The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (26 page)

That sounded… that sounded impossible. It also accurately described the way she had seen men mounting their horses her entire life.

“Come on now,” Matt urged. “You can do this.”

When I mount this horse alone,
she thought,
I will be proving that I don’t need a man. I didn’t need Edward, though I wanted to. And I don’t need Jared, though I want to. I only need myself.
She reached out and took the reins from Matt. “Don’t hold him, please. I shall have to be able to manage him
and
myself.”
 

Reins in her left hand, she stepped closer to the horse and placed her hand on his neck, as Matt had instructed. She eyed the stirrup. It was hanging at about her knee level now. That wasn’t too high, was it? She could surely manage to bring her foot up to knee-height. She grasped the leather cantle in her right hand and lifted her boot free of the split skirt.

It
was
hard, surprisingly hard, to get her boot into that cursed stirrup. The leather-wrapped wood bobbled merrily while she kicked at it, grunting with unladylike exertion, but at last it was there. She stood still, panting a little, with her leg twisted up in front of her and her arms outstretched to reach the pony.

“Now jump,” Matt advised, stepping in front of Galahad’s head. Just in case.

Jump. Jump. Jump. Of course. She had jumped before. When she was about nine years old! Really, when had she
ever
had to
jump
as an adult woman? Horses did the jumping for her.
 

She took a breath and jumped.

Her chest landed hard on the saddle-seat, and Galahad sidestepped nervously, taking her away from the safety of her rock. She grasped at the saddle frantically, hanging halfway off, her right leg dangling, her left leg caught up in the stirrup. Halfway on and halfway off, and no apparent way to either climb all the way on or drop back down to the ground. Oh, this was just a disaster!
 

The Matt spoke again, his voice calm and reassuring. “That’s alright. That happens. Just push with your left leg as hard as you can and when you get your leg straight, you’ll be able to lift the other leg over the saddle. Now go on. Push.”

And Cherry pushed, with all her might. She pushed until she could feel that her face was turning red. She pushed until her legs quivered. She pushed until Galahad was sidling uneasily beneath her. She wished she could tell him to be still, but she hadn’t the breath. And then, just as the little horse shifted his hindquarters away from her weight, she managed to fling her right leg over his back.

“Ah!”
she shouted as she settled into the saddle, that long-desired place like a paradise, and even as she tried to understand what was going on beneath her, with her legs spraddled in the most unbecoming way and her horse the most alien being in the world, Galahad sprung up at her shout and took off, bolting into the prairie.

“Cherry!” Matt was shouting, but there was nothing he could do. It was all up to her now, and she was bouncing and jouncing until her teeth rattled. Oh, where had her smooth little pony gone? This rough-gaited creature between her legs had not the least resemblance to the pony she had ridden side-saddle without a care in the world. Cherry was not so much terrified as she was dismayed. And thankful that even side-saddle riding had given her enough strength in her legs to grasp the saddle with her knees and not be flung off his back.

Galahad was already regretting his bolt by the time Cherry had gathered the reins and was leaning back against them, so they had not traveled too far into the prairie before he had been brought down to a shame-faced halt. He stood, sides heaving from the sudden exertion, while Cherry caught her own breath.
 

“That was most alarming,” she told the pony when she had quite recovered herself. “You should be more careful of your mistress, when she is riding in a new fashion for the first time. Who would take care of you, if I were hurt?”
 

The pony was unconcerned about the future. Ponies live in the now, after all. He ducked his head against the reins, trying to grasp a hunk of dry grass, and Cherry fixed them in a fist she leaned against the high saddle horn. Then she leaned down with her free hand and shoved her right foot into the stirrup. She shifted in the saddle, wiggling a little, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.
 

“This is not the most comfortable saddle I’ve ever sat in, and that’s saying something, coming from a side-saddle,” she commented. “I feel as if I am sitting directly on my… well, it’s just very unpleasant. I suppose I shall get used to it.” She loosened her grip on the reins and gave Galahad a nudge with both heels. He stepped forward brightly, and she realized that it was the first time she had ever asked a horse to do something with any sort of balance at all. It was the first time she had ever sat in the center of her mount, instead of hanging precariously off the side.

