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“He— Heck, yeah. At least I was tryin’ my da—darndest.”
“Are you hungry? My mama’s gone to get something to eat.”
“Gone where?” He surveyed the other seats in the stifling passenger car. Three silver-haired ladies with big hats, two ranchers he thought he recognized and a preacher in a shiny black suit and stiff collar.
“Gone with the conductor man. To get a sandwich for me. I hope it’s not chicken. I hate chicken!”
Gray stretched his legs across the aisle space. “What’s wrong with chicken?”
A frown wrinkled the girl’s forehead. “A chicken pecked me once. It hurt.”
“Yep, a chicken’ll do that sometimes.” He resettled his hat over his face and closed his eyes.
“Mister? Mister, aren’tcha gonna talk to me?”
“Not if I can help it,” he said. He’d just finished a four-hundred-mile cattle drive plagued by bad weather, rustlers and no sleep. He was desperate for some shut-eye.
“Emily!” The voice was stern and female. “What are you doing bothering that man?”
“I’m not botherin’ him, Mama. I’m talkin’ to him.”
“Haven’t I told you never to talk to strangers? Come away from there, honey. I’ve brought you a sandwich.”
“It isn’t chicken, is it?” the small voice inquired.
“I beg your pardon? Emily, what’s wrong with chicken?”
Something swished past him. Something that smelled good, like soap. Maybe honeysuckle, too. “She doesn’t like chicken,” Gray said. He thumbed his hat back and opened his eyes. And then he sat up straight so fast his jeans rubbed the wrong way on the velvet upholstery. Holy—! The prettiest woman he’d ever seen in his life sat opposite him, a brown paper sack in her lap. She wore a stiff dark blue traveling dress and a silly-looking hat with lots of feathers on top. Partridge feathers.
She looked up and smiled. “Oh, good morning, sir. I trust Emily was not bothering you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Would you like a sandwich? I wasn’t sure how long it would be before the train made its next stop, so I purchased an extra one.”
He shot a glance at Emily. “Is it chicken?”
“Well, yes, it is. You do not like chicken?”
“Nope.” He winked at the girl who was sprawled on the seat next to her mother. “A chicken pecked me once.”
Emily giggled.
“Oh. I also have, let’s see...roast beef and egg salad. I trust a cow has not pecked you in the past?”
Gray laughed. “Not hardly, ma’am. Fact is, I’ve seen enough cows in the past month to last me a good while, so if it’s all the same to you, I’ll take the chicken after all. And thanks.”
“You are quite welcome,” she said primly. “I suspect my daughter has interrupted your rest.” She looked straight at him with eyes so green they looked like new willow leaves and handed him something wrapped up in butcher paper. “Emily is quite skilled at interrupting.”
Emily unwrapped her sandwich. “Mister sleeps under his hat!”
“I do hope you didn’t wake—”
“Yes, I did!” Emily crowed. “And he talked to me and everything.” The girl’s bright blue eyes snapped with intelligence. He’d bet she was a real handful. He didn’t envy her mother one bit.
Suddenly he remembered what manners he’d managed to pick up over the past thirty-one years. “Name’s Graydon Harris, ma’am.”
“How do you do? I am Clarissa Seaforth, traveling from Boston. And this is Emily, my daughter.”
He tipped his Stetson. “Emily and I met earlier, Mrs. Seaforth.”
“It’s Miss Seaforth.”
That stopped him midbite. “Miss? As in not married?”
“That is correct. Emily is adopted.”
“Yes, and I’m real special!” the girl sang. “Mama said she really, really wanted me.”
Gray watched Clarissa Seaforth’s face turn white as an overcooked dumpling and then pink and then white again. Whoa, Nelly! Something about Miss Clarissa Seaforth didn’t exactly add up. He clamped his jaw shut and resolved not to ask. Not his business, anyway. He had enough on his mind getting back to the ranch after the drive to Abilene, paying Shorty and Ramon the salary he owed them, eating something besides beans and bacon, and finally getting a good night’s sleep.
“Are you a cowboy, mister?”
“Emily,” her mother admonished. “Eat your sandwich and don’t bother the gentleman.”
Jehoshaphat, nobody’d called him a gentleman since he was ten years old and helped old Mrs. DiBenedetti corral her runaway rooster. The train gave a noisy jerk and began to glide forward.
“Yeah, I’m sort of a cowboy. I just drove three hundred cows to the railhead in Kansas. Guess that makes me a cowboy.”
“What’s a railhead?”
“Emily...” the cool voice cautioned.
Gray bit into his chicken sandwich. “A railhead? Well, that’s where a train stops to pick up cattle cars.”
“You mean a train like this one? I’ve never been on a train before. It’s kinda rumbly.”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Rumbly is a good way to describe it.”
“Doesn’t it bother the cows?”
“This is a passenger train, honey. Cows ride on different trains.”
Her red curls bobbed. “Where do they go?”
“Uh, well, they go...well, my cows are goin’ to Chicago.”
“What do they do when they get there?”
“Emily...” the woman warned. “Eat your sandwich.”
Whew. He didn’t relish explaining a slaughterhouse to little Emily. Or her mother. He devoured another mouthful of chicken sandwich.
* * *
Clarissa swallowed a morsel of roast beef down a throat so dry it felt like sandpaper. How her brother would have laughed about her discomfort. What, sis? You riding the train all the way across the country? You won’t last a single day.
