Rowena did not mind the hurry, for at least Dale had been able to rouse the jeweler and collect their wedding rings before they left Cheyenne. Neither did she mind the rough traveling, even though her muscles ached from a day in the saddle and her skin itched from sleeping fully clothed on the ground. Fortunately, spring had finally arrived, sending the temperatures soaring, although the melting snow had turned the trails across the prairie into rivers of mud.
But with each passing mile her edginess grew. What would happen when they reached Twin Springs? Would Dale find the place lacking and make his displeasure known? Would it turn out that she’d had no reason to flee, and she’d be branded a coward? She swept a worried glance over the two dozen uniformed recruits surrounding her. She valued the safety of an army escort, of course she did, but if she faced a humiliation of some sort, the presence of the soldiers meant it would be a public one.
When they reached the end of the valley, a sturdy rail fence marked the boundary of her father’s land. A fence that had not been there before. And on the other side of the fence, next to a closed gate, stood a small, square log cabin. And through the narrow slit in the solid timber door of the cabin, a rifle barrel poked out.
The soldiers, seated on their horses, fanned out along the fence line. Major Parks called out an order for the rifles to remain in their saddle scabbards. Some of the recruits revealed their inexperience through nervous gestures, hands settling on their sidearms. Rowena could hear the faint popping of holsters being unsnapped.
“Who are you and what do you want?” a muffled voice shouted from inside the cabin.
“Name’s Hunter,” Dale shouted back. “But that’s not important. The important part is that I have a wife with me, and her name used to be McKenzie.”
“What’s her given name?”
Gathering her courage, Rowena urged the big chestnut gelding toward the gate, where anyone hiding inside the cabin could get a clear view of her. With a quick flick of her wrist, she rearranged her skirts to make sure they covered her legs, and then she tightened the reins to hold her skittish mount steady. The United States Army did not provide sidesaddles, and neither did they provide horses accustomed to female riders. The powerful quarter horse beneath her took a frightened sidestep every time a gust of wind whipped her petticoats around the animal’s flanks.
When the horse had settled down, Rowena pulled aside the shawl that covered her head. “My given name is Rowena. My father’s name was Duncan McKenzie, and my mother’s name was Isla McKenzie. On her gravestone up on the hill behind the house it says ‘Beloved mother and wife, a woman of courage’.”
“And what do you want, Rowena McKenzie?”
“I want to come home, claim what is lawfully mine.”
The rifle barrel pulled out of sight. The door creaked open and a young man wearing a double rig of pistols and a flashy, silver-studded jacket in black rawhide edged out. Rifle clamped in one hand, he swept an arrogant look over the group of soldiers while a sorrel horse followed him out of the cabin and halted beside him, as obedient as a well-trained dog.
The young man vaulted into the saddle, adjusted the brim of his hat against the evening sun and looked down at Rowena. “Ride slowly. I’ll let Mr. Reese know you’re on your way.” With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the line of recruits. “Tell those soldier boys to keep their hands away from their guns.”
The house loomed in the distance, a two-story timber structure nestling at the base of the foothills that heralded the change of terrain. Behind the house, rocky slopes created a patchwork of gray and green and brown. Rowena felt her heartbeat quicken, not just with foreboding, but with the bittersweet nostalgia of homecoming.
Earlier, while the soldiers filed through the gate, Major Parks had sought her out and bombarded her with questions. Seated on his horse beside her, Dale had listened in on the conversation but had made no comment as she described how two and a half years earlier an army supply wagon had dropped her off and unloaded her trunks in the courtyard.
“The house felt stuffy, the stoves blazing, the air too hot. Before going upstairs to inspect the bedrooms, I opened a window in the parlor. I heard sounds from outside. Like distant singing. When I went out, I saw men gathered on the hill behind the house.”
She told them how she’d discovered her father had been shot, and how she had refused to listen to Reese’s explanations. “I watched the burial, and then I shut myself away in my father’s study. After nearly a decade away, I’d been dreaming of coming home, of a reunion with my father. And now he’d been killed, murdered for the land, just like my mother had been killed by the Shoshone. My mind snapped. I can’t remember much, but when the night fell, I simply walked out into the frozen darkness, and I have never tried to get in touch since.”
