The moon was up and the whole country was bathed in beauty. John Jacob had been sitting on the porch, looking into the night since early twilight, watching for the men he’d sent out to come riding home with Rachel.
I should have gone with them, he thought for the dozenth time. I could have locked the damn doors for one night.
John Jacob stood up and paced back and forth. The search party hadn’t found her or they’d be back by now. For the third time that night a wolf howled from up the mountain. For the third time John Jacob’s blood ran cold. What if the animal was tracking Rachel? “Oh, God,” he whispered, “don’t let me lose her after just finding her. I don’t think I could bear it.”
Just then he heard the sound of horses’ hooves coming up the river road. The search party had returned with Rachel, and to his surprise, Dylan Quade was with them.
“Is she alright?” John Jacob jumped off the porch and ran to the horses.
“She’s fine,” Dylan said. “She’s just exhausted.”
“Come here, honey.” John Jacob lifted his arms up to help her off Goldie. “We’ll get you something to eat and drink, then get you to bed.” He cradled her in his arms a moment, then, smoothing her hair back, he kissed her gently on the forehead. She smiled up at him, then leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Jealousy, hot and thick, spread through Dylan. Andrews was old enough to be Rachel’s father and here he was acting like he was her lover. Was he the one who had taught Rachel to take her pleasure by straddling a man?
He sat in the saddle watching John carry Rachel into the post. He decided suddenly that he was going to have it out with the man tonight. He wanted to marry Rachel, and he was going to find out just what she meant to John Jacob Andrews.
When Dylan had turned Devil over to the teenager who took care of the customers’ horses, and warned him that the stallion bit when he had the chance, he went inside the post.
The big room was empty so he walked on into the kitchen where Rachel was probably eating something after her ordeal.
There was no one there but Rosie. “Where is everyone?” Dylan asked.
“John Jacob took Rachel to her room. She was falling asleep on her feet. He’ll be back in a minute. Have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting,” Rosie offered.
Dylan was ready to slam out of the post without even answering, but John Jacob came into the kitchen at that moment. “She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.” He grinned, pulling a chair away from the table. “Tell me what happened.”
The last thing Dylan wanted to do was have a friendly talk with John Jacob. He would have much sooner hit him in the mouth with his fist. But the man would think him crazy if he did that, so he said crisply, “Goldie spooked when a grizzly bear came up on them. Fortunately, I heard Rachel’s scream and got to her in time.”
There was a silence as Rosie poured coffee for them. After Dylan had taken a long swallow of the strong brew, he looked at John Jacob and said, “I expect Rachel is a big help to you in the post, cooking and waiting on the customers. I’m sure she’s grateful that you took her in and provided a home for her.”
“I don’t want her to be grateful.” John Jacob said, his voice rough. “The girl is long overdue for some nice things in life.” He went on to say, “I’ve been making plans for her future. Come September, I’m sending her to a school back East where she can get an education. I was once a teacher myself, you see, and it’s important to me.”
“Will she come back here to the wilderness when she’s finished with her schooling?” There was a hint of desperation in Dylan’s tone.
If John Jacob noticed this, he never let on, only continued to talk of his plans for Rachel. “While she’s gone I’ll have a little house built for her, close by the post where I can keep an eye on her. I know she can’t go on living here with me. People are starting to talk.”
The more John Jacob talked, the angrier Dylan became. He wanted to ask, Who is going to protect her from you? Instead he asked coolly, “How long do you think she’ll be satisfied living alone? She’s a beautiful young lady. Every man who comes in here has his eye on her. You won’t be able to keep her long.”
“Ha!” John snorted. “There’s no man around here who will ever marry her. She’s too good for any of them.” He stood up and stomped out the door.
It was obvious that as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.
Dylan struck a match and held it to the cigarette he had rolled while John Jacob spoke of his plans for Rachel. Its yellow flame cast shadows on his lean face and brought glints to his light-colored eyes as he watched Rosie move about the kitchen. He dropped the match when its flame reached his fingertips. He shook his head, bringing himself back to the present.
Why had he been foolish enough to think that he could ever marry Rachel Sutter? He should have known from the first time he saw John Jacob Andrews with her that the wealthy man had marked her for his own.
He took his Stetson off the table and slapped it on his head. As he headed for the door, Rosie asked, “Ain’t you going to visit the saloon? John Jacob ordered free drinks for everyone in the search party.”
