Bridget

by Linda Lael Miller

  Then, at last, he reached the drowning gelding, dove beneath the surface of the water, found Mitch floating motionless, eyes wide open, arms spread as if to receive his fate. His right foot had slipped through the stirrup, and he hadn’t been able to pull free before he ran out of air.

  Trace drew his knife, severed the stirrup from the saddle, and hauled Mitch to the surface.

  The shooting had stopped, but Trace barely noticed. He dragged his best friend out of the river, laid him face down on the bank, and bore down on his back with both hands in an effort to force the water from Mitch’s lungs. He was aware of a dull throbbing in his right thigh, but it would be some time before he realized he’d been wounded.

  The barrel of a rifle prodded his shoulder; he looked up to see a young Reb standing over him, scared half to death but determined to do his duty. “He’s dead, mister. And you’re a prisoner now, so get to your feet if you can.”

  Trace wrenched Mitch over onto his back, yelled at him to blink or get up or just breathe. By then, though, Mitch’s lips had turned a blue-gray color, and his eyes were empty. Trace swallowed a scream of protest and pain, swayed to his feet, and hoisted his friend off the ground, carrying him over one shoulder.

  “You got to leave him here, Yank,” the boy persisted. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, that kid in the ill-fitting gray woolen jacket; he still had spots on his face.

  Trace glared at his unlikely captor. “I mean to bury him,” he said. “If you want to stop me, you’d best just shoot me right here.”

  The boy’s gaze dropped to Trace’s bloody leg. “Looks like somebody already done that,” he said, without triumph. He prodded Trace with the rifle barrel again, but cautiously. “They ain’t gonna let you bury him. There’s too many others that need burying.”

  Trace gripped the rifle barrel and forced it aside, twisting it out of the boy’s grasp in the process. It clattered to the wet, smooth pebbles on the riverbank, where it lay, unclaimed. “You wave that thing in my face again,” he said fiercely, “and I’m going to jam it in one end of you and out the other.” Then he started up the slope to the grassy meadow above, and the Confederates made way for him to pass.

  Someone brought him a shovel; he began to dig the grave. He was in a strange state of mind, half outside himself, a step behind, like his own hapless ghost. He thought he might have gone wild with the force of his grief, if only he could catch up to himself.

  They let him dig and dig, those Rebs, and at some point, a couple of them joined in. When the hole was deep enough, Trace wrapped Mitch’s body in a blanket someone had brought, got down into the grave himself and lay his lifeless friend at his feet as gently as if he’d been a sleeping baby.

  “Good-bye,” he said, and then his knees gave way, and his mind went dark, one shadow at a time.

  “Trace?” A hand rested firmly on his shoulder, gave him a shake. “Trace, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

  He opened his eyes and looked up to see Bridget bending over him, hair trailing to her waist. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and made to sit up. She stepped back so he could.

  She sat down on one of the crate chairs, her hands folded in her lap. The rain had stopped, and the moon must have come out, too, because no lamps were burning, and he could see her so plainly, in her white flannel nightdress. “You were calling to Mitch,” she said, very softly.

  He sighed, shoved a hand through his hair. For some reason, he couldn’t look at her. “Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t,” she replied. “I was thinking about—about tonight.”

  The kiss. He would have preferred to talk about Mitch. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” she agreed readily. “And I shouldn’t have responded the way I did. It’s just that—it’s just that I’ve been so lonely.”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  She straightened her spine a little. “Do you suppose the horses are all right?”

  He grinned, relieved at the change of subject, though a part of him was mighty disappointed that she could dismiss a kiss like that one so easily. “They’re in out of the rain. For tonight, that’s enough.”

  She smiled a small, wobbly smile. “Thank you, Trace. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here—the tarp would never have kept out a storm like that, and heaven only knows what would have happened to Sis and the stallion.”

  He wanted to touch her cheek, her hand, her shoulder, but he didn’t dare. He’d stepped out of line as it was, kissing her the way he had, and he was cold again, as cold as if he’d really been in that bloody river so far away, trying desperately, hopelessly, to save his best friend.

