Catherine had spent the dark hours of morning tearing out the decimated garden plants so she could replant them later in the day. She’d also mucked out the barn, milked the cow and gathered eggs, all before breakfast.
She was dirty, smelly and tired. The storm had pushed laundry day back in favor of more urgent tasks.
And she still had to deal with the cowboy, who no doubt would make more demands about her returning him to his family.
Which is why she hesitated outside the soddy door, leaning her shoulder against it. She could just rest here for a bit in the silent, peaceful moment.
Was that movement across the creek, in the woods? She squinted against the shadows but couldn’t be sure, even as a fearful tingle crawled up the back of her neck.
She’d caught Ralph Chesterton loitering in the woods two weeks ago and had been unsettled ever since. He’d asked her again to marry him, and she’d turned him down flat.
She couldn’t understand why he continued to ask when she’d fairly run him off her property. Once with a pitchfork. Since that sighting, she’d had the feeling of seeing something out of the corner of her eye. But when she’d turn to look, nothing was there. Maybe she was going mad like her grandfather.
And Pop’s middle-of-the-night spell hadn’t helped her relax any. She was on edge, strung tight as a wire.
But there was no use dawdling anymore. Breakfast needed cooking.
When she kicked open the door, as she was holding three eggs in one hand and the milk pail in the other, she nearly dropped both when she caught sight of the cowboy sitting in the chair, stirring something in the skillet.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice sharp.
He glanced up at her, his brown eyes touching her and glancing off. “Cooking breakfast.”
She sniffed, not smelling the charring there would be if he’d burned something. Instead, there was the familiar woodsmoke and the floury scent of biscuits.
Bacon popped and he calmly used the wooden spoon to shift something in the skillet.
Pop sat on his bed, whittling. His face was grim and he kept shooting glances at the cowboy wielding the spoon.
“Are you sure you should be up and about?” She set the pail of milk on the table.
“There’s not much up about sitting here,” he responded with a cheeky smile, but she didn’t miss the white lines around his mouth. It was costing him to sit upright.
“Here.” She put the three brown eggs into his hand, her fingers brushing against his palm. A tremble zinged up her arm at the touch of skin on skin. She felt his gaze rise to her face but edged away instead of looking at him.
A splash of water from the basin cooled her burning cheeks. She took extra moments patting down her face and hands, drying off, trying to regain her composure.
Why did he affect her so intensely?
He was handsome. But surely it was more than that. It must be that so much time had passed since her last interaction with anyone other than Pop. She didn’t count the marriage proposals from Ralph Chesterton. Mostly, she tried not to think of them.
When she got used to the cowboy’s presence, it would be better. She wouldn’t be so affected.
And then he would leave. And that would be even better.
She got three tin mugs down from the shelf, conscious of how her trousers brushed the cowboy’s knees in the enclosed space.
She heard the series of cracks and the following sizzle as the cowboy must’ve broken the eggs into the skillet. She put the table between them, dipping milk for each cup out of the pail and then perching on a stool.
“I was just telling your Pop about my brothers and how their families have been growing.”
She hadn’t been aware that he had brothers. She remembered him being an only child. Hadn’t he been? He’d been friends with Luella McKeever then; they’d been thick as thieves. Had she just forgotten those details?
She doubted it. Those horrific days were seared into her memory and had been for years. They had been enough to make her quit coming to school.
Looking up, she found him watching her. One corner of his mouth turned up, and all she could remember was him at nine years old, standing shoulder to shoulder with Luella and pointing at her, laughing, because her dress hadn’t been like the other girls’.
Was he still laughing at her now?
She must be different from the other women he was used to. And that wasn’t even counting her parentage. If he knew about that, no doubt he would look down on her even more.
Tearing her eyes away from the cowboy, she averted her gaze to the window, where bright morning sunlight streamed in.
“Do you want to hear about my family?”
She shrugged, figuring it was safer not to say anything, in case he was looking for a way to poke fun at her. Pop had taught her how to track and hunt, how to watch her surroundings for danger.
