by Yvonne Jocks
Papa was a powerful man in this town. How could the other cattlemen do something without him even knowing about it?
Papa had said he would rather see Stuart dead than married to her.
Marian thought of her strong, silent father, the foundation upon which her world had rested. She thought of him not letting her have a bear cub, no matter how hard she cried, and sitting up with her or her sisters when they were sick. She remembered the big Die-Up, the worst winter
Wyoming had ever known, and how in the midst of his cattle and his dreams dying in droves, Papa had silently dragged a Christmas tree into the cabin for his little daughters before going back out to face the nightmare. She thought of him standing between her and wolves, Indians, unruly men ...
of him putting her on her first horse, partnering with her for her first dance, quietly complimenting her first long dress.
And no matter how close to Stuart Mariah cuddled, she felt frozen, because no matter how likely it seemed that Papa might join a range war, she would not believe it. She could not.
Not even for Stuart, for whom she thought she could do anything.
She said, “It's not Papa, Stuart. I'l ask him, and he'l tel you himself.”
Stuart drew a breath—then seemed to decide against whatever he'd meant to say. He just held her. But it stil did not warm her.
Final y he said, “If something were to happen ...”
She shook her head, but he sat back, made her meet his steady brown eyes. Unshaven like that—
like a bear—he looked so very grown up. He looked big, and masculine, so ... other. It did not frighten her, quite. But neither could he anchor her, like that.
“You need to think on this, Mariah Garrison,” he told her steadily. “You need to think on this very hard. If it were to come to a range war, do you have it in you to choose sides?”
He did not have to ask her, And which side would you choose?
But that was perhaps the worst, and most important, question of al .
Mariah did as Stuart asked her, the whole rest of the week. She thought about everything he'd said
—and wondered what he hadn't. Some moments, she determined that she would indeed ask her father to explain it al . Perhaps she would take Stuart with her, to hear it himself!
Other moments, she knew Papa would not deign to defend himself against such outlandish
accusations—certainly not in front of a MacCal um! He would not even let Stuart into his house.
Would she ask him such questions in the front yard?
Sometimes she thought Stuart must be tel ing the truth, that Papa had managed to deceive her, her whole life. But sometimes she remembered the sense that Stuart had lied to her—at the very least, he must be mistaken!
It left her dizzy.
On Thursday, she broke one of Mrs. MacCal um's teacups, and before she could apologize, Mrs.
MacCal um said, “We haven't enough nice things to waste!”
As if Mariah wasted her own. As if Marian's own mother would not have done anything to keep a guest from feeling bad about such an incident, no matter what got broken, replaceable or not.
Even though Emily, and little Rose and Ian, were in the same room, Mariah blurted, "Why do you dislike me so much?"
Mrs. MacCal um said, “Your selfishness wil get my boy murdered, that is why!”
And Mariah threw down her dishtowel and ran into the blessedly empty girls' bedroom, fel onto the bed she shared with Emily and Jenny, and cried for what felt like hours. First she cried at Mrs.
MacCal um's cruel, baseless accusation.
Then she cried in fear that perhaps it wasn't so baseless after al .
On Saturday afternoon, Kevin went outside to shoot at empty tins. Each retort from the rifle, even muffled by a rise between the house and the boy, made Mariah cringe. So, of course, it was she Mrs. MacCal um sent to cal the boy in for supper.
A strong breeze had come up, snaking veils of powdery snow over the top of the packed drifts, and young Kevin stood upwind from Mariah, his back to her. Before she reached him, she could smel gun smoke, even hear the clang when he hit a target. But the same wind stole her voice from her and blew it back toward the homestead. She had to fol ow his tracks al the way out to him, which is how she heard what he was saying, as he shot at the target. “Colonel Asa Wright!” he said, aiming.
The rifle kicked, and in the early winter dusk, a blue flame seemed to erupt from its muzzle. But the can sat untouched on its crudely formed shelf of snow.
