Color of the Wind

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Baird struggled with the weariness that rolled over him, the sense of fatalism and desolation that had become all too familiar. "We can track Randy, can't we, Buck?" Baird finally asked.

  Buck pushed up from his knees. "We can sure as hell try."

  "Khy loves Randy," Durban cried, running after them as they went to the barn to saddle their horses. "We've got to find him."

  Baird would have preferred to leave the boy at the ranch in case they ran into trouble, but Durban stuck to them like a cocklebur. Since he'd learned to ride, Durban had become far too fond of roaming, spending too much time by himself—or with unsuitable companions. At least this way, Baird reasoned as they headed south, he'd know where his son was.

  At first the big bull's trail was easy enough to follow, though the wide swathe of trampled grass seemed too straight to be made by an animal wandering by himself and too directly headed toward the Double T. Baird guided his horse along the track, wondering if Cullen McKay was fool enough, or arrogant enough, to take Randy directly to his ranch. Surely he knew the penalties for rustling. Or maybe Cullen thought Baird would care more about protecting the Northcross name than pressing charges.

  Still, Baird was relieved when the trail shied off toward a line of bluffs that lay to the west. He hadn't wanted to have to accuse his cousin of something so reprehensible.

  They'd ridden a whole lot closer to those bluffs and the mountains that mounded up behind them when they found what they were looking for—the clear print of an iron-shod hoof among Randy's tracks.

  "I knew someone was leading him!" Buck exclaimed, squatting down on his haunches at the edge of a creek.

  Durban didn't say much. He just chewed his lip and kept glancing off into the distance.

  The ground turned rocky after they left the stream, making the tracks harder to see. Baird watched the bluffs drawing closer, and when they reached the base, the faint line of hoofprints wound in and out of the weathered outcroppings of wind-cut stone. Then abruptly the prints disappeared, leaving them face to face with a solid sweep of sandstone wall.

  "Where the hell did he go?" Baird demanded, staring up the face of the wall, as if he expected Randy to be perched on top looking down at them.

  "Damned if I know," Buck muttered and dismounted.

  He walked a dozen yards one way and a dozen yards back, staring at the ground and looking for signs.

  Baird should have joined him. Two pair of eyes were better than one, but he stayed in the saddle anyway. He stared out across acres of grassland, a sense of desolation weighing on him. Despite his fascination with this country, it seemed unbearably bleak today. Flat and lonely and barren beneath that wide, oppressive sky. Maybe Wyoming didn't hold the opportunities he thought it did. Maybe he'd been deluding himself when he'd decided he wanted to make a life out here. Maybe a man couldn't change enough to escape his failures.

  The rhythmic squeak of leather intruded on his musings, and he looked across to where Durban sat on his horse a few feet away. The boy was bobbing in the saddle, rubbing his palms up and down against his thighs.

  "Is something bothering you, Son?" Baird asked him.

  Durban jumped as if someone had jabbed him with spurs. "No!" he denied hotly. "Well, maybe. I—I just don't like this place."

  A chill feathered the hair on the back of Baird's neck. He wasn't sure he liked it, either.

  Just then, Buck came toward them, shaking his head. "I'll be damned if I know where that bull went. It's like he was plucked up by angels and set down somewhere else!"

  In these last months Baird had come to rely on Buck's skills, his cow sense, his basic grasp of ranch finance, and his unerring instincts about the weather. It was hard to accept that the old foreman wasn't able to track Randy any further than this.

  "You don't know where he went?"

  The older man shrugged. "Maybe there's something here I just don't see."

  Baird didn't see much either, but he eased his horse back along the base of the bluffs looking for anything Buck could have missed. He couldn't find any sign of where Randy might have disappeared to, either.

  "Let's ride back to where the trail is clearer," he suggested. "Maybe we'll see something if we look at things another way."

  They were nearly back to the creek when a rider approached. None of them was surprised that it was Cullen McKay.

  "Hullo," he hailed them, drawing his horse to a stop. "What brings you out this way?"

