by Tera Shanley
She dismounted stiffly in a small clearing along with Burke and Lenny while Garret rode around the perimeter. Lenny was unusually quiet. Granted, around the men she was always nearly silent, but even her movements were careful and calculated.
She turned around to find Lenny standing within inches of her.
“You scared the devil out of me!” Maggie clutched her chest.
Lenny glanced at Burke, who was unloading their provisions for the night. At such a distance, he wouldn’t easily hear a whispered conversation.
“Be wary. Trouble is coming,” Lenny whispered as she pressed one of Garret’s pistols into her hand and waited for her to give any response she understood.
Maggie put the heavy pistol in the belt and folds of her skirt and squeezed Lenny’s hand. She had only seen the girl scared when Wyatt approached, and for good reason. Such apprehension in her toughened friend was unsettling.
Garret tied Rooney loosely to a rope Burke had draped between a couple of trees. The other horses were already relaxing weary muscles after the long day and tearing through any grass within reach. By the time Garret came back, Lenny and she had already begun preparing ham and beans in a travel skillet and Burke had started a fire with some tinder he’d collected.
Like the thrilling of an extremity that had fallen asleep from prolonged inactivity, her ears tingled with the constant thrum of readiness. Every few seconds the hairs on her nape would rise as if a predator’s gaze was upon her back. If the feeling of dread was so potent for her, it had to be tenfold for the others, more trained to be wary of unseen danger. Restless and watchful, no one spoke a word as they set to their task of making dinner and camp.
The Indians appeared as ghosts materialize out of thin air. Not a branch broken in their wake nor leaf stirred. Not a blade of grass sang its anger at being disturbed. She and her companions were alone in the clearing, and then they weren’t.
Four imposing men stalked closer, clad in leather breechcloths secured by belts. They wore moccasins and decorative breast plates made of thin, uniform white beads. The two older men had left their chests bare under their breast plates, while the two younger Indians had thin cloth shirts on. All wore their hair parted in the middle and in long braids. The lines down their scalps were painted in bright colors, and each had at least one small braid decorated with colored cloth, beads and a single feather. That these men were fearsome warriors couldn’t be questioned, even to an untrained eye such as hers.
With hard expressions and weapons drawn, they approached as if they hunted something vile and dangerous. Maggie jumped at the sight of them but Garret put a firm hand on her leg and flashed a warning look to her. Be still, woman, his eyes seemed to say.
Lenny sat still as a stone with her head down, and Burke and Garret stood slowly. The Indians came to a stop a short distance away from their fire. Garret greeted them in a tongue still foreign to her, save a few words. Though his fluency in their language seemed to take them aback, the warriors didn’t lower their weapons.
They directed their questions to Lenny, and after Garret waited for her to answer with no success, he answered for her, which only seemed to displease the strangers more. Four dark and fiery sets of eyes drifted from Garret to Lenny, and as they broke into a fast and angry-sounding conversation amongst themselves, they gestured to her friend time and time again.
Garret shook his head and repeated the same phrase over and over. He pointed to Maggie and gave a frustrated grunt, grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet. Then he yanked her to him until she was plastered to his chest and covered her mouth with his. She struggled in surprised panic for a moment before she melted into his intoxicating touch. That man could kiss a woman. Her bones melded into place as he pulled his lips from hers, and she clung to his waist to stay upright. Her wobbly legs were less than useless.
“Mine,” he told the Indians. “What’s the word?” He pointed to Lenny and asked her a question in a clipped tone.
The girl glanced from the small band of warriors to Burke, who seemed completely lost in the conversation, and a determined expression came into her eyes. She slunk to Burke’s side. “Mine,” she said, to the dawning comprehension of Burke.
Who looked more shocked, was hard to tell. It was a terribly close race between Garret, the Indians, and Burke. She would have laughed at their comical expressions if death didn’t seem so imminent. If not for her and Garret, surely Lenny had sealed Burke’s fate, for the warriors’ attention swung in his direction. The air was so charged, not a bird in the area was brave enough to let out a squawk.
