He was touched by the earnestness of her expression. “Your uncle,” he prompted, somewhat hoarsely, when she fell silent in the middle of the sentence.
“He died a month ago. But he left me this land and those sheep out there.” She shoved the document toward him and he scanned it, and was more convinced than ever that it was a forgery. Eustace Cummings had been illiterate, but the paper bore a flowing signature. “They’re all I have in the world.” This last was no bid for pity, but instead a clear warning against such sentiments, should he be harboring any.
Tristan wondered if there was a blade of grass left on the acre surrounding his house; like as not, he wouldn’t be able to walk to the barn without sinking to his ankles in sheep shit. He was strangely unconcerned, given how much sweat, money, hope and calculation he’d put into the place.
“You’ve been cheated,” he said, very quietly. He wished he had some tea to offer her; the stuff seemed to perk a woman up. His mother had always taken orange pekoe when she felt melancholy, and Aislinn generally brewed the like for Dorrie, if she got to pining for her lost love, Leander.
She sat even more stiffly than before, looking miserable. Her white, even teeth were sunk into her lower lip. Presently, she said, “You will be called upon to prove that assertion, sir.”
“Stop calling me ‘sir,’” he ordered. “This is not a cotillion or a box social, and we’re casual out here in the countryside. Where are you from, anyway?”
She sighed. “Minnesota.”
“You came all the way from Minnesota driving that flock, with just a dog to help you?”
That was when she smiled, and if Tristan had been standing, he’d have rocked back onto his heels. He damn near turned his chair over as it was, such was the impact of a simple change of expression. “I did not acquire the sheep until I reached Butte,” she replied, and the smile was gone as quickly as it had arrived. The effect of its absence was quite as dramatic as that of its appearance, though in the opposite way. “You see, my uncle was my only remaining relative, and I was his ward, after a fashion. He contracted consumption, and summoned me to his side, but by the time I arrived, he was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Tristan said, and he wasn’t just talking. He had no blood family but Shay, and even though he’d really only known his brother for a year, he didn’t like to think what it would mean to lose him. He didn’t realize until she looked down at the tabletop that he’d laid his hand over hers.
She withdrew none too hastily. “Your proof?”
Tristan was momentarily baffled. “I beg your pardon?”
Emily tapped the document with the tip of a grubby index finger. “You claim to own my land. I should like to see on what authority you base your declaration, sir—er—Mr. Saint-Laurent.”
“Tristan,” he said, getting up. “You might as well call me by my Christian name, because I fully intend to address you as Emily.”
Once again, she colored, but she let the remark pass.
He was grinning a little as he crossed the long room to the plain wood table he used as a desk. It was situated near the fireplace, a handy thing on cold nights. He took a deed from the single drawer—there was another just like it in the bank vault in town—and came unhurriedly back to where Miss Starbuck waited. Outside, the sheep continued to raise a mournful dirge.
She read the deed and if it hadn’t been for the dirt covering her face, she’d have had no color at all. She swallowed hard. “Do you suppose Mr. Cummings deceived my uncle?” she asked, when an interval had passed, chopped off second by second, one tick of the mantel clock at a time.
Tristan knew only that his title to the land was legal. Looking at Emily Starbuck, sitting there in her oversized clothes, needing a bath and one of Aislinn’s hearty meals even more than he did, he almost regretted his advantage. “It’s possible,” he said. “Cummings wouldn’t be the first to cover a debt with a worthless note.”
Emily sagged a little, inside all those clothes, and Tristan braced himself to catch her, fearing she was about to swoon. Instead, she rallied, her spine straight as the handle of a pitchfork. “We shall have to carry this matter before the law,” she said decisively.
Tristan pointed out the date on her marker, which fell a full six months after his own cash purchase of the ranch, but he could see that even an obvious prior claim did not convince her. “I’ve got a few acres up in the hills where you can put those sheep,” he heard himself say. “Just until everything’s been decided, I mean.”
