by Chloe Carley
Gideon followed her up and mimicked her stance, leaning forward so that his face was even with hers when he said, “Because you continue to do silly things. Foolish things.” And why her actions matter so much to me is something I need to think about, but not right now. Right now, I need to impress upon her that there were certain things she just couldn’t do. Not and hope to retain any sort of reputation with the townsfolk.
“Warning the town is foolish?” she demanded.
“Consorting with whores is most definitely foolish and you know it,” Gideon countered back. Riley had struck him as a smart, resourceful young lady when they’d first met. His opinion hadn’t changed, but he’d also added reckless to her attributes. The woman was a walking disaster waiting to happen.
Riley narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “You don’t like whores?”
“I don’t consort with whores,” he fired back. At least, not anymore. There was a time and I’ve asked forgiveness for those years. That’s all in the past and I’m turning over a new leaf.
“Well, I didn’t actually consort with them. I just talked to them for a few minutes. I don’t understand why everyone treats them so badly, they seemed like very nice women.” She picked up the quilt, folding it carefully before she looked up at him and asked, “What are you doing here?”
Gideon chose to ignore her comments about the women from the whorehouse. That was a subject he’d revisit in the future. He was confident that Riley did understand why people treated the women from the whorehouse differently; she just didn’t want to admit that by speaking to them she’d tarnished her own reputation. Instead, he addressed her last question.
“I was coming from the town with a wagon of supplies when I saw you up here. Does trouble always seem to follow you around?”
“No, and that isn’t a very nice thing to say,” she complained with a pout to her lips and sadness in her eyes. “I don’t mean to cause trouble and I don’t go looking for it either.”
Gideon hid a smile. “I’m sorry, sprite.”
“Why do you call me that? I’m not some mythical forest creature,” she informed him with tilt of her chin.
“I wasn’t suggesting you were. You’re just tiny.”
“Am not,” she fired back, the light of battle entering her eyes, and Gideon could tell this was a sore spot with her.
“Compared to me, you are.” Gideon’s tone of voice indicated the subject was no longer open. He stood up to his full height and looked toward home. “Now, I’m heading back to the ranch. Since the town doesn’t seem to be to your liking, why don’t you come with me? Ma would love to have another woman around to talk with and I’m sure she could use some help as we head into fall and harvest season. You’re welcome to stay there until you figure out what you want to do next.”
“I thought you had a sister?” Riley countered back. “Why wouldn’t your mother talk with her?”
Gideon chuckled. “You haven’t met Sara Jane.” He sobered as he imagined the trouble the two of them could come up with and shook his head. “You can come home with me provided you stay away from Sara Jane. The two of you together would be downright dangerous.”
He watched her face fall and tried to think of what he’d said to elicit such a response. “Riley?”
She dropped her eyes for a moment. “I understand. I won’t even talk to your sister…”
Gideon realized where he’d gone wrong and hurried to correct her thinking. “I didn’t mean you can’t talk to my sister, just that she and you are a lot alike. Always getting into trouble, which seems to follow you both around like a magnet. What I meant to say was that my sister abhors anything that resembles the work of a woman and rarely spends time in the house with my ma doing chores like cooking and cleaning. She prefers to be out on the range with the men.”
“And your mother allows this?” Riley looked puzzled.
Gideon smiled. “She requires Sara Jane to pretend to have some ladylike qualities, but cooking is never one of them. We would all die of starvation or poisoning if Sara Jane was to do the cooking.”
“Cooking’s not that hard,” Riley informed him.
“You can cook?” he asked curiously.
“Better than most. My mother was adamant about me receiving a refined education. My father let me wear trousers and follow him around the ranch.” She asked with a sly look in her eyes, “Does your sister work with the animals in skirts?”
Gideon hid a smile sh. “No. She stole a pair of my trousers years ago and Ma finally gave up trying to mend them and just ordered her several pairs from the catalog. The only stipulation Sara Jane has is that she can’t go into town unless she’s wearing a dress.”
Riley smiled at this. “Does she go into town often?”
“Almost never,” Gideon replied, watching as the first real smile hit her lips this day. It brightened up her entire face and he decided he liked seeing her happy. I should find ways to make her smile more often. She was beautiful before, but when she smiles … she takes my breath away. And that is a complication I wasn’t looking for right now. Maybe I’m the one trouble seems to be following around.
