Gerrity's Bride

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“Tell me about her,” Emmaline asked, aware that her request might well be denied. Matthew Gerrity didn’t strike her as the kind to confide in anyone.

He surprised her, tipping his hat back and resting one hand on his thigh. “She was raised here in the territory—a real native, you might say. Her daddy was a brave from a tribe who took a shine to her white mother. That made her a half-breed, and not good marriage material. But she was pretty,” he said, his words tender as he thought of the young girl who had been an outcast.

“Anyway, when Jack Gerrity breezed by, he snatched her up and took her along with him. She was young when I was born, just sixteen, and too innocent to see through the black-hearted Irishman who fathered me,” he said with a twisted grin. “He was foreman on a good size ranch fifty miles or so west of here, and she made do as best she could. We lived in the foreman’s shack there on the ranch, and my mother took home the laundry from the big house.” His mouth tightened as he remembered those early days. “You sure you want to hear this?” he asked abruptly.

She nodded, almost afraid to speak, lest she break the thread of his story.

He shrugged and settled back into his saddle. “Jack Gerrity wasn’t a kind man.” His eyes flickered once in her direction, and the look in them was bleak. “Anyway, one day when I was about five or so, he hightailed it to town on payday, along with the rest of the ranch hands.” He lifted his reins, and the horse beneath him quickened his pace.

Emmaline looked at him with impatience, jostled in the saddle as her own mount followed suit. “And then what happened?” she asked after a moment of silence.

“We never saw him alive again,” he said. “He headed for town to drink and gamble away his monthly pay, and died when he slipped an ace up his sleeve.”

Her brow puckered and she shook her head. “What caused him to die?” she asked innocently.

“The gun of the fella across the table who caught him cheatin’ at poker,” Matt replied sardonically.

Her heart thumped wildly in her throat as Emmaline envisioned the bloody scene. “Whatever did your mother do?” Her voice trembled as she thought of a young woman left alone with a child to care for.

His shrug was eloquent. “We had to move to make room for the new ranch foreman. She managed to get another job, cooking for another rancher. Took me along and raised me in the kitchen.”

“How old were you then?”

His hand fisted against the solid flesh of his thigh, and his voice tightened into a deep growl. “Old enough to stay out of the way when the old man who owned the place got drunk.” He went on deliberately, as if he wanted to have the words spoken and done with.

“One day, my mother loaded me and all our belongings on a wagon and headed out. Your pa found us on the road and took us home with him. When the old man caught up with us, your pa sent him on his way. Paid him for the horse and wagon and told him to clear out.”

“Did they get married then?” she asked quietly, almost unwilling to interrupt, but wanting to know the rest of the story.

“No...she cooked and kept house for him until he heard that your mother had died, just ten years ago.” He scanned her with eyes gone hard and cold. “He thought you’d come back home then.”

“I was only twelve years old,” Emmaline said, defending herself. “My grandparents were heartbroken, and I was all they had left of her. I couldn’t leave them.” Her chin lifted defiantly. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to. My father had never shown any interest in me, anyway.”

His look was scornful. “We both know that isn’t true. I remember all the letters he sent, till he finally gave up on you.”

Those letters again. Maria had told the same story, and she’d spoken with such ringing sincerity, the words had begun to raise doubts in her mind. She shrugged them away, her heart unwilling to release the anger she had clung to for so long.

“Seems to me he had a family right here,” she said haughtily. “You and Arnetta filled the bill for him. He didn’t need a daughter.” As she spoke the words, a twinge of pain needled its way into her heart, and she recognized the envy that blossomed within her. “He didn’t need me,” she repeated stoically.

“You’re wrong.” Matt’s voice was firm, adamant, as he denied her claim. “He felt bad every time one of his letters came back unopened. Then he finally stopped sendin’ ‘em.”

She was silent, digesting the news he’d just delivered, tempted to admit her ignorance of the facts she’d just been faced with. But not for the world would she betray her grandparents, though dismay gripped her as she repeated his words to herself.

His letters came back unopened.

It was too late for mourning, she decided as her back stiffened. But unwanted tears burned against her eyelids, and she struggled to contain them. If he really wanted her, he’d have come after her, she reasoned painfully. She allowed herself one sniff, breathing deeply as she pacified herself with the thought, her eyes on the ground.

“What did you want to show me?” she asked abruptly. “Surely there must have been a reason for this jaunt.”

He glanced at the set expression she wore and scowled. One day he’d make her listen, he vowed. She was due for an eye-opener where her daddy was concerned.

“Just thought you’d like to take a look at the near pasture, and then ride to the top of that highest rise ahead of us,” he answered. “You can see the stream over east of here, and from the high spot we can see all the way to the summer ranges, where the horses go for pasturing.”

“You send them away?” she asked, relieved that he’d allowed her retreat.

“Yep. We round up a good share of the stock and herd them north from here into the high country to graze. Leave a couple of men there for the summer to tend them. They stay in a line shack and watch for mountain lions and keep an eye on things.”