Dylan shook his head and reached for the door latch. “I’d better get back to camp. We’re branding cattle tomorrow.” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
The stable boy was asleep on a pile of hay. Dylan looked at him a minute and didn’t have the heart to waken him. He saddled Devil and headed down the river road. The stallion was rested and wanted to run. Dylan loosened the reins and Devil struck out at a full gallop. But no matter how fast they raced, Dylan couldn’t outrun the crushing sense of disappointment that filled his chest.
The dust rose, stifling and irritating, as Dylan stood with some of his men around the branding fire the following day. For the past week they had worked from can see to can’t see. He was going to have the biggest herd he’d ever driven to Abilene this fall. But what was he working so hard for? he asked himself. He had worked like a slave because of Rachel. He had hoped he’d have a chance with her if he could show he had something worthwhile to offer her. But John Jacob had shot down all his dreams.
He’d made it clear that he meant to keep Rachel to himself. Still, Andrews was not her father, had no real say over her life. Perhaps Rachel would decide she preferred Dylan to the older man. She’d certainly seemed attracted to him last night.
Dylan smiled in recollection as he leaned his back against a tree. He must continue to build up his herd and spruce up his house. It was a well-built house of four bedrooms. It had tightly constructed shutters that kept the cold out in the winter as well as the heat in the summer. The fireplace in the main room took up one outside wall. It had a wide hearth about a foot off the floor, and the mantel was wide enough to hold anything a person might want to put on it. At the moment it held only a big clock that had belonged to his grandfather. His collection of three different kinds of guns and rifles hung on the wall above it.
Two years ago when he’d attended a rendezvous, he had bought several bright-colored rugs from the Indian women who had attended the two-week gathering of trappers. Those women couldn’t be beat when it came to working their looms. He’d purchased one large rug with the idea of spreading it out in front of the fireplace. But he had never had the heart to put its beauty on the floor. He had rolled it up and laid it with the other rugs he had bought. It was time he brought them out and placed them in the rooms.
To keep some of the winter snow and mud off the floors, he’d had a special mat made for the entrance. Old Granny Hawkins, who lived high up in the mountains with only her great-granddaughter for company, wove him a fair-sized mat out of thin strips of rawhide. He kept it swept clean of snow and mud in the winter, and in the summer took it to the nearby creek, where with a flat stone he pounded the floor mat clean.
His place had no touches of female finery. There were no pictures on the walls, no bowls of flowers or greenery on the kitchen table. There was a coal-oil lamp in its center, also one on the table next to a rocking chair in the main room.
Everything was neat and clean, he prided himself on that, but the ranch house was plainly the home of a bachelor. What would Rachel think of it? he asked himself. Maybe he should ask Granny Hawkins to share some of her flower seeds with him. And it wouldn’t hurt to dig a small vegetable plot.
With a deep sigh Dylan flipped a burned-out cigarette into the branding fire that had burned down to a few glowing coals. He straightened up and started back to work. A grown man daydreaming. Well, it couldn’t hurt to try to get Rachel Sutter for his own.
The afternoon was warm and sultry as Rachel sat on the post’s porch, fanning her face with a folded-up newspaper. An occasional breeze moved the long grass in green ripples like waves before the wind. Frogs were peeping along the riverbank, and several yards down the slowly moving water, four Indian women were doing the wash by beating the clothes with rocks.
She thought how pretty and graceful the young maids were now, but how after marriage and two or three children they tended to get quite plump.
What kind of shape would she have after marriage and some children? she mused, watching an eagle sweep slowly across the sky. Her poor mother had always been thin, but that was from the hard work she’d done all her life. Folks said that hard work never hurt anyone, but in her opinion there were all kinds of hard work in this world, and some of it could kill a woman, or at least shorten her life.
She had been noticing that the men living in the valley worked harder than the mountain men. Ranchers had to watch over hundreds of cows, cut hay to feed them over the winter, not to mention the long days they spent branding the animals and then driving them to market.
As for the mountain men, they mostly trapped in the winter and hunted in the summer. It was their wives who scraped a meager living out of the rocky mountain soil. She thought of Dylan Quade. Was he a hard worker? She knew that he ran cattle in the summer months, then went up to the mountains to trap in the winter. His friend Monty had told her he was a hard worker. How else could he have accomplished so much?
As happened every day, Rachel fell to thinking of Dylan. For the first few days after he’d rescued her from the grizzly, she had daydreamed about him constantly. She had thought that he would ask John Jacob about marrying her and then they would talk, make plans for their future. But he hadn’t even come inside the post that night or been near the place since.
She clenched her fist, hating herself. She had given her heart to him, done things with him she wouldn’t have permitted with any other man, and he hadn’t put any importance on it.
