Bridget

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Bridget!” he yelled, as he sprinted across the meadow toward the house. Sure enough, she was standing by that matchstick corral, with a halter draped over one arm. Noah was beside her, holding on to her skirt and peering up at the horse.

  She turned at the sound of her name, and, of all things to notice at a time like that, he took in the fact that she’d done something to her dress, sewn a V right up the center of the skirt and snipped it away to fashion a trouser-like get-up. He shouted her name again.

  She watched him for a few moments, as though she thought he might flap his arms and take flight or something, then turned and shooed Noah away from her side. One small finger caught in his mouth, the boy went reluctantly toward Skye, who was following Trace at a much slower pace.

  Bridget moved the branches that served as fence rails and approached the stallion, raising the halter. Sentinel danced backward and tossed his head. Even from that distance, Trace could see that the beast’s eyes were rolled upward in either fury or panic. The last time the horse had looked like that, he’d caved in a man’s rib cage with his front hooves and would have killed him if Trace hadn’t interceded.

  “Bridget!” Trace roared. He felt as he sometimes did in dreams, as though he were running in mud. Working hard and getting nowhere.

  She turned to look at him again, and the stallion reared against the sky, his forelegs slicing at the air, and let out a long, whinnying shriek that turned Trace’s blood cold as creek water.

  No, he screamed, only to realize that he hadn’t spoken at all. Hadn’t made a sound. No.

  When Sentinel brought his hooves down, he missed Bridget by inches. Then he reared again and sprang like a jackrabbit, straight over Bridget’s head, racing wildly toward the creek. She fell, and, for a heart-stopping moment, Trace thought she’d been struck after all. Noah scrambled toward his mother, screaming, and he and Trace reached her at the same instant.

  No blood. She was looking at him. Blinking. Pale.

  She sat up to draw the boy into her arms and whisper into his gossamer hair. “Hush, now, darling. I’m not hurt. I’m fine.” She met Trace’s gaze over Noah’s head and repeated herself distractedly. “I’m fine.”

  Trace, on one knee in the grass, felt like shaking her. At the same time, he would have given any thing to pull her close and comfort her the same way she was comforting Noah. Well, sort of the same way.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he spat. “That horse could have—”

  “But he didn’t,” Bridget interrupted softly. “Catch him for me, Trace—bring him back. Please?”

  He’d never been able to deny her anything, not even when they were kids, and she knew it. “We are not through talking about this,” he snapped. But then he got to his feet and went after the stallion.

  He found the animal a mile downstream, high on the opposite bank, caught in a blackberry thicket. Trace spent an hour freeing the frightened horse, then led him into the water to wash off his scratched legs and pick out half a dozen more thorns. All the while, he scolded the stallion, but his voice was quiet and even, and when Trace headed back toward the cabin, Sentinel followed him, docile as an old dog.

  Bridget was waiting in the dooryard, one hand shielding her eyes as she watched man and horse cross Primrose Creek.

  “How did you do that?” she asked, none too graciously, either, for somebody who had done a damn fool thing like trying to put a halter on a half-wild horse.

  Trace set his back teeth before answering. His boots were full of water, his pants were soaked to his thighs, and he’d nearly lost the woman he’d sworn to protect, not to mention a perfectly good stallion. He was not in a cordial state of mind. “How,” he drawled, “did I do what?”

  She retreated half a step, though she probably wasn’t aware of it. “You’re angry,” she said. It might have been a marvel, if you went by the surprise in her voice.

  “You’re damned right I’m angry,” he growled. “Fact is, I’m so angry that it would be better if you and I didn’t talk just now.”

  “But—”

  “Bridget, if I get started yelling, I don’t rightly know when I’ll stop again,” he said, and went way out around her. Sentinel ambled along behind him, nickering a cheerful greeting as they passed the mare.

  There was no sense in putting the stallion back in Bridget’s corral, so Trace drove a stake into the ground and used his rope as a tether. Then, since he still didn’t dare open his mouth around Bridget, he headed back to the cedar tree and swung the ax with a new vigor.

