by Tera Shanley
She braided her hair and pinned it into a low bun, letting the natural waves pull some curls out to tickle the sides of her face. Finally, she looked rested and fresh faced, and was grateful for a good night’s sleep.
She met Lenny in the barn with a couple pieces of cornbread from the day before. They relaxed on hay bales and set into breakfast. After they had fluffed crumbs from their laps for the chickens to clean up, Maggie led the horses and mules out to the corral one by one while Lenny milked the cows. Macy and Bossy’s calves were half grown and tended to mill about wherever they pleased.
Today, the little bulls seemed inclined to play-fight near the corral. Those two half-tamed brutes would be a handful when they were older.
Mucking out the horse’s stalls brought back the work she’d done around Roy’s homestead when she was younger. Similar to these chores but on a smaller scale. Her late father’s small ranch wasn’t nearly as grandiose as the Lazy S. It had been home though, and she found herself longing to see it again. A couple of days there after years of homesickness didn’t seem nearly enough.
After the women finished most of the animals’ upkeep, Maggie started saddling Buck. Lenny studied her curiously, but didn’t ask and brought her mare in and began to saddle her too.
“Why do you ride with a saddle?” Maggie asked the girl. “I’ve seen you ride her bareback with ease.”
Lenny grinned and put her saddle back in its place with the others. “Sometimes people, they don’t like to be reminded I’m Indian.”
She snorted. “Little English, my arse. You speak it better than I do.”
Lenny held onto her mare’s mane and hopped on in a graceful arch of motion.
Maggie hiked her foot into Buck’s stirrup and hefted herself into the saddle, adjusted, then had to reposition her skirts. “I envy you. You can wear pants and no one gives you grief for it.”
A devilish glint appeared in Lenny’s eyes. “Part of the reason I don’t speak English around people. If they think I’m a savage, no one bothers me about wearing dresses and acting like a lady. I get to wear pants, and carry a gun, and sleep without clothes. And if anyone asks me to do something I don’t want to, I just act like I don’t understand them.”
At the mention of sleeping without clothes, Maggie ceased fiddling with the stirrups. “You don’t sleep in a nightdress?” How scandalous, but deliciously naughty it would feel to sleep naked. She’d have to try it.
Lenny beheld her knowingly. “Maybe you should be a savage, too.”
A harsh and unjustified word, though a normal part of vocabulary for most. Lenny said it devoid of anger. Whether from knowing the term wasn’t true or from having adopted an ease with the word after years around white men, Maggie wasn’t sure.
“So where are we going, Boss Lady?”
“Ugh, what an atrocious nickname. Call me Maggie. I want to take flowers to Roy’s grave, and maybe spend some time around his place today.”
Lenny looked worried but nodded. “Should be safe enough, but I’m going to grab the pistols just in case. Maybe we can do some shooting while we are there.”
Upon reaching Roy’s grave, Maggie kneeled down in the dirt and laid a bouquet of wildflowers she’d picked on the way on it. Rocks had been laid on his grave to keep the coyotes from digging, but she busied herself with plucking tiny, tender shoots of green grass from the dirt between them. Lenny stood some distance back and waited while Maggie told Roy of her new life, of the things that had happened in the past few days.
“I wonder if you knew what you were doing when you charged Garret with your dying wish, Roy,” she said to his grave.
And then she cried, her anguish and misery bursting forth from her heart, so frail in its attempt to hide her grief from unsympathetic surroundings.
Instinct. Such a curious thing, and it seemed to have grown the longer she was out of the city. The hairs now rose on her neck, and she turned.
Frozen against the backdrop of wilderness and sky, hat pulled low over his face, a man sat a chestnut horse, staring at her. He didn’t move to approach or offer condolences.
Maybe that was his way of mourning the man he’d cared about too. She wiped her eyes and turned to the grave marker. He wouldn’t come to her because it wasn’t his way. But understanding that didn’t relieve the bone deep ache of his deliberate absence.
