Christy

by Linda Lael Miller

  Bridget’s mouth dropped open. She looked purely confounded. “A dowry?”

  “Yes,” Christy replied. “Even rich men expect them, you know. In fact, they seem to prefer property over gold or currency, in these uncertain times.” She stopped, met Bridget’s bewildered gaze. “I mean to marry a wealthy man, for Megan’s sake and my own.” She threw the words at her cousin’s feet like a gauntlet. “The richest one available. Who would that be, Bridget?”

  Her cousin’s jaw line clamped down hard while she made a visible effort to contain her legendary temper. “If you want to keep the land, that’s your right. But only a fool marries for money. I’ve held many an opinion where you’re concerned, Christy McQuarry, but I never thought you were a fool.”

  Christy felt color rise to her face. “I’m not you, Bridget. Lucky stars don’t tangle themselves in my hair or fall at my feet—I have to fight for the things I want.”

  Bridget’s own expression softened from anger to sadness. “Christy,” she said softly. “It must have been hard, coming home from England—”

  “Damn England,” Christy spat. “We were miserable there—shunted off and forgotten. Made to feel like poor relations, even beggars.”

  “Christy,” Bridget repeated. “Oh, Christy.”

  “Don’t,” Christy said before her cousin could go on. She didn’t want Bridget’s concern, damn it. Didn’t want her pity. She had swallowed enough of her pride already. “You’ve always been fortune’s favorite. You were Granddaddy’s favorite, too. And Mitch’s. And— Trace’s.”

  “Granddaddy loved you,” Bridget insisted. “He was heartbroken to lose you and Megan. He never forgave Jenny for taking you away, or Uncle Eli for letting you go.”

  Christy did not reply; she would have choked on the painful lump that had risen in her throat. She had never doubted her grandfather’s love, as she had her mother’s and certainly that of Eli McQuarry, her wild and reckless father. Nor did it particularly trouble her that she would have to make her own way in a world that would grant her no special concessions whatsoever. She had the grit, the strength, the intelligence, and, yes, the beauty to get what she wanted—and she would not be turned from her course.

  “Christy,” Bridget said once more when she started for the door.

  But Christy kept walking and did not look back.

  The town of Primrose Creek was hardly more than a cow path with a wide spot, to Zachary’s way of thinking, but it had its own sturdy log jailhouse and four saloons. He supposed that said something about a place, that it boasted a hoosegow and more than one watering hole, but no schoolhouse and no real church, either. The Methodists and Baptists held services in borrowed tents, but a hard rain or a high wind could send them scrambling for the shelter of the Silver Spike, the Golden Garter, the Rip-Snorter, or Diamond Lil’s.

  Truth to tell, this state of affairs hadn’t troubled him much; he wasn’t a religious man, despite his good Christian raising, nor was he especially fond of liquor, and had heretofore concerned himself with neither churches nor beer halls. He was even-natured, for the most part, a man with simple wants and wishes. He had a way with horses and little else, and he made a point of minding his own business. Moreover, something had gone cold within him the day Jessie died in his arms, so while he enjoyed a sporting woman as well as the next man, he never thought about settling down.

  Now something had changed, and there was no denying it, much as he would have liked to do just that. Some inner foundation had shifted, sent cracks streaking through the walls he’d erected to last a lifetime.

  Feeling a chill—spring weather in the Sierras was a fickle thing—he shoved a piece of wood into the stove near his desk and prodded it into flames with the poker. A day ago, he’d showed up at Fort Grant, looking to do his duty as marshal, fetch a gaggle of women safely up the trail, and be done with it. He’d gone, however grudgingly, but the man who’d ridden back up the track wasn’t the same as the one who’d ridden down it. And what had wreaked all this havoc? One look at Miss Christy McQuarry, that was what.

  He’d seen pretty girls before, of course, even out there in the back of beyond, but Christy—Miss McQuarry—was more than pretty. She was beautiful. That first sight of her, with her gleaming dark hair and charcoal-gray eyes, her perfect skin and slim, womanly figure, had struck him with the force of a log shooting off one end of a flume, and he was still reeling. God in heaven, he even liked fighting with her.

