Unbridled Dreams (4 page)

“So that’s it,” Otto said. “You and God have it all mapped out, eh?”

His tone of voice said that, whatever her intention, Willa had managed to sound self-righteous. Again. Why did it always turn out that way? Why did Otto always resent it when she spoke of praying and getting answers? Sometimes she wondered if talk of God made him feel like he had to compete with the Almighty for her affection and loyalty. The truth was that were it not for her faith in God, Wilhelmina Friedrich would have taken Irmagard and returned to the East long, long ago. But Otto didn’t know about that. He did not share her faith and understood neither how much it meant to her nor how much it had benefited him. And so, once again, Willa cast a quick prayer to heaven and decided that the best thing to say right now was
nothing more.

“Let’s have that tea,” she murmured, and turning from the window, she led the way down the stairs and into the kitchen. While Otto added wood to the hot embers in Laura’s massive cookstove, Willa retrieved two cups and saucers, sugar, and cream. A few minutes later they took their tea out onto the back porch and settled on the swing. “Your sister is a fine woman,” Willa said. “I mean that with all my heart.” And she did. “In fact, it’s because of Laura’s hard work that Irmagard’s summers sliding down haystacks with the girls and chasing after Monte and Charlie on horseback have been so wonderful.”

“It hasn’t been all fun,” Otto said. “Irma’s done real work out here. Charlie’s told me so—and admitted that it surprised him. He didn’t believe her when she first said she wanted to earn her keep. But she won him over. She has worked right alongside the men and then used every spare minute to practice her riding.” Willa could hear him smiling when he said, “She’s determined. Like someone else I know.”

“I
am
determined,” Willa agreed. “And all I’m asking is that she give one year to considering another way.
One year.
” She sighed. “She acts like attending a fine school is akin to banishment.”

“Maybe for her it is.”

“I thought you supported me in this.”

“I did. But after today—” Otto shook his head. “I just don’t know anymore. She seemed so desperately
unhappy.
She’s wanted to be a trick rider with the Wild West ever since she learned Bill was going to add women to the program. And that dream has not abated with maturity. If anything, it’s gotten stronger. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken for her to learn to do what you saw this afternoon?”

“She is out of her mind if she thinks I am going to sit back and let her fritter away an opportunity to attend one of the best schools in the region so she can become a
circus performer.
I’ve seen what that life does to people. To women.”

Otto squeezed her hand. “I’ve heard that Bill’s troupe takes good care of one another—almost as if they were a family. The ladies are escorted wherever they go and their privacy is sacrosanct. Bill has taken every reasonable precaution to protect them.”

Willa sat quietly for a moment, trying to calm her pounding heart. She shook her head. “I simply won’t have it, Otto. The risk is too great. She must give Brownell a chance.”

With a sigh, Otto nodded. “All right. Let us assume Irmagard capitulates and goes to Brownell. She learns everything they have to teach her. And yet it turns out that all that has been accomplished is a forestalling of the inevitable. She still wants a life that’s . . . unusual. So Bill gives her a chance and she amazes him with her audition—which just might happen. Monte and Charlie both say she has real talent.”

“Monte and Charlie are biased beyond belief when it comes to that girl,” Willa said. “It won’t happen.”

“But what if it does? What then? Do you tie her to the bedpost and order up a wedding?”

The man could be so annoying. Like a dog after a bone he would not let a thing go. “Once she spends some time with refined young ladies and sees what the world has to offer she will realize how silly— how immature—this Wild West phase has been.” In the moonlight Willa could see Otto’s reaction. He might not be picking a fight, but neither was he convinced.

“Darling,” Otto set his cup and saucer on the small table to his left and took her hand. “You say you have prayed, and I believe you. But I still don’t understand how you can be so certain that God’s will for Irma is the very thing she least wants.”