He pushed that unpleasant thought aside. “So, are you coming back to the ranch with me? If you like to cook, I’m sure Ma won’t mind having the help.”
He watched her mull over his offer, her expressions written across her face. He also knew the moment she decided to accept. “Yes. I would like to accompany you back to your ranch. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s get you off this boulder and into the wagon and we’ll head home.”
Gideon didn’t speak again until they were both in the wagon and the horse was heading for the river crossing. That’s when it occurred to him that he’d never gotten the name of her brother’s gang. There were so many small and insignificant gangs in the area right now, he doubted he’d even heard of them, but it never hurt to ask.
“Riley, what is your brother’s name?”
“Roy. Roy Sewell.”
Gideon smiled, relieved that the name had meant nothing to him.
“He goes by the name Tseena.”
Gideon almost dropped the reins. He pulled back harshly on them, earning a whinny of protest from the horses, and reached out to catch Riley as the momentum almost threw her from the seat. “What did you say?”
Riley eyed him oddly. “My brother uses the name Tseena. I was told it’s Comanche …”
“…for Wolf. The man who leads the Johnston gang goes by that name,” Gideon added, watching her closely and feeling his heart plummet when she gave him an odd look and nodded.
“That’s my brother’s gang.”
Gideon watched her carefully, picked up the reins and urged the horse forward. “Dear God, help us. The town doesn’t have a clue what’s coming for them.” But Gideon did. He’d run afoul of her brother’s gang once before and almost not lived to tell about it. A more ruthless criminal terrorizing the west he couldn’t name. Rio Arriba was in trouble if Tseena and his gang were headed this way. Something had to be done.
Chapter 12
Riley was nervous as they drove into the yard of the Lazy L ranch an hour later. A man she hadn’t met before, but who looked very much like Gideon, came striding from the barn with Gideon’s father by his side.
“Good timing,” the younger man called out before he spied Riley sitting on the buckboard.
“I don’t recall putting a young woman on my list. Pa, did Ma request a young woman from town?” the man who looked like Gideon asked with a smile.
Gideon tied the reins to the brake and hopped down from the wagon, holding his hands up for her to follow suit. “Knock it off, Shawn. This is Riley. She’s the young woman I found wading in our river several days ago.”
“Ah.” Shawn stepped forward and tipped the brim of his hat in her direction. “Welcome back.”
“Riley, we’re glad you decided to come back. The town isn’t the best place for a single young woman,” Mr. Lawson
stated.
She allowed Gideon to lift her out of the wagon and smoothed her skirt down, wishing she’d been able to launder it before returning. The bottom of the skirt was horribly stained and caked with dirt and mud from her walk into the night before. “Thank you for allowing me to come back. I had a little trouble in town.”
“I’ll tell you both all about it, but first let me get her inside and hand her over to Ma. She slept on a rock last night and woke up this morning to a giant rattler unhappy to find someone else on his sun rock.”
Riley blushed at Gideon’s summary of her activities, feeling as if she needed to defend herself. “To be fair, the snake wasn’t there last night and should have just slithered on past when he saw the rock was occupied by someone else.”
Gideon looked at her with disbelief in his eyes and asked quietly, “You’re not serious, right?”
Riley crossed her arms over her chest before she realized the confining fabric of the dress only seemed to accentuate her womanly attributes and she just as quickly let them drop by her sides. I never have to worry about things like this when I dress as I want to. I wonder if Gideon’s sister would share a pair of trousers with me?
“Gideon, did you … oh! Riley! You’ve come back from town,” his ma exclaimed, hurrying forward and wrapping Riley in a big hug. “We’re so glad to have you back here.”
Riley nodded, confused about why the Lawson’s were so willing to accept her presence. She didn’t know how to react. In her experience, families kept to themselves, and outsiders were treated as such.
Her mother’s so-called friends had become very absent once the funerals were over and it became known that the ranch was in debt to the banker. Riley hadn’t seen any of them, and if they’d been able to avoid her at Sunday church service, they’d done so.
She’d never felt so abandoned as she had during those bleak days--at least, until she’d found out that Roy had intentionally ignored her telegrams and had been planning to completely ignore her arrival in El Paso. That had hurt and still stung even now.
“I’d best get back to work,” Shawn said. “Riley, it was nice to meet you.”
She nodded to his retreating back. Mrs. Lawson took her arm and led her toward the house, chattering about everything at once.
