High Country Bride (8 page)
Read High Country Bride Online
Authors: Linda Lael Miller
Tags: #Westerns, #Fiction, #Romance, #Western, #Historical, #General
She thought of the Texan again, and the shadow resting across her heart lengthened. She needed to tell Rafe what had happened, get it off her conscience.“Rafe—”
He turned that indigo gaze on her, solemn and patient, waiting for her to continue.
She stared at him, and something turned over in the most fragile part of her spirit, doing damage, leaving a web of fine cracks behind. She looked away, made herself look back.“Are you sorry you sent for me?”
He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, ever so gently.“Are you sorry you came?” he countered.
She considered the matter, then shook her head. “No,” she said,“but I don’t know if I’m glad, either.”
He smiled at that. “Fair enough.” He sighed, then reached for the canteen and the saddlebags, preparing to leave.
She touched his arm, and was surprised by her own boldness, though she guessed she shouldn’t have been, considering how she’d felt last night, when he’d kissed her, and the way she’d acted back in Kansas City, putting on dance-hall clothes, swilling whiskey, and taking up with a total stranger. “Not so fast, Rafe McKettrick,” she heard herself say.“You didn’t answer my question.”
Rafe stopped, canteen in one hand, saddlebags in the other, and looked down at her. “No,” he said forthrightly, “I didn’t.”
She waited, arms folded.
A sunny grin broke over his face.“I believe you wanted to know if I was sorry I sent for you,” he said.
She could have shaken him for drawing things out that way, but she was too stubborn to prompt him with so much as a word. She narrowed her eyes slightly and tapped her fingers against her upper arms.
He chuckled. “No,” he said. “I reckon you’ll serve the purpose.”
Emmeline was at once jubilant and mildly insulted, and her expression must have reflected her quandary, for Rafe laughed loudly, the sound ringing against the sky. Then he picked her up by the waist, spun her around in a great, dizzying circle, and finally hoisted her into Banjo’s saddle. Neck and cheeks pulsing with embarrassed heat, she scrambled to get a grip on the saddle horn, and that delighted him even further.
He stood looking up at her, one hand resting lightly on her thigh, branding its image there. The wind had picked up and, for the first time, Emmeline noticed that the clouds were clustering together, conspiring somehow, gray and heavy at the belly.
“We’d better get back down to the ranch,” he said.
“There’s a storm coming on, and Jeb and Kade and the boys will have their hands full with the herd if it gets noisy.”
She felt a swift, fierce frisson of alarm at the prospect of Rafe riding after cattle in a violent storm, even though she told herself he was an able horseman, raised on the frontier. Surely he could look after himself, even in circumstances that would have sent her scurrying for cover.
She didn’t give voice to her concerns but merely nodded.
Rafe mounted his horse, and they started down the mountainside, the sky growing darker as they went. By the time they reached the ranch house, more than an hour later, the first warm, fat drops of rain were beginning to pock the dry dirt.
Rafe dismounted, helped her down, then turned Banjo over to a ranch hand to be fed, watered, and groomed. “Go on inside, Emmeline,” he said, “before you get soaked.”
“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, reluctant.
He glanced up at the thickening clouds, the rain wetting his face and his lightweight coat. “There are cattle to round up,” he said. Then he was back in the saddle and riding away.
“Foreman?”
Kade barked, slapping his thigh with his leather gloves, which he’d just yanked off, finger by finger, using his teeth. “Pa made Rafe foreman? When were they planning to tell us?”
Jeb, who’d stopped and dismounted to inspect his horse’s left hind hoof, used the point of his jackknife to remove the offending pebble and then straightened to look up at his brother, who was still in the saddle. They’d ridden separate fence lines all morning, and now, in midafternoon, with the wind picking up and the formerly placid sky turning ugly as a new bruise in the distance, they’d joined forces to round up strays. If there was going to be weather—and it looked like there was—they wanted the herd bunched up close and boxed into Horse Thief Canyon. While there was no way they could gather all the cattle on the Triple M together in one place, even with the help of several dozen hands working on various parts of the ranch that season, they could bring in a good share of them.
“I guess they weren’t,” Jeb replied belatedly. “Planning on telling us, I mean.”