How did the man do it? He didn’t claim a faith beyond a generic belief in God. Willa, on the other hand, pored over the Bible by the hour. It had been her lifeline to survival more than once, and yet Otto was bringing up one of the great theological questions of all time—how to know God’s will. Irmagard had brought up some of the same issues earlier when she asked if it wasn’t God who had given her the balance and the skill to perform. Maybe they both had a point. Maybe God didn’t
always
require what one wanted least. What if she was wrong? What if—
NO. Children, obey your parents.
That was in the Bible, and its meaning was as clear as it could be. No amount of theological quibbling could reinterpret
that
principle, and if Otto didn’t have the backbone to make Irmagard obey, Willa did. And would.

Somewhere in the distance a lone coyote yipped and was answered by an entire chorus of yowls. Willa shivered and was once more in the moment, worrying over her only child alone in the wilderness.

Otto kissed her hand. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “Which is more than I can say for you if you don’t get some rest.” He nodded toward the east where the faintest paling of the indigo sky spoke of dawn. Standing up he took her cup and saucer, set it beside his own, and pulled her into his arms.

When he moved to lead her back inside, Willa protested about the teacups.

“Let Viola mind the teacups.” He nuzzled her neck.

As Willa followed her husband up the stairs to the second floor, weariness descended like a shroud. It was always like this for her. Stress wore her out even as it robbed her of sleep. She sat on the edge of the bed while Otto removed his dressing gown. “I can’t sleep,” she murmured even as she rubbed her neck. “You know how I am.”

“I do,” Otto said as he got into bed and pulled her close. “But I have a remedy in mind.” He kissed her.

“Mornin’, ma’am.”

A rumbling voice yanked Irma off the horse in her dreams. She opened her eyes to the feeble light of a dawn about to break. A tall stranger stood at the door to the empty stall where she’d slept in a pile of fresh hay. Moving to smooth her skirt, Irma remembered she was dressed in Monte’s clothes. One of the snaps on his red flannel shirt was undone. Not that it mattered with her lack of endowments in that area, but Irma still felt herself blushing as she snapped it. She got up and looked around her, hoping to hide her embarrassment even as she picked hay out of her hair. And all the while the stranger was leaning on the stall door, watching with an amused twinkle in his eyes that made Irma self-conscious and irritated all at once.

“Who are you?” she blurted out. She reached for Monte’s hat and pulled it on, realizing as she did so that Monte was going to be past annoyance and right into mad when she next saw him. He’d had to go to the dance without his new hat
.

“I believe that’s my line, ma’am, what with you sneaking onto the property and stowing away in my friend’s barn.” He reached over and pulled a long piece of hay out of her tangled hair.

“I didn’t
sneak,
” Irma said, “and I wasn’t
stowed away.
And for your information Buffalo Bill is a friend of my father’s. And mine. So I repeat—who are
you,
and what are you doing spying on me?”

“Wasn’t spying,” the stranger said easily. “Couldn’t sleep. Saw you out by the corral in the middle of the night. Watched long enough to know you weren’t bent on horse thievin’ and figured I’d let you get some shut-eye before seeing what brings you onto the place.” He touched the brim of his cowboy hat. “Shep Sterling, ma’am.”

Shep Sterling?
Irma peered up at him. She’d seen Sterling’s likeness on a Wild West broadside. Shep Sterling had a drooping mustache and wavy, shoulder-length dark hair. This fella had a well-trimmed beard and short hair. He smelled of bay rum cologne and was dressed like he’d just walked out of a mercantile with an armful of new “cowboy duds.” His boots were shiny. And that belt buckle was . . . ridiculous. No self-respecting cowboy would be caught dead wearing something like that. Irma smirked. “The last I heard Shep Sterling was billed as the King of the Cowboys with the Wild West. He has long hair and a droopy mustache, and—”

“And what?”

“Real cowboys just don’t get all duded up in polished boots and belt buckles like that,” Irma said. “At least not the ones I’ve worked with. Not on a day when they’re going to be roping and riding broncs.” She grinned. “And they
never
smell like a spice rack.”

“Let me get this straight,” the man said. “I can’t be Shep Sterling because I don’t have a mustache. My hair isn’t long. My boots are shiny, my belt buckle is too fancy, and . . . I smell good.”