But now she was back, and this time the ranch was the opposite of quiet. Men were rushing about in the stable yard, leading out their horses and saddling them. Some darted into the bunkhouse, carried out bedrolls and strapped them behind the saddles.
By the time the double column of soldiers drew up outside the house and the bugler announced a stop, Rowena had counted eight men, and she had picked out Reese and his part-Indian son. Even though Reese had light brown hair and pale skin, the kind that did not tan easily, the likeness was evident. It was there in the way they sat on their horses, in their lithe movements, in the way they seemed to notice everything around them without even looking. It was in the quiet, confident manner in which they issued orders and had eight men saddled, mounted and ready to ride out before Major Parks had even been given the opportunity to demand that they leave.
Rowena had been placed at the back of the column for safety, but something, perhaps a need to prove her courage, made her kick her heels into the flanks of her mount and urge the tired horse forward.
Or, she told herself with a flash of wry humor, perhaps I simply want to be beside Dale because I feel it is the safest place to be.
Reese followed her approach with his eyes. When she came to a halt, her chestnut gelding almost nose to nose with his shiny black mustang, Reese leaned forward in the saddle and touched the brim of his hat. “Miss McKenzie. Welcome home. I hope you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.”
Coward. Coward. The shame of it thudded in her heartbeat. She had been a coward, needlessly fleeing from her home, for now she had been welcomed back with a formal courtesy, not a hint of danger in sight. She managed a stiff nod. “Mr. Reese.”
He jerked his chin toward a young man seated on a gray Appaloosa beside him. “So, my son wasn’t good enough for you. You must have married an important man, to have the power to bring the army along. You might be kind enough to ask the soldiers to let us go in peace.”
Two years of doubt, of wondering if she’d been wrong, made her burst out. “You were living in my father’s house, and my father was dead. What was I to think?”
“You might have listened. I made a bargain with your father. After Luke’s mother died, I married again. Married a lady, and her family disowned her because of me. When she got sick, I took on the job with your father. Part of our bargain was that I could live in the house, offer my wife some of the comforts she’d lost because of me.”
Rowena recalled the heat, the fires blazing. The stuffiness of a sickroom.
Reese spoke quietly. “My wife died a week after we buried your pa. I could have left, but I had promised your father that I’d stay on and hold the ranch for you. And I’ve kept my word. But now that you have a husband, the ranch is his worry and I’m free to leave.”
Up to that moment, both Dale and Major Parks had been listening in silence. Now, with a creak of leather, Dale shifted in the saddle. “The name’s Hunter. And, provided my wife agrees, you’re welcome to stay on as the ranch manager.”
Reese contemplated Dale. “So, she married into gentry. I can see that. I would have liked her to marry Luke, but she appeared to be more inclined to spit in his eye.”
Throughout the conversation, Rowena had been aware of Luke Reese’s attention on her. Perfectly blank, without expression, hiding all his thoughts, he kept staring at her. Something—perhaps the memory of her own rejection by Freddy—made her speak up.
“Surely you understand that I couldn’t consider tying myself to a man who might have been part of a conspiracy to kill my father.” She hesitated and went on, a plea in her tone. “Even if I had listened to you, even if I had believed you, the doubt would never have gone away. I couldn’t have married your son because every time I looked at him, I would have wondered if he had fired the bullet that killed my father.”
“Don’t torture yourself with my hurt feelings.”
The words came in a deep, gravelly voice, without a trace of an accent. Startled, Rowena whipped her head around to look at Luke Reese. In his late twenties, he was lean, with high cheekbones and a full, wide mouth. The tanned skin and black hair marked him as partly Indian, but even without the dark coloring his ability to sit absolutely still on the horse and yet appear graceful would have hinted at his Native blood.
Their gazes collided and held. Unable to look away, Rowena felt herself blush. Deep down, in those inscrutable eyes, she could read derision.
Why, he knows, flashed through her mind. He knows how I feel about Indians. That I hate the Shoshone for killing my mother and would never have married him, whatever the circumstances.
“My men will ride out with me.” Reese shifted his focus back to Rowena and went on with that curious note of wry humor in his tone. “There’s no cattle left, but before you accuse me of robbing you, check the accounts. I sold the herd back in eighty-four, soon after your father died. I’m not a rancher, and I didn’t want a bunch of cows to nurse. As luck would have it, I did well for you. Since then, beef prices have tumbled. I’ve drawn wages, and so have my men. Some of the grazing is rented out to Faraday. You’ll find every cent accounted for, and we’ll leave a few spare horses in the stable.”
