Flint remembered he’d told Ransom he would take Emaline with or without sex, but he wondered now if he’d been blowing smoke. He hadn’t made it through one night in bed with a woman he didn’t love without having sex. Could he possibly have spent a lifetime wanting a woman he did love without having her?
Which made him wonder what Ransom was going to do if Emaline didn’t change her mind. More significantly, what sort of consequences would there be to their beef contract with the army if one of the Creed brothers didn’t marry Emaline Simmons?
Flint took another look at his younger brother and saw the shadows under his eyes. Ransom hadn’t spent an easy night. He met his brother’s gaze and said, “Are you two going to be all right if we leave you here alone?” He turned to Emaline and said, “I guess what I’m really asking is if you’ll be all right all alone at the house while Ransom is out riding fence.”
Emaline glanced toward Ransom before she answered. “I’ll be fine. After all, I’m sure there will be times in the future when it will be necessary for me to be alone at the house. I might as well get used to it now.”
“You’re not afraid?” Hannah asked.
Emaline smiled. “Believe it or not, I’m a good shot. So long as I have a rifle handy, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ve never even held a gun,” Hannah said.
“I’ll teach you what you need to know,” Flint said. “Right now we’d better pack some supplies and get moving. Day’s wasting.”
Ransom took Flint aside and asked, “How far do you want me to go looking for those missing cattle?”
“Stay off Patton’s land,” Flint ordered.
“What if I see signs that that’s where they’ve headed—or been driven?” Ransom asked.
“At least wait until I get back. I shouldn’t be gone more than a few days, a week at most.”
A pained expression crossed Ransom’s face.
“What’s wrong?” Flint asked.
“Nothing you can help with.”
“Try me.”
“I don’t think she’s going to change her mind.”
The words seemed to be wrenched from his brother. Flint had no idea how to comfort him. Especially since he’d acknowledged to himself how much Ransom was being asked to give up.
“I have faith in you, Ransom. You’ve got a few days without another soul around. Spend as much time as you can with her. Be patient. Everything worthwhile is worth waiting for.”
“Easy for you to say,” Ransom said. “You and Hannah seem to be getting along fine.”
“Don’t believe everything you see,” Flint blurted.
Ransom arched a questioning brow.
Flint wasn’t about to tell his little brother how confused he felt, but he had to tell him something. So he said, “Hannah and I are two strangers forced together by circumstance. She still hasn’t agreed to marry me. In the end, you and I may both find ourselves alone.”
Ransom’s lips quirked at the corner. “Well, big brother, at least we’ll still have each other.”
“Take care of yourself while I’m gone,” Flint said. “No heroics over a bunch of stupid cows.”
Ransom scowled. “I don’t need you to take care of me anymore, Flint. I’ll do what I think needs to be done.”
Flint realized he’d raised his younger brother’s hackles. He was used to giving orders and having Ransom follow them without complaint. This defiance was new. And disturbing. Especially since he wasn’t going to be around to come to the rescue if anything went wrong.
“Be smart,” Flint said. “Don’t take any foolish chances.”
“So now I’m a fool?” Ransom shot back.
Flint snorted in disgust. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, unfortunately I do,” Ransom said. “You don’t think I can do anything right on my own.”
Flint put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Look, Ransom, I think—”
Ransom shoved away his attempt at comfort and said, “You’d better get moving. Day’s wasting.”
Flint had a horrible feeling of foreboding. He didn’t want to leave Ransom alone while he went marching off across the prairie on some fruitless journey to find dead bodies that were probably already buried. The mood Ransom was in, he was likely to provoke Ashley Patton for the fun of it. The problem was, Ashley’s hired gunslinger, Sam Tucker, was ready to put a bullet in anyone who looked at him crosswise.
Flint opened his mouth to give his brother another warning to be careful and shut it again. One more word of caution might be the spur that made Ransom do something rash.
He swallowed the warning he’d been about to give and simply said, “I’ll see you when I get back.”
