“How about just having them come in care of M. Curtis?” Carmichael inquired, wondering how deeply he was going to get involved and what might result.
“Perfect.” Mercy glanced around to make sure Mandy wasn’t in hearing distance. “Michael, why don’t you do something really daring? I read this book where an easterner bought a ranch but didn’t know much about running it so he used a different name and then went out and got a job on his own ranch so he could find out all about it.”
“Spies and counterspies?” Carmichael grinned. Yet the boldness of the plan appealed to his new, adventuresome nature. Why not? He could meet Desert Rose Birchfield without her knowing his identity, for a while.
Chapter 4
Dr. Adam Birchfield believed range lore and survival skills as important to his daughters’ health as good food and plenty of sleep and exercise. His wife Laurel agreed, as did her twin sister, Ivy, and her husband, Nathaniel Birchfield, Antelope’s beloved minister. These beliefs worked in favor of Desert Rose and Columbine and Nate and Sam who spent all the time they could on their grandparents’ ranch, the Double B.
Rose’s interest in keeping up with the daring Nate dismayed a score of would-be suitors who often found themselves left to young Columbine’s mercies. Even the most devoted and love-stricken cowboy had not touched her heart, although many had won her admiration with his riding, roping, and marksmanship skills.
Yet when a triumphant Nate sought her out waving a letter and whispering, in case Columbine or Sam lurked about, “It’s come!” Rose’s heart lurched.
“So soon? How did they get it published already?” She snatched the envelope and her eyes opened wide. “Why, this isn’t from Hand and Heart. It’s from Concord, Massachusetts.”
“Of course it is.” Nate’s dark eyes flashed with mirth. “Some eager swain evidently wrote the moment he saw your advertisement. Open it, will you?” The letter from his former teacher had been carefully removed from the larger envelope that came so the one Rose now held could be delivered intact.
Fun filled Rose’s expressive face. She ripped open the letter and silently began to read. “Why, he knows you!” she gasped. “Listen to this, Nate. He says there must only be one Nate Birchfield in Antelope. What an odd coincidence.”
Nate bent over to twitch a piece of sage off his pant leg and mumbled, “That’s probably why he felt it would be safe to write, seeing as we used my address.”
“Oh.” Rose returned to the letter. “He sounds nice. Is he?”
Nate didn’t need to pretend. “He’s just plain grand and the only reason I even considered going back for another year.” His enthusiasm showed in every word and Rose listened hard, holding one finger to mark the place in her letter where she stopped reading.
“Carmichael Blake-Jones. What a name!” She threw back her head and laughed until the hills echoed with her joy. “What does he look like?”
“About my height but heavier, fair instead of dark. Better than that, he’s willing to see the other man’s side of things.”
“Is he a Christian?”
Nate cocked his head to one side. “Well,” he drawled. “He attended chapel and church. I don’t know how deep his faith goes. I know even the most critical of those at school never knew him to do an unkind or unfair thing. Several times for someone in trouble he—”
“Were you one of them?” she demanded, her dark brown eyes glowing.
“Let’s just say that even someone as angelic as I slips now and then,” he teased then made a halolike motion above his rumpled dark hair.
“Do you think I should answer?” Rose quickly finished the rest of the short letter. “Oh, I know he isn’t interested in moving out here or doing any of the things I put in that silly advertisement. He just sounds nice and maybe a bit lonely.”
All Nate’s mischief fled. “Both his parents were killed in a railway accident a few months ago and he lives in the family home alone except for a housekeeper, Mandy.”
“Doesn’t he have brothers and sisters?”
“All older and married, busy with their own families. He has a young niece Mercy. I vaguely remember seeing her a time or two.”
“Aha!” Rose seized on his statement. “Pretty?”
Nate shrugged. “I guess so. Plumpish, fair. Pretty skin.” He surveyed Rose’s tanned complexion. “Pink and white, not tanned like yours.”
She bristled and he quickly added, “On you it looks good. On her it wouldn’t. What else did he say?”
