The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  Sometimes the vast open spaces made her feel so insignificant as to experience utter hopelessness. Other times she felt paralyzed with fear, clinging to the wheels or her worktable, terrified that she would be drawn up, up, up and swallowed by the seamless sky. Always she worried that the pilot would forget where he left her and take the herd somewhere else.

  When the pilot waved her off and cantered away, she glanced at Les, then reached for her crutch and leaned over the side to poke the crutch tip at the ground. Her routine began by checking every inch of the campsite for rattlesnakes. The first week out, she had rolled her chair over a snake and the experience had stopped her heart and aged her ten years. It hadn’t been a rattler, thank God, but it could have been. The lesson stayed with her.

  Climbing down, she adjusted the crutch beneath her armpit, and found her pistol behind the driver’s seat before she grimly set off on the twice-daily snake hunt. As always, she silently thanked Dal Frisco for insisting that they learn to shoot.

  “Were you firing a gun?” Les asked drowsily when Alex returned to the wagon.

  “I got two of them,” Alex said crisply. She was leaving a satisfying trail of dead snakes behind her. “I’ll get you some water.”

  Then she would grind the coffee beans and throw together a quick noon meal of cush and bacon. Cush was leftover corn bread crumbled and cooked until crusty then served drowning in salty gravy. Once she had the cush on the fire, she’d put tonight’s beans to soak and check to see if there was anything quick and interesting among the food tins.

  Sometimes she waited for Grady to dig the fire pit, but more and more frequently she fetched her sharpened spade, dropped to the ground, and dug the pit herself rather than waste time waiting for the remuda. It no longer bothered her that Luther, Caldwell, or Ward might arrive and see her squirming around on the ground. She didn’t care what they thought.

  Today, Ward arrived before anyone else and Alex was glad for once to see him. It meant Les wouldn’t have to wait for Grady to untie her from the seat and help her to the ground. Ward spread a blanket over the grass and took Les a drink of water. Since no one else had arrived yet, he brought Alex an armload of kindling and wood from the cooney.

  “How else can I help, sister?”

  “I can manage, thank you.” She stared at the wood and frowned, then pulled herself off the ground and onto the crutch.

  “Shall I bring down your wheelchair?”

  “Grady will do it when he rides in.”

  “At least I can set up the pot hanger and hang the coffeepots.”

  “I don’t need help or want it,” she said sharply. “You know the rules.”

  Immediately he took offense. She saw it in the way his face pinched and his shoulders stiffened. But she wasn’t Les. His posturing didn’t move her to apologize, it only annoyed her.

  “I’m trying to lighten your burden, sister. And there’s no one to see.”

  In addition to his other disagreeable qualities, he had just revealed himself as a cheat. She lowered her worktable, then gave him a frosty glare.

  “I choose to abide by the rules whether or not there’s a danger of someone catching me cheating,” she said coldly.

  A plum-colored flush climbed his cheeks. “It would be better for all concerned if we could be civil to each other. Very soon I’ll be the head of this family.” He stared at her, letting his words sink in. “You and Freddy would do well to remember who will be managing your affairs.”

  “I beg your pardon! You will never manage my affairs, Mr. Hamm.”

  “I believe it’s customary that—”

  “Never,” she repeated angrily. “Marrying Les makes you her husband, it does not make you the head of the Roark family, and I will never recognize you as such. If you press the issue, Mr. Hamm, I’ll tie up the entire inheritance for years if need be, I’ll use every legal means available. I promise that you will never manage one cent of my money.” His presumption outraged her.

  “I may have to challenge that view. For your own good.”

  He was such a despicable cretin. “This is not the Dark Ages. You’re not marrying one sister and gaining the assets of three.” She gave the wheel on the coffee mill a savage turn. “I have two excellent attorneys in Boston, Mr. Hamm. Should you pursue this reprehensible course, I will instruct them to destroy you. And by heaven, I will enjoy it.”

  He jerked backward from her expression. “You think you’re so superior!”

  “Yes, Mr. Hamm. I do.”

