Buck didn’t want to think about the consequences of getting snowed out of the valley, so he turned away from the sight of Ted, who had reached down to scratch his poor excuse for a dog behind the ears. He wondered what it would be like to have a woman around the place again. Three years ago there had been two women underfoot and he’d been more than happy to let them take care of the chores. Then Sissy, his youngest sister, had died of typhoid and Patsy—who’d been crazy ever since her common-law husband died—got so bad he couldn’t trust what she would do next. He’d had to take her down the mountain and trust her care to an old Scotswoman Ted knew who lived outside Cheyenne.
Now that he’d asked Alice Soams to marry him, there would be a woman in his life again.
And things were bound to be different.
ANNIKA Storm touched the frosted glass of the windowpane beside her seat on the Union Pacific train bound for Cheyenne and parts west. She traced an ever-widening circle with her index finger until she created a peephole large enough to see through, but all it revealed was a vast stretch of snow-covered land.
She took one look outside and sighed with boredom. The bleak landscape had not changed for the last five hundred miles. She glanced down at the journal lying open in her lap and fingered the well-worn pages. Today’s entry would read much like the past few days. Still traveling westward. Open plains and snow all around.
Before she could open her slant-lidded, hand-carved writing box, take out pen and ink, and add the entry (no little feat with the ceaseless rocking motion of the train) Annika felt a sudden jolt and the train ground to a halt. The other passengers around her began to stir, shaken from the lethargy brought on by the earlier, hypnotic motion of the train.
She set her journal beside her on the plush, tufted upholstery of her first-class seat, put her hands on her waist at the small of her back, then arched and stretched. She had no idea when she left Boston that the journey ahead of her would be so long and tedious. As the train halted with a dramatic hiss of steam and screech of brakes, Annika braced herself by putting her hand against the seat in front of her, then reached down for the perky hat that she had set atop the valise that contained her overnight necessities: comb and brush, a nightgown, buttonhook, a fresh shirtwaist, a book, and the tin that held her precious button collection. The hat itself was of her own creation, a low-crowned man’s felt hat with a narrow brim to which she had added a satin hatband of pale blue on navy. The fabric was the same as that of the shirtwaist she wore with the heavy chocolate wool skirt topped by a fitted, single breasted, three-quarter-length jacket. Her “mountain dress,” as she called the ensemble, had served her well during the long trip, but now she was thoroughly tired of wearing it. She could hardly wait to reach Cheyenne and the comforts of her brother Kase’s home where she could unpack her various trunks and boxes and change into something else.
Annika pinned on her hat and stood up so that she could draw her cloak over her shoulders. The black satin merveilleux cape enveloped her clothing. She’d brought it along, not only for added warmth, but to repel dust and soot, unwanted additions to any train ride. She fluffed the wide ruffle that covered the shoulders of the cape and tied the ribbons that held it closed beneath her chin. She was especially fond of the scrolled initials,AS, worked in heavy gold thread on the edge of the collar above her right breast.
A few moments later, the harried conductor, portly and balding beneath a stiff black cap, entered the Pullman and hurried down the aisle. He paused when Annika glanced worriedly up at him. He leaned toward her. In a voice loud enough to carry to the other curious travelers who had paid dearly to ride in the well-appointed sleeper where the seats were converted into upper and lower berths at night, he explained their sudden stop in the middle of nowhere.
“We dropped a crown sheet,” he said matter-of-factly.
“A what?” she asked.
“Crown sheet. Dropped down on the hot coals of the engine and the thing exploded. Blew the windows right out of the cab when the firebox door flew open.”
“Was anyone injured?”
“All three men in the cab were scalded. Brakeman’s the worst of the lot. Things would have been worse if they hadn’t had on so many heavy clothes. We’ll have to send someone down the line to wire Cheyenne for a new crew. If we’re lucky, we’ll be on the way within a few hours.” He pushed his cap onto the back of his head with his thumb. “Never forget the story of the train that stalled in ‘seventy-five. Bound for Denver out of Kansas, trapped by a storm for eleven days. I heard the passengers ended up eating oysters that were part of a shipment to California.” He straightened, faced the rear of the car, and announced, “You may as well get out and stretch your legs for a while, but don’t wander too far away. Hopefully we’ll be leaving before too long.”
