Forgetting Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Not now that she'd chosen him over everything.

  But he didn't leave—not through the carriage house. Instead, he walked to the stal where Buttercup stood watching them, let her sniff his hand, blew gently into her face. Then he took a bridle from the wal and slid the bit into the mare's mouth.

  Mariah watched, silent, as Stuart led her mare out of her stal and began to saddle her—with Mariah's sidesaddle.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, no matter how foolish it sounded.

  “Go tel the housekeeper you'l be taking her; I'l not be accused of horse theft.”

  “But...” Perhaps it should have felt like a victory. In the obvious ways, it was. She would have not just her kitten and her lamb, but her mare? And Stuart?

  But at what price?

  Something felt wrong—faintly but clearly, like a minor chord played on the piano. She'd made accusations, spoken to Stuart as no wife should speak to her husband. She'd lashed out at him for hurts he had not even caused.

  This was too easy.

  In the middle of competently tightening the cinch—as with so much, her husband managed to look as if he'd dealt with sidesaddles al his life—Stuart glanced over his shoulder, brows slanted in a new worry. “You are going home, aren't you?”

  “Our home?”

  He nodded, relaxing at her question. “Aye, Mariah. Our home.”

  The hurt flared again, that he could have doubted it. “Of course I am.”

  He nodded, then led the mare to her, caught Mariah in the crook of his arm, and led both ladies through the carriage house and onto the drive.

  The wagon team stood sleepily, apparently grown used to their morbid load. Pooka waited, hitched to a post nearby, and Mr. MacCal um sat comfortably in the tree swing, near the pond—

  eating a peach.

  Sitting up, he raised an eyebrow at the sight of Mariah's palomino. “What's this?”

  Stuart said, “This is Mariah's horse. Once she talks to the housekeeper, I'd like you to escort her back home, please.”

  Al Mariah's uncertainties returned. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “I've a visit to make.” Stuart put the reins in her hand and headed for the wagon.

  Mariah drop-reined Buttercup and fol owed. “Where? Why can't I go with you?”

  “Because, lass, it's someplace I need to go alone.”

  She grabbed his arm, hard and thick, before he reached the wagon. “Stuart?”

  And he turned, drew her into his arms, and kissed her.

  It was not the sort of kiss she would have expected, in front of his father. It was a hard kiss, possessing Mariah as only a husband could ... and somehow taking what only a wife could offer. A few months ago, she might have lost al ability to stand, kissed like that. Now she wrapped her arms around him, clung to him, and kissed him back just as passionately.

  He was Stuart, after al , and she loved him with everything she was. No matter what else they had to deal with—she loved him most of al .

  Then Stuart straightened, set her careful y back. “Give me this, Mariah,” he asked solemnly. “I have to earn my own respect, this time.”

  Which scared her, even through the pleasant breathlessness that lingered from his kiss. "You'l be careful?"

  “Always.”

  “And ... you'l come home tonight?”

  Stuart nodded. “I'l come home to you.”

  Despite the unanswered questions between them, his eyes were very, very dark.

  Evangeline Taylor lived not far from the railroad tracks, in a square shanty of cut lumber and tar paper, within a square, empty yard, surrounded by posts from what used to be a fence. She'd lived there over half her life, ever since Nel —her mother—fled the boredom of being a farm wife on a claim outside of town with an ex-miner. Not that Nel had in fact been the miner's wife. But Evangeline had vague memories of a cabin, and a burly man pretending to be her father. She even remembered flashes of a fine house before that, too—a house with polished furniture and thick carpets and too many mothers, of whom Nel had not even been her favorite.

  Evangeline wasn't sure how her mother afforded even the shanty. For years, she'd feared eviction.

  But they'd stayed—and it fel into worse disrepair with each season and each of Nel 's occasional roommates. A bottle through the front window. A chair through the back window. The fence and furniture chopped up for firewood. Evangeline despaired of ever completely escaping the stench of alcohol and urine, much less turning the place into anything like a home.

  But since seeing Marian MacCal um's sheep farm, she'd begun—tentatively—to try.

