One winter afternoon shortly before Christmas, Rose sought out Nate and led him to a quiet room away from the Browns. “Nate, I’ve heard rumors about Mike Carey. What do you know?” She watched him with eyes made keen by torment.
Nate started to speak then closed his lips in a straight line. When he finally opened them again he only said, “What have you heard?”
Cold fear settled in Rose’s heart. “That time he rescued me, I’ve never been able to figure out why he happened to be there.” She restlessly pleated the fine blue wool of her gown. “Now range gossip has it that Mike’s quit the Circle 5, is drifting and —”
“I can’t talk about it,” Nate cut in, looking like a thunderhead. “Say, what do you hear from your traveling friend?”
Rose looked down at her nervous fingers. “I—we won’t be writing again. Things were getting out of hand so I told him it would be best to break off our correspondence.”
She didn’t add as she could have done that the decision came after tears and prayers. If she relinquished something fine and wonderful, yet the God who had helped her so many times sent the courage to tell the truth. A few days after she came back to the Double B, she wrote to Carmichael Blake-Jones and told him she had married and wouldn’t be writing again. She thanked him for his many pleasant letters and said how much she appreciated them. She didn’t tell him that if what she suspected were true, her shadowy husband wasn’t the Christian cowboy she thought him but in all probability a rustler.
“Is that the letter you gave me to mail?” Nate asked in a choked voice and hid his face in his hands.
“Yes, I know you admire him a lot and I do—did too.”
“But I remember bringing you a letter from him after that,” Nate protested, his head still down.
Rose almost blurted out the whole story but bit her tongue. She simply couldn’t explain without telling about her marriage. Rose fervently hoped Michael wouldn’t mention it in a letter to Nate! She replied, “Yes, he wrote once.”
“What did he say?” Nate appeared to be holding his breath.
Tired of deceit, Rose went as far as she could. “He said I had broken his heart. That he fell in love with me when he saw my picture.” She glared at her cousin. “See what you started? That’s not all. Do you know who Mr. Carmichael Blake-Jones is?” She didn’t wait for Nate’s answer but excitedly went on. “He’s also Mr. Prentice, the new owner of the Circle 5, and he expected to take over and run the ranch. Probably in the spring. Oh dear, what am I going to do?” A hated tear fell and she angrily brushed it away.
A curious blend of amusement, concern, and pity made Nate’s face a closed book, and he patted her arm. “I have a feeling that in time everything will work out just fine, Rosy. Wish I could be here to see it.” Disappointment vanished when he squared his shoulders and smiled. “Oh well, the sooner I go and learn what I must the quicker I can come back and serve the Lord.”
Rose put away her own troubles. Yet when Nate left her depression came. She had to tell her parents of the hasty marriage and before Carmichael Prentice or whatever his name really was came, but how could she, now that Mike might have turned to rustling? Had he? She couldn’t believe it. Range rumors had to be wrong and this aching sense of loss merely a test of her loyalty. The last thing she needed was Michael’s arrival to complicate things even more.
Christmas passed. Nate swung aboard the eastbound train, leaving Rose desolate. Without her cousin or Michael’s letters she fell prey to her own thoughts. Columbine and Sam offered companionship when they weren’t in school, but long winter hours stretched and lengthened into January and February. Rose alternated between excitement when Nate’s scrawled letters came, filled with boyish admiration for a girl named Mercy Curtis, to melancholy. Her infrequent glimpses of Mike Carey helped little.
Mike seldom came to church and Dan Sharpe seldom missed. Sharpe seemed impervious to slanted stares and whispers from other ranchhands. Hardwick, Nate Thomas Brown, and the others who had gone to the little valley found trampled ground when the snows lifted but no evidence. Sharpe continued his way unhampered. Sometimes Rose, who had chosen to spend most of the winter on the Double B, saw a biding-my-time look in Grandpa Brown’s eyes when Sharpe’s name came up. At least the winter wasn’t one of the worst. Rose and Mesquite could get out at times into the snow-hardened paths and clear, cold days.
“Whatever happened to that nice Mike Carey who used to come over?” Grandma innocently asked one morning at breakfast.
Rose steadied her fork with shaking fingers. “He doesn’t work for the Circle 5 anymore.”
“Land sakes, how young folks do hop around!” Grandma’s keen eyes sparkled. “I’m sorry to hear it. He seemed such a nice, steady young man, not at all like some of our good-hearted but rough boys.”
Grandpa cut in with an irrelevant remark, and Rose wondered how much or what he had heard but didn’t dare ask. Yet she couldn’t avoid overhearing the growing whispers concerning Mike Carey, now viewed by much of the range as a man of mystery.
