Colorado Bride (7 page)

“You’re being too rough on yourself. You’re a charming person and a wonderful cook, and there’re probably dozens of men who would be delighted to marry you if you weren’t already engaged.”

“If I be,” muttered Katie. Td sure like to know where Brian’s got to.”

“I’m sure it’s something very unimportant, and he hasn’t written because he expected to be able to get here any minute.”

“Well, I hope nothing happens to keep your husband away. The sooner he gets here, the safer I’ll feel.”

“Let’s finish cleaning up here and go lock ourselves in for the night. Then we’ll be safe from bears and Mr. Barrow’s outlaws.”

“If you be so hard set on him calling you by your first name, you’re going to have to start calling him Lucas.” Carrie looked startled. “’Tis no more than fair,” Katie added.

“I suppose it is,” Carrie agreed, “but if he’s going to be off chasing wild horses all the time, I won’t be able to call him anything so it won’t matter.”

“There’s nothing about that man that doesn’t matter,” Katie stated with conviction. “And it won’t make any difference if he’s right next to you or a hundred miles away.”

Carrie was inclined to agree, but she hoped Lucas wouldn’t go so far away as that.

Chapter 4

Carrie closed her bedroom door and allowed her body to sag against its roughly carved panels. She had gotten through the day, just barely, but she wouldn’t have made it without Katie O’Malley and Lucas Barrow. What ever made her think she could handle this job on her own? Why hadn’t she turned around at St. Louis when she found Robert had died of a fever and gone back home while she still had the money? If she had known what she was up against, she might have, no matter how bleak her future in Smithfield, Virginia, promised to be.

Like Katie, she had cooked and cleaned for her father and brothers after her mother died. As soon as the war was over, her older brother had brought home a lovable wife, a beautiful, charming,
useless
creature who gave him three children in less than four years and then died of childbed fever. Naturally Carrie had stepped in to take care of the children, and naturally she had not complained when David had been too grief-stricken to pay much attention to his young family. Apparently Emilie’s family was also weighed down by grief because they, too, made no offer to help care for the children.

Carrie said nothing to anyone, though she said a great deal to her pillow every night before she fell into an exhausted sleep. She waited for the wounds caused by Emilie’s death to heal. But when everybody had recovered sufficiently to be able to face the problem, Carrie had been handling it successfully for so long no one saw any need to change anything. Carrie could have stood up to her brother, but her father practically made her caring for his grandchildren a test of family loyalty. On top of that, David’s in-laws sang the praises of Carrie’s unselfishness so loud and long it would have been a social disgrace to refuse. Carrie resigned herself to being a mother without ever having had a husband and children of her own.

She might still have been in Virginia had not her other brother, Sam, brought home a wife, Luanda, who showed every inclination to yield to Carrie in everything, especially if it involved work. Carrie knew in due time she would find herself mothering another set of children, and she made up her mind to leave home.

The entire household had been stunned when she announced she was going to marry Robert Simpson and move to Colorado, but ironically it was not her family that made the loudest outcry, at least not at first. Lucinda had broken into hysterical sobs, loudly complaining of Carrie’s unparalleled selfishness in leaving her family when they needed her. Next it was David’s in-laws’ turn to carry the tale of Carrie’s disaffection throughout the town, making it seem that their grandchildren were being heartlessly abandoned. Finally, Lucinda announced she was expecting a child, and
her
parents expressed their astonishment that Carrie would consider leaving her sister-in-law at such a time.

At this point, her father and brothers took up the by now very well rehearsed cry, and the result was a terrible argument during which they all said things they didn’t mean and would have repented of a few days later, but Carrie decided not to give anybody a chance to apologize. She packed her clothes, gave away everything she didn’t intend to take to Colorado, and left the house without waiting to receive anyone’s blessing. It had hurt, but Carrie longed for a life and home of her own, and she knew she would never get it in Smithfield.