  He was drenched in sweat and nearly ready to collapse when he became aware that he wasn’t alone. Expecting to see Skye with another bucket of water, he was caught off-guard when he found himself facing Bridget again.

  “I’ve made dinner,” she said quietly. “You must be hungry.”

  He ran an arm across his mouth, inwardly testing his temper. He figured he could speak without raising his voice. “Yes,” he said. Better to err on the side of caution.

  “Thank you for fetching back my horse.”

  Trace had to bite his tongue, figuratively anyway, to keep from correcting her on the point of ownership. “We had an agreement, Bridget. I’m supposed to train the stallion, remember?”

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, as though chilled, and sighed. “How do you do it, Trace? How do you—well—make a friend out of a wild horse the way you do?”

  He felt a stab of guilt, but it was quickly quelled. If he admitted that Sentinel was his horse, he realized, she’d believe him, but she would be furious, and there would be one fewer reason for him to stay on at Primrose Creek. Her pride, at once the taproot of her strength and the source of many of her sorrows, might even prevent her from accepting further help of any sort. If he left, there was a very good chance that she and Skye and little Noah would either freeze or starve over the coming winter. Or get themselves carried off by Indians.

  “I don’t know how I do it,” he replied honestly. “It’s a knack, I guess. Gideon used to say I was part gypsy.” He gave a rueful, tilted grin and shrugged slightly, thinking of his scandalous birth. “For all I know, he was right.”

  Her cornflower-blue eyes widened a little; he sensed a softening in her and feared it was pity. There were things he wanted from her, it was true—their old easy camaraderie, for example—but not sympathy. “Do you ever wonder about him? Your father?”

  He shook his head and folded his arms, perhaps to form a barrier of sorts. He wasn’t sure. “No.” That was a lie, of course. He’d wondered about him a thousand times and even asked Gideon if he knew who the man was. And Gideon had laid one big, callused hand on his shoulder and put his greatest hope and worst fear to rest in the space of two sentences. “I’m not him,” he’d said. “Nor is either of my sons.”

  “I heard my daddy and my uncle Eli talking about him one day. Your father, I mean. They said he was a Northerner.” She paused, lowered her eyes, then met his gaze squarely. “He was killed in a bar fight when you were little.”

  Trace’s jaw hardened painfully, and the pit of his stomach knotted. “You knew that? All this time, you knew, and you never told me?”

  She spread her hands. “How could I? You had all these grand visions of how he was going to come back and marry your mother—”

  He turned his back on her, on the dreams of a lonely little boy. Flinched when he felt her hand come to rest lightly on his shoulder.

  “Do you think we could start over?” she asked softly. “Oh, Trace, we were such good friends once upon a time—”

  Such good friends. He’d have cut his heart out of his chest and handed it to her, if she’d asked it of him. Ironic that Skye, sixteen and innocent, had been the one to see into the dark passages of his soul with perfect clarity, and thereby forced him to see, too. If he hadn’t loved Miss Skye McQuarry like a sister, he would have been furious with her.

  “Trace?”

  He made himself face Bridget, put out his hand. “Friends,” he said,
and all the while, he was conscious of the wedding band in the depths of his pants pocket—where it was likely to remain.

  Chapter

  3

  The truce held until after the midday meal, when Trace announced that he was going to town and wanted to take Noah along with him. He’d borrow the mare, if Bridget didn’t mind.

  She didn’t mind, not about the mare, anyway. Letting her son out of her sight, however, was evidently another thing entirely. Bridget, seated on an upturned crate across the table from Trace, straightened her spine with the same dignity she might have exhibited at home, presiding over Sunday dinner at her grandmother’s fine mahogany dining table. “My son will stay right here,” she said, her blue eyes snapping with challenge. “Primrose Creek is a tent town, full of saloons and inebriated drifters and loose women. Let me assure you, it is no place for a child.”

