“I’d be proud to help you in town if you needed me to, Red. I’d like to be part of what you’re building.”
“We’ll see. Like I said, a lot of it’s hard labor and heavy lifting. But I’ll think on it.”
“Didn’t you say you haul groceries from Seth’s to Libby’s Diner? I could carry that back and forth, just take a lot less each trip than you do. Please, Red, you’ve been so good about letting me help. Oh, I want to say again how sorry I am about knocking you out of the hayloft in the barn earlier. I was trying to lift the bucket of corn up there so I could pour Harriet’s food into her trough from overhead. She gets so upset whenever she sees me. And now that the colder weather has forced you to move the feeder away from the fence to keep it out of the wind, I can’t reach it to pour in her ears of corn. I thought you saw me raising that bucket up to the loft.”
“I did see you, Cass. I just thought you looked like you didn’t have a very good foothold. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. It’s all my fault. I was just afraid if I said your name to warn you I was there, you might be startled and fall. That straw can be slippery. I guess I proved that by slipping on it.” Red smiled.
“Thank heavens you landed on the haystack. You could have really been hurt.”
Red’s cheeks got pink and his jaw tightened, and she thought it was sweet he was embarrassed at his clumsiness. His sweetness reminded her of the way he snuggled up to her every night, even though they were careful to fall asleep with a respectable space between them. This morning she felt him rubbing his chin on top of her head when he was still asleep. It had almost felt like his mouth instead of his chin, but despite his assurances that a woman expecting a baby wasn’t unclean, she could tell he didn’t want to kiss her.
She remembered that awkward kiss the first night they’d been together. She was the one who had kissed him. He’d never followed with a kiss of his own, so she knew he didn’t like kissing. But she liked to pretend he kissed her while she slept.
“The haystack was lucky all right.” Red finished his coffee in one last, long gulp. “Let’s not feed Harriet that way again. I’d be glad to do that chore. She’s a cantankerous old monster.”
“I suppose the haymow wasn’t a good idea. But I’m sure to find a way I can keep feeding her.”
“Yes, well, yes…you’re sure to find a way. Let me wash these two last cups.”
“No, you must have chores to do if we’re staying away overnight. I’ll get things straightened in here and come help you as soon as I can.”
Red nodded. “I’d better get going then.” He practically ran out of the house.
“He’s always in a hurry,” Cassie murmured to herself. “I wish I could help him more.” She cleared the last bit of the kitchen quickly so she could get to her outside chores.
CHAPTER 10
I’ll get a horse saddled for you, Cass honey.” Red tried to saddle Buck for her, planning to ride another horse himself, but she’d approached Buck then backed away with one excuse or another until she’d practically been dancing around the horse. Then Buck had started acting spooky.
“Uh…would it b–be all right if I just rode with you, like we did last week?” Cassie gave him a look of such longing, like the idea of sitting so near him really appealed to her. Buck had held up well being ridden double home from town last week. But Red was worried about working the horse too hard.
If Red didn’t share with her, she’d have to ride Buck, because he was the best-trained horse Red owned, but truth was, Buck hadn’t ever calmed down much after Cassie and the chickens had scared him. Red was afraid he was permanently spooked now and would never be as good a mount. Red had a remuda with a dozen horses, but they were green broke—rough horses born on Red’s ranch or rounded up from the wild, well suited to cutting cattle when guided by a firm hand but not saddle ponies for an unskilled woman. The buckskin had come with him from Indiana, just like Rosie, and was almost as much a pet as Rosie. But he’d taken a skittish turn since he’d met Cassie, and Red was worried about Cassie riding him alone. Riding double solved that problem.
It took him a full hour to figure out Cassie had never ridden a horse before, or at least not much. She was terrified but doing her best not to let him see that.
He thought about hitching Buck up to the wagon. It was slower but it would have been okay. Unfortunately, he figured out about Cassie’s fear when they were a long way down the road to Divide. It was too late to go back.