The next day she had told John Jacob she did not wish to go East, get an education. She couldn’t bear the idea of being so far from Dylan. But now it was plain that Dylan had no interest in her, and she wondered what was to become of her. It didn’t seem right to go on living with John Jacob indefinitely, no matter how kind he was to her.
Rachel saw the dust John Jacob’s horse was stirring up before she saw the big sorrel. She stood up and and walked to the edge of the porch, waiting with a welcoming smile for him to ride up.
He returned her smile and stepped down from the saddle. He was covered with dust from the crown of his Stetson to the soles of his boots. As he climbed the porch steps, he took off his hat and slapped it against his legs. As dust and sand flew, Rachel clapped her hand over her mouth and nose. “Are you trying to choke me to death?” she joked. “What have you been doing to get so dusty?”
“I went out to where Dylan has been branding his young cattle. He has some fine-looking stock.”
“I’m surprised he let you watch. He’s such a grouch.”
“You think he’s grouchy?” John Jacob raised an eyebrow at Rachel. “He always seems friendly enough to me. Anyway, he wasn’t there. He was busy chasing wild cattle out of the brush.” John Jacob gave her a wide smile and switched the subject. “I heard something that might interest you.”
When Rachel gave him a questioning look, he said, “There’s going to be a picnic at the church in Jackson Hole this Sunday.”
“A church picnic?” Rachel asked.
“Yep. There will be music and dancing in the evening, and the ladies will bring different eats. Dylan has donated a steer to be roasted. The single women will bring baskets with cakes and pies. The bachelors will bid on them.”
John Jacob paused to give a short laugh. “The baskets won’t have names on them, so the men won’t know whose basket they’re getting.” He paused to laugh again. “A lot of them will be mighty disappointed at the ones they choose to bet on. Some of those women are long in the tooth, and a few are ugly as sin. However, each man is obligated to sit with the woman who made up the basket he chose and eat its contents.”
John Jacob looked at Rachel and teased with a grin, “Can you bake a cake or pie?”
“I can indeed, Mr. Smarty.” Rachel gave him a playful slap on the arm. “I will bake a peach pie. I noticed that you have several tins of peaches in your storeroom. My ma taught me how to bake. She was noted for her pies.”
A sadness flickered in John Jacob’s eyes. He knew what delicious pies Ida Sutter could make. They had shared many of them eighteen years ago. Every Sunday that summer, he and Ida would meet at their secret place along the river. The place where Rachel had been conceived.
John Jacob shook that memory from his mind and talked again about the picnic. “During the afternoon there will be shooting matches,” he said, “and the winner will get a Colt revolver. Then the last event will be a horse race. The winner will receive a handsome hand-tooled saddle.”
Her eyes sparkling, Rachel exclaimed, “I’d better wear that split skirt you bought me the other day.”
“Now, why would you want to do that?” John Jacob questioned with a frown. “You’re not planning on entering the race, are you?” he teased. “The men will ride over you with their big stallions.”
“They’d have to catch me first,” Rachel retorted. “I’ve raced big mountain horses ever since I can remember. That sorrel of yours looks like he’s got a lot of speed in his long legs. I could ride him.”
“He has. But I guess you also noticed how big he is. A little slip of a girl like you could never control him.”
Rachel looked at John Jacob with twinkling eyes. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve already ridden him several times.”
“You have?” John Jacob gave her a thunderstruck look. “That big devil could have killed you.”
“I don’t know why you think that. He’s gentle as a lamb.”
“Hah! Prince is gentle? What put that in your head? He has bitten and kicked every stable hand that has ever come around him.”
Rachel shrugged and quipped, “Maybe he just likes women.”
Knowing that he wouldn’t deny her, John Jacob said helplessly, “I wish you wouldn’t enter him in the race. Why don’t you enter the shooting match instead? You can shoot, can’t you?”
“If I hadn’t been able to shoot a rifle since I was nine or ten, there would have been many times when Mama and we children wouldn’t have had anything to eat.” She grinned at John Jacob and bragged, “I can shoot the eyes out of a squirrel fifty yards away. I’m going to win that Colt.”
“For what?” John Jacob asked as they went through the post door. “You don’t need a gun.”
“I’ll give it to you.” Rachel gave him a sharp pinch in the side as they walked into the kitchen.
“Fine,” John Jacob said, fighting to keep amusement out of his voice. She would be competing against some of the best shots in the country. As he poured a cup of coffee, he said casually, “There will be some mountain men at the shooting match—I’m told that they are crack shots.”
“They don’t scare me,” Rachel said with a lift of her chin. “I’ve probably shot against every one of them.”
They sat down at the table and the subject was dropped as Andy, the cook, placed their supper before them.