And family could be a dangerous topic for discussion.
“You probably didn’t know I had brothers,” he said easily, as if she’d answered him. “My parents died when I was ten. Man named Jonas White took me in—only, he already had five other kids. Four adopted sons and a daughter. And then about nine months after I’d come to be a part of the family, two other boys joined us—they were orphans, too.”
She was sorry to hear that his parents had died. That wouldn’t have been long after she’d left school. She could relate to how it felt to lose the person closest to you.
“You always been the only child?”
She startled, realizing he’d asked her a direct question. A quick glance showed he was stirring the pot, not watching her.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded rusty. She realized she hadn’t spoken all morning. She offered no details. Didn’t want him guessing her shame.
“I was, too, up until that point. You can probably imagine it was a shock to me, going from being the only kid at home to having to share everything.” What must that have been like? Growing up, she’d wanted a bigger family. A father at least.
Was he trying to befriend her? Make her feel companionable with him?
Suspicion filled her. What was his motive? Just to make her want to help him get home?
She tensed, still not answering him, still not knowing what the right thing to say was.
After all the years of isolation, she couldn’t imagine having more of a family. She felt Matty’s intrusion acutely, couldn’t be inside the soddy without him being in her space.
And he talked. A lot.
To have seven others...she couldn’t imagine the noise level, couldn’t imagine having that many people close.
Her skin prickled just thinking about it.
* * *
Matty sensed Catherine’s interest in his words. Why was she being so standoffish?
He gave the scrambled eggs and then the fried potatoes a last stir and grabbed a plate from the shelf above the stove and began filling it.
“Pop?”
The old man grunted what Matty thought must be assent, and Matty passed him the plate. It landed on the table with a thump.
The spoon clinked against the skillet as he worked at filling Catherine’s plate. It didn’t escape his notice that her pants were grubby at the knees and she’d had dirt rubbed into her knuckles before she’d washed up. She’d been in the garden and the pail of milk and eggs told that she’d been working at chores. If he hadn’t cooked up breakfast, would she have come inside and done that, too?
It didn’t seem fair for a young woman alone to be running an entire homestead.
“Catherine?”
She jerked when he said her name, then accepted the plate from him silently.
He worked at piling food on his own plate, and the silence began to grate on him. “Five of my older brothers are married now. Oscar, Edgar and Davy have built their places on the family land—we’ve got a big spread, plenty of room for everyone—Edgar and Davy run cattle with my pa, and Oscar raises cutting horses. Then Ricky lives with his wife on her family’s ranch up north near Sheridan. And my brother Maxwell is married to Hattie. They’re both doctors and split their time between town and the family homestead.”
“Your sister-in-law is a doctor?”
There. There was the interest he’d been waiting for, in her soft-spoken question about Hattie.
“Yep. She trained as a nurse under her father—old Doc Powell—and then went to three years of medical school down in Denver.”
He saw the light of interest in her eyes before her inky lashes came down and hid her gaze from him.
And he felt the stirring of curiosity, as well. “Did your family move away from Bear Creek for a while?”
He wanted to know why she’d disappeared from the classroom without coming right out and asking about it.
“Lived on this very land since 1871,” Pop growled through a mouthful of eggs.
“Oh.”
Then why had she stopped coming to the schoolroom?
“Will your brothers come looking for you?” she asked softly, her fork scraping against the edge of the plate.
“I expect so. I’m not sure they’ll find me this far out. I visited the Samuels family and the Chestertons two days ago, so maybe they’ll follow my tracks.”
Pop harrumphed. “No good Chestertons. They’d better stay out of our business.”
Matty didn’t know the two bachelors well. They’d been courteous enough when he’d checked on them. He could only hope the sheriff or his brothers would find him. He couldn’t stay out here. The isolation, the quiet, was about to drive him crazy, and it had only been one day.
Catherine set her fork down, still silent. Was she upset that he was here, as her grandfather was?
