To Have and to Hold (Cactus Creek Cowboys) (19 page)

Her father smiled the way he did when she was a little girl and needed comfort. “I won’t ask any more questions. Finish your breakfast. Afterwards, we’ll go together.”

She had to force herself to eat the last of her food. It didn’t taste good anymore. She wiped her plate and swallowed her coffee. She would have tossed it away if she hadn’t worried her father might consider it a worse crime than not admitting she was in love with Colby.

The
ciboleros
had camped on the far side of Rabbit Ear Creek. It was a bewildering mix of colorfully dressed men with plain women and children. The forest of tents was interspersed with heavy oxcarts with solid wood wheels. Long strips of drying meat hung from wires or ropes strung between poles, oxcarts, and even tent poles. Bags of what looked like hard, coarse, brown bread hung from the sides of carts. A large herd of horses could be seen grazing in the distance. She spied Colby and Ben in the midst of a group of men wearing brightly colored jackets, close-fitting leather trousers, and flat straw hats who gestured excitedly and all spoke at once. Several people from the wagon train were standing a little apart, apparently awaiting the outcome of the discussion. The moment Ben spied them, he came running.

“You gotta come,” he cried. “Colby says they’re trying to cheat us, and he won’t let anybody buy anything.”

Naomi’s gaze swept over the campground with its shoddy tents, shabby women, and children before asking, “What do they have to sell that we would want to buy?”

“Dried buffalo meat and bread,” Ben replied. “Colby says the bread is as hard as adobe, but he says it’s really good when you dip it in coffee.” Ben took hold of Naomi’s hand. “Come on. You’re missing all the fun.”

Naomi didn’t see anything that made her think of fun. The camp was barely habitable, the women and children had a neglected look, and a diet of dried buffalo meat and hard bread was barely better than living off cornmeal mush. She had no idea what kind of agreement was being hammered out, but apparently one had been for the
ciboleros
stopped shouting and broke out in smiles. Expressionless women went away and came back with strips of dried meat while grinning children scampered about hawking bags of bread. A dirty little boy ran up to them and said something she didn’t understand.

“He’s offering you his bag of bread,” Colby explained.

“We don’t want any.”

“Yes, we do,” her father said. “We’ll have some buffalo meat, too.”

Colby said something to the boy who dashed off and came back with a woman holding strips of dried meat about a yard long.

“How much do they want?” her father asked.

Colby managed the negotiations and explained how many pesos were in an American dollar.

“That was very cheap,” her father said after Naomi was loaded down with bags of bread and Ben was draped in strips of dried meat.

“They hunt to support their families,” Colby explained. “Once they’ve sold what they don’t need, they’ll head back to Mexico.”

Naomi indicated the bread and meat. “What are we going to do with that?”

“Eat it,” her father said. “I haven’t had bread in so long I’ve almost forgotten what it tastes like.”

“And the meat?”

“I’ll show you how to cook it,” Colby offered.

Just what she needed, one more thing Colby could do better than she could. She was surprised at the need to compete with him, to prove she was just as capable despite the fact that she knew she
wasn’t
. It didn’t make it any easier to tell herself that she was in a part of the country Colby had known since birth. She was still annoyed, sometimes to the point of being angry with him. She knew that was wrong. If she had to be angry with anyone, she should be angry with Norman and the other men who’d forced them to leave Spencer’s Clearing.

Now everything had changed. The rules would be different. At home the men wouldn’t have invited a woman to take part in their decision making, wouldn’t have listened to her if she’d given her opinion. Colby was different. He was irritatingly capable and just as domineering at times, but he listened to her opinions, encouraged her to do things she’d never tried, and had made it clear he expected a woman to play an important role in her family’s life. It was a point of view that was new to her, one she wasn’t quite sure she could accept on face value, but she found it exciting.

***

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into climbing this mountain,” Naomi said between gasps for breath.

“It’s not a mountain,” Colby said. “It’s hardly a thousand feet tall.”

“It would be a mountain in Spencer’s Clearing.”

“Wait until you see a real mountain.”

“I won’t mind
seeing
it. I just don’t want to
climb
it.”

They had ridden ahead so Colby could decide whether to camp at Round Mound or Rock Creek. He had put off the decision until after they climbed the beautiful, round-topped cone. Though it wasn’t looking as beautiful now as it had been when Naomi was standing at the bottom looking up.

“Don’t give up now,” Colby encouraged. “We’re close to the top.”

Naomi grabbed hold of a scrawny sapling and pulled herself several feet up the slope. “Who said anything about giving up? After a thousand miles of flat prairie, I’m thrilled to find a mountain.” She was pleased Colby didn’t repeat his insistence that this
wasn’t
a mountain.

