by Nancy Radke
I untied my blanket and started to drape it over her. She stood up and pulled it around herself, then leaned into my arms.
She was shaking, and I pulled her close, wanting to shelter her from her pa and the Indians and anyone else who might want to hurt her. I kissed the top of her head, then her eyes as she lifted her face to me.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and low. “Thank you.”
I understood why the horses would do anything she asked, because I felt the same way. “You’re welcome.”
She laid her head against my chest and I wanted it to stay there. It felt right. This woman felt right.
“There’s something you need to know,” I said. “I checked the bags in the pantry. When we got back from the store, Lewis put the supplies away. Whoever filled the bags, filled them wrong. There was salt in the sugar bag and salt in the salt.”
“So I wasn’t dumb.”
“Not at all. Never was. You need to understand. There’s a whole heap of difference between book learning and smarts. Hero is smart, probably the smartest horse in Texas, and he can’t read a word.”
That brought a grin to her face and a sparkle to her eyes. “Hero don’t need to read. The fillies don’t care. He just flashes those stallion eyes at them and they line up.”
“You can read a book about how to ride a horse, but until you put in hours of riding, you aren’t a rider. You know that.”
She nodded.
“Well, you just need more time to be a reader. Then you would’ve known you weren’t wrong.”
It was just common sense, but she’d been so beat down by the people at the ranch, that she’d lost faith in herself.
“You know that if you took any of those people back there and dropped them in the desert, they wouldn’t be able to find water like you can. You aren’t dumb, you just had a different type of education. One which is very practical for out here.”
She snuggled close to me again.
“May I kiss you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I’d never kissed a girl, except when I was a youngster on the mountains, and my cousin Bo bet me I couldn’t get a kiss from Lucy Kendale. It hadn’t mattered then, but this was different. I felt for Dawn, strong. I might even be in love with her.
She raised her head and closed her eyes, then opened them.
“Well? Aren’t you going to kiss me after you asked for one?”
I took my hat off, beat it on my leg. “Um...”
“Matthew, are you shy?”
“Um, I think... I love you and...”
She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me soundly. Once started, I returned the kiss and we went at it for quite a spell. My heart was thumpin’ and I was a sweating and I just shook.
Here under the Texas stars, I’d found the one woman who spoke to that part of me that I hid from the world. The part that wanted a companion, a completion of myself. Someone I could protect and love and serve.
It had been growing, ever since I first saw her in the corral, and grew even more rapidly now when she kissed me back.
Did she feel the same for me? Her kisses were heating up as fast as I was. Did she realize it?
She was a fine woman, a noble woman. I had to control myself, for I wanted her to know how valuable she was to me. I had to protect her from myself.
“Whoa,” I said. “Back off a bit. I need to know. Are those kisses because you’re happy or grateful, or because...”
“I love you.”
It was exactly what I wanted to hear. “And I love you. Dawn, will you marry me?”
She stared at me in the dim light. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. We’ll find us a preacher and do it right proper.”
“You could have anyone for a wife.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I’m asking you. Will you marry me? Just as soon as I return Hero to his rightful owner.”
“You’d be leaving?”
“I don’t want you to be marrying a horse thief, so I’ll have to find Trey and give him back. That might take some time. You could go back to the ranch and wait until—”
“Never!”
I didn’t blame her. “Okay. We can go to Ft. Worth and I’ll rent a house for you. We can get married as soon as I get back. Then we’ll head west.”
“I could wait with the Kiowas.”
“They aren’t there any longer. The war was harder on the Indians than anyone else.”
“Then I’ll go to my aunt’s place. I can stay there while you hunt Trey. Aunt Mabel’s lonely, with Uncle Tim gone.”
“I can drop by your pa’s place and tell him where you’re at, if you think he’d worry.”
“No. He’ll find out soon enough. Any idea where Trey is?”
“Nope. He could be dead, but he’d be hard to kill.”
“Why don’t you send out word that you’re holding his horse for him and need to know where to send it?”
“That would work, but I’d rather deliver him personally.”
I held her, but realized things were getting darker, which was strange, because the sun had come up.
She pulled back, holding up a hand covered with watery blood. “Matthew. You’ve been hit.”
“Yes.” I remember saying that, but nothing more.
When I woke up, we were traveling. I was on a travois she had rigged from brush and buckskin cut from my shirt. She had used her underskirt to bind my wound, and wrapped me in my blanket, and was now riding Misty, astride. I glanced at her, saw her bare legs, and looked away, embarrassed. She was quite some woman. She had done what was necessary to save our lives. I passed out again, and when I came to, we were at her Aunt Mabel’s house.
George was there, yelling at her, when Mabel came out and shushed him up.
She sent Dawn inside and looked me over. “I guess you’ll live. What happened?”
I told her as best I could, going into and out of consciousness. She made George support me and put me into her bed. “It’s the only one of a size to fit you. You are a tall thing, like my husband was.”
I remember Dawn, wearing one of her aunt’s dresses, bathing my wounds and settling me down. She figured the Indians shot me with her rifle.