Rose’s firm chin shot skyward. “It’s my letter, not yours.”
“Don’t forget I’m your go-between,” he warned.
“Not for long.” She tucked the letter back into its envelope and shoved it in her shirt pocket. “When I write I’ll ask Mr. Blake-Jones to write directly to me from now on.”
“How will you explain to your parents the sudden influx of letters in a masculine hand from two thousand miles away?” Nate fired his best shot.
“There won’t be a sudden influx,” she reminded him. “Besides, I’ll tell the truth, well, part of it. I’ll tell Mother Mr. Blake-Jones is lonely and you fixed it up for us to correspond.”
“Thanks a heap!” He glared at her. “She’ll tell my folks and there won’t be a doghouse in Wyoming big enough for me.”
“Don’t be silly,” Rose told her irate cousin. “Mother knows what it’s like to want to do out-of-the-ordinary things.” Her white teeth flashed. “Writing to a perfectly respectable teacher at a private boys’ school is a lot different from leaving home and traveling alone to the Wyoming Territory a generation ago!”
Out maneuvered, Nate couldn’t help prodding, “When are you going to answer?”
Rose just smiled. “Shame on you, trying to get at the secrets of a maiden’s heart.”
Nate parried her thrust with a quick retreat, only stopping to call around the corner, “I see you’ve been reading romances again. Ohhhh, love is soooo grand.” He crossed eyes, stumbled in a mock swoon, then recovered himself and vanished with a mocking laugh.
She couldn’t help joining in the laugh. Good old Nate! Suddenly a pang went through her. What if he had met a girl back East he cared enough about to move there himself? If that ever happened, well, life would hold no surprises for her. He didn’t, she told herself. So stop building mountains.
Her fingers stole to the letter and a warm feeling for the lonely young man who had so courteously answered her advertisement took root in the rich, sympathetic soil of her heart. Perhaps it wasn’t proper to reply at once, but who cared? Rose tossed her head and went to find writing materials….
Summer opened in a new and different way from any other. Almost before Rose caught her breath and confessed to her mother that she had actually answered a letter from one of Nate’s former teachers, a second letter came. In a way, it offered relief. Rose openly showed it to her parents.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this way for you to begin writing to the young man,” Dr. Birchfield said. “On the other hand, having a friend from back East can benefit you both, and Nate assures me this Mr. Blake-Jones is above reproach.” His dark eyes so like Rose’s twinkled. “Although Nate isn’t always the most reliable judge of character, when it comes down to what really counts I value his comments. Write away, Rose. Just don’t encourage your friend to pull up stakes and move to Antelope, at least not until you’re eighteen.”
“Adam!” Laurel sounded shocked then laughed until her pretty face crinkled and she looked almost as young as her daughters. “I distinctly remember some other easterners pulling up their stakes and look what happened.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he told her solemnly, but Rose saw the twinkle deepen when he kissed her mother.
One evening before sunset Rose saddled Mesquite and rode up to her favorite overlook. She carried with her the latest letter from Massachusetts. New feelings stirred in her heart that thrilled yet frightened her. Was this what falling in love was like? To wait impatiently from the ti
me she wrote to Michael, as he had begged her to call him, until a letter came? To seek solitude rather than open the letters in front of curious Columbine and taunting Nate?
With her new awareness, Rose mulled over the changes in herself. “I spend more time dreaming,” she admitted to the fiery edge of the sun still visible over the peaks. Color brighter than the blushing sky crept into Rose’s cheeks and a wistful sigh escaped. Just this evening after supper she had come upon her father and mother in a rare moment of freedom from their duties. Adam and Laurel had ridden out from town to eat with the Browns and the Birchfield offspring, then had slipped away for a quiet walk. Screened by a drooping cottonwood, Rose stopped short at the picture before her. As Dad faced Mother with their hands joined, their profiles showed clear against the big rock where they stood.
Not wanting to intrude on their precious privacy, Rose took a silent step back then halted, transfixed by Dad’s words that fell like beads from a broken string, each separate and ringing.
