Wyoming Wildfire (23 page)

“Sit!” Burch’s incisive command halted the dog’s advance, but he didn’t sit. Instead he put his paws on Burch’s arm—fortunately his good arm—and licked his face with gusto.

“What do you mean bringing that dog in here?” Sibyl demanded, turning on Lasso. “It’s no thanks to you that he hasn’t turned Burch onto the floor and broken his other arm. Take him right back outside until he learns to behave.”

“The poor mutt hasn’t done a bit of harm,” Lasso said, grinning at Burch’s efforts to keep from having his face thoroughly licked. “He’s just crazy with missing Burch.”

“He can look through the window. Now go on and get him out of here.”

“You’re cruel, Miss Sibyl. There’s no heart in you.”

“When you have to clean the hair off the sofa, or get down on your hands and knees to mop up his muddy tracks, you’ll feel a little differently about it too.”

“You’d better put him out,” conceded Burch. “Even Aunt Ada wouldn’t allow him in the house for more than five minutes.”

“Come on, boy,” Lasso called, whistling to the dog. “It seems you’re just not good enough for this place any more.”

Sibyl’s annoyance was fanned into anger by Lasso’s remark, but before she could utter the sharp retort that sprang to her mind, the dog spotted Augusta’s cat spread out on the back of one of the chairs. With a joyous bark, he immediately gave chase.

The cat wasted no time in useless hissing and spitting. Any dog used to tangling with wolves and chasing after cougars meant business. She jumped from the back of the chair to the top of the china cabinet. Brutus leaped against the cabinet, leaving deep scars in its shiny surface with his toenails and sending several plates hurtling from the grooved shelves to shatter on the floor. Still not feeling entirely safe, the cat leapt over to the top of the curtains. Her claws dug in and held, but the weight of her body caused her to slide down, creating huge rents in the fragile material. The bottom half of the curtain was immediately shredded into ribbons by Brutus’s frantic efforts to climb it to get at the cat, who remained annoyingly just out of reach.

The feline inspected her position and concluded that it could still be improved. With a beautifully athletic arching leap, she sprang from the curtains, landed on Lasso’s head, and then vaulted atop the buffalo head hung high above the mantel.

Safely out of Brutus’s reach at last, she proceeded to insult him by first engaging in a violent fit of hissing and spitting, then by calmly spreading herself out between the buffalo’s horns and washing her paws. Brutus was properly enraged, but he was intelligent enough to realize it was futile to try to reach the cat. He sat back on his haunches and barked derisively at a foe who would sink to such unsportsmanlike conduct as to climb completely out of his reach. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.

Augusta watched the destruction of the room in stupedfied silence, but a wail like the battle cry of an untamed savage erupted from Sibyl. She grabbed a broom and brought it down on Brutus’s hindquarters with all her might. The startled beast turned on his unsuspecting adversary with a savage snarl, only to be brought up short when he saw it was Sibyl. But his brief savagery was quite enough to destroy the last shreds of Sibyl’s temper. She dealt him a thumping swat that sent him scampering out of the room with his tail between his legs. Without missing a beat she turned on Lasso and belabored him about the shoulders.

“Are you crazy?” the dumbfounded man squawked. “Cut that out!”

“I wish I could break your neck, you overgrown buffoon. Anyone but a born fool would have known better than to bring a dog into a room with a cat, especially when it was you who gave Augusta the cat. What did you expect them to do, shake hands?” She whacked him over the head again, and Lasso snatched the broom from her hands, holding it above his head out of her reach.

“You shouldn’t be allowed anything any more dangerous than a dishcloth,” he yelped as she slapped ineffectually at his powerful arms.

“And you should be kept in the barnyard where you belong!” Sibyl paused to catch her breath and realized that Burch was laughing so hard he was in more danger of falling out of the chair than when the dog had jumped on him. Such a breach of loyalty immediately brought her unspent wrath down upon his head.