Finally spring arrived and bestowed a mixed blessing. April’s mercurial outlook reflected Rose’s own up-and-down moods. Memory of her marriage ceremony dimmed until at times she felt it had happened to someone else. Now and then she saw Mike at a distance when she went out riding, but he never approached her. “Probably ashamed to,” she told Mesquite after one such occurrence. The thought plummeted her spirits even further, and it took a mile of galloping with the wind in her face to regain her composure.
Driven by doubt and a growing love for the absent husband that Rose at last could deny no longer, she decided she must know for sure Mike Carey’s true character. He had risked danger, saved Columbine and then herself. Still, he had been right there with Sharpe and his rustlers, and if the latest rumors could be believed Mike had actually been seen riding with some of the worst ruffians in Wyoming just a few weeks before.
Rose had consistently resisted riding near the Circle 5, but one bright morning when Columbine and Sam clamored for her to go with them she consented.
“You won’t believe the gorgeous house going up over there,” Columbine told her. “A second house, actually a big log cabin, is being built just a little way off.” Red streaked her fair skin. “Last time Sam and I went the workers were just putting in huge windows. You can see the mountains and hills and valley. What a wonderful place to live.”
Sam drawled in his own comical way, “Reckon it could be arranged. Someone said Sharpe’s getting ready to leave. If you can charm the new owner, Columbine, the house and view go with him.”
A rush of emotion made Rose hastily bend down to check her stirrup. I hope Columbine has better luck with men than I. First, I have too many in my life and now no one. Mike must have changed his mind, and of course I couldn’t keep on writing to Michael. The thought hurt and made her lash out, “I hope you haven’t been over here running after Joe Perkins, Columbine.”
Her sister’s pretty chin tilted up. “I don’t have to run after Joe or any man. He isn’t even here when we ride over. He’s out with the cattle.” Tears burned her eyes at the unjust accusation. “Just because you’ve moped ever since Nate left doesn’t mean you have to act so mean to me.” She touched her horse’s flanks with her heels and shot ahead.
Sam gave her a look of reproach that clearly told how Rose’s own hopes for a close relationship between him and Columbine had come to pass. “She’s right, you know.” He loped ahead as well.
Rose felt sick and disgusted with herself. “Wait,” she called and goaded Mesquite into a gallop. “I’m sorry, Columbine.” Even though her sister promptly forgave her, Rose couldn’t forget the stricken look in her eyes or the way Sam had responded. Things simply couldn’t go on this way. Better to set off an explosion than to keep all her misery bottled up inside.
Three days later the terrible feeling of waiting ended. Rose overheard her grandfather, Hardwick, and several other ranchers discussing a cattle raid planned for that night. Someone had leaked the news, perhaps in the Pronghorn or Silver saloon or to a friend who promptly reported it to the sheriff. “This is our chance to get the whole gang,” Hardwick snapped and closed his big hand in a significant gesture. “If the report is true, the rustlers are going for every head of cattle they can get away with then move out of Wyoming pronto.”
“Call in every decent man you can get,” Thomas Brown ordered. “Leave only enough hands with the herds so the rustlers won’t get suspicious, and tell them not to resist. We don’t want dead cowboys. The cattle aren’t worth that. Pass the word that we’ll meet here at ten o’clock tonight.”
Rose slipped away, her heart frozen. An inner sense told her Mike Carey would be in the midst of the rustler gang tonight. “He must not,” she whispered under her breath and at the same moment flung herself outdoors and to the corral. Her fingers made short work of saddling up, and a few minutes later she and Mesquite began their quest to find and stop Mike while time remained.
All during the long winter and early spring Mike’s conscience warred with duty. He had sworn to uphold the right, but could God approve of the way he had chosen? A dozen times he considered abandoning the entire scheme, heartily sick of deception and ashamed of the final letter he impulsively wrote to Rose. Not that every word wasn’t true. He realized his first sight of her in the photograph had intrigued him and the clear eyes innocently beckoned him. Would she ever forgive him! Nate said yes when they had a long talk. Outside of the justice of the peace, only Nate knew of the marriage one snowy December night. Mike had gone back and further insured the man’s silence with a large sum of money. Whether he could be trusted remained to be seen. The gathering storm was bound to break soon and sweep away the need for secrecy. After that. . . At this point Mike refused to consider the future.