He couldn’t get a read on her, and that was unusual for him, and frustrating. He was an open and honest kind of guy, and most folks responded to that. Not her.
Was it old scars from their childhood that were still between them? He needed her on his side so she could help him get home. He had to find a way to make things right.
* * *
Catherine had left off clearing the field last night. Half of the ground had been rebroken, the rich brown soil turned up, while the rest bore the signs of the damaging storm, plants beaten into the ground and destroyed. She could finish this plot today, if the weather held and Pop behaved.
She approached the plow she’d left in the field, marking her place, with the mule slightly behind her, tugging its leading rope when it stubbornly slowed. And saw one person she could’ve done without seeing ever again. Ralph.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He stood with arms crossed. He would’ve been handsome, tall and dark-haired, except for the hard light in his eyes and the unkempt state of his dress. And if she got close enough, the smell of his unwashed body.
His lips opened in what must’ve been supposed to be a grin, showing his crooked teeth, stained brown. “Came to see if you’d had the same damage we had. Looks like ya did.”
“We’re managing.” She hated the way that he looked at her. She always did. From the way his eyes lingered when it would’ve been polite to glance away, to the slight narrowing of his eyes.
She started buckling the mule’s harness, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. He made no move to help her. Just stared.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
He gestured to the field. “It’s a lot of work and just you to do it. Seems like you need a man in the worst way.”
A shudder snaked through her. “I do just fine. And I’ve got a man. Pop.”
“That old geezer ain’t no help to you no more, and you and I both know it.”
She kept her eyes on the buckle, on the movement of her hands at the mule’s flank, though her attention did not waver from the man. From the sidelong glances she sent his way, she could see his posture was relaxed, but she wasn’t fooled. He was a threat.
“You been thinking about the partnership I proposed?”
She knew the partnership he was talking about. Marriage. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of mentioning it aloud.
He stepped closer. “Your big secret don’t matter to me.”
She inhaled sharply at his reminder. He knew about her shame. And wasn’t above trying to use it as leverage, apparently. “I gave you my answer the last time we talked. It’s still no.”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You lost your crop thanks to the hail. Ain’t no way you’re gonna catch up on all the work you need to do to make it through the winter. We could help each other.”
“I said no.” Now she let her eyes raise to him to make sure that he wasn’t going to attack because of her answer.
His face had gone crimson; his eyes had a hard glint to them. “You’ll change your mind.”
“No, I won’t.”
He gave her one more leer that she did her best not to show any reaction to. As he walked away, he kept glancing over his shoulder until he made the tree line and disappeared into the shadows.
She had never been so glad to see someone leave her property.
She checked the last buckle on the mule’s harness and slapped the old girl into motion. Now that Ralph was gone, she began to tremble. His words tumbled through her head like water over a rocky creek bed. Had he been threatening her? Maybe his words hadn’t been an overt threat, but she felt it just the same. He and his teenage brother lived on a small homestead not far away. They had never caused trouble for her until about two years ago, when Ralph had started calling—if you could call his visits such. Lately it seemed that Ralph had been trespassing on their property more and more.
She had enough things going on with the cowboy hurt back in the dugout and trying to figure out a way to get rid of him. Didn’t need something else to worry about. But with Ralph her closest neighbor, she never could relax.
For hours, Catherine trudged behind the mule, its leather reins laid over her shoulders as she guided the plow in the furrow next to the several she’d just created in the grassy plain, the brown soil sending its pungent smell into the air. Her boots sank into the soft, loose earth.
If it came down to replanting the wheat, she would need to increase the field so they could plant enough to put some back and start rebuilding the stockpile.
Every time she walked past the crushed stalks, a frisson of worry slithered through her. All that seed lost. The driving hail had left nothing untouched.
“You want a water break?”
Surprised at the unexpected voice, she wiped her forehead with the back of one hand and found the cowboy standing at the edge of the field.
She gave the mule the command to halt. The cowboy didn’t wait for her to untangle herself from the harness, he just brought a pail and the dipper to her.
