The Lover

by Genell Dellin

  But Adams was probably too much of a coward to carry one. No doubt one of the men with him was his gun hand. Eagle Jack didn’t even deign to glance in that direction.

  He motioned low at his side for Susanna to move her horse back and silently thanked God when she obeyed.

  Adams had two spots of color in his cheeks now. He had not moved a muscle. “Who are you?” he asked, his voice slipping a notch higher.

  “I’m Susanna’s husband. Eagle Jack Sixkiller is my name.”

  Adams’s narrow eyes widened. He looked at Susanna. “Husband? Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

  “You didn’t ask,” she said.

  Eagle Jack looked toward Adams’s men. They were slumped in their saddles, quietly talking and smoking.

  He opened his mouth to tell Adams to take his men and his horses and hit the road but he shut it again. Even with Tucker and his men helping, the crew couldn’t brand several hundred cattle in two days and then drive them up the trail far enough to meet the Sixes and Sevens herd without fresh horses.

  And it had to be done in two days. Molly was getting farther and farther away from him, running her heart out in the horse thieves’ clutches.

  “I’ll buy your horses,” he said to Adams, who was actually turning paler, although that would’ve seemed impossible since he was so pasty-faced to start with. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars for the lot of them.”

  They were worth no more than three hundred at the most, including the mules.

  Adams stared at him. “Susanna,” he said, without turning his head to look at her, “is it true that this man is your husband?”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, “he is. And he’s going up the trail with me as trail boss for my cattle.”

  Eagle Jack stared at Adams some more. “You won’t be talking to my wife again,” he said. “So take the money or take your horses and get off her land.”

  “Four hundred,” Adams said.

  “Two and a half,” Eagle Jack said. “Last offer.”

  “Hard cash,” Adams said.

  Without looking away from him, Eagle Jack reached into his shirt pocket for the money he’d gotten at the bank in Salado. He opened the small pouch and shook out double eagles into the palm of his other hand until he had enough.

  “I don’t have time or paper for a bill of sale,” he said, “so you need to know this. If you call these horses stolen and set the law on me, I’ll come back here and kill you.”

  Adams didn’t flinch. “I wouldn’t bother,” he said.

  He held out his hand, took the money Eagle Jack gave him, signaled his men, and rode away without a backward glance.

  Eagle Jack put his pouch back in his pocket.

  “So it begins,” Susanna said, in a voice he’d never heard before.

  Startled, he looked at her.

  Immediately he realized that, although he’d thought he’d seen her angry before, he never had. Her eyes blazed.

  “You’re determined to take over and run this drive, aren’t you?” she said. “Now it’s out in the open. You never meant to talk things over, did you?”

  It made him mad all the way to the bone. “Don’t bother to thank me, Susanna,” he said. “All I did was pay way too much for a bunch of broomtails so we could get your cattle branded.”

  “All you did was overturn a decision I had already made—without so much as a glance at me for my opinion—so that you can get on the trail of your stolen horse. Forget thanks from me.”

  She sat frozen in her saddle, glaring at him with eyes big as saucers, looking shocked as if he’d slapped her face.

  He didn’t know a woman could be this unreasonable. He didn’t know he could get as furious as he was this minute.

  “All I did was rescue you from the clutches of a nasty old man.”

  “All you did was make me a dangerous enemy,” she retorted. “He’ll still be here when I come back to Brushy Creek without you.”

  A small shard of concern stabbed through his fury.

  He rode his horse closer.

  “You should’ve had more sense than to have any dealings with him at all. He’s a snake.”

  “I can handle him,” she said.

  “Then why’re you worried about coming back here without me?”

  “I’m not.”

  Her voice was full of bravado and it didn’t tremble but her lips did. They were full and luscious and inviting and he ought to kiss them.

  To shut her up. Only that.

  “This is going nowhere with you starting to contradict yourself,” he said. “What you need to be doing, Susanna, is building a fire and digging an oven in the ground. That bunch out there working your cattle will be hungry in just a little while.”

