The Heart's Frontier (29 page)

He sounded so certain, so sympathetic, that Emma’s eyes stung with barely restrained tears. She couldn’t muster a reply, and instead fixed her gaze on the remuda
, which Vic had stopped beyond the two wagons. Luke was there now, changing his saddle from Bo to a fresh horse.

He does have it in him. If he loves me, he will do it for me
.

She managed a noncommittal nod for Griff and then kneed Sugarfoot forward. There were only a few hours left between now and the time they turned the herd over to the agency in Hays. She had to talk to him before then.

But when she reined Sugarfoot to a halt beside Luke, his greeting wasn’t as warm as she had hoped. A smile brushed across his lips but failed to stay in place. His gaze lit on her face briefly but then swept the landscape behind her.

“I hope the ride wasn’t too long for you. You did a great job. Thanks.” He bent down to fasten the cinch strap beneath the horse.

How does he know if I did a good job or a bad one? He hasn’t looked at me all day
.

The thought almost shot out of her mouth, but she bit it back. “I was hoping to talk to you alone, but you never came back to ride with me.”

“Yeah? Well, I have a minute right now before I leave.” He kept working as he spoke, his eyes fixed on his hands.

“Leave?” Sugarfoot pranced sideways when she stiffened in the saddle. “You are leaving?”

“While the cattle eat their fill, I need to ride ahead into Hays to let them know we’re here and check on the train. It’ll take a couple of hours.”

He straightened, but the face he turned up to her wore the polite expression of someone whose mind was elsewhere. Emma’s words knotted in her throat. The kind, searching eyes of the Luke she loved had grown distant since this morning.

“What did you want to talk about?”

The sound of hooves from behind announced someone’s approach. She glanced back to see Papa riding toward them, his gaze fixed on her. He halted his horse directly beside her. Luke glanced at him and then turned back to the horse to check the position of the cinch straps.

“Emma,
Maummi
has need of you and Rebecca to help with the cooking. I will care for your horse.”

How did he know what
Maummi
needed? He’d just come in from the rear of the herd, where he’d been all day. She glanced toward the camp, where her grandmother knelt before Jesse’s chair, checking on his leg.

He is trying to separate me from Luke
.

Knots tightened in her middle, and she had to bite back a frustrated retort. Though her lips were clenched shut against disrespectful words, she didn’t bother to school the resentful glance she turned on Papa. He returned it calmly, without the slightest sign of backing down.

Finally, she lowered her head. “Yes, Papa.”

She swung out of the saddle and landed a little unsteadily on the ground before placing the reins in her father’s hand. With one last longing glance at Luke, who did not look up, she headed toward the wagon to help her grandmother.

But she did stomp puffs of dirt with every frustrated step.

T
he main street of Hays bustled with activity. Down the center of the wide street lay a long stretch of railroad tracks, with train cars lined up from the edge of town past the stockyards. On the south side of the tracks the train depot stretched almost the full block. The buildings that lined the north side had all been built in recent years, since fire had destroyed much of Hays a few years back.

Not much had changed since Luke’s visit the previous year, when he’d ridden point for Pa in a drive from Laredo. Lively music poured from the open doors and windows of a handful of saloons and gaming houses, none of which lacked for customers. As he walked past Tommy Drum’s Saloon, a roar of cheers went up inside, probably a winning poker hand that had caught the rowdy crowd’s approval. Snatches of conversation reached him, more than a few in German, thanks to the German-Russians who had settled in the area at the urging of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. Down at the end of the street, past Krueger’s Dry Goods and Groceries, a group of cowboys stumbled out of Kate Coffey’s Saloon and headed toward the Sporting Palace, one of several brothels that also served as a crib for soiled doves.

As he rounded the corner heading for the stockyard agent, he resolved to keep the Switzers away from this part of Hays.

At the reminder of Emma, Luke’s step slowed. All day long she had plagued his thoughts. One of the hardest things he’d ever done was not turn around to see how she was faring during the longest haul of the journey. But he knew that Jonas, bringing up the rear, was sure to be watching, so he had to trust that Griff would keep an eye on her and give her a hand if she needed it.

