“You’re going to miss having this rocker on your front porch,” Hetty said as she dumped it out the back of the wagon.
Hannah picked up a chair and threw it onto the patchy grass in the center of the wagon tracks they’d been following. The chest under it was too heavy to move by herself. “Help me with this chest, Hetty.”
“Maybe we should unpack it first, so it’s lighter,” Hetty suggested.
Hannah opened the chest and saw a beautiful quilt. “We can cover him with this, once we get him in the wagon.” She threw the quilt aside and found sheets. “We might need these, too. They’re wrapped around something.”
Hannah unwound the sheets and found a beautiful framed mirror.
Hetty took it from her and studied her dirty, sunburned face and windblown blond curls. “I don’t think any man would be attracted to me the way I look now.” Then she tossed the mirror onto the ground, where it splintered into a thousand tiny pieces.
Josie looked up at Hetty and said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“When you break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck.”
Hetty sneered. “Our luck couldn’t get much worse than it already is.”
“Keep working,” Hannah said. “We’re losing daylight.”
They threw out furniture, mostly, but also got rid of fifty-pound sacks of rice, beans, and flour, which Hannah knew they were going to miss when they reached Cheyenne.
She spread Mr. McMurtry’s sleeping pallet on the space they’d cleared, then put a sheet and quilt nearby. She took out a bowl to use in case he had to vomit and filled another one with water to wipe his fevered forehead. She tore one of the sheets into rags to clean him if he fouled himself while traveling in the wagon.
When Hannah was done, she left the wagon and crossed to where Mr. McMurtry lay. Josie had draped a sheet over a couple of chairs they’d discarded to make shade for him while her sisters worked. “Mr. McMurtry?” Hannah laid a tentative hand on his shoulder, expecting him to knock it away again.
He mumbled something incoherent, but he didn’t move.
“Mr. McMurtry?” she repeated. She dared far enough to put a hand on his forehead. It was burning hot.
He muttered something that made no sense.
“He’s delirious,” Hetty said matter-of-factly.
“We don’t know that!” Hannah snapped.
“He’s babbling nonsense. What would you call it?” Hetty retorted.
“Let’s get him in the wagon,” Josie said. “So we can go.”
Hetty put her hands on her hips again and said, “How do you propose we do that? He’s out of his senses.”
Josie knelt down and took one of Mr. McMurtry’s hands. “You get the other one, Hannah, and we’ll sit him upright.”
Hannah did as her youngest sister ordered. Once they had him upright, his eyes opened.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Can you stand?” Hannah asked.
Hetty removed the sheet that had kept the sun off him and balled it up in her arms.
He started to get up but fell down again. Hannah and Josie helped him to his feet. Hetty hurried to the wagon and climbed up into it, ready to help pull him in. After several tries, the three of them managed to get him onto the pallet in the wagon. Almost immediately, he started retching.
Hannah grabbed the bowl she had ready and caught most of the vomit. Hetty choked and then threw up over the back of the wagon. Josie wrinkled her nose at the smell and said, “I’ll go get us moving.”
“If you’re both going to ride, I’m riding, too,” Hetty said to her twin, as she searched for a place to sit in the back of the wagon.
“Fine,” Hannah said. “You can help me wipe Mr. McMurtry when the time comes.”
“On second thought, I’ll walk,” Hetty said, throwing a leg over the tailgate.
“Please, Hetty, stay!” Hannah met her sister’s gaze and said, “I don’t want to be alone with him.”
Hetty made a face but stepped back inside the wagon.
Up front, Josie cracked the bullwhip and yelled at the oxen, “Get your butts moving, you lazy sons of bitches!”
Hannah met Hetty’s startled gaze with one of her own, and the two sisters burst out laughing. A moment later, Hannah was sobbing. A moment after that, Hetty was hugging her hard, crying just as loudly.
“What’s going on?” Josie called from the bench seat. “Did he die?”
“Not yet,” Hetty called back.