Hers was an extremely handsome family. Her father had been one of the most admired young men in the state, and her brothers were no less handsome. They were charming, gay, and the best of company. Carrie’s mother had always pandered to her father and brothers, and they took it as the natural course of events that Carrie should continue to do the same, and they could never understand why she rebelled. Though not as handsome as her brothers, Carrie knew she was pretty, and had it not been a well-known fact that her father and brothers had neglected their lands, she would have been much sought after. In a state where the economy had been ruined by the Civil War and where the number of young men had been drastically reduced by that bloody conflict, a girl virtually had to bring something to her marriage or resign herself to being an aunt. Carrie’s dilemma had been even more acute. In the small town of Smithfield, the only unmarried man to come back home after the war beside her own brothers was Robert Simpson.

Carrie knew Robert Simpson’s marriage proposal would be the only escape she would be offered, and even though she felt only a mild liking for him, she agreed to marry him. She had known him all her life and knew he would never take advantage of her as her own family had done. She accepted his offer with the single stipulation that he find a job as far away from Smithfield as possible. She had not expected him to look as far afield as Colorado, but she had not drawn back when he wrote telling her of the position at the Green Run Pass Station and sending money for her journey.

She had traveled to St. Louis with hope in her heart and confidence that she and Robert could build a reasonably happy marriage. Their union would lack the passion she had hoped to find and the ardent adoration her mother had held for her father, but she would be comfortable, and that had to count for something.

Nothing could describe her shock when she reached St. Louis to be told Robert had died only a few days earlier of a virulent fever then plaguing towns along the Mississippi. She was a little conscience-stricken to find she didn’t feel any real sense of loss—die officials all seemed as much struck by her coolness as her beauty—but she never had deceived herself into thinking Robert had been able to engage her heart, and this was no time to punish herself for being unable to shed false tears. She had been given all of Robert’s possessions, and it was in going through his papers that she found the letter giving him the position as manager of the station. She decided at once to take it herself. Her only alternative was to go back to Virginia, and she couldn’t do that. To return while the feelings of resentment and hostility over her departure were still strong would have guaranteed that she would never be allowed a free moment for the rest of her life. Everyone would consider themselves
obliged
to impose upon her, and she decided death was almost preferable to that.

The decision to take on the stagecoach station had been made on the spur of the moment, and she hadn’t worked out how she was going to explain the absence of her husband until she was halfway there. Then it had seemed like a simple matter to keep postponing his arrival until no one really expected him. By then she would have established herself so firmly there would be no question of replacing her.

She had never allowed herself to question her reasoning until some passengers who boarded the stage in Denver began to talk about Baca Riggins. She had given little credence to their stories at first, certain they were trying to scare her, sure it was part of the initiation process all Easterners had to go through when they went west, but after a while it was impossible to ignore the fact that there was universal agreement as to the character of Baca Riggins, and by the time she arrived at Green Run Pass Station, she was in such a state it was all she could do not to get right back on the stage and return to Denver. Now she had survived her first day, but only with the considerable help of Katie and Lucas, both of whom would soon be leaving. Carrie was realistic enough to realize, and admit, that she couldn’t run the station alone, but she had no idea what she was going to do. Katie might leave at any minute, and while Lucas would probably be around awhile longer, he might decide to go after wild horses any minute. Then what would she do?

She had to come up with a plan, she couldn’t just keep hoping things would work out in her favor, but she would have to put that off until tomorrow. She intended to try once more to talk Lucas into staying, at least to get him to promise to take care of the horses for a definite length of time, but she was sure she could count on Katie to do the cooking until her Brian came. Actually she could handle the cooking by herself as long as there was someone for the horses, but she couldn’t do both. That was simply too much for one person, but she had no idea where to look for a cook or a horse tender. Oh well, that was another thing she could ask Lucas about tomorrow.

She realized she was depending an awful lot on a man who had refused to commit himself to helping her, but somehow Lucas was the kind of person one did depend on. Besides, he had rescued her from Baca Riggins, and he had harnessed the team without being asked. Sure, he had told her he couldn’t continue to work for her, but he always seemed to be around when he was needed.