Hours in the saddle had given him plenty of time to consider Jonas’s words. The conclusion burned like acid in Luke’s gut, but he couldn’t deny the truth. Jonas was right. Emma was raised in a world he could never understand, nor could he ask her to give it up. He had nothing to offer her. No home and not much money. The only family he had left was his pa and a couple of brothers who were spread out between here and New York, surely no substitute for the father and sister and grandmother she would have to leave behind.

Emma deserved a better life than the one he could give her.

“Hey, look who finally showed up!”

The shout jarred him out of his gloomy thoughts. He raised his head and saw a familiar figure. He grinned. “Pa!”

He quickened his pace and exchanged an enthusiastic handshake with his father. “What are you doing here? Last I heard you were taking a herd of Longhorns to Abilene.”

“Delivered them a week ago and decided I’d ride on over here to see how my son came out on his first job as trail boss.” His eyebrows slanted askew. “You cut it close, boy.”

“Train’s still here, isn’t it?” Luke jerked his head down the street. “Like you always said, as long as you make it before the train leaves, you’re on time.”

“No, I always said better early than late.” His grin became a smirk. “So, you still have life all figured out, do you? Got it lassoed and hog-tied into a tidy bundle?”

Luke couldn’t meet his pa’s eye. “Well, I might have learned a thing or two.”

Pa’s laugh rang down the street. “But you made it, and that’s what counts. C’mon. Let your old man buy you a drink to celebrate.”

Luke laughed off the offer, as he’d grown accustomed to doing whenever Pa wanted a drinking partner. “Thanks, but I just rode into town to make the arrangements. My outfit’s grazing the herd a few miles south of here, and they are eager to be free of them.” He grew grim. “It’s been a rough ride the past week.”

Pa’s expressive eyebrows arched. “Rustlers?”

“Yeah. I lost two good men and picked up a pair of prisoners to turn over to the sheriff.” He brightened. “I also gained an extra five hundred head of beef.”

“That
is
something to celebrate.” A firm hand thumped him on the back. “You go on and take care of business. I’ll be hereabouts later on, so we can meet up then.”

“I’ll find you.”

Luke watched his father saunter down the street, his gait as cocky as ever. When he reached the entrance of a saloon, he turned.

“Luke?”

Luke stopped in the act of entering the railroad agent’s office.

“I’m proud of you, son. You did a good job.”

That was one of the few words of praise Luke had ever heard his father utter. He flashed another grin. “Thanks, Pa.”

Luke returned to the herd accompanied by two of Sheriff Charles Howard’s deputies. A mouthwatering aroma rising from various pans on a large fire greeted them before they had dismounted.

Ramsey, the older of the two men, raised his nose in the air and drew in a long, appreciative sniff. “I don’t know what that is, but I sure hope I’m invited to stay to supper.”

The other man, Hamilton, agreed. “Who’s your cook on this drive, Carson?”

“I am.” McCann came around the chuck wagon at that moment, water sloshing from a full bucket at his side.

Ramsey’s face broke out into a grin. “I knew by the smell it would be somebody good. How you doing, McC—”

The name was cut off in a gulp as Mrs. Switzer rounded the wagon behind him carrying a stack of tin plates. How she’d managed to keep her
kapp
and her apron as white as the day she started, Luke didn’t know. Or maybe she had a store of clean ones tucked away in that hutch of hers. The
kapp
bobbed up and down as she dipped a silent nod to greet the newcomers and bypassed McCann on her way to the campfire.

Two horses approached from behind, and Luke turned to see Emma and Rebecca rein their mounts to a stop near the remuda
. They both slid out of the saddles and took a moment to settle their bulky skirts around the black trousers they had lashed close at the ankles. Jonas chose that moment to approach from the opposite direction, leading two of his four oxen by rope halters. As he neared, he drew the watchers’ attention to the hulking hutch in the back of the ox wagon.

Both deputies gawked, their jaws slack and their eyes bugging.

Hamilton found his tongue first. “Carson, your outfit is crawling with Amish.”