She looked at Hannah, and they burst into hysterical laughter again, followed by more hysterical sobs.
“I’m sorry,” Hetty said between choking sobs, as she stared into her twin’s tear-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. If I could take it all back, I would. I never imagined this would happen. I’m so sorry.”
Hannah pulled herself free. She wasn’t ready to forgive Hetty. Not yet. Maybe never. They’d probably end up dead anyway, so forgiveness wouldn’t matter. She took a piece of torn sheet, dipped it in the sloshing bowl of water, and used it to wipe Mr. McMurtry’s forehead.
His eyes opened almost immediately. He looked up at her and said in a soft, tender voice, “Hannah?”
Hannah’s heart hurt. She stared down into Mr. McMurtry’s eyes, wondering if she should call him Roland, wondering if she should tell him he was going to be a father. Before she could do either of those things, his eyes closed again. And he sighed.
Only, it wasn’t a sigh, exactly. It was longer and deeper and … he didn’t take another breath.
Hannah felt her hands trembling, felt her body shivering, felt her whole world splintering. “Noooooooooo!” she wailed. “Please, God. Please, God. Please, God.”
“Hannah, stop,” Hetty said. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”
“He’s dead!” Hannah snarled. “Can’t you see? He’s dead! And it’s all your fault.”
“That’s not fair!” Hetty cried. “I didn’t give him cholera.”
“We’d still be with the wagon train if you hadn’t gotten hot britches.”
“You’re just jealous because I found a handsome man to love me, and you were stuck with him.”
“He was a better man than either of those two fools who killed each other over you, you stupid cow!”
“Who’s stupid? You’re the one who married him.”
“I did it to save you and Josie,” Hannah shot back.
“Fat lot of good you did us. Look where we are now.”
“We’re here now because of you,” Hannah retorted.
“Both of you shut up!” Josie hissed at them through the opening in the canvas wagon cover. “Someone’s coming. And they don’t look friendly.”
Hannah bent her head around the edge of the canvas to look in the direction Josie was pointing. She felt her blood run cold. It was a band of half-naked men on horseback. Clearly not settlers. Clearly not white men.
They’d traded with a lot of friendly Indians on the trail. But there were no women or children with these riders. The colorful cotton shirts worn by the friendly redskins were missing. The oncoming horde wore buckskin breechclouts and had feathers in their long black hair. These savages carried bows and arrows and rifles, and they had menacing designs painted on their faces.
War paint, Hannah thought. It’s more colorful than I imagined.
“Congratulations, Ransom.” Flint Creed grasped his younger brother’s hand and pulled him close for a hug. “Emaline chose the better man.”
“Thanks, Flint. No hard feelings?”
“None.” Flint still couldn’t believe Miss Emaline Simmons, the prettiest girl in the Wyoming Territory, had chosen his brother over him. But once Ransom had flashed her that lady-charming smile of his, Emaline had never looked at Flint the same way again. He should have known better than to give the woman his heart before he’d won her hand.
Emaline’s father, Lieutenant Colonel Simmons, the commander at Fort Laramie, gestured for Ransom to join him ne
ar the fireplace in the parlor of his two-story residence. Even though it was the twenty-sixth of July, they’d woken up to a freakishly cold day, so the fireplace was the only warm spot in the room.
The Sunday afternoon gathering was a celebration of Emaline and Ransom’s engagement. Flint felt sick at the thought of living in the same house with Emaline after she became his brother’s wife.
“Excuse me, Flint,” Ransom said. “Duty calls.”
“By all means, go.”
Ransom grinned. “I love Emaline. The fact that my future father-in-law is the one making the decision about who gets the contract to supply beef to the fort over the next year is icing on the cake.”
Flint watched as his brother joined the small group of military officers, ranchers, and tradesmen, who’d gathered at the colonel’s home with their wives after Sunday service at the chapel. Most of the women had their hands held out to the warmth of the fire as they chattered with one another.