  "Randy the Bull broke his fence last night," Durban answered. His words seemed almost a reproach, and Baird slid a long, speculative look in his son's direction.

  "You've lost that fine Hereford bull you paid the sun and moon for a few months back?" McKay asked, sounding incredulous.

  "Yeah, that's him," Buck confirmed. "We followed him as far as the bluffs, then lost his trail. You haven't seen him, have you, McKay?" Johnson's words stopped just short of an accusation.

  "Can't say as I have."

  "Are you sure you haven't seen him?" Durban's tone was taut, almost pleading.

  "Well, no, son." Cullen shifted his gaze toward the boy, focusing on him in a way that made Baird nudge Dandy forward to shield his son from the chill in the other man's eyes. "What makes you think I've seen him?"

  Durban ducked his head. "I just thought you might have."

  "I do think it's fine how you're out helping your father look," Cullen went on. "I know just how much he must appreciate you doing that."

  Baird tightened up on Dandy's reins and put himself directly between Durban and McKay. He didn't understand the other man's animosity, but he wasn't about to let McKay direct it at his boy.

  Cullen backed off a little and gave him a poisonous smile. "So, in addition to this bull, I understand you've lost a lot of other stock this season."

  Baird braced his forearm on his saddle horn and leaned toward McKay. '"What makes you think that?"

  Cullen gave an almost imperceptible shrug. "I hear people talk. I know Buck asked Thornton Watkins if he'd had trouble with wolves, and you talked to Frewen about losing stock to the Indians. I know what Ardith's told me. And Durban."

  Baird suspected the boy had been carrying tales, but the confirmation surprised him anyway. He must have given his feelings away, because Cullen's eyes lit with satisfaction.

  "It'll be a shame if you don't meet your quota," McKay continued. "You'll have to look me up at the Cheyenne Club when you get to town and let me know how you made out."

  "The only quota you should be worrying about, McKay, is your own," Buck spoke up. "Now, we've got a bull to track, if you don't mind us doing that."

  Cullen shrugged. "It's all free range, old man. Track him wherever you like. I'll ask my men if they've seen that bull of yours running loose, but I wouldn't expect to find him anytime soon."

  McKay turned his horse toward the Double T and spurred away.

  Buck sat scowling, watching him go. "Couldn't help bragging a little, could he?"

  "Is that what he was doing?" Baird asked, feeling as if there had been something a good deal more insidious at work.

  "He was bragging, all right," Buck answered with a nod. "Goddamned arrogant son of a bitch."

  Durban didn't express an opinion on the matter. He just watched as McKay rode out of sight.

  Chapter 15

  Boston, Massachusetts

  September 18th, 1882

  My Very Dear Ardith,

  I read your letter of the twelfth with great disappointment and dismay. I find it nearly incomprehensible that you would consider returning to that rough, uncivilized place for the sake of a man who has repeatedly taken advantage of your generosity. But my purpose in writing this is not to disparage a man I have never met. It is to broach a subject that has been close to my heart for quite some time.

  Surely, my dear Ardith, it has not escaped your notice that in the course of the letters we have exchanged, my feelings for you have altered. When you left Boston, I considered you a dear friend and colleague. A deligh
tful companion for a lecture or an evening of theatre, perhaps even a confidante. I have reason to believe that the admiration and respect I felt for you was reciprocated.

  But now, after nearly five months of correspondence, I feel as if I have gained a more intimate understanding of your good nature, and my esteem for you has grown apace of it. I have been touched by the joys and sorrows you have seen fit to share with me, and I feel that they have bound us together at a level of communion I have rarely felt with anyone. Through the letters and our shared confidences, I have come to love you, dear Ardith, with all the passion in my heart.

  It is because I have come to care for you so deeply that I am writing to ask you to be my wife. The letters we have exchanged have convinced me that you are the woman I have been seeking all my life, someone with whom I can share my thoughts, my ideals, and my love. Someone who appreciates the blessed closeness of family, and to whom beauty and culture are as vital as breathing. I want you here with me, Ardith, to be a part of my days and part of my nights. I want to hold you in my arms and never part from you. If you consent to marry me, I will shower you with my devotion for the rest of our days.

