by Yvonne Jocks
“You don't think the dogs ... ?”
Stuart glanced at her, then whistled at the dogs. Both of them dropped to the ground, mid-task, and lay there frozen and alert—though the sheep barely noticed. Beauty and Buster practically quivered with their need to get back to their herding duties; their eyes flicked continually toward their wool y charges, but neither moved anything more than that.
Stuart whistled again, and both dogs launched back into their previous choreography.
Stuart glanced back toward her. He'd never been an expressive man, but something close to pride glowed in his close-lipped smile. “The dogs will do what I tell them,” he assured her. “But you can keep the cat inside until they're used to each other, if you're worried.”
She'd meant to keep the cat inside most of the time anyway. But Mariah decided not to mention that just now. Instead, she enjoyed the white-and-gray prairie, the brisk wind and, most of all , Stuart's quiet company. Halfway through the ride, he shrugged off his coat and draped it over her lap—less distraction, she supposed. He must be cold, though he still wore mittens and his MacCallum-tartan muffler against the weather. But between his coat and hers, and the heat off Jughead's back beneath her, Mariah at least, felt warm and cozy and cared for ...
And remarkably free. After months of staying where others expected her to stay, Mariah loved the grasslands all the more because she had chosen to ride here herself.
When Stuart said, “This is our land,” Mariah's heart beat faster at the weight of what he meant.
This was Stuart's land because he had chosen it, every acre, coulee, and rise, just as she had chosen him. When they married, it would be theirs.
Looking at the winter grassland around her, she trusted both their judgments implicitly.
Stuart felt an uneasy mingling of pride and discomfort. The pride came from the fact that this was his claim. He had to prove it up, of course—spend the next four and a half years living off it, improving it, showing the United States government that he was no quitter. But he would do so, no matter what the cattlemen wanted. That made it his.
He'd claimed this land in his heart long before he was old enough to file on it. He chose it for the too-often-dry creek, and how it was sheltered from the worst of Wyoming's winds ... and, perhaps, for the buffalo wallow toward the south corner, where wildflowers bloomed every spring. Even then, he'd been meeting Mariah in secret. At the time, he'd dared not dream she would yoke her life to his. But he'd still imagined her delight at the flowers.
Of course, he'd feared that someone else would claim the land first—whereas most of the young men in these parts found ways to lie about their ages, filing as young as seventeen, Stuart knew that as a sheeper he might not get away with the same thing.
As with Mariah, his land was important enough to do it properly.
So he’d waited, and either God's grace or Mariah's optimism or folks' reluctance to cross the deadline onto sheep land kept the section available. On his twenty-first birthday, Stuart claimed his quarter section of Wyoming prairie. He knew every one of the hundred and sixty acres now under his name. He'd worked this land, slept on it, dreamed of his future on it.
And now, looking at it through Mariah's eyes, the incessant bleating of sheep rattling through his head, he wondered how she could ever reconcile herself to living on a hundred and sixty acres of near nothingness.
He shouldn't have. Her face glowed as she twisted atop Jughead, taking in the rolling prairie as if she were sightseeing. “Is that your wagon?” she asked, pointing toward the distant, curved white roof, near the haystacks he and Dougie had worked so hard to mow.
“I'll be building a proper house, by the time I've proved up,” said Stuart quickly. “Maybe we could even afford a ready-made house from back East.”
Mariah said, “If the wagon is good enough for you, I'm sure it's good enough for me.” She smiled.
“And my cat.”
“Once I've sunk a proper well , I'll have a windmill,” Stuart continued. “And pens ...”
“It will be the best sheep ranch in the state,” declared Mariah—then pointed. “Look! There's Dougie!”
Stuart had already seen his brother who, surprised to hear the sheep returning early, had come to see what was wrong. He would tel him about the ugly “message” they'd received in the form of a dead ewe, trade off dinner night, and take Mariah back to his father's homestead.
To his relief, both Dougie and Mariah let him, even though it meant neither hearing Dougie rant nor giving Mariah a closer look at the wagon just yet.
