Anthology - BIG SKY GROOMS

by DAVIDSON, Carolyn. MALLERY, Susan. WILLIAMS, Bronwyn (in) Montana Mavericks

  He appeared out of the darkness. She could see the lines of weariness and pain around his eyes. Something was very wrong. “What is it?” she demanded. “Is Zeke—”

  “He’s fine. We’re all fine.” Cautiously, he touched her arm. “Except you.”

  He slipped out of his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. She hugged the warm sheepskin to her while she mulled over his words. Then she understood.

  “You found out.”

  “Ronald Jefferson came by to make sure you were all right.”

  She sighed. “Caleb, I’m fine. I’ll admit I was terrified at the time and I don’t want that to ever happen again, but you didn’t have to come here to check on me.”

  “Yes, I did.” He squeezed her upper arms. “Ruth. Don’t do this. You mean everything to me. Please don’t run away again. Don’t turn your back on the life we could have.”

  She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against his chest. “Is that what you think? That I’ll stay here and never come back to the ranch?”

  “Won’t you?”

  She inhaled the familiar scent of the man she loved with all her heart, then thought of her life here, where she’d grown up. Then she straightened and looked Caleb in the eye.

  “I will always be more Cheyenne than white. I had thought that meant I couldn’t fit in. But I’m starting to see I may be more concerned about my differences than most other people.”

  When Caleb started to speak, she cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. “I’m not a fool. There will always be those who hate what they cannot understand. There will always be men like those from before, or the one today. But I can’t continue to hide from my fear.”

  She took both his hands in hers. “I love you, Caleb. I loved you before and I love you still. My greatest regret in life is the time we have wasted. I want to be with you always. I want to be your wife and bear your children.”

  Happiness flooded his face. “You’ll marry me?”

  “If you ask me to.”

  “Please. Now. Say yes.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “I love you,” he mumbled against her mouth. “Only you. For always.”

  She gave herself up to him, savoring the warmth of his body and the passion flaring between them.

  “When?” he asked, breaking the kiss and cupping her face in his hands. “When will you marry me?”

  “Today,” she said with a smile. “But I would prefer to be married in a Cheyenne ceremony.”

  “Zeke will love it.” He kissed her again. “And he’ll love having you for a mother. He needs someone to care for him. You’re very good at loving people, Ruth.”

  He gazed into her eyes. “I wish I’d come after you all those years ago.”

  “I doubt I would have listened,” she said honestly. “Perhaps we needed those years apart to become the people we are today. Besides, I wouldn’t give up Zeke.”

  “Nor would I.”

  The sun suddenly crested the horizon, bathing them in a soft light. Around them, people awoke and the village stirred to life. Ruth felt a sense of contentment she had never experienced before. In time she would tell Caleb about the child growing within her. A child of both their worlds. Together with Zeke, they would create a future as big and untamed as the Montana sky.

  As Good as Gold

  Bronwyn Williams

  To my beloved granddaughter, Cherylyn Ruth,

  whose image is reflected in Kate, the heroine of this story.

  Strong, and blessed with a beauty that glows from within,

  she makes her grandma proud.

  And to Mr. Ed, who loves me.

  CHAPTER ONE

  June, 1896

  EVEN BEFORE the train pulled out of the station, Will Kincaid was entertaining serious second thoughts. The night before, with the fragrant smoke of an expensive cigar swirling around his head, a shot of the finest whiskey in a fancy, imported glass, with a lovely and obviously willing woman silently offering to serve his every need, he had suffered a few more twinges of uneasiness. Not enough to make him change his mind, but the doubts had already begun to filter in. He’d held on to his glass until his palms had grown damp, then downed his drink in a single gulp.

  The woman, a well-endowed redhead who went by the unlikely name of Delilah DeLyte, had loosened his black silk four-in-hand with skilled fingers. Close up, he could see that the paint on her eyelashes had smeared onto her cheek, lending her a slightly owlish look.

