He looked at me, wary of my teasing tone, not knowing quite what to make of me. Set adrift by the events that had turned my world upside down, I didn’t know what to make of myself. Grab holt, he had commanded, but as yet, unable to define the shape of my new life—unwilling to have it kneaded into one that bore his fingerprints—I could only grope. Given time, my point of balance would make itself known. Until then, I decided, I would be best served by inviting him up now and again to teeter along the tightrope with me. But for that I needed my wits about me, and at the moment they were fogged by fatigue.
He backed up to the fireplace, hooked his elbows up onto the wide stone mantel, and looked down at me. “It’s simple enough. I’m not a greedy man: while the others are forcin’ quantity, I’ll be raisin’ quality. There’ll always be a need for good stock, cattle and horses both, no sense puttin’ all my eggs into—you listenin’, S’rena?”
My eyelids snapped open. “Quality not quantity,” I recited, “and something about eggs. I’m afraid I missed that part... did you mention baskets?” I stood, suddenly wide awake. “Baskets! There are only two here; there should have been three. Surely Sharo would have taken only one for himself....”
“What in hell are you talkin’ ‘bout?”
I waved my hands. “Nothing... it’s not important. Just something that’s been niggling in the back of my mind. No need to bother you with household details.” The day had finally caught up with me; I wondered if I looked as confused as I felt.
Quinn ambled over to stand close, too close. My breath caught in my throat as he smoothed flyaway strands of crinkly, henna-dyed hair off my brow. I could see flecks of amber in his dark eyes as he studied my face; I felt his warm breath on my cheek. I tried to turn away, but he caught my chin his long fingers. “Look at you! Pink and white as a prairie rose. Pushin’ thirty? I musta had sand in my eyes. More like twenty.”
“Twenty-one,” I whispered. I felt a sort of ... singing inside; and as he drew his calloused thumb softly across my cheek my vision blurred, and I felt my mouth go slack.
“Twenty-one. Old enough, I guess.”
“Old enough?” I backed away. “Belle warned me, about you being like your father, but I thought maybe if I worked hard enough, proved my worth—”
“Old enough to be on your own, s’all I meant. Old enough to be fightin’ drought and bad winters.” His expression hardened; he lifted and squared his work-muscled shoulders. “I never forced myself on a woman—never had to—and I’m not about to start with you.”
“With Fawn, then? That’s what you bought her for, isn’t it?”
“Godalmighty, S’rena, Fawn’s not even grown yet!”
“Aren’t you forgetting? She is now. Bazz saved you the trouble.”
Quinn stiffened. “Bazz doesn’t know what trouble is yet.”
I stared at him. “But surely he’s dead!”
“Nothin’ sure about it, any more than what Belle told you about me and my paw, unless you’re plum set on thinkin’ the worst.”
“I believe what my eyes tell me.”
“Is that a fact?” He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Then, tell me this, who do you think the hands’ll believe they’re seein’ when they look at your curly, hennaed hair tomorrow?”
I shook my head and twisted my hands together, lowering my eyes to avoid his accusing gaze. I was tired, too tired, to know what to think any longer. “It must be very late,” I murmured, turning toward the door. I picked up the bucket to take with me up to the shack, but Quinn barred my exit.
“I’ll sleep up at the shack tonight; you can have my room.”
“But—”
“You need a proper night’s sleep. Like I said, Cobby and the hands’ll be back tomorrow. You’ll have a lot to do ... can’t have you draggin’ around all day lookin’ for a shady spot to rest.”
I nodded, too fatigued to dispute the point. As I entered Quinn’s room, I heard Fawn’s door open, then a moment later close, and his footsteps crossed the parlor. He had looked in on her as promised . .. looked in and left. At least I’d accomplished that much.
Sleep was slow in coming. I felt lonelier than I could ever remember. Before, whenever Belle and I were separated—before she came to the orphanage; after she left on the orphan train, even when she locked me in the cyclone cellar—I was aware of her presence in my heart and soul. In fact, in early childhood I wasn’t altogether sure where I left off and Belle began. Later, the sense of her presence within me dimmed, growing fainter with the passing years, yet taken as much for granted as the silent coursing of blood through my veins. It wasn’t until today, as I heard the dull thump of clods of earth on her body, that my heart, seized with anguish, at last allowed me to let her go.
