The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback)

by Sydney Alexander

  The conductor came swaying up the aisle and checked his ticket. “Sir,” he said, pointing to the tiny print. “This is a first-class ticket. You can go up that way and find a compartment.” He gestured towards the door to the next train car. “There aren’t any empty compartments, but the first one on the right only has the one gentleman in it. There’s room for you, and you can spread out a bit besides.”

  “It’s only one stop,” Jared said, a little confused. He peered at the ticket. Well damn. Mike had given him a first-class ticket for the price of a third-class. That was one good man back there. He got up, shrugging his thanks, and dragged himself and his saddle-bag down the narrow aisle and through the doors between the cars, the rails flashing beneath his feet as stepped from one swaying platform to the next.

  The first compartment on the right was, indeed, only occupied by one other gentleman, but gentleman might have been a strong word for the man. Jared didn’t mind much, other than to think that the fellow, who was evidently a cowboy judging by his Stetson, his boots, and his horse-smelling oilskin, looked awfully mean, even when he was apparently dozing. There was something menacing about his very person, from the coiled up power evident in the crossed arms to the dark stubble peppering his unshaven cheeks. Jared shook his head and moved over to take a seat on the padded bench across from the cowboy, tucking his saddlebag securely in the corner. There we are, he thought. Two cowboys in a first-place train compartment. And don’t we look out of place!

  The train was rattling towards Bradshaw at what felt like a break-neck pace; it was hard to believe that a ride that took the better part of the day was a three-hour train journey. Assuming the train didn’t break down or crash into a cow or jump the rails and kill them all, of course.

  Jared looked out the window and thought the cheerful thoughts of an unreformed horseman on a dangerous mechanical contraption. The snow-cloud in the north was much closer, he thought, noticing it for the first time. The entire sky had been covered with that uncertain gray membrane that often marched before a snowstorm, and the sun was invisible behind it. What light there was didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He hated a sky like that. It made for an ugly day, and Jared couldn’t help but think his planned outpourings of unconditional, infinite love were going to fall rather flat under such an indifferent and bored sky. Blue sky and fluffy white clouds beneath a shining yellow sun would have been much more convincing. Also it should probably be a green spring day with the new prairie grasses nodding beneath all that sky and cloud and sun. Well, that was months away. He’d have to settle for cold, gray, and impending blizzard conditions, and hope that his love was enough to blot all that out.

  The cowboy across from him stirred a little in his sleep, and a fold of oilskin fell away from his side. There might not have been much light, but it was enough to glint a little on the pistol handle that had been hidden under the coat. Jared glanced over, took in the side-arm, and glanced quickly back out the window. He didn’t know what sort of trouble this character was up to, and he didn’t want to. The best thing now would just be to stay absolutely silent and hope the fellow slept until after Jared climbed out at Bradshaw.

  Then Jared’s throat started to tickle.

  It was an insidious thing, that throat-tickle. A tickle sounds funny, like something you do with a kid, like a game he’d play with Little Edward, making the little boy squeal and laugh and maybe wet his pants if he was having too much fun.

  This one wasn’t funny, though. It was making Jared fidget and wriggle and even rub at his throat with his hand, as if he could get at it from outside his skin. And then he couldn’t help it anymore: he just started coughing.

  He coughed like a choking horse, hacking and carrying on and making so much noise he wouldn’t have been surprised if the conductor had burst in to see who was dying in his nice first-class compartment. He hocked and honked and wheezed and generally made a racket, and when he was finally done the tickle was gone and the cowboy was looking at him with narrowed eyes.

  Jared wiped his brow and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I had a tickle in my throat.” It sounded the most lame excuse a cowboy could ever have offered another cowboy. He felt ashamed from his Stetson to his boots.

  The other cowboy seemed to agree with his mental assessment. “I thought you was dyin’,” he offered in a gravelly voice. “Sounded like you was dyin’.”

