Chapter 21
The Webster brothers found Ward’s body two miles downstream from the point where the disaster occurred. Numb and dry-eyed, Les watched them bring him into camp, draped across the back of Caleb’s horse.
Stumbling, she headed toward a clump of blackjack oak, feeling sick inside. The last thing she wanted was company, and her heart sank when she heard the creak of Alex’s wheels.
“Peach and James are digging a grave,” Freddy said, setting the brake on Alex’s chair.
“Luther has agreed to say a few words. If there’s anything you want, a special hymn…”
Freddy touched her cheek. “We’re sorry for your loss, Les.”
Hysteria choked her. “My loss,” she repeated. Sinking to the ground, she buried her face in her hands. “I could have saved him, but I didn’t.” She kept remembering him reaching out to her. He would have seen the rope in her hands. “I just stood there and watched him drown.”
Freddy placed an arm around her shoulders. “No one could have saved him, Les. He was lost the minute his horse went under.”
Sobbing, she told them about the evening in the gully, about Caldwell’s offer, about Ward’s threats to kill her and the beatings she had endured. At the end, she lifted a tear-streaked face. “Don’t you see? I hated him! When I saw his horse go under I was glad! All I thought about was me. That I was finally free. He wouldn’t hit me ever again. I wouldn’t have to marry him, wouldn’t have to be afraid. And God help me, I was glad!” She stared at them. “What kind of monster am I?” she whispered.
Freddy studied the anguish in her eyes, then she silently rose and walked away, heading toward Grady’s remuda.
Les thought her heart would break. Shoulders heaving with fresh sobs, she sagged against Alex’s chair. “Do you hate me, too?”
Alex stroked her hair. “Freddy doesn’t hate you. I don’t know what she has in mind, but trust her.”
They both looked toward the soft thud of hooves as Freddy rode toward them, leading Cactus. Wiping at her eyes, Les tried and failed to make sense of what she was seeing. Freddy wanted her to ride somewhere?
“Come on, Les,” Freddy said firmly. “We have enough light left to try an experiment.” She glanced at Alex. “I know what I’m doing.”
Alex nodded and leaned forward, pushing Les to her feet. “Do as Freddy says.”
Too wrung out to resist, Les swung up in her saddle. Riding with her head down, she didn’t look up until she heard the roar of tossing violent water. “What is this?” she asked sharply, reining in. The river was the last place she wanted to be. “I’m going back.”
“No, you aren’t.” Riding up beside her, Freddy grabbed the reins out of her hands and lead her to a low spot much like the place where she had stood motionless and let Ward die.
“Oh God.” She didn’t want to relive this. When Freddy tied up their horses, she refused to get out of the saddle. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Freddy looked up at her. “I’m going to walk upstream a ways, and I’m going to toss branches into the river. You stand at the edge of the water and try to hit the branches with your rope.” Green eyes narrowed and flashed at her. “Get off that horse.”
They stared at each other, both suddenly angry. “You always have the answers, don’t you? You always have to make a drama out of every damned thing!”
“Do you want to spend the next twenty-five years like you’ve spent the first twenty-five? Feeling afraid and sorry for yourself? Poor Les, who everyone picks on. Poor Les, the monster who let her son-of-a-bitch fiancé drown without lifting a finger! Is that what you want? Do you get some kind of pleasure out of seeing yourself as a victim?”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
“Get down here. Show me you have the courage to discover the truth.”
“I hate you! I don’t have to show you anything!”
“Then show yourself! If you don’t find out the truth, you’ll lose everything you’ve gained. You’ll go back to being the kind of woman who lets a man hit her. If you can’t find a man to punish you, you’ll punish yourself! Maybe you could have saved him, Les, and maybe you’ll have to live with that. But I’m betting that you couldn’t have done it, and you have nothing to blame yourself for.” Turning on her bootheel, Freddy stalked away, pushing through the willows.