He hurried on to spread word of the accident through the rest of the passenger cars. The ladies and gentlemen aboard began to stretch and talk among themselves. Annika joined the more adventuresome travelers who began to leave the car.
It was not until she reached the metal stairs and grabbed the freezing handrails on either side that she realized she had left her gloves in her valise. Anxious to feel more of the clear, crisp air on her face she decided not to go after them, but to continue on and return to the car if her hands became too cold. She stepped out of the train carefully and then, when she was standing on the uneven ground near the tracks, paused to look around.
The land was as wide and endlessly barren as it had appeared from the window of the train. Here and there patches of snow had melted, giving the impression of open tears in the fabric of the landscape. The earth was mud brown against the snowy whiteness surrounding it. Tufts of thick, winter-brown buffalo grass and scattered stones added texture to the ground. The air was cold, the wind sharp and stinging, but she found it a relief from the dry, close heat generated by the stove inside the train.
As she began to walk away from the small crowd milling alongside the train, Annika looked toward the west and noticed the gradual, almost imperceptible slope of the land. She realized that since they were still east of Cheyenne the train must be stalled somewhere near her brother’s ranch, which was located on land that backed up to the Laramie Range not far from the small town of Busted Heel, Wyoming. She thought it ironic that Kase had arranged to meet her, not in Busted Heel, but in Cheyenne. He had written that he wanted to combine meeting her at the station with a trip into town for supplies. Instead of being but a few miles away, he was waiting for her down the line.
As she raised her face to the sun and let its warmth vie with the chilly air that touched her skin, she tried to remember what she could of the years her family had lived on the Dakota plains. From the time she was two years old until she was seven, Caleb had been stationed at the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge. She knew they had a small wooden house, that she had been jealous of Kase because he had been allowed to learn to ride and later to shoot a revolver, and that her mother had kept her close to her side. She thought she remembered the same endless stretch of sky that she saw now, and the wind that never seemed to rest, but that was all.
She rubbed her hands together, cupped one around the other, and blew on them to bring some warmth to her numb fingers. Then she folded her arms, hoping to keep the cold at bay a little while longer as she enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine. When she heard footsteps behind her, Annika slowed her pace, hoping to strike up a conversation with one of the other passengers. A young couple walked past her, nodded, and moved on. She heard them speaking a language that sounded Germanic, but it was not Dutch, which she had learned from her mother. She watched as they moved on down the tracks together.
For a moment she felt a fleeting loneliness as she watched the young lovers walk away hand in hand. If she had not called off her wedding, she and Richard would have been married for two months now. They would have shared their first Christmas together and perhaps, she thought with a shiver, she might even be carrying his child. Her loneliness graduall
y ebbed when she silently admitted to herself that she did not think she was ready to face motherhood and all of its inherent restrictions yet.
Richard had been shocked, but kind and understanding when she broke their engagement. During the holidays and all of January while she corresponded with Rose and Kase and prepared to go to Wyoming, Richard had continued to call on her. He had even accompanied Caleb, Analisa, and Ruth to the station to see her off. Willing to give her time to find herself, he told her to see some of the world on her own, to take as long as she needed. On that last day in Boston as the train was about to pull out of the station, he held her hands and promised to be waiting for her in six months when she returned. When she tried to return his ring, he refused to accept it. She left it in her mother’s care.
His acceptance of her decision was smoothly acknowledged without shouting or tears. But then, Richard had always done the right thing, the acceptable thing, throughout their courtship. Following the strict rules set down by society, he had never offered her his arm in the daytime until they were engaged, nor did he give her gifts until she had agreed to marry him. He refused to stand outside her door to bid her good night longer than the proper five minutes, and on those occasions when she asked him in, Richard politely left after the respectable time limit of a half hour had passed.