“What about the young ones? Do you send them, too?”

He nodded. “Except for the nursing foals and the ones we keep here to train for saddle. The rest we’ll sell off as we need to.”

“To whom?”

“Whoever,” he said. “Some go north, some to the army. We make most of our money from the ones we break and sell to ranchers or send east.”

“Break?” she asked.

“Well, eastern lady, what do you call it when you get a horse to let you on its back and give you a ride?” His tone was amused as he teased her.

“I can’t imagine breaking an animal,” she said briskly. “Back in Kentucky, we train them, starting with a foal, just days old. By the time we’re ready to mount them, they’re used to being handled and are ready to be ridden.”

“And I suppose you know all the tricks of the trade,” he suggested mockingly as he watched her roll with the easy gait of her horse. Once she got past the rough trot, she managed well, he thought with silent admiration.

“I watched the trainers work, from the time I was a child,” she said, and her mouth tilted in a smile of remembrance. “I used to sneak out to the barns whenever I could. And when I was older, our head trainer, Doc Whitman, let me help.”

“I’ll bet your mother didn’t know,” he surmised with a lifted eyebrow.

“No.” Her smile faded as she straightened in the saddle. “How much farther?” she asked briskly.

“A ways yet,” he returned, acknowledging her retreat.

The level land began rising in a gradual ascent, and her pony chose his way without her guidance, moving at a steady pace that ate the ground beneath them. She followed just a few feet to Matt’s rear, aware now of the value of the high-backed saddle as she settled into the rolling gait. Her eyes scanned the land about her, yet returned like a compass pointing north to the man who rode before her, his back straight, his shoulders held proudly as he traveled the land he’d been entrusted with.

The highest of the sprawling hills was ahead, and Emmaline felt the hot rays of the midmorning sun penetrate her white shirtwaist even as the breeze kept her reasonably cool while they rode. Matt had handed her a wide-brimmed hat to wear when they began this trek, but she’d left it hanging down her back. Now she tugged it into place.

“You’re ‘bout guaranteed to have a sunburned nose tomorrow,” he told her, casting an assessing glance over his shoulder. “That’s a case of too late, you know.”

“I’ve never been very concerned with a lily-white skin.” Her nose wrinkled, and she laid fingers against it. “I suspect you’re right this time. I can feel the heat there already.”

“I’ll warrant you were a trial to your folks, growin’ up,” he suggested mildly, taking in the sight of her rosy complexion.

“You’d be right. But I cleaned up really well, once I grew up,” she added with wry humor.

His mouth pursed at her words, and he grunted in agreement. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

The horses traveled a narrow path as they neared the crest of the hill, moving along ridges that had not been apparent from far off, but had obviously been used for trails regularly. Single file, they moved along at a quick pace, Emmaline a few yards to the rear, until they broke onto level ground. Their pace picked up and the horses settled into an easy lope.

Then, with a scattering of small pebbles and dust, Matt drew his reins and held out a hand to halt her next to him. “Look, out there,” he instructed her as his other hand swept the horizon.

Before them was a valley that led into a canyon between two roughly hewn hills. A stream trickled down the center of the valley, coming from the side of the rocky heights above.

“Is that the beginning of the mountains?” she asked as she tried to trace the canyon out of sight.

“Just foothills,” he said. “The mountains are farther north, where the stream begins. It dries up down here during the hot spells, but up north a ways, it flows year-round. That’s where we send the horses.”

“It’s desolate, isn’t it?” Her eyes swept the horizon, where not a moving shadow or creature caught her gaze.

“Some folks would say so.”

She looked at him quickly. “But not you?”

He shook his head and swung his horse about with a quick movement of his reins across the cow pony’s neck. “Time to get back. Maria will have dinner gettin’ cold before we show up.”

It was gone. The sense of closeness she’d felt with him had vanished.

His glance was quick as he nudged his horse into a trot. “Can you keep up?”

She bristled and urged her own horse along. “Try me,” she called challengingly.

“One of these days, city lady,” he drawled. “One of these days, I’ll take you up on that.”

Chapter Six

The rounded flank of the horse shone in the sunshine like warm mahogany, and with each stroke of the currycomb, Emmaline sent dust and loose horsehair flying. It was satisfying work, she decided, this grooming of horses. The sound of soft nickering from the mares and colts in the corral, the scent of hay and leather, and even the more earthy smells associated with the barn, brought back memories she cherished.

An affinity with the majestic animals had been her salvation through her childhood, when her mother had almost abandoned her, languishing in her dark, silent rooms. In the home where her grandparents observed all the rules of proper behavior and struggled to instill them in their reluctant grandchild.

She’d felt an outsider, there in that pillared mansion where guests were greeted beneath a welcoming portico. She’d greeted them herself, more than once, and smiled and talked obligingly with the finest citizens of the county. All in the cause of family. And since the death of her mother, she’d spent ten long years struggling to come up to the standards of the society her grandparents enjoyed.

