Forgetting Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Never—except when she was with Stuart. And she wondered now if those fleeting moments of joy justified the seemingly endless days of inadequacy and stagnation.

  What had Mother said? If you start sacrificing Mariah now, you may never get her back.

  She and Stuart walked in near silence for several more blocks. Slowly, the roar and echo of unspoken truth deafened her to even the wind and the crunch of their footsteps. She kept waiting for Stuart to final y speak what they both knew, bracing herself against it. He was the one who could face harsh realities, not her....

  Final y, when she could barely stand the awful anticipation, she forced his hand by asking, tearily,

  “We aren't going to marry in the spring, are we Stuart?”

  “No, Mariah.” Though she'd al but made him say it, the hurt of his quiet words made her want to strike out.

  “Your mother said that my selfishness would get you kil ed.”

  Stuart stopped so that she would look at him. “You must never think that.”

  His solid, scowling face began to blur before her. “You can't tel me what to do anymore,” she whispered miserably.

  Stuart began walking again, drawing her with him, breathing deeply. She hoped her family would take their usual route home, and not drive past them with Stuart looking so murderous and her crying.

  “The beating wasna your fault either,” Stuart insisted stonily. “I earned it by taking liberties with you that weren't mine to have. It was worth it, ten times over.”

  She began to cry then, final y, great silent sobs that convulsed her shoulders and nearly stole the strength from her legs, and Stuart drew her against him, tight. As if people would not see them. As if she stil had a right to his strength.

  “My only regret is hurting you,” he murmured into her hair. “I'd ne'er take any of it back, except to have not hurt you.”

  She only cried harder. None of this was his fault. Perhaps she could not grasp the why of their disparate worlds—but she'd final y begun to recognize the power of that disparity. And yet, against al her fine intentions, she found herself tipping her head back, begging him: "Can't we make it work, Stuart? It can be al right if we try hard enough ... can't it?"

  The longing in his warm brown gaze, as he stared back down at her, gave her a fleeting hope. Al he had to tel her was that everything would be al right, and she could breathe again, she could think of the future without cringing, she could ...

  She could pretend that the sheep farmers and cattle ranchers didn't hate each other, that she could somehow survive a battle between the two factions. She could pretend that she could live a happy life without the blessings of her family, that he could do the same without the approval of his. She could pretend that the next time Stuart was hurt or beaten, the fear that she'd been responsible would not destroy her. .. .

  “People are staring,” Stuart murmured, refusing to al ow her such delusions, even now. “If we don't start walking again, they may cal the law.”

  Mariah struggled to walk and to catch her breath, to stop her crying, al at the same time. Only when their snow-muffled footsteps took them onto the bridge—their bridge—did Stuart stop again and say the worst words of al . “I'd best go no farther. If I do ...”

  But he did not tel her what he feared he would do, otherwise.

  Somehow, she made herself speak without further tears. Stuart deserved that, at least. He deserved at least a fragment of the strength from her that she'd taken from him. "Your mother wil want her ring back," she said properly.

  Taking off her mitten and drawing the ring from her finger was not the hardest thing she'd ever had to do. It was cold, which made the ring fit loosely anyway.

  The hardest thing was unwrapping the plaid-wool muffler from her neck.

  “You needn't—” began Stuart, who'd accepted even the ring with reluctance, as if he did not have every right to it.

  “I'm not a MacCal um,” she reminded him, her voice quavering. “You should have it. I brought it for you.”

  So Stuart took that, too, looked down at it in his hands. “I wish...” he started to say, but fel silent.

  Stuart had never been one for wishing, after al . That was Mariah's weakness.

  She wanted to tel him she was sorry. She wanted to thank him for everything he'd been to her.

  Such simplistic words felt inadequate for either feeling. So instead, afraid of embarrassing herself if she stayed longer, she turned and al but ran off the bridge and away from him, around the corner to Elizabeth Street, up the walk to her home.

  She belonged here, whether she'd forgotten it for awhile or not. She belonged here .. .

  And Stuart MacCal um did not.