After ten more minutes of stumbling over roots and crawling around boulders, they reached the nearly flat summit. To Naomi, the view was stunning. The country to the south was rolling or level, dotted with mounts and hills. The vast plain stretched to the north with occasional peaks and ridges.

“What’s that?” Naomi asked, pointing to a silver stripe above an azure band.

“That’s the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.”

“They look bigger than this mound.”

“At least ten times bigger.” Colby moved next to her, put his arm over her shoulder. “You ought to see them someday. They’re magnificent.”

Naomi was more interested in the arm over her shoulder than she was in any mountain. Colby had placed it there casually, almost as though it belonged there, certainly in a manner that indicated he didn’t expect to be rebuffed. She didn’t want to rebuff him, but she wanted to know if the casualness of it—a familiarity that felt almost like a possessive quality—had anything to do with the kisses they shared so recently. His words said one thing, but his actions were clearly leading in another direction. Thoughts, ideas, hopes, dreams, even idle longings had been swirling around in her head for days in a kind of aimless meandering—not seeking a solution but unable to ignore that answers needed to be found—but her father’s words had brought them into focus. She had reached a point where she needed to know what Colby’s intentions might be. She’d never indulged in an idle flirtation or a momentary fling, but she was sure it wouldn’t feel like this.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Colby said. “If you think the Rockies are impressive now, wait until you see them up close.”

“I wasn’t thinking about mountains.”

“What were you thinking about?” he asked.

When she turned to face him, he let his arm slide off her shoulder, down her arm, until her hand slid into his.

“I was thinking about you,” she said. “About us. About the future.”

He looked as though she’d suddenly started speaking in a language he didn’t understand.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she demanded. “You’ve made a point to seek out my company. We’ve been alone together. We’ve climbed this mountain together. We’ve kissed and held each other. I think I have a right to ask if you intend to ask me to marry you.”

Colby’s throat threatened to close on him. He’d never pretended he wasn’t attracted to Naomi, but neither had he expected his interest would last beyond the time he left the wagon train. Her father inviting him to travel with his family had made it inevitable they would be thrown together. They ate together. They rode together. They even argued together. It was inevitable that a close relationship would develop between them.

But that didn’t mean he was going to ask her to marry him.

He didn’t want to marry just for companionship, for a helpmate, for the mother of his children. Least of all did he want to marry for a convenient way to take care of his physical needs. He found it difficult to say exactly what
would
be sufficient to make him fall in love, but he hadn’t found it despite the strength of his feelings for Naomi.

Suppose he did ask her to marry him and she changed her mind? He’d nearly killed Elizabeth’s father when she jilted him. What would he do this time? Naomi had said all he had to do was look at Paul and Wilma Hill or Haskel and Pearl Sumner to see that love was real. Observing them had added to his conviction that what he wanted from marriage, what he
needed
to take the risk, didn’t exist. He wanted fire. He wanted excitement. He wanted to feel desperate just thinking of losing her. He wanted her touch to ignite a desire in him that was unquenchable. The mere sight of her should drive every other thought from his mind. He should feel that her every breath was
his
breath, that her heartbeat was his heartbeat. Separation from her should be agony, while being with her was sheer bliss. He wouldn’t waste a second glance on another woman no matter how beautiful, fascinating, or alluring because, to him,
she
was the most beautiful, fascinating, and alluring woman in the world.

That wasn’t how he felt about Naomi. There was no desperation, no fear, no bone-crushing need.

“I’m never going to marry, but if I were, you’d be the woman I’d want to be my wife.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“A less hurtful way of saying no. I don’t believe in love. Without it, I’d rather live alone.”

“You mean you would deny yourself friendship, companionship, even children because you haven’t found a kind of relationship you’re convinced doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.” It seemed unnecessary to say more than that.

“One day in the company of Pearl and Haskel or Wilma and Paul, and it’s impossible to imagine them being married to anyone else. What more is there?”

If she didn’t know already, it was impossible to explain. It was something she had to feel as deeply and intensely as he did. It had to come from within her. It couldn’t be learned. It had to have been there since the day she was born.

“I can’t put it into words, but I’d know if I found it.”

“If you can’t put it into words, you don’t know what it is.” Naomi pulled away. “We’d better go down. If the others arrive and you still haven’t decided on a place to camp, they won’t be happy.”