Exasperated, Kade turned his head and spat. “Then how do you know it’s true?”
“I overheard Pa and Rafe talking about it this morning, in the kitchen.”
Saddle leather creaked as Kade shifted his weight, impatient to ride.“I’ll be goddamned,” he said.
Jeb grinned.“Probably,” he agreed cordially.
Kade shook his head, looking amused and disgusted, in equal measure, the way only he could do. “Hell,” he said. “Rafe will be impossible to get along with from now on. You know how power goes to his head.”
“We’ve got to do something,” Jeb agreed, swinging up onto his horse’s back in a single smooth movement. Like his brothers, Jeb didn’t recall a time when he hadn’t ridden; Angus had put each of them in the saddle as soon as they could sit up on their own.
“Just what do you suggest?” Kade asked.
The irony in his brother’s tone, something Jeb could usually overlook, if he was feelig charitable, made him want to fight today. But then, he reckoned, just about anything would have had that effect, given his mood.
“I don’t know what you mean to do,” Jeb answered, reining his horse toward the high meadow, where there were always a few strays to be found, knee-deep in the sweet grass, “but I’m going to get myself a wife. Right now, I don’t much care who she is, either, as long as it isn’t Daisy Pert.”
Kade prodded his mount to a gallop, with a light tap of his heels, and rode alongside Jeb’s butter-colored gelding. “How do you figure on finding a woman?” he asked. “It isn’t as if we haven’t turned the country upside down, trying to scare one up. You had those posters put up all over San Francisco and Denver, and I ran advertisements in four different newspapers back east. Unless you want to marry a whore—”
“New people coming in all the time,” Jeb broke in, re-settling his hat and glowering a little. “Why, there are some homesteaders just the other side of our southern boundary line, or so I hear. One of them must have a marriageable daughter.”
Kade gave a raspy hoot. “Maybe,” he agreed. “The question is, are any of them over twelve?”
“Something’s bound to happen,” Jeb went on, letting his brother’s remark pass. He’d been thinking about this wife situation a lot, at least since Miss Emmeline had arrived the day before, pondering his way through a flock of unspectacular options. “Maybe I’ll ride on down to Tucson, or Tombstone, one day soon, and size up the social situation there.”
Kade swept off his hat, without slackening his pace, and ran an arm across his forehead. “Bring back a spare,” he said.
“By next winter,” Jeb vowed,“we’ll be married men.”
“By next winter,” Kade said, “we could be uncles, and taking orders from Rafe on a permanent basis.”
“Instead of just temporarily, like now?” Jeb retorted dryly, raising an eyebrow.
Kade shuddered. “I love this ranch,” he vowed, “but I figure I could live another fifty years—hell, look at Pa—and that’s a mighty long time to take guff from Rafe.”
Jeb sighed. There was no refuting Kade’s logic. Yep—he would definitely ride down south a ways and see what he came up with. One thing was for damn sure—Kade could go find his own woman. “I think I’d rather be strung up for an outlaw than have Rafe telling me what to do for the rest of my life. The misery would be over a lot quicker.”
Kade nodded, and they rode on, climbing now toward the high country, leaning forward in their saddles as their horses cut through the brush. Sure enough, there were a couple of dozen strays in the meadow, mostly cows and yearling calves, and the two brothers set themselves to the task of rounding up the critters and driving them down a gentler slope, toward the relative shelter of the canyon.
There was a lot of whistling and cursing, and the pair of them were splattered with rain and red mud by the time Rafe finally rode up, looking as cool and unruffled as if he’d just taken high tea in a lady’s parlor. The mere sight of him made Jeb want to haul him off that horse and kick his ass, just on general principle.
“Good job,” Rafe commended his brothers, tugging at the brim of his hat as he got within speaking distance.
“Nice of you to show up,” Kade commended, both hands resting easily on the saddle horn.
Rafe smiled, stood in the stirrups for a moment, stretching his legs, and sat down again with a self-satisfied sigh.“Least I could do,” he said,“now that I’m foreman.”
“So,” Kade said, his jaw tight, his horse sensing his disquiet and spooking a little.“Jeb was right.”