Stuart and Mariah rode back to his parents' home in relative silence—but it was not as easy a silence as that in which they'd ridden earlier. By time they could see his parents' white chimney smoke, if not the house itself, Mariah looked downright distressed.
“Could be...” Stuart reined Pooka to a stop, and Mariah fol owed suit. “We should walk the rest of the way in. So that...”
And he glanced at his duster across her lap.
“Oh!” But she nodded, and when he dismounted she let him help her off the great draft horse she'd been riding.
Stuart shrugged his coat back on, conscious of how it still held warmth from Mariah, even some of her fine, floral scent. He gathered Pooka's reins—and Jughead's rope—in his right hand, preparing to offer his left arm to Mariah .. . but hesitated.
Despite keeping her chin up, even smiling firmly, she looked somehow as unhappy as when she'd found him. Unhappiness seemed blasphemous on Mariah's pretty face.
“Are you cold?” he asked, hoping it was something that simple.
She shook her head, but he unwound the muffler from around his neck anyway. “Here,” he said, looping it gently over her shoulders. “I hope it doesn't smell of... sheep....”
To judge from Mariah's expression, she wasn't noticing any smell . To judge from her expression, he might as well have presented her with jewels or flowers. Then he realized why. It was the blue plaid muffler she'd given him from Scotland. The MacCallum colors.
Well , she would soon be a MacCallum herself—if not soon enough.
“You keep it for awhile,” he insisted, embarrassed to have done something so significant without having meant to—but glad he had. “In case ... in case you forget why you're out here.”
“I won't forget again, Stuart,” she assured him, eyes alight with pleasure.
And then he had to kiss her. He leaned nearer, tipped his head so his hat wouldn't hit her, and touched her soft, full lips with his own. Kissing Mariah in the frosty grass felt as right as anything he'd ever done, neither furtive nor even scandalous, despite their lack of a chaperone. His free hand found her waist. With a shuffling step he leaned against her more firmly, opened his mouth to hers ...
He remembered her stockinged legs, so slim and curved under her skirt hem when she rode
Jughead, and as their kisses deepened his breath caught in his throat— and, somehow, in the rest of him, too. He had no right. But they were engaged....
They startled apart when a child's cal floated to them on the wind. “Stuart!”
Then they smiled shyly at each other, foreheads and noses nearly touching, before glancing across the prairie to where twelve-year-old Kevin waved excitedly.
Stuart waved back, and Kevin ran off in the direction of the white column of wood smoke. He would be announcing their arrival.
Stuart took a step in the same direction, his left arm still around Mariah, perhaps too familiarly but he stopped when, unlike the horses, she did not follow.
“We'd best get in,” he reminded her.
She stood still even so, worry again darkening her face. “It is going to be all right, isn't it Stuart?” she asked, and the desperation in her voice worried him.
“I'll explain to my parents,” he offered, though unsure he understood enough to explain it.
She shook her head, confirming it. “Not just today, not with your parents ... everything. The sheep farmers and the cattle ranchers.
Us. Tel me everything is going to be all right.”
It pained him deeply, not to be able to promise her any such thing. She hadn't heard about the trespassing cattle, or seen the slaughtered ewe. “I canna say that,” he reminded her, as gently as he could. “It's not all up to us, you know.”
She ducked her head, turned into his shoulder. His answer disappointed her, he could tel .
But he would not lie. Not even to Mariah.
Especial y not to Mariah.
Chapter Fifteen
Somehow, Mariah remained outwardly cheerful until the week's end. But when she learned Mr. MacCallum was taking the wagon to town on Saturday for supplies, she was willing to appear self-indulgent in order to go with him.
Mrs. MacCallum made no objections. She'd assumed an air of martyred helplessness where
Mariah was concerned ever since Mariah had ridden off to see Stuart. But her look held
accusations enough. Perhaps the accusations were even valid. Mariah would be seeing her family the very next day. But she wanted it badly enough to risk even valid censure. Even if the other MacCallum children were not allowed to go with her.