  “Well, we shall just see, won’t we? We’ll just see about that!”

  Instantly she thought of Payton lying dead in the rain, and she almost stumbled. How dare she hold herself above Ward Hamm? His crimes were pettiness, unpleasantness, greed, an inflated opinion of himself. Her crime was so much worse.

  “If you’re so superior,” he hissed at her, “then why is Les so ill? She has two more days! That’s all. Then she has to go back on the line.”

  “She can’t,” Alex said flatly. “I’m sorry that Les will have to withdraw from the drive. She’s worked hard and she deserves better.” Every word she spoke was true. “But I’ve done everything I know how, and she’s still dangerously ill. As I’ve told you before, Les could die. Her wound has closed in some spots, it’s seeping in others. Her fever rises and falls, but it doesn’t fall enough. What she needs is a few weeks in bed with someone knowledgeable nursing her. If you care for her, Mr. Hamm, don’t wait. I urge you to put Les in your wagon right now and drive ahead to Waco. Put her in a hotel and find a doctor as quickly as you can.”

  “Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you, you and Freddy.” His eyes closed into slits and spittle flew from his lips. “Then the two of you could split her share. I see right through this.”

  Alex jerked upright and stiffened. If he had been closer, she would have slapped his sweating red face, would have raked her broken fingernails down his cheeks. “How dare you!” The urge to do violence was so strong that she felt faint with her need to strike him.

  “If I have to tie Les onto her saddle, she isn’t leaving the drive. You aren’t going to get our share!”

  Rage immobilized her or she would have swung her crutch at his head.

  Three days later, when Freddy heard Ward’s shout, she pulled back on the reins and peered through a haze of dust. Les’s horse was heading south toward Ward’s wagon, moving away from the herd. Les was semiconscious, mumbling, and the only thing holding her in the saddle was the waist harness that Ward had devised and made for her.

  Riding after her, Freddy caught the reins and guided Les’s horse into a turn, leading the mare back toward the stragglers and the dust kicked up by the main herd. When she spotted a puddle left from last night’s brief rainstorm, she jumped off her horse, ran to the puddle and wet her bandanna. She mounted again and reached to give Les a shake.

  “I… wha…” Les licked her lips. “I’m dying, Freddy. Please. Please let me lie down.”

  Tears cut the dust on Freddy’s cheeks and she dashed at them with the back of her glove. “Here, Les. Wipe your face.” She pushed the wet bandanna into Les’s lap, watched Les stare down at it with a stupid expression. “I can’t get close enough to do it for you.”

  She’d never been as happy to see anyone as when Dal rode out of the rolling dust. Cold anger glittered in his eyes when he looked at Les, swaying and bobbing in the saddle. “This is criminal,” he said, speaking between his teeth. He sent an icy stare toward Ward’s wagon following behind.

  Freddy hit the saddletree with her fist. “I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate Ward Hamm. He’s going to kill her!”

  Last night’s rain had cooled the air, but Les was burning with fever and didn’t seem to know where she was.

  “Please, Dal. Isn’t there something you can do? Is there any way to persuade Lola to give Les another week off the line?” She didn’t know if another week would be enough, but it would be better than this. Anything would be better than watching this.
“If Lola won’t agree, then there must be something we can do to force that greedy, murdering, son of bitch Ward to pull her out of this drive before it kills her!”

  “Lola won’t budge,” Dal snapped, staring at Les. Her chin was on her chest, her eyes closed. Only the waist harness held her on the saddle. “I’ve talked to Hamm, threatened him; he won’t budge either.”

  Freddy pulled off her hat and slapped it hard against her thigh. Anger and frustration made her chest hurt. “He doesn’t have the right to make this decision for her!”

  “Luther says he does. Les and Ward have officially announced their intention to marry at the end of the drive. She has given her property, future, and life into Hamm’s hands. She has no other male guardian, no close male kin. As her future husband, Hamm is claiming ownership and the right to make decisions that will affect them both.”

