The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  “We don’t have much time left,” she whispered, lifting her hands to the buttons on his shirt. “Right now, I love you, and you love me. For the moment, nothing else matters.”

  When she lifted her lips and breathed his name, his good intentions fled. His arms tightened around her, and he kissed her hard, trying to tell her with his hands and body that saying good-bye to her was going to be the hardest thing he ever did.

  They were naked and in each other’s arms when a dozen painted horses galloped between them and the herd. Startled, hearts pounding, they jumped to their feet, swearing and grabbing for their clothing.

  “Indians!” Freddy shouted toward the camp.

  But the warning came too late. The Indians fired their rifles in the air, and an instant later the herd was in full stampede.

  Chapter 22

  The contest was over. The inheritance had been decided.

  After conferring, Dal and Luther returned to the main camp where everyone had assembled. Caldwell staggered behind, wearing a gloating expression, but he didn’t speak. If Caldwell had uttered a single word of self-congratulation, Dal would have killed him. He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself.

  The herd was grazing now, but it had been a long night. No one had slept. The sun had climbed well into the sky before they finished rounding up the scattered steers and took a count.

  Habit carried Dal to the coffeepot above the fire and he poured a cup before he looked at the worried faces watching him. His gaze rested a moment on Freddy’s weary expression, and his chest tightened with bitterness. She would never have her grand theater in San Francisco, would never stand in the wings close to her dream. Maybe Luther would declare his obvious feelings for Les, or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe Alex would bury the past and accept John, or maybe she couldn’t. He didn’t know what would happen to them.

  He squared his shoulders then cleared his throat. “The good news is that no one got killed or seriously injured. The bad news is that the Indians stole forty-two steers. During the stampede, five beeves drowned, and one was lost in quicksand. Two broke their legs, and we had to put them down.” His jaw clamped so tightly it was an effort to speak. “That’s fifty. The herd now numbers 1979.”

  A soft sighing sound whispered through the camp as breaths released and heads dropped. Someone said, “Son of a bitch!” Another voice protested, “It aint fair!”

  “We oughta walk away right now,” Grady snapped. He threw a bitter look at Jack Caldwell. “These aint our beeves anymore. Why should we take ’em in for the widow? I say we just turn ’em out on the range and ride away.”

  “I’ve never abandoned a herd, and I’m not going to start now.” Turnning the herd loose wouldn’t hurt Lola or Jack, wouldn’t affect the outcome. But it would place a stain on the reputation of every man in the outfit, and Dal owed his drovers more than that. Raising a hand, Dal kneaded the tension in his shoulder. “We’re about two and a half weeks out of Abilene. Let’s get those beeves moving.”

  Silently the drovers filed past him, dropped their coffee cups into Alex’s wreck pan, then headed for the remuda to saddle up. They flung black glares toward Caldwell and cursed his name. Drinkwater and Caleb spit in front of his boots.

  On her way to the horses, Freddy stopped in front of Dal and stroked his cheek. “It’s not your fault,” she said softly. Les pressed his hand and nodded. “You did everything you could.”

  Standing next to Alex’s chair, he watched them mount, then ride toward the herd. When Alex took his hand, he frowned down at her. “No man could have done more than you did, and no man could have done it better. You aren’t to blame.” She gave him a little push. “Go on now. They need you at the river.”

  He watched Freddy and Les riding toward the drag, felt Alex’s hand in his. It was one of the worst moments in his life.

  Needing some time alone, he rode out on the range where he could see the herd beginning to move out, and he dropped his head and rubbed a hand down his face.

  Like the gracious, honorable women they were, each of the sisters had offered him a word or a touch of comfort. They hadn’t wept, hadn’t blamed. They hid their despair and accepted their defeat with grace. He hoped Joe Roark was watching today, and he hoped the bastard was proud of the strong fine women he’d raised. Sons could not have done better than his daughters had done, couldn’t have worked harder or given more.

  Raging inside, he lashed his reins across the buckskin and cantered toward the river. The crossing proceeded as smooth as glass, and they didn’t lose a single beeve.