She got out the Bible and read to me, with Mabel correcting some of her words, but she was mostly able to read it. The sound of her voice was comforting, especially when the fever was upon me.
I must have rambled on about Hero, because next thing I heard was George, declaring he was going to hang me for stealing Hero.
Mabel said she would have none of that talk, and I heard hoofbeats as he rode away.
“He’s going to get Pa,” Dawn said, her face white. “He wants Pa to hang you or put you in jail.”
I’d been waiting for this moment. It almost seemed unreal.
Mabel came in to the room. “Did you steal that horse?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. It was during the war.”
“What side were you on?”
“Confederate.” I hoped I had given the right answer.
She snorted. “What happened?”
So I told her about my cousin, and Hero, and having to escape. “He was just a standing there, all saddled and ready to go. He even had a bedroll on him. I’d like to give him back, now that the war’s over, but I don’t know where Trey is. It’s been two years.”
I passed out again. Next time shouts woke me. Dawn was there, and I asked her what was going on.
8
Dawn smiled, looking happy. “You missed all the fun.”
“What happened?”
“Pa came and Aunt Mabel loaded her shotgun. She told Pa to turn around and go home. That I was here, nursing you, and he wasn’t going to get either one of us. That we could figure it all out when you were well enough to talk.”
“Oh. She also told George to go stay with my Pa until he could get the noose out of his rope. Then I stepped out with a rifle in my hands.”
“Pa said he was quit of m
e, riding through the countryside with no clothes on.”
“I said, ‘I guess you’d have rather I drowned in the river.’”
“He said, ‘What did Trahern do to you?’ And I said, ‘Saved my life. I didn’t see you tryin’ to save me from the Indians.’”
She smiled at me. “He doesn’t have a hold on me anymore. It’s like you said. I’m of age. I can choose my own life now.”
“You don’t want to choose a life with a horse thief,” I said, leaning back into the pillow. I felt so weak and tired, I wouldn’t be able to stop a kit fox right now.
“I’ll do what I choose.”
Now when women set their mind on something, you’d best get out of the way. Seems she and Aunt Mabel had decided on me for her.
I fell asleep wondering what I should do. I wanted Dawn, more than any woman I’d ever seen, but I didn’t want to drag her into my life if it meant jail.
The next day Dawn was laughing. She told me the news as she changed my dressing.
“Aunt Mabel’s corrals weren’t high enough. We found Hero in with Misty this morning, acting all important like.” She handed me some broth to drink. “I guess he’s done what he set out to do.”
“He is for sure the smartest horse in Texas. Now when I send him back to Trey, he’ll leave a part of himself behind.”
“Once we find out where Trey is.”
I nodded. “And if he wants to press charges.”
The cloud hung over me as I tried to get well. Get well—in time to hang?
Three weeks later I got ready to leave.
I didn’t want to leave Dawn or give up Hero, but I had to. “Trey might throw me in jail. I don’t think he’ll have me hung.”
“Your cousin? I wouldn’t think so. He should be glad to get Hero back.” She looked at me with those big blue eyes of hers. “Do you really have to go?”
“Yes. I’ve been having a hard time livin’ with myself. I have to do the honorable thing. No matter what the cost.”
“I’ll wait for you. No matter how long it takes.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“I love you, Matthew Joseph Martin Trahern,” she said. “Now get that horse returned and get yourself back to me so’s we can get married and start some little Traherns of our own. I expect I’ll breed as fast as that filly.”
My face grew hot. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”
We went inside and I washed up while she and her aunt put the food on the table.
The dogs barked and I walked over to the door, checking the rifle standing next to it.
“Hello, the house.”
I looked out and there was this handsome gent all dandied up, but looking like he knew how to get things done, sitting on a long-legged horse near Mabel’s front gate. Now it always pays to call out when approaching a house or a camp, because you might get welcomed with a gun.
“Hello, to you,” I said.
“This the Cumming’s place?”
“It’s Mabel Cumming’s place. You looking for work?”
“Not me. I’m headed to California. Looking for Matthew Trahern.”
There was only one reason I could think of why anyone would be looking for me. I took a deep breath. “That’s me. How did you know...?”
“I heard some talk in the bar, back in Ft. Worth, that Matthew Trahern was working on the Cumming’s place. I was wonderin’ if you were any kin to Trey?”
“Yes, I’m his cousin.”
“I’m Gage Courtney. Trey said he had kin all over. I’m headed down the road, but thought I’d stop and say howdy. I know Trey would do it for me, if’n things were switched.”
“Get down and stay awhile. Rest your horse. There’s hay in the barn and good water for him.”
“Thanks.”
“Traveled far?”
“Purt near the whole country. I come back to Tennessee looking for my Ma, Abigail Courtney. She was gone. But I ran into your brothers and sister, and they said that my Pa had come back to get her. We thought he was dead. My folks left me a message with them for me, that they’d moved to California. He’s got hisself a place there.”
“Which of my brothers and sisters?”
“There was a new preacher in the area, holding both a wedding and a meeting, so it brought the folks down off the hills like a swarm of ants finding a picnic. A bunch of your kin was there. But I’m speaking of Ruth and Jonas.”