His role of disgruntled cowboy, sore at Sharpe, brought in rich dividends. Once after griping how Sharpe had ridden him so hard he couldn’t stomach working for the Circle 5 foreman, a disreputable, slouching cowboy approached him. Moffatt, the man who had balked over Sharpe’s forced elopement, hinted broadly that he knew a way to get even with Sharpe. A few sessions later Mike learned Moffatt and the others had never been paid for the cattle they rustled from Hardwick.
“Can’t understand it,” Moffatt confessed. “He always paid up before. This time he keeps sayin’ it’s too dangerous.” He barked a short laugh. “Why’s one time dangerouser than another?” He leaned close and confidentially whispered, “I think he’s hooked on that Birchfield gal and getting’ even. He won’t even let us move those critters from where’s he’s hid them. Says we’ll make one more grand raid and clear out.” His eyes gleamed. “I figure he’s goin’ to doublecross us, so we’re aimin’ to get to the cattle first. Hardwick and Brown and some of the other ranchers are on spring roundup right now. We’ll let them get the cows all collected for us then mosey out and start movin’ them, the night before Sharpe’s big raid.”
Mike almost choked in an effort to hide his exultation.
“Are you with us?” Moffatt demanded.
“I’ll be there.” Mike emphatically shook on it. Under the cloak of darkness, Mike dispatched a note to the sheriff warning him of the raid. Being discovered now had not part in his plan.
Only one flaw appeared in the carefully set up trap: Dan Sharpe’s absence. Mike thought about it then smiled and wrote a second note.
YORE BEING DOUBLED XED. RAID TOMORROW NIGHT.
He signed it, A friend, then rode out and found Joe Perkins and told him to get the message to Sharpe but not let him know who delivered it. Joe’s eyes gleamed with the prospect of action. “I reckon there’s goin’ to be some mighty surprised fellers,” he said.
“I just hope we can get away without any shooting,” Mike told him soberly. Joe looked wise and replied, “It all d’pends on how surprised everyone is.”
The next day Mike stayed in town at Moffatt’s direction. The rustler said, “Keep your eyes open and mouth shut.” Mike wanted to laugh; the advice echoed his Rock Springs lawyer’s statement exactly. Yet the impending events made Mike restless. He walked up and down the streets for a time then saddled Peso and rode out toward the Double B as he had done a hundred times in the past few months. Every time the truth had trembled on his lips only to be bitten back. No one, not even Desert Rose Birchfield Blake-Jones, must know his plan. One careless word could destroy all he had worked so hard to set up.
Spring with all its shades of green softened the range. Mike and Peso climbed to the bald knob overlook and Mike dismounted. The drumming of hooves warned him, but it was too late. Before he could remount and ride off, Rose and Mesquite topped the rise and slid to a stop.
“Hello, Rose.” Mike had no choice but to remain strong at all cost.
Her face pale in spite of her fast ride, she slid from the saddle. “I came to find you.” She stepped close and clutched his arms with strong hands. Her fearless dark eyes gazed into his. “Once you said you loved me. Is it still true?”
“It is.” He didn’t move a muscle.
“Then ride away from Antelope and don’t stop until Peso gives out.” Her words fell like small icicles into the late afternoon.
“I can’t.”
Her self-control broke. “You must!” she cried. “Don’t you know what happens to rustlers? You’ll spend years in jail. Mike, you said you loved God. If you won’t leave for my sake, will you go for His?”
A passing cloud dimmed the sun’s increasing rays. Birds hushed their songs. Mike could only shake his head.
Rich color replaced her pallor, but her steady and searching gaze never left his face. “I’ll go with you if you’ll go now.” He jerked back as if struck. “You’d do that for me? Why?”
“I can’t bear to have you turn from God and be dishonorable.” Her long eyelashes drooped and so did her shoulders. Her nerveless hands fell from his arms.
“Why should it matter so much to you?” Mike’s head spun. “Why, Rose?” he repeated but she didn’t answer.
With a magnificent toss of her head, she stepped back and demanded, “What difference does it make? Isn’t it enough that I will go with you? I’m your wife.” She paled again and her dark eyes grew enormous.
“You would sacrifice yourself to save me,” Mike marveled. For one mad moment he almost gave in. To ride away with Rose offered the strongest temptation he had ever known. Only his inner call to a trait passed down from Puritan ancestors, duty, stopped him. He caught her hands in his. “I’d give everything on earth to do what you ask, my darling, but I can’t.” He felt the shudder that rocked her body.
“Rose, dearest, trust me for a little longer. I swear before God I am not doing anything wrong or wicked. Will you believe me and go back to the Double B?”
She stared at him, and Mike saw the awful struggle within her soul. Seconds crawled into minutes, but at last she whispered, “I trust you.”
