The Bridegroom

by Linda Lael Miller

  Gideon flushed at the thought. “Can I hold him?” he asked Lydia.

  She hesitated, then reluctantly handed over the dog. It nearly disappeared between Gideon’s palms, it was so small, and when he held it up close to his face, it licked his cheek.

  He laughed, surrendered the pup to Lydia again.

  “He mustn’t die,” one of the aunts said, and when Gideon looked over, he saw that both women’s lower lips were quivering.

  That struck at something deep inside Gideon, too, the way seeing Lydia with the pup had.

  He stood up. “He won’t die,” he said, though where this certainty came from, he didn’t know. The critter was scrawny, and probably too young to be weaned.

  “Mr. Blanchard said he might,” Mittie-or-Millie argued. “Someone left him in the alley behind the mercantile, and Mrs. Blanchard couldn’t take him in because she has cats.”

  “Papa once saved an entire litter,” the other sister said.

  Glancing down at Lydia again, coddling the pup, Gideon felt that odd, broken wanting again. But this time, he knew it for what it was. She would hold a baby in the same reverent, infinitely tender way.

  A baby.

  For all his regretting, he hadn’t once thought that he might have gotten Lydia pregnant. They’d only made love that once—but once was all it took, wasn’t it?

  Unnerved, Gideon shoved a hand through his hair.

  “You’re home early,” Lydia remarked, barely distracted from the pup.

  Now, Gideon felt a twinge of envy toward that dog, right along with the sympathy. “Half day at the mine,” he said. Lydia didn’t need to know that Wilson and the others had been afraid the support beams might give way, and bury the men so deep that they wouldn’t be seen again until Resurrection Day.

  “I reckon you must be hungry,” Helga said to him, with guarded courtesy. “Leaving the house before breakfast the way you did, and by the front door, too.”

  Inwardly, Gideon sighed. Outwardly, he grinned, because he knew if he ever let Helga get the upper hand with him, well-meaning though she might be, he’d never know a moment’s peace from then on.

  He nodded. “Obliged,” he said. He’d stopped by the bank earlier—like most of the businesses in town, it was open six days a week—and cashed a draft. “You’ll be needing some things for the house,” he added, taking some folding money from his shirt pocket.

  Lydia didn’t look up from the puppy, so he finally handed the bills to Helga. Her eyes widened at the amount, but she offered no comment—only turned and tucked the funds into a salt box affixed to the wall.

  “We did incur a debt at Mr. Blanchard’s mercantile,” Millie-or-Mittie confessed, nodding toward the garments lying on the table, amid the wrapping paper and coils of twine. “Lydia abandoned most of her clothes, you know, when we left Phoenix.”

  Gideon nodded again. “I know,” he said. Being a man, he hadn’t thought much about Lydia’s wardrobe, but things like that were important to women.

  All of the sudden, he felt too big for that spacious kitchen, too awkward, like some large farm animal stabled in a pantry. If he moved in any direction, he was sure to break something—or someone.

  Helga had commenced making lunch by then, and the old ladies hastily gathered up the dresses and the wrapping paper and the string. Lydia finally laid the puppy in its laundry-basket bed, smiled slightly as it gave a whole-body sigh and drifted off to sleep.

  Again, Gideon’s throat swelled painfully. He put a hand out to Lydia, to help her up, and for a moment, he thought she’d refuse to take it, get to her feet on her own. In the end, though, she accepted his assistance.

  He wanted to pull her into his arms, hold her, tell her he was sorry, swear that even after he’d gone, she and the aunts and Helga and that puny little dog would lack for nothing, because he’d send home most of his pay, but he couldn’t, not with so many people around.

  Helga made hash for their midday meal, and Gideon ate hungrily, though he couldn’t help noticing that Lydia barely touched her food, and her gaze kept wandering to the puppy.

  “I believe I’ll go over to Mr. Blanchard’s mercantile myself,” Helga said, when she’d finished eating. “We could use flour and coffee and a few other staples.”

  When no one commented, she took some of the money from the salt box, donned a calico bonnet and left.

  The aunts cleared the table and began washing dishes.

