SLOAN PULLED UP the wool collar of his new coat and pushed the horse forward. Nothing made sense to him, not even the weather. The snow seemed to swirl without direction, making it hard to see the tracks of the stagecoach, much less follow them. From time to time, the snow would feel more like rain, then harden into cutting ice against his cheeks.
He tried to put the pieces together. He had spent the night with McCall. She made love to him as he never knew people made love. Then, she took the time to kiss him good-bye, buy him clothes, including a coat and gloves; and order breakfast. Next, she left him without a word.
The pieces didn’t fit.
If she’d disappeared suddenly, he’d have sworn she’d been kidnapped. He would have searched the country for her like a madman. But she hadn’t disappeared in any suspicious way. Her leaving had obviously been by her own free choice.
Sloan slowed his horse. What was he doing? She didn’t want to be with him. How much plainer did she need to make it? She must have realized last night had been a big mistake. Maybe she’d cried out his name because she hated his lovemaking so much? Maybe she couldn’t stand to face him again, even to tell him she never wanted to see him? Maybe she’d be like his mother and notice him on the street one day, then walk away without saying a word.
“I’m being a fool!” Sloan mumbled to no one but the wind. “I’ve been a fool for many reasons, but never because of a woman.”
Nothing else in his life had ever made sense. Why should he have expected love to? Why couldn’t he have been happy spending a few hours with a whore in some back room of a bar? Why did he have to learn what it felt like to make love to a woman who took his very soul inside when she accepted his body? How could he live on without feeling her heartbeat echo his each night?
She was just a woman, he told himself. Nothing more. They’d never said they loved one another. He hadn’t offered marriage and she’d never mentioned it. She was a lady, though. A hero’s widow. A wealthy landowner. While he was nothing but a soldier. He knew how to ride and shoot and fight. And last night…last night, for a moment, he’d thought he knew how to make love.
Suddenly smiling, Sloan remembered what old Pete used to say: “A man who thinks he understands women can be fooled into believing anything about himself.”
Sloan knew he could find McCall, even in this storm. She was on a public stage and had nowhere to go but where the stage traveled. But if he found her, did he want to hear why she’d left him?
Slowly, like the cold, the answer pressed into his bones. It didn’t matter why she left him or even that she never wanted to see him again. All that mattered was that he warn her against the men who might be looking for her. If she didn’t want to be around him or sleep with him, that was her right, but he could never live with himself if he knew that he’d put her in danger and hadn’t warned her.
He’d find her, tell her what she had to know to protect herself, and leave.
* * *
It was almost dark when the stage reached the next station along the line. Unlike the huge place at Howard’s station McCall had left, the next was little more than a barn and a cabin. Normally a coach would only change horses and feed the travelers a quick meal at this stop. It wasn’t set up to house guests overnight. The cabin had a fireplace on one end and a long kitchen table in the middle that looked like it might seat six. But the sleeping quarters on the other end of the room was for one. The bed was an army-issue cot. A few pegs served as wardrobe and a barrel as dresser.
The driver, Bryant, carried McCall’s bag as they stepped through the door and into the shadowy warmth of the cabin. The other three passengers, a middle-aged couple and their grown daughter, were already inside, huddled around the fire. Both women were complaining to a silent husband and father about how tired they were.
“Starkie O’Ryan runs this place. He farms and picks up a little extra having fresh horses ready for the line,” the driver called Bryant offered. “He’s not much of a housekeeper, or cook, but he makes a cup of coffee that’ll stay in your blood for hours.”
McCall looked around. “Not much of a housekeeper” was an understatement. The only thing in the room that looked to be dusted regularly was a huge pair of Patterson Colts hanging next to the back door.
“I’m sorry about this, folks.” Bryant removed his hat. “But it looks like we’re going to have to stay here for the night.”
The woman, who’d introduced herself to McCall earlier as Reverend Rogers’s wife without ever introducing Reverend Rogers beside her, charged toward the driver. “We can’t sleep here tonight! It was my understanding we’d be in Fort Worth before dark.”
Her daughter, a younger copy from the same mint, nodded in agreement with her mother.
The driver glanced at McCall as if to say he was sorry for the pair as well as for the room. “I can’t do nothing about the weather, Mrs. Rogers.”
