“It’s a well-known fact that Jubal Early chastised his officers after the Battle of Cedar Creek for running,” Flint said. “When faced with overwhelming odds after the soldiers on both my flanks had fled in panic, I made an orderly retreat with my men.”
“You ran,” Patton said flatly. “Like the lying yellow belly you are.”
Flint found it interesting that he was now a lying coward. But he saw the allegation was finding surprisingly fertile ground.
“I was there,” Ransom said. “Fighting alongside my brother. It happened just like Flint said.”
“I’m not a coward. Or a liar. Or a thief,” Flint began, his gaze moving from one man to another in the parlor. “Consider how difficult it would have been for me to ensure that fifteen steers with this variety of altered brands ended up among the one hundred cattle delivered to the fort last month,” he argued in his defense. “Besides, if I were the one stealing cows, why wouldn’t they have my brand on them?”
“I see your point,” John Holloway interjected. He turned to the other men and said, “Flint would have had to spend a lot of time stealing and branding other men’s cattle in order to get this many to show up in the group that Patton cut out to send to the fort. What motive would he have to do that?”
“I told you, he wants all the land along the Laramie River for himself,” Patton said.
“You’re the one burning out—and then buying out—small ranchers,” Flint said coldly. “Not me.”
Flint saw the agreement with his point in the nodding heads of the Association members.
Patton scowled and searched the eyes of the gathered men. “You’re taking the word of a coward over mine?”
“I haven’t known you for nine years,” John Holloway said. “I’d ride the river with Flint any day.”
Flint felt a weight shift off his shoulders. At least one of his neighbors wasn’t going to ostracize him for what had happened during the war.
“Me, too,” Warren MacDougall said.
“And me,” Jim Grayhawk added.
“I don’t have to stand for this,” Patton retorted. “I could buy and sell every one of you here!” Instead of winning him friends, that statement seemed to have the opposite effect. Patton put his hands on his hips and said, “Why would I need to steal your cattle?”
“Because you can,” someone muttered.
“Who said that?” Patton demanded.
“Whoever said it hit the mark,” Hoot said. “Do I have a motion to rescind Ashley Patton’s membership in the Laramie County Stock Association?”
“I so move,” Warren MacDougall said.
“Second?” Hoot asked.
“I second,” John Holloway said.
“All in favor?” Hoot said.
Not every hand went up. Ritter Gordon and Willis Smithson both abstained.
“All opposed?” Hoot said.
Ashley Patton didn’t bother raising his hand, but it was clear from his red face and blazing eyes that he was definitely opposed. “You’ll all pay for this,” he said through tight jaws.
“I suggest you stop rustling our cattle,” Hoot said. “We string up cattle rustlers out here in the Territory. You might want to tell your hired dog to put his tail between his legs and head for wherever he came from, because he’s not welcome here any longer. Neither are you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Patton said. “Neither is Tucker.” He headed for the door, grabbing his Stetson from a table full of them, and his wool coat from a rack near the door, before stalking out. He never looked back.
Hoot glanced around the room and said, “Well, boys, you heard the man. We can count on trouble. Keep a sharp lookout, and send for help if you need it.”
“You take special care, Flint,” Hoot said as he shook Flint’s hand. The other men crowded around to wish him well and offer their support.
Flint wanted to say thank you to his neighbors, but his throat was too swollen with emotion to speak.
Ashley Patton had left the Association meeting early and angry, and Flint had a feeling of forboding as he headed south to Cheyenne from Hoot Beaumont’s ranch. He rode beside Hannah, who was driving the buckboard. Emaline sat beside her, with Ransom riding alongside his wife. The brothers had agreed in advance to flank the wagon to protect the women in case there were gunshots from ambush.
Flint’s eyes were constantly moving, scouting the horizon for signs of movement, and he knew Ransom was doing the same. To complicate matters, the temperature had dropped twenty degrees since they’d left Hoot’s ranch house. What looked like snow clouds had moved in, and the wind had picked up.
Flint leaned over and tucked the blanket around Hannah’s legs. “Are you warm enough?”
She shivered and said, “Warm as any iceberg at the North Pole.” She glanced at him and said, “Don’t worry so much.”
“Does it show?”
“You’re hovering like a concerned husband.”
“I want to keep you safe.”
“I know,” she said, glancing toward Emaline.
Flint felt frustrated enough to say, “Look at me, Hannah.”
Her head swiveled back, and she raised her left brow in question. “What is it?”
He rode closer to her side, so he could speak quietly and not be overheard by the other couple, who were engaged in a conversation of their own. “I care about you, Hannah.”
“I know. I heard you.”
“But you don’t believe me,” he said flatly.
She nodded her head slightly toward Emaline and said quietly, “This isn’t the time to be discussing this.”
“This is the perfect time.”
She looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he muttered. Then he blurted, “I love you, Hannah.”
His comment surprised a trill of laughter out of her. She slipped the reins into one hand so she could cover her mouth with the other.
Flint had known it was too soon, but he’d said the words anyway. He hadn’t been able to contain them, because he wanted Hannah to know. The feelings were new, but they were strong. And they were real.