  She used an old, torn dress to make curtains for the cardboard-patched windows. She planted a garden outside, and made extra trips to the wel outside of the general store for water, to keep the struggling seedlings alive. Once already, she'd lost her new shoots to rabbits. But despite the setback, Evangeline thought the rabbits had been perhaps the nicest visitors the shanty had seen in some time.

  She slept in a loft where the stovepipe ran through. When younger, she slept up there to stay out of sight. As she got older—after one of Nel 's gentleman friends almost cornered her in the kitchen one night—she slept there because she could draw the ladder up after her. And today, she was restuffing her mattress.

  Evangeline had been cutting and drying grass, or “prairie feathers,” for a week now, to fil her freshly washed ticking. It smel ed of summertime, and she wondered if she would, too.

  Then the door to her mother's room slammed open and Nel stalked out, wearing only an untied robe. “What the hel are you doing!”

  Evangeline did not risk a slap by answering. She only lifted the half-stuffed mattress slightly, so that Nel could see for herself.

  "You don't have to make so much goddamn noise doing it, do you? I'm going out tonight, for God's sake!"

  Evangeline obediently put down the straw and the ticking both. She hoped that if she stopped now, Nel wouldn't throw either out.

  For her part, Nel stalked to the stove and poured some of the coffee Evangeline kept for her.

  “What the hel 's gotten into you this summer anyway?”

  “Ma'am?”

  “Don't cal me ma'am. I'm not that much older than you.”

  Evangeline nodded. It would do no good to tel Nel that Mrs. Garrison's daughters cal ed her ma'am—when they didn't cal her Mother... or Mama.

  Nel liked to pretend she was Evangeline's older sister, anyway.

  Now Nel looked closer at her daughter. "Who're you fixing that bed for, anyhow? You catting around with someone?"

  Evangeline shook her head, but Nel just laughed one of her meaner laughs.

  "I forgot—you're saving yourself for marriage. Take it from me, baby. If men liked wives, we wouldn't have a roof over our heads."

  Evangeline said nothing. But she hoped not al men preferred whores to wives, even if she never got to find out—and something must have shown on her face.

  “Oh, you know so much, do you?” chal enged Nel . "Tel me one woman, one who keeps her husband happy."

  Evangeline knew she should say nothing—it was an insult to good women to even mention them in Nel 's presence. But she hated it when her mother got like this, determined to rub the world's ugliness in Evangeline's face. She hated it more with each passing year. Before she could stop herself, she said, “Mariah MacCal um.”

  Nel laughed. “Oh! Baby—how old are you, anyway?”

  “Fifteen,” whispered Evangeline, already regretting her recklessness.

  “How'd you live this long and stay this stupid?”

  Something must have shown on Evangeline's face again, because Nel threw her nearly empty coffee cup into the bucket by the stove. "First, MacCal um herds sheep. It can't be hard for his wife to do it better than sheep, now can it? Second, they're newlyweds. Newlyweds do it al the time whether they like it or not, especial y if they're churchgoers and actual y thought they had to wait.

  And third, even if they're the
happiest couple since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, I wouldn't trade places with Mariah MacCal um for al the tea in China. Life is fixing to get ugly, out in Sheepvil e."

  The way Nel said that frightened Evangeline. Nel didn't use that tone unless she knew something bad—and relished it.

  “What do you mean?”

  "I mean it's never been healthy to run sheep in Wyoming, and it's about to get a lot unhealthier.

  Now where the hel did I leave my bottle...."

  Evangeline watched her mother kick through the clothes and belongings she'd left scattered in the corners, seeking a bottle that she'd surely finished the night before.

  “Nel ? What do you mean, unhealthier?”

  “Let's just say I hear things, in my line of business. Not for me to blab.” After several more kicks, Nel stopped and looked entreatingly at Evangeline. “You know, baby, if I could just find my bottle, calm my nerves a bit, I could get some more sleep before tonight. You're the one who woke me—”

  She kicked over Evangeline's fresh straw. That was al right. It was just straw.

