That got her to quit staring at her clinging hands and turn to him. With a sigh, he reached down, fetched the reins from her, and took a step. Megan squeaked loud enough that Dave’s horse would have danced sideways if he didn’t have the stallion under firm control. Blue’s ears came forward, so the old beast was at least alive.
Dave led his sturdy little wife out of the ranch yard, walking at a pace that was only the least bit above a full stop.
Teaching Megan to ride looked to be a task for a man anticipating a long, long life.
“SO NOW THAT I KNOW HOW TO RIDE, WHAT WILL YOU be teaching me tomorrow?” She certainly hoped she knew enough to be done, because the riding lessons were terrifying.
David gave her a long look but didn’t answer. Instead, he passed through the kitchen, and she heard him clomping up the steps.
“Supper will be in an hour!” she called after him.
He grunted but didn’t respond. Smiling, Megan felt keen satisfaction at how well she’d done. Why, she was good enough at riding, she doubted another lesson was necessary. She prayed fervently it would be so.
She rolled out the piecrust while the boys played under the kitchen table and contemplated something she had confidence in.
Cooking.
It was a whole hour before David came back down. His eyes were a bit puffy as if he’d been sleeping. He settled into his place at the head of the table, rubbed his chest, and said, “Let’s bow our heads.”
Then her menfolk dug into the meal. David seemed pleased with it and showed a good appetite.
Once they were stuffed, the boys went up to their room to play and David disappeared into the front of the house. She’d barely stepped foot in either front room—the day had been full enough without turning her attention there. He closed the pocket doors on the library and occasionally she heard him coughing.
After the kitchen was tidy and the boys tucked into bed, she turned to what David needed. She’d spent her last pennies in Chicago buying the makings for the concoction that had helped her little brother mend after his pneumonia. She made a strong cup of tea, laced with honey, ginger, willow bark, and cayenne pepper. She let it steep a bit while she prepared a poultice for his chest and a few other little tricks she had learned from an old doctor who was willing to treat the very poor.
When it was all ready, she went into the living room to find David asleep in a comfortable stuffed chair with a book open on his lap.
“Here now, David.” Keeping her voice low, she gently caught his wrist and coaxed him awake.
He didn’t respond at first and fear caught in her throat. What if he was dead? She saw the rise and fall of his chest and knew he wasn’t, but it might happen. If not now, then one of these times. His heart would quietly stop beating. She’d come into a room expecting that he was sleeping, only to find he’d died.
Tears burned at the very thought. Megan knew only too well what a dead body felt like. She’d prepared her mother’s body for burial. She could still feel that hard, cold flesh. David was warm. His pulse beat in his wrists. He shifted a bit as she talked to him, and finally, slowly, his head came up.
To cover her worry she turned to focus on the cup of tea she’d fixed for him. “I want you to drink this. It’s full of things that will make you feel better.” She lifted the tea to his lips.
He roused enough that he took the cup and sipped it, then shuddered. “What is in this?” His brow furrowed and he stared at the cup.
“Just drink it down. And I’ve got a plaster for your chest.”
David downed the tea on a single swallow, grimacing. He set the cup aside. “Megan, I don’t mind taking any medicine you have or any treatment you’ve concocted. But to think you can save me—that’s false hope, little lass.” He rested one open palm on her cheek.
Megan met his eyes, wondering if a man who believed himself to be dying would give up the fight to live. She needed to give him reason to hope.
“Let’s go upstairs. I want you lying down when I put the poultice on. It’s bedtime anyway.”
“So I need to wake up so I can go to sleep?” David laughed, but there was a touch of bitterness in it. “I slept half the morning away. I had an afternoon nap. Now it’s bedtime. I have a schedule like an infant.”
“Just you hush, David Laramie. A man who’s been sick needs rest. All I see when I look at you is a full-grown man, that’s all.” She did her best to glare that truth into him. “You know my mother died of pneumonia.”