Reese directed his attention to Major Parks, glancing at the oak leaf insignia on the older man’s shoulders. “Well, Major, what it is to be? Do we ride out peacefully, or do you wish to give your troops an opportunity for target practice?”
The major pulled a face. “You must know as well as I do that this bunch is so green they’ll scarcely know which end of the gun the bullets fly out from. Go in peace. And should any of your men wish to enlist, tag along and we’ll get you signed up at the fort.”
A burst of laughter rippled around the band of gunfighters. Even Luke Reese’s lips slanted into an amused half smile. His father joined in, then fell serious again. “Miss McKenzie, there is one more part to my bargain with your father. My wife’s buried on your land, and I want to be buried next to her.” He patted one hand at his chest. “I carry a letter in my pocket, promising a hundred dollars to the man who brings my body back to Twin Springs. The money’s in the strongbox, clearly labeled and separate from the ranch funds.”
“Don’t forget Katherine’s things,” Luke Reese said.
“Right. There’s a trunk with my late wife’s belongings up in the spare bedroom. She set great store by the few mementoes she had from her affluent life. I’d be grateful if you held on to them. If Luke manages to find a woman who’ll have him, he’ll send for the trunk.”
It felt odd to Rowena, having eight heavily armed men on one side and two dozen uniformed soldiers on the other, all keeping quiet, out of the way, letting her—a woman and hence a person of no consequence—conduct her difficult conversation uninterrupted.
Thank you, Rowena wanted to say to Reese. I appreciate everything you have done. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I made a mistake.
But somehow, her error of judgment seemed so monumental, her behavior at the time of her father’s death so foolish, words failed her. She needed time to rearrange her entire thinking.
For once, she was grateful for her expensive education, for now those formal good manners came to her aid. “Please be assured, Mr. Reese, that when the time comes, we will act according to your wishes. We will bury you beside your wife, and in the meantime I shall make sure there are flowers on her grave. And I will look after her belongings until your son sends for them.”
Reese nodded. He signaled to the men. The horses shifted. Leather creaked. Bits jangled. Hooves scraped against the ground. They are about to leave, Rowena thought, and her chest clenched at the prospect of a parting with so much left unsaid.
And finally, the words flowed, as easy and free as the springs that gave the ranch its name. “Thank you. Thank you all, for everything you have done, for the way you have taken care of my home. If any of you ever needs a resting place—perhaps a final one—you are welcome here.” She laid her palm across her heart and said, “Go with God.” A sincere farewell that came out choked with emotion, and then she watched the eight men who had guarded her father’s legacy ride out.
The soldiers left immediately afterward, the call of the bugle leading them away in a neat formation, a flag flapping at the head of the column. Although she’d miss the big chestnut gelding, in truth, Rowena was glad to see the troops go. Each time they had halted on the trail, the soldiers had hurried to picket their mounts and join the stampede to help her down from the saddle. Like lemmings, they had crowded around her. Despite her kind nature, the constant attention had begun to grate on her nerves.
When the rhythmic thud of the heavy quarter horses no longer shook the ground beneath her feet, she had lost the excuse to avoid looking at Dale. The sun was low on the horizon, and she had to shade her eyes with her hand to make out his expression.
“You think I’m a coward, don’t you? The way I ran away.”
“Fear can make a person act without reason,” he pointed out.
“I can’t see you ever being afraid of anything.”
“Can’t you?” Dale replied softly. “Can’t you?”
The memory of the nightmare she’d witnessed on the train, the terrible sounds he had made, echoed in Rowena’s mind. Feeling ill at ease, she shrugged the question away and turned toward the house. She lifted her arm and made an expansive gesture. “So, what do you think of Twin Springs?”
“The house seems solid enough.”
Rowena tried to assess her home with the eyes of a stranger. Two stories high, constructed of sturdy logs mellowed golden, the house seemed as much a part of the landscape as the grass-covered prairie and the rugged hills. Above the entrance, a canopy provided shelter, and the glass in the windows reflected the setting sun.
“And the land?” she pressed him. “What do you think about the land?”
“Haven’t seen enough to form an opinion.”
