He didn’t remember much about the rest of that night. He went back to the boarding-house and went silently up to his room and locked the door and drank a bottle of whiskey. The next afternoon he staggered out into the spring sunshine and asked the barman at the dance-hall to send for Hope.
The day-barman didn’t know Jared. And he wouldn’t do it, anyhow.
“She don’t take visitors until late,” the barman chided, rubbing at his glasses with his rag in that typical barman way. When Jared didn’t immediately leave, his glass-cleaning got a little more aggressive, and so did his tone. “You don’t look like you got enough brass for her, neither. Maybe you ought to just take yourself home, son.” One of his braces slipped and he put down the glass to straighten it. Jared took the opportunity to punch him in the mouth.
There was a lot of shouting after that, and Matt was summoned to straighten him out, and he was taken back to his room and put to bed and dosed with coffee. But nothing changed what he had seen, and the image was burned into his brain. Hope, laughing on the arm of that top-hatted dandy. Hope, taking him upstairs. I’m just a dancer, she told everyone, over and over. I don’t take men upstairs.
But she had lied.
About everything?
The roan pricked his ears at a little stand of cottonwoods, and Jared let the horse pick his own path towards the stalwart prairie trees. Despite the rain that was coming from every direction, up and down and sideways and crossways, the horse was bound to be thirsty. It was past midday, he reckoned, though without the sun it was hard to tell, and they were still a few hours’ ride from the gray little town on the horizon. He was looking forward to getting a dry room and a dry bed with the first enthusiasm he’d felt for anything since he’d gotten the letter. He wondered, watching the roan’s ears swivel and his nostrils flare as he scented out the water ahead, if he oughten just turn around and go back home while he still could.
What if she had lied about the baby? What if she was lying now?
What if… what if… what if…
He remembered the wedding announcement in the paper; he remembered her calling at the boarding-house, veiled and hatted like a matron, crossing her ankles and sitting bolt-upright on the worn divan in the sitting room and telling him, without tears, that her condition was due to Mr. Howard T. Townsend of Townsend Cattle & Oil, and she would be wed to him within the month.
He had stared at her and said nothing at all. His mouth wouldn’t open; his tongue wouldn’t work.
“I’m showing, you see.” She had coughed delicately, as if to take away from the impropriety of her words. “Time is really of the essence.”
He found his voice. “You said he was mine,” he croaked hoarsely.
Hope had shifted in the divan a little. The shawl slipped, and he could see, just shyly peeking from beneath her modest gown, the swell of her belly.
“You said we would name him Andrew. For my father, you said. To remember him by.”
Hope stood to leave, and he stood as well, reaching out to clutch at her wrist. By God, he’d been a wreck of a man that day, hadn’t he? To reach out and grab at her like that, to try and stop with brute force the woman he had loved for so long! But she had jerked away easily; his nerveless fingers dropped to his side. The clock on the dusty mantlepiece ticked. Somewhere out on the street, a frightened horse whinnied. And Hope turned her face from him, and went out of the sitting room, and down the hall, and through the door, and disappeared.
The roan drank deep from the little stream he had found for himself, his freckled ears flicking with every swallow he took. Jared stood up in the stirrups a little to be sure he could drink his fill. When the horse finished, he raised his dripping lips and turned his head around to look at Jared with impassive brown eyes. Then he took a step to the left. Towards Bradshaw. Towards Cherry.
But Jared flicked the left rein against his neck. “I’m sorry, boy. I think you’re right. I know you’re right. But whether she’s a lying bitch or not, I have to stop Hope in Opportunity, or she’ll raise all kinds of hell in Bradshaw.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cherry asked Matt to teach her how to ride astride.
Matt put down his coffee cup and studied her. “You want to ride in a cowboy saddle?”
She nodded. “It would be much safer for me.”
She didn’t elaborate on her meaning, leaving Matt to believe whatever he wanted about her intentions. Surely it would be safer just for rides across the prairie, to the claim and back on fine days. But Cherry had a deeper intention than just taking idle rides around the countryside.