  Slowly, Evangeline said, “I think I remember where Dixie left her bottle, when she stayed here last month.”

  Nel 's green eyes—far prettier than Evangeline's— narrowed into dangerous slits. “Where?”

  “Wil you t-tel me what you heard about the MacCal um s?”

  Nel slapped her. The crack of it startled Evangeline even more than the blow—it never failed to.

  “Wil you get me Dixie's goddamn bottle?”

  Victoria Garrison, thought Evangeline miserably, would hold out for the information. But Evangeline did not have Victoria's grit. Instead, she had to gamble on the possibility that, if Nel cheered up, she might start talking.

  It would not be the first time.

  So she got up, went to the woodpile, and braved the spiders there to dig out Dixie's bottle. She hated to do it. This was a bottle of medicine, worse than liquor.

  But then she thought of Mariah MacCal um, and her smiles, and her pet lamb.

  Evangeline turned and handed the bottle to her mother.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  What if Mariah was right?

  Stuart drove the wagon steadily to the southwest, toward the foothil s and the Bighorn Range beyond, despite the late hour. He did not worry about finding his way and, as it turned out, did not need to. When he reached the road that branched west, an ironwork sign arched over it with the Circle-T symbol at its apex.

  “Gee,” cal ed Stuart, easing the draft team into a right turn.

  Garrison had laid claim to good land, rol ing and fertile. Poplars neatly lined either side of the two-rut drive, leaves whispering in the spring breeze, and off to Stuart's right he sometimes glimpsed the heavier wood that marked this branch of the Goose Creek.

  The contrast to his father's dry, rocky claim and his own settled deep in his gut. But he swal owed down the resentment of it and instead asked himself: If he'd gotten to this part of the country twenty years ago, where would he have staked claim?

  The question bothered him, because it echoed the hurtful things Mariah had said. But...

  But what if she was right?

  Stuart did not like thinking that at al . But he disliked the danger of not thinking it even more.

  He reminded himself that he had a bel ed cougar lying dead in the back of his wagon, flies already buzzing around the tarp that covered it. That was not paranoia on his part. Nor were the three dead sheep, the month before, or the stock other local sheep farmers had lost. He hadn't imagined Idaho Johnson's message “from the local cattlemen,” or Old Man Garrison's threats against his life ...

  Or Garrison's claim that it wasn't about sheep ?

  Stuart hadn't lied to Mariah about the reception his family got when they first herded sheep into Wyoming. Before the deadline, Stuart had seen warfare that he prayed his own sons never would, much less his wife. Charred carcasses of fired sheep. The bulging eyes and stiff tongues of animals poisoned by saltpeter—which was not toxic to cattle. He would never forget the night that masked cowboys swept down onto the herder's camp, shooting sheep and dogs and humans like fish in a barrel.

  The Wyoming Stock Grower's Association had backed the gunmen in the Johnson County War.

  Why

  wouldn't they support violence in Sheridan County, too? And Jacob Garrison belonged to the Wyoming Stock Grower's Association. So the question Stuart had asked himself from the start remained.

  How could anyone be terrorizing this range, and Jacob Garrison not be involved?

  In which case, could be Stuart did lie to Mariah about coming home tonight. He might not make it home at al . Even now, he noted riders approaching from across the pasture to his left. One was Hank Schmidt, Mariah's cousin, who'd beaten him so many months ago.

  Stuart kept on driving, even once the riders flanked him. After facing how badly he and Garrison had managed to tear Mariah— his Mariah—in half, he could no longer respect himself without knowing, once and for al , where Garrison truly stood.

  And despite the risks, and al the speculation, only one man could truly tel him that.

  The medicine did cheer Nel into sharing what she knew—and now Evangeline Taylor found herself with the safety of good people in her hands....

  In her stupid, useless hands.

  Johnson—the man folks were cal ing “Idaho”—hadn't liked the sheep farmer's “manifesto.” He meant to ambush Stuart MacCal um's claim with a half-dozen or more men, tonight. And they weren't just gunning for sheep.

  . The need to do something—to do the right thing— deafened Evangeline like the rumble of a train going by at night. But what?