  He rubbed his beard-stubbled chin and squinted into the cracked shaving mirror next to the window. He didn’t look all that different, but he was thinking some crazy thoughts, that was for sure. He wanted to dance, for God’s sake, and not with one of the ladies who plied their trade over at the Golden Garter, either. He wanted an excuse to put his arms around Christy McQuarry, that was a fact, and the music was optional. Furthermore, he’d started to imagine what it would be like, living in a real house with curtains at the windows, raising a passel of kids, just as his own mother and father had done.

  He made twenty dollars a month, he reminded himself, and that was when the town council had the funds to pay him, which was only intermittently. He felt his forehead with the back of one hand and grinned ruefully at his own image in the looking glass. No fever.

  At least, not in his head.

  Christy faced the ramshackle structure with as much courage as she could muster. According to Trace, the place had originally been a Paiute lodge. It had a leaky hide roof, stitched more with daylight than rawhide, and he and Bridget had kept horses there in inclement weather. They’d lived in the place, too, while their house was being built, but Christy took small comfort in that knowledge.

  “You must be outta yo’ head,” Caney said, hands on her hips. “Miss Bridget and Mister Trace have that nice house over yonder, and you want to live here?”

  Christy turned to face the woman she considered her only true friend, exasperating as she was. “Go ahead and stay with them, if that’s what you want,” she replied, keeping her voice crisp.

  “Well, I ought to, that’s fo’ sure. They got real beds over there. They got windows and a roof that don’t show no sky through it—”

  Determined, Christy began sweeping out the rocklined fire pit in the center of the building, using a broom she’d improvised herself from twigs and slender branches, and she was brisk about it. “Fine. You’re getting old, and you need your comforts. Besides, you got spoiled living at Fort Grant all winter.”

  Caney rose to the bait like a trout leaping for a fly, and Christy, having her back to the woman now, smiled to herself. “What you mean, I’m gettin’ old and spoilt? I ain’t but forty-two, and I can do the work of any two mule-skinners. Got you and Miss Megan across all them plains and mountains, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Christy said, and pressed her lips together.

  “You think I ain’t got the gumption to sleep in a place like this? Laid my head down in many a worse one, I have.”

  Christy smiled, swept, and said nothing.

  “Drat it all,” Caney groused. “You know dern well Miss Megan will stay here if you do, out of plain loyalty, and that leaves me with no choice at all, because I wouldn’t sleep a wink for thinkin’ of the wolves and the outlaws and the Injuns gettin’ to you, after all I done went through to bring you here—”

  Shame jabbed at Christy’s conscience; she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t be like her mother, wouldn’t use other people to get her own way, wouldn’t use another’s weakness to her advantage, and here she was, doing precisely those things. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning and meeting Caney’s level gaze. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I was trying to influence you—”

  Caney gave a guffaw of laughter. “Were you, now?” she said, her bright jet eyes twinkling. “Well, two can play at that, young lady.”

  Christy pretended to swat at her friend with the makeshift broom. “You were pulling my leg the whole time.”

  “ ’Course I was,” Caney said, gr
inning now. “If you’re set on stayin’ here, then I will, too.” She looked up at the deer hides sagging overhead. “We gonna live in this place, Miss Christy, we gotta put us some boards up there, and some tar paper, too, if we can get it. You have any of that money left? What you got for your mama’s watch and pearls back in Richmond?”

  Christy sank onto a bale of hay and sighed. “It took every penny to buy the mules and food and sign on with the wagon train. I’ll take the cameo into town tomorrow. Surely some miner will want it for a present.” Tears stung behind her eyes at the prospect of yet another stranger taking possession of one of Jenny’s belongings, but she would not shed them. She had certainly had her differences with her mother, but she’d loved her. In spite of everything, the losses, the separations, the grim, unhappy days at St. Martha’s, and the even unhappier visits to Fieldcrest, she’d loved her.