  He turned his back on her and galloped away, sending his horse toward the herd.

  To get started counting the cattle. Only that.

  There’d never been any danger that he might kiss her.

  Because now things were different. In Salado, he’d thought a short dalliance might be entertaining but he would never consider it now. It would only confuse an already tangled situation.

  He still couldn’t believe that the words “my wife” had actually come out of his mouth and he couldn’t believe that he’d actually meddled in her affairs to the tune of two hundred and fifty dollars, just to try to protect her when she came home in the fall. All that got him more tied up in thinking about her, and meeting Mr. Adams made it harder to try to talk her into staying home.

  Damn it all! He’d gotten in far too deep here in the last few minutes to ever let himself kiss her. And that was good.

  Because kissing her once would never be enough.

  Susanna was in such a state by the time she got into the house that, at first sight of her, Maynell threw up her hands and dropped her potato-peeling knife clattering onto the table.

  “What happened?” the woman asked. “Oh! Did one of them boys out there get gored?”

  That thought helped jolt Susanna back to herself. “No,” she said, forcing the words out past the knot of fury in her throat, “and thanks for reminding me that it could all be worse.”

  Maynell could never control her curiosity for a minute. “Then what is it that’s next-to-worse?”

  “I hired my pretend-husband and trail boss, that’s all. And now he’s made me so mad I could cheerfully stuff him in a sack and throw him in the river.”

  Maynell tilted her head in her birdlike way and looked at Susanna closely. “Well, I—” she began.

  “If you say ‘I told you so’, Maynell, I’ll swear I’ll—”

  Maynell put on her very best hurt look. “I’d never say such a thing as that.” She pushed back her chair to get up.

  “Oh, yes, you would,” Susanna said. “Don’t lie to me, May. I’ve had enough. My new ‘husband’ has been lying to me all day.”

  Maynell shook her head wisely and padded off to the work table. “Not a good sign,” she said. “A lyin’ man is trouble.”

  Susanna jerked a chair out from under the table and dropped into it. “As soon as I can breathe again, I think I’ll go out there and run him off,” she said. “I know as well as I’m sitting here that he’s going to try to ride off with my herd and leave me home. He doesn’t think a woman should go up the trail.”

  Maynell poured a dipperful of water from the wooden bucket into a bowl, wet a cloth, and came back to the table with it. “Here, wash your face and calm down,” she said. “You’re pale as a sheet except your cheeks are flaming like you’ve got the scarlet fever.”

  Maynell sat and took up her work again. Susanna obeyed, thankfully holding the cool cloth against her hot cheeks.

  “Thanks, May. This does feel good.”

  But Maynell was done with sympathy. “If you couldn’t find no good man you could trust, if you settled fer just breath and britches, then what kind of crew do you think he’ll get for you?”

  Susanna gritted her teeth. That was the hardest thing
about Maynell and Jimbo living as a hired couple in the other end of the dog-trot cabin—Maynell’s scoldings and preachings. But who else would work for her for no money, for only a place to live and food to eat?

  “Maynell—”

  “They’re liable to gang up and steal your cattle and leave you lost and alone out there on the prairie somewhere…if they don’t kill you first.”

  To her surprise, Susanna rushed to Eagle Jack’s defense.

  “He’s not that kind of liar, Maynell.”

  Maynell gave the potato in her hand a vicious swipe with the knife. “I wasn’t aware there was more than one kind,” she said.

  “Well, he’s more the kind that…I guess you’d say he changes his mind about what he said before.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like agreeing to my deal, then an hour later trying to back out on taking me up the trail with my cattle.”

  Maynell’s tight mouth turned up at the corners. “Well, he might be forgiven for that,” she said wryly, “depending on what all you did and said in that hour.”

  “Thanks a lot, May.”

  But Susanna smiled, too, in spite of herself.

  Maynell was irritating beyond belief, but she did have a way of putting things into perspective. Eagle Jack probably had expected to go to the bank, get his money, pay her back for his bail, and talk her into letting him out of the agreement they’d made.