Chapter 11
“Why did you make me skin the rabbit?” Maggie asked.
She had been curious about Lenny’s reason for days, and the ride from Roy’s homestead to the Lazy S wasn’t a long one. She and Lenny needed to take advantage of their time together before prying ears surrounded them and she was back to taking lessons on the Comanche language.
“Garret doesn’t need a weak woman.” Well, that was an unexpected turn to this conversation. “It’s not a bad thing to be a soft woman. To be tender when he needs it, but he would never respect a weak woman.” Lenny looked at her as if to gauge whether she understood. “No one wanted his marriage to that Jennings woman to happen. Garret, least of all of us. But he would have done it to save the ranch. She would have done her best to put us beneath her though. Garret needs a woman to work beside him. Not one he has to drag behind him. He wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t try. The effort you have been willing to put in? It matters to a man like him, even if he doesn’t always show it.”
“Hmph. He most certainly doesn’t show it. Most of the time I can’t honestly say whether he likes me or loathes me.”
“He is a hard man,” Lenny agreed, “but it’s worth the trouble to get yourself under his arm.”
“Is Cookie your man?” After the words were out, she wished immediately she could take them back. It was far too bold a question at such an early stage in their friendship.
Lenny, thankfully, only smirked at her. “Cookie is my father’s brother. Was my father’s brother,” she corrected herself. She appeared as if she waited for more questions, and when none were offered, continued. “My mother and father died when I was little, and Cookie didn’t yet have a woman or a baby. He took care of me as his own. Like my father, Cookie was a great warrior. Led many brave war parties. One night he received a spirit dream. In it, a white owl told him of what could come to pass. The owl told him he must take me away from our people that night. The owl said it was my destiny to live away from the reservations and among white men. To choose a white man. Cookie was furious and argued with the spirit animal, but the owl told him he must keep me safe. He said that when I was gray, the white man I chose would become a supporter for the last great chief of our people because of his time spent with me. Hawk.”
So transfixed had she been by Lenny’s slow, rhythmic words and story, the last word caught her off guard. “Huh?”
Lenny pointed to the large bird perched on a tree limb. “He’s hunting.”
“What happened next?” Maggie asked, ignoring the interruption.
A sigh escaped her friend. “Cookie took me in the middle of the night. The next day my village was attacked. No survivors were found. We searched for work but couldn’t find any. I was just a girl and didn’t understand why Cookie was looking for work with white men. They were our enemy and Cookie was a great warrior. I was angry and felt betrayed. Garret’s dad hired us, but I think he was drunk when he did. Probably didn’t even mean to give us work, but for years we kept the ranch working with Garret when he was younger. After Garret left for school, I wanted to leave but Cookie refused. Said someday Garret would run the ranch and it would be our best chance. We just had to make it until then. So we did, and I found out Cookie was right. Garret was meant to run this place. He takes care of his people.”
“You speak so highly of Garret. Did you ever think he was the one you were supposed to choose?”
Lenny gawked at her like she had sprouted antlers. “No. Garret is too moody. Too broken. I’ll let you deal with him. I want a happy man.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality. “One who smiles a lot.”
“Like Burke?�
� One glance at the shock in Lenny’s face, and she was sure she’d guessed right. “Burke? But he is such a scoundrel!”
Lenny laughed and nodded in agreement. “And he needs a shave, and he sees me as one of the men.”
“I daresay he would be a fetching man without the beard,” she conceded. His kind, dark eyes were handsomely shaped and his happy disposition did make his smile all the more appealing. “And I’m sure he doesn’t see you as one of the men. From a distance, yes, your dress could throw one off, but up close you couldn’t ever be mistaken for a man. Your face is much too fair,” she said with a nod.
“Nape,” Lenny said pointing to her foot.
“What?”
Lenny tilted her head toward the barely visible house in the distance. Garret was headed their way on foot.
“Oh. Right. Nape? Nape.”
When Garret reached them, he took Buck’s reins and pulled him to a stop. He nodded at Lenny, and she rode ahead.