  In the hope that you will give me the answer I seek, I am sending my grandmother's emerald as a betrothal ring. Please advise me of your willingness to wear it and consent to be my bride. I look forward to meeting you at the railroad station three weeks hence, and welcoming you into my world and my life as my fiancée.

  Let me tell you once more before I close how deeply I care for you, and how desperately I want you with me. I love you, Ardith, and I breathlessly await the assurance that you love and want me, too.

  With my undying devotion,

  Gavin

  Ardith sank into the chair at the head of the long pine table, too breathless to think, too weak-kneed to stand. Phrases leaped out from the letter in her hands, saying that Gavin felt "bound to her," that he had come to love her "with all the passion in his heart." That he wanted to "shower her with devotion" for the rest of their days.

  Oh, Lord! Dear Lord! This was what she'd yearned for, the gossamer dream she'd woven from gallant kindnesses and warm half-smiles. Night after night she'd lain in that prim little bed in that prim little room at her uncle's house and imagined what it would be like to lie beside Gavin in the dark, to be enfolded in his arms, and taste his kisses.

  Each time she prepared to go into Boston with her portfolio of sketches, she had looked into the mirror in the entry hall, adjusted her hat, and whispered to herself, "Perhaps today he will notice me. Perhaps today he will see me differently."

  Now finally he had seen her as she had longed to be seen, and it was her words, not the cant of her bonnet, that had made the difference.

  She pressed her palms to her flaming cheeks. Gavin needed her, desired her as his wife. The thought of what that meant stole through her—how his mouth would crush down on hers, how his broad hands would stroke over her flesh, how his eyes of cobalt blue would hold her in thrall.

  She blinked the image away, feeling oddly disoriented.

  It was Gavin who wanted her—he had looked past the plainness of her face and the difference in their ages to the woman underneath. He had fallen in love with her thoughts and her words and her pictures. Gavin had come to want her for herself.

  But exactly which self did Gavin want, Ardith suddenly wondered. Did he want the one who had saved herself from a mountain lion, or the one who could unerringly navigate the tangle of streets in downtown Boston? Did he want the Ardith who bathed in the creek or the one who could spontaneously translate the libretto of a Wagner opera? Did he want the woman who could run his house, hostess his salons and dinner parties, or the one who would lie every night for the rest of her life listening for the wind across the prairie?

  Which one of those women did she want to be?

  She looked down at the box that had come with the letter. "In the hope that you will give me the answer I seek," Gavin had written, "I am sending my grandmother's emerald as a betrothal ring." It was a lovely gift, thoughtful, romantic, cloaked in tradition, and bound to Boston as if by silken chains. It was not a token he had given lightly, nor one she could accept without considerable thought.

  Still, she longed to see the ring, the treasure Gavin had offered up as a token of his love. She spread the layers of excelsior in the outer box and withdrew a small black velvet jeweler's case. Holding her breath, she lifted the lid.

  Nestled inside on a bed of gleaming white satin was the most exquisite ring she had ever seen. The emerald was huge, square-cut, set in gold, and surrounded by seed pearls. Ardith lifted the ring from its satin nest and might well have slipped it onto her finger if she hadn't heard the footsteps on the porch and the back door opening.

  Needing time to consider Gavin's offer and all it meant, Ardith fumbled the ring back into its box. China came up beside her before she had managed to tuck everything out of sight.

  "Did you get a gift?" the girl asked, as Ardith hastily settled the velvet lid in place.

  Ardith shook her head. "It's just something I asked Gavin to send to me."

  "That is from Gavin, then?"

  Ardith hesitated. "Yes."

  "May I see what he sent you?"

  Ardith jammed the velvet box back in among the curls of wooden packaging. "It's nothing really," she assured her niece. "Nothing you'd be interested in. Nothing."