“You ride better than I figured you would,” Flint said grudgingly. “You must have spent a lot of time on horseback.”
Hannah felt a rush of emotion as she remembered all the times she and Hetty had gone riding in Chicago’s Lincoln Park—renamed after the assassinated president—along the shores of Lake Michigan. “My father loved fast horses,” she said. “He owned several Thoroughbreds, and Hetty and I used to sneak away to the stables and ride them.”
Flint frowned. “Stallions?”
Hannah nodded. “And yes, they always wanted to race. And yes, we had to keep them from fighting each other. But oh, how I loved to fly across the grass in the early morning with the wind off the lake in my hair!”
“Your father allowed his daughters to do something that dangerous?”
Hannah laughed, realized what she’d done, and sobered again. “Papa didn’t know. But I’m not sure he would have stopped us even if he’d had an inkling what we were up to. He encouraged us to do all sorts of things that gave Mama a fright.”
“Like what?” Flint asked.
“We’d drive ourselves around Chicago in a fringe-topped buggy pulled by a pair of matched chestnuts, dressed identically, of course.”
“Without a chaperon?”
“We had each other for chaperons,” Hannah said. “Hetty and I were pattern cards of propriety, at least in public. At home we’d race each other up the stairs and slide down the bannister. It used to drive the maids and the butler and Mama crazy.”
“Maids? A butler? Sounds like your father was rich.”
Hannah shrugged. “He owned a bank. It burned down in the Great Chicago Fire, and we lost everything. Our only living relative, Uncle Stephen, put the six of us in the Chicago Institute for Orphaned Children.”
“Sounds like a real nice fellow,” Flint said sarcastically.
“Not a nice man at all,” Hannah said. “Our aunt had passed away, and Uncle Stephen swore he couldn’t raise six kids by himself. Besides, he claimed that he couldn’t afford to take care of us. He was unemployed, you see, because Papa’s bank, where he’d worked, had burned down.”
Her voice turned bitter as she added, “Two years after the fire, he opened a bank of his own.”
“If he was so poor, where did he get the money to build a bank?” Flint asked.
“It does raise some questions, doesn’t it?” Hannah said with a curl of her lip. “Unfortunately, having money made no difference to Uncle Stephen. He didn’t want us. We’ve been forced to fend for ourselves.”
“By becoming brides,” Flint said.
Hannah lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “It’s an honorable solution to the problem of survival.”
“You were lucky you didn’t die on the trail.”
“Speaking of which, I can’t believe how good you are at backtracking my trail. Or how many times I covered the same ground,” she said with chagrin.
“It’s easy to walk in circles in the dark.”
“Really? It’s awful to think that if I’d stopped when the sun set and waited for morning I might have found help sooner.”
“Hannah,” Flint began, “I don’t think anything you did or didn’t do would have made a difference. Not the way you’ve described Hetty’s injuries. She needed a surgeon.”
; Hannah stared into the distance and saw a dust cloud that seemed to be moving closer. “Flint, what is that?”
“Riders.” As he spoke, he freed his Winchester from the boot on his saddle and cradled it in his arms. Hannah’s heart shot to her throat. “Shouldn’t we run?”
“Let’s see who it is first.”
“I’d rather run,” Hannah muttered under her breath. She would have been more frightened, except Flint seemed so calm.
“I don’t think it’s renegade Indians this far southeast of Fort Laramie,” he said. “We’ll be able to see who it is in plenty of time to escape, if that becomes necessary.”
He sounded sure of himself, and he was holding his rifle ready to fire, so Hannah willed her heartbeat to slow down. She wouldn’t make a very good frontier wife if she jumped like a rabbit at every shadow.
The hardest thing she’d ever done was to hold her horse steady while they waited for the riders to reveal themselves. Even so, her mount sensed her nervousness and sidestepped often enough that Flint finally said, “Take it easy, Hannah.”
“Who could it be, if it’s not Indians?” she asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
She pointed and said, “Are they wearing Stetsons?”
“Looks like it,” Flint agreed.