  “Go back to bed, Bridget,” he said hoarsely.

  She hesitated, then rose, put more wood into the stove, and watched him for a long time in pensive silence. Finally, she spoke. “Did he suffer? Mitch, I mean?”

  Trace bit his lower lip, held her gaze. “I don’t think so,” he said. “There was a gash in the back of his head. He must have struck it on a rock when he was thrown.”

  “You did everything you could, Trace,” she whispered. “I know you did.”

  It came upon him suddenly sometimes, took him by surprise even in the broad light of day, the knowledge that Mitch was dead, that he’d never see him again. After the dream, though, the grief was worse, as fresh as if the incident had happened only hours ago, instead of years. “That’s kind of you, Mrs. McQuarry,” he said, and wondered at the edge in his voice even as he spoke, “considering your stated opinion that I’m to blame for what happened.” In truth, he blamed himself. And he was beginning to suspect that he hadn’t come to Primrose Creek set on marrying Bridget because of any promise to Mitch but for reasons of his own. Selfish ones.

  She paled; he saw that in the dim light, hated himself for it. And then she said something he’d never have expected to hear her say. “I was wrong, Trace. I’m sorry. Mitch was a man, not a little boy, and he wouldn’t have gone to war if he hadn’t wanted to.”

  There was nothing he could say to that. It was wholly true. Though amiable and maybe even naive, Mitch had been eager for adventure. He’d have joined the fighting even if Trace had refused to go along; it was just that neither of them had really expected to die. They’d been so young, with their blood pulsing in their veins, convinced they would go home triumphant one day, together, and tell stories about their experiences until they were both too old to rightly recall any of it.

  Only it hadn’t happened that way.

  Trace lay down. The dirt floor was hard, even wrapped in quilts the way he was, and the cold seemed to seep through his skin.

  “First thing, after I get the barn built,” he said, turning away from Bridget and dragging the covers up to his ear, “I mean to put a bedroom on the back of this cabin. You and I aren’t sleeping out here once we’re married.” He waited for her protest, but she said nothing at all. He heard her cross the room, get back into bed, and sigh.

  When Bridget awakened the next morning, with burning eyes and an irritating stuffiness in her nose, Trace had already left the house. She was fairly certain he’d gone to fetch the horses back from the lodge across the creek, and a glance out the front window confirmed the fact. He was leading Sis by her halter, while Windfall followed amenably.

  The air was golden, scrubbed clean by last night’s storm, and the creek was a ribbon of bright silver, light in motion. It was only then, watching the man and the two horses coming up the near bank, that she realized why the stallion obeyed Trace so readily.

  She went outside and watched, arms folded loosely in front of her, while Trace put both Sis and the stallion out to graze, each tethered to a separate line.

  “What’s his true name?” she asked, when Trace finally came to stand before her, looking like a Norse god in the dazzling glow of the morning sun. “The stallion, I mean.”

  Trace watched her solemnly for a few moments,
then he flashed that illegal grin. “I call him Sentinel,” he said.

  She set her hands on her hips and tried to be annoyed, but she just couldn’t manage it. Not on such a beautiful day. “Why didn’t you tell me he was yours in the first place?”

  He scratched the back of his head, narrowed his eyes to a good-natured squint. “That would have been one less reason to stay here,” he said, “and I do mean to stay. Besides, I reckoned you’d figure it out on your own sooner or later, given that I showed up here on foot, carrying my saddle. Those Paiutes jumped me, one fine morning before I’d had my coffee, and relieved me of the horse. Evidently, they couldn’t handle him and decided to pass the problem on to you.” He stopped smiling. “The thing that troubles me about that is, it means they were watching this place. I’d be willing to bet they knew you and Skye and the boy were here alone, and they sure as hell had their eye on those oxen for a while, too.”

  Bridget had imagined the Indians watching her and Skye as they went about their chores, watching Noah, but until now, she’d never allowed herself to entertain the thought for too long. It was too frightening. “If that’s so, then by now they know you’re here.”