Allowed me to let her go. ... Lying there in the summer dark, stunned by my realization that if our situations had been reversed Belle would never have suffered this aching sense of relinquishment, I felt tears slide down my cheeks. Had her presence, always thought a loving one, been an illusion all along? Loving? She hadn’t even cared enough to hate me.
I shivered. I was wholly dependent now on the kindness of strangers, which, unlike love, was rarely given without the expectation of something in return. I pulled Quinn’s blanket close around me. It smelled of smoke and horses and the warm saltiness of the man himself. Had he meant to reveal himself as he had to me tonight? He wasn’t given to idle chatter. I could not, for example, imagine him discussing Morning Star’s future with Cobby—or with Fawn, for that matter—as he had with me. What did he want from me?
Drifting on the edge of sleep, a picture of Quinn and Fawn disporting playfully together, cowboy sultan and his raven-haired harem girl—a picture more fanciful than my conscious mind would have allowed—blossomed in my head. Had Fawn’s blushing response to Sharo’s longing look made her seem less a victim in my eyes? Had Quinn’s indulgent treatment of her tonight blurred my perception of his villainy?
Try as I might, my weary brain persisted in mixing black and white to gray, until finally, resisting any further attempt to sort out my confusions, it look refuge in dreams. In them, Quinn’s work-roughened Levi’s were transformed into silken robes, and jeweled rings glittered on the long fingers that stroked a long fall of silver hair back from eyes as blue as cornflowers, warm fingers that strayed to my naked shoulders, cupped my breasts.. ..
Heat pulsed through me, jagged as lightning. I pushed Quinn’s blanket from my taut body, gasping as the ebbing tremors smoothed my blood to syrup. Stunned by sensation, I closed my eyes, unable to think; unwilling if I could. My breathing slowed, and a tremulous faraway sigh—could it have been mine?—released me to dreamless darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
The next day, alerted by a distant rumbling, I paused in the pegging up of my damp clothes from the rain-sodden bag Sharo had delivered to me the afternoon before. I shaded my eyes with my hands the better to see below me a straggle of riders hazed by the dust billowing in the wake of the heavily loaded ranch wagon’s wheels. Slouched in their saddles, their departing yips of anticipation silenced by five days of drinking, gambling and womanizing, the hands’ return to Morning Star bore little resemblance to their exodus. Even their horses seemed woebegone.
What a sorry bunch they were, I thought as I shook out another of my creased garments. I doubted if they had more than a dollar left between them. I knew they had nothing to look forward to but hard work and winter. Yet were my pockets any less empty or my prospects less bleak? They at least had the memories of their coarse pleasures to exchange while patrolling the ranch boundaries and bringing breeding stock in ahead of a storm.
My well-worn workaday dresses snapped on the jury-rigged line as the gusting breeze caught them, gray and brown sails above a landlocked sea of grass. I lifted my face to the sun-lit, white-puffed bowl of summer blue. The havoc wreaked by the terrible twisting wind could have seemed nightmare-dreamt were it not for the broken house and the newly dug grave down in the hollow. I se
cured a second batch of wooden pins to the wind-tugged garments, wishing my spirits could be bolstered as easily, reminding myself that storms were as much a part of life as the fair-weather clouds above, that winter was many months away.
Voices floated up from the barnyard. Grab holt, Quinn had said. I shoved a last pin onto the line, sighed, and prepared to enter the fray. There was a wagon load of supplies to be stored. Thanks to the damage wrought by the storm, adjustments to the usual schedule of chores would be required, and Cookie would probably need an extra pair of hands to help with the meals for the men. Whether he would welcome mine remained to be seen.
I needn’t have worried. When I asked Cookie if he had enjoyed his holiday, he grabbed off his hat and peered at me out of bloodshot eyes so mournful I hadn’t the heart to pursue it. Instead I offered my help, which he immediately and gratefully accepted. This was after Quinn called the hands together to acquaint them with the new circumstances, telling them Belle and his brother were no longer living at Morning Star—he omitted details—and that Rita had left, too.