  It didn’t matter anymore.

  In the following days, they forded the Salt Fork and Pond Creek, passed large colonies of prairie dogs, and once they had to hold the longhorns while a herd of buffalo ran west across the trail. Tomorrow they would enter Kansas below Bluff Creek and Fall Creek.

  “Are we finished with Indians?” Les asked Grady as she pulled her saddle off Cactus.

  “Might see some Osage, but mostly they’ll ask for tobacco. Sometimes they’ll beg a steer, but mostly the Osage got more pride than those thieving Comanche.” He spit in disgust.

  “If they need the meat, we might as well give them a beeve or two.” Now that the cattle were Lola’s, she could be generous. The thought raised a bitter smile.

  “Well, gol-dang. Look what’s coming your way, Missy.”

  Les placed her saddle on the ground, then stood up, rubbing her hands on her trousers.

  Luther strode toward her with a grimly determined expression and a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in his hand. But it was a Luther that Les hadn’t seen before. His hair was slicked back with oil, he was clean-shaven, and he wore a dark suit, vest, and tie. His hat was brushed and his boots polished.

  “A man don’t get all slickered up like that unless he’s coming a-courting,” Grady said. “You got to ask yourself if that’s the worst sunburn you ever seen, or if he’s feeling mighty nervous.”

  “Go away,” Les said, feeling nervous herself. She had hoped he would come to her, but she’d begun to think it wouldn’t happen. “Help Alex or cut some firewood but go away.” She had time to knock the dust off her pants and smooth her hair before he reached her.

  “Here.” Removing his hat, Luther thrust out the wildflowers. “These are for you.”

  “Thank you.” As far as she knew, there wasn’t a vase within twenty miles of camp. “You look very nice tonight.” Her comment brightened the red pulsing on top of his ears.

  “So do you,” he said, looking at her.

  Les doubted it. She was dusty, sweat-stained, and sunburned. She needed a bath and a hair wash. This moment would have been better if she’d been wearing a nice dress with her hair curled and a tiny packet of violet sachet pinned inside her corset. Instead, she wore a sun-faded shirt with a hole at the elbow and pants smeared across the thigh with horse slobber.

  Luther pulled at his collar. “Would you do me the honor of joining me for a short stroll before supper? There’s a prairie-dog town not far from here which you might find entertaining.”

  He was so Sunday perfect while she smelled of horseflesh and cowhide and a day’s labor. At least she could wash her face and hands. “Would you give me a moment first?”

  He looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I… of course you need to think about this. I should have inquired before I… damn, I’m no good at this.” He started to back away. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to impose.”

  Instinct warned that Luther would approach once and once only, and that it had taken enormous courage to bring him this far. If she let him walk away, he would not return.

  “Luther…” Crimson rushed into her cheeks as she marshaled her own courage. “I think I have loved you since I was fourteen or fifteen years old.”

  “I can see this is an inconvenient…” He stopped and stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t think you noticed me. I thought you brought me books and talked to me because I was the silly young daughte
r of your client. You called on Pa, not me. You didn’t dance with me at socials, didn’t invite me for a ride in your buggy.” Stepping up to him, she tucked her arm through his and turned him toward the prairie-dog village. He looked dazed. She was a little dazed herself. “So I stopped hoping you might be a suitor, stopped thinking about you.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” he said, staring down at her. “I invented reasons to call on your father so I could see you. I wanted to dance with you, but I’m so poor at it I thought you would refuse me. Les, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love you.”

  She faced him, sudden tears glistening in her eyes. She had waited a lifetime to hear a man say those words to her. No, she had waited for Luther to say those words. Until Freddy opened her eyes, she’d considered her feelings for him so hopeless that she had pushed them far far away. Eventually, she had turned elsewhere and had almost made the worst mistake of her life.

  Gazing at each other in amazed delight, they stood on the prairie, their hands lightly touching. “Oh, Luther. I’m so happy.” And then began the rush of lover’s questions.