  He scanned the surrounding countryside, as though he expected the pack of renegades to come shrieking out of the timber, mounted on their war ponies and waving tomahawks over their heads. “Maybe it’s just that I didn’t get much rest last night,” he said, “but I’ve got a real uneasy feeling just now. You keep Skye and Noah close by until it’s time to leave for town.”

  Bridget nodded, unconsciously wringing the fabric of her skirt with both hands. “You’d best move your things into the cabin,” she said.

  “I’ll do that,” he replied.

  As he walked away to gather up his rain-soaked belongings, Bridget harbored the notion that he might have been trying to scare her so she would let him stay inside the house. Instantly, she dismissed the idea. Trace was certainly no model of decorum, but he’d never use fear to get what he wanted. Anyway, the small hairs on her nape were standing up.

  They left for Primrose Creek an hour later, Skye and Noah riding bareback on Sis, Trace on the stallion, with Bridget side-saddle in front of him. She tried to ignore the way it made her feel, having Trace’s arms around her that way, however loosely, but the effort proved useless. Ever since he’d kissed her the night before—and honesty compelled her to consider the fact that she had most definitely kissed him back—she’d had a strange, boneless feeling, as though some slow, sweet fever had taken root inside her, causing her to melt away, digit by digit, limb by limb.

  It was an exceedingly peculiar sensation, one she had never experienced before, even in her most intimate moments with Mitch. There had been few enough of those, of course, since her bridegroom had gone away to war barely a week after their wedding, leaving her pregnant with a child he would never see.

  She had been filled with tenderness for Mitch. With Trace, it was something else entirely—a deep and violent yearning to touch him, to surrender to him, to lie beneath him. But there was the fury, too—always the fury. Where had he been when the world was crumbling around her, when the farm was overrun with carpetbaggers and Granddaddy was dying and she’d needed his help? Where?

  Heat thrummed in her face, and she was glad her back was turned to him, because he would have seen too much if he’d been able to look at her straight on.

  Water dappled the mud-and-manure streets of Primrose Creek, standing in dirty puddles big as lakes. The tents all had a sodden look about them, their tops weighted and dripping, but the towns-people seemed exuberant, and Bridget thought she understood their cheerful mood. There was something about a storm like last night’s that made a person feel as though the world had been washed and polished, groomed for a new start.

  Jake Vigil’s grand mansion was at the far end of town, and the sawmill was beyond, just a long log structure, really, with a crudely lettered sign on the roof announcing lumber for sale. Jake himself was a tower of a man, standing well over six feet, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, with thoughtful hazel eyes and a head full of curly brown hair. Handsome as he was, Mr. Vigil was shy, at least around anyone in a skirt. Just seeing Bridget and Skye made him flush crimson and look away quickly, as if he’d found them somehow, well, indisposed.

  Trace dismounted and introduced himself. He and Vigil shook hands, and then they vanished inside the mill building, deep in discussion.

  Bridget took that opportunity to look around for a bank. Most likely, she wouldn’t be able to get a loan anyhow, especially now that she wouldn’t have the stallion for collateral, but she had to do something. Granddaddy had meant the Primrose Creek tract to stay in the family, her share and Skye’s, and Christy and Megan’s, too.

  “What are you looking for?” Skye asked, always curious.

  “A bank,” Bridget said. “I thought if—”

  “You thought if you borrowed money and paid Christy and Megan for their land, they’d never have cause to come out here and live across the creek from us.”

  Bridget was affronted, though not, if the truth were known, precisely justified in her response. She did cherish a certain secret worry that their cousins would come to Primrose Creek to claim their inheritance, unlikely as it seemed. The old feud would surely start up again. “You can’t seriously think they’ll ever set foot in a place like this,” she said, as much to convince herself as Skye. Her conscience was troubling her a little, for she knew full well that Gideon hadn’t meant for Christy and Megan to sell their land. He might even have put something in his will that would prevent it.