  “Thank you kindly for sharing dinner with me, my dear, but I’m afraid I’ve an early train to catch.” Gently, Will Kincaid had set his glass on the table, risen to his well-shod feet and extracted a large bill from his money clip. Her smile had been quick, her fingers even quicker.

  Nine years, he reminded himself now as the train left the yards and began to gather speed. Nine years and roughly fifteen hundred miles. For the first time it occurred to Will that his own brother might not recognize him as the same reckless young hellion who had robbed his safe and fled town in a fit of righteous anger.

  Two months ago he had written to tell Caleb he’d like to mend the rift. There’d been no response. Now that Will was actually westward bound, the uneasiness that had been creeping up on him for weeks could no longer be denied. Could something have happened to Brock, the baby brother both men had done their best to raise?

  Caleb had been left with the sole responsibility. Through his own reckless action, Will had missed seeing the boy grow to manhood. Caleb would have done a good job of raising him, for his sternness had never extended to the youngest Kincaid.

  Could something have happened to Caleb, himself?

  Quickly, Will shut off the chilling thought. Things would have changed, but if anything like that had happened, surely someone would have responded to his letter.

  There’d once been a time when the three Kincaid brothers had been a solid unit—two rangy young hell-rakers and a tagalong kid who thought his older brothers had hung the moon. Then the old man had suffered a stroke and Caleb had been forced to grow up overnight and take over the entire operation. That’s when things had begun to change. Will had stepped into Caleb’s boots and taken on the task of herd manager, a vast responsibility on a spread as large as the Kincaids’ ranch. He’d done well enough until Caleb had taken to questioning every move he made, every sale, every purchase, every hire and dismissal. It got to the point that the two brothers couldn’t spend five minutes together without butting heads.

  At barely twenty years old, Will had still had a lot of wild oats to sow, a lot of hell to raise, but he’d kept it to a minimum. He might have occasionally had a few drinks too many, might have ridden into town a time or two for a few hours of late-night carousing, but he’d never once shirked his duty. No matter how big a head he had the next morning, or how sour his belly, he’d been on the job come daybreak.

  And then, just when he’d thought they might eventually works things out, the old man had died and left the entire Kincaid ranch to Caleb. Will couldn’t have been more stunned if someone had knocked him in the head with a cross-tie. After that, Caleb had completed the transition from being a tough but fair big brother to a hard, cold stranger. It was as if they were no longer related. As if Will had no more rights than the newest stable hand.

  For weeks tension had simmered just beneath the surface. The flash point had been reached after a minor disagreement about whether to mend the south fence or start moving the herd down to the east pasture. Straining with pent-up fury, the two brothers had launched at each other. Neither of them had pulled any punches. After the first roundhouse swing, Will had paused to rub his bleeding knuckles. Caleb had made some biting remark and Will had lit into him again, catching him off guard. Recovering quickly, Caleb had decked him, turned on his heel and stalked off without another word.

  Will had stormed out the door on Caleb’s heels and headed for the Double Deuce Saloon. It had been after midnight when he’d returned to the ranch. Resentment fueled by drink, he had let himsel
f into the office and helped himself to a third of the cash in the Kincaid safe, justifying the act by telling himself that the ranch should have been divided equally among the three Kincaid brothers. Brock was too young to play an active role yet, but he was still a Kincaid. As for Will, he had worked his butt off since he was old enough to saddle his own horse, but he flat out refused to put in another day’s work for the coldhearted bastard who now owned every stick, stone and head of cattle.

  So he had taken a third of the money in the office safe and fled.

  For the first few years he’d blamed Caleb. Resentment had festered like a bad tooth. Gradually, he had shifted the blame to the old man for favoring one son above the others, pitting them against one another. The result in Caleb’s case had been guilt for being chosen; in Will’s case it had been jealousy at being left out.