“What are you laughing for? Do you think it’s funny to see the room we’ve worked so hard to make look decent utterly destroyed because your boneheaded friend brought an outdoors hunting dog in to visit?” Burch was too sorely tried to be capable of words.

“I hope you slide right out of that chair and your leg hurts so much you can’t sleep for a week,” Sibyl raged at him, but now Lasso had started to laugh, and Sibyl was so furious at both of them, she couldn’t speak.

“That cat, when it leaped on your head …” was all Burch could get out before going off again.

“It’s nothing compared to the little woman beating me like I was a dusty carpet,” Lasso howled raucously.

“I hope you both choke,” Sibyl cried and raced from the room to keep them from seeing the tears sparkling in her eyes.

“My, my,” Augusta said to no one at all. “This will take some doing to put right.”

Two days later, Sibyl had still not forgiven Burch. She scrupulously provided his meals and tended his wounds, but she refused to speak to him unless she had to, and she would not spend any time in the same room with him as soon as the work that kept her there was done.

“How long is she going to carry on like this?” Burch inquired of Augusta after a meal eaten in total silence.

“I can’t say. Your laughter hurt her deeply. She spent a long time on this room and was rightfully proud of the results.”

“But I wasn’t laughing at
her.
I was laughing at that damned cat and her beating Lasso with a broom like he was a street vagrant.”

“That’s the same as laughing at her.”

“No, it isn’t.

“I doubt you’ll be able to convince her of that, and after all, that’s what matters.”

“It’s a damned nuisance to be stuck in a house with a female that glares at you all the time like you were the devil himself, and then does everything she’s expected to do with positive Christian resignation, just like she expected to be thrown to the lions the minute I get well.”

“Sibyl was greatly upset by your accident, and she almost worried herself into a fever over you. She’s still worried that your leg might not heal properly. I don’t know, but I think your laughing at her made her feel you didn’t value anything she had done for you.”

“But that’s nonsense. I owe her my life. If she hadn’t insisted on looking for me, I might have died out there.”

“Have you told her?”

“I don’t have to; she knows it.”

“It’s not the same to know something as it is to have someone put it into words,” Augusta pointed out mildly.

“Then I’ll tell her right now”

“You’ve waited too long. She won’t accept your thanks now.”

“Women, by God! It’s impossible to understand them.”

“It’s quite easy really. All we want is a little love and to feel needed.”

Burch looked at the room about him. Even with the windows stripped of the torn curtains and the cabinet scratched past repair, he acknowledged that Sibyl had made a great difference in his life. He did need her in other ways too, ways that had little to do with the physical pleasure that her body gave him, ways he was only beginning to understand, and he hadn’t even been able to figure that out for himself. It took this kindly aunt, speaking softly and apologetically, to show him what should have been obvious to anyone who was as smart as he took himself to be.

But all attempts to speak to Sibyl met with polite rebuff. She simply walked out of the room if he attempted to speak to her about anything of a personal nature. Any single word that strayed from the business of the house, his illness, or the ranch was met with a raised eyebrow and a readiness to turn her back on him. The impasse might have gone on for more than one horrendous week if Sibyl’s furniture hadn’t arrived.

Burch had just been settled in the ranch room for the afternoon when Balaam came shuffling in to warn him that they were about to be descended upon by a caravan of squatters.

“I thought you’d given up drinking?” Burch taunted him. “Squatters don’t come through this time of year and they would never wander this far off the Oregon Trail.”

“I ain’t been drinking,” snorted Balaam, affronted that he would be accused of being drunk on the job. “It’s a mess of wagons and they’re plumb full of house things. And they’s coming this way because they asked special for the Elkhorn ranch.”

“Well, see what they want and get rid of them as soon as you can.”

“They don’t want you, they want Miss Cameron.” Burch regarded him skeptically. “Yes sir, Miss Sibyl Cameron, late of Lexington, Virginia. And there’s only one person here that fits that description.”

