Megan

by Linda Lael Miller

  Because the sky was overcast, Megan could barely see, but she followed Augustus, who made an intermittent yellow flash as he ran through the trees. She was slapped and battered by low-hanging branches as she raced on, moving as fast as she dared, and once, when the mare stumbled in a ditch, she nearly dropped the rifle. Her teeth were chattering, mainly with cold, though she might have admitted to a measure of fear, depending upon who was asking.

  Thunder began to rumble as she rode higher and higher toward the top of the ridge. Sure enough, the herd was there, sheltered in the small canyon below, and when she gained the vantage point, lightning spiked across the sky and danced on the ground, illuminating the milling cattle and the rustlers in a series of brilliant, blue-gold flashes. Augustus hunkered down on the wet ground, growling.

  “Quiet,” Megan commanded, though there was no likelihood that he’d been heard.

  The terrified cattle were bawling fit to raise the dearly departed, churning round and round like whirlpools in a flooded river, and the men riding herd shouted to each other in hoarse, worried voices. With every strike of lightning, every boom of thunder, the creatures, two-legged and four-legged alike, became more agitated.

  Megan thought of the discussion she’d had with her sisters that afternoon and hoped they’d been right, figuring that Gideon McQuarry was still looking after them all, from wherever he was. “Granddaddy,” she murmured, “if you’re listening, if you’re looking on, I need your help, and I need it pretty quick.”

  There was no blinding insight, but it did come to her that Granddaddy had always believed in action. Do something, he’d often said, only half in jest, even if it’s wrong.

  Her arm was aching from the weight of the rifle—there was no scabbard on her saddle—so she rested the weapon across the pommel, in order to balance it while she descended the hill. Augustus, perhaps heeding her instructions to keep his own counsel after all, perhaps merely as frightened as she was, trotted alongside, nose skimming the ground every now and then.

  It hadn’t occurred to Megan that if the lightning had revealed the herd and the rustlers to her, the reverse might be true as well. When the whole hillside lit up and the herd began to scramble through the opening of the canyon, the cattle trampling and goring each other in the process, she saw two men riding up the trail toward her. At the rate they were traveling, there was no question that they’d seen her and that their intentions were bad.

  Well, Granddaddy, she thought, with resignation, I did something, like you said, and it was wrong. Then she raised the rifle, cocked it, and sighted in. She didn’t like the idea of gunning anybody down, for any reason, but she’d do it if she had to, to stay alive.

  The cattle began to run, bellowing now like souls being driven into the flames of hell, and Augustus shot forward like an Indian’s arrow, racing toward the approaching riders, barking.

  The dog was sure to be killed, and Megan knew that even if she was lucky enough to live through this night, she’d never forgive herself. She’d had few enough friends in her lifetime, and Augustus had been one of the best.

  Her finger was on the trigger, ready to fire, when another bolt of lightning revealed that one of the riders was Webb, and the other was Zachary. She was so relieved, and so utterly horrified by what she had nearly done, that she didn’t release her grip fast enough when she lowered the rifle, and a shot pinged into the ground.

  The mare, already scared halfway out of its hide, reared straight up, pawing at thin air as though to claw a hole in it, and sent Megan slipping backward to topple over its rump and land with stunning force on what should have been soft ground, even mud, given the recent rain. Conscious of the danger of being kicked or dashed to shreds under those panic-driven hooves, she hurled herself to one side, bruising herself even more as she rolled over the fallen rifle.

  Before she could get her breath, Webb was kneeling on the ground beside her, pressing her down by the shoulders when she tried instinctively to rise. “Are you hurt?” he roared. She wasn’t, but it might not be prudent to say so.

  Megan hesitated as long as she could, but her mental inventory had already indicated that she was just fine. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Webb got up then and, taking one of her hands, wrenched her unceremoniously to her feet. “Then go home! It might have escaped your notice, but we’re just a little busy here!”