“That Rita, she comes and goes. Miss S’rena’s agreed to stay on as housekeeper, for the time bein’, anyways. The house ain’t for livin’ in; so you’ll be seein’ her up at Rita’s shack—her choice, boys—and unless she asks for somethin’, you stay clear, savvy?”
“You sure which one of them girls took off, Boss?” a brash voice called out.
“I won’t ask who said that,” Quinn said. “You all heard of henna, I reckon,” he drawled. A couple of the men snickered. Fresh from town, henna-haired ladies were no doubt very familiar to them. “Well, sometimes exper’ments like that turn out how you least expect. Let’s just say she’s real sorry about it,” he said in a tone clearly meant to discourage further comment. “Isn’t that so, S’rena?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. All red-gold ringlets like I was, who could blame them for doubting? It wasn’t until a few moments later, when I felt an unwelcome arm slide around my waist, that I fully realized how misleading the truth could be when not all of it is told.
“I’m thinkin’ you’re Belle,” Jed muttered in my ear, “and Cooper’s got your silver-haired sister hid away somewheres, along with that scrawny little breed of his.”
The foulness of his breath made my stomach turn. I struggled in silence against his tightening arm, not wishing to draw attention to my predicament. His roving free hand moved lower to squeeze my bottom. He gave a grunt of surprise.
“No way Belle could’ve shed so much so fast—”
I whirled on him. “Belle is dead,” I said in a harsh whisper. “She died in the storm ... we buried her yesterday.”
He nodded his satisfaction. “I figured Belle wouldn’t take herself off without tellin’ me somehow, not with the plans we had.”
Jed rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin and peered at me, slyly, fearfully, wondering, no doubt, if I knew of the scheme to take the gold and leave me dead on the prairie. He didn’t care that Belle was dead, only that she hadn’t crossed him.
“You look younger’n her,” he breathed. His dirty calloused hand reached toward my face. “Those worn-out hags in town left me wantin’ for a bit of fresh—Jesus!”
I swung my fisted hand hard, aiming for the fork of his greasy Levi’s. His grip loosened abruptly, and as I walked away, very fast, to join Cobby at the wagon, I saw him doubled over, hands cupping his groin, out of the corner of my eye.
“Jed givin’ you trouble, missy?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, Cobby.”
He peered at me. “You all right? I ain’t much of a hand with a cook pot, but I’m thinkin’ a rest’d do you good.”
Cookie must have told him of my offer to help, I thought. “Keeping busy will do me even better, Cobby. I’ll be fine. I have a place to lay my head, and I’ve got you as a friend.”
Cobby colored. “Not much of a friend, not helpin’ you find a better place for that pretty head of yours.”
I hastened to head off Cobby’s implied criticism of Quinn. “The shack really was my choice, Cobby. All it needs is a little fixing up ... well, maybe a lot,” I admitted as he looked at me askance, “but there’s plenty of time before cold weather sets in.”
“Anythin’ you need, you ask me,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, although there was no one near enough to hear. “ ‘Cept for Jed and a couple of his mangy pals, this is a right useful bunch of boys. If we can’t find it, we’ll make it.”
“And if you can’t?” I teased.
Cobby knitted his grizzled eyebrows, plucked his pipe from the pocket of his stained, ragged leather shirt and stuck it upside down his mouth. “Then, I reckon you don’t need it. Hey, Woody,” he called, “go give Cookie a hand with peelin’ the taters! As fer you, missy, you’d best be heatin’ up your cook pot. We ain’t et nothin’ since early mornin’.”
I traversed the yard between the barn and corrals as primly as a preacher’s wife—no fluttering or ankle-flaunting—sidestepping the crisscrossing paths of hands hastening from one chore or another, avoiding their curious sidelong looks. I failed to notice Jed’s deliberately timed approach, entering the bunk-house door a moment ahead of him only to be shouldered out of his way. I shrank back as he sidled by me, unable to avoid contact with him or the heavy sack he allowed to clank painfully across my bosom. “I’ll be paying you a visit sometime soon,” he muttered. His mean little eyes were unforgiving. “We got a little settlin’ up to do.”