  Stuart, holding the numbness to him just a little longer, slowly fol owed Mariah's dainty footsteps until he could see her fine, big house, around the corner. He told himself that he worried the Garrisons might not take her back. It was an excuse, of course, and a poor one.

  But it let him watch her one last time as she approached the front door, as it opened, as her mother folded her into a tight embrace and drew her inside.

  Then the door shut, and she was gone.

  He walked back to the church, to his horse. He rode back to his parents' ugly, sprawling, sod-roofed homestead, dismounted, and went inside.

  His family, at the Sunday dinner, stared with a kind of morbid expectation in the dim light. Stuart stood just inside the doorway, feeling the numbness beginning to unravel. He remembered loving these people, respecting them, caring what they thought. He suspected someday he would again.

  But for now . ..

  He reached in his pocket and retrieved the ring, approached the table.

  “Have some dinner, Stuart,” offered his father. “You'l want to warm yourself.”

  As if he would ever feel warm again, much less here. Stuart slapped the ring onto the table in front of his mother, turned, and began to leave.

  But when she said, “You'l find a better woman for it, son,” he stopped.

  He did not bother to turn. But he said, "I'l never touch that ring again. And if you mean to hear another civil word from me—"

  “Stuart,” interrupted his father—as wel he should. There were lines no man should cross, no matter how provoked.

  “Don't expect me for church next week,” he said instead, and left. Anything else he had to tel them, he could send word with Dougie.

  The numbness had just about worn off. And Stuart had a pain to face, a disappointment in himself and his world both, that he doubted a lifetime would be enough to wear away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When she'd returned from her half-year in Europe, Mariah had felt as if she'd never left home—

  within minutes.

  But after not even a month with the MacCal ums, as weeks passed, she began to fear she'd lost the ability to truly go home, ever again. At least, not to the storybook life she'd once cherished.

  Somehow she'd lost that—her certainty that everything would turn out fine, that good prospered and bad failed, and that people who worked hard enough could earn their hearts' desire. That pragmatism was perhaps the last thing Stuart had managed to teach her.

  And it stil hurt nowhere near as badly as losing him.

  She appreciated what she had, of course—al the more for having so nearly renounced it al . And the gaslights, warm home, and pretty clothes counted among the least of Mariah's blessing. Even the festive beauty of Christmas came and went in a meaningless blur...

  Except that she noticed how Stuart MacCal um no longer attended church services.

  No, what Mariah clung to that January were the more simple joys of hearing Elise's infectious laugh, helping cook for her family, listening to Evangeline Taylor play increasingly beautiful piano every Thursday afternoon.

  She smuggled the barn-cat and her kittens into the younger girls' bedroom and savored the sight of Kitty's pinched face slowly softening to the wonder of having such clever, dainty creatures climbing over her
bed, playing with her braids and stretching high to drink from her water pitcher.

  When Papa discovered them, Mariah enjoyed watching Elise help their mother sweet-talk him into letting the animals stay. She enjoyed knowing full wel that he took as much pleasure in Kitty's rare laugh as anyone ... and that, after al , kittens were not bear cubs.

  Or sheep farmers.

  Mariah savored helping her mother use her newfangled sewing machine to make quilts for the needy, taking sleigh rides out to the ranch, and spending long evenings entertaining her “Uncle”

  Benjamin Cooper, Papa's business partner, with his British wife and their wel -behaved son. And she enjoyed realizing how little money had to do with their best blessings.

  But despite those joys, it no longer felt like a storybook life because, no matter how pleasant Mariah's world, shadows seemed to lurk just beneath the surface. Elise pouted as often as she laughed, and poor Evangeline Taylor had little prospect of ever having her own piano. Kitty might never be as strong or healthy as her sisters. And as for the beautiful Circle-T Ranch, nestled alongside Goose Creek in the foothil s of the Bighorn Mountains ... was it so beautiful?

  Mariah was almost sure bul ying had nothing to do with the ranch's success. Almost.

  Her father's business partner came into the ranch kitchen late one evening as Mariah, unable to sleep, kneaded dough for the morning's biscuits. She took advantage of their unexpected privacy to ask, “Uncle Benj?”