  Jared noted that the fellow had never even uncrossed his arms, so evidently he hadn’t been so concerned by Jared’s impending death that he’d been planning on jumping up to help him or anything like that. “Not dyin’,” he confirmed. “Just a tickle.”

  The cowboy nodded, bored. Then a staccato knock at the door turned both of their heads. “Come in!” the cowboy snapped.

  The door slid open and a silver-haired old man, long-limbed and thin, with fuzzy white eyebrows, peered in. His expression was irritable, suggesting to Jared that he’d managed to wake up the passengers in the next compartment as well. But the man didn’t even glance in Jared’s direction. “Hop up!” he said to the cowboy. Jared started at his accent, which was nearly identical to Cherry’s. “You’re going to need to go and find the nursemaid and get her ready.”

  The cowboy worked his jaw and regarded the old man for a tense moment. “Why don’t you send your old lady to get the nursemaid?” he challenged finally. “Do I look like a goddamn chaperone?”

  “I’ll thank you to speak respectfully to your betters,” the Englishman ground out, a vein showing in his forehead beneath his thin hair. “Or at the very least, the person holding the purse-strings.”

  The cowboy slowly got to his feet, pulling his coat securely around his pistol again. “I’m chargin’ extra for this, old man,” he growled, and shoved past the Englishman.

  The old man followed him out, calling down the corridor: “Be back here before we reach Bradshaw! We’re going to need to ask around and find out where the girl is staying! I’ll want everyone close together so that we can work as quickly as possible. There’s a train east at six o’clock tonight, and I intend to be one it.” The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Jared alone in the abandoned compartment.

  He looked back out the window, not sure what to make of everything he’d just seen and heard. The old English fellow was obviously rich, and the cowboy was being hired for some sort of task, along with a nursemaid… to find a girl that was somewhere in Bradshaw. He thought and thought, but he couldn’t think of any young girls in Bradshaw that might need help from any English folk. The only one even remotely connected to the English was Cherry, and she didn’t need any help, not as far as he knew…

  Jared furrowed his brow. Something very odd was going on here. The only thing he knew for certain was, that fella wasn’t getting on no six o’clock train tonight. He squinted past his own reflection in the glass. That was most definitely a blizzard on the way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Cherry went riding as soon as the breakfast dishes had been dried and put away. She was trying desperately not to think of the events of last night: the arrival of Hope Townsend on Jared’s horse, the elusive statements from Wilbur about Jared’s odd behavior and disappearance over a month ago, the impending threat of the cloudbank in the northwest.

  Well there was one thing that she couldn’t forget, she thought, walking against the teeth of the cold north wind to the barn, and that was the cloud-bank. It was much closer than last night, the high tops of the clouds blowing across the entire sky, while the heart of the storm still brooded far away, beyond the horizon.

  “Don’t go too far,” Matt said when she led Percival past him to saddle up. He’d been out in the barn for at least a half an hour already, working on the roan’s sore legs. Steam was rising up from a bucket and he was easing the roan’s left foreleg into it. “Don’t spill this now,” he told the horse, who was resisting. “If I got to go in and boil another kettle of water, this is going to take all damn day.”

  “Is he goin
g to be alright?” Cherry pulled out her brushes and went to work on Percival’s thick coat. He certainly wouldn’t feel the wind out there today.

  “I think so. Got a stone bruise on this hoof and his ankle looked a little puffy. Probably turned it coming across that hard ground. Epsom salts can soak out anything that hurts.” He’d gotten the hoof down into the bucket now and was holding tight, reminding the horse not to lift it out again. “I’d go real slow with your horses today. Everything’s frozen. Jars their bones, see.”

  Cherry nodded, even though she wanted nothing more than a break-neck gallop across the frozen grassland. Something to distract her mind from all the upset that had come to Bradshaw. “I’ll be careful,” she assured him, picking up Percival’s hooves one by one and cleaning them out with a sharp hoof-pick. “I promised Eddie I’d take him for a little ride later, too. On Galahad, if he comes asking. I’m afraid Percival is going to be a bit silly with that cold wind out there.”