The commander put a friendly arm around Ransom’s shoulder and the two of them engaged in conversation with Emaline. Ransom reached out a large, work-worn hand, and Emaline daintily put her small hand in his.
Flint felt his gut wrench.
What had Emaline Simmons seen in his brother that she hadn’t found in him? Was it something about his looks? He was taller by two inches, a full six foot three, and at twenty-six, a year older. Ransom was lean, top to bottom, while Flint’s own shoulders were broader, heavier with muscle. They both had blue eyes, although, to be honest, his were more of a flinty gray—what had given him his name, in fact.
Why Ransom and not him? Was it something as frivolous as the fact that Ransom’s black hair curled at his brow, while his own lay straight as a crow’s wing down his nape? He didn’t smile as often as Ransom, but he was the one who bore the weight of responsibility for his younger brother. Always had and always would.
Flint and Ransom had come to the Territory nine years ago, after the War Between the States, from their home in Texas. They’d left because there was no longer a place for them at their late father’s cotton plantation, Lion’s Dare. By the time they’d gotten home from the war, it wasn’t even called Lion’s Dare anymore.
Their mother, Creighton Stewart Creed, had remarried after their father Jarrett’s death at Gettysburg. Her new husband, an Englishman named Alexander Blackthorne, had renamed the land Bitter Creek and turned the plantation into a cattle ranch. Not just a ranch, an empire. The bastard had bought—or stolen—so much land that it took three days to ride from one side of Bitter Creek to the other.
Blackthorne had made it plain that if Flint and his brother stayed around, they would be taking orders from him. Flint and Ransom had been only eighteen and seventeen at the time, but they’d gone to war at fifteen and fourteen, and after three years of fighting and killing and living off the land, they were no longer willing to be treated like boys.
So they’d left, driving a small herd of mavericks north to a place where they could be their own bosses. When they’d arrived in the Territory, they’d spent the summer building a sturdy two-story, wood-frame house with covered porches front and back, similar to what they’d grown up in at Lion’s Dare.
A staircase split the lower floor in half, with a parlor on one side of a central hallway and a combination library and office on the other. The dining room, kitchen, and pantry took up the back of the house. They’d built two large bedrooms upstairs that could later be divided as their families grew, with fireplaces that warmed both stories at either end of the house.
They’d located the ranch house on 320 acres of land—160 acres each—they’d filed on under the Homestead Act of 1862. It was a day’s ride southwest of the fort along the Laramie River. Most of the land on which they ran their cattle belonged to the government, but they’d set their boundaries as far beyond the ranch house as they could control with a couple of Winchesters.
Flint and his brother were partners in everything, and more important, best friends. They’d suffered through and survived the war together, which had bonded them as tightly as any two men could be. Without Ransom’s support, Flint might not have made the decision to try his luck in the Wyoming Territory.
And yet, the thought of Ransom touching Emaline made him want to put his hands around his brother’s throat and—Flint cut off the thought. When he looked down, his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.
He didn’t know what to do with the dark, savage, selfish feelings roiling inside him. Lately, all he thought about were ways he could win—or steal—Emaline from Ransom before the wedding, which was scheduled for the last Sunday in August.
He knew Emaline liked him. If not for Ransom, she might very well have chosen him. Ransom had survived the war because of him, had survived the trail from Texas because of him, had survived the first miserable winter because of him, had survived an accident in the fourth year they’d been here because of him.
Flint found himself wondering whether Emaline might not be with him now if he hadn’t saved his brother’s life over and over again. There were a lot of ways to die here in the Territory. Renegade Sioux, horse and cattle thieves, and squatters with shotguns were all constant threats. Even more dangerous were the elements—the ever-present, relentlessly howling wind that tormented a man until he thought he might go mad, and the frigid isolation during endless months of sleet, snow, and below-zero temperatures.
Simply staying alive was a constant struggle. And yet, they’d not only survived, they’d thrived.