She looked at him steadily for a few moments, but he knew nonetheless that she was doing everything she could to keep from breaking down to weep. He put away an urge to take her into his arms and assure her that things would work out, he’d see to it. She stood.
“That’s kindly of you,” she said. “If you’d just point the way—”
He was on his feet. “I’ll lead you there myself.” He intended to talk her into putting the sheep in the dog’s care, just long enough to come to town with him and tuck into some fried chicken at Shay and Aislinn’s place.
“I couldn’t abandon them,” she said, when he had made the suggestion, indicating the ocean of moving, baaing wool with a nod of her head. He was mounted on the gelding, and she was beside him, riding the mare she called Walter. “One cannot merely leave them to wander and round them up whenever you want. Sheep are not like cattle, Mr. Saint-Laurent.”
“I do know that, ma’am,” Tristan agreed good-temperedly. “And it’s Tristan.” He adjusted his hat and sighed, looking up at the twilight sky as he spurred the gelding into an ambling trot. The smell of live mutton filled his nostrils like an itch. “There’s an old man in a line shack up ahead; I’ll get him to keep an eye on the flock for you. You can’t spend the night up there alone anyway.”
Emily did not turn to look at him, and her face was hidden, once again, in the shadow of her hat brim. “I have not been sleeping in grand hotels since I left Butte,” she said reasonably. “Spud and Walter and I, we like making our beds under the stars.” She sighed. “I did expect a house to take shelter in when we arrived, though.”
Tristan felt like the worst kind of brute, though he was fairly certain that hadn’t been Emily’s intention. “You can stay at my place. I’ll bunk in the barn.”
She spared him a glance. “I’ll sleep near my sheep,” she said. “Like I told you, they’re all I have.”
Tristan’s attraction to this woman was equal only to the exasperation she caused him. “You can’t do that. Between the bears and the mountain cats, your common drifter and some of those outlaws holed up on the Powder Creek spread, you wouldn’t be safe.”
“I’m not certain I’d be any better off in your ranch house. If indeed it is yours.” She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I am weary of rough accommodations, though, I must confess,” she said.
They didn’t speak again until they’d reached the line shack, where Tristan permitted an old hermit named John S. Polymarr to reside, in return for the occasional bit of information concerning the goings and comings of the riders up at Powder Creek.
Polymarr stood in his doorway, wearing an undershirt and a pair of baggy trousers held up by suspenders, watching the sheep move up the draw in a noisy V, driven relentlessly by the dog.
“You better get them critters out of here before Kyle hears tell of ’em,” he said.
Tristan dismounted and removed his hat, more out of habit than real deference. His adoptive mother had been a stickler for manners. “Kyle is in the state penitentiary,” he replied. “He won’t be offering an opinion anytime soon, one way or the other.”
Polymarr spat, let his gaze move to Emily, still mounted on her horse. “I don’t hold with no sheep, myself,” he said.
“I don’t either,” Tristan answered. “All the same, I meant to offer you five dollars to look after them for a day or two. The lady there has business in town.”
The old man squinted in the gathering darkness. “That’s a lady?”
Tristan felt Emily stiffen, despite the distance between them, and was glad she couldn’t see that one corner of his mouth had developed a slight and intermittent twitch. He said nothing, but simply waited, thinking that she was an incredible woman, traveling all that way with only a dog and a mare and a flock of sheep for company.
“Five dollars?” Polymarr asked, and spat again.
“Two now, three more in a couple of days,” Tristan said. It was a ridiculous amount of money to pay, just to get Miss Emily Starbuck to pass an evening in town with him and spend the night under his roof, but he would have given a lot more to achieve his purpose.
Polymarr rubbed his beard, only pretending to ponder the offer. The acquisitive light in his small, rheumy eyes virtually guaranteed his compliance. “Well, all right,” he said, in his own good time. “But you just remember, St. Lawrence. I don’t hold with no sheep.”