“That’s Trey’s brother and sister. Not mine.”
“Luke?”
“He’s mine.”
“He was the one who mentioned you were somewhere in Texas.”
“Yes. I saw him before I left.”
We moved toward the barn area with his horse, a black and white paint with albino blue eyes.
“I left Trey and his wife in Washington Territory to go get Ma in Tennessee. I could’ve saved myself a long trip if...”
“Trey is married?”
“Yes. Things happen,” he said, as he unsaddled his horse and turned him into the corral.
“Where’d you leave him? I’ve got a horse belongs to him.”
“Walla Walla. His place is east of the town that’s growing there. They’ve got themselves the makin’ of a fine ranch in the foothills of the mountains. Trey plans to put in some hay and grain crops on the lower acres, and raise cows and horses in the foothills. You say you’ve got a horse of his?”
“Yes.”
“Hero?”
“Yes.
“Which one is he?”
I pointed him out. “He’s hard to miss. I sort of lifted him from Trey. Never felt right about it.”
Gage laughed. “He told me about that. Had you caught good and proper, didn’t he?”
“Yes. But it just don’t set right with me, having a horse I don’t rightly own. Saddle and all. Now that I know where Trey is, I can return everything to him.” And a whole lot faster than if I’d had to hunt all over the country for him. We walked back from the corral.
“I don’t think he expects him back.”
”What makes you think that?”
“Trey tied that horse near you, so you’d be able to escape.”
“Why would he do a thing like that? He’d just caught me.”
“He didn’t realize who you were until he had you caught. He knew that men were dying at the prison camps in huge numbers, and he didn’t want you going there. Especially Camp Morton, the one where they would’ve sent you. It was a death sentence.”
“How’d he know I’d get loose?”
“He put the most inexperienced private he had to watch you. One he said couldn’t tell one end of a gun from the other. And he saddled and bridled Hero and left him as close to the edge of camp as he could. He knew Hero could outrun any other horse there, so if you made it to him, you were gone. He watched you go.”
“I wondered at the ease of it all. As I left, he yelled, ‘Don’t shoot my horse.’ I thought he was more worried about Hero than about me. But still I’d stolen his horse. So I need to get Hero back to him.”
“Didn’t you find the note?”
“What note?”
“A bill of sale. He wrote you one and tucked it into the saddlebags. He didn’t want you shot as a horse thief. Hero’s yours.”
We stepped inside the house and my heart was pounding while I tried to act unaffected. “Dawn, this here’s Gage Courtney. He’s a friend of my cousin, Trey. And this is Mabel Cummings.”
“Hello,” Mabel said brightly. “Come and eat with us. I’ll put on another plate.”
As she was getting the table ready, I walked over to where my saddlebags hung. I’d never completely emptied them out, as I might grab them for a sudden trip and I always kept some pemmican and a flint for fire starting, a knife and a few rounds of ammunition in them.
So I carried them to a bench, turned them upside down and cleaned them out.
No paper. I looked up at Gage, defeated. He was watching me.
“What abo
ut that?” he asked, pointing to my courier pouch.
“I know what’s in there,” I said. “I got that after I escaped.”
“Look anyway. Trey wouldn’t have told me he did something if he hadn’t of done it.”
I open the oilskin pouch, and pulled out all the papers. There was my army discharge papers, my bill of sale for Misty, my last letters from my mother, a letter of recommendation from General Lee.
The last item was a small folded-up piece of paper. A bill of sale for Hero, made out to me. The thief must have tucked it in there when he’d gone through my saddlebags, probably looking for money.
I wasn’t a thief! The release of guilt made my head swirl.
I held it up for Gage to see, grinning ear to ear like an idiot, then handed it to Dawn. Her squeal of delight told me she was able to read what it said.
He smiled. “Trey does things like that. I found he’d given me wages for all the time I helped him, and we never had such an agreement. Just put money into my bags, so when I opened them up, there it was.”
I nodded. I wanted to do something for the man.
“You going back to him?” I asked.
“Maybe, sometime. I was supposed to take Ma back there to live, but seein’ she’s hooked up again with Pa, I guess I won’t. At least not until I catch me a sharp-looking woman like you’ve got.”
“Yes. Things happen.” I put my saddlebags away. “Don’t wait too long, Gage. The sharp-lookin’ women get taken while you’re not paying attention.”
I determined right then and there that as soon as we got some colts from Hero and Misty, I would have Dawn train them and then we’d send them to Trey. He wasn’t the only Trahern who could be generous.
And honorable. He’d given me back my honor and I would always be thankful to him for that.
Talking to Gage, finding out about what Trey had done, lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. In one way, because of the war, I hadn’t considered myself a thief, yet in another way I had. Knowing that Trey put temptation in front of me, and I had acted on it, still galled me somewhat. I shouldn’t have... No. It was war. It was my duty to escape with whatever means possible.
Trey knew that. That was why he’d set Hero up so handily for me. I was taking the horse of my cousin, not of some stranger. And putting that bill of sale in my saddlebags might have saved me a hanging, if someone recognized Hero and wanted to hang me.