Flint watched Emaline’s and Ransom’s eyes meet. When his brother raised Emaline’s hand to his lips, Flint felt a surge of murderous rage. And swallowed it down.
There’s nothing you can do, he warned himself. You better learn to live with the situation, because it isn’t going to change.
He felt nauseated. How could he love his brother and yet feel so much anger toward him?
Flint exercised iron control over the jealousy that threatened to spill out and spoil the day. He’d never experienced it before, and he didn’t much care for it. Jealousy truly was a green-eyed monster.
The hardest thing to handle was knowing that when he’d lost Emaline, he’d lost something more valuable than all the money and power and land he might possess after a lifetime of work.
Emaline is the love of my life. She’s my soul mate. If I can’t have her, I will wither like an unwatered plant and die.
Flint snorted in disgust. Soul mate? No man died because he was forced to live without the love of a woman. Otherwise, he and Ransom would have been under the ground a long time ago. But he ached with longing, and he felt a powerful sense of loss.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, he thought, if Emaline and Ransom were planning to live in a home of their own. That wasn’t the case. Every morning he was going to have to sit down across the breakfast table from Emaline and watch his brother kiss her and laugh with her, watch them touch, and see the love for Ransom grow in her dark brown eyes.
It was going to be pure torture. Maybe he’d round up some cattle and head south before winter came.
The instant he had that thought, Flint knew he couldn’t leave Ransom alone through the winter. It was dangerous enough with two of them working the ranch. One man alone would find himself spread too thin to supervise everything that needed to be done, even with the help of a couple of cowhands.
Even worse, they were facing a threat to their survival. Plain and simple, they were losing cattle. Someone was rustling them. Flint had a pretty good idea who it was, but he wasn’t going to make any accusations until he could prove it. He couldn’t leave Ransom to face that danger alone. He had to stay.
All his life, Flint had kept his brother safe. He couldn’t stop now.
He pressed his lips together in determination. He had to get over the feeling that life was no longer worth living if he couldn’t marry a woman who was as good as lost to him.
Emaline had chosen Ransom. He was going to have to live with that choice
.
“I can’t believe the fair Emaline is choosing to marry your brother.”
Flint was startled to hear his own thoughts spoken aloud. And disturbed to realize that the speaker was Ashley Patton, a man who’d become the second-richest, second-most-powerful man in the Territory over the past year, using both fair means and foul. Flint knew for a fact that Patton had employed hired guns to move squatters out and paid his cowhands to file on 160 acres each under the recent Timber Culture Act of 1873, which he’d promptly purchased from them at rock-bottom prices.
It was some comfort to know that Patton hadn’t been able to win Emaline’s favor, either, although Ashley had made a serious effort to attach her.
He supposed Patton would be attractive to a woman. He was always nattily dressed in a tailored suit, his blond hair parted in the middle and slicked down. He had a neatly trimmed mustache several shades darker than his hair and flashy, very white teeth. He was short and stocky, but not fat. He had mud-brown eyes that reminded Flint of most of the cows he’d seen.
Patton had attended some fancy college back East and had inherited lots of money, but he seemed determined to make even more. Flint couldn’t help wondering whether it was Emaline or the yearly contract to provide beef for the army that Patton was more interested in procuring.
“Miss Simmons would have done far better to marry me,” Patton said. “She would have made a good senator’s wife.”
“Wyoming isn’t even a state yet,” Flint pointed out.
“It will be. And I’ll be one of its first senators. What will your brother be? Some two-bit cowhand living in a two-bedroom shack.”
Flint found Patton’s description of the home he and Ransom had built offensive. The furnishings might be crudely made, and after nine years of Wyoming winters, the house might need another coat of whitewash and a few repairs. But he’d be willing to bet it would still be standing in a hundred and fifty years.
He let the attack on his home go to address the insult to his brother. Which was how Flint found himself in the awkward position of defending Emaline’s choice.
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