“Take a walk with me?” he asked Maggie.
“Be delighted.” She dismounted before he could assist her and snatched the reins from his hand. “Come on ol’ Buckey-boy,” she crooned. They roamed in silence while she waited for Garret to find his words.
“While the boys were in town, they heard there was a dance coming up. The McDowell’s barn burned to the ground a month back and folks in town aim to raise a new one. The dance will be afterward.” Garret reacquired Buck’s reins, and Maggie hiked up her skirts to keep pace with him. “Normally me and the boys would help with the barn and be on our way, but since you are here— Well, I figured I’d see if you needed to go,” he ended.
“Garret Shaw. Are you asking to accompany me to a dance?”
“Hardly,” he said, sparing an annoyed glare for her. “Just thought you would require more socialization than the rest of us.”
To sidle around a cluster of cactus, she hiked her skirts higher. “Let me guess. The boys want to go, but you want to use me as an excuse for it.”
At the edge of her vision, a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Do you want to go or not?”
“Fine, but Lenny comes, too.”
Garret stopped walking so abruptly, Buck nearly stepped on the back of his boot. “Now why in Sam Hill do you think Lenny would want to go to a barn raising and a dance?”
“I don’t, but I’ll ask.”
“And how do you propose to do that? You don’t even speak her language!”
Skirts still lifted to pick her way over the uneven terrain, she made her way past him. “I’m learning it,” she snapped.
“Do you wear her moccasins every day?” he asked, peering at her footwear.
“Of course I do. They were a gift and they are comfortable. Would you prefer I wear my fine high button leather shoes to properly milk a cow? And furthermore, do you have any idea how many times a day that damned rooster chases me? I’d likely never escape in those.”
Lengthening his strides, he caught up with her. “Learning the language, wearing moccasins…sure you ain’t turnin’ Injun?” His tone said he didn’t mind the changes.
“Yes, I think tomorrow I shall wear a feather in my hair.”
* * * *
Garret thought she had been joking, but the next morning, while Lenny tied a long hawk feather into Maggie’s unpinned hair, she broached the subject of the dance.
“No,” Lenny responded immediately.
Having let the subject rest for exactly three minutes, she tried again. “Burke is going.”
Lenny sighed and stood back to admire her efforts on Maggie’s hair. “Even if I went to the dance, he would look at me the same.” Her eyes lit up. “Unless I had a dress to wear.”
“You want to borrow one of my dresses?” Maggie asked, eyebrows surely touching her hairline in surprise. “Are you sure you want to do that? What I mean to say is, your dress is part of what makes you you.”
“How am I supposed to find the man I’m supposed to be with if he can’t see past my outfit?”
“Well, then maybe he isn’t the man for you, if it takes a frilly dress to win his affections.” After quiet contemplation while she made her bed, Maggie folded. “I am truly up to my eyeballs in problems with the male gender at the moment. Who am I to give advice? Of course you can borrow any dress you want. I can do your hair if you’d like, as well.”
Lenny grinned, showing teeth that were straight and white against her dark skin. “Don’t worry. I won’t turn into a white lady if I wear a dress for one night.”
“More likely you’ll thank the heavens you aren’t a white lady after wearing one for a night. They are atrociously uncomfortable.”
* * * *
Three long and uneventful nights Garret spent out with the boys watching the cattle. They suspected cattle rustlers were to blame for the decline in their bovine numbers, but thus far, had seen zero nighttime human activity. Sparing their own, of course. As much as Maggie enjoyed sleeping with nary a stitch of clothing in Garret’s absence, she grew suspicious her increasingly foul mood had to do with how little she had seen him of late. She hated to admit it to herself, much less utter such embarrassing words out loud, so would keep the tidbit of information to herself. After bouts of especial grumpiness, Lenny tossed knowing looks at her, which led her to think she was fooling no one.
When Garret showed up to gather more provisions to last them yet another night, that was it. Enough was enough.