Kevin seemed particularly dismayed to be left behind. “Remember, Da,” he kept saying. "A Winchester! With a tang rear sight!"
“It's not a name I'll soon be forgetting,” soothed his da.
Mariah waited until she was seated beside Mr. MacCallum in his wagon, driving steadily
southwestward, before she asked, “Is Kevin getting a rifle for Christmas?”
Mr. MacCallum cleared his throat and said, “Not for Christmas, no.”
Since he seemed unwilling to make conversation, she contented herself with counting off the familiar landmarks until she saw the red depot and Sheridan Inn in the distance and, beyond them, Sheridan itself. Home!
Until spring, she reminded herself firmly. Perhaps, she should feel guilty for not thinking of the MacCallums as her family even now. But she could not. And she felt too happy for the chance to see her own parents and sisters again to worry the subject further.
“Be back here in two hours, lass,” instructed Mr. MacCallum, setting the wagon's brake in front of the Big Goose Hardware Store. "The sky's low; I dinna want a storm to catch us before we get home."
“Yessir,” agreed Mariah, claiming the sack with the rejected flour and sugar from the wagon bed.
“Thank you again for letting me accompany you.”
He nodded, shy.
Mariah hurried several doors down to the drugstore which, she knew, boasted a telephone. But when she asked Irene, the “hello girl” to connect her to the Garrison home, Irene said nobody was answering. “Would you like me to keep trying, Mariah?”
Remembering how little time she had, Mariah declined. Not event months ago, she hadn't been the sort of girl who would walk downtown unescorted. But married women could, and she was practical y married. Perhaps she could still manage a proper escort along the way.
She stopped by her brother Thad's law office, but it was locked. A block farther, she stopped at the millinery shop, run by the mother of one of her best friends from school. Charity Wills and her mother lived above the shop; it was Charity who had helped deliver Mariah's European letters to Emily MacCallum. If Charity was home for holidays from the finishing school she'd gone to back East, wouldn't they have a lot to talk about! But...
“Charity won't be home until next week,” said Mrs. Wills, cooler than Mariah remembered her. “I will tell her you stopped in.”
“Thank you.” Mariah would have liked to linger, look at the beautiful new hats ... but she did only have two hours. So she hurried on alone, her mood unsullied.
Only when she reached her tree-lined street did her cheerful step slow, her attitude falter.
The three-story house's windows seemed dark for such a cold, gray day. Though a wreath hung on the front door, no lights twinkled through the beveled panes. And no smoke came from the cook-stove's chimney—not even enough to heat the ever-present pot of coffee.
Her family's town house looked.... empty?
“They've gone to the ranch for the weekend,” announced a quiet voice.
Mariah gasped. Then she spun, searching for the source of the voice. Only when she looked up, into an oak tree, did she recognize the wan face peeking back down at her.
“Evangeline Taylor?” she asked. “Whatever are you doing in a tree?”
The skinny girl stared downward, perhaps unable to arrive at a suitable answer, so Mariah tried another tack. “Come down from there! Proper young ladies do not sit in trees.”
She remembered her sister Laurel. “Especially not other people's trees,” she added.
Evangeline dropped to the walk beside her, hung her head. “I'm sorry,” she said, in that low voice that seemed unwilling to claim enough volume to be properly heard. She made a sad sight, her skirt too short for her age, her stockings patched, and wisps of thin, almost colorless hair slipping from her single braid. She wore a knitted shawl against the cold, and no mittens—and brand-new shoes.
But Mariah had too much to worry about with the empty house to wonder about Evangeline's shoes. “What did you say about my family?”
“They've gone to the ranch,” repeated Evangeline, daring a quick peek up through her pale lashes.
“Victoria told me they would, yesterday.”
“Oh....” said Mariah. Her family often spent weekends at the Circle-T, returning for church Sunday morning. And they had not known she would come to town.
So why did she feel orphaned?
