High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  The door flew open, slamming against the outside wall, and Rafe was there in the chasm, gun drawn. The snake, distracted, struck at him, but, miraculously, Rafe was quicker. He fired, and the creature’s head splintered.

  Still terrified, Emmeline jumped down off the outhouse bench, forgetting that her drawers were still around her ankles, and stumbled into Rafe with enough force to send them both toppling onto the path outside the door.

  Rafe laughed, though she thought she saw something like sympathy in his eyes.

  “I hoped you’d come around to my way of thinking,” he said, “but this is neither the time nor the place for expressing your affection, Mrs. McKettrick.”

  Scared, fuming, and wildly confused, Emmeline pushed her way to her feet and wrestled her drawers up, nearly falling again in the process. Rafe remained on the ground, propped on one elbow, grinning up at her. “Thank you!” she shouted, and stormed off toward the house.

  Rafe scrambled to his feet and followed, catching up with her long before she reached the porch steps. He took her arm and turned her around to face him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but his mouth kept trying to quirk into a grin, and his eyes were bright with merriment.“Are you all right, Emmeline?”

  She drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. Her nerves, flaring like tree limbs tossed in a gale, were beginning to settle down again. Her heart, though still beating rapidly, was no longer struggling to escape her chest, and she was most surprised to hear herself laugh.“I nearly died of fright,” she admitted, running a hand over the loose tendrils of hair tickling her forehead. “That was a rattler, wasn’t it?”

  Rafe stepped back into the outhouse, emerging momentarily with the snake’s body dangling from one hand. The thing must have been three feet long, even without its head.“Yep,” he said, showing her the rattles.

  She laid a hand to her stomach, willing herself not to vomit. A cold sweat was drying on her skin, and she shivered.

  Rafe tossed the snake aside, into the tall grass. “I was beginning to think you meant to sleep the day away,” he said.

  She might have bristled, but he’d just saved her life, even if he had laughed at her for getting tangled in her bloomers, so she smoothed her hair again and smiled a little. “I should have thought you would be hard at work by now,” she said.

  He caught the jibe, and grinned. “I finished my day’s work already,” he countered. “You want to go riding? Have a look at the place?”

  Emmeline had missed breakfast, and she was starving, but her eagerness to try riding a horse and to see more of the Triple M overruled the emptiness of her stomach.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that. Provided you promise to be a gentleman.”

  He leaned in a little and lowered his voice.“I think I’ve proven that it’s safe to be alone with me,” he replied, obviously referring to the night just past, during which they had shared a bed without incident. “When I make love to you, Mrs. McKettrick, you’ll be more than willing.”

  She let the remark pass, for the sake of the peace, though her cheeks burned. Something happened inside her, too, something reminiscent of last night’s kisses and the secret havoc they’d wreaked, but she would have died before telling him as much.

  He caught her chin in his hand and made her meet his eyes. “Everybody in the family thinks you overslept because you were worn out from the wedding night,” he said, enjoying her instant, wide-eyed chagrin. “Pa’s so happy, he made me foreman of the Triple M first thing this morning and gave me my choice of sites for a house. I’d like to show you the place I have in mind.”

  Emmeline had never had a real home, at least not the respectable kind where she could entertain company, and the hope of having one at last had been a large factor in her decision to offer herself as a mail-order bride. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes,” she said, and forgetting all about the snake, she turned and hurried into the house.

  Half an hour later, she met Rafe outside the barn. Concepcion had outfitted her with trousers, a shirt, and boots, all outgrown, long ago, by one of the McKettrick sons, then contributed a hat and coat of her own.

  Rafe smiled at the sight of her. His gelding waited at the hitching rail, impatient to be away, and he’d saddled a smaller horse for Emmeline, a pinto he introduced as Banjo.