Jed’s threat would have worried me more if I’d had less to do, but no sooner had I sliced and cooked the potatoes Cookie needed for the hash he was preparing from canned corned beef brought back from town—there wasn’t time to bring in fresh meat— than I had to run up to Quinn’s quarters and start all over again for him and Fawn, this time with fresh eggs, vegetables from the garden, and biscuits with milk gravy made from the scrapings from the meat pie pans. It would have been easier if we’d all eaten together, at least until the ranch settled back into a routine, but Quinn was reluctant to expose Fawn to the hands’ curious eyes.
“Seein’ how Bazz treated her, they might get to thinkin’ she’s fair game. It was bad enough before.”
In other words, private property, no trespassing allowed. Thinking of Jed’s unwanted attentions, I wondered how far his protective impulse extended. “And I am? Fair game, that is?”
He looked at me appraisingly. “You’re free, white, twenty-one and healthy as a—well, mighty healthy-looking. ‘Sides, without some encouragement, I reckon none of the cowpokes here’s man enough to brave those schoolmarmish looks you give—yep, just like that,” he said, laughing as I looked down my nose at him.
We ate in silence. This evening, I was glad to see, Fawn’s appetite was worthy of a trencherman. At this rate, we’d soon see roses in her dusky cheeks. Quinn’s thoughts were elsewhere.
“Would you care for another helping?” I asked as he mopped gravy from his tin plate with a bit of biscuit. He held his plate up wordlessly.
“A penny,” I offered as I spooned out the last of the vegetables.
“Hmm? A penny for what?”
“For your thoughts. Assuming they’re for sale to the likes of me,” I added dryly.
His eyes snapped into focus. I could sense his weighing of the pros and cons as he silently, methodically, forked the vegetables into his mouth. At length, he tilted back his chair and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “Fawn, honey, fetch the coffee, will ya?” he drawled.
Pleased to be of service, Fawn’s eyes brightened as she scurried to do his bidding. I observed this little scene of subservient domesticity with distaste.
“I sure hope St. Peter ain’t no kin of yours,” Quinn said.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Judgments, S’rena. You sure do have a way of stampedin’ into ‘em.”
“Why, I never said—”
He waved an impatient hand. “I know well enough what you never said. You’re forg
ettin’, I’ve spent my life with critters what never say anythin’, but that don’t mean I don’t know what’s goin’ on inside their fool heads.”
Fawn returned with the coffee. I waved the pot away. “Forget the penny!” I scraped my chair back. “What’s going on inside your head’s not worth it.”
My snappish tone made Fawn round her eyes, but Quinn just grinned and wagged his finger. “Temper, temper. You keep on like this and I’ll start thinkin’ we buried S’rena ‘stead of Belle. Fact is, it’s her and Bazz I was broodin’ on. I ‘spect you know they was owed money by the terms of my paw’s will. I was thinkin’ of puttin her share in the bank in Ellsworth for you.”
I stared at him. My penny was buying more than I bargained for ... or was it? “In my name or yours?”
He chuckled. “In yours, S’rena. Vamoosin money, case you got a mind to take it on the lope.”
“We made a bargain. Are you suggesting I break it?”
He threw up both hands, palms out. “Whoa, there. I’m not much for suggestin’. If that’s what I meant, I’d tell you, flat and out.”
I nodded, mollified. “Then, I thank you for it. I never thought. ...” I could tell by the look in his eyes there was no need to finish. He knew I hadn’t expected him to honor any right I might have to Belle’s inheritance. The funny thing was, knowing I would have money in the bank, in my own name, even it only enough to buy a ticket elsewhere, made me all the more determined to prove my worth to him and to Morning Star. I wondered if he knew that, too.
“My half-brother’s share—how’d that lawyer talk put it?—reverts to me,” Quinn continued. “That’s what I was thinkin’ on just now. About puttin’ it back into the horse-breedin’ end of the business. A clever, gentle-broke cow pony’s worth a lot more’n some rough-busted range mustang. There’s this fine Appaloosa mare I got my eye on—”
“You’re talking as if Bazz were dead!” I cried.
The amber lights in Quinn’s dark eyes went out. “If he’s not, when I find him he’ll wish he was. Soon’s I get the boys started breakin’ the horses I got me orders for, I’ll be on his trail. He ain’t got a horse; he’s too soft to get far without one. The tree’s already picked out.”
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