully. Then she turned to Pack. “Thanks to you!” With that she went back into the house.

Mara passed through the parlor, the kitchen, and out onto the back porch. She stood by the support post and shivered. “Please God,” she prayed, “let me get accustomed to these people and their ways.”

Her troubled eyes turned toward the bunkhouse where Cullen and Aubrey lolled on the porch. They had not been to the house since the day she arrived, not even to inquire about Brita. If Brita was hurt by her husband’s neglect, she never voiced her feelings; in fact, she never mentioned him or Cullen at all.

*  *  *

In the span of a week, a remarkable change had come to the house. The days were long this time of the year, and Mara worked from dawn to dusk with what help Trellis would give her. Because Brita told her that it rankled the boy to have the men see him washing and cleaning, she asked him to do what repair work he could handle. Trellis took measurements so that the broken windowpanes could be replaced. He nailed a new board to the back step and put new hinges on the privy door. Mara scrubbed floors, washed walls, and polished wood.

One afternoon, several days after the incident with Travor, Mara saw Cullen and Aubrey ride away from the ranch. She asked Trellis to go to the bunkhouse and bring back everything that had been taken from the house. The boy brought back one chair and the mantel clock. Everything else was beyond repair. Disappointment was not exactly the word for what Mara felt: heartsick might have described her feeling better. She went upstairs to her room, shut the door, and allowed herself the luxury of tears.

Later, her small, round chin tilted, her dignity returned in the guise of a very stiff, proud posture, she went back down to the kitchen, more determined than ever to make a place for herself.

Pack was recovering from the ordeal faster than she thought possible, but he was weak, trembly, and in a foul mood most of the time. The problems now were the wounds in his thigh and side. They were healing, but not fast enough to suit him. Mara didn’t know what condition they were in because he no longer needed help in changing the bandage. Since the morning after his fever, when he had railed at her for being in her nightclothes, Mara had avoided him when possible. His insults had shaken her to her very roots, and she vowed that she would never forgive him. She had spoken to him only when he asked a direct question and was civil to him only for Brita’s sake.

When the evening meal was ready, Mara carried a tray to Brita and called Pack to the table. She sat across from him, eating without appetite. No words passed between them, but she could feel his eyes on her often. She avoided looking at him, finished eating, and got up from the table to take her plate to the dishpan.

“Mara Shannon! Sit down!”

Pack’s commanding voice was like a lash on Mara’s back. It caught her by surprise and startled her so much that she almost dropped the dish she was carrying from the table. She hesitated a minute to fight down the anger that rose up to redden her face, then turned.

“Yes? You want something more?” she asked formally, determined not to allow him to know how his harsh voice grated on her already taut nerves.

She couldn’t help noticing that the swelling had left his face and the bruises were fading. With the dirt and blood washed from his hair, it was as dark and shiny as a crow’s wing. He had made an attempt to control the mop of unruly curls without much success. They flopped over his ears and tumbled down over his forehead.

“I don’t want anything more. Sit down.” His dark eyes met her emerald green ones and refused to look away.

As his eyes held hers for several seconds, some of the hardness left. The silence between them seemed to crackle. Neither of them moved nor spoke for what seemed an endless space of time. Pack stared at her, holding her eyes like a magnet with his. For an instant there was a flicker of recognition in some small part of Mara’s brain. It was as if she suddenly knew this man well, was bound to him with invisible ties. His face was not strange to her, nor was his body or his feelings. The reflection lasted for only an instant.

“Is that an invitation or a command?”

“Call it what you want. We’ve got to talk.”

“We? I have nothing to say to you.”

“But I have something to say to you.”

Pack watched her move from the table to the workbench, her color intensified by the heat from the stove. He let his eyes travel the room, taking in every change she had made. The kitchen was pleasant; the shining chimneys on the lamps helped give the room a rosy glow. Her woman’s touch had made this house a home again. She was a nesting type woman who could make a home anywhere.

“Say it,” she said more calmly than she felt and turned her back on him. It irritated her that his presence made her nervous. Each time he looked at her the bold masculine magnetism he emitted aroused a sense of excitement in her.

“I’ll be leaving as soon as I get my horse.” The words were softly spoken to Mara’s back.

“What has that got to do with me?”

She calmly wrapped the freshly baked loaf of bread in a clean cloth and placed it in a tin. She thought briefly of asking him if he knew where she could get a cat. Each morning she found mouse droppings in the kitchen, and it offended her sense of cleanliness.

“Goddamn it, woman, you can’t stay here!” he snarled, low-voiced.

She turned, leaned her back against the workbench, and folded her arms across her chest. This past week, from dawn to dusk, she had worked harder than she had ever worked in her entire life. At the end of the long day she was so exhausted she could only wash herself in the water she carried to her upstairs room and fall into bed. Now this . . . this big, stupid Irishman was sitting at her well-scrubbed table, after he had eaten the meal she had cooked, and was telling her that she couldn’t stay here—in her own house!