  China gave her a long, speculative glance. Knowing the girl's perceptiveness, Ardith did her best to divert her.

  She gestured to another of the packages lying on the table. "There's something there for you from your grandfather."

  China picked up the box and hefted it. "It's sweet of Grandfather to think of us," China began, "but he doesn't seem to realize there's not much call out here for white kid gloves and hair ribbons. I think I'll let Khy open it. I like how excited he gets where there's something in the mail for him.

  "What I was wondering," China went on, "was if you know how soon Hunter Jalbert will be bringing Meggie to the ranch?"

  Ardith drew a breath, lightheaded with relief at having China's attention turn from Gavin's gift. She wanted to keep the news of his proposal to herself for a time.

  "They'll be arriving any day now, I should think," she answered. "Your father has rounded up almost all the cattle he's taking to Cheyenne. The Jalberts know we'll be leaving a week after the herd, so they'll have Meggie here in time to go with us."

  "And when we reach Cheyenne," China verified, "you and Meggie will be taking the train to Boston?"

  At those simple words a wave of grief broke through Ardith, all but bringing her to her knees. Her chest ached with longing, and she had to tighten her fingers around the box Gavin had sent to still their trembling.

  She had known for weeks that leaving was inevitable, that her time in Wyoming was coming to an end. She had known she was losing this small perfect piece of her life, this small perfect piece of herself. Why did China's simple words cast that loss in such sharp relief?

  "If we're going to get Meggie enrolled in her classes, we'll need to leave as soon as we get to Cheyenne," she said, trying to hide the depth of her regrets. "Once your papa has concluded his business, you'll all head for New York and take a steamship from there to England."

  "I can hardly believe we're going back," China said on a sigh, "after everything that's happened."

  Ardith curled an arm around China's shoulders and drew her close. "I know, sweetheart. I'm so proud of you for the grown-up way you've accepted Matt's death."

  China snuggled against her, the child in her seeking reassurance, the half-grown woman with a dawning wisdom of her own. "I'll always love him, Aunt Ardith. But I know I have my life ahead of me."

  Ardith drew China closer. "I think caring for Matt, knowing how good and fine he was, will help you choose the right man for your husband when that time comes."

  "He'll have to be someone special to be better than Matt," China said with a catch in her voice.


  "Yes, he will." Ardith wrapped both arms around her niece and pressed a kiss into China's hair. "He'll be someone wonderful, someone who admires you and appreciates you for who you are. You'll recognize him when you find him because Matt taught you what to expect."

  "Have you ever found a man like that, Aunt Ardith?" the girl asked her.

  The question made Ardith look long and hard at her own life. At the woman she was and the woman she wanted to become.

  Yes, she thought and glanced down at the box she'd received from Gavin just today. She thought of the beautiful ring tucked inside and the promise this wonderful man had asked her to make. She thought of Baird, who'd touched her heart and held her when she cried. Of Baird who had never asked Ardith anything and never would.

  Yes, she though in answer to China's question. Oh, yes, I have.

  She closed her eyes against the sting of tears.

  * * *

  Baird didn't make it back to the house until after the children were abed. Ardith had been sitting up sketching, wanting to tell him about Gavin's proposal before she mentioned it to anyone else. But when Baird finally dragged in, he looked so worn and preoccupied that Ardith decided to hold her peace.

  "Have you had anything to eat?" she asked him as he sank into a chair at the end of the table.

  When he shook his head, she bustled off to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. She fixed him a plate, slicing roast beef and bread, scooping out helpings of coleslaw and Myra's beans. She spooned canned peaches into a dish and sliced gingerbread to go with them.

  Baird was asleep with his head on his arms when she got back, sprawled as if his bones were dissolving. She settled the tray of food on the table, and stood frowning down at him.

  His lashes lay in the darkened hollows beneath his eyes. Concern for the ranch and the children had scored new lines into that beautiful face. She reached across and stroked his hair to awaken him, realizing that the thick, dark strands were damp, as if he'd taken time to bathe the smell of cows away before he came back to the house.