Crying, Les watched her go. When Freddy disappeared into the foliage, she climbed off her saddle with the intention of untying her horse and leaving. Then she saw the first branch go bobbing past in the river waters.
Frozen, she stood beside her horse and waited for the next branch. When she saw it rush by her, she dropped her head and felt the weight of the rope coiled on her hip. Did she have the courage to seek the truth? Did she want to know?
Freddy was out of sight and would never know the results. Only Les would know. Suddenly, urgently, she needed to learn if she could have saved him.
Taking the rope from her hip, her breath hot and fast, she made herself approach the water’s edge. The next branch that came tossing and swirling in the foamy water, was closer than Ward had been and she believed it would be easy to lay the rope right on top of the wet leaves.
She was wrong. Her rope hit the water behind the branch, which had already swirled past her. Clutching the rope in sweaty hands, she waited for the next one. This time her throw landed short. By her seventh attempt, she understood she could not have saved him.
She gave it one more try, straining to anticipate the speed and power of the current. This time she came close. If she’d had the time to make a calculated judgment, if she could have practiced, if Ward had caught the rope at the precise moment, maybe… But there were too many ifs. In the end, Freddy was right. Ward had been doomed the instant his horse went under.
Her hands went limp and the rope played out through her fingers, dragged into the flood by the currents. She watched until it disappeared, then she ran crashing through the underbrush, shouting Freddy’s name. When she found her, she threw herself into Freddy’s arms. “Thank you! Oh, Freddy, thank you!”
Freddy held her and let her cry it out, then she eased back and smoothed a strand of hair off of Les’s cheek. Finally she smiled. “If you’re ready, let’s ride back and watch them plant the son of a bitch. It’s over, Les. You’re free.”
The trail wound north through the Indian Territory, over high, rolling prairies. Water was plentiful along heavily wooded streams, the grass thick and lush. Dal camped near Stinking Creek the first night after crossing the Red River.
As he rode into camp, he could see Monument Hill, a flat-topped mesa strewn with slabs and boulders of sandstone. Early trailblazers had marked this section of the Chisholm with red stones off the mesa, creating piles almost twelve feet tall.
After supper, he and Freddy walked out on the range, and he showed her the rocks. “The piles are about three hundred feet apart across this section of the trail,” he explained. “Somewhere in one of those piles is a stone with my initials. Shall I carve yours?”
“Thank you.” The setting sun bathed her tanned skin in tints of gold and orange. “And Alex’s and Les’s, too, if you don’t mind.”
Kneeling, he removed his knife and leaned over the soft sandstone. “How is Les holding up?” As he carved the initials, Freddy told him Les’s story, and his face turned grim. “It worked out for the best,” he said finally, standing away from the rocks.
Now that he’d folded his knife away and his hands were unoccupied, it was harder to be near her. He couldn’t look at the smooth column of her throat without remembering where it led. Couldn’t glance at her slender waist without recalling the delights above and below. When he saw the curve of her buttocks beneath her trousers, his palms grew moist. Desire was no stranger, but it had never been this consuming, this intense and constant.
Freddy held a wild daisy in her hand and plucked at the petals as she spoke. “How many beeves did we lose during the crossing?”
All day the drovers had been asking the same que
stion, and each time the answer stuck in his throat. “Twenty-three.” He did the math for her. “Our margin is down to seventy-one.”
“Will that be enough?” she asked, raising eyes that looked like jade in the glow of sunset.
“I sure as hell hope so,” he said thickly, staring at her mouth. Something about this woman and this woman alone sang to his mind and body, calling to him like the sirens of myth. When she looked at him a dozen emotions churned inside his chest. He wanted her, wanted her to admire him. He wanted to be twice the man he thought he was for her sake. He wanted to win the inheritance for her, wanted to slay a dragon and lay it at her feet. He wanted to put his brand on her for the world to see, wanted to hold her close and never let her go.
“When you look at me like that, I can’t think,” she whispered. The daisy fluttered from her fingers.
“We should go back,” he said hoarsely.
“Is that what you want to do?”