  Nel snored in the bedroom. She would be no help, even were she conscious. Mrs. Garrison, whose winks and cookies had won a devotion Evangeline hadn't known was in her, had taken Kitty and her other daughters out of town, to see an eye doctor. Evangeline knew Marian's father could help, but doubted he would believe the likes of her—assuming she could even manage speech in his presence. Assuming she could find his ranch, on foot, before sunset.

  And then there was the younger Mr. Garrison. Mr. Thaddeas Garrison. The up-and-coming

  lawyer ...

  Evangeline feared going to him more than anything else.

  Not that she disliked him. Since the bal at the Sheridan Inn, when he asked her to dance, Evangeline liked Thaddeas Garrison far more than she should—and therein lay the danger. She knew he'd danced with her out of charity. She knew he was a ful -grown man, col ege-educated, who saw her as no more than a friend to his baby sister... if he even recognized her. And yet, it would crush something new and tender, deep inside her, if she dared approach Thaddeas Garrison and he looked at her the way his father did—

  The way most respectable people in town did, the way Evangeline knew they should.

  And refused to see her, refused to listen, refused to believe. How could she bear it if her reputation damaged the very people who'd been so kind to her?

  Evangeline had to do something. So, deciding what Marian or Victoria might do, she went to the sheriff's office.

  Sheriff Ward—who had arrested Nel more than once—was not in. Deputy Franklin was, and the way he looked at Evangeline unsettled her.

  “I know you,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You're Nel Taylor's girl, right?”

  Evangeline nodded, trying not to glance at the doorway to the cel s, beyond the desk. Terrible things happened back there. Nel had told her so.

  But Deputy Franklin was looking at her bare legs, which had grown too long this year, and that frightened her even more. He didn't even look up from his discourteous perusal when he asked,

  “Somethin' I can do for you?”

  Evangeline swal owed, tried to find the breath to form words. Mariah, she kept thinking, even as she hid one leg behind the other. Mariah needs help.

  Then Deputy Franklin asked, “Maybe somethin' you can do for me?”

  Evangeline fled t
he sheriff's office and the way the deputy was looking at her and the fear that nearly paralyzed her. She ran two blocks before she dared duck into an al ey, to make sure he hadn't chased her. Then, panting, she raised her fisted hands to her mouth and tried not to cry at her own uselessness. Nel had not said when tonight Johnson and his regulators meant to ambush the MacCal ums....

  But the afternoon sunlight was slanting sharply already. Sunset was mere hours away.

  Shifting her weight from foot to foot, fighting the low whimper that tried to squeeze out of her throat, Evangeline wondered if perhaps Nel had lied. That made her feel momentarily better. Nel could be lying to her— again—or Mr. Johnson could as easily have lied to Nel . There might be no danger to Mariah at al !

  But the whimper squeezed out of her throat anyway. Just as likely there was danger. And she was the one who'd tricked Nel into tel ing her. That made whatever happened her fault. Worse, it wouldn't happen to Evangeline. It would happen to Mariah. Her friend.

  Desperate, Evangeline used her sleeve to dry her damp eyes. The important thing, Mariah had once told her, was not what other people thought about her behavior. The important thing was that she felt she had good reasons— for sitting in trees, marrying sheep farmers, or...

  She'd never had better reason to act than this. So she peeked out of the al ey again, then made her timid way to the law office of the esteemed Thaddeas Garrison. She could have found that office—

  his name printed in green and gold across the front window—with her eyes closed. But to go inside ...

  Again she found herself hesitating, trying to catch her breath, before she even touched the door.

  Final y, needing to think, she turned to go hide in another al ey—

  And bumped right into a man's chest.

  The man wore a careful y pressed brown suit, with a finely buttoned vest, a silver watch fob—and cowboy boots. He smel ed clean and wealthy. To Evangeline's mortification, she recognized him even before she dared raise her eyes to take in his intel igent face.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” said Thaddeas Garrison, helping her catch her balance with strong hands on her shoulders. “I should look where I'm going.”