“When?” she asked, nearly choking on the word. “Wh-when would we hold this race, I mean? And where?”
He smiled. “A week from Sunday ought to be soon enough. The road between Primrose Creek and my front gate should do as a course.”
It was two miles from one point to the other, by Skye’s estimation; not an unmanageable distance, certainly, for a pair of strong horses like these. But a week from Sunday! The bay wasn’t even broken to ride yet, and besides, how was she going to train the animal to accept a rider if Jake insisted the stallion belonged to him? He obviously meant to take the bay back to town with him.
Jake made a gesture like tipping his hat, only he wasn’t wearing one. Skye had long since noticed that he rarely did. “Deal?” he asked.
Skye gazed up at him. The sun was at his back, like an aura, putting her in mind of pagan gods—Apollo, perhaps, riding one of his chariot horses. She couldn’t make out his features. “There’s a lot we haven’t settled,” she pointed out.
He chuckled. “Now, that’s a fact,” he agreed. The leather of his saddle creaked again as he bent down, extending one hand and slipping his foot out of the stirrup so she could get a purchase to mount. “Come along, Miss McQuarry. I’ll see you home, so the wolves don’t get you.”
She hesitated, then took his hand, planted her foot in the stirrup, and allowed him to pull her up behind him. Her precarious situation forced her to put both arms around his middle to keep from falling off, and the scents of his shirt and his skin and his hair combined to tug at her from the inside. The bay stallion trotted along behind them, as docile as could be.
“You’ll have to leave that stallion here,” she said when they’d reached Trace and Bridget’s place and she’d gotten down from his horse, “if you expect me to make a saddle horse out of him in time for the race.”
Jake looked back at the captured bay, as though assessing him. Then he leaned forward, resting one forearm across the pommel of his saddle. “That’s just it, Miss McQuarry. I don’t expect you to break him. You won’t make much of a wife if you get yourself stepped on, thrown, or kicked.”
“I’ve been stepped on, thrown, and kicked,” she snapped, annoyed at his blithe assumption that she would lose their contest. At the same time, she was confused, because she wanted to marry him, which meant she’d have to lose. Didn’t it? “I’ve been around horses all my life, Mr. Vigil, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t ride.”
“Riding is one thing,” he pontificated from on high, “and saddle-breaking a wild horse is another. The question is decided.”
Skye wanted to throw something. “If you think you can just announce that something is decided and go right on from there, whistling a tune—”
He grinned. “Are you backing out of our deal?”
She thought of all she stood to lose if she won that race and all she stood to gain if she lost. Pride wouldn’t let her sacrifice the honor of winning, and love wouldn’t let her claim it. She was in a dither, though she’d have gone back and found those wolves and fed herself to them before admitting as much.
“No,” she answered at some length. “Are you?”
“Not a chance,” he replied. “Hank and I, we need a woman in the house.” Then he turned and rode cheerfully away toward town, leading the captured bay behind him.
“What was that all about?” a voice inquired, from just behind her.
Skye turned to see Megan standing there, holding one of Bridget and Trace’s twins. And all of a sudden, Skye began to cry, to blubber and wail like a fool.
“Whatever is the matter?” Megan demanded, her eyes narrowed.
“I’ve just bet my whole future on a horse race!” Skye howled.
“Well, is that all?” Megan asked, a little impatiently. “‘What happens if you lose?”
Skye was stupefied by her cousin’s blithe attitude, but she didn’t bother to say so. It wouldn’t have done any good. “I’ll have to marry Jake Vigil.”
Megan did not look the least bit sympathetic. “I see,” she said, smirking a little. “I guess you’re in some trouble, then. No McQuarry I ever heard of ever threw a race.”
Skye was glum and, at one and the same time, possessed of a strange and secret jubilance. “Not one,” she whispered miserably.
Megan’s expression was tentative, almost wistful. Later, Skye would think she should have guessed, right then, what her cousin was planning to do. “We’ll always be friends, won’t we, Skye?” she asked. “Friends as well as cousins, no matter what?”