Cassie had started out sitting sideways on the saddle while Red rode behind the cantle. But that proved to be not only uncomfortable for them both, but Buck didn’t like Red sitting back so far and proved it by bucking every few feet. Cassie had nearly fallen off a few times. Red fixed that by moving into the saddle and holding her firmly on his lap just as she had been after their wedding. Red found this arrangement to be no hardship.
Even after Red moved, Buck was fractious.
“Is this how it usually is to ride a horse, Red?” Cassie tried to sound calm, but Buck wasn’t cooperating. Now Cassie’s flapping skirts and her constant squirming around on Red’s lap weren’t making his horse a bit happy.
Red was happy…just not his horse.
“Buck’s a little jumpier than usual, I reckon. He’ll calm down once we’ve ridden a ways.” Red hoped.
Cassie’s constant nervous fluttering wasn’t bothering Red at all. He liked the feel of her against him, and every time she moved, he realized that being married was a wonderful thing. But Buck wasn’t married to Cassie, and he probably didn’t think she was heart-stoppingly beautiful, what with Buck having his own standards of beauty that included four legs and gigantic teeth. So Buck didn’t like her one bit.
They’d been on the trail a far piece when Cassie said, “I’d like to learn to ride a horse, Red.”
“Learn to ride? What’s to learn? You’re doin’ it.”
“This is only the third time I’ve been on a horse in my life. I should know how to do it if I’m going to be a rancher’s wife, shouldn’t I?”
Red’s stomach sank at the thought of what lay in store for him if Cassie got her mind set on the death-defying task of riding a horse. Then under the fear, he registered what she’d said. “Only the third time? How did you live in Montana for two years and come across the prairie in a covered wagon without riding a horse?”
“We had the carriage and Griff said riding was not ladylike. So I never …”
Red felt a little stir of his temper. It usually wasn’t too much trouble, but sometimes he had a little problem with it. “Cassie, Griff told you not to ride. Griff told you not to talk about the baby to the point you don’t know a thing about what’s to come. Griff told you a woman was unclean when she was carryin’ a child. Griff mortgaged all your family heirlooms without telling you so you could have a useless new silk dress every year. Excuse me for speakin’ ill of the dead, Cass, but your husband wasn’t very smart, was he?”
All Cassie’s fluttering and squirming stopped. She sat frozen in his arms.
Red tensed up when he realized he’d gravely insulted his new wife’s dead husband. It wasn’t a good way to endear himself in her eyes. He started to apologize, but he wanted to see her face first to judge just how hurt and angry she was.
Before he could get a peek at her she said, “Do you really think Griff was wrong about all those things?”
“Now, Cass honey, I shouldn’t have said that. I know you loved him and you …”
“Answer me!” All the softness was gone. She sounded almost frantic.
“Well, don’t you?”
Another silence, longer than the first, stretched between them. “You mean I get to decide if I think he was smart or not? Surely that’s not a woman’s place.”
“I don’t rightly know if Griff was smart or not. I just said he did some things and told you some things that weren’t smart. No one can know everything. I’m sure Griff was real smart about lots of things, but he was wrong about some things, to
o. He shouldn’t have said you were unclean. But maybe that’s somethin’ he was raised with. Some people have funny notions. And he should never have mortgaged your things. I know all about the law and how it treats property between a husband and wife, so legally those things were his. But there’s right and wrong, too, Cass. Morally those things were yours. Maybe you would have agreed to mortgage them, but I’m bettin’ you’d have said, ‘I want my family Bible more than I want a new dress.’ Now isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you’d’ve said?”
It took a long time, with Cassie staring at her hands, before she answered. “I’d have parted with the Bible for food, for something we really needed. Well, maybe not. No, not the Bible. I wouldn’t have parted with that ever. That book was something my mother treasured. I’d have gone hungry before I parted with that big old book ….”