“There’s not enough room in this cabin for two, much less for all five of us.” The reverend’s wife looked around, becoming more disgusted by the moment.
“Six,” Bryant corrected. “I don’t know where Starkie is, but he’s around here somewhere.”
“Well, I don’t know about this woman here,” the wife pointed at McCall and lifted her nose, “but my daughter and I are certainly not sleeping in the same room with strange men.”
The driver stepped around McCall while she fought down a laugh. He seemed to take more offense to the woman’s insult to McCall than McCall did.
He was prepared to defend her honor. “Pardon me,” he stared at the wife. “But maybe you don’t know who this fine lady is.”
McCall raised her hand to calm Bryant. She’d been expecting Mrs. Rogers to storm at her for hours. The woman was a talker who never bothered listening. When McCall politely refused to visit during the trip, Mrs. Rogers had simply changed the subject and tried again. Until finally she’d grown tired and became out of sorts with not only McCall, but her family. After hours of this, McCall could clump her conversation into two categories: the imperfections of her husband and the perfections of her daughter, Pearl.
“It’s all right, Bryant. The woman has no reason to know me.” She touched the driver’s shoulder in a silent thank-you for his gallantry. “And she’s right. We can’t all sleep in here.”
McCall turned her attention to the woman. “There isn’t enough room, madam, but we also have the barn to use as quarters. I might suggest that the women take the cabin and the men take the barn, but, in truth, I’ve spent most of my life sleeping among men. I think I’d be more comfortable in the barn with Bryant and Starkie. So your husband can stay here and guard his family for the night.”
Mrs. Rogers’s mouth fell open as she stared at McCall.
A roar of laughter came from the cellar door in the corner. A large man in his late thirties climbed out with a sack of potatoes over one shoulder.
Before anyone in the room could recover from his sudden appearance, he tossed the sack on the table and grabbed McCall around the waist. “Well, if it ain’t Major Harrison’s wife!” he yelled in a voice that rattled the few unbroken dishes he had. “’Tis glad I am to see ye, ma’am.”
McCall felt like a child as the big man picked her up and held her in the air like a treasure. “Hello, Stark,” she laughed. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
Starkie put her down. “Folks call me Starkie now. I’ve mellowed in me old age.” His face darkened. “I heard about the major, ma’am. ‘Tis sorry, I am. He was a great commander. I would have been with him that day if I hadn’t been delivering horses over to Arkansas.”
“I know.” McCall fought down the tears. Starkie had been with her husband from the beginning of the war. The big man knew his horses and the major respected him greatly for that.
“You’re Widow Harrison?” Mrs. Rogers moved closer, interrupting the reunion. “I’ve heard about you.”
“I’m Mrs. Harrison,” McCall corrected. Even after three years she hated being called widow. “I think I introduced myself when we climbed into the coach this morning.”
Mrs. Rogers shook her head. “You told us you was McCall Harrison. You never told us you was the widow of Major Harrison.” She looked like she was angry at McCall for not filling her in on the proper details.
McCall’s patience was at an end. She always hated folks who treated people different after learning who their family or husband was. Glancing at Starkie, she asked, “Can I bunk in with you and Bryant in the barn for tonight? I need to sleep among comrades.”
Starkie straightened to attention. The deep dimple on his left cheek reflected his pride. “We’d be honored.” He glanced at the others. “The cabin’s yours. Try not to mess anything up.”
Mrs. Rogers huffed, but was suddenly hesitant to show her anger. A silent woman she hardly knew was someone easily snubbed, but the famous Widow Harrison was quite another. “Excuse me, Mr. Starkie,” she stepped in front of him, “but what about supper?”
“I’ll be back when I get the horses in and see that Mrs. Harrison’s got a place to sleep for the night. If ye’re worried about food, start peeling them potatoes. If ye peel enough we’ll have potato pancakes for supper, with what’s left over for breakfast.”
Mrs. Rogers refused to move out of the way. “There’s no need for you to worry about the widow. She can sleep in here with us. My husband can sleep in the barn with the men. It wouldn’t be proper for her to sleep out there with strangers.”
