The Loner (21 page)

"W
hoa, Dunny Girl, we're home.”

Cathleen stopped her horse in front of the house and stood up in the stirrup, ready to dismount.

“What's this?” Black Fox asked, as he brought Ghost to a halt beside her. “I remember once when you said if you didn't put your horse's care before your own, you'd be too old to ride.”

She hesitated only a moment before she swung down.

“That was before I had a home to come back to,” she said. “And a husband to take my horse to the barn and do my chores for me.”

Shaking his head in mock dismay, he answered with the low, wry chuckle that she loved.

“Spoiled you rotten, that's what I've done,” he said. “I'll not make that mistake again.”

“Too late,” she said, pulling her saddlebags off the skirt of her saddle. “I'm used to having my way and I'm not giving in now.”

Black Fox was right; she would have to give in. But she didn't have to admit that to him yet.

“Except on this one thing,” he said, and he dismounted, too.

Her eyes sought his as he let his reins drop to ground-tie Ghost and walked toward her. Without a word, he took the saddlebags from her with one hand and cradled her elbow with the other.

“I can carry those,” she said stubbornly. “And, for six more months, I can ride with you just the way I've been doing.”

“I was a fool to ever let you start that,” he said. “And now's the perfect time to put a stop to it.”

They turned and started for the steps.

“Black Fox…” she said.

He interrupted her immediately.

“Cathleen, you cannot be riding after outlaws and helping me bring them in to jail while you're carrying a baby. It's too dangerous and you know it.”

She stiffened, ready to put up a good fight, but
instead, she let him lead her up onto the porch and to the front door of the old cabin she had come to love. Home. Their home.

“I don't want to put the baby in danger,” she said. “Never. But if I don't go with you, there'll be no one to back you up and
you'll
be in danger. I'm torn to pieces between you two.”

In the parlor, he dropped the bags onto the leather seat of the ancient oak rocking chair and turned to face her. He took her shoulders in his hands.

He held her so firmly, yet so gently that tears sprang to her eyes.

“What's too dangerous is for me and the baby to stay here without you,” she said, her lips stiff with the unshed tears. “We might just perish of loneliness.”

He bent to kiss the tip of her nose, then he held her to him.

“How about you start us some supper,” he said, “and let me tend to the horses? Then we'll talk.”

Black Fox left her there and led the horses to the barn. He would have to tell her about his decision tonight, to keep her from worrying any longer, but first he had to think it through one more time, to make sure he could live with what he'd planned to do.

He didn't want to leave her either. Hardly ever did he feel the need to be alone anymore—he'd been too lonely too long before he found her.

But he loved his job, too, and it had been his life for many a year.

More than that, the Nation needed him. He and the other Lighthorse had cleaned out a lot of the riffraff, that was true, but there were a lot of criminals still running to the Indian Territories for shelter from the law. The native lawmen who knew the country and its natural hideouts in the rough terrain were the only ones who had a chance of ferreting them out.

He unsaddled and brushed the horses, put them into their stalls, hayed, watered and grained them. Then he walked back across the yard to the house, his heart finding its way to peace. Life had to be lived one day at a time. There was no other way.

And a man had to think of his own family and his own place once in a while.

When he stepped up onto the small back porch, he saw that Cathleen had a fire going in the stove and was setting a pot of potatoes on to cook. She had changed into the calico dress he'd bought her. It and her hair held the colors of the October western sky glowing behind the sunset.

Home. Night was coming on and he was home with the woman he loved.

He watched her through the open door while he cleaned up at the wash bench. She looked even more beautiful and feminine in a dress and she knew he liked her to wear them.

He smiled to himself. She was planning to argue some more and she was using every weapon in her arsenal.

His eyes followed her as she walked briskly back to the table, then to the meal box to take out what she needed to make cornbread. He could watch her every minute for the rest of his life and never get tired. She moved with her own quick grace and she always did what she started to do. If any woman
could
take care of a babe and capture criminals at the same time, it would be Cathleen O'Sullivan Vann. Already, she was quite a legend in the land.

He couldn't wait to watch her flat belly swell and grow round with their child. She wanted at least a dozen, she had confided in him on the way home this afternoon.

That made him shake his head wryly. A dozen children and to be a partner on the job to a Lighthorseman, that was all she wanted. Well, that was what she
said
she wanted.

She knew as well as he did that such a thing was impossible. He didn't know everything about her after only these few months of marriage, and in some ways she was an even bigger mystery to him, but he did know this. What she was really saying was simply that she didn't want to be separated from him for days at a time so soon after they'd found each other.

He threw out the dirty water, picked up the
clean towel she'd left folded beside the wash pan, and dried his face. Then he strode to the door.

“What I'm thinking,” he said, as he opened the screen and stepped into the kitchen, “is that I need to take a few months off the job to work on this farm. I noticed the barn and the other outbuildings need some repair before winter and the chimney could use a good chinking.”

She whirled to look at him, her face aglow.

“Oh, Black Fox, do you mean it? A few
months
?”

“I'm going to tell the council not to call on me unless it's a real emergency,” he said. “Not until summer.”

With a joyful cry, she ran to throw her arms around his neck.

“And then? After the baby gets big enough, we might let Aunt Sally watch him or her and I could ride with you sometimes?”

He chuckled as he pressed his cheek to hers and caressed her slender waist with both his hands.

“If I know you, you won't let that baby out of your sight,” he said. “And remember, Cat, I did survive for seven years as a Lighthorse all alone.”

She snuggled closer into his embrace.

“But I did save you from Becker's gang that night at the cave,” she said. “So you aren't saying I can
never
ride with you again. Are you?”

He slipped his fingers into her hair to cradle her head and tilted it back so that he could look into her face.

“No, never is too long a time to talk about…” he said, looking into her eyes with all the passion that was welling in his heart, “…except when we talk about our love. It will never leave us.”