“I should go,” whispered Evangeline, and began to turn away.
“Wait!” Realizing how rude she'd been, Mariah caught the girl's skinny arm. “It's still my home, too, and I have some things to return. Please, come with me and warm yourself.”
Evangeline hesitated. “But... nobody's there.”
“I'm here.”
When Evangeline continued to stand there, near about cringing in the cold, Mariah slipped her hand over the girl's chapped hand and started around toward the back of the house. Evangeline followed her as docilely as a child-broke horse.
Even in a town as safe as Sheridan, her mother had a habit of locking the doors when they left for several days. “We keep a key here,” she said, moving one of the stones near the back porch, and Evangeline finally said something.
“You should have told me to look away!” she cried.
Claiming the key, Mariah looked over her shoulder, surprised.
“I shouldn't know where your family keeps that,” insisted Evangeline, stricken. “If something were to be stolen...”
“You don't mean to break in, do you?” teased Marian, reaching the porch.
“No, but... please say you'll hide it somewhere else now. Please?”
“Al right,” agreed Mariah as the lock clicked open. “I'l hide it somewhere else. Now come in, hurry. It's cold!”
After only another moment's hesitation, Evangeline scurried into the dark kitchen.
The first thing Mariah did was turn on lights. Ah! She did miss good lighting. She understood the expense of kerosene and coal oil, of course. The MacCallums had good reason to limit their use of lamps. Perhaps she would need to do the same, once she and Stuart married.
But she missed it, all the same.
She put her “charity” ingredients in their proper bins, then checked the ice box—and smiled.
“Would you like a sandwich? Mother left bread, and beef to slice.”
“Without asking?” asked Evangeline in a whisper.
“Nobody will mind,” Mariah assured her—and paused to savor that certainty. As long as she did not finish off what her mother had left, she was welcome to it, partly because her family could afford it. But partly because she was loved.
“Sit down,” she invited as she made them both good, thick sandwiches. “If you're worried, I'll leave a note.”
Evangeline sat.
“Why were you in the tree?” Mariah asked, af
ter sitting across from the girl and setting the lunch in front of her.
Evangeline murmured something.
“Pardon?”
“You'll think I'm silly,” admitted the younger girl.
"Even if I did, what would that signify? The important thing is that you feel you have a good reason. Like ... like me choosing Stuart MacCallum to marry."
“I just... like being on this side of town,” admitted Evangeline slowly, after chewing and swallowing a bite of sandwich. “Everything is so fine here, so clean and pretty.”
Mariah considered the part of town where Evangeline likely lived, across the railroad tracks. She'd only caught glimpses of it—but it made her feel ashamed for her reservations about the
MacCallums' warm homestead, no matter how useless she felt there.
“I don't think you're silly, Evangeline,” she said quietly.
Evangeline's smile flickered into and then out of existence even more briefly than one of Stuart's would, but Mariah felt glad to have seen it. She felt even better when she thought to check the cookie jar—and found Christmas cookies.
After eating, she and Evangeline looked at the Christmas decorations her mother and sisters had already put up—garlands of evergreen, tied with bright red bows, and paper snowflakes pasted into the windows. Even empty of Garrisons, the house seemed filled with holiday spirit. Mariah thought to compliment Evangeline on her shoes—“My mother bought them for me,” said Evangeline, awed—and talked her into accepting a spare pair of mittens.
By the time they locked up the house and headed back downtown, looking in shop windows,
Mariah was in high spirits again. But then they reached the millinery.
“Look,” said Mariah, pointing into the window at all the beautiful hats. "My friend Charity Wills lives there, and oh, we had such fun playing dress-up with all those hats when we were younger.
She'll be home from school next week."
And Evangeline said, quietly, “Charity Wills got home from school on Monday.”
It took an embarrassingly long moment for the truth to register. Mariah actual y wondered, Why would she lie to me? before her gaze settled on Mrs. Wills, safe behind glass panes, helping a customer—and firmly ignoring the two outcasts at her window.