The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback)

by Sydney Alexander

  Privately, Cherry wasn’t sure how these women found the time in their day to provide treats to her as well as get through the drudgery of taking care of their own families. She had only Little Edward to concern herself with, and that was exhausting enough. But some of these women had six, seven, eight children! Her eyes followed the little creatures as they rough-and-tumbled out on the prairie. Some clad in patched hand-me-downs, some clad in clean denim and new calico: all in all the children of Bradshaw outnumbered the adults by a goodly number.

  Cherry watched a little girl set a tea party on wide flat stones, using bark for plates and curled leaves for cups, and a gaggle of small girls gathered together to partake of the fairy’s feast. They were as close and affectionate as sisters, and she supposed that with those red heads, braids blazing like fire-brands in the mid-day sun, they probably were. Lucky girls. Cherry had always wanted a sister. But her mother had not enjoyed good health, and there had been no children at Beechfields but Cherry.

  She felt a sudden stab of jealousy. Looking at their bright faces, so animated in conversation with one another, she felt that all the china tea-sets and porcelain-faced dolls in the world didn’t make up for a childhood spent alone. Without a playmate, she’d been forced to make best friends with first her pony, and later her mare — not the worst fate, to be sure, but these girls would have so much more when they were grown: friends that they had been close to their entire lives. Possibly, Cherry thought, she could have used a sister to rely on in the past two years. Or even a brother to defend her against the gossip against her name.

  She wondered, nodding with absent enthusiasm as she took a grubby handkerchief bulging with cornbread, if there would be a brother or sister for Little Edward, and then she was surprised at herself for having such a thought. How could there be, with Edward gone?

  Edward was dead, she reminded herself sternly, and so with him all the other children she might have borne him. She’d lost more than her honor and her place in her own family, her name and her position in society; she’d also lost the husband and the family she could have had. She knew that. She had always known that, since the day she found out that Edward would not be coming home.

  Remembering that moment when her heart had felt ripped from her chest, Cherry blinked away a sudden tear; she coughed and turned her head so that she could flick away the offending object without being seen by the sharp-eyed homesteaders. Patty Mayfield, close at her side like a faithful chaperone, made a noise of dismay and snatched Matt’s handkerchief from his breast pocket; it was not a terribly clean handkerchief, predictably, but she passed it to Cherry eagerly and Cherry was obliged to set down the bundle of cornbread on the growing pile of baked goods next to her and accept the grubby hankie.

  “Dust,” she sniffed, smiling thinly at Patty, and dabbed delicately at her nose, as if she had been sneezing. “I am so plagued by the least bit of dust.”

  Patty’s eyes widened a little. “I hope there isn’t too much dust for you out here, ma’am. It can get almighty dry sometimes.”

  “Not too dusty, no, let us hope,” Cherry said confusedly, not sure she should have admitted a weakness in her constitution. “I shall certainly grow accustomed to it. It is merely — ah — a new sort of dust, one knows. The very soil is quite changed from what I knew in England.”

  Patty nodded eagerly. She was just as ready to exonerate Cherry from any sort of city-bred affliction as Cherry was to deny it. “It takes time, yes it does ma’am. Why when we came out here from Minnesota, I scarcely knew what to do with myself. All the trees was gone. I asked my mama where all the trees was gone to, and she started to cry a little. But we got so we were used to it, and now I wouldn’t live anywhere else. Trees and buildings, they’d choke me. I wouldn’t be able to breathe.” She said this last in a dramatic, slight accent, daring to appropriate Cherry’s delicious accent into her own broad voice for just a few words, and she could not help but thrill at the sound of it.

  Cherry heard the inflection and smiled a little, distracted from her sudden sorrow over Edward and their unrealized family, and Patty smiled back, a warm glowing hero-worship sort of smile, and Cherry felt her own lips widen and her eyes warm, so awash was she in a sudden sweet feeling of camaraderie and friendship, and into their sunny aura of good feeling strode Jared Reese, dark-browed and creamy-Stetsoned, thumbs hooked in his wide leather belt, and he flashed a rare smile of his own at them all.

