The Independent Bride (3 page)

Abby pulled her galloping thoughts to an abrupt halt. Brought face-to-face with a handsome man in uniform, she was behaving like a silly girl. He was just a man. There were lots of them around.

“How about you, ma’am?”

He had turned to Moriah. Abby was ashamed to admit that for a moment she’d forgotten her sister. He might be
just
a man, but no other man had ever caused her to forget Moriah.

The soldier introduced himself. “I’m Colonel Bryce McGregor, commander of Fort Lookout,” he said. “I heard these three were here. I’m sorry they found you before I found them.”

“Did you kill them?” Moriah asked. Neither Larson nor Orman had moved.

“I’m surprised you care what happens to them.”

“My sister doesn’t believe in killing,” Abby said.

“These men are little better than animals. Lock them up,” he told his men. “I’ll deal with them later.” He turned back to Abby. “You ladies are new out here. Let me escort you to where you’re going.”

“Thank you, but we’re already there,” Abby said.

“If it’s shopping you have in mind, you’ll have to go to Boulder Gap. Better still, Denver.”

“Why? This store seems well supplied.”

“Maybe, but since Abner Pierce died, you can’t find anybody to serve you. Half the time the clerk’s drunk or gone. Abner held the lease on the store, but now that he’s dead, I’ll have to find someone else to take it.”

“You can’t do that,” Abby said.

“I have to, ma’am. There’s no one to run the place.”

“There is now,” Abby said. “I’m Abigail Pierce. This is my sister, Moriah. We’re Abner Pierce’s daughters.”

Chapter Two

“Women can’t run this store,” Bryce said.

“We can and we will,” Abby declared. “Since you’re the authority out here, I expect you to make sure no one interferes with us.”

Bryce knew he was staring at Abby as if he’d never seen a woman before. He
felt
as if he’d never seen one like her. She was everything a man should avoid—a figure made for temptation, thick brown hair, big hazel eyes, a face of beauty, and an expression of stubborn determination. At the same time she was exactly what no man could resist. It was easy to see how Orman and his friends had gone a little crazy. He didn’t feel too normal himself. There was nothing weak or shy about Abby. It was her intensity that drew him. She wasn’t a woman to sap a man’s strength. She would fill him with the courage to face danger without flinching, drive him to do without thinking what a wise man would think twice about.

“Where do you want us to put them?” one of the soldiers asked Bryce.

“The stable will be fine until I decide what to do with them.”

He warned himself to get a grip on his emotions. The one time a woman had affected him like this had led to a disastrous marriage. His father had warned Bryce that a man in his position should never let his heart rule his head. He’d made that mistake once. He didn’t intend to make it again.

The men staggered to their feet. The Pierce sisters watched nervously as they were dragged from the store.

Bryce didn’t have anything against women engaging in business as long as it didn’t affect him. But anything that happened in the trader’s store would affect him and the men under his command. It could also affect the situation with the Indians on the reservation. That was where the problem got personal.

Bryce had been breveted a general during the Civil War. But like so many officers who were promoted on the battlefield, his rank had been temporary and had been reduced with the advent of peace. Also, like so many other officers, he found that the cessation of war meant the army’s only theater of activity was the West. That meant fighting Indians. Bryce had nothing against the Indians. In fact, he’d have been perfectly happy to leave them in possession of this vast wasteland, but hundreds of thousands of people had come west looking for gold, their own land, a chance to start over, a chance to make their fortune in a land they saw as free for the taking. That was where things got complicated. The Indians were already in possession of the land, but it was a kind of possession the white invaders didn’t recognize.

Settlers plowed up the sod and killed the buffalo. In an attempt to solve the Indian problem, the government made treaties that guaranteed the Indians their own land and food supply as long as they stayed on a reservation. But the settlers didn’t honor the boundaries, especially when gold was found, and the Indian agents didn’t deliver food and supplies as guaranteed. So conflict between Indians and settlers continued, and it became the army’s job to solve the problem.

With the reduction of the army in peacetime, assignments out West were virtually permanent. Bryce knew he would have little chance of being posted back East if he had trouble with the Indians or complaints from the civilian population. Avoiding both would be difficult under the best circumstances. It could become impossible with a woman untutored in the ways of the West thrust into the middle of everything. The fact that she was extremely pretty would only make things worse. He had to find a way to convince her to go back where she came from. For her benefit as much as his.

‘I take it you’ve just arrived,” Bryce said to Abby once the men had been hauled away.

“What has that to do with anythinkg?”.

“You’re unfamiliar with the West, this fort, how to run a trading post. And that doesn’t touch on the problems of fulfilling your contract to deliver beef to the Indians.”

“What contract to deliver beef?”

He had to get his mind off her eyes. They were huge, dominating her face. The way she looked at him—eyes wide and inquiring—made him feel she was innocent, in need of protection. “The federal government has made treaties with several Indian tribes. In exchange for the Indians staying on their reservation, the government provides them with basic necessities. The most important is beef. Just before his death, your father won the contract to supply the beef. The last herd was stolen, but the Indians found the cattle somehow.”

“How much? How often? Where does the beef come from?”

Bryce cursed silently. She was indeed innocent and in need of more protection than he could give her. If she didn’t know what the contract required, how could she possibly fulfill it? “You’ll have to talk to the Indian agent. The Indian Bureau is part of the Department of the Interior. The army has no jurisdiction over them.”

“But wouldn’t you bear responsibility if the Indian Bureau fails to achieve its goal of keeping the Indians pacified?”