She saw the strain, saw what it cost him to carry the pail in the clenched set of his jaw.
“Thank you,” she murmured as she sipped noisily from the dipper.
“You’re welcome.”
She saw his eyes trail over what she’d done, and unbidden, her spine straightened. The Matty she’d known in the schoolroom had found fault with nearly everything she did. Would he find fault with the work she’d done today?
She pushed her bangs out of her face, hating that he saw her like this, dressed like a man, grubby, thirsty.
Cathy, Cathy, homemade happy! Those awful voices from her childhood pattered through her memories like raindrops that sometimes infiltrated the roof of the dugout. It made her self-conscious as she drank from the tin cup.
“I figure I owe you an apology,” he said.
She choked.
He gave her long enough to stop sputtering. “Guess you weren’t expecting that?”
“I didn’t know for sure you’d remembered me.”
His gaze was steady on her, and the intensity of his eyes was hard to hold. “Yeah. And I remembered how awful I was to you. I’m sorry for the things I said back then.”
It was the very last thing she expected him to say. And he seemed to be able to read that in her expression. His lips quirked up in an endearing half smile, one that made her stomach swoop. She dropped her eyes.
She had to remember that he wasn’t her friend. He hadn’t been back then and right now he wanted to get home. He was using her. Trying to get her to help him.
He might’ve been waiting for a response. Silence lagged between them, and she didn’t fill it.
Finally, he sighed.
She gulped the rest of the water and offered him the cup. But instead of taking it and walking away, he caught her fingers against the cup. The contrast of his hot fingers against the cool metal unnerved her and her chin jerked up as she met his eyes.
“Does your Pop have nightmares like that a lot?”
That he saw the issues closest to her heart unnerved her even more than his touch, and she jerked her hand away. She couldn’t afford him to discover the truth about her heritage.
His eyebrows ran up toward his hairline. She flushed, hating that he saw that he had an effect on her.
“Not every night,” she said smartly. “Will you move?”
He didn’t. “Is he a danger to you?”
“Of course not. He would never hurt me.”
“Does he always know it’s you?”
She went still. How had he guessed that sometimes Pop was so lost in his memories that he didn’t recognize her?
“Pop is the only family I’ve got left. We take care of each other.”
He took a slow look around them, prompting her to do the same. There was nothing out of place, only the familiar rolling plain, in the cup of the valley that kept them out of sight of the neighbors, unless they got too close.
“I only see you, taking care of everything,” he said quietly. “Have you ever thought of moving closer to town, where you’d have more help?”
And there it was. Of course he’d brought it back to getting to town. Because he wanted to get home.
And while she wanted him gone, she also couldn’t leave the homestead and couldn’t take Pop with her.
Her chin came up. “I manage.”
And she gave a slap with the reins. He was forced to move aside or have his foot caught in the plow as the mule lurched forward.
He stood at the edge of her plot for long enough that she grew uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
She fumed as she halted the mule and turned the plow in the rutted dirt. What did he think, that she wanted him near, asking questions? Forcing her to remember that she was a woman, not just a worker, trying to keep the homestead afloat.
It was uncomfortable. She was happy here on the homestead with Pop. Her mama had been practically shunned by Bear Creek. How could she expect different?
Nor did she have anyone else to turn to. She’d lived here all her life, wasn’t comfortable in town, had never wanted anything else.
Finally, he disappeared through a copse of trees, back toward the soddy, and she felt she could breathe again.
And...if she was being totally truthful with herself, there was a time she had wanted something different. She’d dreamed of more education for herself. Hearing that Matty had a sister-in-law who had gone to medical school—medical school!—was like a crawly itch. Like the time she’d gotten into a poison oak patch. What would it be like to have that freedom? To go to college herself?
She would never know, she reminded herself. When her mama had died, Pop had been all she’d had. He’d given years of his life to take care of her. She could do no less for him, in these last years of his life. She owed him, in the sense of family duty.
No matter what old dreams she would sacrifice to do so.