Cherry had decided that riding astride was the key to her financial independence.
Even in England, when she had been a very daring rider, taking jumps other ladies would walk their horses around and forever exasperating her father by challenging grooms to races, there was a certain limit to just how fast or far or high she could ride her horse. That limit was, of course, the sidesaddle. It simply wasn’t safe to do much more than walk sedately on a park lane in the silly object, and the mere fact that any lady managed to get their horse onto the hunting fields at all was a testament to their riding ability and extreme courage. Cherry was a very talented horsewoman, but even so, her plans would not work if she had to ride half-tilted off the side of a horse all the time.
But the cowboy saddle, with its high cantle and pommel and stirrups on both sides of the horse, that would be the very thing for the plots in Cherry’s mind. And she had her eye on Patty’s big western-style saddle, the sort the cowboys used. It would let her ride astride, in a split skirt cut just for that purpose.
“We’d have to order you a saddle,” Matt said doubtfully. A good saddle wasn’t cheap.
“Why, she can use my saddle!” Patty was in a cheerful and giving mood, especially considering it was only a day after she had informed Matt that she would kill Jared if he ever came back to Bradshaw. She had since relented, and promised her husband that she would not, in fact, murder his oldest friend. But she wasn’t making any promises about having him over for tea any more.
Matt, who didn’t care for tea anyhow, poured more coffee in his mug. “You’ll want my help putting it on your horse for a while,” he warned. “It’s a heavy old monster. I think it’s made out of bricks inside.”
“Don’t you make fun of my old saddle,” Patty scolded. She spread a generous amount of butter across her biscuit. Patty loved a good buttery biscuit, and she didn’t care one bit what it did to her waistline. She had her man. “I got that saddle from my father for a fourteenth birthday present. I’ve ridden all over the countryside in that saddle.”
“That’s precisely what I’d like to do,” Cherry said eagerly. She spread a much thinner pat of butter on her own biscuit. Waistlines were no laughing matter to an Englishwoman of the ton, even if she was sitting at a breakfast table somewhere out in the American frontier. Some lessons could not be unlearned. But as for riding…! “I love to ride, and it just looks so much more free than that sidesaddle I’ve ridden in my entire life. If I could try it out first, I would order my own from the harness-maker’s.”
“Mr. Handler will make you a beautiful saddle,” Patty announced with authority. “I saw one he made for Mr. Morrison. Hand-tooling of a bird on the panel. I have no idea why Mr. Morrison should’ve wanted such a thing on his saddle but it was beautiful.”
“Mr. Morrison is a strange fellow,” Matt mused, and they all at once took a drink of coffee and reflected upon the strangeness of Mr. Morrison.
After breakfast and the washing-up, Patty declared that she wanted to play with Little Edward and must have him for the morning. Cherry dragged Matt out to the stable to see about fitting the saddle on Galahad. There was a dark cloud looming and rain was on the way, but she thought they could fit in a riding lesson.
The little spotted pony was busy spreading perfectly nice hay all over his loose box, a specialty he had that was quite hard on the feed bill budget Cherry had set for herself, but he w
as happy enough to see them, charging forward and pushing his head over the wooden half-door. Cherry gave him a rub under his long brown and white forelock and then took his head-collar in hand. “Come on, lad, it’s time for a new sort of ride,” she told him, and opened the door.
Cherry brushed him with a curry comb and a dandy brush while he dozed in the shadows of the barn aisle, loosely tied to a ring in the wall. Matt leaned on the wall and watched her.
“I wouldn’t have thought a fine lady from England would know how to rub down a horse,” he said suddenly. “But then again, I wouldn’t have thought she’d come to Bradshaw and take up a claim, neither.”
“I have done many things most ladies do not do,” Cherry admitted. “But learning to take care of a horse is not so uncommon. I am a country girl, after all. I spent plenty of time dogging the footsteps of the grooms, asking them to take out my pony for me. After a while, they just taught me to do all the grooming and tacking so that they wouldn’t have the trouble of it. And I found I was happier taking care of my pony myself.”