“I believe you mentioned that.”
“Did I mention that my brothers didn’t die? They were very sick but I pulled them through. I learned a lot about the disease, and I talked with a doctor many times about how to treat it. He said there can be pain after the pneumonia, sometimes for a long time. And the cough can go on for months. Now, I don’t care what your fancy doctor told you.”
“The best doctor in Chicago by all accounts.”
“I’d put an old doctor from a poor neighborhood, a man who’s seen most everything, against a fancy doctor who’s only treated healthy rich people any day. I want you to plan to live to an old age. And part of that planning is to do whatever I say when it comes to treating you.”
“Whatever you say?” David smiled. “I’m not surprised you want to run things, Meg.”
“When it comes to the sickroom, I’ve got more knowledge than you.” She did her best to be stern, but he’d called her Meg. She liked it and it took a fair amount of will to go on scolding the sweet, stubborn man. “If it comes to putting reins on a horse, then I’ll bow to your superior knowledge.”
Their eyes locked for far too long. No indeed, there was nothing childlike about her handsome husband.
“I’m sorry about your ma, Megan. How old were you when she died?”
“I was fifteen. Da had been gone for three years but he was a drinker with a bad temper. Things got better when he was gone. There was more money too, because he always drank up whatever I earned.”
“You worked at a job when you were twelve?” David caught her hand and tugged until she sat in the fancy stuffed chair beside his.
“I started working when I was seven or eight. I ran errands for the general store. Then I got a job at a carpet mill and did that most of my growing-up years.”
“I’ve heard of those places. They’re dangerous.”
“They’re loud and hot. The hours are long. The pay is miserly and, yes, they’re dangerous. I saw children die, tangled up in the machinery. I did my best to keep my little brothers from having to work in a mill.”
“There were five, weren’t there? Little brothers, I mean.” David was still holding her hand. It felt wonderful.
“Yes. Sean, Donal, Conor, Killian, and Brendon. The youngest, Brendon, was born after Da died.” She could remember the last time she hugged little Brendon, the morning of his first day of school. He’d hugged her back when she’d sent him off in the morning. When he’d come home, he’d pushed her away, embarrassed. Too old to let a big sister hug him, he said. The other boys had each done the same in turn and she had been able to shrug off their growing-up airs. But there’d been other, younger brothers to hug and she hadn’t minded much. But when Brendon had done it, her heart had hurt for days.
“And none of them had to work while you slaved away in a carpet mill?” Dave’s fingers tightened.
“It was something I could do for them. I didn’t mind. I felt as if I was saving their lives.” She smiled. “I was quite the hero.”
Lifting her hand, David kissed her fingers, woven between his own. “Then you cleaned houses?”
“I’ve worked a lot of jobs, but lately, yes, I cleaned houses. It was a much preferable job.”
“And where are your brothers now? You’ve barely spoken of them. Do you miss them? Do you want to go back east to visit them?”
“They’ve spread out all over.” It lifted her heart to add proudly, “All five of them graduated from high school. None of them took to the bottle like Da.
They’re fine men.”
“It’s clear that you love them. If you want to go see them, we can do it. The train makes that possible.”
“I wouldn’t know where to go look for most of them to visit. I haven’t seen a one of them in years.”
“So you sacrificed your entire childhood and young adulthood for them, and they don’t even let you know where they’re living?” Color rose up David’s neck along with the indignation in his voice. “None of them offered to take you in and support you after all those years of brutally hard work while they went off to school?”
“Hush,” Megan scolded. “Their loyalty is to their wives and that’s as it should be.” Megan smiled, but she felt the weight of turning up the corners of her mouth. “No sense thinking on sad things, is there? It does no good.”
“Megan, do you think you can be content out here? Wyoming is a harsh land. It’s not for some folks.”
