Wyoming Bride (6 page)

Flint and Ransom had come to the Territory nine years ago, after the War Between the States, from their home in Texas. They’d left because there was no longer a place for them at their late father’s cotton plantation, Lion’s Dare. By the time they’d gotten home from the war, it wasn’t even called Lion’s Dare anymore.

Their mother, Creighton Stewart Creed, had remarried after their father Jarrett’s death at Gettysburg. Her new husband, an Englishman named Alexander Blackthorne, had renamed the land Bitter Creek and turned the plantation into a cattle ranch. Not just a ranch, an empire. The bastard had bought—or stolen—so much land that it took three days to ride from one side of Bitter Creek to the other.

Blackthorne had made it plain that if Flint and his brother stayed around, they would be taking orders from him. Flint and Ransom had been only eighteen and seventeen at the time, but they’d gone to war at fifteen and fourteen, and after three years of fighting and killing and living off the land, they were no longer willing to be treated like boys.

So they’d left, driving a small herd of mavericks north to a place where they could be their own bosses. When they’d arrived in the Territory, they’d spent the summer building a sturdy two-story, wood-frame house with covered porches front and back, similar to what they’d grown up in at Lion’s Dare.

A staircase split the lower floor in half, with a parlor on one side of a central hallway and a combination library and office on the other. The dining room, kitchen, and pantry took up the back of the house. They’d built two large bedrooms upstairs that could later be divided as their families grew, with fireplaces that warmed both stories at either end of the house.

They’d located the ranch house on 320 acres of land—160 acres each—they’d filed on under the Homestead Act of 1862. It was a day’s ride southwest of the fort along the Laramie River. Most of the land on which they ran their cattle belonged to the government, but they’d set their boundaries as far beyond the ranch house as they could control with a couple of Winchesters.

Flint and his brother were partners in everything, and more important, best friends. They’d suffered through and survived the war together, which had bonded them as tightly as any two men could be. Without Ransom’s support, Flint might not have made the decision to try his luck in the Wyoming Territory.

And yet, the thought of Ransom touching Emaline made him want to put his hands around his brother’s throat and—Flint cut off the thought. When he looked down, his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.

He didn’t know what to do with the dark, savage, selfish feelings roiling inside him. Lately, all he thought about were ways he could win—or steal—Emaline from Ransom before the wedding, which was scheduled for the last Sunday in August.

He knew Emaline liked him. If not for Ransom, she might very well have chosen him. Ransom had survived the war because of him, had survived the trail from Texas because of him, had survived the first miserable winter because of him, had survived an accident in the fourth year they’d been here because of him.

Flint found himself wondering whether Emaline might not be with him now if he hadn’t saved his brother’s life over and over again. There were a lot of ways to die here in the Territory. Renegade Sioux, horse and cattle thieves, and squatters with shotguns were all constant threats. Even more dangerous were the elements—the ever-present, relentlessly howling wind that tormented a man until he thought he might go mad, and the frigid isolation during endless months of sleet, snow, and below-zero temperatures.

Simply staying alive was a constant struggle. And yet, they’d not only survived, they’d thrived.

Flint watched Emaline’s and Ransom’s eyes meet. When his brother raised Emaline’s hand to his lips, Flint felt a surge of murderous rage. And swallowed it down.

There’s nothing you can do
, he warned himself.
You better learn to live with the situation, because it isn’t going to change
.

He felt nauseated. How could he love his brother and yet feel so much anger toward him?

Flint exercised iron control over the jealousy that threatened to spill out and spoil the day. He’d never experienced it before, and he didn’t much care for it. Jealousy truly was a green-eyed monster.

The hardest thing to handle was knowing that when he’d lost Emaline, he’d lost something more valuable than all the money and power and land he might possess after a lifetime of work.

Emaline is the love of my life. She’s my soul mate
.
If I can’t have her, I will wither like an unwatered plant and die
.

Flint snorted in disgust.
Soul mate?
No man died because he was forced to live without the love of a woman. Otherwise, he and Ransom would have been under the ground a long time ago. But he ached with longing, and he felt a powerful sense of loss.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if Emaline and Ransom were planning to live in a home of their own. That wasn’t the case. Every morning he was going to have to sit down across the breakfast table from Emaline and watch his brother kiss her and laugh with her, watch them touch, and see the love for Ransom grow in her dark brown eyes.

It was going to be pure torture. Maybe he’d round up some cattle and head south before winter came.

The instant he had that thought, Flint knew he couldn’t leave Ransom alone through the winter. It was dangerous enough with two of them working the ranch. One man alone would find himself spread too thin to supervise everything that needed to be done, even with the help of a couple of cowhands.

Even worse, they were facing a threat to their survival. Plain and simple, they were losing cattle. Someone was rustling them. Flint had a pretty good idea who it was, but he wasn’t going to make any accusations until he could prove it. He couldn’t leave Ransom to face that danger alone. He had to stay.

All his life, Flint had kept his brother safe. He couldn’t stop now.

He pressed his lips together in determination. He had to get over the feeling that life was no longer worth living if he couldn’t marry a woman who was as good as lost to him.

Emaline had chosen Ransom. He was going to have to live with that choice.

“I can’t believe the fair Emaline is choosing to marry your brother.”

Flint was startled to hear his own thoughts spoken aloud. And disturbed to realize that the speaker was Ashley Patton, a man who’d become the second-richest, second-most-powerful man in the Territory over the past year, using both fair means and foul. Flint knew for a fact that Patton had employed hired guns to move squatters out and paid his cowhands to file on 160 acres each under the recent Timber Culture Act of 1873, which he’d promptly purchased from them at rock-bottom prices.