The cowboy hats meant the riders were unlikely to be Indians. Hannah let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She followed Flint as he urged his horse forward to meet the oncoming riders.
“It’s a friend of mine and his sons,” he said when they were close enough to see facial features.
“Should we be meeting them like this? I mean, the way I’m dressed? And without a chaperon?”
“Holloway will take his cue from our behavior,” Flint said. “If what you’re wearing is okay with me, it’ll be okay with him. Don’t worry that he’ll say anything. Out here, no man’s going to insult a woman, not unless he wants every man within a hundred miles to come after him with a rope.”
Nevertheless, Hannah tucked in her shirt and shoved several flyaway curls behind her ears. She was wearing a flat-brimmed hat Flint had loaned her, and she tugged it down low. Then she sat up straight and waited to meet Flint’s friends.
“Howdy, Flint,” a man with a windburned, deeply lined face and gray sideburns said as he pulled his mount to a halt in front of them. The hazel-eyed man was flanked by two young boys who looked similar in age to Hannah’s brother Nick, which would make them nine or ten. One had black hair and blue eyes, the other had blue eyes, sandy hair, and freckles.
“Howdy, John,” Flint said, putting a finger to the brim of his hat in greeting. “Josh. Jeremy.”
“Hello, Mr. Creed,” the boy with the dark hair replied.
A moment later the sandy-haired boy said, “Who’s that with you, Mr. Creed?”
“Beat me to it, son,” the older man said, turning his gaze on Hannah.
Hannah was staring at Flint Creed with wide eyes. It seemed unreal that she’d ended up in the home of a man with the exact same last name as the rancher whose advertisement for a mail-order bride her sister Miranda had answered. Could Jacob Creed from Texas and Flint Creed of the Wyoming Territory possibly be related? Before she could ask, Hannah was being introduced to the older man.
“Hannah, this is John Holloway and his two sons, Josh and Jeremy. John, this is Mrs. Hannah McMurtry. She’s a widow who lost her husband on the journey west.”
“Flint saved my life,” Hannah interjected.
“Ma’am,” Holloway said, tipping his hat to her. He turned to Flint and asked, “Where are you two headed?”
“Hannah’s wagon was attacked by renegades on the trail. I rescued her, and she’s been recovering at my ranch. She had to leave a wounded twin sister behind. We’re backtracking to see if we can find the wagon and any sign of Hannah’s sister Hetty.”
Holloway rubbed at his chin thoughtfully and said, “We were at the fort yesterday, and no one said anything about finding a girl on the trail. Sorry, ma’am.”
“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t found,” Hannah said, fighting off a feeling of panic. “Maybe whoever found her was passing through and kept moving. I had another sister, Josie, who was taken by the Indians who attacked our wagon. Have you heard anything about a white woman being captured by the Sioux?”
“Sorry to hear about your troubles, ma’am,” Holloway said. He turned to the two boys and said, “You boys hear anything about a white captive at the Red Cloud Agency Camp over the past few days?”
“Soaring Eagle and Wheat Woman didn’t mention anything,” Josh said.
Jeremy added, “Some of the braves might have left the camp to go hunting, because they were so short of food and—”
“And attacked my wagon?” Hannah said. “I thought the Indians in the agency camps were supposed to be peaceful.”
As Hannah watched, Holloway exchanged a pained look with Flint. Then the older man said, “The government confines the Sioux on a bare strip of land, then appoints a corrupt agent who steals the food and supplies they’re supposed to receive. It’s no wonder they run off and steal and kill.”
Hannah was curious enough to ask, “Why would your sons be going to an Indian camp?”
Holloway glanced at Flint, who said, “She won’t say anything.”
Holloway turned to Hannah and said, “My sons are one-quarter Brulé Sioux. Soaring Eagle and Wheat Woman are their grandparents.”
“Oh.” Hannah was shocked. She looked again at the two boys, hunting for features that would proclaim them Indians. Their blue eyes—and Jeremy’s freckles—seemed to deny the fact.