Hannah had responded with laughter. Amused laughter? Disdainful laughter? Disbelieving laughter? All three, probably, Flint thought with a sinking heart.
“What’s so funny?” Emaline asked, turning to Hannah.
“Yeah, let us in on the joke,” Ransom said.
Flint held his breath, wondering if she would repeat what he’d said. She glanced at him, sobered, and said, “You wouldn’t get it.”
“I thought it might have something to do with this crazy weather,” Emaline said. “Can you believe it’s starting to snow?”
“The way my day has been going, yes, I can,” Flint replied. His eyes searched the horizon, which was quickly becoming obscured by falling snow. The snow would make waiting in ambush a lot less comfortable for Sam Tucker. With any luck, if he was out there, he’d give up and go home.
“Maybe we’ll be snowed in and have to stay in Cheyenne for a whole week,” Emaline said. “I would love to shop and shop and shop.”
“If the snow gets that deep, we need to be at the ranch to drop hay for the cattle,” Ransom said.
Emaline made a face. “We never did have a honeymoon.”
“I’m sorry, Em. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
She laughed. “Yes, you will.”
Flint watched the couple exchange a happy, conspiratorial look that he envied. He made the distinction in his mind between appreciating what Ransom had with Emaline and wishing he had the same thing with Hannah.
Flint was so disturbed and distracted that he almost missed the flash of gunfire to his right. “Ambush!”
Hannah slapped the reins hard against the horses’ backs and yelled “Giddyap!” The team’s gait went from a trot to a gallop in a few steps, sending the buckboard careening along the bumpy, snow-slick road, while Flint and Ransom spurred their mounts to stay next to it.
&nb
sp; The gunshot had reverberated in Flint’s ear a second before he felt the tug on his sleeve. He clenched his teeth at the pain in his biceps and saw blood spurt from his torn coat sleeve.
“You’re hit!” Hannah cried.
“Don’t stop!” Flint said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They kept up the hectic pace for another half mile, till the knoll disappeared behind them.
“Slow them down, Hannah,” Flint said.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked as she tugged on the reins.
“It’s a flesh wound,” Flint replied.
As Hannah stopped the buckboard and began tearing at her petticoat to get a piece of cloth to tie up Flint’s wound, Ransom glanced behind them and asked, “Do you think Tucker will follow us?”
It was a foregone conclusion that Sam Tucker had been the man at the other end of the rifle. Patton didn’t do his own dirty work, and Flint and Ransom had no other enemies.
“He’s already headed to Cheyenne,” Flint said as he eased his coat off. “He’d have to be a fool to try riding all the way back to Patton’s ranch in this weather.”
He turned his horse so his injured arm was presented to Hannah, who sat waiting with a strip of cloth in her hand.
She tore his shirt away from the wound, examined it, and said, “You were lucky. The bullet only grazed you.”
Flint hissed and said, “Take it easy,” as she tied the cloth tightly around it.
“If you don’t like my nursing, you can see a doctor when we get to Cheyenne.”
“You’re prickly.”
Her eyes met his as she said, “I don’t fancy becoming a widow twice in the same year!”
He realized all the blood had fled from her face. “Hey. I’m fine.” He reached out a hand to support her, because it looked like she might faint, and she shoved it away.
“You need to do something about that man!” she snapped.
“What do you suggest?” he said, shivering in the cold.
“For a start, put your coat back on before you freeze to death.”
He grinned and then grimaced as he eased his shearling coat back on over his injured arm. He surveyed the ragged hole in his coat sleeve and said, “That son of a bitch has a lot to answer for.”
“What are you going to do?” Ransom asked.
“Confront Tucker,” Flint replied.
“Is that a good idea?” Emaline asked anxiously.
“When you’re attacked by a rabid dog, you put it down,” Flint said.
He glanced at Hannah, whose face looked drained of blood again. But she said nothing.
“Won’t that be dangerous?” Emaline persisted.
“Not as dangerous as leaving Tucker on the loose to ambush us again,” Flint said.
The rest of their trip to Cheyenne was uneventful. Hannah insisted they stop by the doctor’s office first. Once the doctor confirmed there wasn’t even enough damage to require stitches, they checked into the Western Winds Hotel on Main Street.
“I’m looking forward to dinner in the restaurant,” Emaline said.
“I hope you’ll excuse me,” Hannah said. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”
Flint was alarmed, because he’d overheard Emaline raving about the restaurant’s steak dinners and Hannah agreeing it would be wonderful to eat somewhere with a fine linen tablecloth and fancy silverware. He perused her carefully, noting her flushed face and mussed hair, and said, “I think I’ll stay in the room with Hannah and have the hotel send up some dinner for both of us.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Hannah protested.
Emaline hugged Hannah in the hallway in front of their room and said, “We can always have dinner tomorrow, if you’re feeling better.”
“We’re going home tomorrow,” Hannah said.
Emaline smiled, glanced at Ransom, and said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Flint exchanged a look with Ransom, who shrugged and said, “She wants to shop.”
Emaline giggled.
Hannah waved and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Flint followed her into their room, closed the door behind him, and said, “I wish you had let the doctor take a look at you when he took care of my arm.”