Tristan didn’t bother to correct the old man’s mangling of his name, even though he greatly valued it. “Whatever your opinions,” he said, placing a pair of silver dollars in the codger’s hoary palm, “the count had better tally when I come back to collect those woolly wretches, or I’ll take the difference out of your hide.”
“Let me get my gear,” Polymarr said, and went back into the shack. When he came out a few minutes later, he had a haversack over one stooped shoulder and a blanket roll under his arm. Tristan took note of the ancient pistol in the old man’s belt. “What about that damn dog?” the old coot complained. “He bite or anything like that?”
“He’ll tear the throat out of anything or anybody that tries to carry off one of my sheep,” Emily said, without turning a hair. Tristan felt a wrench of tenderness, looking at her, thinking once again of all the miles she’d traveled on her own. It was God’s own wonder she wasn’t lying beside the trail someplace, dead, the world being that sort of place.
They proceeded up into the high meadow, Polymarr plodding along behind, cursing in the midst of all those caterwauling sheep, and the moon was up by the time Emily had given him instructions and commanded the dog to stay. The animal yawped and ran a few paces after her as they rode away, she and Tristan, but in the end his sense of duty kept him with the flock.
“Tell me where we are suppering,” Emily said, when the sheep and Polymarr and the dog were well behind them. “I’ve forgotten.”
“There’s no fault in your memory,” Tristan replied. “I don’t believe I’ve said where we’re headed. We’re joining my brother and his wife in town.” He hoped Aislinn had held the meal, for he did relish her fried chicken, but if she hadn’t, he would take Emily to the hotel dining room. What was it, he wondered, that made him want to feed her, protect her, scrub her down and buy her every length of lace and ruffle between there and San Francisco? There were other things he wanted to do, too, but the time to think of them had not yet come.
He cleared his throat. “You didn’t truly come clear from Montana all alone?”
“I did,” she answered, and sounded pleased with herself, too.
“Why?” He bit the word off, like a piece of hard jerky, his head full of ugly images. He’d seen the handiwork of renegade Indians and outlaws before, along the trails and on isolated homesteads, and although he admired her grit, it galled him that any woman would take such a risk.
“Why?” she echoed, her tone somewhere between incredulity and mockery. “Because it was the only way to get from there to here, that’s why.”
“I’ve made the trip myself. It isn’t an easy one.”
She looked at him; he felt her gaze even though he couldn’t see her eyes for the hat brim. “It’s been my experience,” she said, “that not much is easy in this life. Some things, though—well, some things are worth fighting for.”
He agreed, and it was clear to him that there was a battle ahead, sure enough. He smiled to himself. There was nothing like a good skirmish.
Chapter 2
JUST LOOKING UPON THAT STURDY HOUSE in town, with its windows spilling light into a yard where flowers surely grew, Emily thought her heart would burst with wanting such a place for her own. She had kept her spirits up all the way from Butte, more from necessity than courage, though she had her share of that to be certain, but now, all of the sudden, weariness descended upon her, wings spread and talons bared. She had been wearing the same clothes since leaving Montana, and hadn’t managed more than a few washings in streams and rivers along the way. She’d probably forgotten the manners she’d taken such care to learn over the years, having lived roughly for so long, and she was bound to disgrace herself somehow.
“I can’t.” She didn’t glance toward Tristan, but she was aware of him there beside her, all the same, sitting that gelding as though he’d been born a part of it. Her face felt hot and her chin wobbled.
“Sure you can,” Tristan countered easily, just as if he knew beyond all doubt that she could. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him swing down from the saddle and tether his mount loosely to the picket fence.
Before she could rustle up a retort, the screen door creaked open and two middle-sized boys erupted through the opening, whooping like red Indians.
“Thomas and Mark,” Tristan explained. He reached up and took Emily by the waist before she could deliberate further, lifting her down, setting her lightly on her feet. “In point of fact, they’re in-laws, but I think of them as nephews, most of the time.”
