An Unwilling Husband (25 page)

She had always known Garret was smart and capable, even when they were children, but had never expected him to take up law. “Is being a law man what you want to do?

“Sometimes.”

“Then why try to save the ranch at all?”

He cocked his head to the side as if he couldn’t tell whether she were serious and then shook it. “Nah, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

“I know it don’t make sense. It seems like nothin’ but bad happened there. I never blamed the land for it though, and I guess the presumptuous part of me thought, if I ran the Lazy S, I’d do it better than my old man ever did. I’d make it into something worth passing to my sons one day. I thought I’d save it and wipe out my pa’s memory completely.” Sighing, he glanced back at Burke and Lenny again then returned his attention to her. “And then after I came back and started working, I had these people under me who depended on the ranch too, and it became about more. Where would Cookie and Lenny go if the ranch goes down? Burke and Wells would be fine, but they see the Lazy S as home. Hell, for the first time in a long time, I’m seeing it as home too,” he finished, shrugging.

“None of that is hard to understand, Garret.”

He considered her for a long time. “Maggie, I reckon I owe you an apology. This whole time I thought you were living some easy life away from here and I was angry about it for a long time. Seems I was wrong. I misjudged you, and I’m sorry.”

She blinked at him in surprise, and he added, “You’re still annoying though.”

“Please,” she said grinning. “I think you mean
entertaining
. Gracious. Intriguing. Magnanimous.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t, and now you demoted yourself to irritating and bothersome,” he said with a cheeky glint in his eyes.

With a jerk of his head toward Burke and Lenny, he motioned for them to catch up, and when they had, said, “We’re going to take the hard way in. I don’t want to risk passing the Jenningses or any of their informants on the way into Whitfield’s land, so we’ll go through the brush from here. It’ll take us longer, but will be safer. Now let’s get a move on. We’re burnin’ daylight.”

A kick to the horses, and they were off.

* * * *

The day dragged. Garret stayed in the lead and with the boys around, Lenny only spoke Comanche, leaving Maggie to her thoughts as the hours passed slower than water boils. The sun beat down with single mindedness. To fry her. Thank goodness for the hat Garret gave her before they’d left that morning. Her fair skin would have been crispy after so long in the relentless sun. The hat was mannish and unbecoming on her, though a similar one on Garret made him look strapping and mysterious. Now, she almost laughed at her vanity because she would likely be ruddier than a tomato without Garret’s foresight in providing her with it in the first place.

Off the main road, whitetail deer, possums and rabbits and the occasional escaped pig from a nearby ranch had etched winding trails through the brush. The horses tended to travel one after the other but unfortunately Buck was a behind sniffer and had been kicked in earnest at least twice by Lenny’s mare. It didn’t deter him. Lenny pulled up and around at an opening in the dense woods and put her mare at the back of the group. Maggie smiled in apology at her horse’s typical male behavior as she passed, but the girl wasn’t looking at her. Lenny looked…spooked.

Surely she wasn’t cross with her. She’d tried to pull Buck back. In fact, had spent a great deal of time and effort giving the paint distance, but Buck had been unwavering in his obnoxious quest.

As she peeked around Burke to offer a verbal apology, Lenny swept the edges of the clearing with a piercing look. Buck and her inability to curtail his proclivities might not be Lenny’s problem.

The going was unhurried, as traveling through dense brush and thin trails slowed them down to a crawl. The group rode straight through lunch, eating in the saddle, and it was nearing the time they would need to break camp. The low-hanging sun threw the trees’ shadows across her thighs and the birds that had been chirping in the trees quieted in an instant. Even the breeze seemed to still.

Eyebrows arched, Garret turned in his saddle, looking not at her, but past her to Lenny. Whatever he’d seen in Lenny’s face, it made him slow down and untie the thin leather string securing his rifle on his saddle.

A half an hour more of riding without interruption, and she’d relaxed again into the rhythm of Buck’s gait. Her body could only stay tense and fearful for so long before it tired of the game.

“Time to settle in for the night,” Garret said in a tone which brooked no argument.

Not that she would have squabbled anyway. She had been working on her endurance in the saddle, but still would be walking bow-legged for a good while after an entire day of riding.

She dismounted stiffly in a small clearing along with Burke and Lenny while Garret rode around the perimeter. Lenny was unusually quiet. Granted, around the men she was always nearly silent, but even her movements were careful and calculated.

She turned around to find Lenny standing within inches of her.

“You scared the devil out of me!” Maggie clutched her chest.

Lenny glanced at Burke, who was unloading their provisions for the night. At such a distance, he wouldn’t easily hear a whispered conversation.

“Be wary. Trouble is coming,” Lenny whispered as she pressed one of Garret’s pistols into her hand and waited for her to give any response she understood.

Maggie put the heavy pistol in the belt and folds of her skirt and squeezed Lenny’s hand. She had only seen the girl scared when Wyatt approached, and for good reason. Such apprehension in her toughened friend was unsettling.

Garret tied Rooney loosely to a rope Burke had draped between a couple of trees. The other horses were already relaxing weary muscles after the long day and tearing through any grass within reach. By the time Garret came back, Lenny and she had already begun preparing ham and beans in a travel skillet and Burke had started a fire with some tinder he’d collected.

Like the thrilling of an extremity that had fallen asleep from prolonged inactivity, her ears tingled with the constant thrum of readiness. Every few seconds the hairs on her nape would rise as if a predator’s gaze was upon her back. If the feeling of dread was so potent for her, it had to be tenfold for the others, more trained to be wary of unseen danger. Restless and watchful, no one spoke a word as they set to their task of making dinner and camp.