  Megan seethed. Remarkable, she thought. Here she’d risked life and limb, trying to save his blasted cattle, and how did he repay her? By jerking her up off the ground and shouting at her. “I’m not going anywhere!” she yelled back, just on general principle. Heading for home was the reasonable thing to do, she supposed, but she felt anything but reasonable just then. She was mad enough to spit. “Jesse just told me that the men you hired are rustlers!”

  Webb bent down so that his nose was almost touching hers. “I already know that,” he growled. “Now get your bustle back on that horse and go home, or I swear I’ll take you across my knee right here!”

  Zachary had caught and settled the anxious mare, and he led it over to her. “We’ve got our hands full here, Megan,” he said, “and the best thing you can do to help is stay out of the way, so we don’t have to worry about you.”

  The rain started again just then, with fresh force, and Megan felt as though someone had upended a bucket of cold water over her head. She ached in every joint and muscle, and she was mortified into the bargain. She wasn’t a man, that was true, but she could ride and shoot as well as most of them, and Webb needed her help—he was just too hardheaded to admit it. On top of that, he wasn’t even grateful that she’d tried to save his mangy cattle from a pack of rustlers.

  By that time, the herd was in full stampede. In that rugged country, they could easily kill or injure themselves; probably a number of them already had.

  Megan looked from Zachary’s face to Webb’s, which was hidden by the night and the brim of his hat, then turned in defeat, gripped the saddle horn, and mounted the mare. Zachary handed up the rifle.

  “How did you know?” she asked. “About the rustlers, I mean?”

  “Figured it out the other day, when I was checking brands,” Zachary answered. “Listen, Megan, maybe you ought to pass the night with Christy. Tell her we’ll be all right.”

  Tell her we’ll be all right. The words echoed in Megan’s mind as she watched the two men get back on their horses and head straight for the heart of chaos. Tell her we’ll be all right.

  “They’ll be all right,” Caney said half an hour later when Megan was seated before the kitchen stove in Christy’s kitchen, wearing one of her sister’s nightgowns, wrapped in a heavy blanket, and still shivering so hard that her teeth chattered. Instead of following his master, Augustus had accompanied her on the ride through the trees and over the creek, evidently following some canine code of honor, and Christy was drying his coat with one of her good towels.

  She looked pale—naturally, she was worried about Zachary—but her gray eyes were fierce with anger. “What were you thinking of, Megan McQuarry, chasing off after a pack of outlaws all by yourself like that?”

  Caney handed Megan a cup of tea, laced with honey and a dollop of whiskey, and tried to hide a smile. “I reckon she thought she was going to help some way,” she said, in her smoky voice. “Didn’t you, girl? I declare, you’d have been better off, the four of you, with a little less of your granddaddy’s cuss-headedness.”

  “I couldn’t just sit there at home and do nothing, knowing Webb was about to lose everything,” she said, well aware that it was a lame excuse. Nonetheless, it was all she had. She looked at Caney, then Christy. “Could I?”

  “You wouldn’t have, if you’d known,” Caney told Christy.

  Christy’s eyes glittered with tears. “It’s bad enough that I have to worry about Zachary all the time. I don’t need to be fretting over my sister, too!”

  Caney’s smile broadened, but there was something broken in it, something fragile.
“Seems to me you ought to have some of this doctored-up tea, too,” she told Christy. “Come on and sit by the fire, and give that poor dog some peace. You keep rubbin’ him like that, you’re going to wear the skin right off him.”

  Christy’s hair was trailing down her back. She was clad in a heavy nightgown, a flannel wrapper, and a pair of Zachary’s woolen socks, and still she was beautiful enough to attend the ball at some castle and distract the Prince from Cinderella for good. She got to her feet and did as she was told, and Caney handed her some tea of her own. “I don’t know why I had to fall in love with a lawman,” she fussed. “Why not a farmer, or a banker, or a storekeeper?”

  Caney laughed, but, even in her present state of mind, Megan saw the sorrow in her friend’s eyes. “We don’t choose love,” she said. “Love chooses us. And it don’t much matter what our druthers might have been.”