  Skye groaned right out loud at this pronouncement, and, out of the corner of his eye, Trace saw Noah’s face fall with disappointment. If it hadn’t been for those factors, he might have laughed at Bridget’s statement. “The boy was born smack in the middle of a war,” he pointed out reasonably. “He made the trip out here, none the worse for wear. And I hardly think you need to concern yourself that he might take up with ‘loose women’—not just yet, anyhow.”

  Bridget glared at him. Obviously, she did not like discussing the subject of a visit to Primrose Creek in front of her son, but he wasn’t about to back down without a tussle. Noah didn’t belong only to her, he belonged to Mitch, too. And Mitch, Trace knew, would not have wanted his boy brought up to be timid, particularly in a place that demanded strength and courage of a person, be they man, woman, or child.

  “The subject,” she said, “is closed.”

  Trace stood up. “I’m going to town, and Noah is going with me.” It was all a bluff, because if Bridget held her ground, he wouldn’t override her wishes, but the issue was an important one, and he could be every bit as stubborn as she was. “I reckon we’ll be back before you manage to have me arrested.” With that, he carried his plate and fork to the wash basin, deposited them there, and started for the door.

  Skye looked from her fuming sister to Trace and back again. “I want to go, too,” she said. There was a note of shaky determination in her voice, and she stood. “May I go with you?” she asked Trace.

  He nodded and extended a beckoning hand to the boy. Waited.

  Noah hesitated, reading his mother carefully, then edged toward Trace.

  Bridget stood, blushed furiously, and then sat down again. “I’ll expect you back here before sundown,” she said.

  “You could come with us,” Skye suggested quickly. Trace could tell that the girl wanted to walk over and lay a reassuring hand on Bridget’s shoulder, but she didn’t move. “It’s not far to town. You and I could walk. Maybe pick some wildflowers for the supper table—”

  Bridget merely shook her head, and though she said nothing more, the look she gave Trace just before he turned away said plainly that the fires of hell itself could not surpass what she would do to him if anything happened to Noah or Skye.

  Outside, he saddled the mare and helped Skye to mount, hoisting Noah up to sit in front of her. She looked confused. “I don’t mind walking, Trace,” she said. “I walk all over the place, all the time.” She bit her lip briefly, averted her eyes for a moment, and Trace guessed by her guilty manner that she’d been to town on her own, probably on more than one occasion, with Bridget none the wiser. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” he said sternly. “You go ahead. I’ll ride the stallion.”

  Her eyes went wide. “But he’s not even halter-broke—”

  “We have an understanding, he and I,” Trace said easily. Then, using Bridget’s rope halter in place of a bridle, he swung up onto Sentinel’s bare back and urged him forward with a feather-light motion of his knees.

  Skye’s mouth was wide open. “I’ll be jiggered,” she said. “That horse is close kin to the devil, and here you are riding him like he was a pony at a fair!”

  Trace laughed. “Come on,” he replied. “You heard your sister. If we’re not back here by sundown, she’ll hang my hide out like a hog’s and scrape off the bristles.”

  He’d gotten a look at the settlement of Primrose Creek the day before, passing through on his way to find Bridget and the boy, but he hadn’t lingered long. It was typical of mining and timber towns all across the West, with whiskey flowing free and good sense at a premium. Even armed with a .44 as he was, a man was at a distinct disadvantage without a horse under him; Trace never ran from trouble, but he wasn’t one to seek it out, either.

  “You stay close to me,” Trace told Skye, as they both dismounted in front of the general store, a building with a temporary air about it, as though it might be planning to pick itself up some dark night and go sneaking off into the countryside. The merchandise—as well as the clientele—was visible through the cracks in the walls.

  Skye nodded and turned to help Noah out of the saddle, only to find him with one small foot in the stirrup, set on getting down on his own. It gave Trace an odd sense of pride, witnessing the enterprise, as though he’d had something to do with the making and raising of this boy.

