Blaze of Lightning Roar of Thunder

by Helen A Rosburg

  “I’m Ring Crossman,” he said politely. “I’m looking for my hand, Rowdy Hayes.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Crossman, I remember you. Glad to have you back, sir. But Mr. Hayes isn’t here just now. I believe he’s at the restaurant.”

  “That’s a good place for him to be. I’m hungry enough t’eat my saddle.” Ring tipped his hat to the clerk and turned to leave. “Oh, I’m sorry. Blaze, would you like to go on up to our rooms and do, well, whatever it is ladies do?”

  Blaze quickly shook her head. The last thing she wanted to do was be alone in this place without Ring or Sandy.

  “Thanks, but I’ll … I’ll come with you.”

  Ring smiled. “After you.” He gestured to the door.

  Blaze couldn’t leave fast enough.

  Back in the street, Ring headed in a familiar direction. Blaze walked just behind him while Sandy limped along in the rear. Blaze saw Ring start, then lift his hand in greeting.

  “Rowdy. Good to see you.”

  A stooped, older man with long, snow-white hair raised a hand almost imperceptibly by way of reply. His deeply lined face remained sober. Blaze glanced at Sandy.

  “Don’t pay Rowdy no mind, Miss Blaze. He looks like ’at all the time.”

  Blaze wasn’t so sure. She kept her eyes on Ring, who seemed to tense all of a sudden.

  “What is it, Rowdy?” Ring asked, confirming Blaze’s suspicion. “What’s wrong?”

  Rowdy inclined his head to a place somewhere behind him. “Let’s go over t’Miss Maggie’s, have a drink.” Without another word, he turned and headed back up the street.

  “There really must be somethin’ wrong,” Sandy said to Blaze. “That’s the most I heard him talk since I knowed him.”

  Blaze’s stomach constricted. She hurried after Ring.

  Maggie’s saloon was another eye-opener for Blaze. A place to go and eat was wonder enough. But a place to drink?

  She accepted a glass of water only when Ring asked her what she wanted. He bought beer for everyone else. They took their drinks to a round table and sat down. Blaze wrinkled her nose at the smell of the alcohol, then promptly forgot about everything but Ring. He had gone pale.

  “Better tell me what it is, Rowdy,” he said tightly. “I’d sure like to get over to see my mother.”

  Rowdy didn’t reply. He looked at Ring without blinking.

  “Unless, of course, it’s about my mother.”

  Rowdy held Ring’s gaze for another long moment. His pallor deepened.

  “I’m sorry, Ring,” Rowdy said quietly. “I’m sure as hell sorry.”

  There was another long, painful silence. Then: “Did she suffer?”

  “She was sick a long time, Ring,” Rowdy said soberly. “She passed in ’er sleep. It was a blessin’.”

  Ring nodded slowly and stared down at his clasped hands. “How long ago?” he asked without looking up.

  “Near a month,” Rowdy replied. “It was a real nice funeral, Ring. I did the best I could.”

  Ring nodded again. “Thanks, Rowdy. I appreciate it.”

  Blaze felt a tear slip down her cheek. “Guess I’ll go on over to her house, then.” Ring got up and walked toward the double swinging doors. Heart breaking, Blaze followed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SOUND OF MOURNING DOVES CAME THROUGH THE open window, carried on the wings of a fresh, spring breeze. The gauzy curtains fluttered and settled, fluttered and settled, as if breathing in and out. Drowsing beneath the colorful quilt, Blaze inhaled the desert perfume of blooming cacti, and the lingering scent of night-blooming jasmine that Ring’s mother, Priscilla Wade, had planted in her backyard garden.

  She would have to get up soon. Rowdy, Ring, and Sandy would be by for their breakfast. Blaze smiled to herself.

  Ring hadn’t wanted her to do that for them. At least that’s what he said. But she knew he was secretly delighted. As were Sandy and Rowdy. Her mother had taught her well, and they liked her cooking. Blaze giggled.

  Rowdy absolutely hated to cook, yet earned his living that way. Maybe that’s what made him so grumpy all the time.