  Megan took a steadying sip of the stout, blood-warming brew, and though it seemed that her spirit had stayed behind on that hillside with Webb, her heart went out to Caney. “I guess things aren’t going too well with Mr. Hicks,” she said softly.

  Caney sighed and joined Christy and Megan at the table. “He’s a stubborn man, my Malcolm.” Megan saw tears in Caney’s eyes, and that was a rare occurrence, despite what they’d all been through over the past decade or so, what with the war, and Granddaddy dying, and the farm being lost to Yankees. “I’m at my wit’s end, where he’s concerned. I tried cookin’ for him. I tried fussin’ over him. I tried ignorin’ him. And nothin’s changed, nothin’ at all.”

  Both Christy and Megan were still, sensing that something was coming, something about to break over them with as much force as the storm tearing the night sky asunder. Neither of them wanted to hear, but they could no more prevent it than they could change the weather.

  Caney blinked and dashed at her eyes with the sleeve of her woolly robe. Her gleaming, abundant hair was subdued into a crinkly braid, thick as rope, and for what might have been the first time in her life, Megan saw her clearly. Because Caney had cared for her and for her sisters, because she’d been at the farm as far back as any of them could remember, they’d thought of her as old. Now, Megan realized that Caney probably wasn’t even forty, and that she was beautiful.

  “Any sensible man would be proud to have you for a wife,” Megan said, in a hopeless effort to forestall the inevitable.

  “About time I moved on,” Caney said. “Three of you are married, and you’re spoken for, Miss Megan. Webb’s a good man, and he’ll make a fine husband.” She smiled a misty smile. “I wouldn’t make a habit of crossin’ him, though, if I was you.” A throaty chuckle. “But then again, if I was you, I probably would.”

  Both Megan and Christy had stiffened in their chairs, and they were both weeping silently and without shame.

  “None of that,” Caney scolded. “I done spent my life lookin’ after you four. It’s my turn to kick up my heels.”

  “Why can’t you stay at Primrose Creek?” Christy asked, making no attempt to dry the tears on her cheeks. “You can kick up your heels all you want, right here.”

  But Caney shook her head. “I love Malcolm Hicks. Love him with my whole heart. I can’t stay because I can’t bear seein’ him all the time and knowin’ he don’t think enough of me to make me his wife.”

  Megan and Christy looked at each other in despair, but neither of them had any idea how to respond. No matter what joy the four McQuarry women might find with husbands and children and each other, Caney’s going would leave an empty spot in each of their hearts.

  Megan reached out to take one of Caney’s hands, and Christy took the other. And they just sat there, the three of them, holding on and, at the same time, trying to let go.

  *

  Megan awakened in a twist of sheets, soaked in perspiration and gasping from some dreadful dream, still crouching like a monster just beyond the reach of her memory. It was a moment before she realized that she was back in her room at Christy and Zachary’s place, a moment more before she heard deep and even breathing.

  Still, she thought it was only Augustus, but in the glow of lantern light coming in through her door, open just a crack, she saw a man’s form sprawled in the room’s one chair. She didn’t need to see clearly to know it was Webb—her heart told her.

  He was safe. Thank God, he was safe.

  “Go back to sleep,” he grumbled.

  Megan pretended to be indignant, though she wasn’t sure how well she succeeded, because the truth was, she was glad he was there. Gladder than she’d ever been about anything. “I don’t have to take orders from you,” she pointed out.

  He laughed, then yawned expansively. Megan wished they were already married, so that he could lie beside her on the bed, maybe hold her in his arms. “We’ll discuss that later,” he said. “Right now, I haven’t got the gumption it would take to settle the matter.”

  “There are other beds in this house,” she whispered, because she didn’t have the strength for a debate, either. Not at the moment, at any rate. “Why are you sleeping in a chair?”

  “I’m not sleeping,” he pointed out with some regret. “And I wanted to be close to you. Make sure you didn’t go sneaking off to confront the whole Sioux nation or try to haul in a few outlaws for the reward.”