Her voice faded and Red was afraid he’d made her cry. He felt like a brute to have reminded her of her precious belongings. He’d hurt her with his words when she was the most precious thing in the world to him.
“But the pearls and the portrait frames, I would have held on to them if I could, but I would have let him have those if it was for something that was important to the ranch. But I’d have never mortgaged them for a dress. I had two other black silk dresses. Griff wanted me to always have new things. He said we needed to keep up the right appearance.”
Red tried to distract her from her keepsakes. “And as far as not thinkin’ a lady should ride a horse, why honey, I’ve never known a lady in Montana who didn’t ride a horse. Even in Indiana most ladies rode. Surely Illinois isn’t much different. Griff was just plain wrong about that.”
“When he was dying, Griff kept insisting I not go for help.” Cassie looked up at Red, her eyes brimming with tears. “I didn’t know how to catch the horse, so it was easy for me to mind him. Then I waited too long. When I finally did catch one, I couldn’t make the horse obey me. It went back to the house at least six times before I got it going toward town. But it didn’t matter by then anyway; Griff was dead. I stood by and let my husband die rather than ride for help. I didn’t do a thing to save him because I was a coward. A stupid, cowardly child. That was one thing Griff was right about.” The tears overflowed and Cassie looked as if she hated herself for failing that idiot Lester Griffin. Like she still wished he was alive so she could be married to him.
Red knew all the stories about redheads having fiery tempers. And he knew, in his own life, that there was some truth in that. He didn’t get angry very often, but on occasion he really blew up. Listening to Cassie say Griff called her a stupid, cowardly child set him off like dynamite detonated inside him. He clamped his jaw tightly shut and didn’t let the words escape that were roaring around inside him. He’d already insulted her husband once today. He knew he didn’t dare do it again. He’d remember her tears of grief for Lester Griffin if he lived to be a thousand.
Red prayed for restraint. He’d wrestled with his temper all his life, and the grace of God had helped him gain pretty good control of it. He froze his jaw solid and prayed and tried not to let his fury spread to his body for fear he’d squeeze Cassie so tight she’d squeak. And he asked God to forgive him because he was sorely afraid that if Lester Griffin had been standing in front of him right now, he’d have beaten him to within an inch of his worthless life.
Cassie seemed to be lost in her guilt about letting that no-account husband of hers die, so Red was free to struggle with his temper. He finally felt controlled enough to say through clenched teeth, “You’re not stupid, and you’re not a coward, and no woman who’s gonna have a child any minute counts as a child herself. So Griff was wrong about that, too. Now, hold on ‘cuz Buck is rested and we’re gonna gallop.”
He kicked Buck in the sides before she could respond to him, because he was very much afraid that if she called herself stupid and Griff smart again he was going to say something he’d regret. Buck broke into a ground-eating gallop. Red felt his horse’s enjoyment of the hard run in the way Buck relaxed between Red’s legs. Buck forgot about the fidgety woman who had been annoying him for the last week.
Red wasn’t so lucky.
He had the jolting realization that he’d just fallen completely in love with his wife. His wife, who was still in love with the village idiot.
With murder in his heart, Wade watched Dawson and the china doll ride away.
He’d learned the woodlands around the Dawson place so well he could come within a hundred feet of the house without being seen. He didn’t have his rifle today. Today he had other plans.
He saw the way Dawson held Cassie. Wade pulled the flask out of his hip pocket and tried to soothe the inferno of jealousy with the bitter whiskey. He touched the pearl handle of his six gun. He wasn’t after Dawson today. He walked up to the front door of Dawson’s decrepit shack and went inside.
He’d loved walking around inside the Griffin place. He’d loved to run his hands through the china doll’s silks. He’d touched her combs and jewelry and kept strands of her hair until he’d gathered enough to make a little braid of it to keep in his pocket.