  Gideon watched Lydia watching the puppy for a while, then went upstairs, turned up the gas-flame under the bathroom boiler, and shaved while the water heated for a bath. After a stinging splash of bay-rum to his face, he headed for the bedroom, in search of clean clothes. Most every garment he owned was either dirty or still in his room over at Lark and Rowdy’s, but he had trousers and shirts in his valise, the things he’d normally worn, before returning to Stone Creek and going to work in a copper mine.

  “I know an outsider when I see one,” he heard Mike O’Hanlon say. “Your clothes are too good, your house is too fine, and your family is too important in this town.”

  He’d never failed at a single assignment he’d undertaken, since the day he left college and went to work, he thought, but he’d sure made a hell of a mess of this one. And the irony was, he was going to have to leave Lydia anyway.

  His shoulders stooped.

  “Gideon?”

  He hadn’t heard Lydia approaching, hadn’t heard the door open—but then, he probably hadn’t closed it in the first place. He couldn’t recall, and that troubled him—he was losing his grip.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  Gideon turned, smiled at his wife. “No,” he said. “I just thought it would be good to clean up.”

  Her smile faltered a little; she looked so small, so vulnerable, standing there. Gideon’s heart turned over, as he thought of all the things there were in the world to cause her pain.

  “Lydia, the puppy—” he began.

  “I know, Gideon,” she said, very softly. “Snippet might not survive. You don’t need to tell me that.”

  His throat closed up again. He swallowed. “I could borrow Rowdy’s horse and buggy,” he heard himself say, though he hadn’t consciously formulated the idea. “Show you around Stone Creek a little—maybe take you out to see Wyatt and Sarah’s ranch.”

  She brightened. “I’d like that,” she said. “But Snippet—”

  “The aunts and Helga will be here to look after the pup,” Gideon said, because suddenly it seemed vitally important to take Lydia out in the buggy, a perfectly normal outing for a married couple. “And hovering over him won’t keep him alive.”

  Lydia pondered that, then nodded.

  “I mean to take a bath,” he told her. “I won’t be long. When I’m through, I’ll go fetch Rowdy’s rig and come back for you.”

  She still looked troubled. “Gideon, when I came in—the way you were standing—something about the angle of your head—”

  “I’m all right, Lydia,” he said. He wished—God, how he wished—he could tell her about his real job, and Mike O’Hanlon’s suspicions, and even what he’d be doing in Flagstaff the next day, but he couldn’t. Not, he realized, because he’d given his word to the mine owners, but because he didn’t want to lay his private concerns on her shoulders.

  He’d done enough to burden her as it was.

  “Are you sure we won’t be imposing on Wyatt and Sarah?” she asked. “Just—dropping in on them that way?”

  “I’m sure,” he said, and because he had to lighten the moment or break under it, he added, “But if you’d like, I could have engraved calling cards printed up and drop one off at their door ahead of time, so they’d know they were about to have company.”

  Lydia smiled at that. “I’ll wear one of the new dresses you bought me this morning,” she said. “The blue sprigged muslin, I think.”

  He nodded, thinking he would have been perfectly content to stand there in that bedroom and look at her—just look at her—for the
rest of his born days. But life had a way of moving on, grinding things and people beneath its great wheels, and he could feel forces gathering around him, closing in. All of it made a pleasant buggy-ride with his wife a matter of urgency. Depending on how things went in Flagstaff the next day, he might not set eyes on her again for a long time.

  So he went back down the hall, and bathed and put on fresh clothes. Then he headed for Rowdy’s place.

  His brother wasn’t around, but Hank and some of his friends were playing baseball in the lot beside the barn.

  “Tell your pa I borrowed the buggy and the gray mare,” Gideon told his nephew, as he headed for the barn door.

  “Take the sorrel,” Hank replied, because such requests were common in his experience. “The mare threw a shoe yesterday.”

  Gideon smiled, nodded and went on about his business. Found the sorrel, hitched the animal to the buggy, and set out to collect Lydia. On any previous visit to Stone Creek, he would have joined in the baseball game, at least for a little while, but not that day.

  Hank waved as he drove past, and Gideon nodded in farewell.

  He might see Hank again when he returned the buggy, he thought unhappily—or not until his nephew had grown into a man.