  She smiled in the darkness. He wanted to be close to her.

  He yawned again. “Megan?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ever scare me like that again. I damn near had a heart attack when I saw you out there, in the middle of a storm, with the whole countryside crawling with outlaws.”

  She was silent. After all, she couldn’t make a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  “Megan.” He was quietly insistent.

  “I’ll try,” she said, with little or no hope of success.

  He chuckled again. “I guess that’ll have to be good enough, for now anyway.”

  She swallowed hard, dropped her voice to a whisper. “What about Jesse? Have you seen him?”

  “He must have taken to the hills.”

  “He tried to do the right thing, Webb.”

  “He was a little late.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  She persisted. “Come and lie here with me. You’ll never get any rest in that chair.”

  “I’d never get any rest lying next to you on a bed, either,” he replied dryly. “Except maybe the permanent kind, if Zachary, your sister, or Caney came in here and shot me for a rascal.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to think of something to say, and the next thing she knew, there was light at the window, and the smells of freshly brewed coffee and frying bacon filled the air. The chair beside the bedroom door was empty, and Megan wondered if she’d only dreamed that Webb had returned, had sat there keeping watch over her well into the night. Suppose he hadn’t come back at all but instead lay trampled or shot, somewhere in the canyon?

  She hastened out of bed and into a practical brown cotton dress either Caney or Christy must have laid out for her to wear. She swallowed her pride and put it on; the garment fit loosely across her breasts, since Christy had a more womanly figure, but just then fashion was about the last thing on Megan’s mind.

  She wrenched on her stockings and shoes, did what she could with her hair—which wasn’t a great deal, given that it was still damp from her flight through the rain the night before—and dashed out into the kitchen.

  Christy was there, along with Joseph and little Margaret, who were tucking into their breakfasts with uncommon relish. No doubt they were eager to go outside into the sunshine after being confined to the house for several days by the dismal weather.

  Megan opened her mouth to ask about Webb, but Christy answered before she could get the words out.

  “He’s fine,” she said. “So is Zachary. Right now, they’re trying to round up what’s left of the herd.”

  “What about the rustlers?” Megan asked. She thought
of Jesse again and wondered what would happen to him.

  “They got most of them last night. Six of them are in jail.”

  “Zachary and Webb arrested six men by themselves?”

  Christy poured coffee and set it down on the table, indicating that Megan ought to take a seat. “Jake and Trace were there, too, along with Mr. Hicks and Gus and several other men from town.”

  Even after the scene with Webb the night before, there on the hillside, Megan found herself wanting to ride out and find him, make sure he was unhurt. It made no sense, thinking that she could protect him, but there it was. The drive to be near him was deeper than anything she’d ever felt before.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked in a small voice.

  Christy smiled gently. “Do? Why, we’re going to head over to Skye’s place, just like we planned, and start stitching up your wedding dress. We all went to town for the silk right after we left you yesterday.”

  “It’s dangerous, caring for a man—”

  Christy came to stand beside Megan’s chair and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Take my advice,” she said. “Think about the wedding. It’s a lot better than fretting.”

  Megan nodded, but only after she’d weighed her sister’s counsel.

  “Where’s Caney?” Joseph wanted to know. “She don’t burn the bacon.”

  “Doesn’t,” Christy corrected. Megan noticed her sister didn’t defend her own cooking skills. “And Caney’s busy. She’s going on a trip.”

  Joseph narrowed his eyes. “Where?”

  “Young man,” Christy sighed, “there are times when I wish you weren’t quite so precocious. Finish your breakfast.” She rounded the table, ruffled his hair. “We’re going to Aunt Skye’s house, and we mustn’t be late, because there is a great deal to be done.”

  Joseph’s eyes widened. “Will Hank be there?”

  “I would imagine he’ll be at school,” Christy said. Her expression was tender, though her voice was firm. She knew Joseph would be mightily disappointed if he didn’t get to see his cousins before the day was out.