Now he needed more of her. It had been too long since he’d had her alone, as he sometimes did at Griffin’s when her foolish husband went to town. Wade knew the fear he sensed in her was fear of her attraction to him. Any decent, married woman would be afraid of such stirrings. If he had just had his chance and the china doll wasn’t bound to someone else, she would have turned to him.
He wandered through the house looking for signs of her. He didn’t find a single dress. There was no silk or satin anywhere. She had no mirror or hair combs that he could find. He gathered several strands of hair from her pillow, but there was nothing else.
“You’ve come down in the world, china doll. First you were married to a man who hurt you. Now you’re married to a man who can’t give you nice things.” Wade took a long pull on his flask and savored how eager she would be to come to him.
“And maybe Red Dawson hurts you, too.” Wade thought of Red putting his hands on the china doll and fury burned in his gut. “I want to rescue you from this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled a handkerchief out. It was so delicate that his calloused fingers snagged it when he rubbed it between them. He thought of leaving it for her. But he knew better than to let Dawson know he was around. And besides, he didn’t want to give up this latest memento he’d claimed from the Griffin house. Most of the things had been taken out and sold to pay off the bills that no-account Lester Griffin had run up. There wouldn’t be any more pieces of Cassie to collect. Wade rubbed the handkerchief and smelled the beautiful scent on it and pitied her.
Drinking deep of the whiskey fueled his anger, and he wanted to lash out and destroy this ugly home she’d been imprisoned in against her will. He raised his fist to smash the lantern, shouting, “Red Dawson stands in our way!”
Something almost echoed in the decrepit excuse for a house and Wade paused without wrecking the lantern. He listened again. The echo he’d heard wasn’t his own voice. It was something else, something far away and quiet and small, but it seemed to burrow into him deeply. It was all wrong. He knew the way he was acting wasn’t reasonable. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the china doll. It ate at his gut to think of her trapped here, like Wade was trapped with his father. Wade wanted to run off, start a new life without Pa telling him every breath to take. But he couldn’t leave the china doll. He had to save her. Then they’d run together.
Whatever that echo, it calmed him enough that he didn’t smash the house to pieces and burn it to the ground. But he didn’t stay and listen for it again either.
Instead he took a long pull from his whiskey bottle and stormed out before he did something stupid.
He needed to plan.
He needed to set her free.
CHAPTER 11
Where’s Anthony, Ma?”
Lindsay lightly touched her roan’s neck with the reins and used her knees to steer the h
orse close with its travois on the back, then swung down to help with the harvesting. Blond and pencil slim, thirteen-year-old Lindsay was as tough and competent as a seasoned cowhand.
Breathing a prayer of thanksgiving that none of her girls took after their pas, except in looks, Belle looked up from where she plucked a pumpkin off the vine. “I haven’t seen him since the noon meal.”
She set the pumpkin on the growing pile. The last of her fall garden was nearly stripped clean. She straightened and rested one hand on her back. Good thing the baby would come by spring. She didn’t want to do branding while she was expecting. Her belly got in her way.
“What do you need him for?”
“These pumpkins are heavy, but it’s not like it’s really hard work. I thought maybe he’d pitch in.” Lindsay pulled her pumpkin free with a snap of the crisp, dead vine.
Belle chuckled. “Well, you are a dreamer, youngster. I suppose you can hope, but it’s not likely to happen.”
“I saw him.” Sarah came walking up from the derelict cabin they lived in. “He was sitting under the Husband Tree again. Did you ever tell him he was sitting on one of the husbands’ graves?”
Belle straightened and looked up the long slope to the bluff that towered over her house. A lone oak where she’d buried William and Gerald. “Too bad he doesn’t die up there and save me the work of hauling him up.”
“He might live, Ma. Just because you’ve chosen men who proved to be rickety in the past doesn’t mean Anthony won’t last.”
Belle knew that to be the absolute truth, but she could hope. The only good thing about being married to Anthony was it kept other men from coming around the place.
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