Because his anger was so unlike him, she watched him closely, knowing this question was important. “It’s beautiful. And so quiet. The roar of the city liked to knock away my ears. I can’t imagine how you brought yourself to leave this place.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Regret maybe.
“How could you leave it? How could you exchange this peace and quiet for the city?”
The look David gave her was a long one. If she hadn’t been holding his hand, she’d have never felt him trembling. “You want to know why I left, really?”
The reason had to be terrible, she realized. Megan hesitated. “If you want to tell it.”
There was silence between them, broken only by the crackling of the fire. David lifted her hand to his lips and just held it there, kissing her hand, almost as if he were trying to stop the words that he needed to say.
“No one knows this, Meg. I probably shouldn’t tell you. My life, what I left behind out here, is well and truly over and it would be best if it stayed forgotten.” At last he met her eyes. “You have to swear to never repeat this to another soul.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to know?”
She wasn’t sure at all, but it seemed that he needed to speak of it. “You can trust me with your secrets.”
“I know I can.” His eyes seemed to burn with the longing to trust. At last he spoke quietly. “My ma and pa and I came west with a wagon train in 1843. One of the early trains to cross the Oregon Trail and not a big one, only about ten wagons.”
“I can’t imagine crossing this whole country in a wagon, the train took long enough.”
David quirked a smile. “The train took days. Our journey took months. Pa was so tired of it he’d considered many times leaving the group and finding a place to settle. And then one morning I rode out with Pa to hunt. He let me come along. We’d scout the trail ahead and hunt for the wagon train. Pa was teaching me to read sign.”
“Read sign?” Megan interrupted.
“Yes, like to recognize an antelope track or a mountain lion print. He was teaching me to hunt and skin. All the things a boy needs to survive in the West. I loved every minute of it, and I’d gotten to be a fair shot and had brought down food to bring to the family’s fire.” He breathed in and out slowly.
Megan didn’t break the silence.
“Then one day we came riding back into the camp, late in the day, with enough food for everyone to get a piece of meat and . . . and . . .” David let go of her and ran both hands over his face as if he wanted to wipe the memory away. “The wagon train had been attacked. Burned. The horses and supplies stolen. Everyone was dead. Man, woman, and child, all dead. Including my ma and two little sisters.”
“Were they attacked by Indians?”
“Pa said no.” David uncovered his face and looked into the fire as if he were staring into the past. “He could read Indian sign. He said it was outlaws who wanted to make it look like Indians. He didn’t tell me that until a long time later. When it happened he barely spoke a word while he buried everyone. It took a long time. Pa scouted around and found this canyon and we settled here, long before there was anyone else in the area.”
“And when you were grown up, you left because of the memories of losing your ma and sisters?”
“No.” David pulled his faraway stare from the fire and faced her.
And she knew this was the important part.
“I left because as soon as I was old enough, I started guarding the Oregon Trail. My pa told me what really happened to my family and it made me mad enough to kill. I was quiet about it, but the band of outlaws preyed on people along the trail and I hated it. Hated them.”
“Guarding it, how?”
“I was a good shot, a great shot. Fast and accurate. Nothing scared me or made me back up. I think I hurt so bad over my ma and sisters I didn’t care if I lived or died, and that made it easy for me to face danger.”
“When did you start doing this? You were too young when you first settled here.”
“It was years later. We heard about another train being attacked and I was raging mad at the Indians I thought had done it. Pa said he didn’t want to see me hate like that so he told me what really happened with Ma. About the time I turned sixteen, I stumbled on men planning to attack a wagon train and I . . . I stopped them.”
Megan knew he meant he’d killed them. She shuddered at his bleak tone.
“It felt good. The wagon trains came through regularly. I’d tell Pa I was going hunting or trapping, which was common enough. Staying out overnight, even for several days, wasn’t unusual. Then I’d guard the trains until they left the area or the men threatening them were all dead.”
A chill rushed down Megan’s spine at the cold tone of his voice.