Naomi started down without waiting for Colby. He wanted to call her back, but what could he say that hadn’t been said already? He didn’t want their time together to end so quickly, but hadn’t he been the one to effectively end it? There was something between them that was unfinished, but he didn’t know what it was. He
did
know that in turning away from him, she was leaving a big hole in his life. He would miss her as he hadn’t missed anyone since Elizabeth. This was the end.

But the end of what?

***

Naomi woke with a headache that wasn’t improved by the smell of cooking grease and the sound of rain on the canvas covering. In an ironic reflection of the situation between her and Colby, it had rained for the better part of three days during which they had hardly spoken. Her father had cocked a curious eyebrow but said nothing. Ben hadn’t been as tactful, but he’d been too happy for the chance to ride each day to push the issue. Ethan was too involved with Cassie and Little Abe to notice anything that wasn’t shoved under his nose. The rest of the caravan was too concerned with keeping dry and preventing the wagons from getting mired in mud to have time or energy to be aware of the death of a romance.

Had it been a romance, or had she been deceiving herself from the start? Colby had told her from the beginning he didn’t believe love existed. He’d had twenty-seven years to be confirmed in that opinion. Why should she think she could change his mind in two weeks? Had she been trying to change his mind, or had she wandered into this blind?

Her father, who’d slept next to her, sat up. “Drat,” he said when he realized it was still raining. “I guess it’s cold breakfast again.” He sniffed the air, a puzzled expression on his face. “I must be dreaming.”

“You’re not,” Naomi assured him. “I smelled it, too.”

“It smells like beef. Where can it be coming from?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

“You can’t go out there. It’s still raining.”

“I won’t dissolve.”

Neither of them had to leave the wagon because the flap at the end of the tent opened to reveal Ben’s grinning face.

“I thought you two would never wake up, but Colby said it was okay if you overslept in this weather.”

“It’s not oversleeping when it’s still dark outside,” Naomi pointed out.

“Colby fixed breakfast for us,” Ben announced.

Her father, less interested in the weather or whether they’d spent too long in bed, asked, “How did he manage it in this rain?”

“He cooked underneath the wagon.”

Naomi wondered where he found dry wood, but she wasn’t surprised. Colby could do anything except communicate with his heart.

Colby’s rain-soaked face peered around the flap at the front of the wagon. “Are you ready to eat?”

Naomi wondered why water dripping from the end of his nose only served to make Colby more handsome. It wasn’t fair. His face ought to be so unattractive that a silly woman like herself wouldn’t fall in love with him. Yes, she’d admitted she loved him. She’d had two days with little more to do than try to convince herself that she
wasn’t
in love with him. She had failed miserably.

“We’ll eat only if you eat inside the wagon with us,” her father said to Colby.

“I can eat under the wagon.”

“No, you won’t.” Naomi was determined no one, especially Colby, would think she was nursing a broken heart. “You’ll eat with us, or none of us will eat. That includes you, too,” she said to Ben before he could lodge a protest.

“I agree with Naomi,” her father said. “Now come on in. There’s nothing in here that won’t dry.”

It was a tight fit. The bed of the wagon had been filled to the height of five feet with furniture, trunks, and boxes. The mattresses had been placed on top. There was enough room for three people to sleep side by side, but hardly enough space to sit up. Ben climbed up with his sister and father. After handing up plates of steaming beef stew, Colby chose to stand just out of the rain.

“Thank you,” her father said to Colby. “This is a real treat.”

“I confess I had a reason,” Colby said.

“It’s the river,” Ben interjected.

“What about it?” their father asked.

“It has risen overnight,” Colby said. “With all the rain we’ve been having, it’s going to rise still higher.”

“Can’t we wait until it goes down?” her father asked.

“It could take a week or more,” Colby said. “We don’t have enough food and clean water to last that long. But there’s another danger.”

“Indians,” Ben intoned.

“Indian attacks aren’t as prevalent here as they are a hundred miles back,” Colby said. “Being backed up against the river, we could be surrounded and cut off.”

“Is the river really high?” Naomi asked.

“It’s normally only a few yards wide with a rocky bottom that makes crossing easy. Now it’s so high we’ll have to swim the stock across.”

“That doesn’t sound hard,” her father said.

“It’s the rapid current that we have to worry about.”

“Well let’s not worry about it yet. I want to enjoy my breakfast.”

Warm sunshine and a trickle of water in the river wouldn’t have been enough to enable Naomi to enjoy her breakfast, not as long as Colby was only inches away. His presence made the air crackle with energy that reached out to everyone around him, an energy that had an especially powerful effect on her. It was like something tangible that wrapped itself around her making it impossible to ignore him. And she needed to ignore him. She
wanted
to ignore him. It was cruel that he had accomplished so easily what she couldn’t despite her struggles.