She gave up quizzing him in the hope of some positive comment. “Let’s go inside.”
The front door gave way to a small vestibule, designed to keep the heat in during wintertime. Beyond was a big parlor, furnished with homely pieces her father had crafted himself. The rest of the ground floor comprised a simple kitchen and a study lined with bookcases.
“Papa didn’t employ a housekeeper after Mama died. He did the cooking, and I did the cleaning, until I went to school at fourteen.” Rowena swept one fingertip along the top of an oak cabinet in the parlor and studied the line in the dust. “And it seems that after I left nobody took over the task.”
However, contrary to her remark, the desk in the study shone spotless, the inkwell full, the ledgers arranged in neat stacks. “Do you wish to examine the accounts?” she asked. “Find out if we are paupers?”
“It can wait.”
Rowena led the way into the kitchen and peeked into the meat safe and the pantry. “A side of beef,” she announced her findings. “Tins of milk. Canned vegetables. Sacks of flour. At least we won’t have to starve right away.”
Dale crossed the room to the ancient iron range by the window. Rowena watched as he dipped his finger into the big cauldron of water on the stovetop to test the temperature before bending to open the hatch below. While he stirred the glowing embers, Dale spoke in a casual tone. “I don’t think you’re a coward.”
Surprised, Rowena abandoned any pretense of inspecting the supplies and stared at him.
“You were faced with an impossible situation,” Dale went on. He fetched firewood from the rack in the corner and filled the stove. “If you’d stayed, you might have been coerced into marrying a man you suspected of murdering your father. Running away was as good an option as any. Your only failing was not to make better preparations for your flight.”
When Rowena made no reply, Dale closed the hatch with a clunk and straightened. Facing her, he leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms over his chest. He hadn’t removed his hat, and he slanted a curious glance at her from beneath the brim. “I expect it wasn’t your first proposal of marriage. How did you deal with the others?”
“I...” She wanted him to understand, so much that she burst into a confidence when it might have made more sense to hold her tongue. “In fact, I was engaged to be married, in Boston...the brother of one of my school friends. He...he thought I was an heiress to a big ranch... I never misled him, he simply made a false assumption...and when he learned the truth about Twin Springs, he broke off the engagement in a very public manner... That’s partly why I recoiled from the suggestion that I marry Luke Reese...one man had already wanted to marry me for the land, and now another...”
“And you ended up married for your land anyway.”
“I didn’t mean...” Fraught now, Rowena closed her eyes and gave a small huff of frustration. She opened her eyes again and swept an awkward look at Dale. “I think I’d like to go and see the cemetery now, before it gets too dark.”
Dale pushed away from the kitchen counter. “I’ll come with you.”
The wind had gathered force, and Rowena’s skirts whipped around her legs as they made their way up the hillside along the narrow, winding path behind the house. She pulled her shawls tighter around her shoulders against the cold. Her thoughts ran in nervous circles while she picked her steps between the rocks and clumps of coarse grass that might trip her up in the evening twilight.
After the success of her wedding night, she had hoped her marriage could become more than just a practical arrangement. That they could build on the physical closeness between them, form an emotional bond. But in the last two days the constant presence of the soldiers had prevented any intimacy. The memory of that night was already becoming distant, like a dream, never to be repeated. The question of their sleeping arrangements in their new home pricked like a thorn in her flesh. Deep down, she felt that whatever happened between them tonight would act like a trail marker and determine the direction their life together would take.
She came to a halt by a pair of granite headstones and studied the inscription that she recalled by heart. Beloved mother and wife, a woman of courage.
“I’ve never seen my father’s grave,” she said quietly. “Not covered up, I mean.” She took a step to the right. Because they were higher up, the last rays of the setting sun were still peeking over the western horizon and fell on the letters chiseled into the stone.
Rowena read the words out loud. “Duncan McKenzie. Beloved husband and father and a good friend. A man of honor.” Her eyes misted. Not only had Mr. Reese made an effort to find a headstone that matched her mother’s, but he had chosen words in keeping. A swell of gratitude rose inside her at the man she barely knew, a man she had treated with suspicion and mistrust. “I’d like to see his wife’s grave.”
Despite the vagueness of her comment, Dale appeared to understand, for he set off higher up the hillside. Rowena listened to the crunch of his footsteps, then heard his voice calling out for her. “Up here.”