Mariah's stride faltered. She'd spent six months in Europe with the Colonel and Mrs. Wright, as a companion to their daughter Alice. Why ... ?
“Bil Irvine!” Again, the boy shot. Missed. Cursed.
He was pretending to shoot at local ranchers!
Mariah wanted, needed to stop him, and yet she could not seem to even draw a breath. So she had to stand there, mutely watching, as Kevin said, “Jacob Garrison!”
The rifle kicked.
The empty can flew into the air, and Kevin let out a whoop of joy at having hit his target.
Mariah wanted to crumple to her knees in the snow and be sick... but she stil could not seem to draw breath, even for that.
And being sick would change nothing.
Stuart felt like a hypocrite. He'd begged Mariah to think—to think hard—whether she had it in her to choose sides, should it come to a range war. But he had worked himself near to exhaustion al week so as not to think about the same thing.
He did not dare. Knowing—loving—Mariah for four years, he knew the answer.
Even his Saturday night routine of pressing his good shirt, choosing a paper col ar, and polishing his boots became a way of doing something, anything, instead of thinking on it. But when he woke in the darkness the next morning, splashed his face with near-frozen water, then shaved and dressed for church, he knew that the truth would come.
Whether he wanted it or not, he needed her answer.
As he rode toward the homestead, the sky barely the color of Mariah's eyes, Stuart saw a shadow separate from the eaves of his family's home and resolve itself into Mariah. Bundled in a coat, gloves, and muffler—their muffler—she hurried to the barn, beckoned him to fol ow.
Stuart had fol owed her to the Kissing Bridge far too often to refuse this on grounds of propriety.
But he also knew, in the hol owness where he usual y kept his heart, that she was not behaving so secretively in order to kiss him.
He dismounted and led Pooka into the barn, rather than leave him in the cold untended, then turned to where Mariah stood beside an empty stal .
She was twisting her mittened hands. Her face looked very white, and her eyes wide.
Then, unexpectedly, she said, “Let's marry now, Stuart. This week. Today.”
The words might— might—have reassured him.
But the way she said them, rushed and frightened, did the opposite.
Chapter Eighteen
That, Stuart would decide later, was when the numbness started.
“Marry you,” he repeated stupidly. “Today?”
“As soon as possible. We can't put it off any longer. I'm afraid ...”
But whatever she feared, she hid by lowering her gaze to her hands and saying no more.
Stuart said, “You cannot marry me just because you're afraid.”
Even without looking back at him, her shoulders stiffened in clear, petulant chal enge. Yes, I can!
“Reverend Adams would never agree to it.”
“Then ... then we can elope.” Her voice squeaked on the last word. It felt eerily like talking to some stranger, not to his Mariah—and he had no business being alone in a barn with any other woman.
He had little business being alone with her.
Instinctively, Stuart reached for her, as if by touching her he could make her more real. She took his hands, but when he tried to pull her closer, she moved stiffly. It felt like holding someone else, too.
“Mariah, w
e agreed. 'Twould be unfair to our parents.”
She shook her bent head, though surely not at his argument. How could an elopement of their eldest children not badly betray both families?
“And we dinna need the scandal,” he reminded her.
“I don't care what people think!” Now she looked up, and her teary eyes startled him even more than her uncharacteristic claim. “I don't!”
“Of course you do, lass. If we just wait until spring ...”
That was when he final y understood what frightened her.
If they married quickly enough, any second thoughts she had would be too late. That meant she already had second thoughts, and merely wanted to outrun them. Mariah had already decided the question he'd asked her to think on.
She just hadn't admitted it to herself yet.
“Stuart...” Mariah snuffled, wiping at her face with one mittened hand. “About waiting. The talk wil end once we don't have an early baby. We'l just make sure not to, that's al .”
What? The idea of living with her in his sheep-wagon, never more than six feet apart except when he was outside, and somehow not consummating the marriage ...