  WYATT AND SARAH’S RANCH LAND reminded Lydia of a rippling green sea as she and Gideon looked out over the expanse from the seat of Rowdy’s buggy. Several hundred cattle grazed in the rich grass, drank at the springs and the small creek, two riders—probably Wyatt and Owen, though it was hard to be sure from that distance—moving among them.

  The main house stood upon a hill, a two-story white structure, solid and square, with green shutters and gleaming windows and a veranda on three sides. It was flanked by a sturdy barn, a springhouse and several other small outbuildings.

  Gideon’s grin was weary as he took it all in. “You should have seen this place,” he said, with quiet pride, “when Wyatt took it over from Sarah’s father’s bank ten years ago.” He turned slightly, pointed to a smaller house, on another hill. “That’s Owen’s house, there,” he went on. “He and his wife, Shannie, are expecting their first child in a few months.”

  “It’s lovely,” Lydia said, catching the sound of children’s laughter on the slight breeze. She had met Rowdy and Lark’s little ones, now she would get to know Wyatt and Sarah’s, too. Perhaps, like their cousins, they would address her as “Aunt Lydia,” a prospect that pleased her.

  “For an old train robber and erstwhile rustler, Wyatt did all right for himself,” Gideon said, taking up the reins again, urging the horse on.

  They descended a rutted, curving dirt road with a grassy hump bulging high in the middle, and when they drew closer to the main house, Gideon gave a long, shrill whistle through his teeth.

  Dogs began to bark, and then four children, two boys and two girls, roughly the same ages as Lark and Rowdy’s brood, came running barefoot around the side of the house and up the road toward them. Two dogs frolicked after them.

  “Uncle Gideon!” one of the girls cried, her face alight, her long, dark hair flying behind her as she ran up that road. “Uncle Gideon!”

  Grinning, Gideon stopped the rig, set the brake lever, and jumped nimbly to the ground, catching the child when she launched herself into his arms. He spun her around, both of them laughing, and then set her on her feet again.

  Lydia watched as the older two, both boys, solemnly shook Gideon’s hand, and the baby, a girl no older than three, hung shyly back until her uncle crouched directly in front of her. The gentle way he spoke pierced Lydia’s heart. “And here’s my Lucy Jane,” he said.

  Lucy Jane hooked one finger in her mouth and regarded him with huge cornflower-blue eyes.

  “She doesn’t remember you, Uncle Gideon,” the other girl said. “She was really little the last time you were here.”

  The tallest of the boys, perhaps eight or nine years old, turned to Lydia, still sitting in the buggy, enjoying the scene and, at the same time, wondering why it made her feel sad.

  “Are you our aunt Lydia?” he asked.

  She nodded, smiling.

  “This is Payton,” Gideon said, ruffling the boy’s hair. He’d hoisted Lucy Jane onto his hip, carried her easily in the curve of his arm. “That other yahoo is Luke. It was Margaret Alice who tried to knock me down, and—” he looked around, frowned “—where’s Mark?”

  “It’s his turn to churn the butter,” Margaret Alice replied. “And Mama says he’ll have to copy Bible chapters if he doesn’t quit whining about it.”

  Gideon laughed.

  By then, Sarah had appeared on the porch of the big house, a younger and noticeably pregnant woman with a glorious head of copper-colored hair beside her, both of them smiling in welcome.

  In the distance, Wyatt and Owen approached on horseback.

  Suddenly, Lydia felt shy.

  “They can be a mite overwhelming,” Gideon teased, having read her expression the way he so often did, climbing into the buggy seat again, with Lucy Jane perched solidly on his lap. “All those Yarbros coming at you in a herd, I mean.”

  “Cattle come in herds, Uncle Gideon,” Luke said, speaking for the first time. Like the other children, he had dark hair and very blue eyes. “Not people.”

  “I stand corrected,” Gideon replied, with an affable salute, and started the buggy moving again.

  The boys and Margaret Alice climbed nimbly onto the back of the rig to ride along, while the two large dogs, yellow like Pardner, ran alongside, adding gleefully to the fuss with yips and barks.

  Lydia, in the center of all this dust-raising, noisy activity, had never felt happier—or sadder. Thus, she did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  Sarah greeted her on the porch with a beaming smile and a kiss on the cheek, and introduced her to Shannie, correctly assuming Gideon had told her the children’s names. Wyatt and Owen reached the house, dismounted, and left the horses standing, reins dangling, at the water trough.