McCall smiled. She’d sleep in the snow before she’d share a room with this woman. “No, thanks.” McCall tried to sound polite. “I’ll be more comfortable in the barn. And Starkie isn’t a stranger; he was my husband’s trusted sergeant. To my way of thinking that makes him more family than any I’ve got.”
Mrs. Rogers opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. Both Starkie and Bryant looked like they would go to hell and back to defend McCall’s honor while Mr. Rogers, her husband, didn’t seem like he’d go half as far to stop them. Plus, anything the widow did would be fuel for future stories.
An hour later, McCall was truly comfortable in the barn. Starkie had cleaned out one of the stalls and laid down a foot of hay. Then he’d unpacked a load of burlap bags as a mattress and used his best, half-clean quilts to make her bed.
“Bryant and I will bed down just outside this stall, so ye’ll be real safe, Mrs, Harrison.” Starkie looked pleased with himself. “Is there anything else I can get ye?”
McCall smiled at the man she’d known for years, yet never really talked to. “Yes. First, I’d like it if you called me McCall. It would please me greatly to think that after all these years we’re friends. And second, if you feel strong enough to brave the cabin one more time, I’d love another cup of your coffee.”
“I’d be honored to count ye as a friend.” He started to say McCall, but couldn’t quite get it out. “And I’ll get us both a cup.”
He disappeared without another word. McCall pulled her boots off and slid beneath the first quilt. She liked the smell of hay and horses surrounding her. This night reminded her of all the nights she’d slept out in the field with Holden. Usually they put up a tent, but when they were moving fast they often camped in barns much like this one.
“Here ye go, ma’am.” Starkie handed her a cup. “I’ll be saying good night now.”
“Stay a minute and drink your coffee, Starkie. Seeing you brings back the days when we were traveling and fighting. I rarely get to talk to anyone about the past.”
Starkie leaned against the stall railing and took a sip of his coffee. “I know how ye feel. Most days I don’t want to remember, and when I do there’s no one to share the memories with.”
“It wasn’t all terrible, was it?”
“No,” he answered. “It was bad sometimes, but ye know every day a man feels totally alive when there’s a war. Most days now blend into one another until I can’t recall what’s happened for a week sometimes. Back then, everything I did mattered. Knowing one mistake and I’d be killed sure did a lot for keeping me alive.”
“I know,” she answered, thinking that she’d felt dead since the night Holden died. Except for last night. Sloan had made her alive again. He’d made her aware of all she was missing and of all she’d never known.
“And the friends we made,” Starkie continued. “I sometimes knew men for only a few months, but was willing to die for them, and knew they would for me. Now, I’ve known my neighbors for three years and couldn’t even tell ye one good secret about them.”
McCall laughed. “I guess secrets don’t seem so important when you think you’ve got a few days left to live.”
“True, and they did make for interesting talk around the fire the night before a battle.”
McCall hugged her knees. “I learned something about the major recently I never knew.” She couldn’t tell Starkie of learning in Sloan’s arms about loving. She’d never admit to this man how her husband hadn’t known the first thing about making love to a woman. But she needed to get her thoughts in order. “But you know, Starkie, it doesn’t matter. I feel the same way about him as I did, even knowing what I know now.”
Starkie’s bushy eyebrows pulled together and he took a big gulp of his coffee. “I’m mighty glad to hear ye say that, ma’am. Me and the men were always afraid ye’d find out, and we didn’t know what ye’d do if ye did.”
The words took a moment to register in McCall’s tired mind. He was talking about something and it couldn’t possibly be what she was thinking. He couldn’t know that she’d spent the night with Sloan and that she’d really made love for the first time. Starkie couldn’t have known that the major knew nothing of how to please a woman.
“All the men knew?” McCall tried to hold back her interest.
“We knew.” Starkie looked down at his boots. “But none of us would ever have told ye, ’cause it would have hurt ye. We was keeping his secret to protect ye, not him so much.”
“I see,” McCall whispered, thinking that she didn’t see or understand at all. How could she have lived among them and not known something all the others knew?