  She felt a flutter of fear, looking at that animal, but her love of adventure prevailed. She stepped closer, reached up to grasp the saddle horn, and tried to put her foot in the stirrup, as she’d seen other riders do. Before she could attempt to hoist herself up, however, Rafe closed strong hands around her waist and swung her into the saddle. His touch stirred a flock of new feelings, rising to swamp her senses like some mystical flash flood, and leaving her spinning and light-headed when they ebbed.

  “Ready?” he asked, squinting a little in the bright spring sunshine as he looked up at her.

  Emmeline simply stared at him for a long moment, feeling like an idiot and quite incapable of speaking the English language. Then, mercifully, she recovered. She nodded, the breeze setting tendrils of hair dancing around her face, and he untied his horse and mounted.

  “She’s a lively one,” he said, indicating Emmeline’s horse as he came alongside. “Good-hearted, though—except when she’s in heat.”

  Emmeline looked away, toward the red mesas looming in the distance, then back to her husband’s face. “You wouldn’t be trying to shock me, would you?” she asked sweetly, hoping he wouldn’t notice that the knuckles of her right hand had gone white where she gripped the saddle horn. Emmeline did a lot of brave things, as a general rule, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared—it meant she was determined not to give in to cowardice.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, ducking his head in a vain effort to hide a grin.“I wouldn’t think of it.”

  Emmeline rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she said. She sat very stiffly in the saddle, its thinly covered leather seat hard as stone beneath her bottom, and her legs were so far apart that she feared she’d be split up the middle like a wishbone at the slightest jolt. She closed her eyes and silently instructed herself not to be a ninny; she was a rancher’s wife now, and ranchers’ wives rode horses. Among other things.

  “Miss Emmeline?” It was Rafe’s voice. Close-by, and quiet. He was right beside her on that big gelding, the man and animal as much a part of each other as if they’d been born together, one creature. Both of them seemed to generate heat and energy, as though they had great, silent machines working away inside them.

  “What?” she asked, a mite testily, perhaps. She’d used most of her self-control just getting past the rattlesnake experience, and now she was sitting on a horse’s back for the first time in her life. This was a morning worthy of an entry in her remembrance book, and it would make a fine contrast to ones she had written in Kansas City, such as, “Went to the library” and “Saw Mary Alice’s father on the streetcar.”

  She heard Rafe’s chuckle. “Take it easy,” he counseled. “Anybody who can jump onto an outhouse seat with their britches around their ankles can stay on an old mare with no trouble at all.”

  Was he praising or mocking her? She couldn’t tell. His words made her feel good, though, and a little more confident. She was physically agile; she’d loved gymnastics at finishing school and won several awards for juggling Indian clubs. She would be good at riding, too, in time. She was sure of it.

  “Shall we go?” she asked very primly, and then couldn’t stop herself from laughing a little, for pure joy. The sun was brightche air was fresh, and the ragged patches of dirty snow were all that remained of winter. There was a faint thrum of exhilaration building inside her, too, just because she was alone with Rafe, though whether or not this was a favorable development was yet to be seen.

  He answered by urging the gelding forward with a click of his tongue, and Banjo ambled alongside. Emmeline jostled rigidly as if she had a flagpole on her back, and willed herself not to cling for dear life. They hadn�
��t traveled more than a dozen yards and already her thighs were aching from clenching the horse’s sides; after a day of this, she’d be lucky if she could put her knees together.

  Rafe smiled.“Let out your breath, Miss Emmeline, and then take in another. Try to loosen your hinges a little.

  You’ll be mighty stiff and sore by tonight if you ride with your muscles locked up like that.”

  Emmeline tried, really tried, to comply, seeing the common sense in his words, but her heart was pounding, partly with terror and partly with excitement, and her breath came in quick, shallow gasps. Her many sojourns of fancy, in which she’d ridden elephants over the Alps with Hannibal, raced camels along the road to Damascus, and outrun the wind on the backs of great steeds from the stables of Alexander the Great himself, had done precious little to prepare her for a single overweight mare with the plodding gait of a plow horse.