“They called me the . . . the . . .” David shook his head and looked at her. “I shouldn’t tell you. It’s better you don’t know. I only wish the whole thing would be forgotten.”
“They called you what?”
He swallowed hard. “The O. T. Rider. Oregon Trail Rider. No one connected me to Pa until one day a man rode into our ranch. He’d tracked me somehow. We shot it out and I won. Pa saw the duel, so I had to explain. Pa had heard of the O. T. Rider but he’d never imagined it might be me. But he saw me draw on that man and knew I was deadly with a gun. And we both knew that if one man found me, others would.
“Pa told me to run, change my name. Stay away until everyone forgot who the O. T. Rider was. I did. I knew living that way could kill me. Someday, someone would come along who was faster—someone always does. But I hadn’t figured guarding that trail might get my pa killed. He gave me what money he had and I rode east all the way to the ocean. I turned Pa’s meager stake into a fortune. I wasn’t a man you’d have admired back then, Meggie. But then I met Pamela. I married her and had two wonderful children and found the Lord. I became a man I could respect. I’d been away long enough that I could come back here. I’ve always felt like this was my true home.”
“The O. T. Rider.” Megan shook her head. “I’m married to a fabled gunman, and all he does is buy me clothes, compliment my cooking, and love his boys soundly.”
“And teach you to ride. Don’t forget that, Meg.”
“That horse is a menace. I can’t help it if he’s hard to ride.”
“It’s a mare, a gentle mare.”
“Hah! That beast has a wicked gleam in his eye. I don’t trust him.”
David laughed. She was amazed he could laugh after sharing the darkest part of his life. “Let’s go up to bed.”
Megan reached her hand down for him and he took it, rising to stand without letting her bear much weight.
“The tea was good. It soothed my throat a bit and the coughing has eased. I like it. Except for the taste.”
“Go on up. I’ll get you another cup while you change for bed and I’ll fetch the poultice.”
David smiled. Megan couldn’t resist smiling back. He bent over and rested his lips on hers, as if matching their smiles together.
“I’ll get into bed and wait for you, Dr. Megan.”
With mock severity, Megan said, “Just see that you do.”
Laughing, David led her out of the room, then turned and headed upstairs.
THE DAYS FELL INTO A PATTERN AS THANKSGIVING approached.
Megan trying to get the house in order.
David fussing at her to learn ranching.
Boys screaming and wrestling, running wild inside and out.
Good food.
A pattern marked by terror as David shooed her outside to ride that awful blue horse again and again.
“Why can’t I just ride in your wagon?” Megan almost fell off the other side of the horse as she mounted, but David caught her. The horse had a bad habit of putting his head down, which made his back slope toward the front. Only clinging to the saddle horn kept Megan from sliding straight down the horse’s neck and onto the ground. The horse was just being plain spiteful.
“There are places out here a wagon can’t go. And a horse can travel much faster than a wagon.” David patted the unruly critter.
Megan wished he’d quit, lest the horse become upset. “But I don’t want to go faster.”
“Well then, you’ve picked the right horse. This old mare won’t go one bit too fast.”
Megan wondered what a mare was and wondered if it was where the word nightmare came from.
She should probably ask, but David was sure to answer, and that could go on a long time and get very boring, all without making a lick of sense.
David’s cough seemed a touch better as long as Megan poured tea into him steadily. He’d taken to having a cup many times a day and his chest pains seemed to ease for several hours afterward.
The ranch cook, Tex, had brought Megan a turkey for Thanksgiving, all cleaned and ready to roast. Tex’s cooking had gotten some better since Megan had taken to advising him, which had made her very popular with the cowhands.
The turkey was huge, and Megan contrived quite a feast for the family. She sent pies made from dried apples out to the bunkhouse too, which raised her even higher in the eyes of David’s men.
Margaret Brownley, Robin Lee Hatcher, Mary Connealy, Debra Clopton Page 25