How could three of the most important men in her life act like nothing had happened to her? Men were usually blind to emotional turmoil, but how could they not realize the significance of the silence, of the distance between them?

Maybe the rain was a godsend. Sibyl or Laurie would have known immediately something was wrong and wouldn’t have been satisfied until they forced it out of her. Naomi didn’t like the prospect of having to explain that she’d lost her heart to a man who told her he didn’t believe in love. How stupid could she be? Had she been hoping her love would change his mind?

No, because she hadn’t intended to fall in love. She hadn’t even thought it possible. Which just went to show that being intelligent didn’t mean you had common sense.

“Thank god you made coffee,” her father said as he took the last swallow from his cup. “Now I feel like I can face anything.”

That
anything
proved to be quite formidable. Everyone had gathered to stare at the torrent of water that should have been a quiet stream.

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait?” Norman asked.

“Colby has already explained why we can’t wait,” Morley Sumner said. “I say we get started before the river gets any higher.”

“Are there any strong swimmers in the group?” Colby asked. “I only need one other.”

Several men glanced at the river, others at the ground, but his question was met by silence until Ethan stepped forward.

“Do you think you can swim against that current?” Colby asked him.

“If you can, I can.”

Naomi struggled to keep from raising a protest. Ethan was a good swimmer, but he was tall and thin, nothing like Colby’s powerfully muscled body.

“We have to swim ropes across,” Colby explained. “Once we attach them to something solid, we can start with the stock. In the meantime, collect all the empty barrels you can find. We will need those to help float the wagons across.”

Naomi hated the feeling of helplessness, but there was nothing she could do as she watched the men tie lengths of rope together while Colby and Ethan stripped down. Clothed in nothing but underwear, the contrast between their bodies was even more apparent. Her body tensed, words of protest primed to leap from her tongue when her father spoke.

“Colby won’t let anything happen to Ethan,” he assured her.

“What if Colby can’t take care of himself?”

“I haven’t seen anything yet that man can’t do.”

That’s because he hadn’t tried to swim a rain-swollen river. Colby was still human, which meant he had limits. Much to her embarrassment, she found herself thinking about the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles that rippled across his back, rather than the dangers of the swim. She should be thinking about her brother’s safety rather than the powerful arms that had held her in a tight embrace. And the last thing that should cross her mind at this moment was the generous mouth that had kissed her into surrender. What was wrong with her that she had let a man who didn’t believe in love cause her to tumble head over heels? She was almost relieved when the two men waded into the churning water.

Will
they
make
it?

The question thundered in her brain, but she was determined to remain confident regardless of the difficulty. It wasn’t easy to do when the current swept both men off their course.

Ben grabbed for his father’s hand. “The river’s carrying them away, isn’t it?” Fear made his voice weak and unsteady.

“The current will make it harder and take them longer to cross, but they’re already making progress. The ropes will keep them safe.”

Naomi was grateful for her father’s calm reassurance. It enabled her to tell herself her father had a much better understanding of the situation than she did, that if he felt confident Colby and Ethan were safe, then she needn’t worry. Still, it was hard when Ethan was swept farther down the river than Colby.

“The current is strongest in the middle,” her father explained. “It’ll get easier as they get closer to the far bank.”

If
they got closer. Their strength would give out while the river flowed on relentlessly. Colby’s hands knifed through the water with a rhythmic precision that changed only when he had to dodge a piece of floating debris. As the minutes rolled by, the current fought them to a standstill. Naomi moved closer to her father until he took her hand in his. His fingers gave her a squeeze of reassurance, but neither of them took their eyes off the swimmers.

“Colby’s out of the worst of the current,” her father announced.

“What’s he doing?” Ben asked.

Rather than continue across the river, he turned downstream.

“He’s going to help Ethan,” their father said.

“How?” Ben asked.

Ben didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Upon reaching Ethan, Colby swam next to him.

“He’s blocking the current,” their father explained. “It’s easier for Ethan to swim in Colby’s wake.”

Their progress was slow, but their approach to the far bank was steady. Everyone sighed with relief when Colby waded out of the river. Naomi thought he looked like some kind of god emerging from the water. Ethan’s safe arrival was cause for spontaneous applause.

Naomi wanted to sink down to the ground and cry with relief. It was the realization that this was only the first step in a difficult and dangerous crossing that stiffened her back and hardened her resolve. This was not the life she’d expected, definitely not the life she wanted, but she wouldn’t let it defeat her. Thousands of other women had succeeded. There was no reason she couldn’t as well.