  Trace waited, held out a restraining arm when Skye would have taken her nephew by the waist and set him on his feet. Then Noah was standing on the ground, gazing up at him with an expression so reminiscent of Mitch that, for a moment, his throat closed up tight. After a hard swallow and a long study of the horizon, Trace was able to look down into those bright, eager eyes again. “Now, you listen to me, boy,” he said, not unkindly, but at the same time making it clear that he would brook no nonsense. “You don’t go wandering off anywhere. You and I, we’re partners, and we’ve got a lady to look after. That means we have to stick together.”

  Skye rolled her eyes. “I come here all the time,” she hissed.

  “If I catch you at it,” Trace answered under his breath, “I’ll paddle your backside.”

  Skye colored, and that reminded him of her sister. No telling how long Bridget would hold this little escapade against him, for all her pretty words about what good friends they’d been back in the old days.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Skye said.

  “Try me,” Trace responded.

  The general store turned out to be remarkably well stocked for such a rustic establishment: there were blankets and boots and ready-made shirts and good denim pants, made to last. While Skye admired a shelf full of books, handling one and then another as reverently as if they’d been printed in letters of fire on Mount Olympus, and Noah squatted to brush aside some sawdust and set a red and blue striped top to spinning on the floor, Trace selected two sets of everyday clothes and set them on the counter, which was really only a pair of rough-hewn boards stretched between two fifty-gallon barrels.

  The storekeeper, a burly gray-haired man with a wiry white beard, smiled broadly and greeted him in a strong German accent. Trace couldn’t help thinking of the woman Bridget had mentioned, the one twice his size, and wondering if he’d get a look at her. He figured a female who didn’t speak English might not be a bad bargain; a man could get some peace, keeping company with somebody like that. Unless, of course, she talked as much as most women did. It was bad enough when you could understand what they were saying. Being nagged in another language would be worse still, because there’d be no way to fight back.

  “Something else for you?” the storekeeper asked, interrupting Trace’s runaway train of thought. He’d said his name was Gus.

  Trace indicated Skye and the boy, both lost in pursuits of their own. “We’ll be wanting that toy,” he said. “And one of those books, into the bargain.” He paused, thought of Bridget again, remembered how she’d loved to curl up in the porch swing on a hot summer afternoon back home in Virginia and lose herself in some story or another. Times like that, he and Mitch hadn’t been able to coerce her to ride or fish or climb trees with them, no ma
tter what they said or did.

  He smiled at the memory of a time when Bridget’s life—all their lives—had been simple. Safe. “Better make that two,” he added.

  Gus beamed, pleased, and gestured toward the shelf. “You choose, yes?”

  “Yes,” Trace agreed, and stepped up beside Skye. “Which one?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  She looked bewildered. “Which—?”

  “Which book, monkey,” he prompted with a grin. “Or don’t you accept presents from men who turn down your marriage proposals?”

  Her cheeks turned a fetching shade of pink, but she smiled. “Presents? But it isn’t Christmas or anything—”

  He sighed, examined the titles. For a place like Primrose Creek, the selection was impressive; obviously, not all the miners and lumbermen spent their wages on whiskey and women. “Go ahead,” he said. “You can have any one you want.”

  She took a blue clothbound volume off the shelf and clutched it to her chest as if she thought he might change his mind and take it away. He chose a second book, one with a bright red cover and gold print on the spine; it was a love story, and there was a horse in it. Just the kind of thing Bridget would enjoy.

  “We—we had to leave Granddaddy’s books when we came out here,” Skye told him, and he was touched to see tears in her eyes. “All we brought with us was the Bible, the one that’s got all the McQuarrys’ names written inside, clear back to the first war with England. Bridget said we had to take useful things, food and blankets and warm clothes and the like—”

  Trace touched her nose with the tip of his finger. “It must have been real hard, leaving home,” he said.

  She nodded, blinked, and looked away.

  He understood about that and gave her the time and privacy to collect herself while he selected other things from the shelves: flour, yeast, sugar, coffee, and all manner of other staples. After making arrangements for Gus to bring the foodstuffs as far as the creek’s edge in his buckboard, they left the general store.