“Why? I’m fine.”
“If you’re so fine, why aren’t we having dinner downstairs with Ransom and Emaline?”
She turned back to him, looked at him with stark eyes, and asked, “Why did you say it?”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. He’d been wondering the same thing himself ever since he’d said those three fateful words, I love you, which she’d dismissed as a joke or an insult or a flat-out lie.
“I wanted you to know,” he said at last.
She crossed her arms protectively over her breasts, above her burgeoning belly, and asked, “When did this change of heart occur?”
How could he tell her what he didn’t know himself? He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Her mouth tightened. “Because it hasn’t happened. For some reason you’ve decided to lie to me about this. It isn’t necessary, Flint.” She unfolded her arms, looked down, and placed her hands on her enlarged belly, caressing it as she said, “I have a child to love. That’s all the love I will ever need.”
Flint winced. “I wasn’t lying.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Please. Don’t.”
Flint stared at his wife. He’d made a terrible mistake. He shouldn’t have said the words, not when she wasn’t ready to hear them. He wasn’t sure where to go from here. How did you prove to a woman that you loved her, when she was certain you didn’t?
She looked him in the eye and said, “I’d rather be alone.”
She didn’t even want him in the same room with her. He felt hurt, but he knew he had a great many fences to mend. Better not to try and do it all in one day.
“I’ll have some supper sent up to you.”
“Where are you going?” she asked as he opened the door.
“I think I’ll take a walk.”
The door wasn’t quite closed when he heard her say, “Be careful, Flint. Don’t make me a widow again.”
He took surprising comfort from the fact that he would have the rest of his life—however long it lasted, considering the threat from Ashley Patton—to convince his wife that he loved her.
“I expected Cheyenne to be a collection of shacks and saloons,” Hannah said to Flint. “It’s so much more than that.”
They were strolling the weathered wooden boardwalk along Main Street in Cheyenne, Hannah’s arm looped through Flint’s, headed for Taylor’s Dry Goods, where Flint and Ransom had an account, to buy Christmas gifts.
“Cheyenne sprang up seven years ago, when the Union Pacific railroad came through,” Flint explained. “When gold was discovered in the Black Hills this past July, it became the stepping off point for miners headed north to the Dakotas. There’s even a Cheyenne to Deadwood stage.”
So why couldn’t you find a bride in Cheyenne? Hannah wondered. Then she took a second look at the people swarming past one another like ants heading home with a fallen grasshopper and realized there were easily ten men for every woman. At the moment, she and Emaline, who was keeping pace with Ransom behind her, were the only two females on the street.
“Where are all the women?” Hannah asked Flint.
He pointed across the street. Hannah followed his finger to a female face peeping at her from a second-story curtained window above one of the many saloons, from which the sounds of a tinkly piano and a screeching violin spilled onto the street.
“Oh,” she said, her face pinkening with embarrassment. “I meant—”
“The decent women are at home with their kids or shopping for supplies or working with their husbands. I’m not quite sure how many folks live in town, but I expect the population will grow with all the business from prospectors,” he said.
The sun had come out to sparkle on the thin layer of snow, which was rapidly being muddied
by wagons and men on horseback. Hannah lifted her face and felt it bathed in surprising warmth.
“Thanks for agreeing to this, Flint,” Emaline said.
Flint glanced over his shoulder and said, “I don’t think Hannah could handle another trip to Cheyenne later this month.”
“Speak for yourself,” Hannah said with a smile.
Flint glanced at her bulk, and she laughed and ducked her head. “Okay, so maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’m glad we have a chance to shop. I haven’t shopped since …” Her voice trailed off.
Hannah hadn’t gone shopping since the week before the Great Chicago Fire, when her mother had taken her and her twin to Marshall Field’s to buy matching dresses, whose design they had first seen in Harper’s Bazaar.
She and Hetty had each ended up with a paisley-striped, heavy linen sheath in the new princess style. Hannah could remember the dress as if it were yesterday. It had an upstanding white lace collar, while the lapels, the velvet bow at the neck, the buttons down the front, and the trimming on the pockets and long sleeves were all made of dark pink velvet.
Hannah tried to avoid thinking about her parents—or her siblings—because when she did, she missed them, especially her mother, who would have been excited about this grandchild. Her mother probably would have been appalled at Hannah’s first husband but perhaps more pleased with the second. She definitely would have wondered at a daughter who’d loved pretty things spending most of her days dressed in a man’s wool shirt and Levi’s, or a shapeless piece of muslin, instead of a Marshall Field’s ready-made dress in the latest fashion.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Hannah turned to Flint and said, “I was thinking about my mother.” She sighed. “And missing her.”
He didn’t say anything, and Hannah realized Flint had no idea how to express sympathy. Not that she needed his pity. Or wanted it. Not to mention the love he was offering.
Hannah glanced askance at her husband. She couldn’t understand why Flint had said he loved her. The words were a painful reminder of the fact she’d twice married strangers for whom she’d felt nothing. She was especially suspicious of Flint’s proclamation of love, because it had come out of nowhere.
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