Unimaginable. “We wil na wait,” he warned, his cheeks wanner than the barn merited.
Mariah nodded in a moment of foolish, beautiful victory. “Yes!”
“No! I mean...” Heaven help him, sooner or later they would have had to face this subject. He just hadn't expected to have to be speaking of it.
He could not bear to look at her as he forced the words from his mouth. "I mean, once we do marry ... I doubt we can wait, to ..."
He swal owed, hard, and even not looking at her he could feel her expectation.
“To risk babies,” he rasped, final y. “Not and live together.”
“Oh!” She realized then what he meant.
They spent a long moment, stil holding hands but looking at anything but each other. Only once did Stuart peek—quickly—and see that Mariah had ducked her head again.
But she wasn't so mortified as not to argue. “But Stuart, we ... we can ...” Her grip twisted, tight and awkward. “That is ... my mother says there are ways....”
He either had no earthly idea what she meant, or he did not dare let his thoughts drift near a place where he might. “Ways ... ?”
“To ...” Now he need not look at her to know she'd averted her face, because she'd braced the top of her head against the middle of his chest.
Never had he felt so uncomfortable.
“To ... be married . ..” she managed final y, miserably. “And not make a baby. There are ways for women to ... make sure . ..”
Stuart closed his eyes against so fantastic a conversation—but then his eyes flew open, because with a rush of cold and noise, Mariah flew back from him as if yanked.
She had been yanked. His mother, come upon them together, had yanked her.
Were Stuart not already numb with mortification, this would have finished him. The most intimate, embarrassing conversation of his life had been overheard by his mother?
Only that could explain his momentary paralysis. Then Ma yanked Mariah backwards by the arm again, right out the door. “Tramp!”
And numb or not, Stuart lunged after them. “No!”
“Maggie!” Da and several of the children were pouring from the homestead to see. Worse, Mariah had fal en in the snow. Had she been pushed? Stuart's mother didn't push people! And yet—
"The girl is obscene! We raised a good boy, a clean boy, and I find them together talking obscenities and sin!"
“Enough!” Only when his own voice echoed back at him did Stuart recognize it. Only when he saw his own hand on his mother's shoulder, physical y holding her back from where he'd stepped between her and Mariah, did he realize he'd been fully ready to push her, if need be.
Somewhere deep inside him, where it would never show, he began to shake then. And yet the knowledge of Mariah fal en back in the snow, her face pale, her coat bunched awkwardly on her, superceded even lost faith.
When he repeated the word lower, his throat hurt as if he'd injured it. “Enough.”
Da drew his wife back. Stuart turned to Mariah, and the pain in her eyes, her shame-reddened face, lanced through his growing numbness and straight into his soul. He ignored the near-crippling pain to draw her to her feet, started to brush the snow off her coat...
Then he realized how inappropriate that was, to touch her hips, her legs, and stopped doing that, too. Mariah brushed herself off alone. None of his sisters, staring horrified from the stoop, came to help.
This was Stuart's fault, of course. His fault for bringing her here. His fault for pretending they could make this work. Mariah had honestly believed it, of course— but that was Mariah. She'd believed her father would accept him, too.
Stuart should have known better. He had known better. But God help him, he'd so wanted the mirage to be real....
“We wil go inside and discuss this,” said Da.
Ma said, “Not. Under. My. Roof.”
“Maggie, be reasonable.”
“It's al right.” Mariah spoke so low, Stuart almost didn't hear her. "I don't want to go back in there.
I'm finished living where I'm not wanted."
Had she felt unwanted before now? Stuart remembered something about Christmas cookies,
weeks ago.
He 'd known better.
After that, he let the numbness win. He owed Mariah his strength until he got her safely back to her own world— and far, far away from his. If he stayed numb, maybe ...
Maybe he could survive the morning until then.