  Well, she had fooled him, hadn’t she?

  “I picked the crew,” Susanna said, “at least part of it. We hired three men.”

  “I seen ’em ride in,” May said. “Tucker put ’em right to work. And Jimbo, too—he’s buildin’ a fire for the brandin’.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Susanna said. “We’re wanting to head out day after tomorrow at the latest.”

  Maynell got up again and brought Susanna a cup of cool water. “Now,” she said, “tell me about that big Indian.”

  Susanna stopped in mid-swallow and stared at her.

  “I’m old but I ain’t blind yet,” May said. “I seen that long black hair and that handsome profile from the porch.” She smiled and looked off out the open door as if she could still see him. “Rides like a Comanche, too,” she said, musing to herself. “Always did like a handsome man who could ride.”

  It was true. Eagle Jack was a handsome man. Horseback or not, any woman would turn her head to look at him twice. Or three times.

  “He’s a Cherokee,” Susanna said. “His name is Eagle Jack Sixkiller.”

  “Pretty name,” Maynell murmured. “Always did like a handsome man with a handsome name.” Then she fixed her steely gaze on Susanna and picked up her knife to get to work again. “Where’d you find him?”

  Susanna told her the story from the minute she’d walked into the Salado Jail to the moment Eagle Jack had ridden away and left her down at the corral. In detail. Maynell, who hardly ever went anywhere, demanded detail in her stories because stories were few and far between. Brushy Creek had few visitors.

  But in this story Maynell especially wanted detail because she—judging him completely on looks, of course—was so taken with Eagle Jack.

  But the main reason Susanna didn’t mind telling every detail was that it gave her a chance to try to figure him out.

  “You see, May, in the jail I instinctively thought that I could trust him, that he was an honorable man. But it wasn’t an hour later that he was saying he wouldn’t take me up the trail and he’s been back and forth on everything ever since.”

  Maynell gave her that narrow-eyed, suspicious look of hers.

  “What d’you mean by ‘everything’?”

  “Then he said he will take me up the trail and that we’ll talk over all the decisions except when it’s life or death—at which point, he’ll gag and tie me and throw me in the wagon—”

  Maynell chuckled heartily. Susanna refused to dignify that with an acknowledgment.

  “—yet he decides we need extra help with the branding so we can get on the trail fast, and then he scares me half to death to make me agree to it. He’s paying for it, now I’m in his debt.”

  “Hmm,” Maynell said. “Sounds like a sensible man.”

  Susanna set her glass down, hard, and frowned at her.

  “Whose side are you on here, anyhow, Maynell?”

  “Does he have brown eyes?” Maynell asked.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “I always did like a brown-eyed handsome man.”

  “You’re acting like a silly schoolgirl, Maynell.” Then Susanna smiled. “He has a grin that could melt an iceberg,” she confessed.

  “Well, thank the Lord,” Maynell said. “Up till now, I was thinking you’d plumb lost all your senses.”

  “He’s a charmer,” Susanna said. “He’s used to getting his way with women. And so he doesn’t know what to do with me.”

  Maynell gave a low chuckle.

  “Oh, I’d bet he does, honey. All you have to do is give him a chance.”

  Susanna was horrified.

  “Maynell! You’ve lost your senses.”

  “Well, I know I told you hiring a stranger to pretend to be your husband was foolishness, but now I’m thinking you’ve made a right fine choice.”

  “Good Lord, Maynell! You’re only saying that because he’s brown-eyed and handsome.”

  “Always did like a brown-eyed handsome man who’d speak right up and tell you how it’s gonna be,” Maynell said. She fixed Susanna with that look again. “He’s one in a million, girl. You oughtta nab onto him.”

  Sometimes Susanna wondered why she’d ever let Maynell and Jimbo live in the other end of her cabin. This was one of those times.