  “Wel looky the night owl!” he greeted cheerfully, helping himself to some always-hot, strong coffee. A handsome man for his age, his stylish sideburns and moustache showing the only gray in his otherwise dark hair, Benjamin Cooper was as personable as Mariah's father ... wel , wasn't.

  Because of that, he handled most of the social responsibilities for the Circle-T.

  “Do you know of someone in the area named Johnson? I believe people cal him Idaho.”

  Uncle Benj paused, suddenly alert, coffee cup halfway to his mouth. "I know enough about the fel er to know a little gal like you oughtn't, is what I know."

  A few months previous, that would have dissuaded Mariah from pursuing the topic. But

  heartbreak had given her a certain recklessness. “Do you know if he's working for anybody?”

  “Most men do, darlin'. Unless they're born wealthy.” Uncle Benj grinned at that because he, as he liked to remind them, had been born wealthy—before the War between the States, anyhow. And he hadn't done so very badly afterward.

  “Do you have any idea ... Do you know who?”

  “I haven't seen as how it was any of my business, Miss Mariah.” He stared at her over his coffee cup, surprisingly sober—for him. “Now how do you figure it's any of yours?”

  In for a penny ...

  "I've heard rumors that he's trying to start a range war. That he's been hired to run the sheep farmers off, or at least push back the deadline. You and Papa wouldn't let something like that happen, would you? If you knew about it, I mean?"

  Stil staring, Uncle Benj asked, “Why don't you ask your daddy, darlin?”

  And for that, she had no good answer—except, because I don't want to insult him.

  That, and the even more cowardly, I'm not sure I want to know.

  By the time February arrived, Stuart had begun to hate the wagon and the claim, both. He wasn't too fond of the sheep, either. For almost as long as he'd dreamed of proving up, he'd pictured doing it with Mariah Garrison beside him. He'd always recognized the impracticality of such fantasies ... and yet it had added something intangible, something precious to his daily work, to al ow himself that little bit of a dream.

  Now what did he have left but a hundred and sixty acres of frozen Wyoming plains and just over four hundred stupid sheep?

  Sometimes, lying in the dark and feeling lonesome, he considered leaving the Bighorn basin entirely. Dougie could lie about his age and file on the claim, and Stuart could move far away and become something completely different. A sailor. A soldier. A coal miner.

  Somebody Mariah might stil love ...

  But general y he accepted that he had neither the creativity nor the drive to change his life now.

  Mariah had been his creativity and his drive both, and he'd let her go. Besides, Stuart's family had tended sheep for generations. He knew sheep; he was good with them. Likely, he'd work sheep until he died.

  But often as not, of late, he didn't much care when that was.

  First week in February, taking a turn as herder, he had a run-in that near about proved it. The day was clear, sun on snow bright as diamonds, so that he'd rubbed charcoal under his eyes to keep from going snow-blind as he watched his flock. He saw the dogs' and then the goats' heads pop up before he had any other warning of something amiss.

  No sound but wind across the plains, goat bel s, and the bleating of unconcerned sheep.

  No movement but the circling of a hawk.

  By the time he saw the rider approaching from the southwest, barely a dark speck against glowing whiteness, Stuart had mounted Pooka—complete with the Winchester scabbarded from the

  piebald's saddle—and ridden out to meet his visitor.

  Once he got close enough to see under the lone man's hat and past another mask of charcoal eye smudges, Stuart wasn't surprised to recognize the wel -armed Idaho Johnson himself. Even with his sidearm hidden by his duster, he had a rifle hanging from his saddle, and some looped rope on one side, a coiled bullwhip on the other.

  Despite Mariah's optimism, Stuart had known it would come to this sooner or later.

  “I reckon you must be lost, Idaho,” he cal ed onto the wind, before the gunman even reached him.

  “This is sheep country.”

  “That explains the stench,” drawled Johnson. "Those damn wool y monsters of yours are stinkin'

  up the county, MacCal um."