“Of course we will,” Skye said. Her uneasiness deepened measurably and would not be ignored. “Megan, what are you—?”
“Skye!” Bridget interrupted from the doorway of the house. “Megan! Come inside, won’t you? I need some help with the carding and spinning.”
Skye and Megan looked at each other for a long, silent moment, and it was tacitly agreed that no more was to be said, at least in Bridget’s presence.
Jake smiled to himself all the way to town, where he turned the bay stallion over to one of the stable hands at the livery for safekeeping. Leaning against the corral fence, he admired the animal for a while before deciding to head home.
The moment he took a step in that direction, however, he found himself face-to-face with Zachary Shaw. Once they had been good friends, but there had been a strain between them since the marshal had married Christy McQuarry.
Zach adjusted his hat. His stance and the set of his shoulders gave clear indication that he had something to say and meant to say it, no matter how unwelcome the observation might be. “That’s a fine animal,” he said.
“Thanks,” Jake replied without inflection. “No matter what your wife’s sister might have told you, I caught that stallion myself, and I mean to put my brand on him, if matters come to that.”
The marshal frowned, plainly puzzled. So, Jake thought, Skye hadn’t run to her cousin’s husband, the marshal, to stake a claim of her own to the bay. She went up another notch in his estimation. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jake nearly laughed. Nearly but not quite. “Never mind that. If you have business with me, let’s hear it. Otherwise, I’ll be making my way back to the mill.”
Shaw sighed. They were standing on Primrose Creek’s only real street, two men known to have their differences. Boggle-eyed passers-by were stretching their ears in the effort to eavesdrop. “Damn it, Jake, listen to me. There are a couple of agents over at Diamond Lil’s, making a lot of noise about taking over your whole operation by the end of the month. I thought you might want to know.”
Jake tightened his jawline, and the joint made a faint popping sound when he released it by force of will. He glanced in the direction of the saloon, which was only one of several that had sprung up in Primrose Creek over the past few years and subsequently prospered. “Thanks,” he said in a virtual growl.
“Is it true, Jake?” Zachary asked quietly. “Are you in trouble?”
There was no reason to tell his erstwhile friend about the deal he’d made with the railroad and all he stood to lose if he didn’t keep up his end of the bargain. It was literally everything he could do not to storm down the street to Diamond Lil’s and bang a few heads together. At last, he met the other man’s gaze squarely. “No need for you to be concerned,” he said coolly. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Shaw sighed. “Are you going to hold that grudge of yours until some undertaker pulls off your boots once and for all, or what?”
Jake stiffened; automatically, his right hand clenched into a fist, then relaxed again. “Malcolm tells me you’re a father,” he said, ignoring the question. “Congratulations.” With that, he walked away, moving in the general direction of Diamond Lil’s, even though it was against his better judgment.
But Shaw wasn’t through with him yet. “Jake.”
He stopped, refusing to turn around again, and waited.
“I didn’t tell you about those railroad agents so you could head
down there and tear the saloon apart. Whoever makes trouble, whether it’s them or you, will end up in my jail for the night, if not longer. Clear?”
Jake didn’t offer a verbal reply, but his opinion must have been obvious anyway in the sudden stiffening of his spine and the length of his strides. He reached the entrance of the saloon and was just about to push through the swinging doors and step over the threshold when Hank appeared at his side, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Pa?” he asked. The kid was still getting used to having a father—hell, Jake was just getting used to being one—and the word came out like a croak.
Jake closed his eyes for a moment. Not now, he thought. Then he looked down at his son. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asked. He’d extracted a solemn promise from Hank, early that same morning, that he’d avail himself of Primrose Creek’s makeshift schoolhouse.
“I ain’t goin’ back to that place ever,” Hank announced. “There’s nobody there but for a pack of runny-nosed kids and that homely teacher.”