  The pink light of dawn stole through the window to stain the simple, white-painted dresser and warm the quilt Blaze had pulled to her chin. She closed her eyes and still saw the comforting light. She’d cook, then have her lesson on her very own horse.

  Blaze shivered with pleasure. Her own horse. The most beautiful animal she had ever seen. Purest white with a sprinkling of black spots over his rump and a funny black circle around his left eye. He had a funny expression, too. He’d hang his head a little, let his ears flop, and look at her with those big, brown eyes. With the black ring especially, he looked so pitiful, kind of lonesome. It had taken her awhile to think of just the right name. Then it had seemed obvious.

  Lonesome. She’d call him Lonesome. Not only did he appear that way, but it was a talisman of sorts. Neither one of them would ever be lonely again.

  Blaze hugged her arms to her breast. She had always thought she would love to have a horse. What she hadn’t imagined was how much she was going to love the horse itself.

  Thinking about Lonesome brought her naturally to thoughts of Ring. Blaze experienced a feeling of warmth that spread outward from the center of her breast. Could it be from her heart, she wondered. She recalled that fateful day nearly three months ago.

  Ring had walked straight to the cemetery. It had been painful to watch him search for her grave. Row after row he walked until he found it at last. He knelt on one knee. His chin dropped to his chest.

  Blaze had watched from a distance, and was glad she had when a sob escaped her. She realized her face was wet with tears. Her heart ached for Ring.

  He had remained kneeling for a very long time. Once Blaze saw him lift a hand to his eyes and scrub them. She herself never moved a muscle.

  She was not certain how long she had stood at the cemetery’s edge, watching him. What seemed an eternity later, however, he rose and walked slowly back to the cemetery’s entrance, head down. When he passed her, he looked up and appeared surprised.

  “You’re here.” It was a simple statement of fact, yet it contained almost more meaning and emotion than Blaze could bear.

  “Yes. I’m here,” she replied with equal simplicity.

  Ring nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Would you like to show me your mother’s house?” Blaze didn’t know where the words had come from, but she instantly sensed they were the exact right ones.

  A small, sad smile touched Ring’s lips. “I’d like that very much.”

  They walked down the main street side by side, silent. At the opposite edge of town, Ring turned right down a narrow street lined with small, quaint stores. When the row of stores came to an end, he kept walking. Blaze saw, in the distance, a neat, white clapboard house surrounded by a white picket fence and tidy gardens, front and back. She glanced at Ring.

  There was another smile on his mouth, but this one was only vaguely tinged with sadness. Blaze felt her spirits lift a little. At the front entrance to the house, Ring opened a low gate and held it for her. She stepped into the magical enclosure of Priscilla Wade’s home.

  Flowers, sadly wilting now from lack of care, grew against the sides of the house. There was a front porch with a rocker off to one side, and lace curtains on the windows at either side of the front door. Overwhelmed, Blaze followed Ring onto the front porch. Again he held the door for her, and she stepped inside. She heard the door close behind her.

  “It’s not much, I know,” she heard Ring say. “But my mother loved it.”

  “Not much?” Blaze turned to Ring. Her eyebrows had nearly disappeared into her hairline. “I think it’s the most beautiful home I’ve ever seen.”

  Ring was silent for a moment. He swallowed. “Would you like me to … to show you around?”

  Blaze could only nod. Ring gestured around them.

  “My mother’s parlor,” he said needlessly.

  It was charming. Th
ere was another rocking chair in one corner, facing a settee, with a small, low table between them. In another corner was a knickknack shelf, filled with figurines and pretty rocks.

  “I found those, and gave them to her when I was just a kid,” Ring said as if he had read her mind.

  Something hard and uncomfortable formed in Blaze’s chest. She was glad of the room’s cheery colors; pinks and blues, a soft, pale green.

  Ring led her on to the next room, the kitchen. Lace hung at the windows here as well. A real sink with water pump and a cast-iron stove. Cups in a pretty blue and white pattern hung under cabinets on one wall. Behind one glass cupboard door she saw matching saucers and plates. There was a small, square oaken table in the center of the room with four matching chairs.