  Caney’s large, slender hand came to rest on Christy’s shoulder. “Life’d be some easier for you if it weren’t for that McQuarry pride of yours,” she said quietly. “Now, let’s gather some firewood and carry in the trunks from that wagon out there. We push some of these bales together, we can make us some beds. Better’n sleepin’ under the wagon like we did whilst we was travelin’.”

  Christy laid her hand over Caney’s, squeezed. “What’s wrong with me, Caney?” she whispered. “Why can’t I be beholden to Bridget or anybody else, even for something as basic as a real roof over my head?”

  “I done told you already,” Caney said. “It’s that ole devil, pride. You got it from your granddaddy—he sure had him plenty, ole Mister Gideon McQuarry. Turns a body cussed, that’s fo’ sure. But it makes you strong, too. Keeps you goin’ right on when other folks would lay down and whimper.”

  Christy blinked a few times, stood up, and went back to her sweeping. When that was done, she and Caney brought in the trunks and pushed bales together to make three beds. There were plenty of quilts, hand-stitched by Rebecca McQuarry herself, and knitted woolen blankets, for Caney had rescued them from the laundry before she’d left the farm. They spread them over the prickly surfaces of the hay and made jokes about princesses and peas.

  By the time Megan returned, accompanied by Skye, twilight was falling, and there was a cheerful blaze crackling in the middle of the lodge. The mules had been let out to pasture, along with horses borrowed from the army, their things had been brought in from the wagon, and Caney had a pot of beans, dried ones left over from the journey west, simmering on the fire.

  Megan gleamed as though she’d been polished, and her bright red-gold hair caught the firelight. She and Skye were both barefoot, having waded across the stream, and carried their shoes by the laces. “I had a real bath,” Megan said, as proudly as if she’d never taken one before. “I used hot water and store-bought soap, too, and I didn’t even have to hurry in case it got cold, because Bridget kept filling up the tea kettle and warming it on the stove.”

  Christy, seated on yet another bale of hay, smiled and leaned forward to stir the beans with a wooden spoon. “Well, now. I’m sure you must be entirely too fine to keep company with the likes of Caney and me. I expect you’d rather spend the night with Skye.”

  Megan was clearly torn between a perfectly natural yearning for creature comforts—she had done with out them for a long time, without a single complaint—and a strong devotion to her older sister, and it moved Christy deeply, seeing that. Forced her to look down at the fire for a moment and swallow hard.

  “Bridget sent you a dried apple pie,” Skye put in quickly, as if fearing the silence, and set a covered basket on the dirt floor, close to Christy’s right foot. “She can’t bake a decent cake to save her life, but she’s got a way with pie dough.”

  Christy spoke carefully. Quietly. “Please tell her I said thank you,” she told the girl gently, then shifted her gaze to Megan. “You go on across the creek with Skye, now. The two of you have been apart for a long time—you must have a lot of giggling to catch up on.”

  Megan looked doubtful, and at the same time full of hope. “You’re sure?” Her voice was small. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “I won’t be alone, Megan,” Christy pointed out tenderly. “I’ve got Caney to keep me company.”

  Megan hesitated just a moment longer, then bent and kissed Christy on the cheek. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” the girl promised earnestly. “You’ll be needing a lot of help. Maybe I can catch us some fish for supper.”

  Christy reached out, patted her sister’s hand. As children, Megan and Skye had been thicker than the proverbial thieves. She wasn’t about to let her own problems with Bridget come between them. “That would be a fine thing,” she said.

  With that, the girls vanished into the night again, and their happy chatter trailed behind them like music.

  “You did the right thing, lettin’ that girl go like that. I know you worry about her whenever she’s out of your sight,” Caney observed, taking the spoon from Christy’s hands and serving up a plate of beans for each of them.

  “She’ll be safe with Trace and Bridget,” Christy said. Safer, certainly, than in an old Indian lodge with no door and no windows and only the flimsiest excuse for a roof.

  The two women ate in companionable silence, both of them sick to death of boiled beans, and Caney insisted on carrying the dishes down to the creek for washing. When she returned, Christy had put on a nightgown, unpinned her waist-length hair, and begun to brush it with long, rhythmic strokes. She’d lit a kerosene lamp against the descending darkness and set the basket containing Bridget’s pie inside one of the recently emptied trunks, in hopes of discouraging mice. It would be a fine treat for breakfast.