“I’m coming with you.”
Garret looked at her in shock, a half-eaten biscuit hanging from his mouth. “No,” he said around the food. “Hell no. You would hate it, and I have enough to deal with without listening to your whining.”
“How do you know I’ll hate it?” she countered. “You don’t even know me and besides, I’ve already saddled Buck and packed a bedroll and my own food. You won’t even know I’m there. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”
He shook his head in annoyance and stuffed food into a pack.
“And I don’t whine,” she said, slamming the front door behind her as she left the house. She’d wait with the horses lest Garret get the harebrained idea to leave her behind at a dead run.
The ride to the pond was quiet until Garret said, “Your last pie almost looked normal.”
Ah, that hard earned half-compliment was so sweet to her ears. “I’ve been practicing the creation of the perfect pastry dessert to present at the barn raising.”
Kicking his horse into a trot in front of her, he said over his shoulder, “You’re likely to run the ranch out of flour with your good intentions.”
Why couldn’t the confounding man let her keep any of his kind words? She stuck her tongue out at his receding back. Mature or not, it made her feel better.
The remaining herd was still substantial and when they arrived, Cookie, Burke and Wells were scattered among the bellowing beasts on horseback. The former concentrated on chewing copious amounts of grass, while the latter kept a wary eye out for intruders. The men looked exhausted, and as she steered Buck to her post, the boys threw surprised glances in her direction. All but Burke, who waved and looked as if she was the entertainment he had been waiting for. She would have to try her best not to provide the expected show.
Milling about in the herd, she kept an attentive eye and rode to the edge of the numbers to check the tree line for any unexpected movement. How they would ever keep track of all the cattle was beyond her. The animals tended to wander wherever the wind took them, completely uninterested in staying in an easily manageable group, despite the cowhands combined efforts to keep them together. Garret muttered it was because the beasts were dumb, and though she strove to be more charitable in her thoughts, one evening with the herd had her inclined to agree with him.
Maggie was grateful for darkness. Her stomach proved to be an impatient little companion, and by nightfall she had tied a string of tight knots down the extra length of Bucks reins out of boredom. Her gaze was drawn to her untouchable husband’s strong athletic form mo
re and more often, and she was relieved when Cookie started a fire some small distance away in the waning evening light. Burke disappeared into the trees and Garret kept his position with the herd, but she happily joined the men at the campfire. She hoped to pick up a few tips on outdoor cooking, and was glad when Cookie patiently answered her questions and let her help. Dinner was simple. Beans and ham with a loaf of freshly baked bread she’d brought. The bottom was scorched and it hadn’t risen properly, but no one complained.
The night was beautiful and clear. The sheer number of stars was nearly aesthetically overwhelming. Billions of tiny diamonds decorated the deep purple sky. Wells graciously gave up his seat on a fallen tree, which was a fortunate thing because from the looks of it, Garret had no intention of sharing his space on it. Still mad, then.
The men’s easy banter with each other made her chuckle, even when evident the bulk of their amusement stemmed from Garret’s relationship, or lack thereof, with her. The jabs didn’t make her uncomfortable. They bothered Garret, though, by the perpetual grimace he wore and the clenched set of his jaw.
Well, hang it then. Let them tease. What they said was mostly true and she could use a good laugh.
Maggie shoveled the last bite of dinner into her mouth as Burke announced he had a present for her. She turned to look at him and came face-to-face with a spiny lizard. Squeaking, she dropped her plate and hopped onto the log, which elevated her exactly one foot off the ground, and made her no safer. Garret’s shoulders shook with the effort to hold in his laughter. At least he tried. The others were hootin’ and hollerin’ remorselessly.
She threw her husband a slit-eyed glare and snatched the lizard from Burke’s outstretched hand. That successfully surprised everyone, including herself. Seated again, she cradled the reptile between her hands. It was the size of her palm and spiny, though not painful to hold.
“What is he?” she asked as she rubbed her finger down the folding spines on its back.