“Oh, bollocks,” Maggie grumbled. “Would you like to join us for dinner?” she asked the men, speaking slowly. She pantomimed eating and chewing.
Garret stared at her as if she had lost her mental faculties.
“Well, ask them,” she directed him. Hands on hips, she waited.
The warriors looked at each other and then at her in confusion, and Lenny, silent Lenny, was of no help whatsoever. Garret cleared his throat and invited them to break bread. The men lowered their weapons, but kept them handy. Their curiosity with Lenny and a white man speaking their language had the older men calming the fire in the younger ones.
The tension between the men made for an uncomfortable meal but curiosity got the better of one of the younger braves. He pointed to Maggie’s moccasins poking from under the hem of her dress and asked Lenny a question, to which she responded with a nod. Maggie lifted her dress just enough to show off Lenny’s craftsmanship.
For a time, as she seemed the only one who felt inclined to chat, she carried on a very one-sided conversation with the Indians. Garret translated but he wasn’t gracious about it. When nervous, she had a tendency to ramble, and ramble she did. She told how Lenny outshot the men at the barn raising, and she’d made her skin a rabbit. The men seemed to like that one, and they squinted at her proper posture, poise and dress. Even Lenny cracked a smile, though she wiped it clean as soon as it appeared.
One of the younger braves, who sat behind the others, watched Maggie with interest, so she directed her stories and questions at him while the others finished their meal and stared at the silent Indian girl.
Lenny sat beside Burke, leaving him scarcely enough room to move his arm to eat. He scooted further down the fallen tree for space but relentless in her chase, she kept close to him until Burke nearly fell off the end. Eventually he gave up and attempted to eat with his other hand.
With persuasion, Lenny responded in clipped tones to the questions asked by the men, though what they were discussing was incomprehensible.
From the confounded look on Burke’s face, he seemed to be in the same wayward boat as her.
The man in the back continued to watch her. It bothered Garret far more than it did her, and as the evening wore on and their dinner guests remained, his apparent lack of need for personal space made her smile to herself. Unlike Burke, she was disinclined to move over to gain space. Sitting so close to Garret Shaw wasn’t such a terrible thing, so she held her ground. With his heat warming her and his solid arm against her, danger seemed a comfortable enough distance off.
Maggie stretched her back as she relaxed into the cadence of the foreign language spoken around her. She gave up trying to understand the flow of conversation. Instead, she enjoyed the sound of their tenor voices and rhythm of the words. One of the older men gave a short utterance and, as one, the men stood in a fluid motion. The warriors gave them slight nods and headed off in the direction in which they’d come. The young man in the back stayed and addressed her, much to her surprise. He hadn’t spoken to her before then. She looked to Garret to translate. He didn’t appear happy but he could have been more gracious about it.
“He says he’s never met a woman like you. Says you are confusing.”
“Oh, well I’m terribly sorry,” she directed at the Indian.
“Don’t think he meant it in a bad way,” Garret said dryly.
She waved as the man disappeared i
nto the darkness beyond the firelight, and turned to start cleaning up after their meal. Garret hovered, but seemed at a loss for words, so she ignored him and waited for him to verbalize his thoughts. He didn’t. Instead he helped clean up and set up their bedrolls near the fire.
“Burke, you take the first shift,” he said. “Wake me in a few hours and I’ll take the rest of the night, if you like.”
Burke agreed, went a short distance and leaned against a tree with his pistols to keep watch. Despite the somewhat cordial dinner with their new acquaintances, having a weapon drawn still kept a person on alert.
Sleep would come restless that night.
Chapter 17
How was Maggie supposed to sleep when she was so close to Garret’s body? His warmth radiated onto her. His soft, slow breathing told her he slept with no trouble, while she, on the other hand, couldn’t sleep if her life depended on it. He’d decided, for reasons unknown to her, to put his bedroll behind hers and had proceeded to fall asleep undisturbed. Right beside her.