Rafe sliced a glance in Jeb’s direction, eyes narrowed. “Yup,” Rafe said. Hot damn, but he looked cool as a springhouse egg. Seething, Jeb wheeled his horse in a little closer, thinking he might take the new foreman down a peg or two.
Rafe’s look invited him to try, and the two brothers sat facing each other in stony silence, their horses restless beneath them. Overhead, thunder rolled across the sky and boomed against the mountains, and the cattle took to bawling and flailing around like a bunch of bugs in the bottom of a tobacco can.
“Let’s get these critters into the canyon,” Kade said, raising his voice to be heard,“before they take a notion to stampede.”
“W
HERE IS EVERYBODY
?”
Rafe asked, looming in the kitchen doorway, his clothes as soaked and muddy as if he’d been rolling about on the ground—and perhaps he had. Cowboying was surely rough-and-tumble work.
Emmeline, seated near the stove, where she’d been mending the hem of her best petticoat, looked up at her husband. The shadows made the room seem especially cozy, even as rain lashed at the windows and struck the roof with a furious rhythm.
“Angus is helping find lost cattle,” she answered, “and Concepcion left a note, saying she went to pay a call on a neighbor.”
“In this weather?” Rafe asked, evidently unconcerned with his father’s whereabouts, or that of his two brothers, for that matter, as he kicked off his boots and set them behind the stove. “She knows better than to do a damn fool thing like that.”
Emmeline didn’t care for his tone, which was officious, and she passed him a glance meant to convey her thoughts. Granted, the storm showed no signs of relenting—indeed, it seemed to be growing more ferocious by the minute—but Concepcion was an intelligent woman and must have had good reason for making the trip. Emmeline rose from her chair, set her sewing on the seat, and went to peer through the misted window over the sink, as though by looking she could cause her friend to appear.
“Did she ride, or take the buggy?” Rafe wanted to know. He looked—and sounded—as irascible as before.
Emmeline flinched as thunder shook the house and lightning split the sky, outlining trees and outbuildings in an eerie, blue-gold glow.“I’m not sure,” she admitted. Her irritation at Rafe’s attitude had given way to a quiet but elemental fear.“Do you think she’s all right?” A whisper.
“A lot of things can happen in this country, especially in this kind of weather,” Rafe said. “I’d better go and find her.” He rummaged around on the covered porch for another pair of boots and yanked them on. By then, Emmeline had fetched her cloak from the peg next to the door.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“No, you’re not,” he replied flatly.
Emmeline put her hands on her hips. “While we’re standing around arguing, Mr. McKettrick, Concepcion could be catching her death of pneumonia out there.”
“And you figure it makes sense for you to rush right out and catch it too?” he retorted.
“You might need my help.”
“I can’t imagine ever needing your help,” Rafe said.
He might as well have struck her. She opened her mouth, and promptly closed it again, too stricken to speak.
He leaned in, jamming his arms, one by one, into the sleeves of a dry coat.“Just stay here,” he snapped.
Emmeline fought back humiliating tears. Was this the same man who had given her a gold wedding band on top of a mountain, after showing her where their house would stand? “No!” she snapped back. “I
am
going, whether you like the idea or not.” In fact, maybe she would just point herself toward Indian Rock, once they were sure Concepcion was safe, and keep right
on
going.
“If you want to make yourself useful, start heating up some water. I’m going to want a hot bath when I get back here.”
“Heat your own bathwater,” Emmeline said, striding across the porch and picking her way down the steps to the yard. “I intend to find my friend!” With that, she dashed across the rain-swept grass toward the barn. The creek was roaring in the near distance, swelling its banks, the sky was ugly as a new bruise, and the rain came in torrents.
Rafe caught her by the arm and goose-stepped her the rest of the way, practically flinging her into the cool dampness of the barn. “Listen to me,” he rasped. “I might have been a little gruff back there in the kitchen, but the plain fact is, you’re only going to slow me down.”
Emmeline’s cheeks flared with indignant color, but she held her tongue. She marched to Banjo’s stall, threw a halter over the mare’s head, and led her out into the main part of the barn. She didn’t bother looking for the saddle; she wouldn’t know how to put it on the animal anyway. Surely, she reasoned, she could manage a bridle.