“It would cause a lot of problems for John if the truth about his kids and their mother, who’s half Sioux, became known.”
“I see.” She turned to Holloway and said, “Your secret is safe with me.”
“By the way,” Holloway said, “Ashley Patton has applied for membership in the Laramie County Stock Association.”
“I don’t see how we can keep him out,” Flint said. “He’s bought up a bunch of smaller spreads. I think by now he owns more cattle and more land than anybody but you.”
“I’ve discovered a bunch of squatters on my land who look suspiciously unlike sodbusters,” Holloway said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Patton is at the bottom of it.”
“I’m missing a hundred head of cattle,” Flint said. Holloway hissed in a breath. “That’s a chunk of beef.”
“I’m not sure yet what happened to them. Maybe they just drifted.”
“With all the barbed wire you’ve put up?” Holloway said. “That seems unlikely.”
“Yeah,” Flint agreed. “Ransom is going to take a look and see what he can find out.”
“Tell him to be careful,” Holloway warned. “Patton is an unscrupulous son of a bitch.” He turned to Hannah and said, “ ’Scuse my language, ma’am.”
“But he is a son of a bitch,” Flint said.
Hannah covered her mouth to stop a laugh. “He sounds like a horrible man.”
“A man worth watching, for sure,” Holloway said.
“What are you three doing this far south?” Flint asked.
“We’re headed to Cheyenne,” Holloway said. “I need an anniversary gift for Kinyan. That’s my wife,” Holloway explained.
“How many years is it?” Flint asked.
“Ten.”
“You’re a lucky man, John.”
“Don’t I know it,” Holloway said with a smile. “Will you be at the Association meeting next week?”
“Depends on what Hannah and I find when we reach her abandoned wagon. If there’s enough of a trail, we may try to follow the Indians who took her sister captive.”
That was news to Hannah, but welcome news.
“Watch yourselves,” Holloway said. “There are plenty of young bucks riding around out there looking for trouble.”
“They won’t find me easy prey,” Flint assured him. “See you later, John. Take it easy, Josh
. Jeremy.”
“So long, Mr. Creed,” the boys said almost in unison.
“Nice meeting you, Mrs. McMurtry,” the freckle-faced boy said, touching the brim of his hat.
“Nice meeting both of you, too,” Hannah said.
When the Holloways had ridden beyond the point where they could hear her, Hannah asked, “Did you mean what you said?”
“What?”
“About following the Indians who took Josie? Did you mean it?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” Flint said. “But don’t count on finding her, Hannah. The Sioux wouldn’t have left much of a trail, and whatever little sign there was has most likely been blotted out by wind and weather. Besides, it’s entirely possible those renegades came from one of the tribes in the Dakotas, where we can’t follow without risking both our lives.”
Hannah heard what she wanted to hear. After they found the wagon, and did whatever had to be done there, they would try to track down Josie. There was a chance she could still make good on her promise to rescue her sister.
She glanced sideways at Flint and wondered again whether her sister Miranda could possibly be married to some relative of his. “Is Creed a common name in Texas?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”
“The man my sister traveled to San Antonio to marry was named Jacob Creed. Do you know him? Could he possibly be related to you?”
Flint stared at her in surprise. “I have a brother named Jacob.”
Hannah stared at him. “Really? Does he live near San Antonio?”
“Jake has a ranch a couple of hours away. But he’s married and has a two-year-old daughter, Anna Mae. Last I heard, he had another child on the way.”
“Do you suppose something happened to Jake’s wife?” Hannah asked.
Flint frowned. “I think he would have written us about it. But maybe not.”
Hannah was worried because the advertisement in the Chicago Daily Herald for a mail-order bride hadn’t said a word about the Texas rancher having been married before or having a two-year-old daughter. Maybe they weren’t one and the same person. But if they were, Jacob Creed was in for a surprise of his own, because Miranda hadn’t said anything about the fact she was bringing along two little boys.
Wyoming Bride Page 13