Her hands slowed as she considered the past, reflecting on the proper behavior, the elegant posturing, the strict rules of etiquette she had adhered to, suffering in the doing. Only her hours spent in the barns had given her escape from the rigid way of life that had ruled her days.

She lifted her head and looked about her, at the wide span of the corral, the open doors of the barn and the flat pasture that was still green from the spring rainfall. Her gaze halted as she inspected the adobe house, which hugged the earth and seemed almost part of it. With thick walls and high ceilings, it held the cool night air long into the daytime hours, and offered a welcome for her that she had felt with increasing depth.

Even the people within those walls had begun to treat her as a part of the household. Emmaline smiled as she considered the sister she had come here to claim.

Theresa had spent half an hour before breakfast practicing her rope skipping, with Emmaline’s willing encouragement. The session had ended with a tentative embrace on the child’s part, and Emmaline had tried to be satisfied with the half hug she received before Theresa scampered off to the breakfast table.

“Out exercising so early?” Matt had come upon her unexpectedly, and she’d wondered for a moment if he’d watched as she took turns with her sister, showing her the fast-paced stepping to the rhythm of the rope as it spun about her body.

She had turned to face him, flushed and still breathless when she met his teasing glance. Irritated at being caught off guard, she’d muttered a hurried excuse and slipped away, aware of her disheveled appearance.

She spent a few moments before her mirror to prepare herself for the morning table. She’d washed her face with warm water and a cloth, and then quickly brushed her hair before she tied it up with a ribbon to match her dress.

At the table, Matt once more had become the man in charge, questioning Olivia, prodding Tessie to eat her breakfast, his earlier lapse into teasing forgotten, it seemed. But the slanting look he cast in Emmaline’s direction as he left the table had been filled with a veiled warmth she hugged to herself.

Now she took it out and examined it, that glance of his. Her eyes slitted against the brilliant sunshine, she brushed contentedly at the side of the horse she tended and wondered at the softening of Matthew’s hard features. His eyes had glowed with some indecipherable emotion that dwelled there, just behind his shuttered gaze.

Her arm kept up the steady movement as the horse edged closer, his own eyes closed as he welcomed her attention.

“I swan. You’re spoilin’ that critter, Miss Emmaline,” said Claude from the barn door, where he watched. “Ol’ Brownie’s never had it so good in his life, since you started ridin’ him.”

Emmaline grinned. The lazy teasing of the man behind her, combined with the prospect of a long ride in the morning sunshine, pleased her immensely.

“I like grooming him,” she answered, finishing her task with a final flurry about the neck of the gleaming animal, bending to step to the other side as she brushed. One hand rubbed at his velvet muzzle with affection.

“Well, he’s never had so much attention in his young life, and he’s just eatin’ it up.” Claude tipped his wide-brimmed hat back as he surveyed the scene before him.

He watched as Emmaline flicked the blanket onto the pony’s back, then lifted the saddle to swing it into place. She hesitated and lowered it, taking a breath as she once more prepared to hoist it. It was heavier by far than the small riding saddle she had used in Kentucky. And when she rode sidesaddle with the larger horned version, her mount had always been prepared for her.

“Here, let me do that,” Claude said, quickly dropping the halter he’d been holding and hustling over to where she stood. His hands reached out to grasp the heavy saddle and take it from her hands.

She relinquished it readily and brushed her palms against the leather of the riding skirt she wore. Once more the soft texture of the garment caught her attention, and she looked down at it, appreciating the gesture of the gift. The thought brought a flush of color that ridged her cheeks as she recalled the hours she had spent with Matt that day.

She would ride alone this morning, always within sight of the house and barns, she had promised at the breakfast table. Matt would be working with horses in the corral, unable to join her. She watched as Claude tightened the cinch and dropped the stirrup into place, ready for her to mount.

Leading the horse, one hand on his bridle, she walked with him until she lined him up with a mounting block Claude had placed for her use next to the barn. She could manage without it, but the gesture had pleased her, and she knew he watched as she stepped up onto it, smiling in his direction in silent thanks.

The horse edged away as she put her weight in the stirrup, and she spoke quietly to him, swinging her other leg over the saddle and gathering the reins into her left hand.

Like a demented animal, the cow pony flung his head back and snorted, then bowed his back and kicked out with his hind legs. His loud whinny rang out, and then, in a surprise movement that had her clutching at the saddle horn and dropping the reins at the same time, he leaped with all four legs off the ground, slamming once more against the hard sand, jarring her teeth together.

“Whoa...whoa there, Brownie!” Claude’s hoarse voice rang out in near panic as he watched the young woman clinging for dear life to the animal she rode.

From the corral, three men came running to the scene, Matt Gerrity at the front, his booted feet eating up the ground in long strides, his eyes focused intently on the drama before him.