  “They don’t truly belong in England,” Skye said. “The farm was home to them, just like it was to us. But now that’s gone, and this is home.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “Can you really picture those two here, mincing down the street in their satin slippers, pressing their linen handkerchiefs to their pert little noses?” She was convinced she was safe in making the obvious assumption, for she truly couldn’t imagine Christy and Megan in these surroundings.

  Skye looked obstinate. “They’ll come to Primrose Creek, Bridget. Just you wait and see. And you’d better be nice to them, too.”

  Before Bridget was forced to offer a reply, she spotted a sign hanging outside an especially ragged tent just down the road. Preaching, this Sunday, it read. Well, if there wasn’t a bank, at least there was a church of sorts. The mining town might have stumbled unwittingly into the path of civilization after all.

  Trace came out of the mill, notable for its lack of a shrieking saw if nothing else, looking very pleased with himself.

  “We’ll have a barn in no time at all,” he said, “and a bedroom right after that.”

  Skye looked from Trace to Bridget, blushed a little, and then smiled. “You’re adding a room?”

  Trace nodded, as though there were nothing unusual or improper about discussing such accommodations in front of a young girl and a child. Not to mention his best friend’s widow. “Come next spring,” he said easily, “I’ll build one for you, too, little sister, and one for Noah here.”

  Skye beamed at the prospect, then lapsed into a frown. “I’ll be almost seventeen then. Ready to marry up with somebody and have my own place, next to Bridget’s.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t be in such a hurry, monkey,” he said. “You’ll be a long time married, after all.”

  Bridget glanced away. Her face felt hot again. “Is there a bank in this town?” she asked, maybe with just a hint of testiness in her voice.

  “Now, Mrs. McQuarry,” Trace drawled, pushing his hat to the back of his head and looking up at her with eyes full of mischief, “what in all the blue-skied world would you want with such an institution as that?”

  She stiffened. She hated it when he called her “Mrs. McQuarry” in that particular tone, as though she were a young girl playing house and serving make-believe tea in miniature cups, instead of a woman grown, with a child to raise. “That ought to be perfectly obvious, Mr
. Qualtrough. I want to borrow a sum of money and buy the land across the creek before our cousins sell it to someone—er—undesirable.”

  He was holding the cheek piece of the stallion’s bridle, his shoulder touching Bridget’s right knee and part of her thigh. She wished he wouldn’t stand so close; it made her feel as if she were caught in the middle of the creek, with lightning striking all around her. “Gideon meant that land for Christy and Megan. I reckon you ought to leave them to decide what to do with it.”

  Bridget set her jaw, released it with an effort. “Christy asked me to buy the land,” she said. “Read the letter if you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh, I believe you, all right,” Trace said, tugging the brim of his hat forward a little so it shaded his eyes. “But I figure you’d better just wait and see what happens before you go taking on any debts. You know Christy’s impetuous; she might have changed her mind by now, and Megan would have had a thing or two to say about it, too, since half that tract is hers.”

  There was no sense in arguing, especially when Skye was right there, listening in, ready to take Trace’s side in the matter. “It would appear that there is a church here,” she said, because the silence had stretched to an uncomfortable length.

  “Good,” Trace said, grinning again. “We can get married proper-like.”

  “I have no intention of marrying you,” Bridget informed him, out of pique and habit.

  He just looked at her, with the memory of that kiss laughing in his eyes. His expression said, Think what you like. And he took the stallion’s reins in one hand and headed for the tent in question.

  “We’d like to get married,” Trace said, when a white-haired man came out of the church tent, smiling at the prospect of welcoming stray sheep into the fold.

  The reverend looked at Skye, then at Bridget, obviously puzzled.

  “This one,” Trace told him helpfully, laying a hand on Bridget’s thigh, big as life, right there in front of God and everybody. He was just lucky she didn’t have a riding quirt in her hand. “I figure we ought to get the words said as soon as possible, on account of we’re living in sin.”