  “Oh, Ring,” Blaze sighed. “I … I don’t know what to say. It’s wonderful.”

  “Let me show you your room,” he said by way of reply.

  It was as if Blaze had suddenly become numb. It simply didn’t register. Her room? She followed Ring back through the salon and through a door off to one side.

  The bedroom looked as if it had been decorated for the princess in a story her mother had read to her when she was a little girl. The curtains at the window were gauzy and reached all the way to the pine floor. The quilt on the bed was in pastel colors. A small table, bearing a lamp, stood beside it. A matching dresser graced the opposite wall. Blaze was speechless.

  “Do you like it?” Ring asked finally.

  Blaze thought she nodded, but wasn’t sure.

  “So, you won’t mind staying here?”

  Blaze came to her senses at last. She turned to him. “Oh, Ring, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s … it’s … so grand.”

  A smile almost made it to his lips. “Blaze, my mother wasn’t grand. She was a solid, decent, loving woman. She would have wanted you to stay here. She would have insisted on it, in fact. You two had a great deal in common.”

  Blaze was astounded. “Your mother and … me?”

  “You’re the two strongest women I ever knew.”

  Blaze was speechless.

  “Would you come and sit on the porch with me for awhile, Blaze? I’d like to tell you how I got my name.”

  “Of course I’ll sit with you,” she replied in a small voice.

  Ring took the rocker from the parlor and put it near the one on the porch. They sat down side by side.

  “My mother was a schoolteacher,” Ring began. “She taught at a small school outside St. Louis, Missouri. One day a young man came riding by. It was a hot day, and he was thirsty, so he came inside to ask for a drink of water.” Ring leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “He was a handsome man, powerfully good lookin’. When he left, my mother thought she would never see him again. She was wrong.

  “He came back the next day and asked for a drink of water. And the next day, and the next. Then one afternoon, when school was out, he asked if he might take her for a walk.”

  Blaze stared at Ring with rapt attention. His gaze was focused somewhere out over the far horizon.

  “He came every afternoon for a month, and they walked out together. Then he asked her to marry him.”

  Vaguely, Blaze remembered Ring’s mother’s last name was different from his. “Did she accept?” she breathed.

  “Yes. She did. She adored him.”

  Blaze’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “So, they went away together and got married?”

  “Well, they went away together. Joseph, my daddy, had always wanted to move to the southwest. My mother was willing to go, but wanted to be married first. He promised they’d get hitched as soon as they got to Arizona.”

  “But that didn’t happen, did it?”

  Ring shook his head. “He got her a real nice little house, this one, and took a job at the livery stable. Then Ma got pregnant.”

  Blaze raised a hand to her mouth. Ring didn’t even seem to notice her.

  “She thought then, for sure,” he continued, “that my daddy would marry her. She was so sure that she decided to name her baby, whether it was a girl or a boy … Ring. She was convinced that a baby was what was gonna finally put that ring on her finger.” Ring sighed heavily.

  “So, that’s what she did when I was born. She even gave me my daddy’s last name. It didn’t do her a bit of good.”

  Blaze felt tears well in her eyes.

  “A week after I was born, he just didn’t … he just didn’t come home one day. My mother never saw him again.” Ring stared at the distant mountains for a long moment, then cleared his throat.

  “But she raised me right, took over my daddy’s job at the livery, and sent me to school.”

  “The livery? But … she was a teacher, Ring.”

  He was silent. “She had a child out of wedlock,” he said at length in a dull tone. “The town shunned her. She was lucky to get a job cleaning stalls.” Ring stood and walked slowly down the porch steps.

  “Ring? Wait. Please.”

  Blaze started to follow, but he spoke without stopping or turning.

  “I’m going back to the cemetery for awhile. You stay here, get settled in. I’ll see you later.”

  The sun was over the horizon. It poured through the window like warm honey. Blaze knew it was time to get up and get going. But she lingered just a moment longer.

  She had stayed in Priscilla’s house, of course. Blaze had told Ring it was only until the snow melted in the mountains and she could continue her way north. She didn’t tell him why. He didn’t ask. He told her simply to move on in.