Irma shrugged. “It’s a nice outfit. For a drugstore cowboy.”

“Drugstore cowboy?”

“Someone who has the outfit . . . but who wouldn’t know a latigo from a lariat.” Irma looked down at his boots. “And whose boots haven’t ever set foot in a corral on branding day.”

The “cowboy” grinned and shoved his hat back on his head. “Well, ma’am, the fact is, I do know a latigo from a lariat—”he looked down at his boots—“but the boots and the buckle
are
new. And if what you say is true about
real
cowboys, then I guess I ain’t a real cowboy.”

“
There’s
a surprise,” Irma laughed as she brushed past him and headed for the corner of the barn where feed was stored. Grabbing a bucket, she dipped into a bin of oats and walked out to the corral. Diamond came trotting over. Irma scratched behind his ears. “Ready to go home, boy?” she said. Diamond thrust his muzzle into the bucket and grunted with pleasure.

“You in the habit of borrowing grain from Buffalo Bill?” the man asked.

Irma shook her head. “Not in the habit. But he won’t mind.” She glanced sideways at him. “And you’d know
that
if you were a real cowboy, too. Ranchers always have the latchstring out for one another.” Diamond finished the last of his grain, and Irma returned the bucket to the barn. When she got back, the stranger had stepped into the corral and was saddling the gentle gelding. “I’ll get that,” Irma said. The stranger stepped away and watched her work. She slipped the bridle over Diamond’s ears and pulled his forelock from beneath the browband. When the stranger moved to grab Diamond’s reins she shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. He’s ground broke.”

“
What
broke?”

“As long as the reins are dangling like that, Diamond considers himself hitched to a post. It’s actually called ‘ground tying’ a horse. Which is what you can do if they’re ‘ground broke’.”

“No kidding.” The man put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “That’s amazing.” He looked at Irma. “And you’d trust him not to run off? Even if he was out of the corral?”

Irma nodded as she hooked a stirrup over the saddle horn and checked the girth strap.

“No offense,” the stranger said, “but I thought girls always rode on one of them, uh, them . . .”

“Sidesaddles,” Irma said as she reached for the reins and mounted up. “Some do. I don’t.”

“Well, don’t that beat all,” the stranger said. “Now that’s something to write home about. Meeting a pretty girl who sits a horse like a man.”

Irma peered from beneath Monte’s hat, suddenly suspicious of the stranger’s supposed ignorance. She nodded at the corral gate. “If you’ll open the gate for me, I’ll be on my way.”

When he obliged, Irma rode through. “You never did tell me your real name,” she said, as the stranger closed the corral gate.

“Henry Mortimer,” he said, then shrugged. “Not a very good name for a cowboy, is it?”

Irma laughed. “You could try Hank.”

He smiled up at her. “You think that fits?”

Irma nodded.

“Well then, I guess that’s it. I’ll be Hank to you, Miss . . . ?”

Irma smiled. “When I get my spot with the Wild West I’ll be Liberty Belle.”

Hank whistled low. “What’s your act?”

“Trick riding.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“Keep an eye out later today,” Irma said. She hadn’t quite figured out how she was going to manage an audition with Momma in attendance, but she was determined it would happen. Nudging Diamond forward, she headed for the ranch, wondering about Hank Mortimer and what kind of connection earned him a room in Buffalo Bill’s ranch house. He seemed nice enough. Maybe she’d seek him out and explain things to him so he could appreciate what he was watching when the auditions started. Folks couldn’t really understand how much skill it took to ride a cutting horse until they understood how hard a calf would try to stay with its momma. The partnership between a good cowboy and a good horse was a sight to behold—once a person realized how long it took for that partnership to solidify. It had taken her nearly two years to teach Diamond how to partner with Liberty Belle. There was a lot to learn in order to really appreciate the West. It would be fun to enlighten a greenhorn. And besides, Henry had nice eyes. Broad shoulders.
You sap. You’re blushing.