With a triumphant cry he encircled her with his arms and kissed her as he would have liked the night they married. Then he tore himself free, led Mesquite close, and waited until Rose mounted. “I promise you will never regret your trust,” he told her. “Very soon I can explain everything.”
She lifted the reins, but he laid one hand on the pommel. “Rose, are you learning to care?”
Her sweet lips trembled. She patted his hand then removed it from the pommel. Not until Mesquite danced away with her did she reply in a low call that thrilled Mike to his boots. “Perhaps.” Her laughing face turned rosy. She waved and rode away, leaving him shaken and thanking God.
Hours later Rose paced her room. She had come back to the Double B as Mike asked but she never promised to stay there. A quick look out the window revealed dark forms gathering in the starlight. Fear clutched the watching girl’s throat. She could not bear the long night of waiting. The moment the riders started, she slipped downstairs to where she had tied Mesquite, already saddled, and mingled with the others. Her sombrero and the heavy coat of her grandfather’s she had donned effectively hid her identity. Only her wildly beating heart threatened to betray her.
The surprise Joe mentioned worked in the posse’s favor. Moffatt and his men had no suspicions and rode practically into the arms of the posse, whose presence paralyzed them.
Hardwick’s stentorian, “Hands up or we’ll shoot!” and the zing of well-placed lassos rid the range of the outlaws who had plagued ranchers for months.
“Well, just see who’s here!” Thomas Brown whirled toward the big buckskin that had dashed into the circle of men around the prisoners.
“I want every one of these men and Mike Carey arrested for rustling,” Dan Sharpe’s voice boomed out. “I’ve been watching them for weeks and—”
“You don’t leave us holdin’ the gunnysack,” Moffatt bellowed. “Me and my men’ll take our medicine, but we ain’t standin’ by while you get away with it.” A string of profanity followed. “Sheriff, Sharpe’s behind us. We’d akept still if he’d paid us like he promised. Now he can go to jail along with the rest of us and Carey.”
“Carey?” The sheriff glanced at Mike, rigid in the starlight.
Joe Perkins stepped down from his pinto, Splotch, and faced Sharpe. “My pard ain’t no rustler an’ never has been. He was sworn in as a special dep’ty months ago, on purpose to stop this here stealin’ of yours.”
A gasp ran through the crowd of men. Sharpe’s jaw sagged then he reached for his revolver. “Liar! You’re in this, too, and I’m going to. . .”
“Go, Peso!” Mike spurred on his quarter horse. Peso’s flying leap knocked Sharpe flat. He cursed, aimed, and fired. Mike felt a hard blow in his chest and slumped in the saddle.
Released from their stupor by the shot, a dozen men piled onto Sharpe with Joe Perkins going first. Willing hands hauled Mike from the saddle. Barely conscious, his last thought was, I fought the good fight and kept the faith. Then, blackness pierced only by a girl’s scream. . . .
While stories of his heroism swept the valley, Mike Carey lay fighting for his life. All the skill Adam Birchfield possessed, the power of special prayer meetings on Mike’s behalf, and Desert Rose’s refusal to let him go combined in a mighty effort. Day and night Rose hovered close by. When alone on watch, she let the love in her heart overflow and clung to her husband’s hands, willing him to live.
Five days after the shooting, Adam took his daughter aside. “He’s very near the crisis. If he lives through the night he has a slim chance.”
“He isn’t going to die.” Wan but determined, Rose proudly lifted her tired head.
“Would you have his suffering go on and on?” Adam asked and stroked his daughter’s auburn braid.
Rose shook her head as she clung to her father. Yet for hours she prayed Mike might be spared. Not until he sighed deep in his coma, his face waxen, could Rose come to the point where she changed her prayer. “Thy will, Lord, not mine.” Better for his suffering to end and hers to go on. She rested her head on his pillow, so weary she could not longer hold it up. Adam found her there an hour later.
“Rose.” He gently shook her awake.
She lifted heavy, tear-swollen eyelids. “Is he gone?”
“No, praise God. He’s sleeping naturally. Now you must rest.” He held out his arms and she flew into their comfort after a quick confirming look at their patient. A few minutes later she fell into a deep, untroubled sleep and didn’t awaken until early evening. Adam warned her not to stay long now that Mike had begun the long trail back. He must not talk.
So Rose only said when he opened his eyes, “You were shot. Everything is over and you’re going to be better.”
Satisfied, he slept again while his body healed. When Rose came into the room, his gaze never left her. Something in his look disturbed her, a shadow she couldn’t describe. He said little about the fight except to express gladness the rustlers and Sharpe had been sent to prison. He never mentioned their encounter on the bald knob.