“It’s soothing work,” Matt agreed. He turned over a metal water bucket and sat down on it. “Soothing for the horse and soothing for the folks.”
“It’s messy work, though,” Cherry grimaced, looking at the white hairs that had settled all over her plain brown coat. The cheap fabric seemed to attract horse-hair. “I always end up with a shiny horse and a filthy habit.”
Matt grunted and got up again. “Clean enough for a saddle, I reckon.”
He came out of the tack room with a brightly colored Indian blanket and the heavy Western saddle, carrying both on his forearms like a footman carrying clean napkins. He gestured with the blanket and Cherry laughed and snatched it off of his arm, placing it gently on Galahad’s back.
“Further up,” Matt instructed. “This has a lot more leather than your little saddle.”
She lifted the blanket and placed it halfway up the horse’s neck.
“Be serious, wontcha!”
“Ye of little faith.” Cherry slid the blanket down the neck until it rested just above his withers. “To keep the hairs on his back from pinching.”
Matt just grunted and lifted the saddle onto Galahad’s back. The pony stepped restively under the weight. “Settle, boy,” Matt crooned, and Cherry smiled.
“You’ll want to watch how I do up the cinch,” he said, showing her all the knots and loops that went into tying the cinch tight. It seemed a very complicated way of doing things, but she supposed, a buckle could break and a knot never would.
“Now then, ready to get up?”
Cherry studied the saddle. This was it, then. The moment of truth. The ultimate independence: mounting a horse without assistance. She had borrowed Patty’s split skirt; she had seen Patty mount — just like every man in the world, poking a boot in the stirrup and lifting off. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it?
“I’ve never mounted from the ground by myself,” Cherry admitted at last. “I don’t know how. I had a rock out at the claim, you know, and here I’ve always gotten a leg-up.”
Matt nodded. “That’s just fine. We’ll use the rock out back.”
They went outside and Matt led Galahad over to a large, flat-topped rock which sat behind the barn. It was only about a foot high, perfect for sitting on: Patty and Cherry occasionally sat on the rock in warm weather, to soak up the sun, and she had seen Matt dry saddle blankets on it as well. Now Matt encouraged Galahad to stand up right next to the rock, so that the left stirrup was dangling over top of its flat surface. Cherry followed uncertainly: it didn’t look high enough to get her into the saddle.
“Come on over here.”
Cherry squared her jaw, climbed up on the rock, and marched over to Galahad. The good pony glanced at her but didn’t move a muscle. She looked at the stirrup with uncertainty. It still seemed very far away from her foot. She `wasn’t sure she could ever lift her leg high enough. And once it was there, what would happen? How would she get the rest of her body up in the air, over the saddle, and onto Galahad’s back?
This was impossible.
But no — Patty could do it, so could she.
“Put your left hand in his mane, and your right hand on the cantle,” Matt said encouragingly. “That’s right. Now you’re gonna put your left boot in the stirrup, and give a little jump and bring your right leg over the saddle. You can push on his neck and the saddle to hold you up.”
That sounded… that sounded impossible. It also accurately described the way she had seen men mounting their horses her entire life.
“Come on now,” Matt urged. “You can do this.”
When I mount this horse alone, she thought, I will be proving that I don’t need a man. I didn’t need Edward, though I wanted to. And I don’t need Jared, though I want to. I only need myself. She reached out and took the reins from Matt. “Don’t hold him, please. I shall have to be able to manage him and myself.”
Reins in her left hand, she stepped closer to the horse and placed her hand on his neck, as Matt had instructed. She eyed the stirrup. It was hanging at about her knee level now. That wasn’t too high, was it? She could surely manage to bring her foot up to knee-height. She grasped the leather cantle in her right hand and lifted her boot free of the split skirt.