  “When did you first know…?”

  “How could I not have guessed?”

  “What if…?”

  “I almost spoke that time you…”

  And suddenly it was dark. Supper had come and gone, the drovers had drifted to their bedrolls. And still they had not said all there was to say. Les suspected they never would.

  Blazing with surprise and happiness, feeling the rightness of him, of them, she clasped his hands and gazed into the love shining in his eyes. “Luther? Are you ever going to kiss me?” The brazenness of the question shocked her, then she let it go. She was not the same timid, unsure girl she had been before this journey. A woman had replaced that girl, a woman who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to reach for it.

  Grinning, he pulled her close. He kissed her tenderly, gently, as if she were a fragile porcelain creature who might shatter if he applied too much pressure. When he eased back, anxiously scanning her face, Les sighed. She was going to have to lead him every step of the way. Rising on tiptoe, she wound her arms around his neck, pressed her body hard against his, and kissed him with all the fire and passion she had been saving for a lifetime. This time when their lips parted, he looked stunned. But only for a moment. His hands tightened on her waist then slid to her buttocks and he caught her up against him. When his lips crushed hers, his kiss was as passionate as she had dreamed, a kiss like none other she had ever received.

  Breathless and feeling her heart beating hard against her chest, she blinked. “I think we’re getting the hang of this.”

  Laughing, he folded her into his arms and pressed her against his heart. “Say you’ll marry me, Les, I beg you. I want this to be the shortest courtship on record. I’ve waited long enough.”

  Easing back in his arms, she lifted her fingertips to his lips. “Luther, will you ever wonder if I accepted you because we lost the contest, and I had no way to support myself?”

  “Is that why?”

  “No. I want to marry you because I love you.”

  He cupped her face between his hands. “Oh, my dearest. Then you will marry me, and make me the happiest man on earth?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, laughing and throwing her arms around him. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Someday she would tell him about Ward. What their relationship had been, and all that had happened. But not now. Tonight was for love and the wonder of discovery.

  An hour before dawn she stumbled toward her bedroll, and as she sat down to jerk off her boots, she suddenly remembered her shift on night watch. With a guilty start, she began to rise, then Freddy pushed up from her pillow and squinted at her.

  “I took your shift,” she muttered sleepily. “Are you still a virgin?”

  Shocked, Les stared at her. “Of course! You are so vulgar, Freddy.”

  “Too bad,” Freddy said, dropping back on her pillow. “About the virgin part, I mean.”

  Laughing softly, Les crawled into her blankets and smiled up at the fading stars. Freddy’s rude question kept returning to her mind, making her feel warm all over and remember Luther’s kisses. He was right. The wedding needed to be very soon. Perhaps in Abilene.

  “Pa?” she whispered, looking up at the velvety sky. “Thank you. This cattle drive is the best gift you ever gave me.” She’d found something far better than an inheritance. She’d found herself. And her sisters. And Luther.

  “You know,” Freddy said, striding up to the chuck-wagon table. She slid her noon plate into the wreck pan and watched Alex cut chunks of meat for their supper stew. “I used to think you were smart.”

  “Is that right?” Alex asked drily. “So what happened to change your mind?”

  “The stupid way you’re behaving. For a person who has to be right all the time, you’re wrong about a lot of things. Maybe it’s time you thought about that.”

  Alex looked up from her worktable and frowned in surprise. This was a familiar argument with roots twisting into their childhood. She’d believed this hard journey had changed her relationship with her sisters and laid to rest old conflicts. “What are you talking about?”

  Freddy lifted a hand and ticked down her fingers. “Here’s a few of the things you’ve been wrong about just since you returned to Texas. You were wrong when you insisted that you didn’t need to know how to shoot a weapon. You were wrong about Les loving Ward. You were wrong not to interfere when we heard Ward slap Les.”

  “You didn’t interfere either!” she said, feeling a flush of embarrassment rise on her cheeks.

