Maverick Heart (20 page)

A moment later she heard boots on the wooden porch.

“Get a hinge for this door from the sutler,” Miles ordered.

“And some soap,” Verity reminded him.

“And some soap,” Miles repeated. “Have him put it on my bill.”

“Sure, boss. What kind of soap?”

“For dishes.” He paused a moment and said, “Better get some sweet-smelling stuff, too, if he’s got any. Something a lady would use.”

Frog’s voice sounded even croakier. “Tark’s gonna give me a hard time, I ask for somethin’ like that.”

“Tell him it’s for my wife.”

“Do I have to, boss?”

“I’d appreciate it, Frog,” Verity said from a spot behind Miles’s shoulder.

Frog’s color heightened. “Yes, ma’am. It’ll be a pleasure, ma’am.”

A moment later Frog was gone.

“Thank you, Miles,” Verity said, backing away from him as he turned toward her, his hand on the door holding it upright.

“Tark will give him a hard time.”

“Maybe you should buy soap more often. Then it wouldn’t be such a novelty.”

Miles laughed. “Touché.”

She realized he was going to leave again. “Miles?”

“What is it, Verity? I’ve got work to do.”

“What am I supposed to do around here?” she asked.

“Whatever needs doing.” He paused and said, “If you like, you can start by attending a funeral service with me.”

“What?”

“For the man who was killed in the first Indian raid. And for Shorty. We’re gathering at the cemetery this morning so I can say a few words over them.”

“I see.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“I’ll come.”

Miles held the door open so Verity could precede him. He walked beside her toward the small graveyard behind the house. She saw several primitive crosses and wondered who else was buried there. The men were already assembled, including Frog, who had delayed his trip to the fort long enough to be present at the service.

Verity stood beside Miles, aware that the seven cowboys were looking everywhere but at her.

When Miles took off his hat, the other men followed, clutching a variety of headgear against their chests or legs. “Lord,” Miles began, “we’ll miss having Pete around, but I expect he’s up in heaven talking your ear off. Take good care of him. Shorty wasn’t much for praying, but he lived by the Commandments. He was a good friend and a good man. Take care of him, too. Amen.”

“Amen,” the cowboys chorused.

“Day’s wasting,” Miles said.

The cowboys wandered off, leaving Miles and Verity alone with the new graves. It was frightening to think a man could live and die with only a brief eulogy to mark his passing. Shorty had died too young. And who was Pete? How old had he
been? Had he come here with hopes and dreams as she had?

The ragged wound in the earth where Pete lay buried was marked with a crude wooden cross that had his name burned into it. No dates of birth or death. No words of love and regard. The ceremony for the two men had been so pitifully short, Verity wondered why they had bothered having it at all.

She knelt in the knee-high grass between the two graves and began crumbling the large clods of dirt, smoothing out the surfaces of the graves. It seemed sad that there was no one here who cared enough to do it.

“Who was Pete?” she asked Miles.

“He showed up a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t volunteer.”

“So you didn’t really know him.”

“I’ve known a hundred like him.” Miles knelt on one knee beside her and reached for a large clod of dirt, which he crushed in his fist. He let the dust sieve back through his fingers onto Shorty’s grave.

“This place isn’t anything like England. It’s so … unforgiving,” Verity said.

“It’s what England was a thousand years ago. Out here a man is forced to find out what he’s made of inside. You carve yourself a place and live one day at a time. You don’t have time to think about whether you’re happy or sad, you’re too busy trying to survive.”

Verity placed her hand in the one Miles held
outstretched to her and allowed him to help her to her feet. She left her hand in his as he walked her back to the house.

“If we live for today, does that mean we forget the past?” she asked as he shoved open the front door and ushered her inside. “Are you suggesting we pretend it never happened?”

“We put it away,” he said, lifting the door and fitting it evenly into the frame. “And live for today.”

She waited for him to finish, to turn and seek out her eyes, before she said, “All right, Miles. I can do that.”

“Does that mean you’re accepting the terms I offered?”

“It means I won’t argue with you anymore about the subject.”

She watched some emotion halfway between relief and triumph cross his face.

Before he could reach for his prize, someone pounded on the door twice, and it fell inward and hung precariously on the single hinge. Red stood there, chest heaving. “You better come quick, boss. There’s trouble.”

“We’ll finish this later,” Miles said.

As he followed Red out the door, Verity wondered what disaster had befallen them now. A thought struck her. Maybe someone had found Rand and Freddy! Her heart leapt with hope as she hurried through the open doorway after the two men.

“What’s the problem, Red?” Miles said as he stepped onto the porch. The wind whipped at his Stetson, and he tugged it down to keep it from blowing away.

“Prairie fire, boss. Probably started by lightning. ’Bout five miles west of the house. Coming this way in a hurry.”

Miles felt paralyzed. So far he had been able to keep his crippling fear of fire a secret, but his men would expect him to work beside them putting out this fire. If he wanted to keep their respect, he was going to have to do just that.

His stomach shifted. A wind-whipped fire could turn in an instant, and he knew the damage fire could do to human flesh. Despite the cooling breeze, perspiration dotted his brow and the area
above his lip. Miles forced himself to give orders in a calm voice.

“Load a couple of plows onto a wagon and get shovels and blankets,” he said. “Have everybody mount up. We’ll do what we can to keep the fire away from the ranch buildings.”

“I can help.”

Miles turned to find Verity standing on the porch, her hands holding her wind-blown hair out of her face. He saw her suddenly as she would look with her hair singed to the scalp, her eyelashes gone, her skin charred black.

“You stay here,” he said in a hard voice.

Her hands dropped to perch at her hips. “I’m your wife. I can help.”