A groan scraped his throat when he glimpsed the tip of her tongue. “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Freddy. I don’t want you to ever think I used you.”
“I appreciate that.” Then she surprised him by stepping close and winding her arms around his neck. “Now I need to know how offended you would be if I take advantage of you, and use you.” A mischievous grin curved her beautiful lips.
For an instant he didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. Then he laughed and pulled her roughly against his body. “I think I could put up with it.” Cupping her buttocks, he held her close and let her feel what the touch of her did to him. Then he said what he had to before he lost control. “We want different things, Freddy, different lives. I can’t promise you a future. Hell, I can’t promise you anything.”
“Just give me now,” she murmured, lifting her lips.
When he kissed her, he forgot about everything except her body curving into his and the womanly scent and heat and sweetness of her. A deep hunger shook his body and mind, and he could not have stepped away from her if his life had depended on it.
They came together with fire and urgency, needing each other and the joy they could take and give. Wild with desire, they sank to the soft grass beneath the high pile of sandstone and tore at each other’s clothing, frantic for the warm touch of smooth skin.
Dal told himself that he wanted to be gentle and tender with her, wanted to tell her all the things he could not say except through lingering caresses and long, slow kisses. But they had been too long apart, and the urgency to melt into each other ran at fever pitch.
They tore at each other’s boots, then threw off shirts and trousers and fell backward in the grass, locked in each other’s arms. He didn’t notice the small rocks beneath his bare knees, didn’t hear the distant notes of a harmonica drifting on the evening breeze. The only thing he saw were her eyes looking up at him, filled with desire and as green as the grass that surrounded her cloud of dark hair. All he heard was the music of their quick, ragged breath and the cadence of two hearts pounding as one.
When he entered her and felt her bare legs wrap around his waist, he paused and gasped and knew he would never come closer to heaven than he was this minute.
Later, Freddy lay in his arms, her fingers idly combing the hair on his chest. “When did it get dark?” she asked softly, laughing. “I didn’t notice.” After a moment she posed a serious question. “Dal? What will you do if we don’t win?”
He pulled a long strand of dark hair across his throat, enjoying the silky feel on his skin, then he tightened his arms around her. “Maybe I’ll go to Montana anyway. See if I can hire on somewhere. What would you do? Join up with an acting company?”
She was silent so long that he wondered if she had fallen asleep. “I’ve never told anyone this,” she said finally. “I didn’t return to Klees because I came to my senses or because Pa ordered me to return. I went home only because the Maestro sent me packing. I tried three different companies and—this is so hard to say—they all let me go.”
She spoke so softly that he could hardly hear her although his ear was only inches from her lips. “I’m sorry, Freddy.”
“Do you know what it’s like to want something with all your heart, but know that you aren’t any good at it?”
He had hoped she didn’t know. Hearing her confide that she did hurt him inside. “Maybe the Maestros didn’t recognize good acting when they saw it.”
Leaning, she kissed him, then sat up and gazed into the darkness. “I’m good enough to act scenes for Peach and Drinkwater and the rest. But I’ll never be good enough to perform for a real paying audience.” She paused and her head dropped. “I wanted it so bad. I loved the applause, and I pretended it was for me. But it never was. It was for the other actors.”
There was something so dejected and vulnerable in the naked curve of her spine that his chest ached just to look at her.
“Riding night watch gives a person a lot of time to think,” she said, tugging at the prairie grass. “I’ve been fooling myself. Reading scripts and practicing scenes. I’m never going to be a great actress.” Her shoulders collapsed, and she sat very still for a moment before she reached for her shirt. “The best I can hope is that we win and I can build a theater house. That way, at least I’d be close to the stage and greatness. I don’t know what I’ll do if we lose.”
“You could come to Montana,” he said lightly, touching the back of her neck.
She arched her throat and leaned back against his hand. “I saw snow once. I didn’t like it much. I think Montana is for you rough, tough cowboy types, not for failed actresses.” She didn’t look at him. “Have you ever thought of trying your luck in a place like San Francisco?”