“I’ll see what it’s about,” Augusta said, rising from her chair. But she had not reached the front door before Sibyl came bounding down the stairs like a twelve-year-old late to dinner and afraid of getting no dessert.

“My furniture’s come at last!” she cried, and burst through the door without waiting for Augusta. Burch could not remain in his chair, waiting for someone to tell him who stood at his front door, so with Balaam’s assistance, he hopped to the porch on his one good leg. He was dismayed to find half a dozen wagons, all piled high with crates, pulled up in front of the house.

“Good God, did she empty every house in Lexington?” he exclaimed, wondering where she could possibly find a place for that much furniture, even in a house as large as the Elkhorn.

“Part of it belongs to me,” confessed Augusta. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing it, but I couldn’t leave it with no one to care for it, especially since I had no idea when I might be returning.”

“It doesn’t matter, there’s plenty of room,” Burch relented, wondering if there would ever be an end to the upsets, discomforts, and surprises Sibyl caused. As for Sibyl herself, all traces of her anger and sulkiness were forgotten.

“It’s all here, and it doesn’t look like they broke anything. You won’t recognize the place when we get through,” she told Burch, almost dancing with excitement. “It’ll look just beautiful with the paper Ned and Balaam have been putting up.”

“You’ve got far more than for just three rooms,” he said, thinking of the saloon, parlor, and dining room where Sibyl had kept the men busy with the wallpaper.

“I’m going to put furniture in every room in the house. I’m sick to death of living in a big empty shell. I feel like it’s a warehouse.”

“Looks like it’s going to be a full warehouse.”

Sibyl merely laughed and told Balaam to go fetch Ned and anybody else he could find.

“There’s a lot of work to be done and these men can use some help.”

Things got a mite tense after that, and Burch found it much more comfortable, as well as safer, to remain in the ranch room. So did Lasso when he came for what had become his daily visit.

“I can’t get a word in with Augusta, what with Sibyl asking her where this piece ought to go or her worrying if one of them clumsy oafs will scratch some table or what not.”

“Have a seat and rest a while. It’s not safe for man nor beast out there.”

“Especially not beast,” Lasso said with a crack of laughter, but Burch was easily able to refrain from joining him. “She shoved a lamp at me with orders to put it on the table just like I was a parlor maid,” continued Lasso, his dignity affronted. “If I’d stayed, it would have been doilies or framed needlepoint next.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand why womenfolk get so worked up over silly things like furniture. I knew Sibyl was a little peculiar, I could see that months ago"—he failed to notice the pucker that appeared between Burch’s eyes—"but there’s Augusta, as sensible a woman as you could want, running about acting like she’s plumb distracted.”

“You know women and houses.”

“No, I don’t. My Mary never did care for houses. As long as she had her horse and the open range, she was as happy as a June bug. She didn’t care if the dinner burned or the seat of my pants was completely worn through.”

“If that’s the kind of woman you want, you’d better back off from Augusta before its too late.” Lasso eyed his friend sharply. “It’s obvious to everyone except Sibyl that you’re going to ask Augusta to marry you.”

“Do you think shell disapprove?”

“Shell hate it. If she had any idea right now of what you’re up to, not to mention the least suspicion that her aunt might accept, she’d whisk that poor woman off to Lexington and you’d never see her again.” He laughed. “She considers you only one small step better than a savage.”

“I know she doesn’t like me, but I won’t let her stand in my way.”

“You’d better worry more about how you’re going to like being chained and civilized than anything Sibyl might do. It’s not Sibyl you’re hoping to marry.”

“You think Augusta will try and turn me into a dude?”

“I can’t say what she’ll do. Augusta is a kind, sensitive woman, but she’s also a lady. It’s the way she’s been brought up, and it’s the only way she knows how to live. You can teach her to ride and she may even do it to please you, but shell always dislike and fear horses. She’s going to be unhappy unless there’s some order and gentleness in her life. You can’t treat her like you did Mary. If you do, you’ll break her heart.”