  “Jared!” Patty exclaimed, and put out one tan hand to pull him closer. She plucked at his plaid shirt. “Where have you been? Mrs. Beacham had to come wandering over here alone! What sort of escort are you, now?”

  Jared’s smile hung on grimly. Cherry thought him a very rude man. What was he thinking of? She had made it quite clear she was not interested in conversing with him any further. He had been insufferable on the ride in, telling her she was going to have to toughen up! The nerve! She’d show him tough, so she would. A Beacham lady was just as tough as any old cowboy. And the day would come when he would look at her farm and he would eat his words. Until then, though, she wasn’t much interested in his company. He could just drop that silly smile and mosey right along.

  Mosey. Heh. She wondered how that word had insinuated itself into her vocabulary, and how many more silly western words would find themselves falling from her lips? Would it be wiser to avoid local slang, or work to use it? Would it make her seem foolish to say something like ‘mosey’? Possibly she would have to just give it a little time. But it was such a fun word. It was going to be interesting, to see what happened to the way that she spoke, and the way that Little Edward grew up speaking, out here amongst these plain people. She would make a study of it. That was what Edward would have done, looked at it scientifically. She was not much of a scientist herself, but there was every chance that Little Edward would take after his father, and regard everything as a potential experiment.

  “Mrs. Beacham, I am sorry to hear of your loss.”

  Cherry blinked and looked down; a small woman, wizened like a plum, hunched like a shepherd’s crook, was turning her head awkwardly to look up at Cherry. The woman smiled, her lips but another fold in a sea of wrinkles, and her dark eyes glistened. Cherry wet her lips. “My loss, madam?”

  “You’re a new widow, ain’t ye? Got the new babe at the homestead, they tell me. Left him there, smart, smart…”

  There was nothing these people didn’t know about her… nothing. And she hadn’t told them a thing! “My son, yes, is at home with the Jorgensons’ younger daughter. I am sorry; I have had so many losses that I try to put them out of my mind. Thank you for your sympathy. You are too kind.” Her voice stretched thinly at this last; she knew this kind of woman. There was no question of being kind.

  “Do the grand mucketies not wear widow’s weeds in England no more?” The woman’s smile seemed faintly mocking now.

  “My father, who passed just before my husband, requested that I did not,” Cherry lied, letting the slur on her aristocratic heritage slide. “He was not fond of seeing me in black. I was his only child, you see, and we were very close.” And that was no lie, at least.

  The old woman nodded, an odd sight to see when her head was twisted sideways, more like a shaking of the whole head and body, and Cherry could see that she was unconvinced. Wonderful, she thought, biting the inside of her cheek to prevent a grimace. A suspicious old grannie to turn everyone against me. Is my life to turn into a pantomime?

  “Mrs. Beacham was quite right to come to the west and start over again!” Patty Mayfield declared. “We’re going to take real good care of her out here! Bradshaw people takes care of their own!”

  Cherry smiled gratefully. “I am sure that I am going to be very happy here, myself and my son,” she agreed. “Everyone has been so kind.” Excepting you, old woman, and you, cowboy. She looked pointedly away from Jared, who was standing near Matt, watching her with moody eyes.

  ***

  Jared kicked Matt.

  “Ow!”
Matt complained, and clutched at his shin. “Whaddya do that for? A nice party and you’re comin’ along to kick a fella.”

  “Wanted to see if you were still tough enough,” Jared muttered. He had actually just thought that kicking Matt might do something to relieve his feelings, but it really hadn’t done a thing. He still felt mean as a snake and mad as hell, and he didn’t quite know why… but he thought it had something to do with his uppity English neighbor, who seemed to be going out of her way to ignore him. And why should he care? Sure, she was pretty… beautiful, even. But she was nasty as a mustang filly. Unbroke. Mean. Free-spirited. Damn. He shook his head.

  “Tough enough for what? Dammit!” Matt rubbed at his shin and Patty Mayfield, in a knot of women surrounding the genuine lady, sent a quelling look in his direction. He looked quickly at Jared, who hadn’t missed the exchange.