He was wrong. I have lasted all the way from Boston, and I’m not finished yet!
But she was most definitely exhausted. She settled back in her seat and let her eyelids drift shut. Emily was a handful, irrepressible, full of four-year-old curiosity and questions and... Oh, she did hope her niece, now her adopted daughter, wasn’t making a pest of herself. In one ear she could hear her daughter’s high, piping queries and in the other the deeper, grumbly responses of the cowboy in the seat facing them.
“Mama?” Emily jostled her arm. “When are we gonna get there? Can I have a horse?”
“I do not know, and no, you cannot have a horse. Life is dangerous enough as it is.”
The cowboy crossed his long, jean-clad legs. “How far are you goin’, Miss Seaforth?”
“All the way to Oregon. Smoke River.”
“That’s about ten more hours,” he said from under his hat.
She blinked. “Now, how would you know that, sir?”
He sat up. “Cuz I’ve traveled this route before. That’s where I live.”
“Oh?”
He sat up. “I own a ranch near Smoke River. Just sold all my cattle in Abilene and now I’m goin’ home. You?”
Emily pressed up against her arm. “Tell him, Mama.”
“Why, I am traveling to join someone.” She paused and swallowed. “A...friend. I have agreed to be his wife.”
“Sight unseen?” He thumbed his hat back off almost black hair.
“Well, yes, actually. When my brother, Anthony, died, Caleb offered to—”
“Caleb? Caleb Arness?”
“Why, yes. Do you know him?”
Gray bit back a groan. Yeah, he knew him. Last time he’d tangled with Caleb Arness, he’d sworn he’d kill the lowlife some day. “Yeah, I know Caleb.”
“Ah. Could you tell me a little about him? Please?”
Like hell he would. But her green eyes darkened into an entreaty no man could resist. Not this man, anyway. “What do you want to know?”
She hesitated. “Well... Caleb wrote that he loves children. That he would treat Emily as if she were his own child. Does Mr. Arness have children of his own?”
Gray tried hard not to flinch. Caleb Arness was a liar and a cheat, and if he spent a single minute thinking about anyone other than himself, Gray would cut up his Stetson with his pocketknife and eat it. “Listen, Miss Seaforth. I gotta ask why a woman like you would even consider marrying a man she’s never laid eyes on.” A man at the rock bottom of anybody’s list of eligible men.
She cuddled Emily closer to her body. “Whatever do you mean, a woman like me?”
“A woman who—” he sucked in a breath “—is, um, attractive. Okay, pretty.” Really pretty. Hot damn, she made him crazy.
She blushed the nicest shade of raspberry he’d ever seen, and he bit the inside of his cheek. What could he say to save her from the clutches of Caleb Arness?
* * *
The train chuffed noisily into the station at Smoke River, and Emily began to bounce up and down and peer out the window. “Ooh, look, a horsie! And a funny wagon. Can I ride in it, Mama? Can I?”
Clarissa straightened her hat, then stood up and shook the wrinkles out of her bombazine travel suit. “We’ll see, honey. First we must get off the train.” They moved past the dozing cowboy, Mr. Harris, and descended from the train. The red-shirted conductor followed, set Clarissa’s single suitcase on the platform and disappeared back into the passenger car.
The sun was blinding. She raised her gloved hand to shield her eyes and squinted at the small station house.
“Oughtta get you a sun hat pretty quick,” said a masculine voice behind her. Graydon Harris stepped into her field of view.
“Yes, thank you, I will do that.”
“Dressmaker in town sells hats,” he volunteered. He strode past her and slung the saddlebag he carried over his shoulder into the wagon bed, then climbed up beside the driver.
“Uh, can we give you a lift, Miss Seaforth?”
“Yes!” Emily chirped. “I wanna ride on the horse!”
“No, you don’t, Emily,” Gray said. “Nobody rides this horse.”
“How come?”
“Well...” He jumped down and lifted her suitcase into the wagon. “Because he doesn’t have a saddle.” He gestured at the seat he’d just vacated. “You ride up here, ma’am. Emily and I’ll climb in behind you.”
Well! He gave her no chance to refuse, just grasped her around the waist and swung her up into the empty space. She heard the driver chuckle. “Don’t do no good to say no, ma’am,” he said. “Once Gray makes up his mind, that’s pretty much how things are gonna be.”
Gracious sakes, what grammar! She sneaked a look at the speaker. Why, he was nothing but a boy! An Indian boy, she gathered from his bronze skin and the strip of red calico tied around his head. He grinned and nodded at her, and she quickly averted her gaze.
Emily squealed as Mr. Harris lifted her up into the wagon bed and climbed in after her. Her daughter’s next words made her cringe. “Look, Mama, an Indian! A real live Indian!”
Both Mr. Harris and the driver laughed.
“I apologize for my daughter,” she said as the boy picked up the reins.
“No need,” he said. “You must be from back East. Everybody out here’s already seen what us Indians look like, so it’s no surprise to them.”
The wagon rattled into the rutted road, and Clarissa clutched the edge of her seat.
“Ooh!” Emily screamed. “We’re moving!”
“Sit down, honey.” Mr. Harris’s voice came from the back. “Don’t want you to fall out.”