If she scooted back even closer to him, would he notice? Couldn’t hurt to try.
The instant she began to relocate her bedroll, she was startled to find him looking at her through one slitted blue eye, wearing an amused expression.
He chuckled at her. “Go to sleep, Maggie.”
“Harrump,” she grunted, and plopped down on her unmoved bedroll. It would have to be close enough.
When the first blue-gray streaks of morning lay across the sky, Maggie stretched the stiffness from her back. She huddled into her sleeping bag to regain some of the warmth she had lost sitting against an old cottonwood tree. While Garret slept on, she was riveted by a jagged scar across his neck. How had she not noticed it before? Sure, it was faint, and silvered with age, but at one time had been a significant injury and seemed obvious in the dim morning light. Possibly she hadn’t paid proper attention to his neck because his eyes so often had her enraptured.
Something alerted her that Garret had slipped from the depths of sleep into the subtle shift of wakefulness. Perhaps the slight variance in the cadence of his breathing, or perhaps, the small piece of her soul which seemed determined to tether itself to his had told her of the change.
“Where did you get the scar on your neck?” she asked.
She knew he’d heard her. He was just putting off waking the last bit of the way.
His bleary blue gaze focused on her, and he jerked his head back an inch. He cleared his throat and sat up. “It’s not a story with a happy ending. Where’s Burke? Why didn’t he wake me?”
More than a little proud, she explained, “Lenny spelled him, and then I took a turn. You were up most of the night before and you needed rest. Where did you get the scar?” she repeated, undeterred.
Garret rubbed his face, ran his hands through his hair and shook it out. “My old man hit the bottle too hard one night. Tried to slit my throat.” He looked at her with his eyebrows raised, as if daring her to ask more questions she likely wouldn’t appreciate the answers to. “Thankfully, my pa was too drunk to get it done right.”
He’d said it off the cuff, so detached from such a horrid story that had no business coming from a man’s mouth and ringing true.
He’d been a child who’d lost his mother and the remaining parent, the one supposed to protect him, had tried to kill him. Bile rose in the back of her throat at the horror, and she swallowed down the queasiness. “Your story had a happy ending to me,” she said quietly.
Garret regarded her, those cerulean eyes piercing to her very being as his expression turned questioning. “And how’s that?”
“You’re still here. When did he do it?”
Garret scanned the dim clearing as if he wished he were anywhere but there. “The season you and your ma left Rockdale.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No use apologizing. It ain’t your fault.”
“No, of course it isn’t, but I’m sorry no one was there for you.” She closed the short distance between them and hugged him around his neck.
He sat frozen and stiff, but she couldn’t seem to pull her arms from his shoulders. The scruff on his unshaven face felt right against her cheek. He relaxed and put his arms hesitantly around her waist. She wanted to cry for what he had been through, but it wasn’t his way, so she put her sorrow into holding him. Garret let out his breath and murmured, “It’s all right now, woman. I don’t even think on it anymore.”
Lenny and Burke watched them from a distance, but at a glance from her, took off into the woods. Maggie let Garret go, not pausing to talk or give him even a moment to panic and say something horrid to her, as he so often did after she showed any emotion. She simply stood, rolled the blankets, and avoided his gaze at all costs.
Garret rolled his blankets, and when finished, took hers and tied them to the saddles still cinched on Buck and Rooney. After a quick breakfast of stale biscuits and dried venison, the four of them headed out to finish the last few miles to Whitfield’s ranch.
“Need to talk to you,” Garret said as they pulled the horses up at the boundary of old Whitfield’s land.
His serious tone brokered dread, but with a straightened spine, she reined Buck closer to Rooney and waited.
“This money I’m using to buy these cattle? It’s the money we got from driving Roy’s herd, and therefore I was thinking it was rightfully yours. Figured I should ask what you wanted to do with it before I spend it.”
“Buy the cattle, of course. Anything I can do to help us keep the ranch, I’ll do, but can I say something?”