  Jared thought it proved his point, but he just shook his head. “Tough enough to ride plumb to Texas and chase some damn cows,” he answered gruffly, making it up as he went along. “But if you’re gonna complain about a little kick in the shins…”

  “Wait.” Matt grabbed Jared’s arm and pulled him away from the little cluster of women, down to the wet stones along the creek-bed. Children throwing pebbles laughed at them and then scattered back into the shade of the cottonwoods. “What gives? I thought you said no to Texas.”

  “I been doing some thinking.” Jared shrugged, not looking at the woman who had got him doing all that thinking. “Thought maybe winter here was a bad idea.”

  “Maybe you shoulda thought sooner.” Matt sounded completely exasperated. “I’m gettin’ to likin’ Patty here. I don’t know as I want to leave her here to get friendly with anyone else. Winter’s a long time for a girl cooped up with a bunch of other men. Could be she’ll forget all about me. Some fella’ll get off that train and smile at her and she’ll forget I was ever born.”

  Jared sighed. One thing he’d always had to deal with, was Matt being ornery and contrary. He was as bad as a damn cow himself. One morning he’s complaining about spending the winter in Bradshaw, the next he’s in love with a Bradshaw girl and can’t leave. “So you changed your mind, is that it?”

  “I might have.” Matt looked a bit wily. “I just don’t know.”

  Jared decided that he couldn’t take another second of the damned party. Everyone was acting so contrary. Matt in love with Patty Mayfield. The Englishwoman turning up her chin at him for nothing more than making sure she was alive. Jared figured that Bradshaw was just about the most irritating place he had ever been in his life. Texas, with all its disappointments and reminders of heartbreak, was looking mighty appealing right now.

  But if Matt wouldn’t go with him…

  He stomped away, leaving Matt grinning maddeningly, a fool in love, and went across the dips and hollows of the prairie towards the drab clapboard of Bradshaw. A jackrabbit shied up from nearly beneath his boots and went bounding away through the gleaming summer grasses, ears pinned back against its furry skull. Fluttering little birds skimmed away, mouths clenched tight around the hoppers they’d been foraging for in the roots. Further out, he knew, away from their homesteads and their fires and their noise, shy antelope still ran wild beneath an endless dome of blue. He wanted to saddle up the roan and go out and gallop after them. He wondered how he could ever have decided to put down roots and file a claim. Because right now he was pretty sure he couldn’t see it through, couldn’t make it long enough to own the land. Sitting still like that just wasn’t in him. He’d tried it, and it just wasn’t working out.

  Jared didn’t want to sit still long enough to have to think.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cherry saw him leaving, his cream-colored hat a bright spot against the unrelieved emerald of the prairie. She noted that he’d chosen to go south, around the party, so that no one would stop him and talk to him. What an unrefined bear, she thought. What an unpleasant boor. And what a shame that he was her closest neighbor, her closest English-speaking neighbor, anyway. She was starved for conversation out there and it would have been nice if Jared had turned out to be the sort of fellow one could visit with, perhaps have a bit of a chat with over a cup of tea. The folk in Bradshaw were not the sort to stand on ceremony if a widow and her neighbor wanted to be social without a chaperone, she supposed. And it would have made such a nice change from the visits with the Jorgensons.

  The Jorgensons were lovely people, of course, a golden shining family of five, but not a single one of them spoke a single word of English (although the three youngest went to school each day and seemed to concentrate very hard on what the teacher was saying, so it was to be hoped, Patty Mayfield explained, that one of them would pick up something) and visits to them consisted of a great deal of smiling and nodding and the partaking of tea and butter cookies. If Cherry was completely honest with herself, it was the butter cookies that kept her going back. She wasn’t much of a baker, and still hadn’t mastered butter-making. At any rate, sugar was very expensive out here. She’d never dreamed sugar could cost so much. It made the constant parade of sweets and cakes and tarts and pies back at Beechfields seem positively princely, and they had not been an extravagant family.