  So she had, and the past months had been filled with a quiet joy. She had her horse, as Ring had promised. She rode every day. She lived in a beautiful house. And there was Ring’s company, always pleasant.

  She had such warm feelings for Ring. He was a kind man, and treated her like a lady. Those were two things her mother had always told her she loved about Blaze’s father. Did she love Ring? Blaze rolled over onto her side.

  How could she know? She had never been in love before. And she had imagined something different when she did fall in love.

  And then there was her mission. Nothing, no one, could stop her. Would he join her? Would he want to?

  Blaze moaned. What was she going to do? How was she going to know if she was in love or not?

  She threw her legs over the edge of the bed. To heck with her lesson. She was going to ask Ring if he would ride out into the desert with her instead. What she was going to do when they got there, she didn’t know. But she would think of something. She was sure she would.

  Blaze just knew she had to go.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BLAZE DIDN’T THINK SHE HAD EVER SEEN THE DESERT look so beautiful. Large yellow blooms decorated the prickly pear, smaller ones dusted the leafless paloverde. Pink blossoms erupted on the barrel cacti, while sage and mesquite bloomed with tiny yellow flowers. Red-petaled blooms decorated the long, spiny arms of the ocotillo. Due to recent rains, here and there on the valley floor were sparse patches of grass, thin and fine as a baby’s hair. The desert was alive and wearing its spring finery.

  The sweet scents and stirring beauty were a balm to Blaze’s soul. Although the terrible tragedy in her life, the pain and loss, never left her, for this moment at least she felt light of heart. The feeling helped warm her for the task she had set for herself. Blaze glanced toward the man riding at her side.

  She loved the way Ring sat a horse. He seemed so at home, so easy in the saddle. His back was straight, but not rigid, giving him the appearance of flowing along with his horse instead of merely riding it. His hands held the reins loosely, and his eyes were heavy lidded beneath the wide brim of his Stetson. But Blaze was not fooled. He was like a snake sleeping in the sun. In the space of a heartbeat he could be tensed to strike. She smiled to herself.

  There were so many things she liked about Ring Crossman. She’d been right to come out with him like this today. Her inst
incts had been correct. If there could ever be anything between them, she would find out now. The thought of her single-minded mission did not even distress her. What was meant to be, would be.

  The pair had ridden for some time at a slow, but ground-eating lope. Blaze had enjoyed every moment of her horse’s rocking chair gait, and was reluctant to stop. But they had ridden quite a way out into the desert and it would be time to turn back soon. It was more than time she speak to Ring about what was on her mind.

  His first clue had been when she declined a lesson and suggested they ride out together. It wasn’t that he thought her idea odd. Rather, it was the way she acted when she asked him. Ring glanced sidelong at Blaze and shook his head.

  She was a strange one, all right. All sealed up tight around a core of something hard and terrible, something, he had to admit, he might never know about. Something that was driving, or pushing her north. She was on a quest of some kind. Or a hunt.

  Ring felt the hair on his arms stand up as he recalled how coolly she had informed him she had killed a man. She was no stranger to death and dying. That much he was certain of. What puzzled him was the other side of her, the side that flourished despite whatever it was she had gone through. The part of her that made him want to take her in his arms and make the rest of her world go away. He stole another look at the woman who rode beside him when she slowed her horse to a walk.

  There was something on her mind. He’d known her long enough and well enough to figure that much out. She wanted to talk to him. But about what? Ring’s stomach suddenly spasmed.

  Was it time for her to move on? The snow had started to melt in the mountains. Is that what she wanted to tell him? In the next moment, his worst fears were realized.

  Blaze halted her gelding abruptly and looked Ring straight in the eye. There was no other way to go at it, she decided, except straight.

  “I … I want you to know, Ring,” Blaze began, “that it was … special … staying in your mother’s house. You’ve been very kind to me. And I can never thank you enough for Lonesome.” Unconsciously, her hand stroked the spotted horse’s neck. “But it’s about time I … I thought about heading north again.”