He nodded.
“Why don’t we drive the cattle straight to town, sell them at a profit and be done with Whitfield’s brand?
“But what about the breeding stock for next year?”
“We can put the money aside to help pay the loan to the Jenningses, but I fear the longer we have these cattle, the more time Wyatt will have to steal them back. I have a bad feeling about keeping this herd.”
Grunting, he nodded. “We’d easily triple our money if we drive them into town right now, as cheap as Whitfield is selling them to us. And it wouldn’t hurt to have them gone before the Jenningses find some loophole to get ’em back. I’ll talk to Burke and we’ll see about driving them that-a-way tomorrow.”
They rode through the brush that lined a small clearing, and Whitfield’s modest cabin peeked through a pair of cottonwood trees. The wind caressed a splintered rocking chair on the small porch and milling cattle dotted the yard. It was clear Whitfield had made a one-man effort to bring the herd together in preparation for driving them. Cows were spread far and wide, but at least they wouldn’t have to go riding all over creation in search of them.
Garret instructed Burke and Lenny to start rounding up the stragglers and motioned for Maggie to join him. Whitfield was a hunched, gray haired man who came out onto the front porch with his arms full when Garret and Maggie neared. He was packing, and in a hurry.
“Don’t want to be here when the Jenningses figure out they weren’t careful enough with the paperwork,” Whitfield offered with a mischievous grin.
“Right,” Garret said with a chuckle. “We’ll make this quick then.”
He tossed Whitfield a leather bag of money and waited while the man counted it.
Whitfield grunted in approval. “That’ll do it. This money will get me out of town and into the city where I have relatives waiting. Plan to get onto the train by the end of the day.”
“Probably a good idea,” Garret replied. “Don’t reckon anybody’s tried to stand up to the Jenningses before today. We’ll probably drive the herd straight into town ourselves, and get out of the Jennings way.”
“Probably best. I’d drive them myself, if I had the manpower. They’ll fetch a good price.” Whitfield squinted at the position of the sun. “Listen, I got a horse. A real fair filly, and I can’t take her with me where I’m going. Would you mind picking her up in town and taking her back to the Lazy S? She’s draft and Fri
esian, a real big girl. She’s great for hard work, and her foals will catch a price. I’d be much obliged. I can’t part with her, thinking she is going to Jennings’s breeding stock.”
“I’ve seen the horse you’re talking about. She’s a beauty. We’ll take her, if it’s what you want. Give them my name at the stable and we’ll get her after we sell the cattle.”
He tipped the brim of his hat. “I’ll see you when I see you,” Whitfield said, and went back to loading his small wagon.
It took an hour to gather the milling cattle before they were off at a grueling, slow pace. Getting such a large herd moving in the intended direction while keeping the headstrong ones from escaping into the brush took alertness to the cattle’s ornery ways, hard riding and lots of yelling. As the other three were seasoned at driving, often she had to go after the numbers intent on splitting from the bulk of the group. Tumultuous motion, like she was a chicken with her head cut off. There was no pattern or organization. Driving, for her, was chaos.
They avoided the main road in hopes of avoiding attention, so the cattle had to be pushed through areas of thick brush. Every muscle was strained as if she had been driving for days by the time they stopped for a bite to eat.
The cattle milled about, exhausted from traveling, and grazed hungrily on knee high prairie grass. With Garret’s portion of dried venison in hand, she wove through the mass of irritable beasts on Buck, careful to avoid the bulls with the biggest horns, until finally she reached him near the middle of the herd. It would have to be a lunch in the saddle if they wanted to get to town by dark.
Garret leaned across the saddle horn and took the small meal from her outstretched hand. “We aren’t going to break camp until late today.”
Already tearing into the jerky, she nodded. A small flash of gray through two large patches of brush caught her attention, and she jerked her head and squinted in the direction she had seen it. Nothing moved besides the cattle that had wandered that far. She shook her head and took another bite.