Luke hid a grin. “They have been lending a hand since we were attacked by rustlers. We were lucky they came across us when they did.”

“Speaking of rustlers, I hope you fellows are here to take charge of these two.” Jesse’s voice cut across the distance. His chair had been lowered to the ground behind the wagon, where he kept watch on his prisoners. “I’ve looked at their ugly faces so long I’ll probably have nightmares for months.”

The deputies went to take a closer look at the captives, and Luke with them. He was aware of Emma’s gaze fixed on him, and also of Jonas’s sharp-eyed stare from the other side of the wagon. By mustering an enormous amount of strength, he managed to keep his step straight and his eyes forward. He knew that if he even glanced her way, his resolve would crumble.

“Well, look who we have here.” Ramsey bent over at the waist and made a show of examining the rustlers. “If it ain’t Lester Aims and Earl Bishop. Boys, Sheriff Howard is gonna be mighty glad to see you two. He has a list of complaints against you twice the size of a Texas steer’s horn.”

“We’ll take them from here,” Hamilton told Jesse. Then he cast a hungry look toward the fire. “But there’s no hurry, is there? We have time for some grub if someone was to invite us.”

McCann poured a dipperful of water into the big pot suspended over the low flame. Mrs. Switzer stirred the contents, brought the spoon up to her lips for a taste, and then gave a satisfied nod. With ceremony, McCann bent over, picked up a metal triangle, and held it aloft to run the striker around the inside.

“Come and get it.” His familiar bellow rolled over the prairie. He lowered his gaze to the deputies and grinned. “Guests are always welcome at the McCann-Switzer chuck wagon.”

If the two thought that anything was odd in the addition of an Amish woman’s name to the reputable trail cook’s, they didn’t waste time saying so. Soon they were tucking away stew and biscuits as though they hadn’t eaten in a week.

McCann sidled up to Luke. “You’d barely ridden out of sight when Jonas spied a couple of jackrabbits and set about laying snares. Before I knew it, he had a half dozen of the scrawny things. Ordinarily I would have spitted ’em and roasted ’em, but Miz Switzer insisted on stewing them. You won’t believe how good stew can be until it hits your tongue.” He lowered his voice and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “I watched how she did it. Can’t wait to try it myself. And the peach cobbler she cooked up. Mm-mmm.” He stepped away to oversee dishing up generous portions of rabbit stew.

Luke turned his back to the activity around the fire and gazed out over his cattle. The job was almost done. Nothing left but the counting and weighing and collecting his pay. The stockyard agent had assured him that the extra cattle would be counted as part of the Triple Bar herd unless they had traceable brands. Hancock would make a tidy profit, and Luke would no doubt have his pick of jobs once word spread.

Why, then, was he fighting a melancholy cloud that threatened to settle over his soul?

Someone approached from behind. Clearing his expression, he turned and found Emma standing no more than an arm’s length behind him. The angry scratches on her face had settled into a spray of tiny scabs, and the welt had become a faint bruise that marred one perfectly smooth cheek. She was, if anything, more beautiful to him than ever.

Her eyes searched his, and his resolution to honor her father’s request wavered. How could he say goodbye to her when what he really wanted to do was sweep her into his arms, throw her on his horse, and ride hard for Texas before anyone could stop them?

“I brought your supper.” She thrust a plate of thick, delicious-smelling stew into his hands.

He automatically took it. “Thank you. I…” He cleared his throat. “I heard it’s really good.”

The dusty ground must have held some special fascination for her, because she studied it with rapt attention. The silence between them became electric, full of unspoken sentiment and suppressed feeling. Around them, the men’s talk swelled with praise for the food and admiration for the two cooks who had produced it, but the noise seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier that surrounded Emma and Luke.

But that same barrier stood as firm as a stone wall between them.

Her shoulders rose as she drew in a breath. “Luke, I’ve wanted to say something, but I’m afraid you’ll think I’m forward.”

The idea brought a smile to his lips. “I can’t imagine anything you could say that would make me think you forward.”

She looked up, her eyes full of an unnamed emotion that caused his insides to quiver in response. “I wanted to say—”