  “I’d say so.” Matt sat down in the straw next to the roan, hand still tight on the horse’s leg. “Storm before supper, I’d say. We’ll be indoors a few with this one, and no mistake.”

  She could only sigh. Indoors with her thoughts was the last place Cherry wanted to be.

  Despite the wind and her distracted state of mind, Cherry managed to give Percival a tough work-out, bending him in circles and asking him to pay attention to her slightest command at the drop of a hat. When she sat deep in the saddle and stilled her motion, closing her fingers tightly on the reins, she wanted a halt that moment and not a few steps later. When she brought her legs gently against his sides and opened her fingers again, she wanted a spring forward in motion, not a thoughtful look-around before he stepped off. The idea was taking a while to sink in, however. Percival was, generally, a very clever horse. But the wind was turning him into something of a Lookey-Lou, turning his head this and way that to see… what? The wind fluttering in the grass? She didn’t know what he found so upsetting. “If we were in the forest, perhaps I could see your argument,” she told him as he fought for his head after a particularly bumpy halt. “Blowing branches, the wind roaring in the trees.” She gave him a nudge and he leapt up and forward in a complete over-reaction. Cherry set her jaw and sat down hard in the saddle, giving him nowhere to go with her tight hands. “But this behavior is completely uncalled for!”

  She heard laughter behind her after that and turned the horse abruptly. “Who’s there?” Riding behind the backyards of Bradshaw’s houses as she did, there were occasionally spectators. But on a day like this, with everyone hunched over against the wind and hustling to get in provisions before the storm hit, tittering laughter from a rude audience was the last thing she had expected.

  “Hello, Mrs. Beacham,” a pretty voice trilled, and from around the corner of a backyard toolshed strolled the black skirts and feathered black bonnet of Hope Townsend.

  Cherry pressed her lips together in annoyance. That witch was the last thing her nerves needed. “I’m very busy right now,” she called, raising her voice to be heard over the gusting wind. “I have a lot of work to do with this horse, as you can see.”

  “Oh I see,” Hope said mockingly. She kept on walking, however, right into the beaten-down grass that Cherry used as a sort of make-shift riding ménàge every day. “What an unconventional career for a woman. Is this how they raise their young ladies in Merrie Olde England, to ride like men? Why, you’re as good as any bronco-buster. You should go on cattle drives and break wild horses for them. I’m sure Jared would be happy to recommend an outfit to you.”

  I will not let her get to me, Cherry promised herself, or commanded herself, whichever worked. “It is true I am a better rider than most women. I was very fortunate to ride from a young age. Not all young ladies have such good luck.”

  “Maybe we should have a race,” Hope suggested. “I’m a pretty good rider.”

  “The lame horse in the barn over there suggests otherwise,” Cherry said acidly, pushed beyond politeness. Animal cruelty was simply unacceptable. “I would not wish to test my skills against someone of your questionable talents.”

  Hope pursed her lips. The barb had struck. But that was all the encouragement she needed to get to the point. “You’re not getting Jared, Englishwoman. He’s always been in love with me, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  Percival chose that moment to plunge sideways, gaping his mouth against the bit as he fought for his head, and Cherry had her hands full. Unfortunately he shoved his big body in such a way that it looked as though she intended to ride Hope down. The other woman jumped out of the Thoroughbred’s way with a little shriek.

  “Why, you bitch!” she shrieked, retreating to the safety of the toolshed. “I might’ve felt sorry for you, too, because he’s a good man and I know you’ll hate to lose him. But you’re nothing but a crazy person. You and your wild horses are welcome to each other. I’m taking Jared back to Texas, and don’t think running me over with your damn horse can stop me!”