Jake, mad enough to bite through a railroad spike an instant before, now had trouble holding back a grin. At the edge of his vision, he glimpsed Zachary Shaw, pretending to look at a display of feathered hats and other female fripperies in the milliner’s window. Miss Ingmire, the schoolmarm, was only seventeen herself, according to rumor, and she had trouble keeping order in class. As for the runny-nosed kids, well, Jake figured there was probably room for one more; his boy would fit right in.
He stepped aside, one hand resting on Hank’s blade-thin little shoulder. “I’m afraid there are some things in this life that we don’t have a choice about, and school is one of them. You’ll need to read and write and cipher if you’re going to run my timber company someday.” Provided there still was a company once Hank was grown. The way things were going, they’d both end up as drifters and no-accounts.
Unless, of course, he won next Sunday’s horse race—as he fully intended to do. Surely, he’d be able to persuade Skye to let him harvest the necessary timber once they were man and wife. He would run double and even triple shifts at the mill and meet the railroad’s deadline. His spirits rose, and he grinned. “Suppose I told you that you were about to get yourself a mother. What do you think she’d have to say about a boy who won’t go to school?”
Hank’s square little chin jutted out a little, and his eyes snapped. “If she’s anything like Mandy, I’ll be taking to the road again, and it won’t matter what she thinks. I ain’t puttin’ up with no ear-washing, neither.”
Jake bit the inside of his cheek in order to maintain the sober expression he’d just managed to assume. “She’s nothing like Amanda,” he assured the boy. “I think you’ll like her.”
Hank narrowed his eyes. “She’ll want me to go to school every day, though. Maybe even church on Sundays.”
“ ’Fraid so,” Jake admitted. “Women place a lot of store by school and churchgoing. I believe the Reverend Taylor likes to cut loose with an extra sermon on Wednesday nights, too.”
Hank sighed, and his shoulders slumped significantly, though Jake thought he sensed a certain excitement in the child. No doubt, he’d dreamed of being an ordinary kid many a time, with an ordinary father and mother and a set of rules to follow.
“Let’s go on home,” Jake said quietly. “You can make another try at school tomorrow.”
Hank hesitated, then fell into step beside him.
A voice from behind stopped both of them cold. “Vigil!”
Jake turned. Two strangers stood on the wooden walkway outside Diamond Lil’s, and he knew by their waistcoats and derby hats that they were railroad men. His hand came to rest lightly on top of Hank’s head. “I don’t conduct my business in the streets, gentlemen,” he said. “You have something to say to me, you come to my office at the mill in the morning.”
The taller of the two men, a thin, pockmarked fellow with overlapping front teeth, worked up a smile. “No offense meant,” he said, and touched the brim of his hat in a gesture that conveyed more mockery than respect. “We’ll be around to see you first thing.”
“I reckon you know what it’s about,” put in the second agent. He was little and wiry, the kind a man had to look out for in a fight.
Jake didn’t reply. He simply turned his back on the two men and started toward home again. Zachary, who evidently had stuck to Jake’s heel like a chunk of horse manure, fell into step beside him. After a friendly nod of acknowledgment to the boy, he got right down to business. “It’s time we put what happened behind us, Jake. Time like this, a man needs his friends.”
Jake glared at him and kept walking. “I’ll remember that,” he said, “if I run into any.”
Shaw looked downright exasperated. “Damn it,” he rasped. Then, remembering Hank, he lowered his voice, as if that would keep a sharp-eared kid from hearing. “Damn it,” he repeated. “I’m trying to help you here!”
Jake gave a derisive chuckle. “Five minutes ago,” he said, “you were threatening to throw me in jail.”
“I still might,” the marshal said lightly. “Even if there isn’t a law against your kind of pig-headed, jackass approach to life, there ought to be. Now, I have another question. Two, in fact. Where did you get this kid? And did I hear him call you Pa?”