Bryce was relieved to see Abby was quick to understand the situation. It made him more hopeful she would see the wisdom of selling the trading post. “We’re also called on to protect miners, ranchers, farmers, townsmen, freighters, even rail layers when there’s trouble.”

“That’s what the army is here for, isn’t it?”

“For real danger, not for fools,” Bryce said. It was almost a relief to let his mounting frustration surge to the surface. It made him less aware that Abby Pierce was a disturbingly attractive woman. “Let a man lose a single cow and he starts demanding that every Indian from here to Wyoming be wiped out. Many a disgusted cavalry troop has marched for hours seeking Indian cow thieves, only to find the cows have merely strayed.”

“They need better fences,” Abby said.

“Ranchers don’t use fences. Cows roam free.”

“How do they get them to come back? How do they know which cows are whose?”

She obviously knew absolutely nothing about the West. From the silence of her sister, he assumed Moriah didn’t know any more. If Bryce could have legitimately done so, he’d have picked Abby Pierce up and bodily put her on the first wagon out of Fort Lookout. From the way his body reacted to the thought, he decided the notion of touching Abby in any manner wasn’t a good idea.

“Cows are branded with their owner’s mark. During spring and fall roundups ranchers cut out beeves for sale, brand the new calves, and castrate the males. That’s fundamental knowledge. Surely you can’t expect to survive out here if you don’t know things like that.”

Abby raised her chin defiantly. “Thousands of people come West knowing as little as I do, but they manage to learn. I will, too.”

“You don’t know enough to sell the items before you.” He knew he’d hit on a weak point, but Abby didn’t back down.

“We just got here. We haven’t even had time to see where Father lived.”

Bryce was ready to tie them up and force them to leave, but he figured they’d make that decision on their own once they saw their living quarters. Abner hadn’t been noted for being particular about his surroundings. Bryce couldn’t understand how such a rough man could have fathered two such lovely daughters. They must take after their mother. He could certainly understand why their father had kept them safely back East.

“He lived through there,” Bryce said, pointing to the door at the back of the room.

Just as the women turned their attention to the door, two enlisted men burst into the trading post. They came to an abrupt halt when they saw Bryce.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“We heard mere were two women in the store,” one of the men said, apparently too agitated by the sight of Abby and her sister to think of some evasive explanation. “We wanted to be the first to ask them to marry us.”

Abby and Moriah looked at the two soldiers as if they’d lost their minds.

“Women are rare at Fort Lookout,” Bryce explained. “You and your sister will probably receive proposals from every single man at the fort inside a week.” Once the men got a good look at them, they’d be fighting to see who asked first. Bryce had to stifle an impulse to throw both men out on their backsides.

“Why?” Abby asked. “They don’t even know us.”

Didn’t the woman have a mirror? Didn’t she know she was pretty enough to make even a sensible man forget himself? “A man whose wife becomes a laundress gets to move out of the barracks into a shanty. An industrious wife can earn two or three times what he earns a month, as well as providing him with home-cooked meals and other creature comforts. Women are in such high demand, no one can keep female servants.”

Abby’s look of astonishment turned to indignation. “You can tell all your soldiers they’ll be wasting their time. Neither of us has any interest in getting married. We certainly aren’t interested in doing so to enable our husbands to live better while we slave to support them.”

They’d have to have my permission to marry,” Bryce said. “I won’t give it.”

“A free-born man has to have your permission to marry?” Abby asked, looking at him in amazement.

“It’s regulations. The army allows only as many enlisted men to marry as we have need for laundresses. At the moment we have enough.”

Abby looked as though she would explode. “I’ve never beard anything so medieval in my life. You would never actually deny a man the right to marry, would you?”

“It’s my responsibility to think of the good of all the men, not just of one or two. Yes, I would deny permission to many.”

“I expect you’re married, with a house full of kids and servants.”

“I’m a widower with a young daughter. I have only one servant, and he’s a man. The two women I hired are both married now.”

That was another reason he needed to be posted back East. His parents thought he should have left his daughter with them, but he hadn’t wanted to be separated from her. There was the question of proper schooling and, later, a suitable husband. He needed a post back East to build his career, and with his family connections, he had a good chance of getting one soon if there were no troubles with his command. That was where he needed to be if he ever wanted to find a wife who could step into the social and political roles that had been traditional in his family for generations.

“Thank you for arresting the men who attacked us,” Abby said. “I also appreciate your sharing information about the way people live out here.”

She spoke as though people in the West were a different breed from those back East, and he had no intention of trying to disabuse her of that notion. The stranger she thought the people and the more uncomfortable their way of life, the sooner she’d go back where she came from.

In a way it was a shame she couldn’t stay. He hadn’t seen such an attractive woman—single or married—in three years. It would be a relief and a pleasure to spend some time in female company. But even though Abby Pierce was lovely enough to make him wish he could forget his duty, she seemed very prickly, very determined, even aggressive. Her sister looked more amiable. He liked his women soft and pliable, but he did prefer that they speak.

“If you would ask these two men to bring our trunks in, I’d be grateful,” Abby said.

Bryce didn’t have to say a word. The request was barely out of Abby’s mouth before the soldiers darted outside and dragged two enormous trunks into the store.

“Put them through there,” Abby said, indicating the door at the back of the store. The trunks made an unpleasant grating noise as they were dragged over a floor covered with grit. “I think we’ll close the store for the rest of the day,” Abby said to Bryce. “That will give us a little time to get settled and become familiar with the merchandise.”