The Indians appeared as ghosts materialize out of thin air. Not a branch broken in their wake nor leaf stirred. Not a blade of grass sang its anger at being disturbed. She and her companions were alone in the clearing, and then they weren’t.

Four imposing men stalked closer, clad in leather breechcloths secured by belts. They wore moccasins and decorative breast plates made of thin, uniform white beads. The two older men had left their chests bare under their breast plates, while the two younger Indians had thin cloth shirts on. All wore their hair parted in the middle and in long braids. The lines down their scalps were painted in bright colors, and each had at least one small braid decorated with colored cloth, beads and a single feather. That these men were fearsome warriors couldn’t be questioned, even to an untrained eye such as hers.

With hard expressions and weapons drawn, they approached as if they hunted something vile and dangerous. Maggie jumped at the sight of them but Garret put a firm hand on her leg and flashed a warning look to her.
Be still, woman
, his eyes seemed to say.

Lenny sat still as a stone with her head down, and Burke and Garret stood slowly. The Indians came to a stop a short distance away from their fire. Garret greeted them in a tongue still foreign to her, save a few words. Though his fluency in their language seemed to take them aback, the warriors didn’t lower their weapons.

They directed their questions to Lenny, and after Garret waited for her to answer with no success, he answered for her, which only seemed to displease the strangers more. Four dark and fiery sets of eyes drifted from Garret to Lenny, and as they broke into a fast and angry-sounding conversation amongst themselves, they gestured to her friend time and time again.

Garret shook his head and repeated the same phrase over and over. He pointed to Maggie and gave a frustrated grunt, grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet. Then he yanked her to him until she was plastered to his chest and covered her mouth with his. She struggled in surprised panic for a moment before she melted into his intoxicating touch. That man could kiss a woman. Her bones melded into place as he pulled his lips from hers, and she clung to his waist to stay upright. Her wobbly legs were less than useless.

“Mine,” he told the Indians. “What’s the word?” He pointed to Lenny and asked her a question in a clipped tone.

The girl glanced from the small band of warriors to Burke, who seemed completely lost in the conversation, and a determined expression came into her eyes. She slunk to Burke’s side. “Mine,” she said, to the dawning comprehension of Burke.

Who looked more shocked, was hard to tell. It was a terribly close race between Garret, the Indians, and Burke. She would have laughed at their comical expressions if death didn’t seem so imminent. If not for her and Garret, surely Lenny had sealed Burke’s fate, for the warriors’ attention swung in his direction. The air was so charged, not a bird in the area was brave enough to let out a squawk.

“Oh, bollocks,” Maggie grumbled. “Would you like to join us for dinner?” she asked the men, speaking slowly. She pantomimed eating and chewing.

Garret stared at her as if she had lost her mental faculties.

“Well, ask them,” she directed him. Hands on hips, she waited.

The warriors looked at each other and then at her in confusion, and Lenny, silent Lenny, was of no help whatsoever. Garret cleared his throat and invited them to break bread. The men lowered their weapons, but kept them handy. Their curiosity with Lenny and a white man speaking their language had the older men calming the fire in the younger ones.

The tension between the men made for an uncomfortable meal but curiosity got the better of one of the younger braves. He pointed to Maggie’s moccasins poking from under the hem of her dress and asked Lenny a question, to which she responded with a nod. Maggie lifted her dress just enough to show off Lenny’s craftsmanship.

For a time, as she seemed the only one who felt inclined to chat, she carried on a very one-sided conversation with the Indians. Garret translated but he wasn’t gracious about it. When nervous, she had a tendency to ramble, and ramble she did. She told how Lenny outshot the men at the barn raising, and she’d made her skin a rabbit. The men seemed to like that one, and they squinted at her proper posture, poise and dress. Even Lenny cracked a smile, though she wiped it clean as soon as it appeared.

One of the younger braves, who sat behind the others, watched Maggie with interest, so she directed her stories and questions at him while the others finished their meal and stared at the silent Indian girl.

Lenny sat beside Burke, leaving him scarcely enough room to move his arm to eat. He scooted further down the fallen tree for space but relentless in her chase, she kept close to him until Burke nearly fell off the end. Eventually he gave up and attempted to eat with his other hand.

With persuasion, Lenny responded in clipped tones to the questions asked by the men, though what they were discussing was incomprehensible.

From the confounded look on Burke’s face, he seemed to be in the same wayward boat as her.

The man in the back continued to watch her. It bothered Garret far more than it did her, and as the evening wore on and their dinner guests remained, his apparent lack of need for personal space made her smile to herself. Unlike Burke, she was disinclined to move over to gain space. Sitting so close to Garret Shaw wasn’t such a terrible thing, so she held her ground. With his heat warming her and his solid arm against her, danger seemed a comfortable enough distance off.

Maggie stretched her back as she relaxed into the cadence of the foreign language spoken around her. She gave up trying to understand the flow of conversation. Instead, she enjoyed the sound of their tenor voices and rhythm of the words. One of the older men gave a short utterance and, as one, the men stood in a fluid motion. The warriors gave them slight nods and headed off in the direction in which they’d come. The young man in the back stayed and addressed her, much to her surprise. He hadn’t spoken to her before then. She looked to Garret to translate. He didn’t appear happy but he could have been more gracious about it.

“He says he’s never met a woman like you. Says you are confusing.”

“Oh, well I’m terribly sorry,” she directed at the Indian.