“Laurel, it’s been almost twenty years since I came riding in to Red Cedars. You’re more beautiful now than you were then.”
The unwilling eavesdropper’s eyes stung. Would anyone be able to say that to her twenty years from now?
Laurel laughed and little bells rang. “And Dr. Adam Birchfield is even handsomer.”
Etched against the moss-covered rock, Adam’s face shone with a light that caused Rose to cover her mouth. “Thank God you are the one He knew would complete my life. Dearest, all these years, through drought and hard work, two steps forward and one step back, if you could do it all over, would you leave Red Cedars and come to me again?”
Laurel hesitated and the listening Rose held her breath. Then in a choked voice her mother said, “I would come, only far sooner!”
When Dad caught her close with a little cry, Rose escaped undetected. A knowledge she didn’t know she possessed whispered inside her wildly beating heart. This is love as God meant it to be, enduring, sustaining, real.
Why should the name Carmichael Blake-Jones immediately flash into her mind? Rose dismissed such premonitions in her usual style. Yet now as the sky changed to gold and purple and gray and she reluctantly mounted Mesquite for the ride home, memory of the two who were dearer to Rose than anyone on earth settled into her heart’s treasure chest to be stored, taken out now and then, and cherished.
News that ran the range like wildfire temporarily replaced thoughts of love from Rose’s mind. When Nate rode in from Antelope with another letter from Michael he also delivered the news that Old Man Turpin had sold his Circle 5 ranch to an easterner.
“Wish I’d known,” said Thomas Brown, scratching his head as he looked at his grandson. “We might have swung it and added to the Double B.”
Grandma Sadie, bright and perky as ever, said, “Land sakes, old man, don’t you think we have enough to do around here without adding another ranch?”
Thomas grinned and Rose saw the fondness in the gaze he turned toward his wife. “The young people are growing up. Maybe one of them will want a ranch.”
Nate squirmed under his grandfather’s direct gaze. He still hadn’t told anyone except Rose about his struggle over the future. His younger brother, Sam, grinned back at Grandpa Thomas. “Not me. I’m gonna be a doctor like Uncle Adam.” With a flash of the mischief that characterized Nate, young Sam drawled, “Too bad you didn’t buy it for Rose. She could be a female rancher. She’d do a good job, too,” he added.
“You just bet I would. If I had the Circle 5 I’d tear down those saggy fences and build a strong corral and then build a house with enough windows to see all five peaks that show up there.”
“Does anyone know anything about the new owner?” Columbine put in. Her light brown hair lay in carefully set curls and her usually languid brown eyes sparkled with excitement. “Does he have a family? Will he be living on the Circle 5?”
“Uh, Old Man Turpin says everything was handled through what he calls ‘a young upstart of a Rock Springs lawyer.’ The name on the papers is a Mr. Prentice.” Nate meticulously refrained from mentioning one small detail: he had encouraged the new owner to use a name other than Blake-Jones. Michael had chosen his mother’s maiden name and in correspondence had frankly told the lawyer he preferred the countryside didn’t know his real identity until a later time when he would disclose it. Neither did Nate report how the lawyer verbally raised his eyebrows but buttoned his lips in respect to his eccentric client’s wishes.
“The lawyer is rounding up hands, doing some of those repairs you talked about, Rosy, and in general, sprucing up the Circle 5.” Repressed excitement oozed from Nate.
Rose glanced at him sharply. “You act as if you struck the entire deal.”
Nate grinned his particularly maddening grin. “Well, I did bring home the news, didn’t I?” He tweaked her braid. “Ready for a ride?”
“Five minutes.” She raced upstairs to get a jacket and the sombrero she liked best for riding.
Trail companions Mesquite and Piebald stood waiting by the time she arrived. She’d had some trouble convincing Columbine and Sam this wasn’t a good time for them to come along.
“Come on, Columbine, I’ll take you,” she heard Sam say and some of her guilt fled. She had to tell Nate a piece of news of her own. In the letter she’d managed to slip away and read, Michael shared that after a long time of serious thought he had decided to take time off from his teaching position and do some traveling.