  Eventually he had matured enough to shift the blame to his own shoulders, where it rightfully belonged. The old man had built the Kincaid spread up from the ground. He had a right to leave it to the man he considered best suited to run it. By nature, Will was a tad hotheaded, inclined to act on impulse. Given the advantage of hindsight, he eventually realized that Caleb had been forced to move in the other direction to counterbalance what he called Will’s gut-for-brains recklessness.

  In some ways, Will Kincaid thought as the train gathered speed, he had changed. The touch of gray at his temples was new, as was the habit of wearing custom-tailored suits, handmade shirts and oxfords instead of Levi’s, flannel shirts and battered stock boots. Yet somewhere underneath all the dandified barbering and citified clothes, vestiges of the same reckless brawler remained. Good thing he had learned in the early days after leaving home to tamp down his recklessness and rely more on his brains than his fists, otherwise he might not have survived.

  Instead, he’d not only survived, he had thrived. In the nine years since he’d left Montana with a horse, a single change of clothing and two thousand dollars in cash, he had managed to get himself an education, spotty, but sufficient for his needs. He had acquired enough polish to see him through most social occasions. Eventually, building on a combination of instinct, luck and perseverance, he’d gone on to pile up a fortune in gold, hard cash and solid investments. What’s more, he had done it honestly, although he’d be the first to admit he could as easily have swindled his way into a fortune. From somewhere among his ancestors he seemed to have inherited two distinct traits: rectitude and recklessness. It was a damned uncomfortable combination, but thank God he had finally learned to make it work for him.

  LEAVING THE TRAIN at Butte, Will took the stagecoach from there to Whitehorn, exhausted, but savoring the familiar countryside. The hit-and-miss village he remembered had grown into a small but thriving town. Which made his plan of opening a bank all the more feasible.

  But first he had a few fences to mend. That is, if there were any fences still standing.

  He was standing outside the stage stop, flexing a few tired muscles, when he heard a familiar voice. “Will? Will Kincaid? Well, damn my bones, it is you!”

  “James? Good God, man, are you still on the loose?”

  James Kincaid, first cousin and once favorite drinking and gambling companion, hadn’t changed. Pure black Irish, he’d always had the kind of good looks that attracted women of all ages between cradle and grave. The signs of dissipation might be a bit more pronounced now, his gait a bit too careful as he sauntered across to the stagecoach stop, but the smile was the same.

  “Have you seen Caleb lately?” Will was almost afraid to ask.

  “Not since the wedding.”

  “The what? Caleb’s married?”

  “You didn’t know? Yep, she made him wait a respectable time after Marie died, but—”

  “Marie?”

  “Oh, hell, you didn’t know about Marie?” Reaching for one of Will’s two bags, James took his arm and steered him toward the nearby saloon. “Come on, cousin, you can buy me a drink while I fill you in on what’s been going on around here.”

  It was early for drinks, but Will needed some answers. Who better than his cousin to provide them? “Don’t tell me the old Double Deuce is still in business.”

  “New owner, but still in business and getting ready to expand. I like to think my support over the years is in some small way responsible for the old Deuce’s success,” James said with patently false modesty.

  “You haven’t changed,” Will observed dryly.

  “You have.”

  The Double Deuce was neither the oldest nor the newest saloon in Whitehorn; neither the fanciest nor the shabbiest. It happened to be the one favored by his generation, however. That much, Will was pleased to note, had not changed. He recognized several faces from the past.

  James led the way to a table and signaled one of the saloon girls. There’d been a time, Will remembered with a twinge of something akin to nostalgia, when he had done his share of hell-raising in this same noisy, cheerful, dimly lit establishment. James had usually been a part of whatever carousing he’d done.

  “So who is this Marie you mentioned?” Will prompted after both men had been served.

  “Your late sister-in-law, may she rest in peace.” The expression in James’s startlingly blue eyes belied the pious sentiment. “I’m sure she had some wonderful qualities, only I never could figure out what they were. The only good thing to come out of that marriage is little Zeke. Hey—I reckon you don’t know you’re an uncle, either, do you?”