Riley’s head was spinning several hours later. She’d heard all about Shawn and Gideon as young boys, and she’d met Sara Jane briefly as she’d rushed through the kitchens, grabbed two apples, and issued her greeting on her way out the back door.
“She seems in a hurry,” Riley commented.
Pearl Lawson smiled. “She’s just afraid I might ask her to stay inside and help cook or clean. Both activities she hates with a passion.”
“Well, I can’t say I blame her on the cleaning part, especially if it entails laundry, but I love to cook.”
“Well, then that’s what you shall do.” Pearl had shown her where everything was located in the kitchen and after only a few instructions about how many mouths would be eating her food, she’d left Riley there.
Riley had rolled up her sleeves, tied up the sides of the skirt so that she didn’t keep tripping on the hem, and gotten to work.
Two chickens had already been plucked and were sitting on the sideboard waiting to be cut up and added to the stew pot. She found a supply of carrots, potatoes, and turnips in baskets in the larder, and after cutting them up, she added them to the pot with some salt and some dried herbs she found sitting in marked jars.
She also found a supply of dried apples and added them to some hot water to get them softened once more.
While that happened, she made a quick pie crust and fashioned two large sheet pies in the cast iron skillets she found stacked next to the hearth. She added the apples and then the top crust, cutting a leaf pattern in the crust, much like the French chef, hired by her mother to teach her the finer aspects of cooking, had shown her years earlier.
She placed the pies in the oven and grabbed the bread, which had been started earlier that morning, from the shelf above the stove and began to knead it. She had both hands immersed in the sticky dough when Gideon entered through the back door.
“Look at you, cooking like you were born to do it,” he teased. He sniffed the air and then smiled. “Apple pie?”
“Yes,” she responded with a smile of her own.
“My favorite.”
Riley felt warmth fill her chest at his approving look and she hurried to say something to help cover the fact that she was blushing. “Good. Your mother just turned the kitchen over to me, so I made what I wanted …”
“You did fine,” he assured her. “I wanted to tell you that we’re going to have a small meeting right after supper to discuss your brother and what’s going to happen. I can’t sit by and watch the town suffer without trying to get them to see reason.”
Riley frowned at the sad look on his face. “Is there something else wrong?”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “There is. I wanted to prepare you because in order to convince my family that your brother really is a threat, I’m going to have to explain to them how I know about your brother.”
“You know Roy?” Riley asked.
“Yes, and no. I ran afoul of him quite a few months back and barely lived to tell about it. The men who travel with him are ruthless and my gang …”
“You have your own gang? You’re an outlaw?” Riley asked in shocked disbelief. Her hands were covered in flour and she quickly wiped them clean on the apron she’d wrapped around her waist.
“I was an outlaw and we never intentionally hurt anyone. We certainly never killed anyone, but your brother has. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Riley felt tears fill her eyes and was saddened because she didn’t even try to deny Gideon’s accusations. Her brother, Tseena, was a bad man and had done many very bad things. The law wanted to hang him and that was probably more than he deserved, and yet … he was still her brother. She couldn’t forget about that if she wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, wishing there was a way to make all of this go away. In coming here to warn the town, she was going to cause strife between Gideon and his family. All they had done was be kind to her and she felt sad that this was how she repaying them. “I could go back into town and try again …”
“No. I spoke to the sheriff and you were right: He isn’t inclined to believe anything you say. He actually warned me about you.He thinks you might be a little daft. Anyway, my family have no idea of what I’ve done and I’m dreading telling them.” He paused for a second and added, “I just wanted you to know that if there is any tension or harsh words exclaimed during our meeting, they are directed at me, and not you.”
“Why?” Riley asked.
“Why what?” he asked.
“Why are you dreading telling your family? They love you very much, that is plain to see.”
“I guess I’m afraid they won’t want me around any longer once they find out what kind of man I really am …”
“You are my son and if you did some things you’re not proud of, ask God to forgive you and move forward with your life,” Pearl Lawson stated from the doorway.
“Ma …”
“You think I can’t see what your time way from the ranch did to your soul, Gideon? It’s battered and bruised, but in time, it will heal. The heart works like that.” She walked over and gave her son a hug and Riley was sure she saw tears in Gideon’s eyes when Pearl pulled away. “Now, what’s this I hear about Riley’s brother being the worst outlaw in these parts?”