Don’t stop writing, he wrote in the concise hand Rose had come to admire. Send letters in care of M. Curtis and they will be forwarded.
“M. Curtis?” Nate wrinkled his forehead. “Who’s that?”
“Who cares?” Rose said impatiently and swung to the saddle. Her auburn braid flipped over one shoulder; she felt Mesquite stamp his hoof, ready for the ride. “What if Michael—Mr. Blake-Jones comes out here?”
Nate had never looked more innocent. “What if he does? I told you he’s a grand guy.” He vaulted onto Piebald and gathered the reins. Not until their usual race ended with him a length ahead did Nate casually add, “Don’t you want him to come?”
“I don’t know.” Panting, her face as pink as her name, Rose slowly dismounted and dropped to the needle-covered knoll they loved. “He hasn’t sent a picture, although I did when he asked for one.”
Nate choked and she whirled on him. “What’s wrong with you?”
He coughed. “Then you wouldn’t know him if he came riding up to you.” He jerked off his big hat and slapped dust from his jeans with it until Rose indignantly moved away from him. “Any other reason you aren’t pitty-patting to see him?”
She ignored his sarcasm and drank in the familiar scene before her. Gazing at the rolling hills and tall mountains, she was filled with the strength and peace of the psalmist David: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
“Nate—” A childlike tremble brought seriousness to her cousin’s face. “It’s been wonderful to write and tell him about Wyoming and hear about his life. Sometimes, though, when you meet someone about whom you have certain ideas, you feel disappointed.”
“I know, Rose Red.”
The hated nickname slipped by without a murmur. “I just don’t want anything to spoil the way things are right now.” She opened her arms wide to the panorama before them.
Nate stayed quiet so long she looked at him in surprise. He lay on his stomach, chewing a blade of grass. The expression in his eyes touched his faithful friend’s heart. “Here I am worrying about what may never happen while you’re struggling. Are you any closer to an answer?”
“I think so.” New manliness shone in the dark gaze he tore from the mountains and turned on her. “Nothing shattering has happened, but every time I see Dad’s tired face filled with a look beyond explaining I see myself.” He shifted. “Does that sound stupid?”
Rose shook her head. “Have you talked with him or Aunt Ivy?”
“I won’t unti
l I’m sure.” Nate moodily returned to his survey of the valley below. “If it were any other job I’d probably be shouting it from the housetops. Like Sam’s hung on your dad’s pants leg from babyhood talking about being a doctor.”
“I understand, Nate.” Rose put her sturdy, tanned hand over her cousin’s and love flowed between them.
“You’re a good kid, Rosy.” Nate turned his hand over, gripped hers, and sat up. “Sometimes I think we’re almost twins.” The next moment he flung off such sentiment and reverted to his usual self. “Why don’t we ride over to the Circle 5 tomorrow?” Only the look in his eyes betrayed how important these few moments had been to him.
“Why don’t we take Columbine and Sam?” she suggested and sprang lightly to her feet. “Seems we’ve spent most of our lives running away from them. Lately Columbine has acted lonely.”
“Let’s fill our saddlebags with grub so we can take all the time we want.” Nate leaped at the idea. “Can’t go in the morning, though. Grandpa needs help mending fences or they’ll start looking like those tumbledown ones on the Circle 5.”
“Never!” She laughed. “Besides, this Mr. Prentice is going to fix them, you said.”
A curious light came into Nate’s eyes. “He’s a real good fixer, according to Old Man Turpin’s lawyer.”
That night the entire household including the four young Birchfields turned in early. Usually the cousins quietly visited for a time after Thomas and Sadie went to bed. Tonight they wanted all the sleep they could get and planned to arise even earlier than normal so work could be done and they’d have time for their ride.
Rose could scarcely believe how excited Columbine was over getting to go. She observed her younger sister pulling on boots and retying her scarf for the third time. “How tall are you now?” she asked.
Wildflower Harvest: Includes Bonus Story of Desert Rose Page 18