“Ye have to know, ma’am, that it had nothing to do with ye. He’d been with her for years, long before the war broke out. She weren’t the kind of woman an officer would marry. She couldn’t even write her own name.” He thought he was being helpful. Starkie had no idea of the earthquake he was setting off. “The major didn’t care about her the way he did ye. He told me once that if he ever had children he wanted ye to mother them. Bloodlines are important in more than horses, he used to say. McCall’s got good breeding in her lines.”
“I see,” McCall said again. She was glad she was sitting, for his words would have knocked her off her feet. “Starkie,” she raised her chin slightly. “I don’t know much about her. Would you fill me in? Not that it matters, but I’d like to know.”
Starkie hesitated. “I don’t see no point to—”
“I’d just like to know.” McCall fought the lump in her throat. Holden had had another woman. A lover everyone in camp, but her, knew about. Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought her proper, do-it-by-the-book husband would have kept a woman.
“There ain’t much to tell,” Starkie shrugged. “She stayed with the women who follow behind the army. Mostly she just did laundry, and I understand she could cook pretty fine, too. I heard tell before the major, she used to have several men visiting her after hours, but once he came along, she limited her nights to him. The last few years she stayed in a little house near Howard’s station. He visited her when he could. I heard someone say that she’s still there. She does some cooking for the station and takes in sewing. She’s no common whore.” He looked embarrassed at the word he’d used. “I mean, she might not be a lady, but she’s not trash.”
“Did Holden love her greatly?” McCall had to ask, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. If he did, it would hurt. If he didn’t, she’d think less of a man she’d always thought was great.
“I don’t know that,” Starkie answered. “I know he saw that she never went hungry. A couple of times when I was moving horses and he was on a campaign somewhere, he’d have me check in on her and see if she needed anything. I always took her an envelope that had money in it and the two letters M and L. I think they must have meant something to her, because she always smiled when she saw them.”
“What did she look like?” McCall tried to think, but she could remember no young woman who had moved to Howard’s station in the past few years.
Starkie shrugged. “Short, not near as tall as ye, ma’am. And she had long hair that had once been blond but was turning gray. She was maybe fifteen or twenty years older then ye, but still full of life.”
“She was Holden’s age.” Several women of that age lived around the station. Most were widows, McCall thought, but she really hadn’t spent any time visiting with them.
“I reckon. She’d had a hard life and the years wore heavy on her. She had a way about her, though, a way that said she was all woman. Even her name, Lacy, was something different.”
McCall fought down the emotion. Lacy, the little woman she’d seen a few times when she’d been staying at the station. “Thank you for telling me,” she managed to say. “I needed to have a picture of her in my mind.” He couldn’t mean the Lacy she knew. He was talking of a mistress, and the Lacy that she had met a few times was just an ordinary plump little middle-aged woman who seemed shy every time McCall spoke to her.
Starkie lifted his cup and moved away. “Good night. Try to sleep. Ye folks will be moving out at first light.”
McCall snuggled down in the covers and closed her eyes. Tears fell silently down her cheeks, wetting the blankets. Whoever this Lacy woman was didn’t matter. Holden hadn’t been what she’d thought he was. After three years of wearing black and swearing to always keep his memory alive, she realized he hadn’t loved her. He’d needed her with him, but he hadn’t loved her. Her Holden had loved another while they were married.
The pain in her heart felt as if it might shatter her chest at any moment and leave her broken into a thousand pieces. She forced herself not to cry aloud as she heard Starkie and Bryant bedding down several feet away. They were talking about the day in low tones. She couldn’t make a sound and let them know how deeply she hurt.
Closing her eyes tightly, McCall tried to imagine herself in Sloan’s arms. She needed to feel the safety of his embrace, even though she knew they could never be together again. Before he’d come into her life, things had been so simple. Not feeling was her wall against the world. But he’d shattered that wall. She knew she’d have to run as hard and fast as she could if she were ever going to pull her life together again. He hadn’t said he loved her, or talked of tomorrow. She was a forever kind of woman. And Sloan was a one night kind of man.
As she relaxed, Sloan’s arms came around her in her dreams. He was there beside her as he’d been on the prairie. She was wrapped in the warmth of his hold and unafraid.
McCall smiled. He’d never again be more than a dream to her, but at least she had the dream to help her make it through the endless nights to come.