Mary Connealy (14 page)

She was surprised to find out Red had a nervous streak. She didn’t really know him, of course, but he’d seemed like a calm man. She found out he was prone to clumsiness. He’d hurt his ankle in a fall and he’d scared Rosie that first morning. When he offered her help with some job, he’d talk a little too fast and stumble over his words, and he seemed to spend time fixing things around the farm that had seemed fine when she’d been working with them.

She was serving him his noon meal on Saturday when she started to ask about riding the horse. Before she could gather her courage, Red announced they were heading for town as soon as dinner dishes were done.

“Town? Why?” Cassie’s stomach fluttered with excitement. She loved going to town, although she’d gotten so she avoided it whenever possible with Griff. He made her sit quietly in the carriage while he conducted his business. She wasn’t to speak to anyone or even smile or make eye contact. Griff said it was familiar and indecent behavior for a married woman, and Cassie had done her best to please him.

“I’ve got several jobs I do in town on a Saturday afternoon. To raise money and barter for supplies. And I’ve got to preach tomorrow morning at Seth’s. I’ve considered it awhile and I’ve decided we’ll stay in the hotel. Grant has always offered me a room. But sleeping on the ground has suited me. The nights are getting sharp, though, and I think you need a bed.”

“Can I help with your jobs, Red?” Cassie began cleaning up after the noon meal, hurrying so Red wouldn’t have to wait when he was ready to go.

“Most of it is heavy work. That’s why they hire me.” Red carried his own plate to the sink.

Cassie was still amazed when he did woman’s work.

“You could spend the afternoon with Muriel if you want,” Red suggested.

“Why do you do all that work, Red? You have everything you need here. You grow your own food and you seem to have a fair-sized herd of cattle. Why do you do all those chores in town?”

Red began drying the dishes Cassie washed. He was silent as he considered her question. Cassie realized that the way he talked to her, not as if she was stupid but as if the questions she asked were interesting, was the thing she liked best about her new husband. She also liked that he never yelled and the way he savored every bite of the food she made. It was amazing to her that he’d complimented her on the food. She’d never thought a man would bother with such a thing. Why, she even found his nervousness endearing.

Now, he stood there helping her and thought about her question as if the answer were important. Which meant the question was important and somehow that made Cassie important. It was wonderful.

“When I first moved here, I had nothing. I got out here a year before they opened this area for settlers because I reasoned that this would be next. I scouted until I found this place, the creek, the grasslands, the mountain valleys that could feed so many cattle but would be worthless without the creek. I’d even found this cave and had the beginnings of my home built. I was working odd jobs around Divide to earn enough money to buy a few cattle. I staked out a few good water holes and bought them up nice and legal as soon as I could scrape together the money. I bought ten head of cattle from a herd passing from Montana to the rail yards in Kansas City. I had the cows and the land, but I still needed money.”

Red kept wiping until the few dishes were done, then poured them both another cup of coffee and settled at the table. “I had my eye on the forty acres next to me which had never been claimed, so I worked like crazy, afraid someone would beat me to it. As soon as I got the money together, I bought it.”

Cassie sat down across from him.

“Doing odd jobs in town turned into bartering my labor at nearly every store where I did business. I almost never pay cash for anything, and if I get ahead, they pay me or they keep an account open for me. Like at the general store last week, I was able to have Griff’s bills taken off what I had in my account, and they traded the value of your dress. So that bill is all settled. Quite a few of them are.”

“You are paying all of Griff’s bills with your labor?” Cassie sipped carefully at the burning hot brew.

“Sure. Labor is how you get money. How else do you think I could do it? If I paid cash—I do have some money in the bank these days—that money is all labor, too. It’s the same.”

“But…then why didn’t Griff work for them when he owed so much?” Cassie’s voice faded away. She knew why. Griff would have found working for Seth beneath him. Even now Cassie could feel a twist of embarrassment to picture Red doing all that menial labor for the town shopkeepers.

“Griff had his way. I have mine. I’ve managed to add another 160 acres to my holdings as other settlers gave up. Because I have good water, I control several thousand more acres. I’m buying it all up as fast as I can because I don’t want there to be any question about the title.