He had been as predictable in his agreement to give her time to think things through as she had expected, and now that she could look back over their brief relationship, it was that very predictability that she was running from. Life with Richard would always be sane and safe, predictable and proper. Those were the qualities her parents had seen in him and admired. It was not necessarily the life she wanted.
The wind whipped the edges of her cloak open, so she tugged them closed and held them, but her hands were freezing. When she stumbled, nearly turning her ankle on a loose rock, Annika decided that her brief sojourn outdoors should reach its end. She took a last, deep breath of the winter air and turned around. Farther down the line, passengers were huddled in small groups, talking idly, staring at the landscape around them as if, like Rip van Winkle, they had slept for years.
As she approached the sleeper, she was forced to step aside to allow a passenger to descend the stairs. The woman was thin, almost to the point of emaciation. Her hair was lank and long, not really blond, nor was it brown, but a faded, indiscriminate color. Her eyes were blue, her skin sallow. The pinched lips, held tight beneath her narrow nose, made the woman appear older than she really was. Although Annika nodded in greeting, the woman ignored her and moved on. With a shrug, Annika stepped aboard and quickly put the incident behind her. She took her seat again, left on her cloak because the car had become drafty with both doors open, and opened her journal.
AT ten minutes past twelve, Buck Scott cursed himself as he rode down Capitol Avenue toward the Union Pacific passenger station in Cheyenne. He had lost track of time when he made one last stop at Myers and Foster’s shoe store on Sixteenth, and now feared he had missed meeting Alice Soams when the noon train arrived. As it was he was so far behind that he had not had time to get a haircut or a shave. He had taken longer than necessary when he stopped at Tivoli Hall to partake of some St. Louis beer, went into Zehner and Buechner and Company to buy a simple gold wedding band, then there had been those last few moments he’d spent standing in front of the window at the Wyoming Hardware Company staring at an ornately decorated Aladdin ventilating stove, wondering how he could get one up the mountain.
If not for all the delays he would have been at the station well before noon, for he had made it to Cheyenne in record time—a day and a half—but it had been a day and a half of hard riding leading an extra mare and two pack mules. He could only hope the trip back into the mountains would go as smoothly, especially with an inexperienced rider and all her possessions in tow. As he urged his horse on, careful to avoid the buggies and wagons vying for space in the crowded, muddy street, he tried to quell the roiling nervousness that had plagued him since he neared Cheyenne. What would Alice Soams be like? How would she take to him and life in the Rockies? Why in the hell had he ever decided that marriage was the only way he could cope with his present predicament?
He was used to his life of isolation. Hunting and trapping filled his days, sporadic trips into Cheyenne took care of any need he ever had for companionship. Whenever he wanted a woman to ease his loneliness, he’d bought and paid for one for a night. Until now, that had always been enough. But now, matters were such that he couldn’t even leave the cabin unless there was someone there to watch over the place, so after endless hours of careful deliberation, Buck took the only option he felt was open to him—he had answered the advertisement in a Boston newspaper and found himself a wife.
There was a crowd milling about on the platform. Even though he was a good head taller than almost everyone there, by the time he had tied up his animals and mingled among them, he still had not spotted anyone who might have been Alice Soams. There was only one unaccompanied female in the group. She was standing off to the side of the platform alone, but she was nearly seventy years old. He hoped to God she wasn’t Alice.
Buck took off his hat and ran his hand over his hair. He’d tied it back into a thick queue with a strip of leather, but the stuff was so naturally wavy that some of it was always working its way out of the tie. He slammed his hat back on and pushed his way through the crowd to the ticket window.
When he had the clerk’s attention he asked, “There been a lady here askin’ after Buck Scott? She was due in on the noon train.”
“She couldn’t have asked,” the clerk said shortly, “because the noon train’s late.”