Not until the end of May would Adam pronounce Mike fit enough to ride. The shadow in his eyes grew deeper. Even the welcome news that Nate would be coming soon did not erase it. “Will you ride with me?” he asked when Adam agreed to a short outing.
“Of course,” Rose couldn’t understand why her heart pounded so at the prospect of a mere ride. They didn’t go clear to the bald knob but to a secluded spot by a rushing stream where the cottonwoods seemed to whisper their secrets.
“Rose,” Mike began after they seated themselves on a big rock, “will you tell me about Carmichael Blake-Jones, please?”
“Nate told you!” Misery made her stammer. “It was a dare and I never meant any harm. I feel so ashamed.” She bit her lip and stared at the churning water, feeling tossed like the leaves that fell and whirled downward.
“Nate says he owns the Circle 5 and intends to run it. Are you in love with him?” Mike shifted position.
“No.” She turned and met the blue gaze fixed on her. “Once I thought I might be.” She couldn’t continue.
He gently took her hand and the poignant light she loved filled his eyes. “Then would plain Mike Carey, the man you married, have a chance at capturing your heart?”
False pride faded. Too many hours of uncertainty and fear had driven it away. “Yes, Mike.” She courageously continued to look straight into his face.
“Whoopee!” Mike roared. He dropped her hands, threw his hat into the air, and jumped until she wondered if he had gone mad.
“Stop, stop, Mike. Dad would never have let you come if he’d known you wouldn’t be careful. What’s wrong with you?” She sprang to her feet only to be caught and swung around. “Mike, stop it. What possesses you?”
“I have a confession too. My full name is Carmichael Carey Blake-Jones.” Mischief danced in his every movement.
“You!” Desert Rose wondered if she had heard right. “Then, all this time. . .” Her voice stumbled over her rising anger.
“I never lied to you, Rose. I just didn’t tell all the truth. I promise never to deceive you again.” He held her away from him. “I also want you to know that I would never have agreed to Nate’s prank if I hadn’t fallen in love with your photograph.”
“But you didn’t have a photograph when I wrote the advertisement,” she protested, too stunned by the revelation to make sense of it.
“Nate sent your letter directly to me with one enclosed.”
“How he must have crowed,” she said bitterly and jerked free. “I hate being made a fool of, and that’s what you’ve done.”
The same poignant blue light returned. “Desert Rose, far from it. The more I got to know the wonderful girl, the more I hated the underhanded way I met her. Won’t you forgive me?” Spent from the exertion, he laughed unsteadily. “I think I’d better sit down again.” He seated himself crosslegged on the ground, his face suddenly pale.
Rose’s anger vanished forever with a rush of memories that brought back those desperate hours when she saw Mike fading in spite of all she could do. Now she threw herself down and confessed, “When I knew Carmichael Blake-Jones would live in the new home on the Circle 5 I felt jealous of the girl he would marry even though by then I knew I loved a cantankerous cowboy named Mike Carey.”
His kiss silenced her. Then Mike pointed toward the mountains. “Soon the snows will be gone from the peaks, probably about the time Nate comes. The wildflowers will be gorgeous. We must finish supervising the building on the Circle 5 now, but God willing, would my wife like a camping honeymoon a little later?”
Rose felt her throat tighten at the prospect. “She would.” She stayed quiet within his arms for a moment then said. “Michael, do you think God planned this all along? I could forgive Nate better if I thought that.”
“God certainly knew it would happen,” he soberly told her. “If I had known just a year ago what a harvest I would reap—” His arms tightened. “There’s still a harvest of souls waiting, and what better way to gather them than by Christian living and example? We’re just links in the strong chain of His followers who have been given a white field. Our children and grandchildren must be taught the only happiness is in serving our Lord and Master.”
“They will be,” she assured and rested her head on his shoulder. “If God can take the thorns from a desert rose, He will surely guide us.” She gently freed herself, stood, and held out her tanned hand. “Come, we must go home.” Hand in hand they walked toward Peso and Mesquite and began their life’s journey together.
Mercy Curtis never kept house for her uncle, but she did come to Wyoming a year later. As Mrs. Nate Birchfield, she put to good use all the housewifely skills she had cultivated. She and Columbine Perkins joined Rose in the many tasks pioneer and ranch women performed that helped their husbands proclaim the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sam followed in Dr. Adam Birchfield’s footsteps as a medical doctor while Nate and Reverend Nat Birchfield tended to the souls of the Wind River Range.