  “Ownership!” Freddy shouted in a strangled voice. The West was far more liberal than the East, but even here conventions prevailed when it was convenient. Releasing a scream, she galloped away from Dal and rode up fast and hard on Mouse and Brownie, the laziest of the stragglers. She ran them a quarter of a mile before she halted to catch her breath and wait for Dal and Les to catch up.

  “You’re the boss. You could put her off the drive,” she said to Dal when he rode up, leading Les’s horse.

  “Tell me what reason I can use that Hamm won’t challenge in court. Give me a valid justification, and I’ll put Les off this drive faster than you can quote a line from one of your plays.”

  “She isn’t doing the work! Look at her. She’s only half-conscious!”

  “Ward will say she was on her horse, in position, putting in the hours.” Stretching a hand, he gently pushed Les upright, then swore steadily.

  Tears spilled over Freddy’s lashes. “She didn’t work the last two stampedes!”

  “Hamm will say that was because I ordered her not to. He’d be right.”

  Freddy’s leg brushed his. “Put her off the drive anyway, I beg you. Alex and I will sign anything Ward wants saying that we’ll give Les her share of the inheritance if we win. She doesn’t have to finish the drive, she can go somewhere, and rest, and get well. She’ll get her share anyway! Tell him that!”

  Sunlight fell across Dal’s eyes when he turned his head, making them appear coolly translucent. “Alex already suggested that proposition to Luther, but it won’t work. You and Alex don’t get to decide how the inheritance is divided. Joe made that decision in his will, and the will says if any of you drop out for any reason, you forfeit your share of the inheritance.”

  “There must be some way around—”

  Dal’s sudden laugh made her look up. “If there was any way to tinker with the will and Joe’s conditions, you would have hired the first trail boss you interviewed. Believe me, if ever there was a watertight will, Joe’s will is it.”

  Despair made her stomach cramp. “The estate could be distributed, then Alex and I could quietly give Les a share. No one would have to know, just us.”

  “Ward will never accept a verbal agreement from you and Alex, you know that.” Sympathy vied with anger across his expression. His jaw clenched when he looked at Les. “This goes on until she dies or recovers.”

  Freddy covered her face in her hands.

  They both watched Les’s slumped figure in front of them. “I’m starting to worry about you, Freddy. You were up most of last night sitting with Les, and spent the other half chasing a stampede. Tired cowboys make stupid mistakes.”

  “It was dark and raining. That’s why I ran into Charlie’s horse.”

  “You ran into Charlie because you were too exhausted to pay attention, and you didn’t react fast enough. Because you’ve only had about three hours’ sleep in the last four days. If you want to kill yourself like Les is doing, fine, but you’re not entitled to endanger my other drovers.”

  She was exhausted enough that she only half listened to what he was saying. Her attention strayed to his mouth, and she surrendered to the fascination of watching how he formed words. She thought she knew every detail about him—Lord knew she watched every move he made—but she hadn’t noticed the way he pushed some words out, caressed others. A ball of heat uncurled in her stomach, and she wet her lips. If she didn’t stop thinking about him, wondering and speculating, she would lose her mind.

  “How many beeves have we lost?” she asked, fixing her thoughts in a different direction. Once she had believed the worst thing that could happen to her was never to act onstage again. Now she understood the worst thing would be to endure this ordeal, then discover at the end that it had been for nothing.

  “We lost two steers last night.” For the first time, Freddy saw weariness in the tanned lines that gave strength to his face. “That brings us to fifty-nine lost.”

  “And cuts our margin to 153,” she said slowly.

  Blinking hard, she told herself fiercely that they would win. Fate wouldn’t put them through this then snatch away the prize at the end. Please God, she thought, looking at Les through a film of tears, help her. And let us win.

  Dal leaned against the wheel of the chuck wagon, smoking, listening to the night sounds of a sleeping camp. Caleb and his brother sat beside the fire, drinking coffee and talking quietly, waiting to take their turn at night watch. Freddy and Alex were still in Les’s tent. Along about midnight, the steers had pushed to their feet as they usually did about that time, had done a little soft blowing and grazing, then settled down again.