  Caney undressed in the shadows and donned her own night dress, a fancy red taffeta affair trimmed in lace. It had been given to her by a sick woman she and Christy had tended while they were crossing the plains with the wagon train. The lady, one Lottie Benson, accompanied by a man she said was her brother, must certainly have had a story to tell, but Christy hadn’t dared to ask her. Besides, it was kind of fun, just speculating.

  “I reckon you know that good-lookin’ marshal has an eye for you?” Caney asked, stretching out on her spiky bed with a long-suffering sigh.

  The idea warmed Christy in a way no nightgown, taffeta or flannel, could have done. She blew out the lamp and lay down to take her night’s rest. “Nonsense,” she said. “You’re imagining things.”

  Caney sighed again, a comfortable, settling-in sigh. “We’ll see ’bout that,” she replied. “We’ll just see.”

  Chapter 2

  Christy awakened early the following morning, while Caney was still snoring quietly on the other side of the fire. She dressed in haste, attended to a brief bit of business in the woods, and went down to the creek to wash her face and hands. Although there was smoke curling from both chimneys rising from Bridget’s roof, she saw no other sign that anyone was up and about.

  She returned to the lodge, brushed her hair and wound it into a loose knot at the back of her head, then brought the small velvet pouch containing her mother’s jewelry from its hiding place in the false bottom of one of the trunks. She spilled the meager contents into one palm—the cameo brooch she meant to sell that very day, a pearl and diamond ring, a pair of sapphire ear bobs, and a garnet necklace.

  A sob rose in her throat, but she did not make a sound. Nonetheless, the silent cry reverberated through her spirit and found its place there, among her dreams and wishes and private sorrows. She closed her hand around the jewels for a moment— they were only trinkets, really, and she should not let herself be sentimental about them—and then resolutely tucked everything back into the bag except the cameo. When the pouch was hidden again, she rose from her knees, slipped the brooch into her skirt pocket, and set about brewing the morning coffee.

  Caney awakened with a stretch and a crow of exuberance. “Now, then,” she said, “it’s a brand new morning, praise be to God, and I’m here to see it and set my feet on the g
round!”

  Christy smiled. Whenever she got to railing against the fate that had brought her to this pass of destitution, Caney always said or did something that brought her around. Heaven knew, there were plenty of other women in the world in far worse straits than she was—women with no friends, no land, no jewelry to pawn. The brothels of the West were full of such unfortunates—and just the thought of them was enough to give Christy nightmares. “I have business in town,” she said simply, fetching Bridget’s pie from its place of protection in the cedar-lined trunk. “I’ll see about lumber and tar paper for the roof.”

  Caney sat up, looking rumpled in her red taffeta nightgown. “I’d best go with you,” she said.

  Christy shook her head, averted her eyes. It was bad enough, practically begging for what they needed.The prospect of Caney or anyone else she cared about looking on was beyond endurance. “You stay here.There’s plenty to keep you busy, and anyway, this is something I need to do alone.”

  Caney understood pride, and she nodded solemnly. “All right, then,” she said with reluctance, and produced a small, familiar derringer from her ancient valise. Granddaddy had given it to her years before, Christy knew, so she could protect herself when she was away from home. “You take this along. Just in case.”

  Christy accepted the pistol, more at ease with it than she would have expected, and slipped it into her pocket alongside the brooch. She had never fired a gun and hoped she wouldn’t be called upon to do so,that day or any other, but these were dangerous times, and a woman alone was unquestionably vulnerable.

  “You gonna walk to town?” Caney wanted to know. “I could saddle up one of them army horses for you, quick as that.” She snapped her fingers and, after pawing through a trunk, ferreted out a well-worn dress of yellow calico. “You run into some badtempered critter or a band of Injuns, you’ll have a fightin’ chance on horseback—”

  “The marshal said it was two miles into Primrose Creek. That is hardly any distance at all. Besides, I need to stretch my legs.”