  Wyatt smiled at Lydia, bid her a polite welcome, but the look he tossed in Gideon’s direction was slightly less cordial.

  “Come inside,” Sarah urged, taking Lydia’s hand. “The coffee’s on, and I’m just about to take a blackberry cobbler out of the oven. Shannie and I have been baking all afternoon.” She paused. “Oh, Lydia, I’m so glad to see you.”

  Sincerity shone, beacon-bright in Sarah’s eyes, and Lydia was moved by the sight. She truly was a member of the Yarbro family—except to Gideon.

  Wyatt lingered, holding his black round-brimmed hat in one hand, and so did Owen.

  Glancing back, expecting Gideon to follow, Lydia saw him set Lucy Jane down, so she could scamper into the house with the other children.

  “I’ll have a word with you, little brother,” Wyatt said to Gideon, and though he probably hadn’t intended for Lydia to hear, she did. Meeting her gaze, then looking away, Wyatt spoke again. “Owen, you go on inside and have some cobbler before it’s all gone.”

  Gideon stood with his hands on his hips and a stubborn set to his jaw, looking at Wyatt.

  Owen stepped onto the porch, smiled affably down into Lydia’s worried face, took her by the arm, and escorted her briskly into the house.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WYATT TUGGED OFF ONE LEATHER glove, then the other, the ones he always wore when he rode, and stuffed them both into a hip pocket as he held Gideon’s gaze, there in front of the ranch house. “Rowdy tells me,” he said very quietly, “that he thinks you’re in some sort of trouble. Says you’ve gotten yourself snarled up someplace between the workers and the men who own the mine. Is that about the size of it, Gideon?”

  Gideon felt heat rise in his neck. He hated feeling like a little brother, especially since he was as tall as Wyatt and taller than Rowdy, but they were both more than a decade older than he was, and a lot more experienced, and in that moment, like it or not, he did feel like a kid.

  “That’s about the size of it,” he finally allowed.

  Wyatt propped one foo
t against the side of the porch, put his hat back on and adjusted it slightly, so the brim shaded his eyes from the Arizona sun. “Did it ever occur to you that, being your kin and all, Rowdy and Owen and I might want to help? Sam O’Ballivan, too?”

  Gideon shoved a hand through his hair. “I won’t see you putting your lives on the line like that,” he said. “You’ve got wives and kids, Wyatt, and Owen’s Shannie is in the family way, too.”

  Wyatt’s gaze slid briefly to the closed door, and one corner of his mouth tilted upward in a spare Yarbro grin. “You’ve got a wife, too,” he pointed out. “But there’s something about the way you are with her—something I can’t quite work out in my mind, not all the way, anyway—that bothers me, Gideon. I guess the closest I can get to it is to say that you seem like a man who’s only passing through, not meaning to stay in Stone Creek—or with Lydia.”

  “After this—after this assignment is finished,” Gideon admitted, to himself as well as to his eldest brother, “I’m not going to be welcome in Stone Creek, Wyatt. If I’m gone, I can send Lydia money. If I stay, I might not live very long. I figure Lydia’s better off with an absent husband than a dead one.”

  “You mean to run,” Wyatt said flatly.

  Gideon colored up for certain then. Went crimson, if the heat in his face was any indication. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he said.

  “Well, I would,” Wyatt countered. “I’ve lived on the run, Gideon, and so has Rowdy. And you can take it from me—it isn’t a life. It’s an existence, and barely that.”

  “You have Sarah and the kids, and Rowdy has Lark—”

  Wyatt leaned in. “And you have Lydia, you thickheaded fool,” he growled. “You’ve got to stake out a claim to a piece of ground, literal and figurative, dig in the heels of your boots and stand, Gideon. If there’s fighting to be done, Rowdy and I will fight right beside you, but there’s not a damn thing we can do if you’re hell-bent on turning tail and running.”

  “This isn’t your problem,” Gideon ground out. If Wyatt hadn’t been right, he’d have taken a swing at him—and he was tempted to, anyway. Trouble was, that would have upset the women and the kids, and on top of that, Gideon wanted to keep all his teeth.