  “Listen to me, Maynell. My ‘right fine choice,’ Mr. Brown-Eyed Handsome One-in-a-Million, has just gotten me in a whole lot of trouble. He insulted Mr. Adams and insisted on buying that whole remuda and now I’m in even more debt to him. Big debt.”

  Maynell listened, wide-eyed.

  “Mr. Adams has an interest in the bank. He can probably make them foreclose on this place if I don’t come back from Abilene with enough money.”

  “Why did he insult old Adams?”

  “Adams was implying that he’d rather take his pay in another way than money.”

  “Always did like a handsome man that’d step up and take a handle on any situation,” Maynell said.

  “Maynell! Listen. Worse than putting me two hundred and fifty dollars in his debt is that he did not consult me. He took over, don’t you understand that? He overturned a decision that I had already made.”

  Maynell just looked at her and kept on peeling potatoes.

  “I can’t let him take over my herd and my life,” Susanna said, the urgency rising in her again. “What if he takes over and doesn’t consult me on any decision and I’m just the cook all the way up the trail and when we get to Abilene he takes over the sale of the cattle and everything?”

  “You jist said he ain’t the kind of liar to steal your cattle.”

  “Well, he’s not. Actually, he isn’t really a liar…in a way. He just keeps changing his mind about—”

  “About what to do with you,” Maynell said. “Well, you can’t blame him for that. It’s a big question, missy, because you are a handful, if I do say so myself.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  Susanna’s tone was sarcastic but she really didn’t take offense. Maynell, whom she’d never met until two years ago, was the closest thing to a mother that she’d ever had. Maynell loved her. She knew that.

  Maynell was the only person who had ever truly loved her because Susanna’s mother had died birthing her.

  “You’re looking at the debt he put you in,” Maynell said. “And him making the decisions and all that. But that ain’t why he insulted old Adams and it ain’t the important thing, neither.”

  Susanna stared at her.

  “He done it protecting your womanhood, Suzy,” Maynell said. “He could’ve got hisself shot. You bes
t be grateful for a man like that.”

  Chapter 5

  Somebody came galloping up to the porch before Susanna could think of an answer to Maynell’s proclamation. Thank goodness.

  Much more of this drivel from Maynell and she’d be giving her whole world over to Eagle Jack and thinking about what he really meant by what he said and did and obeying his every command like a puppy dog. It was already turning her mind to mush and filling her with a bunch of confusing feelings.

  She got up and went to the open door. It was Jimbo, bareback on Buster, the one mule that she had not yet been forced to sell. Jimbo rode in a circle in the yard, as if he didn’t have time to stop and talk. She stepped out onto the porch.

  “Susanna!” he called. “Boss wants you to come down to the herd. Big pow-wow about what the trail brand’s gonna be.”

  He rode away, hunched over the neck of the big mule like a jockey, looking about as big as a fly. The normally solemn Jimbo was surely in his sixties, but now he was as excited as a boy.

  Susanna watched him race back to the herd. Well, well. Another staunch supporter for Eagle Jack?

  Surely Jimbo wasn’t taken with him because he was a brown-eyed handsome man.

  When she came back from Abilene, she must see to it that Jimbo and Maynell got out more. They needed to go to town, see other people. She’d send them for supplies instead of going herself.

  “Maynell,” she called, as she strode back into the house, “I’ve been summoned by the boss.”

  “I heard,” Maynell said. “That’s good. See there, he ain’t makin’ all the decisions. He’s askin’ your opinion on the brand.”

  “Which is the least he could do, considering they are my cattle,” Susanna pointed out.

  She went into her bedroom to get a fresh bandana, glancing at herself in the mirror as she passed the dresser.

  It wouldn’t hurt to have a fresh shirt, too. She was covered with dust from the road and the corral, plus she needed to feel her most confident in this confrontation, which it certainly would be. When had she and Eagle Jack ever had a conversation that wasn’t a confrontation?

  The way she looked would affect how much her authority would be accepted by the men. She went to the armoire and rifled through her meager pieces of clothing.