  They traveled on the road for a while, then cut across a meadow, Banjo slogging diligently along behind the gelding, bridle fittings jingling. After a few minutes of rhythmic breathing, Emmeline was able to spare some of the concentration she’d been devoting to immediate survival, and began to take in fragments of the majestic scenery rising all around them.

  The horses continued to climb, leaving the meadow behind now, picking their way over trails littered with red rock. The land, which looked so barren from the lower country, was alive with small, skittering animals, vociferous insects, and the occasional snake. Every time Emmeline spotted a slithering reptile, she relived both the horror and the humiliation of the outhouse for a moment.

  Inexperienced as she was, Emmeline knew she would love riding from that day forward. Everything was so beautiful—the wind played in the juniper trees and made the newly sprouted oak leaves rustle cheerfully. The sky was an acute blue, just beyond her reach and soft as finely spun silk. Birds twittered in noisy concert, and rabbits raced across the path.

  Presently, they came to a high, grassy clearing, surrounded on three sides by timber. Rafe got off his horse and walked back toward Emmeline. Banjo, unconcerned with bit and bridle, bent her head to nibble at a tuft of clover.

  Emmeline caught her breath when Rafe lifted her down, stood her on her feet on the lush virgin ground. They stared at each other for a long moment, then he turned her gently, pointing out the vista he’d brought her to see.

  The view was indeed splendid, sweeping in all directions. It seemed to Emmeline, in those first drunken instants of discovery, that they had ridden into the sky itself, and staked their claim on a cloud, or even a tattered edge of heaven itself.

  To the north, she saw the creek winding along its glittering way, and the big house, small as a party favor in the distance, blue smoke curling from its chimneys. There were the barns, the bunkhouse, the silos and other outbuildings, all of them tiny enough to close her fingers around and tuck into her pocket. To the west, there was more red-rock country, mesas and buttes and deep ravines, and the ever-present saguaro cacti. In the distance were great stands of timber. Indian Rock was plainly visible to the east. To the south, Emmeline knew from her geography, lay the harsh desert lands, with sage and sand and more cacti, and, farther still, Mexico waited, as mysterious as another world.

  She laid a hand to her heart. “Oh, Rafe,” she breathed, “it’s magnificent.” When she chanced to look up at him, she caught him watching her with an expression of quiet pleasure.

  “This tract of land is pretty far from everything,” he said. He picked his way through the words, as though one of them might prove jagged and do injury of some sort. “No stores for miles. No schools, either. When—when we have children, I reckon you’ll have to teach them yourself, like Ma did with Jeb and Kade and me.”

  Everything seemed so gloriously possible in that time and place, even a family of little McKettricks, seated around a kitchen table with slates and lesson books. They seemed so near in that moment, those dark-haired, blue-eyed children, that she could almost say their names.

  Emmeline spread her arms and made one swirling turn. “If this were Europe,” she said, “there would surely be a castle standing here, with fine turrets, and flags, and a drawbridge.”

  Rafe looked both worried and hopeful. “Is that what you want, Emmeline? A castle?”

  She laughed, and the sound startled the horses, made them look up, just briefly, from their feast of sweet grass. “Why, Rafe,” she said,“if you pitched a tent on this spot, it would do as well. It’s the view that makes it so magical, the height—why, it’s almost like flying.” She whirled again, on impulse, arms out wide.“Like being a bird.”

  He laughed, too, then, and took a step toward her, and she suspected he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her, but he was not as bold as he had been the night before, it seemed. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a small packet of folded paper. His big rancher’s fingers fumbled a little as he opened it to show her the contents.

  Two gold wedding bands glimmered inside, almost lost in the width and breadth of his leather-gloved palm.

  Emmeline looked at the rings, then up at Rafe’s face.

  He held out his hand a little farther. “Take it,” he said. Then, with a slight motion of his arm to prompt her: “The little one’s yours.”

