Mary Connealy (75 page)

“I don’t imagine anyone in this family is interested in seeing the
house
I’ve been building for the last few weeks.”

Dead silence met his announcement, except for the sound of the skillet hitting the floor. Betsy even reacted to the changed atmosphere in the room and stuck both hands into her mouth.

Belle quit fighting against his hold. “Eew ouse?”

Silas uncovered her mouth.

Belle repeated, “New house?”

“Yes. New house. What did you think I’d been doing ever since I got here?”

Silas thought he heard a cricket chirp in the dead silence.

“Never mind. I know what you all think of me.” He tugged his Stetson low over his eyes. “But confound it, how could you not trust me better than this? I punched a thousand head of cattle over a hundred of the roughest miles God ever put on this
earth
for you women. I worked eighteen- or twenty-hour days. I hauled you
all
over two mountain passes even though it almost killed me doing it! I—I—” Silas lapsed into silence to match the rest of them and took his arm off of Belle’s waist and stepped back.

Finally, he said, “How could you believe I’d—” Surprised at how hurt he was by their easy belief in his worthlessness, he fell silent. Sure, they’d known a lot of no-account men, but he’d next to broken his
heart
getting those cattle to market and building Lindsay her house and getting them all home safe. Didn’t that count for anything?

At last he said the only thing he could think of. “I asked you to wait for me with all the winter chores, Belle. And I told you I had an idea I needed to work on. Why didn’t you say something if you needed me? Instead, you just assumed the worst of me and did the work yourself. Do I have to prove myself to you every day for the rest of my life? Is that what I can expect from marriage to you?”

He stared at the floor for a while, trying to find in himself the pleasure he’d had at being married and being a father. It was so laced now with hurt it was as if he’d never even known these women. “Well, decide if you want to live here or with me.” He stalked out.

He was halfway to the barn when Belle called after him. “New house?”

Afraid of the scalding things he wanted to say to her, Silas ignored her and kept walking.

She hollered, “Where is it?”

He turned back.

Belle stood in her tottering cabin with the door in pieces on the ground. All three girls peeked over her shoulder at him.

He looked back at them for a long time, studying his wife, wondering who she really was. He knew the hardworking rancher and the sweet, loving woman in the night, but underneath the years of disappointment and hard lessons her life had taught her was there someone else? Was there someone who could trust and love, someone who could move over enough to include him in her life and find joy in wanting his child?

The events of the past day told him no. He’d signed on for a lifetime of bouncing off the brick wall of Belle’s doubts about all men. It hurt. He didn’t like it, and he didn’t want to live like that.

If there was a soft side to be coaxed out from under her toughness, he didn’t appear to have the knack of doing the coaxing. And he’d reached the point where he didn’t have much interest in doing it either. Letting him into her life and opening up to him had to be something Belle did herself.

“It’s in the mouth of the high valley near the south pass. I staked a claim to it while we were in Helena. It’s mine. I reckon I’m going to go live there.” He turned away from her and caught up his horse. Then, without a backward glance, he rode off in the icy cold to his empty home.

All three of them looked at each other. Then they looked around the ramshackle house they lived in. Hoofbeats faded in the distance.

Belle came out of her trance and whirled back to the door. She stared in the direction he went. “He said he had an idea. He said…he said I was a rich woman and it hurt his pride to come to me with nothing.”

Belle turned back to the girls. “New house?”

“He claimed that valley you wanted?” Emma asked.

Sarah said wistfully, “I’d kind of like to see it.”

“He said he’d do the winter chores,” Emma added. “But I never believed him. Not for a minute.”

Belle shook her head. It had never occurred to her either. It had never occurred to her to trust the man who had saved their lives several times over. “He worked so hard on the drive, but I just thought he was—I don’t know—putting on an act, I guess. Remember how Anthony dug that well for us when he was courting me?”

Emma and Sarah nodded.

Betsy kicked her legs and said, “Papa.”

“Anthony dug mighty slow though,” Emma said thoughtfully. “Kept on and on about the rocks. Even then we knew he was no-account, didn’t we, Ma? We just didn’t expect no better.”

Belle looked back out the gaping doorway. “Anthony would never have risked his life to haul us over the passes home. He’d have never put in the long days riding herd, and he didn’t have an ounce of Silas’s skill handling cattle and sticking his cow pony. A man doesn’t get good at things like that without practice, and lazy men don’t practice. How could I not know all of that after spending a month with Silas?”

“He did a right fine job on Lindsay’s house,” Emma remembered. “I could tell he knew what he was doing. Reckon any house he built’d be a good ‘un.”

Sarah said, “Do you think he’ll let us live in the new house with him?”

All three of them exchanged a glance. Then they started smiling.

Belle said, “Let’s go see.”

The girls dressed. They all pulled on their heavy coats, tucked Betsy in the carrier, and headed for the corral.

It was nearly a two-hour ride to the south pass. Belle thought how nice it would be to live two hours closer to Divide. The trail split, one half starting up the mountain to the pass, the other winding into Silas’s high valley. They had only gone a mile down that valley trail when they rounded the mouth of the canyon. There, sitting beside a spring, sat the most beautiful ranch house Belle had ever seen. It was all logs. One story high and built in a single straight line. The house was about four times the size of the one they lived in. It had a neat porch across the whole front of it, made with a split-log floor. Evenly spaced saplings formed a railing along the front.