  It was a lot to take in all at once. Will finished off his drink and signaled for another. For the past few years he had limited himself to a couple of drinks after hours, a single cigar and an occasional woman. Moderation in all things, that was his new motto. For the most part, he’d managed to stick to it pretty well.

  James finished his own drink. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and ordered another. “Now, Ruth, she’s different. You remember Ruth, right? Her brother, John, is now one of the top dogs out at the Laughing Horse Reservation. She and Caleb met again this spring when Zeke ran away to the reservation. Ruth’s now married to Caleb.”

  Will took a moment to digest the news. “Just tell me this much—is Caleb all right? Is the ranch still a going concern? Am I going to have any more surprises if I show up there unannounced?”

  “He doesn’t know you’re coming?”

  “I wrote a couple of months ago, but I hadn’t heard back by the time I decided to just up and return.” He wondered if James knew about the money he’d stolen. Pride alone would probably have kept Caleb from reporting it. At least, Will thought wryly, there’d been no wanted posters with his picture on them, so far as he knew. “Is there a decent hotel in town?”

  Since his brother now had a wife and a child, Will was even less certain of his welcome.

  “Old lady Harroun’s boardinghouse or Amos Carlton’s hotel, take your choice. She sets a good table, but Amos’s beds are better.” He grinned the same old infectious grin that had won him forgiveness for many a transgression. “’Course, if you’re hard up, there’s still the old Tanner mansion.”

  “God, is that thing still standing?”

  “Been on the market as long as I can remember. With things building up in town the way they are, wouldn’t surprise me if it got snapped up by some poor jerk with more money than brains and turned into another boardinghouse.”

  Will shook his head and chuckled. “That reminds me, I’d better secure a room and clean up before I head out to the ranch. Livery still got a few decent horses for hire?”

  “Ask for Mose. Tell him I sent you.”

  IT WAS EARLY evening when Will, having rented a room at the hotel, bathed and changed into a suit that wasn’t speckled with fly ash from the long train ride, finally headed out of town. The high granite ridges of the Crazy Mountains were awash in a clear golden light, the lower reaches shaded with blue. Before him rolled vast acres of grain, ready for harvest, while overhead the sky was a deep cobalt bowl. Had he even noticed such things as a
young man?

  Probably not. Once he’d left home he’d been too caught up in the rush of freedom, the excitement of being out from under his brother’s watchful eye. Then, too, even before he’d left Montana, the guilt had begun to fester. Not only had he stolen money, but he’d left the ranch shorthanded. To this day he wasn’t sure if it had been pride, shame or curiosity about what lay just over the horizon that had kept him from turning back. Maybe he’d known even then that some vital element was missing from his life. Trusting his instincts, he had kept on moving, staying a few weeks here, a few months there, learning as he worked his way eastward. Thank God he had hung on to his stolen nest egg until he’d reached Chicago.

  For the first few days the noise of a bustling city had nearly driven him away, but before he could make up his mind where to go next, he’d been trapped by a sense of raw energy unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was the kind of energy that made a man want to do big things, to be a part of it—to set his own wheels to turning.

  Determined to double Caleb’s money to prove—well, to prove something or other to them both—it was almost by chance that he’d discovered a talent that had lain dormant for the first twenty years of his life.

  Money. High finance. Wheeling and dealing, speculating, recognizing investment opportunities before they were even a speck on the horizon. It was not unlike the days when old man Gibson had taught him how to read the forest—how to study the lay of the land until he knew precisely where to set his traps.

  The irony of it had not escaped him as he’d found himself turning into even more of a dedicated businessman than his brother.

  Pausing now beneath the familiar circular gate, Will took stock of the changes. New fences. A fresh coat of paint. Someone had planted flowering bushes around the house, the scent layering with the rich smell of ripe grain and cattle on the warm evening air. Breathing deeply, he swung down from his rented gelding and braced himself to face the music.