  She smiled at the clarification, and he chuckled, though he’d reddened a little at the base of his jaw, and his expression had an element of shyness about it. She took the ring, held it between her thumb and forefinger, and turned it slightly, enjoying its cool smoothness, its glow. Rafe, meanwhile, made some shifting motions, pulling off his riding gloves and jamming them into his coat pocket. Rather like a carnival magician performing sleight of hand, he managed to end up with his band lying in his palm. He hooked it onto his little finger, then took both her hands in his.

  “We’ve got a lot of things to work through,” he said huskily,“but in the meantime, will you wear my ring?”

  She felt something tighten in her throat, some sweet and spiky pain, and could only nod her head, even though good sense told her to refuse until she was sure she wanted to stay on Triple M.

  His big hands trembling a little, Rafe slipped her ring onto her finger. Emmeline was as moved as if they’d been standing in a cathedral, clad in the finest wedding garb, instead of on a towering hill, buffeted by an ever-chillier breeze. Without ado, she took Rafe’s ring, and his left hand, and pushed the band onto his finger. The two of them just stood there, then, hands still clasped, unable to meet each other’s eyes.

  “Well,” Rafe said finally, in a husky voice, “I reckon I ought to kiss you. Seal the bargain and all.”

  She couldn’t answer, but just stood there huddled inside Concepcion’s coat, miserable with hope.

  Rafe put a finger under her chin, raised her face so that she had to look right at him. She did so, and her gaze held steady, despite her many misgivings and uncertainties. The forbidden night she’d spent with the man called Holt, back in Kansas City, tugged at the hem of her conscience, and a sense of sorrow settled over her, quieting her joy.

  Rafe rested his hands lightly on either side of her waist, while she was thinking those thoughts, and lifted her onto her toes, bending his head to find her mouth with his. Emmeline shivered a little, with anticipation as well as guilt, and Rafe paused, lifted his head, and searched her face for any sign of reluctance. “Emmeline?” he asked.

  She knew she should tell him the truth about herself and get it over with, but she was still afraid, and, besides, she didn’t know precisely what the truth was, where her virtue was concerned. She did recall being soundly kissed, back in Kansas City, in the shadowy upper hallway of the boardinghouse, and wondered if Rafe would be able to tell that she was a woman of experience. The prospect scared her twice as much as the rattlesnake in the outhouse had, but this time, there was nowhere to jump.

  “Just kiss me, Rafe McKettrick,” she said, flushing.

  He sighed, then touched his lips to hers, tentatively at first, softl
y, and once more Emmeline’s passion was immediately awakened.

  Rafe responded by deepening the kiss, and when it ended, sometime later, and only because they were both in need of air, they stood close together like that, his hands on her waist, her arms around his neck, just staring at each other in bewildered marvel.

  It was Rafe who stepped back.“I thought we could put up the house over here,” he said gruffly.“Facing the creek, and Pa’s place.”

  Emmeline was still recovering from the revelation of his kiss. She smoothed her flyaway hair, raised the collar of her coat. “Yes,” she managed to agree, and cleared her throat delicately.“That would be nice.”Would she even be here when the house was built, or would she be far away, trying to make a new life for herself somewhere else?

  Rafe paced off the length of the house, showing her where the windows would be, and the front door. They decided on the locations of various rooms—the kitchen, the parlor, his study, her sewing room, the master bedroom and nursery. It was a sort of game to Emmeline, a grown-up version of playing house.

  Having laid their plans, they stood where their bed would be, should they actually get that far, and, stricken to silence once more, looked everywhere but at each other.

  Rafe had brought sandwiches along, packed in his saddags, and they sat side by side on a flat rock where their kitchen table might stand one day, eating and sharing his canteen of water.

  Emmeline stole the occasional surreptitious glance at this contradictory man she’d married, framed in sunlight beside her like a young god, and prayed that she would never love him. It would be unbearable, to care for someone so much and not be cared for in return. Oh, it was all very romantic, the land, the matching rings, the dream of a house, but Emmeline had not forgotten what Rafe had said about love the night before. Marriage was like a business agreement to him; he was scornful of the more tender sentiments.