It was hard, surprisingly hard, to get her boot into that cursed stirrup. The leather-wrapped wood bobbled merrily while she kicked at it, grunting with unladylike exertion, but at last it was there. She stood still, panting a little, with her leg twisted up in front of her and her arms outstretched to reach the pony.
“Now jump,” Matt advised, stepping in front of Galahad’s head. Just in case.
Jump. Jump. Jump. Of course. She had jumped before. When she was about nine years old! Really, when had she ever had to jump as an adult woman? Horses did the jumping for her.
She took a breath and jumped.
Her chest landed hard on the saddle-seat, and Galahad sidestepped nervously, taking her away from the safety of her rock. She grasped at the saddle frantically, hanging halfway off, her right leg dangling, her left leg caught up in the stirrup. Halfway on and halfway off, and no apparent way to either climb all the way on or drop back down to the ground. Oh, this was just a disaster!
The Matt spoke again, his voice calm and reassuring. “That’s alright. That happens. Just push with your left leg as hard as you can and when you get your leg straight, you’ll be able to lift the other leg over the saddle. Now go on. Push.”
And Cherry pushed, with all her might. She pushed until she could feel that her face was turning red. She pushed until her legs quivered. She pushed until Galahad was sidling uneasily beneath her. She wished she could tell him to be still, but she hadn’t the breath. And then, just as the little horse shifted his hindquarters away from her weight, she managed to fling her right leg over his back.
“Ah!” she shouted as she settled into the saddle, that long-desired place like a paradise, and even as she tried to understand what was going on beneath her, with her legs spraddled in the most unbecoming way and her horse the most alien being in the world, Galahad sprung up at her shout and took off, bolting into the prairie.
“Cherry!” Matt was shouting, but there was nothing he could do. It was all up to her now, and she was bouncing and jouncing until her teeth rattled. Oh, where had her smooth little pony gone? This rough-gaited creature between her legs had not the least resemblance to the pony she had ridden side-saddle without a care in the world. Cherry was not so much terrified as she was dismayed. And thankful that even side-saddle riding had given her enough strength in her legs to grasp the saddle with her knees and not be flung off his back.
Galahad was already regretting his bolt by the time Cherry had gathered the reins and was leaning back against them, so they had not traveled too far into the prairie before he had been brought down to a shame-faced halt. He stood, sides heaving from the sudden exertion, while Cherry caught her own breath.
“That was most a
larming,” she told the pony when she had quite recovered herself. “You should be more careful of your mistress, when she is riding in a new fashion for the first time. Who would take care of you, if I were hurt?”
The pony was unconcerned about the future. Ponies live in the now, after all. He ducked his head against the reins, trying to grasp a hunk of dry grass, and Cherry fixed them in a fist she leaned against the high saddle horn. Then she leaned down with her free hand and shoved her right foot into the stirrup. She shifted in the saddle, wiggling a little, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.
“This is not the most comfortable saddle I’ve ever sat in, and that’s saying something, coming from a side-saddle,” she commented. “I feel as if I am sitting directly on my… well, it’s just very unpleasant. I suppose I shall get used to it.” She loosened her grip on the reins and gave Galahad a nudge with both heels. He stepped forward brightly, and she realized that it was the first time she had ever asked a horse to do something with any sort of balance at all. It was the first time she had ever sat in the center of her mount, instead of hanging precariously off the side.
That was worth a little discomfort, she supposed.
They went walking back across the waving banks of silver grass. Matt had started after them on foot, seen that she had recovered control, and settled down to wait against the rock behind the barn. He was leaning against the edifice, arms crossed, as she rode the pony up to him.
“I guess that’s as good a test ride as any,” he drawled when she pulled Galahad up beside him.
“I’m thankful Patty didn’t see it,” Cherry said with a smile. “She’d likely stop me from riding in her saddle ever again, for fear she’d killed me.”
“Nah, Patty’d understand.” Matt slouched up and started fussing with the stirrups. “That’s how a girl learns to ride on the farm, you know… put her on and slap the pony on the behind.”
The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) Page 19