“And the rest of the time?” Emily asked, smoothing her trousers as though wishing and touching could make them into skirts of fine velvet, or at least clean calico. She took off the slouch hat and pegged it onto Walter’s saddlehorn, then smoothed her hair with unsteady hands.
The boys were hurtling toward them over the dark grass. “The rest of the time,” Tristan answered, “I pretty much accept that they’re savages.”
The screen door opened again, and a woman appeared. Her hair gleamed dark as onyx in the lamplight from inside, and her dress, though simple, draped her figure gracefully, for all that she was plainly with child. Once more, Emily felt the ignoble sting of envy; she turned and would have scrabbled back into the saddle and made a dash for other parts if Tristan hadn’t stopped her by taking a soothing grasp on her arm.
Thomas and Mark had gained the fence and, for a beat, they were quiet, peering at Emily in the faulty glimmer of a waning moon. “Who’s that?” one of them inquired.
“Miss Emily Starbuck,” Tristan said, as formally as if he’d been presenting her at some grand ball, “meet Thomas Lethaby, there on the left. That’s his brother, Mark, on the right.”
“You’re a girl?” the one called Mark wanted to know. He seemed skeptical.
“Howdy,” Thomas said, simultaneously elbowing his sibling in the ribs.
“Boys! Come inside, this minute,” the dark-haired woman commanded, with loving authority. She stood partway down the walk, and the children obeyed her reluctantly, casting backward glances as they went, while Tristan opened the gate and stood aside to let Emily precede him. She had to force herself through for, drawn though she was, a part of her still wanted to bolt.
“Are we too late for supper?” Tristan asked, addressing the woman. There was a smile in his voice, and a degree of caring too pure and quiet to be without meaning. He’d swept off his hat, as well, holding it loosely in one hand.
The lady of the house laughed. “You know you could turn up in the middle of the night, looking for a meal, and never go away hungry.” She put out a hand to Emily. “Good evening,” she said. “I’m Aislinn McQuillan.”
Emily responded with a handshake and gave her name shyly.
“Won’t you come in?” Aislinn asked. By that time, she’d curved an arm around Emily’s waist and was gently propelling her toward the house. A man stood on the porch now, leaning with his hands braced against the whitewashed railing, the warm light glowing golden in his fair hair. Although Emily could make out only the outline of his frame and a general sense of his manner, she recognized right awa
y that he was a twin to Tristan.
Emily was secretly mortified by the state of her person, particularly her clothing, as she passed along the walk, up the steps, into the house. She regretted letting Tristan persuade her to accompany him here and, at one and the same time, yearned to be taken into the laughter, into the light, if only for a single evening. Like a ragged and piteous wayfarer, warming her hands at a friendly fire. “I’ve been traveling for many weeks,” she said, in an effort to explain the trousers, the serape, the collarless shirt made for a man.
“With sheep,” Tristan added, in the entry way.
The other man gave a low whistle of exclamation.
“This,” Aislinn said, smiling as she turned to indicate Tristan’s precise replica, “is my husband, Shamus McQuillan. We call him Shay.”
“Sheep,” Shay marveled, as though he’d not heard of such an animal before.
A table was set in the dining room, with candles and china and silver shining fit to dazzle the eye. There was nary a sign of Thomas and Mark; Emily suspected they were looking on from some hidden vantage point, though. She couldn’t help a small smile, nervous as she was.
“This way,” Tristan said, before Emily had to ask for a place to freshen up. He took a light hold on her arm and led her on through the dining room into the spacious kitchen behind. After fetching a basin and a ladle from the mud room, he lifted a lid on the side of the huge black cookstove, trimmed in gleaming chrome, and soon there was hot water. Soap.
Emily yearned toward those plain refinements just as she had toward the house itself; she removed the serape, at a gesture from Tristan, and washed her face and hands as sedately as she could. Her every instinct bade her plunge into that basin, splashing exuberantly and shouting for joy, so welcome was the prospect of being even moderately clean again.
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