She hurried after him. The grave was almost at the crest of the hill, where a sweeping view opened up over the valley. The simple gray stone headstone only had a name, Katherine Reese, and the dates of her birth and death engraved on it. Around the grave, stones in the same pale gray granite formed a decorative border. Circular in shape, perhaps eight inches across, each stone had been chiseled into a pillar-like ornament with a ball on top, a bit like pawns on a chessboard, the surface polished smooth.
“He must have hacked out these stones by hand,” Dale commented, awe in his tone. “It must have taken him forever.” He counted the ornamental shapes, his forefinger hovering in the air, dipping as he silently added up the number. “There’s thirty of them in all.”
“He must have loved her very much,” Rowena said quietly. She stole a glance at Dale standing beside her. The brim of his black, flat-crowned hat shadowed his face, but she could see the stubble on his lean features, the scar on his cheek, the shadows of past suffering in his eyes. She felt her chest tighten with some emotion she dared not name.
Dale led the way down the hill in silence, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts. The wind was blowing in fierce gusts now, and the narrow path required them to walk in single file, which would have made conversation difficult anyway, even if he had known what he wanted to say to Rowena. She had lost just as much as he had, Dale realized, perhaps more, and he chose to allow her a moment of privacy to remember her parents.
“The water should be warm by now,” he remarked once they entered the heat of the kitchen. “If you tell me where to find a tub, I’ll prepare a bath for you.”
“In here.” Rowena went to the far side of the kitchen and opened a narrow door. Edging past her, Dale stepped into a small room with a cement floor and a single window high up on the wall. The space reminded him of Rowena’s jail cell in Pinares.
Three weeks. Three weeks was all it had taken for those edgy emotions inside him to grow until it felt as if his skin was too tight, his blood on fire. In the last two days, he’d come close to ignoring the rules of propriety and taking her on the hard ground while he hoped the soldiers had the decency to look the other way.
During the journey, he’d felt Major Parks watching them. Dale had no doubt that a letter would soon find its way to his mother in New York, with details about him and his bride. Somehow, the thought pleased him. He wanted his mother to know about Rowena. Know that he was no longer alone, with only nightmares to keep him company.
He turned around to face his wife. She was hovering in the doorway, silhouetted against the last of the daylight through the kitchen window. It struck him again, the serene grace and dignity he’d noticed when he first saw her in Pinares. It was not just her beauty that had enchanted him, had drawn him to her. It was her gentleness, her compassion, her sense of humor. She made him forget the ugliness of his outlaw years, allowed him to believe in redemption. With her, he could remember the happy years of his childhood, before the war, before the killings, and imagine life could be like that again.
As he watched her standing there, shy and uncertain, he wanted to tell her that he hadn’t married her for the land alone. That she meant more than the ranch. But her tale of a past betrayal kept him silent. There had been a wistful note in her voice when she revealed her broken engagement. For all he knew, Rowena was still in love with the man she’d hoped to marry, pining for him, and someone else’s reassurances of her worth might mean nothing to her.
“I’ll bring in the water, then,” he told her, his casual manner giving no hint of his hopes and longings. “You might like to hunt up towels and clean clothing.”
Rowena nodded and whirled and vanished. Dale went back into the kitchen, lit the lamps there, put candles in the wall brackets in the bathing room and lit them, too. He took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves, then lifted down the tub hanging on the wall and gave it a good rinse before hauling over the cauldron of hot water from the stove and tipping the contents into the steel tub. He tested the temperature. Just right for a woman’s delicate skin.
He closed his eyes, dreamed, imagined. But a jarring note shattered the picture of a contented future he tried to create in his mind. Even though their wedding night had been a success, Rowena had married him as a business arrangement. Would she one day feel trapped because she had tied herself to a man she did not love and make him suffer because of it?
And what about himself? He was allowing pretty dreams to fill his head, but did he even possess the capacity to love? Was he worthy of love?
He thought of his past, how for so long hate had been a greater force in his life. And deep down he knew that he had no hope of building something lasting until he had purged those memories from his mind. Shared them with Rowena. Let her know what kind of a man he had been, so that if she ever loved him, she would love all of him, not just the thin veneer of a gentleman officer of the law that she could see on the outside.