Huddled silently with the MacCal um children in the back of the wagon, en route to church, Mariah had never felt so dirty. Somehow worse, she'd never felt so absurd. She should have known that Stuart—steady, practical Stuart—would not sanction her fears with a rushed marriage. Perhaps she had known, but just could not bear to be the one who admitted ...
Who final y said ...
Perhaps she'd needed him to play the vil ain by speaking the words. They'd both waited so long, tried so hard, sacrificed so much! And yet, the cracks had been showing themselves for weeks now. Mariah just had not wanted to see. And after this morning ...
Obscenities. Sin.
She wanted to draw the carriage blanket up over her head and never face another MacCal um again. The intimacies she'd ventured would sound obscene, given a public forum—and yes, many people would consider such an idea as control ing the number of one's children sinful. Her mother had thoroughly embarrassed her by discussing such things, once Mariah was old enough for long skirts. And yet surely, between a married couple ...
Or a nearly married couple ...
Or...
Mariah wanted to cover her face and smother herself. Oh, what must Stuart be thinking!
He'd been wonderful, facing down his mother and standing silent guard until the family left for church. Even now, instead of riding ahead, he rode stonily abreast of the wagon where Marian huddled, as if daring his family to speak an il word. But he'd said nothing since the barn.
Only once he helped her from the wagon at church did Stuart draw her aside.
“Shal I walk you home?” he asked, low. “If you dinna want to attend services...”
For a single, horrible moment, she misunderstood him. Sin. Obscenities. “I belong in church as much as anybody, Stuart MacCal um!”
He blinked, startled. Then he said, “Never doubt it,” and offered his arm.
Would she have had the courage to fol ow his family into church otherwise? Hearing nothing of the hymns or even the sermon, Mariah wondered how she could possibly survive without Stuart's strength. She realized that she probably would have to.
And that's when the tears began to threaten, building with each unheard reading, each song.
When little Elise, half of her face hidden by a big floppy bow, brazenly looked over the back of the family pew to wave at her older sister, Mariah felt something akin to p
anic. Too soon, she must face her own family, the family she'd shattered in order to be with Stuart, the family to whom she'd insisted ... .. . wrongly ...
As the closing hymn began, she pushed to her feet and slipped out of the church, despite the attention it would draw. She'd faced so much this morning already.
Stuart caught up with her as she hurried across the snowy churchyard. He matched his stride to her own but did not, wisely, ask what was wrong.
What was right ?
“I can't face Mother,” she explained, not slowing. Her voice sounded foolish and high. "She'l ask what's wrong, and I'l start crying, and I won't be able to talk, not even to explain, and ... and Papa might kil someone...."
And she might not even be exaggerating.
“I'l walk you home,” Stuart insisted again. “Please. We ... we must settle this, you and I.”
If they said nothing, she could go home and pretend to forget about range wars or outraged mothers. She could pretend that somehow things might yet be al right, that somehow, she and Stuart could make this work. But Stuart knew better, didn't he?
She took his arm, wishing she did not need his strength so badly, and tried to blindly watch the frosted store windows instead of facing him.
Then she recognized his solemn, concerned face reflected in the windows over her own. He could see her wet eyes, her tight mouth, just fine.
“I'm sorry,” said Stuart final y. “Ma behaved poorly.”
Mariah gasped, even glanced momentarily at him in surprise. Stuart loved his mother. People should love their mother.... But then she'd come along.
“It must have been a shock for her,” she murmured with desperate politeness.
Stuart snorted at her understatement, then looked away. "I am sorry you were unhappy there, too ... sorry not to have seen it."
As if it were his fault. “I wasn't continual y unhappy,” Mariah protested. She'd rather liked his father, and had become tentative friends with his sisters. But...
But if she stopped trying to see things as they should be, instead of as they were, she had to admit that she'd fought unhappiness almost from the day she'd moved in. Never once over the last several weeks had she felt particularly bright, joyous ... useful.