  “We’re not talking about me. You were wrong every time you said, ‘I can’t do this.’ You were wrong when you thought you were going to die in the stampede. You were wrong about that, too,” Freddy said, nodding at the crutch leaning against the worktable.

  She put down her knife and wiped her hands on her apron. “So I’ve been mistaken about a few things,” she snapped. “What’s your point?”

  “First, let’s talk about the past. You were wrong to go chasing after Payton, and wrong to pretend it was a marriage made in heaven. You were wrong to insist on going to that party and wrong to urge the carriage driver to drive faster in the rain.”

  “How dare you!” she said furiously, her voice low and shaking. Heat burned on her cheeks and her hands trembled badly.

  Freddy leaned forward with narrowed eyes. “You’re wrong about a lot of things, Alex. So what the hell makes you think it’s the right decision to give up John, a good future, and, instead, sit down in that clumsy, confining wheelchair and live the rest of your life as a miserably unhappy recluse?”

  “Shut up!” Shaking so badly that she feared she would fall, she reached for the crutch and slipped it under her arm. “You… you…”

  Freddy waved an angry hand toward the drovers sitting on the grass eating their noon meal. “Every man in this outfit worked on that wooden leg, Alex. And every one of them thinks you’re wrong not to wear it. But you think you’re right. Now, why is that? Do you prefer to feel crippled and helpless? Does it feel good to be dependent and imagine that strangers feel sorry for you? Because that’s the only reason I can think of to explain why you’re being so stupid.”

  Alex gasped. The blood drained from her face and pain tightened her chest. “Why are you saying these hurtful things?” she whispered. She had believed that she and Freddy were friends now, that they cared about each other.

  “You think you killed Payton. You’re wrong about that. But you are hurting a good man who loves you. Is that what you stand for, Alex? Is it right to sacrifice yourself for a dead man, but cause a living man pain? John turned himself inside out for you. He faced his past and put it behind him, because he loves you. But you won’t do that for him, will you? Is guilt easier to live with than love? Is it easier to make a prison out of that damned chair than to strap on your leg and take two steps toward the man you told me you love?” Her lip curled. “I
looked up to you, Alex. I thought you had courage. I never thought you’d throw away your life just to prove that you’re right, and that’s really what this is all about.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re saying!” she shouted, fury blazing in her eyes.

  “Wrong again,” Freddy said quietly. She reached for Alex’s hand, then dropped her arm when Alex jerked back. “You aren’t going to let John walk away because of some deranged need to punish yourself for Payton’s death. That isn’t the reason. If you retreat to that chair, it will be because you can’t admit that you made the wrong decision when you decided to spend the rest of your life atoning for another wrong decision.”

  “Get out of here and leave me alone!” She was shaking violently, so angry that she was stuttering.

  “In a few days we’re going to ride into Abilene and John is going to get on the train and you’ll never see him again.” Freddy grabbed her hand, and this time she wouldn’t let Alex shake her loose. “You can go with him. Or you can spend the rest of your life regretting two wrong decisions. Payton’s death and rejecting John. Think about it, Alex, and think fast. Time is running out.”

  Tears of pain, outrage, and fury blurred Freddy’s form as she walked toward the remuda. Alex wanted to scream at her, throw something, say something, but she was so deeply upset and furious that she couldn’t speak or move. When she regained a semblance of control, she dropped into her wheelchair and shoved savagely at the wheels, lurching out onto the grassy prairie. Facing away from camp, she dropped her head and buried her face in her hands, gulping deep breaths and shaking. Finally, she made herself think about what Freddy had said.

  And, oh God, Freddy was right.

  She had been wrong about so many, many things, had made so many bad decisions.

  Staring at the vast space in front of her, she thought about her life. And in the end she understood that she had been deceiving herself. Confining herself to a wheelchair wasn’t an attempt to atone for Payton’s death; it went deeper than that. She was running away from past mistakes and the fear of making more in the future. Not Payton, but pride and fear would make a recluse of her. Her punishment was not for setting in motion a chain of events that had led to her husband’s death and the loss of her leg. Her punishment was for all the wrong decisions.