“What would a man like me do in a big city? All I know is cattle and ranching.” Gently, he turned her to face him. “Freddy, I’ve listened to you recite around the campfire, and I think you’re a fine actress,” he lied. “Owning a theater is a good second choice, but maybe you’re giving up the dream too soon.”
“Liar,” she said softly, but he saw a glisten of gratitude in her moist eyes. “The worst of it was I shamed my family, hurt my pa, ruined my reputation and destroyed my future, all for something I’m no good at.” A bitter smile curved her lips. “I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself. But this…” She waved a hand to include the land, the steers, the campfires, and the people around them. “It’s all so real. There’s no room for pretense out here. You can’t hide in a role. The drive scrapes people down to their core and makes them take a hard look at what’s inside.”
He put his arms around her and held her close. “What’s inside you is good, Freddy Roark. You don’t have to pretend to be anyone else.” Staring toward the range over her shoulder, he ground his teeth together and silently swore he would get two thousand cattle to Abilene if it killed him. She would have her grand theater in San Francisco.
It wasn’t going to be easy. Last year, a party of Cheyenne had stampeded a herd of longhorns in the Indian Territory and made off with all of them. Later it came out that the trail boss had refused to give any beeves to the Indians who came into camp begging for meat. The raid had occurred in retaliation. The lesson? When begging Indians appeared, give them a steer. The next three weeks were going to seem endless.
So many steers were footsore that Dal announced they would rest the herd for two days beside the flooding Washita River and wait for the high water to subside. No one wanted a repeat of the Red River catastrophe. Fine tall grass swayed in a light breeze flowing down the Washita Valley. The water was clear and sweet, good for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes.
Freddy draped a wet shirt over the willows lining the red-clay banks, humming under her breath. It was amazing how a bath and clean clothing could improve a person’s spirits.
She was smiling as she walked back to camp, but her smile vanished when she noticed a tall Indian man and a boy. Slowing her steps, she watched Dal rope one of the footsore steers, and lead it toward the Indians, his expression tight.
This was the third steer so far that the Cheyenne had demanded as tribute for crossing the territory.
What she saw next infuriated her. The man and the boy left camp, leading the steer, and Jack Caldwell followed. She could guess what Caldwell was saying to the Indian.
Fists clenched, she stormed onto the range, anger blazing in her eyes. She intercepted Jack as he was turning away from the Indians, a satisfied smile on his lips.
“If I were a man, I’d kill you,” she said, spitting the words.
“Now, Fancy honey, why would you say a thing like that?” He smiled, his gaze lingering on the silky fall of hair that dropped almost to her waist. “You look beautiful today.”
“Did you tell them to come every day and demand a steer? Did you tell him to send his friends here to beg for meat?” She knew that’s what he had done. “You make me sick!”
Caldwell fell into step beside her as she whirled. “It’s not too late, Fancy. The offer is open. You can come out of this with something to show for it.”
“Even with all your cheating, at the last count we still had enough steers to win!”
“Why, darlin’, you’ve cut me to the quick.” Grinning, he placed a hand on his chest, then his expression sobered. “You aren’t going to win.” He grabbed her arm, but she shook off his hand. “I don’t care about the others, but I’d hate to see you go through this ordeal, then end up with nothing.” Stepping in front of her, he touched her face. “I can’t get you out of my mind.”
Freddy slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she warned, letting him see the frost in her eyes. “I have no feeling for you. None. You don’t want to know what I think of you.”
“If you’re betting on Frisco, you’re putting your money on the wrong man.”
“I’m putting my money on the best man,” she snapped. “I love him.”
It was the first time she’d spoken the words aloud and they rang in her ears. Surprise stiffened her shoulders, then her body relaxed. Fighting a fact didn’t make it less true. But admitting something she’d been trying to ignore didn’t make her happy either. Her gaze swung toward the remuda, where Grady and Dal were talking. Loving him complicated everything.
The Best Man Page 33