“I worked at the lumbermill to pay for the barns and corrals. I traded work with a farmer to get the chickens. I traded one of Rosie’s calves for Harriet. I’m up to nearly five hundred head of cattle now, with last spring’s calf crop. There’s a lot of money to be made in cattle drives back East, but I take a little less and sell my cows in Divide because I don’t want to be gone from my place for the whole summer. I don’t hire a lot of hands like a lot of ranchers do.”

“Five hundred cattle? You built that up from ten cattle in only…how many years?”

“I’ve been out here four years now, counting the year before I homesteaded. I’ve spent hundreds of hours hunting the hills for cows that have gone maverick. I’ve bought cattle cheap that weren’t ready for market from settlers who were folding up. I’ve sold off the steers only once. I had a few three-year-olds ready to sell last spring, but I’ve held on to all the mama cows so they could build the herd. It’s a lot of work to build something from nothing, but God gave us a bountiful world. He put gold under the ground in California and He put gold in the ground here in the form of rich soil and plentiful grass and water.”

“I’d be proud to help you in town if you needed me to, Red. I’d like to be part of what you’re building.”

“We’ll see. Like I said, a lot of it’s hard labor and heavy lifting. But I’ll think on it.”

“Didn’t you say you haul groceries from Seth’s to Libby’s Diner? I could carry that back and forth, just take a lot less each trip than you do. Please, Red, you’ve been so good about letting me help. Oh, I want to say again how sorry I am about knocking you out of the hayloft in the barn earlier. I was trying to lift the bucket of corn up there so I could pour Harriet’s food into her trough from overhead. She gets so upset whenever she sees me. And now that the colder weather has forced you to move the feeder away from the fence to keep it out of the wind, I can’t reach it to pour in her ears of corn. I thought you saw me raising that bucket up to the loft.”

“I did see you, Cass. I just thought you looked like you didn’t have a very good foothold. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. It’s all my fault. I was just afraid if I said your name to warn you I was there, you might be startled and fall. That straw can be slippery. I guess I proved that by slipping on it.” Red smiled.

“Thank heavens you landed on the haystack. You could have really been hurt.”

Red’s cheeks got pink and his jaw tightened, and she thought it was sweet he was embarrassed at his clumsiness. His sweetness reminded her of the way he snuggled up to her every night, even though they were careful to fall asleep with a respectable space between them. This morning she felt him rubbing his chin on top of her head when he was still asleep. It had almost felt like his mouth instead of his chin, but despite his assurances that a woman expecting a baby wasn’t unclean, she could tell he didn’t want to kiss her.

She remembered that awkward kiss the first night they’d been together. She was the one who had kissed him. He’d never followed with a kiss of his own, so she knew he didn’t like kissing. But she liked to pretend he kissed her while she slept.

“The haystack was lucky all right.” Red finished his coffee in one last, long gulp. “Let’s not feed Harriet that way again. I’d be glad to do that chore. She’s a cantankerous old monster.”

“I suppose the haymow wasn’t a good idea. But I’m sure to find a way I can keep feeding her.”

“Yes, well, yes…you’re sure to find a way. Let me wash these two last cups.”

“No, you must have chores to do if we’re staying away overnight. I’ll get things straightened in here and come help you as soon as I can.”

Red nodded. “I’d better get going then.” He practically ran out of the house.

“He’s always in a hurry,” Cassie murmured to herself. “I wish I could help him more.” She cleared the last bit of the kitchen quickly so she could get to her outside chores.

I
’ll get a horse saddled for you, Cass honey.” Red tried to saddle Buck for her, planning to ride another horse himself, but she’d approached Buck then backed away with one excuse or another until she’d practically been dancing around the horse. Then Buck had started acting spooky.

“Uh…would it b–be all right if I just rode with you, like we did last week?” Cassie gave him a look of such longing, like the idea of sitting so near him really appealed to her. Buck had held up well being ridden double home from town last week. But Red was worried about working the horse too hard.