  But she knew she was lucky to have the Jorgensons, even if they did not make much conversation. It had been a stroke of pure luck that she had taken Little Edward out on an exploratory drive one day and met the Jorgensons at all. Well off the main track, their homestead was a tidy little farm set deep in a round green bowl, watered by a determined little spring all set about with willow trees, like something out of a painting on a blue willow plate, with blinking Jersey cows peeping out of a sod barn and the beautiful Jorgenson children going about their blonde business in crimson and blue embroidered dresses. The oldest girl had taken a shine to Little Edward, and her mother had smiled benevolently and indicated, somehow, through much pointing and nodding and smiling, that the girl should follow Cherry back to her own claim on mule-back, and Cherry had allowed it, albeit with some confusion; had she just hired a nursemaid, and where on earth would she put her up?

  But the girl had only stayed a few moments, to look around the shanty and the beaten-down grass around it, and then smiled and patted Little Edward and bobbed her head to Cherry, and then pointed to the ticking tin clock on the kitchen shelf and tapped the number eight. Cherry smiled, quite mystified, and watched the girl ride away on her big mule without any idea what had just transpired; but the next morning at eight, the mule was back in her yard, and the Jorgenson girl had put him in hobbles to graze, was coming into her shanty, was scooping up Little Edward with a practiced hand, and nodding at Cherry to be about her business. And so it went, every day except Sundays, and Cherry was so relieved to be able to work on the farm without having to worry about Little Edward that she didn’t object to the accidental hiring, and gave her as many pennies each Saturday night as she could scrape up.

  Oh, the Jorgensons were a blessing, and no mistake! The girl was always bringing over gifts from her generous (and probably worried) mother: the tins of cookies, fresh-baked bread, embroidered dresses for Little Edward, once, memorably, a side of bacon which hung awkwardly in the little shanty, its grisly meatiness keeping her awake as it swung in the moonlight just feet from her bed, until she devised a cabinet to hang the meat in the lean-to barn.

  And they were lovely to visit anyhow, without conversation; the girls so tidy and industrious, milking the cows and sewing in the little parlor, for the Jorgensons had a real house and not a claim shanty; they were well-settled here, unlike the newcomers that had swollen Bradshaw’s ranks in recent years. Cherry was charmed by them, and most of all by Mr. and Mrs. Jorgenson’s deep, deep regard for one another. They were in love, and there was really no other word for it; regard was just a stuffy aristocratic term that denied the intensity of their gazes, the meaningfulness in their soft touches, the way that Mr. Jorgenson would lean over his wife’s chair and smile down at her work, and brush her cheek softly with
his fingers, an entirely inappropriate gesture in front of a guest at tea, naturally, but one that Cherry could not tear her eyes from, could not stop turning over in her mind. She had wanted this, a family and a passionate love affair with her husband, and she had been so close, so close, and now she would always be alone on the prairie, and at times she would have to close her lashes against the suspicious burning in her eyes.

  As neighbors went, then, the Jorgensons were something of a mixed blessing. The food and the comfort were lovely distractions from her own Spartan existence, it could not be denied. The assistance of the eldest daughter, she could see now, was absolutely indispensable. It had been naive of her to think that she could put together a fledgling homestead with an infant strapped to her back, however much she hated to think that her Cousin Anne had been right about that.

  But despite the cookies, Mr. and Mrs. Jorenson’s love affair, carried out in their every move and look and gesture, always sent her home in a funk, leaving her wondering how she would ever make it through the long lonely years ahead of her. She had been groomed her entire life for marriage and wifehood, and her papa had, however unwisely, encouraged her to aspire to a love-match. And when she had fallen in love with Edward Walsall, and confided that he had asked her to marry him and join him in sailing to South America on some scientific exploration he had decided was his newest passion, her father had paled, but had not withheld his blessing.

  From his deathbed, although no one suspected it at the time, he told his daughter to be happy. And when he had died, succumbing to a sudden fever that set in during what had seemed to be a simple bout of grippe, she had fled the sickroom and the stares and the stern doctor and rushed to the stables, to bury her face and her tears in the mane of her bay mare, and that was when her life’s course changed utterly.