  Cherry wearily kicked the explosive horse into a canter and let him go bounding around in circles for a while, hoping to burn off a little excess energy. She didn’t bother to turn back and see if Hope was still watching her. What did it matter? She said she had come to take Jared back. Well, Jared wasn’t here. The joke was on both of them, wasn’t it?

  ***

  When the whistle blew for Bradshaw, Jared was already standing in the train corridor, waiting impatiently to disembark. He was leaning against a window, staring out at his little town, when a harsh hand shoved him against the wall. “Get outta my way, cowboy,” a familiar voice growled, and Jared realized it was the mean-looking cowboy from the train compartment. He recovered himself, rubbing at his shoulder where it had crashed into the wall, as the cowboy barreled past, dragging a white-faced woman in a faded brown traveling dress behind him.

  Jared was just about to shout after him when the old Englishman put a finger on his shoulder. “Be a good chap and let me pass, won’t you,” the gentleman suggested in cultured tones, but his eyes were cold and his manner imperious. Jared looked him in the eye, ready to give him a piece of his mind, about how he wasn’t going to get out of his way until he was good and ready, and he could sick his damn fool guard-dog down there on him if that was what he wanted, but he wasn’t about to go on being treated like an inferior in his own town, and so on and so forth and more like that, when he realized with a start that he recognized those blue eyes glaring down at him. He’d seen those eyes before, with exactly that glacial expression, from a different face.

  Jared furrowed his brow. “Just a minute there,” he drawled, pretending he wasn’t at all put out by the rough behavior. “You know a girl named Charlotte Beacham?”

  The old man started, his blue eyes widening, and though he quickly tried to cover up his emotions, it was too late. “I haven’t any idea who you’re talking about,” he tried to demur, pushing past Jared and continuing down the corridor.

  “Now hang on a minute!” A terrible suspicion was forming in Jared’s mind. Cherry’s got troubles of her own, Matt had said. Trouble from home, Matt had said. His mind counted over the weeks. Was six weeks enough time for an interfering Englishman to get from London to Bradshaw? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. The cowboy with the pistols gleaming at his belt, the nursemaid, those crystal-clear blue eyes that matched Cherry’s: this was the trouble from home. He was sure of it. “You stop right there!” Jared hollered, running down the swaying corridor. But the door was already sliding shut behind the Englishman: he was following the other two into the next car. Jared reached for the door just as the train’s brakes began to squeal, and the sudden slowing of the train threw him slam into the door. He hit his head on the wooden door and slumped to the ground, momentarily dizzied.

  The train whistle shrilled — they were coming into the station. Jared managed to get himself up, rubbing at the knot on his forehead and cursing. He’d hit the ground plenty coming off rank horses, bu
t it was a damn fool who hit his head riding on a train. Shaking it off, he shoved open the door and ran between the cars, but when he came into the next carriage, they were nowhere to be seen. Worse, people were filing out of their compartments, eager to get off at Bradshaw and stretch their legs, and the train corridor was impassable with waiting passengers. Jared leaned against the door and pounded his fist quietly against his thigh, frustrated beyond words. He’d have to get off as quickly as possible at the siding and find them in the crowd. And by the looks of things, half the damn train was getting off at Bradshaw for a little stroll. They’d be hell to find.

  By the time the wooden siding of Bradshaw was rushing up to meet the train, Jared was already standing on the bottom step. He jumped off onto the platform, legs rolling a little under him as the loss of motion threw off his balance, and then he straightened and looked down the siding.

  He saw them right away: the cowboy had already jumped down and was reaching up for the nursemaid. She was frightened, shaking her head; she wanted to wait for the train to stop, Jared figured. But the Englishman was not going to wait for her: he gave her a shove and she shrieked as she went stumbling onto the platform. By now the train wasn’t moving very quickly and she wouldn’t be hurt, but it was still a damn mean thing to do to a woman, Jared thought. He took off running, brushing past the astonished Mr. Morrison and a very disapproving postmistress, who were both there waiting for deliveries.