  Tonight there wouldn’t be a stampede, he had made sure of it, at least as sure as he could be that a stampede wouldn’t start by human design. Dal had kept an eye on the observers’ camp until midnight; now Grady was out there in the darkness and would stay until dawn, watching to make certain that Caldwell didn’t approach the bedding grounds.

  Dal should have crawled into his bedroll and gotten some sleep, but he kept running events through his mind. Last night a spectacular lightning storm had terrifled the steers, had brought them to their feet and started them running. But the night before, there had been no apparent reason for a stampede.

  His gut told him Caldwell was behind the unusual number of stampedes occurring on this drive. There was nothing he would have liked better than to catch the son of a bitch red-handed, but it didn’t look like that would happen tonight. Tonight Caldwell was apparently giving himself an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  An hour later, still not sleepy, he poured a cup of coffee and sat beside the embers to warm himself. The Webster boys were riding the herd, and he was alone, not fit company for anyone. Smoking he watched Alex crawl out of Les’s tent, drag herself into her wheelchair, rest a moment, then roll through the darkness to fetch something from the chuck wagon. On her way back, half-blind with fatigue, she ran a wheel into someone’s boot. A man rose out of his bedroll, muttered a curse at her, then sank back down. Alex whispered an apology then touched a hand to her eyelids before she maneuvered around the bedroll and returned to Les’s tent.

  Alex puzzled him. She used the crutch as skillfully and confidently now as if she’d used a crutch from the beginning. But the instant she didn’t absolutely need to be upright, she returned to the chair, which was unwieldy, slow, and agonizingly hard to push through high grass and over rough ground. He’d given up trying to understand why she made it so hard for herself.

  He didn’t notice that Freddy had crawled out of the tent until he heard a chorus of muttered swearing rising from the bedrolls. When he stood, he saw her reeling toward him, tripping over bedrolls, a tired but radiant smile lighting her face.

  She gripped his arms when she reached him, excitement trapping the low firelight in her eyes. “The fever’s broken! The fever’s broken! Les will make it now! She’s weak as a calf, but she’s going to be all right!” Throwing her arms around his waist, she pressed her forehead against his chest and wept.

  The worst thing he could have done was wrap his arms around her, but he couldn’t help himself. Ma
king soothing sounds deep in his throat, he held her, stroked her shaking shoulders, and let her cry out the last ten days of fear and worry and now relief.

  When she finally raised her face, he discovered he’d made a mistake. The worst thing was not holding her. It was kissing her. He couldn’t help doing that either.

  Chapter 15

  Her response to his kiss was as shatteringly explosive as her response had been the night she’d lost her horse during the stampede. Dal’s mouth came down on hers, hard and possessive, and an earthquake rocked Freddy’s body, shaking loose a fiery urgency that bubbled through her bloodstream. Any fleeting thought of resistance melted in the heat between their hips, in the fervor of seeking lips and thrusting tongues.

  She’d been mad to throw herself into his arms, crazy to pretend that touching him wouldn’t be like setting a match to paper. But somewhere beneath the relief of knowing that Les would live and recover had been the excitement of finding a justification to throw caution and sensibility to the winds and seek the thrill of his arms. She had flown to him as unerringly as a moth to the flame, and deep in her heart she knew where it would lead. At some point, without knowing exactly how or when it happened, she had made a decision that she recognized only now.

  A low groan wrenched from his throat, and he whispered her name against her lips. His hands stroked her back, her hips, strayed toward her buttocks then slid away. Beneath the wildness unleashed by his kisses, Freddy retained enough presence of mind to realize he fought the frenzied arousal she felt in his body and in hers.

  So many things had changed since they had walked away from each other the last time. It might have been her instead of Les who was gashed by a needle-tipped horn; she could die without ever knowing him. Now she understood that she might take nothing away from this drive except the memory of Dal Frisco. Most of all, she needed respite from the continual wondering and longing and desire that kissing him before had unleashed. What she felt went beyond wanting him; she needed him.