Her curiosity about him was greater than ever, but she realized she had to be very careful if she started asking questions about him. Everyone believed she was married, and they would interpret her interest in a very different manner because of it. Suddenly she was angry that she was caught in such an untenable position, and all through no fault of her own. No, she couldn’t say that. She had been only too anxious to marry Robert, and it was her own idea to manage the station the station by herself. No, she was in a tough situation because she didn’t want to accept the only solution she could think of and go home; she
had
to have a life of her own, and she was determined to fight for it if she had to. She doubted she would have had the courage to come ahead if she had known what faced her, but she was here now and she intended to stay. Bother Lucas’s outlaws, renegades, and drunks. She’d make sure the doors were locked at night and that someone was around during the day, but she was going to stick it out. Thousands of other women had endured a lot worse than this to cross the plains in a covered wagon, and she was just as tough and tenacious as any of them.

From long habit, Carrie woke before dawn. She immediately got up, but when she remembered the first stage didn’t come through until after nine o’clock and realized she didn’t have to get up for another hour at least, she sank back down with a blissful sigh and snuggled under the covers. It was already late spring, but unlike her native Virginia, May nights could be very cold in Colorado, and the warmth of her bed was deliriously inviting. For a moment she enjoyed a feeling of peace and well-being. Just knowing she was in her own home and didn’t have to prepare breakfast for seven people, not to mention get them out of bed and see that the children got dressed, added to her contentment, but gradually she started to recall all the difficulties of her situation at the station, and her feeling of contentment faded. If she didn’t solve her problems, she would ultimately be faced with the necessity of going back home or marrying the first man who asked her.

The thought of marriage by itself was unexpected and shocking, but even more unsettling was the discovery that Lucas Barrow’s was the first name to pop into her mind. And it didn’t take her more than a couple of seconds to realize that next to him, every person she had met since she left home faded into insignificance. Yet the idea of marrying a man like Lucas, much less Lucas himself, was ridiculous. Their backgrounds were so different and they were so unalike it would be absurd to even consider it, not that she was actually
considering
it, it was just a thought that occurred to her, and a stupid one at that, so she immediately dismissed it.

But Carrie was dismayed to find she couldn’t dismiss thoughts of Lucas that easily, and she was forced to abandon her bed and start getting dressed before she could get her mind off the strange, enigmatic wrangler. And to think she hadn’t even known what a wrangler was yesterday morning; now here she was less than twenty-four hours later mooning over one just like an adolescent schoolgirl. Well, she wasn’t mooning exactly, really, she wasn’t mooning at all, it was just that the man had been so helpful, even if he did have a poor opinion of women, and there was a sense of mystery about him she found fascinating. One of the men on the stage had told her that people in the West came from many different backgrounds, that they were not always what they seemed, and that they had their own reasons for keeping what they knew to themselves. She was not supposed to be curious, but she couldn’t help wondering about Lucas.

She slipped out of bed, wrapped her robe around her, stepped into her slippers, and idly moved about the room, ending up at the window, where she drew back the curtain so she could look out. It was still dark outside, but the sky had become a gray vault above the peaks in the distance. In a few moments the sun would burst over the distant mountains and flood the sky with its cold, clear light. She wondered if Lucas lived in a snug cabin or if he camped out. She had been told that men of the West almost always slept out, partly because they were used to it and partly because it was a lot less trouble, but it took almost no time for her to decide that any amount of trouble was preferable to sleeping outside, especially during the winter or when it rained. And that didn’t include other considerations like wild animals and marauding Indians! What kind of man would prefer the outdoors and all its dangers to the comfortable safety of a house? Could such a man ever be brought to live inside, eat at a table, and take regular baths? Carrie realized this was just one more thing she had never taken into consideration, and she wondered how much more she would have to learn before she could begin to feel comfortable in her new home.