With a gusty sigh, Rafe turned away from her, throwing his hands into the air, and proceeded to saddle a horse for himself. His gelding, Chief, remained in his stall, steam rising off his hide because of the wetness in the air.
Emmeline chose a bridle, wrestled it onto Banjo’s head, and led the poor beast to stand alongside a bale of hay, which she used as a mounting block. Rafe and his horse were already approaching the burgeoning creek when she finally persuaded her recalcitrant little mare to leave the shelter of the barn.
Keeping up was impossible; the rain was a smothering, impenetrable curtain between her and Rafe. Emmeline knew she should swallow her pride and go back to the house, but she couldn’t make herself do either of those things. If she was ever to amount to anything as a ranch wife, she had to be able to c with any emergency.
Rafe stayed close when they crossed the creek—Emmeline’s feet were already numb with cold—then rode ahead. She persisted, and he wheeled around to ride beside her again. “You’re acting like a damn fool!” he yelled over the downpour. “People get struck by lightning storms like this—-they get themselves thrown from their horses and hit their heads on rocks—they drown in flash floods!”
“Exactly why we need to find Concepcion!” she cried in reply, sputtering as the wind buffeted her face, stopping her breath.
“Hell!” Rafe roared. Then, before Emmeline knew what was happening, he leaned over, hooked an arm around her waist, and dragged her off Banjo, settling her behind him on his horse. Deftly, he removed Banjo’s bridle, gave the animal a light swat on the flank, and sent her racing back to the barn. “At least
she’s
got some sense!” he shouted.“Hold on, damm it!”
With a motion of his heels, he set the gelding in motion again, and Emmeline was forced to cling for dear life. She reached around his middle and took handfuls of his coat, then buried her face in the slight hollow between his shoulder blades. The ride was a rough one, wet and cold and slippery, but when the overturned buggy came in sight, just ahead, Emmeline was glad she’d come along. Concepcion had unhitched the horse, and the two of them, woman and beast, stood shivering beneath an overhang of rocks.
Rafe was down off his horse in an instant, while Emmeline followed more slowly. She was stiff, and the balls of her feet ached mightily when she walked, causing her to limp a little.
“He’s lame,” Emmeline heard Concepcion tell Rafe, as she stroked the animal’s muzzle.
“What about you?” Rafe shouted over the driving rain. “Are you all right?”
Concepcion nodded. “Just feeling a little stupid,” she confessed.
Rafe gave her a look designed to convey his opinion of females who didn’t have the sense to stay out of the rain, but said nothing. He checked the buggy horse, an ancient dappled gray, and then straightened. “He’s sound enough to carry Emmeline,” he said to Concepcion.“You can ride back with me.”
“What about the buggy?” Concepcion asked. “Are we just going to leave it out here?”
“Yes,”Rafe said, giving the rig a cursory inspection.“The axle is broken. I’ll come back for it when this lets up.”
He hoisted Concepcion onto the gelding’s back and, with even less ceremony, flung Emmeline up onto the gray. The muscles in her thighs screamed in protest, but she didn’t make a sound. During the brief moment when her gaze locked with Rafe’s, the two of them sparked lightning of their own.
Emmeline jutted out her chin.
The return trip was necessarily slower than the ride out had been, due to the dappled gray’s injured foot, and once or twice, from beneath the brim of her bonnet, Concepcion looked back at Emmeline, a troubled expression in her eyes.
Reaching the ranch house, Rafe deposited the women near the back door, then rode off to the barn, the gray plodding along behind him.
“What happened?” Emmeline asked, when she and Concepcion were safe, if not yet warm, in the welcoming kitn. It was obvious that there had been a mishap of some sort, but she wanted details.
Concepcion added wood to the fire in the stove, stoked the blaze with a poker, then nodded toward the back stairs. “We’d both better change out of these wet clothes before we do any talking,” she said.
They retreated to their rooms, returning minutes later, wearing their warmest dresses. Emmeline huddled close to the stove, blotting at her wet hair with a towel, while Concepcion brewed tea.
Concepcion sighed as she measured fragrant leaves into a pot. “You should have stayed here, Emmeline,” she said.“It’s dangerous out there.”