“You’d only be in the way.”

“I’ll follow after you if you try to leave me behind.”

“Damn it, Verity, how did you get so willful?”

“I took a lesson from you.”

She surprised a laugh out of him. Then he sobered. He knew the dangers involved. He doubted she did. At least if he had her with him, he could be sure she was out of the path of the fire. If it turned toward the house and they couldn’t stop it, she might be in more danger here than if she came with them.

“All right, you can come,” he said. “But if I give an order, obey it like your life depends on it, because it probably does. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Let’s go saddle up.” He headed for the barn, not waiting to see if she followed.

“I have no idea how to attach one of those Western saddles to a horse,” she said as she hurried along beside him.

“Sully!” he shouted. “Throw some leather on Blackbeard for the lady.”

“Right, boss.”

“Go watch him,” Miles ordered. “You might as well learn now as later.”

Red had hitched a couple of mules to a wagon that was loaded with plow blades, shovels, blankets, and two barrels of water. Another brace of mules was tied behind the wagon. Minutes later, Cookie climbed up on the wagon bench. The rest mounted their horses, and they all headed off in the direction of the red glow that showed against the dark thunderclouds on the horizon.

They crested a rise, and the jagged orange streak of fire and the blackened earth it left in its wake became visible in the distance. It stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions.

“My God, Miles!” Verity cried. “How can you possibly hope to turn that fire?”

Miles fought back the nausea that roiled in his stomach. His fingers clenched the reins until they were white-knuckled. “We have to try,” he said grimly. “You stay with the wagon. Be ready with water and an extra blanket if one of the men needs it.”

Red unhitched the mules that had pulled the wagon and hitched them to one of the plows, while
Pickles hitched the other plow to the team of mules that had been tied on behind. The two men separated their teams, and each began to plow parallel furrows about seventy-five feet apart. As soon as they had enough earth turned, the rest of the men set fire to the grass between the two furrows to burn it off and create a firebreak.

They worked with shovels to widen the furrows and used blankets to control the fire within the man-made break. When the prairie fire reached the break, there would be nothing left to burn, and with any luck, it would die. Of course, that presumed the furrow was plowed wide enough that the gusting wind didn’t whip the fire across it.

Miles stayed on horseback to allow him to move quickly between the working men and supervise the operation. Mobility was the only thing that kept his fear at bay. He told himself the fire couldn’t get to him, that he could outrun it on horseback, if need be.

But he had heard enough stories of fleet-footed animals caught by a runaway prairie fire to know he was only kidding himself. He kept his bandanna across his nose and mouth to keep out the worst of the smoke, but tremors of fear raked his body every time he caught a whiff of burned flesh from rodents that couldn’t escape the blaze.

It seemed impossible to Verity that Miles and his men could succeed in creating a wide enough firebreak before the flames reached them. Acrid smoke choked the air around her and made it hard to draw breath.

Sully had stayed with her at the wagon. The whites showed around his brown eyes, and his nostrils flared. Verity wondered what awful memories the fire must conjure for him.

“Sully?”

It took him a moment to focus on her. “Ma’am?”

“Will they be able to do it?”

“Don’t know, ma’am.”

She paced the length of the wagon and back in agitation. “I need to be doing something. I want to help them.”

“Don’t think that’s a good idea, ma’am. The boss said stay here. You better do what he says. I …” He swallowed hard. “A fire … it can get outta control quicker’n that.” He snapped two burn-scarred fingers.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

When she took a determined step in the direction of the fire, Sully reached out a hand to stop her. As soon as she paused, his hand came away. “Did you want something else, Sully?”

“Take a good look at me, ma’am.”

She met his eyes squarely and tried not to let her gaze stray beyond the normal skin on his face. She lost the battle, her eyes drawn against her will to the gruesome scars on the sides of his head where his ears used to be. She kept her face blank, but her stomach revolted at the sight of his deformity. He kept staring at her until her gaze dropped.

“You think twice before you go rushing off,” he
said. “This is what fire can do. I know from the way folks try not to look at me that it ain’t a pretty sight. It’d be a shame if anything like this happened to you.” He ducked his head, his forefinger on the brim of his hat. “That’s all I got to say, ma’am.”

Verity had some idea what it must have cost the young man to share even that much of his feelings. His warning kept her where she was a little longer.

She watched the men widening the trench with shovels. She didn’t have the strength to do what they were doing. But the fire curved in on one side where the men were burning it between the furrows, and several men batted at the flames with blankets to keep them from spreading too fast. She could certainly help do that.

She watched, fidgeting, frustrated, feeling useless, until finally she decided that no matter what the danger, she could no longer stand by doing nothing. She had spent a lifetime on the sidelines. Here, in this new land, she had a chance to help determine the course of events, rather than to wait for things to happen around her. It was a heady feeling. And one that gave her the impetus to act.

She grabbed a blanket from the back of the wagon and headed toward the firebreak.

“Ma’am!” Sully called after her.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be careful!” she shouted back over her shoulder.

It didn’t take her long to realize why the men had pulled their bandannas up to cover their faces. The smoke was stifling. She reached into the
pocket of her riding skirt for her lace-trimmed handkerchief, which she tied around her nose and mouth. Now she looked as much like a bandit as the rest of them. She aimed herself perpendicular to the plowed furrow and began beating at the fire along the short edge of the firebreak to put it out.

It seemed like they worked for hours, plowing, shoveling, and then beating back the flames on the grass burning between the furrows. Smoke made her eyes water. Soot gathered on her eyelashes, on her hands, her face, her hair, her clothes. Her arms and back and shoulders ached from the constant
slap, slap, slap
as she beat at the fire with the heavy wool blanket.