Buck looked around at the crowd, passengers waiting to depart, folks there to meet new arrivals, and asked, “How late’s it going to be?”
“No tellin’. When I hear anything from down the line, I’ll announce it.” With that the man motioned forward an impatient couple standing behind Buck.
Buck shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to move closer to the edge of the platform. He looked down the tracks, willed the noon train to appear, and when it didn’t, he glanced up at the sky. When the wind had picked up, blowing in from the northwest as it usually did, he remembered Old Ted’s prediction of a storm. Buck concentrated on the train again as he stepped from one foot to the other. Damn! he thought. His impending marriage hadn’t even taken place and already things had started to go sour.
He looked around at the crowd again, uncomfortable among so many people in one place. He’d never liked being surrounded by milling bodies; it reminded him too much of being part of a herd. He’d seen one too many animals die because they let the lead bull do their thinking for them. Buffalo would run right off a cliff because they followed the lead bull. Working alone was the way he liked things; living alone had been his way, too. But now all that was about to change.
Buck glanced over his shoulder and couldn’t help but notice the only other exceptionally tall man on the platform. The man was well dressed, outfitted like a prosperous rancher in a fleece-lined leather jacket, black wool pants, and a new hat with a ring of silver conchos for a headband. His boots caught and held Buck’s attention, for they were glossy black, polished to a high shine and as clean as humanly possible to keep them with all the mud in the streets. Like Buck, the man wore his hair long, past his shoulders, and tied back out of the way, but this man—well over six foot three—was a half-breed. Sioux, Buck guessed. Sioux and white.
And the man was staring back at him with a cold, hard look in his deep blue eyes.
Buck turned away. He’d seen that look before. It seemed even ‘breeds thought they were better now than buffalo hunters.
The wind whipped across the platform, a chilling, cutting wind that shook Buck out of his dark thoughts. The sky was still raw blue and clear, but he knew now, as sure as Ted had, that a storm was on the way. He had to get back through the pass before it hit. He turned and pressed his way back through the crowd toward the
ticket window. Just before he reached it, the clerk opened a small door in the side of the building and stepped out. He cupped his hands and shouted, “Train’s blown a crown sheet down the line outside of Busted Heel. Don’t know how long it’ll be before we can get another engine down to bring ‘er in. Maybe you folks ought to get in out of the cold until she pulls in. We’ll blast the whistle loud and long to let everyone know when it’s here.”
Buck listened to the grumbling around him and ignored it as he stepped up to the window where the clerk had safely ensconced himself inside once again. He grabbed the bars that separated him from the clerk and said, “Where’d you say that train’s stalled?”
Annoyed, the man stared at Buck’s rough hands. “Down the line. Near Busted Heel.”
“Which is?”
“’Bout an hour’s ride east of here.”
Buck Scott mumbled the one word he should have never uttered in mixed company and shouldered his way off the platform.
KASE Storm listened to the station clerk’s announcement and shook his head in frustration. It was just like his half sister to board a train that was meant to break down.
He loved Annika, loved to spoil and pamper her just as his mother and stepfather did, and any other time he would be glad to have her visit, but when her last letter came informing him that she would arrive in less than two weeks’ time, Kase had wanted to wire her and tell her to wait until spring. But Rose, his Italian wife, had stopped him.
“How come you say this, Kase?” she had asked. “Your sister, she can help me, and this way I can know her better, like a real sister, before the baby comes.”
Kase didn’t have the heart to tell Rose that Annika would be little help. His sister had never done a day’s work in her life. Unlike Rose, who had come to Wyoming alone, started her own restaurant, sold it for a tidy profit, and still insisted she do all the cooking for the hands at their ranch, Annika had never had to lift a finger to do anything for herself. Their parents had seen to it that Annika was educated so that she would be able to support herself if the need ever arose, but both he and Annika had been endowed with ample trust funds, a legacy from Caleb’s father’s fortune, that would provide for them for a lifetime.
Come Spring Page 3