It was some comfort to know that Patton hadn’t been able to win Emaline’s favor, either, although Ashley had made a serious effort to attach her.

He supposed Patton would be attractive to a woman. He was always nattily dressed in a tailored suit, his blond hair parted in the middle and slicked down. He had a neatly trimmed mustache several shades darker than his hair and flashy, very white teeth. He was short and stocky, but not fat. He had mud-brown eyes that reminded Flint of most of the cows he’d seen.

Patton had attended some fancy college back East and had inherited lots of money, but he seemed determined to make even more. Flint couldn’t help wondering whether it was Emaline or the yearly contract to provide beef for the army that Patton was more interested in procuring.

“Miss Simmons would have done far better to marry me,” Patton said. “She would have made a good senator’s wife.”

“Wyoming isn’t even a state yet,” Flint pointed out.

“It will be. And I’ll be one of its first senators. What will your brother be? Some two-bit cowhand living in a two-bedroom shack.”

Flint found Patton’s description of the home he and Ransom had built offensive. The furnishings might be crudely made, and after nine years of Wyoming winters, the house might need another coat of whitewash and a few repairs. But he’d be willing to bet it would still be standing in a hundred and fifty years.

He let the attack on his home go to address the insult to his brother. Which was how Flint found himself in the awkward position of defending Emaline’s choice.

“Ransom is a good man,” he said.

“I can offer her a more comfortable life,” Patton replied.

“Maybe money doesn’t interest her,” Flint said. “Maybe she’s looking for someone with honor and integrity.”

Patton’s lips curled in a contemptuous sneer. “I guess that explains why she chose your brother over a yellow belly like you.”

Flint’s face went white. “You son of a bitch!” His right hand was already fisted to throw a punch when he found himself facing a Colt .45 held by Patton’s hired gunslinger, Sam Tucker.

“Bad idea,” Tucker said.

“Put it away, Sam,” Patton said, frowning at his hired gun. “This is a social gathering, not a saloon. Besides, I can handle this.”

“Just makin’ sure there’s no trouble, Boss,” Tucker said as he holstered his weapon.

“Get yourself some punch,” Patton told the gunman.

Tucker smirked at Flint, then turned and headed for the punch bowl that had been set up on a table across the room.

Flint shot a glance toward the group by the fire, but none of them seemed to have an inkling of what had just happened.

“Be careful who you’re calling names,” Flint warned. “Words like that can get a man killed.”

“I heard a rumor about you,” Patton said. “If it turns out to be true, I don’t think the colonel’s going to give you that beef contract even if you’re related by marriage.”

Flint barely managed not to wince. During the Battle of Cedar Creek, the final skirmish in the Shenandoah Valley in late ’64, the Union counterattack had resulted in panic among the Confederate troops, who fled the battlefield. Left with his flanks undefended, Flint had been left with no other choice than to retreat with his men as well.

Flint had fought bravely in other battles with his company both before and after that incident, but the words
yellow belly
and
craven
and
chickenheart
and
coward
had followed him until the end of the war.

Most of the men he’d fought with were dead, or living a long way from here. There was no way for Patton to have found out that he had so notoriously retreated with his company. Flint didn’t lack courage, he was simply a man willing to allow himself to back down rather than die. Maybe that was shaving hairs, but there it was.

However, if he was ever branded a coward in Wyoming, he would have to leave. No man would work for him. No man would ride the river with him. No man would have anything to do with him.

Oh, God. Was that why Emaline had rejected him? Had she heard rumors of what had happened during the war? No, if that were true, he and his brother wouldn’t even have been allowed over the colonel’s threshold, let alone have a chance at that all-important beef contract.

“I hear the musicians tuning up,” Patton said. “I intend to have a dance with the prettiest lady in the room before I leave.”

“Just remember she’s already promised to my brother,” Flint warned.

Patton smiled. “There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”

Flint stepped in front of Patton and said, “What does that mean?”

“There are a lot of dangers in a land like this. And lots of reasons to change one’s mind about marriage. I’d be very surprised if your brother is still around when it comes time to wed the beautiful Miss Simmons.”

“Just so you know,” Flint said, “if anything happens to Ransom, you won’t be around long enough to become a groom, either.”

Patton laughed. “I enjoy a good contest. May the best man win.”

“May I have this dance?”

“Why, yes. Of course.”

Flint thought Emaline looked endearingly startled by his request for a dance. He held out his hand and felt the warmth and softness of her hand as she placed it in his. He realized he was nervous as he rested his palm against her back and took the first steps of the waltz the violinist was playing. Her eyes were lowered, so all he saw was the shiny twist of dark brown hair on the top of her head.

He watched the pulse in her throat above the high, frilly collar of her dress. He was aware of the stiff corset she must be wearing, which kept her back so straight. He wondered what it would be like to undress her a layer at a time, whether her skin would be as soft as it looked, whether it would be the same translucent ivory everywhere.

Flint knew he should be making small talk, or she should, but neither of them spoke. He thought he could feel her trembling, but maybe that was him. He knew what was keeping him silent. He wondered why she didn’t speak. But he didn’t ask.

They danced on, the silence increasingly uncomfortable, at least for him. Finally, Flint cleared his throat and said, “How are plans coming for the wedding?”

She looked up then, her dark brown eyes bright and excited, and said, “Sadly, I don’t have a mother to help me organize things, but Captain Harvey’s wife, Jean, and the sutler’s wife, Phileda, and several of the ranchers’ wives have volunteered to help. I’m so looking forward to the picnic after the wedding!”