  Stuart said, “Not likely. County stank pretty bad when I got here.”

  Though when a fel ow insisted on riding in from downwind...

  Johnson just stared, the effect al the more unnerving because he'd blacked his eyes down to his weathered cheekbones, like some Sioux warrior. “So why ain't you moved on yet?” he cal ed across the maybe ten-foot space they'd left between them.

  Because nobody's had the guts to make me. At that thought, which Stuart barely bit back in time, he realized just how badly he'd taken Mariah's loss. Cowboys said obnoxious, obscene things like that; they liked to throw dust, al snort and no substance. He, however, though maybe not the shiniest coin in the pouch, was not a stupid man ... with a few recent, painful exceptions.

  He was smart enough to raise sheep over cattle or corn, anyhow. And he knew someone like Johnson not only could outshoot him, but likely reserved a seat in hel some time ago.

  Just how suicidal was he feeling, to taunt the man?

  Instead of daring Johnson to plug him where he sat, Stuart answered more evenly, "Because this is our side of the deadline, that's why."

  “Used to be,” noted the gunman, unimpressed. “But word is, the deadline's moving.”

  “Nobody told us it was.”

  Johnson said, “I'm tel ing you.” Something about his eyes bothered Stuart, and not the blacking.

  They put him in mind of a fel ow he'd once known with a glass eye ...

  Except Johnson had two of 'em, and they obviously worked.

  “The deadline's marked by a gulch,” Stuart reminded him. Gulches rarely moved.

  “Not no more,” Johnson insisted. “Good water in that gulch, come spring. Folks done decided to push the deadline back to where folks done started homesteading ... maybe farther.”

  Stuart's was the closest homestead.

  Rather than argue the obvious, Stuart narrowed his eyes—he had charcoal war paint too, after al

  —and asked, “What folks?”

  Johnson said, "You know what's healthy for you, you'l head those hooved locusts of your'n out that way, quick-like, 'cause folks don't want this range sheep-tainted c
ome summer."

  “Without asking the people who live here?”

  “Folks I'm talkin' about,” noted Johnson, “don't ask.”

  “The cattle barons,” guessed Stuart.

  When the gunman smiled, it didn't reach his glassy eyes. “I'l tel 'em you were inquirin'.”

  Which of course did not answer the question.

  “You can also tel them ...” Stuart took a deep breath, to rein back that suicidal impulse of his again.

  "Tel them that the deadline stays. While you're at it, you might also want to ask for a raise.

  If this gets ugly, you're the one risking jail, not them."

  “I got money and good lawyers on my side, MacCal um ,” drawled Johnson, stil smiling joylessly.

  “What have you got?”

  Maybe because the mention of lawyers reminded him of Mariah's brother—Old Man Garrison's heir—Stuart felt his own contrariness rearing up again. “Enough sheep to taint the range for cattle on both sides of the deadline, if the dogs and I decide to herd them there.”

  Johnson shook his head slowly. "You herd them sheep across that gulch, boy, you'd best herd your coffin right along with them, 'cause you'l be needing it."

  It bothered Stuart that when he said, “We'l see about that,” Johnson merely let the smile into his eyes— final y—before turning his shaggy gray mare off toward the cattle range again.

  It rankled him even more that Johnson's smiling eyes, a kind of dead smile but stil eerily happy, scared him as nothing else about the encounter had. Once the speck that was the gunman

  vanished from the white range—and no sooner—Stuart rode back to his own work, his sheep....

  And the rankling just got worse. Moving the deadline? Money and lawyers?

  Soon Stuart and the dogs were easing the sheep back toward this week's bedding grounds, to leave them with Dougie early. For what good it would do, Stuart meant to report Johnson's open threats to the sheriff, now that the gunman had bothered to make them. Then, if the sheriff didn't care, he meant to go see a couple of cattle barons.

  The sons of bitches had already cost him the woman he loved.

  “Dear Miss Mariah,” greeted Colonel Wright, his drawl even thicker with southern aristocracy than Benj Cooper's, “I hope my months as your guardian al ow me to speak frankly?”