*When a brisk knock sounded at his office door the next morning, an hour after he’d coerced Hank into returning to school and its many trials and crossed the street to the mill, Jake sighed with resignation. Sooner or later, he’d have to speak with the railroad people, anyway. It might as well be sooner.
“Come in,” he growled.
He couldn’t have been more surprised when Skye McQuarry answered his summons, clad in a yellow dress with ruffles at the cuffs and hemline. Her rich brown hair was pinned up in a loose knot at the back of her head, and her skin and eyes glowed, even as a nervous blush rose in her cheeks.
He stood so hastily that he nearly overturned his chair, and for a long moment, he just stared at her like a smitten boy, too startled to speak. She’d been pretty before, in her rough clothes and that old leather hat with the floppy brim, but she was beautiful now.
Something in his discomfiture must have given her confidence, for she straightened her shoulders and met his gaze straight on. “We need to clarify a few matters,” she said. “If I lose this race—which I won’t—and have to marry you, will you promise to treat me with respect? I won’t put up with anything less. I expect to be a partner to you, and I will not be made to do anything I don’t choose to do.”
Jake Vigil found his tongue. “Yes,” he said. Then he cleared his throat, still profoundly stricken by the sight and scent of her, by his sudden and fierce desire to reach out and pull her into his arms, and said it again. “Yes, Skye. I promise.” He paused. “God knows, I have my faults, but I’m not the kind to take advantage of a woman.” While the words he spoke were truthful, he had to admit he wasn’t following her train of thought that well, stunned as he was by her unexpected appearance.
She looked as though she believed him. Could it be that she actually wanted this marriage? No, it couldn’t be that.
“Thank you,” she said, and turned to go.
“Skye?” He couldn’t help himself; her name was out of his mouth like a cat slipping through an open doorway.
She faced him again and raised one eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.
“You’ll want to be sure and win that race if you can,” he heard himself tell her. “Just now, my prospects as a husband and provider are not exactly impressive.”
She smiled again, and again he was thunderstruck. Had Christy’s smile ever affected him like that? Had Amanda’s? He couldn’t remember feeling this way—pleasantly off-balance—in the whole of his life.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Mine are excellent.”
“Your—?” He was furiously embarrassed and not sure why.
“Prospects,” she explained, and let herself out.
He was still standing up,
still staring at the empty doorway, when the two railroad agents appeared, hats artfully in hand, manners humble.
“Sit down,” he said, and tried to remember why they were there.
“About your contract with the Union Pacific,” began the tall one, dragging a chair up in front of Jake’s desk while his partner did the same. “There seems to be some concern among the board of directors—”
Jake sank into his own chair and shoved a hand through his hair. “Gentlemen, I gave my word that I will deliver thirty thousand railroad ties within the next few weeks, and I mean to keep it.” How? he asked himself. Even if Skye granted him access to her precious trees, he’d have trouble meeting the deadline, which was just a month away.
“How?” asked the second agent, crossing his legs at the knee.
“Is the order overdue?” Jake countered.
The agents reddened, and one of them curled a finger beneath his collar and tugged. “Not exactly.”
That was when Jake faced the truth: the railroad was going to win either way. If they couldn’t get the railroad ties, they’d have his holdings—the mountain he had fought and worked to own, the house he’d built, the equipment, and the thriving mill. Hell, maybe they’d have the whole damn town by the time they got through.
He sat back in his chair and interlaced his fingers, primarily to keep himself from springing over the desk and throttling the both of them, one gullet in each hand.
“According to our contract,” said one agent, uncomfortable in the thunderous silence, “you still have thirty days. But you don’t seem to be making much progress, and it would be impossible, in such a short time—”
Jake thought of Skye and of Hank. Not so long ago, he’d almost been discouraged enough to give up, count himself a fool for staking everything he had on this one deal, and move on. Now, it seemed to him, he had every reason to fight, every reason to succeed.
“You’ll have your timber if I have to sell my soul to get it,” he said. “Now, get out. I have work to do.”
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