That was worth a little discomfort, she supposed.

They went walking back across the waving banks of silver grass. Matt had started after them on foot, seen that she had recovered control, and settled down to wait against the rock behind the barn. He was leaning against the edifice, arms crossed, as she rode the pony up to him.

“I guess that’s as good a test ride as any,” he drawled when she pulled Galahad up beside him.

“I’m thankful Patty didn’t see it,” Cherry said with a smile. “She’d likely stop me from riding in her saddle ever again, for fear she’d killed me.”

“Nah, Patty’d understand.” Matt slouched up and started fussing with the stirrups. “That’s how a girl learns to ride on the farm, you know… put her on and slap the pony on the behind.”

“No!” Cherry lifted a leg in front of her, embarrassed at the way Matt was fumbling with the buckles beneath her calf. “That can’t be true.” She glanced down; he was letting the stirrup down a hole.

“You’re taller than Patty,” he grunted, grabbing her by the leg and guiding her boot back into the stirrup. She blushed, but Matt wasn’t paying any attention to such silliness. “Yep,” he went on, walking around to do the left stirrup. “She told me, that’s how her pa taught her to ride. And she’s a real good rider.”

She lifted her left leg up past Galahad’s withers as Matt fixed the left stirrup, and managed put her boot in the stirrup without any assistance as soon as he had finished. “There y’are,” he announced, stepping back. “Now you sit too far forward. You gotta sit back, and let your leg go in front of you.”

Cherry obligingly shifted her seat in the saddle, but it didn’t ease up the hard pressure between her legs. It was really terrible, she thought. She couldn’t imagine how Patty dealt with it. To say nothing of men!

“Y’aren’t sittin’ back,” Matt said disapprovingly. “Sit
back.”

She wiggled.

“Back means back, Cherry.”

“For pity’s sake, Matt!” Cherry burst out. “I’ve never
sat back
in my entire life. I don’t know what that
means!”
 

He sighed. “You ladies.” And he put his hands on her back and hip and shifted her so that she
was
sitting back, on her tailbone.
 

It was such an astonishing difference in feel that Cherry didn’t waste any time feeling embarrassed over the way her friend’s husband had touched her. He hadn’t meant anything by it, anyway — he was just trying to put her in the correct riding position. And he had! He had!

She was sitting farther back than she ever could have imagined; instead of sitting rigidly upright, as she would on the corner of a divan, her derriere was directly underneath her body, much as she had seen a man lounging comfortably in a chair. Lounging comfortably while
she
was sitting as if a pole was lodged in her spine, one might add! The saddle held her comfortably in its broad, wide cantle, while her legs naturally shifted a little in front of her and pushed down into the leather stirrups. She felt utterly safe and secure. It was a marvelous feeling.
 

She smiled down at Matt, who was momentarily taken aback by the brilliance of it. He had never seen Cherry quite so elated.

“This should’ve been Jared teachin’ you,” he blurted out, and immediately felt ashamed, for the bright smile melted away and she looked momentarily bereft. Then her face smoothed over; the lines in her forehead disappeared and her smile came back, but it was the fixed and stiff thing he had grown used to seeing on her face.
 

“Jared made his choice,” she commented, and her voice was thin. “You are a good teacher, Matt, and I appreciate your time very much. Your hospitality and generosity to me have been beyond the call of gentlemanly behavior.”

Matt had never heard such a formal speech in his entire life. Evidently Patty had been right when she told him Cherry could write as good as a preacher. She could talk as good as a preacher, too.

“Well gosh,” Matt said, and then stopped. “Well, gosh,” he said again, and thought. “Why don’t you take him out and get used to trottin’ and gallopin’ in that saddle,” he suggested when he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I’ll stay right here for a little while and make sure you don’t have any trouble.”

Cherry smiled down at him and then nudged Galahad away from the rock. Matt watched her sway in the saddle, the split skirt falling away in pretty curves from her narrow waist, and he thought, once again, that Jared was worse than a fool. After this ride, he’d take Cherry down to order her a saddle of her own.