“I could say the same to you,” Emmeline pointed out reasonably.
Concepcion smiled.“Indeed, you could,” she admitted.
The door banged open, and Rafe stormed in.
“Are you two pleased with yourselves?” he demanded, shedding his coat, shirt, and boots, flinging them back out onto the porch. He was still wearing a button-up undershirt and his trousers and socks, but Emmeline found herself flushing as hotly as if he’d stripped himself naked, right there in the kitchen.
Concepcion squared her shoulders. “Thank you for coming to fetch me, Rafe,” she said, very calmly. “I do appreciate it. I will not, however, have you raising your voice to me as though I were some greenhorn.”
He subsided, but only slightly and only long enough to turn his ire on Emmeline.“I suppose you have something to say, too?” he challenged.
Emmeline shook her head, holding her chin a notch or two higher than usual.
“Good,” he retorted, waggling a finger at her. “Because I’ve got plenty—”
“Go and change your clothes,” Concepcion interceded mildly.“You’re dripping all over my clean floor.”
For a moment, Rafe looked as if he might bellow like a bull, or turn the kitchen table onto its top, but then he simply crashed his way up the stairs and along the hallway to his room. Both Concepcion and Emmeline flinched at the distant slamming of a door.
“He’ll get over this,” Concepcion said.
Emmeline realized that her eyes had gone wide, and willed herself to relax. “I was only trying to be a good ranch wife,” she confided.
Concepcion chuckled. “I think your idea of being a wife might be a little different from Rafe’s,” she said. The water in the teakettle began to boil, and she poured it into the crockery pot, raising a cloud of deliciously scented steam. “When Rafe sent away for a bride, he expected someone who would follow his orders, cook his meals, clean his house, and bear his children.” She paused. “What did
you
expect, Emmeline?”
She shrugged, feeling dispirited and exceedingly far from home. “I guess I wanted to belong somewhere,” she said.
Concepcion patted Emmeline’s shoulder, then took two cups from the shelf next to the sink. She inclined her head slightly, urging Emmeline toward the table, and they both sat down, on opposite sides, the teapot between them.
“Rafe wanted me to stay here and heat water for a bath,” Emmeline continud.
“Terrible,” Concepcion said, and smiled, over the rim of her cup. Her ebony hair was sagging from its pins and still dripping a little. Her dark eyes twinkled.
Emmeline sighed. “I suppose I should have done what he asked, but he was so heavy-handed about it.”
Concepcion chuckled, took a sip of tea. “Rafe McKettrick has met his match,” she said, and she sounded pleased. She glanced toward the rear stairway, and then the door, probably assuring their privacy. “With the men in this family,” she whispered, “you have to choose your battles wisely. They’ve got skulls as thick as a bull’s, all of them, and they’ll argue one side of a question until they’ve convinced God and his angels that they’re right, then take up the other side and make just as good a case, for the pure sport of it.”
Emmeline’s shoulders sagged with discouragement. She might as well catch a stage out of town right now, and let fate have its way with her, for she would never learn to “choose her battles” and, besides, she wasn’t cut out to take orders from anyone, especially when she considered those orders unreasonable. She supposed she’d acquired that trait, like so many others, from long association with Becky.
Concepcion poured more tea into Emmeline’s cup.“Just give him a little time,”she said. Rafe’s footsteps echoed from upstairs, and Concepcion leaned closer and whispered, “Marriage requires patience and compromise.”
“Yes,” Emmeline agreed, rather pettishly, “but only from the wife, it would seem.”
Rafe looked damnably attractive, standing at the base of the stairs, his skin ruddy, his dark hair tousled from a vigorous toweling. He wore clean denims, another button-up undershirt, and a pair of gray wool socks, but no boots.
Emmeline sniffed at the sight of him. It was difficult to believe that, only hours before, just prior to the storm, they’d shared a picnic lunch on a lower rung of heaven, slipped gold wedding bands onto each other’s fingers, and talked about children.
“Tea?” Concepcion offered, holding up the pot.
Ignoring the invitation, Rafe took a cup from the shelf, approached the stove, and sloshed in a dose of coffee, grimacing when he tasted it. “Where,” he asked, very quietly, “did you have to go that was so important?”