If Red didn’t share with her, she’d have to ride Buck, because he was the best-trained horse Red owned, but truth was, Buck hadn’t ever calmed down much after Cassie and the chickens had scared him. Red was afraid he was permanently spooked now and would never be as good a mount. Red had a remuda with a dozen horses, but they were green broke—rough horses born on Red’s ranch or rounded up from the wild, well suited to cutting cattle when guided by a firm hand but not saddle ponies for an unskilled woman. The buckskin had come with him from Indiana, just like Rosie, and was almost as much a pet as Rosie. But he’d taken a skittish turn since he’d met Cassie, and Red was worried about Cassie riding him alone. Riding double solved that problem.

It took him a full hour to figure out Cassie had never ridden a horse before, or at least not much. She was terrified but doing her best not to let him see that.

He thought about hitching Buck up to the wagon. It was slower but it would have been okay. Unfortunately, he figured out about Cassie’s fear when they were a long way down the road to Divide. It was too late to go back.

Cassie had started out sitting sideways on the saddle while Red rode behind the cantle. But that proved to be not only uncomfortable for them both, but Buck didn’t like Red sitting back so far and proved it by bucking every few feet. Cassie had nearly fallen off a few times. Red fixed that by moving into the saddle and holding her firmly on his lap just as she had been after their wedding. Red found this arrangement to be no hardship.

Even after Red moved, Buck was fractious.

“Is this how it usually is to ride a horse, Red?” Cassie tried to sound calm, but Buck wasn’t cooperating. Now Cassie’s flapping skirts and her constant squirming around on Red’s lap weren’t making his horse a bit happy.

Red was happy…just not his horse.

“Buck’s a little jumpier than usual, I reckon. He’ll calm down once we’ve ridden a ways.” Red hoped.

Cassie’s constant nervous fluttering wasn’t bothering Red at all. He liked the feel of her against him, and every time she moved, he realized that being married was a wonderful thing. But Buck wasn’t married to Cassie, and he probably didn’t think she was heart-stoppingly beautiful, what with Buck having his own standards of beauty that included four legs and gigantic teeth. So Buck didn’t like her one bit.

They’d been on the trail a far piece when Cassie said, “I’d like to learn to ride a horse, Red.”

“Learn to ride? What’s to learn? You’re doin’ it.”

“This is only the third time I’ve been on a horse in my life. I should know how to do it if I’m going to be a rancher’s wife, shouldn’t I?”

Red’s stomach sank at the thought of what lay in store for him if Cassie got her mind set on the death-defying task of riding a horse. Then under the fear, he registered what she’d said. “Only the third time? How did you live in Montana for two years and come across the prairie in a covered wagon without riding a horse?”

“We had the carriage and Griff said riding was not ladylike. So I never …”

Red felt a little stir of his temper. It usually wasn’t too much trouble, but sometimes he had a little problem with it. “Cassie, Griff told you not to ride. Griff told you not to talk about the baby to the point you don’t know a thing about what’s to come. Griff told you a woman was unclean when she was carryin’ a child. Griff mortgaged all your family heirlooms without telling you so you could have a useless new silk dress every year. Excuse me for speakin’ ill of the dead, Cass, but your husband wasn’t very smart, was he?”

All Cassie’s fluttering and squirming stopped. She sat frozen in his arms.

Red tensed up when he realized he’d gravely insulted his new wife’s dead husband. It wasn’t a good way to endear himself in her eyes. He started to apologize, but he wanted to see her face first to judge just how hurt and angry she was.

Before he could get a peek at her she said, “Do you really think Griff was wrong about all those things?”

“Now, Cass honey, I shouldn’t have said that. I know you loved him and you …”

“Answer me!” All the softness was gone. She sounded almost frantic.

“Well, don’t you?”

Another silence, longer than the first, stretched between them. “You mean I get to decide if I think he was smart or not? Surely that’s not a woman’s place.”

“I don’t rightly know if Griff was
smart
or not. I just said he did some things and told you some things that weren’t smart. No one can know everything. I’m sure Griff was real smart about lots of things, but he was wrong about some things, too. He shouldn’t have said you were unclean. But maybe that’s somethin’ he was raised with. Some people have funny notions. And he should never have mortgaged your things. I know all about the law and how it treats property between a husband and wife, so legally those things were his. But there’s right and wrong, too, Cass. Morally those things were yours. Maybe you would have agreed to mortgage them, but I’m bettin’ you’d have said, ‘I want my family Bible more than I want a new dress.’ Now isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you’d’ve said?”