Hope came on the seventh day, when Jared had just about given up any thoughts of seeing her alight from the train. He had been a constant figure at the Opportunity siding every afternoon, awaiting the train alongside the station-master, who thought him a love-sick homesteader waiting on his wife from back east, and an ever-changing assortment of tradesmen come to meet their deliveries and escort the wagon-loads of goods back to their various storefronts. Opportunity was a bustling town, practically a city compared to the dusty little one-horse Bradshaw, with a lumberyard twice the size of Bradshaw’s, a livestock auction where Cherry’s stolen mule had almost certainly been sold months ago, and
two
hotels.
 

Jared had booked a room in the shabbier of the two hotels, apologizing to the roan when he saw the indifferent state of the livery out back. But he knew that Hope — he
expected
that Hope — wouldn’t agree to stay in such a place, with its musty, moth-eaten curtains hanging crooked in the dirty windows and the dour-looking manageress smoking a pipe in the hotel office. And keeping as far from her physical presence at night as possible was a matter of grave concern for Jared. He wasn’t giving himself any chances to slip up. He had to convince this woman that she wasn’t going to get any satisfaction from him now, and that meant she couldn’t have any opportunities to seduce him.
 

Because he knew… he’d give in.

So he’d patted the roan on the neck and slipped the hostlers a few extra coins, with the promise that there was more where that came from for every day his horse’s stall was kept spotless and the hay was clean and sweet-smelling. A cowboy could never take too much trouble with his horse, after all. Even a retired cowboy.

And then he went down to the train station, got a timetable, and waited.

On the sixth day, the station-master finally asked him what the hell he was waiting for. He was starting to suspect Jared might have criminal motives. Perhaps he was sussing out the weekly deliveries in preparation for a robbery.
 

“Just a woman,” Jared said drily. “Nothin’ special.”
 

And the station-master laughed and let it be.
 

On the sixth night he sat at the bar of the saloon next to the hotel and drank whiskey from a dirty glass. The saloon was teeming with people; a large group of cowboys was in town for some reason or another, and they were being stared down by a group of ladies who had taken a floor of rooms at the town’s nicer hotel and were drinking something the bar-man called “champagne” but was suspiciously lacking in bubbles when the bottles were opened.
 

“Oughta make friends with one of them ladies over there,” the bar-man said after the fourth or fifth whiskey. He was growing fond of Jared, a quietly unhappy man who never made trouble and always paid his tab at the end of the night. That was the sort of man a bartender wanted to help out. “I hear they’re looking for husbands, but I imagine they’ll take whatever they can get. They’ve been here two or three weeks and money must be gettin’ low for some of them.”

Jared turned and looked at the women in the saloon’s far corner. There were at least twelve of them, all in various stages of intoxication. One was standing on her chair singing a song; her voice might have been that of an angels’ except that it was just one more noise in a sea of noises. “They spend enough on booze,” he observed.
 

“Tryin’ to stand out,” the bar-man said, not exactly sympathetic. “Want to seem fun-lovin’ I guess. Won’t tie a man down after they’re married.”

Jared shook his head. “I don’t want company that bad.”

The bar-man nodded. “I hear ya. Thought it was worth a try, though. You look a mite lonely.”

Jared just nodded. He took a long drink and looked at the bar-man’s earnest face. The fella was young, with long mutton-chop whiskers of a scruffy orange-yellow. He wasn’t a handsome man, but his fingers were calloused and his face was tan. He probably had a claim he worked in summer and held up this bar in the winter. Hard worker. Jared liked him instinctively. “Nice of you,” he said finally. “I reckon I’ll always be lonely if I mess this up.”
 

The bar-man looked interested, but Jared just turned his glass upside-down. “Time to go.”

Now, standing on the platform, watching the train slowly gain size and detail as it came chugging from the east, Jared remembered his words to the bar-man. He couldn’t mess this up. He had to find a way to put Hope aside gently, send her back to Galveston or to start somewhere new, maybe even back East, anywhere but here in the Dakotas, anywhere but with him. If she beguiled him again, there would be no second chances. A girl like Cherry wasn’t going to appear out of nowhere again, and she certainly wouldn’t take him back if he betrayed her. He knew that in his bones.