Belle knew Silas hadn’t been able to go to town for anything to make his building easier because the pass was snowed shut. There were no glass windows—only shutters pulled firmly closed without a sagging corner in sight. Three chimneys of fieldstones adorned the roof. Only the center one had smoke coming out of it. As they got nearer, she saw the leather hinges on the front door and the tight corners of the log cabin that had been hewn out by hand. She could see the wooden pegs that held the porch and doors and shutters together. It must have taken him forever to do such a lovely job on this big cabin.

She realized the stiff breeze was gone and the snow wasn’t as deep as back home. Silas had chosen a spot that cut the north wind. Belle knew the little spring flowed year-round out of a fissure in the cliff close behind the house, so they’d always have fresh water. Silas had thought of everything.

She rode closer and saw Silas’s buckskin grazing in a corral behind the house. A big barn stood beside the corral. Built with the same attention to detail. The same
loving
attention to detail.

“He loves me.” Belle stared at the proof. “He loves all of us.”

Emma nodded. “He’d never’ve gone to so much trouble elsewise.”

Belle’s hand went to her flat stomach, and for the first time in her life she was excited and proud to be expecting a baby. She remembered her tears of yesterday with shame. With ironclad resolve, she decided then and there to be the best mother to this young’un and to the rest of her girls that the world had ever known.

God, I don’t mind if it’s a boy.

On that shocking thought, she spurred her horse and galloped toward the home he’d made for all of them. She went to the corral to turn her horse loose. Even matters of the heart took second place over caring for her horse.

Emma jumped down beside her and caught Belle’s reins. “You’d better go try and cheer him up, Ma. We’ll give you awhile to grovel.”

Belle looked sharply at Emma.

Emma grinned.

Sarah piped up from behind, “Hand over Betsy, Ma. And don’t be shy about crying if need be. That’s supposed to soften men up something fierce.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Belle asked.

Sarah took Betsy, and the three girls headed for the barn.

Over her shoulder, Emma called, “We won’t come in until you come for us, Ma. If you have to be pathetic, then do it, but we don’t want to watch. We need to explore the barn anyway. We may set up a camp and spend the night. Even without a fire, this barn’ll be warmer than our old cabin. So take whatever time you need to convince Silas to let us live here.” Her two smug daughters headed for the barn, giggling.

Belle glared after them for a minute, but it wasn’t because she was upset. Her temper was all fake. The truth was she might have to grovel and cry and act pathetic, and if that’s what it took, so be it! But that didn’t mean it came easy to her.

It took awhile to gather the gumption to admit she was wrong on every count straight down the line. She squared her shoulders and headed for the ranch house.

As soon as she looked where she was going, she saw Silas standing on the porch at the top of the steps, leaning one shoulder against a sturdy support post with his arms folded and one ankle crossed over the other one.

She faltered a bit at the cranky look on his face that told her he wasn’t going to settle for any less than an abject apology, but she had the guts to keep moving. Whatever he said, she reckoned she deserved it.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps, and her mind went completely blank. Apologizing wasn’t something she did much of. “We…uh…we want to live here.”

Silas just stared at her.

“With you.”

He cocked his head slightly to the side but didn’t speak.

Belle sighed deeply. “We…
I’m
sorry. I can’t believe I didn’t trust you after all you did for us. I…Even if I didn’t, I should have
talked
to you. I should have
told
you what I was thinking, how upset I was.”

Still nothing.

“Well, go ahead and yell at me if you want to.” Belle was getting tired of being contrite. It just didn’t sit well. She tried one more time. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry, and you don’t have to prove yourself to me ever again. If you sit down on your tail and never lift a finger to help me again, even if we’re married for fifty years, I’ll never think you’re lazy. I’ll never doubt your word, and I’ll never breathe a word of criticism.”

Still no response.

“I promise that if you say you’ll take care of the chores, I’ll let the chickens starve and the cattle wander off and the vegetable garden dry up and die before I believe ill of you.”

Silas was silent.

Anger stabbed her, but it wasn’t her strongest reaction. She was afraid.

What if he never forgave her?

What if he never smiled at her and hugged the girls?

What if he didn’t want to have a baby with her and he never came to her again in the night?

“All right!” She flung her arms wide. It burned. It burned bad. But she made herself say the most outrageous, impossible, stupid thing she’d ever said.

“I’ll obey you!”

S
ilas felt his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

His arms dropped from the stubborn crossed position he held them in. He stood up straight. “Really?”

Belle nodded.

“You’ll let me give you orders?” He had to fight a smile of triumph.

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Belle fisted her hands and propped them on her hips defiantly, but her words didn’t match her movements. “I’ll obey any orders you want. You’re the boss of this ranch, and what you say goes.”

“Well, that sounds interesting. Let me think.” Silas rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger and stared at the sky so he wouldn’t laugh out loud at the faces she was making while she was trying to be apologetic and submissive.

It was killing her.

He didn’t think it was a good idea for her to realize how much he was enjoying the sight. She probably only had so much “obey” in her, and she was likely to start growling any minute.

On the other hand, he thought he had a right to a little getting even with her for all the hurt she’d caused him. “What if I told you I’ve never cared much for that silly T Bar brand? We’re changing it. I registered my own under Circle H in Helena, and starting this spring, all our calves are going to wear it. That’s what I used to call my spread down in New Mexico, and it suited me.”

Belle swallowed visibly, and Silas thought she was choking over his first order. “The T Bar stands for something out here. I’ve spent the last sixteen years building that name into—” Then she clenched her jaw shut.

Silas could see her physically trying to stop the words that wanted to escape her lips. She must have gained control of herself, because finally she said rather hoarsely, “Yes, Silas. Circle H sounds fine.”