Secondhand Bride (18 page)

A
t first, Jeb thought he’d been buried alive, such was the weight of the pain, but when he opened his eyes, Chloe was standing next to him, gripping his hand. Her red hair was falling from its pins, and he could tell by her puffy eyes and red nose that she’d been doing some crying.

“It’s about time you woke up,” she said. “Becky and Sarah will be serving supper in a little while.”

He let out a raspy chuckle, and she gave him some water from a china mug. The stuff tasted like ambrosia, but the touch of her hand, supporting the back of his head, was better yet. “Am I still in Doc’s office?” he asked, thinking it a reasonable question.

She shook her head. “You’re at the hotel. Rafe and Kade brought you here a few hours ago. They made a litter out of an old door.”

He took more water, letting the image of that take shape in his mind, then allowed his head to fall back onto the pillow. “Well,” he said, “at least the grub will be good. Doc’s not known for his cooking.”

She put the mug aside. “Does your arm hurt much?”

“I feel like the barn fell on me,” he admitted. He wondered what he’d have to promise to get Doc to give him another one of those shots.

She smoothed his hair back from his face; he liked the feel of that. “You could have been killed,” she said, and tears glistened in her eyes. He wondered if things would change between them now. Maybe getting shot hadn’t been such a bad thing, even if it did hurt like Holy B. Jesus.

Carefully, he lifted his left arm, cupped his hand behind Chloe’s head, and drew her down into a light kiss. “But I wasn’t,” he said hoarsely, when their lips parted. “Don’t cry, Chloe. Please, don’t cry.”

Contrary creature that she was, she laid her forehead against his and sobbed.

T
he trouble with being laid up and in pain was that it gave a man too damn much time to think. Lying there in that hotel room, Jeb counted the cracks in the ceiling and the boards in the wall. A single fly had come to keep him company, now buzzing at his head, now bumbling against the glass in the window. He tried to read some from the lofty tomes Kade had brought him, but words on those pages seemed as restless as the fly. They just wouldn’t light on his brain and settle in.

Perhaps because he’d come so close to crossing over— according to Doc, he’d tried to slip away a couple of times during the operation—he kept thinking about his mother.

He remembered once, when he was six or seven, spending a night in town with a friend and taking in the fiery sermons of an itinerant preacher. He’d been terrified, and awakened screaming and sweating in the depths of a summer night, flailing at his covers.

“I’m bad and I’m going to hell,” he’d told Georgia McKettrick, in a bullet spray of words, when she hurried into his room with a lantern and a concerned expression.

She’d sat on the edge of his narrow bed, wearing a satin wrapper and smelling of some combination of lilacs and sleep, and smoothed his hair back from his forehead with one blessedly cool hand. “Nonsense,” she’d said.

“But the preacher said so.”

“The preacher is full of sheep dip,” his mother replied, and it seemed to him that there was more than enough affection in her smile, even some left over for the preacher. “The poor man’s just confused, that’s all.”

About then, Angus had appeared in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame. “That’s how the bastards get you, son,” he’d said, yawning. “By making you scared. Don’t you ever let anybody or anything do that.”

His ma had cast a glance in her husband’s direction, evidently a sharp one, judging by the reaction to it, which was plainly visible in Angus’s much-younger face. Jeb had an idea that it was the word “bastards” that got Georgia’s hackles up; she didn’t hold with swearing. Said it was a sign of a poor vocabulary and a mean spirit.

He’d smiled then, comforted, and he smiled now.

He was hurting. He was bored and frustrated half-out of his skull. But damned if he was scared.

A heavy knock sounded at the door of his room; he knew, by the weight of it, that the visitor was Angus or one of his brothers and not Chloe. It was the first day of school, and she was down the street, riding herd over a wild bunch.

He was still coping with the letdown when he offered a gruff, “Come in,” and Angus walked in. Jeb craned his neck, looking past the old man for Doc, with one of his magic needles. Another disappointment—Angus was traveling alone.

“Afternoon,” he said.

Jeb nodded a greeting. Now that he wasn’t dangling a foot in the grave, the old man probably meant to give him trouble about leaving the Triple M.

Angus drew up the only chair in the room and sat down next to the bed with a heavy sigh. He eyed the sling supporting Jeb’s right arm. “How’s the pain?”

“Oh, the pain’s doing fine,” Jeb replied. “
I’m
a little worse for wear, though.”

Angus chuckled, rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. He was a tougher than boiled owl, his pa, a quality Jeb both admired and resented. He’d seen that McKettrick grit carry the day, times beyond counting, and against formidable odds, but he’d also collided with it on a number of occasions and landed on his ass in the dust. “You up to talking a little, boy?” he asked.

For a moment, Jeb was small again, and fearful of devils and hellfire, but the feeling quickly subsided, finding no place to take hold. If he got to the pearly gates and found out his theology was wrong, at least he’d be able to say he’d thought things through for himself instead of taking somebody else’s word. “I can manage some listening,” he said. “Talking might be another matter.”

Angus smiled distractedly, ran his big, work-worn hands down the thighs of his trousers. “I’ll try to hold up my end, then,” he said. As if he’d ever had to make an effort in that direction. “I do have a few questions for you, though.”

Jeb nodded, to show he was paying attention, and waved away the fly with his good arm.

“What made you take a notion to sign on at the Circle C?” The old man was trying to be diplomatic, Jeb could see that, but he’d never really gotten the hang of it, and this time was no exception.

“The pay was better,” he answered, a mite flippantly.

Angus thrust out one of his gusty sighs. “We could have talked about that,” he said, picking his way through the sentence like a man crossing a wild creek, inching from stone to slippery stone. “If you’d given me the chance, I might have upped your wages.”

Jeb’s jaw tightened; he willed it to relax a little. “Or said I was already earning more than I was worth,” he replied.

Angus surveyed him from beneath lowered and bristly brows. “It’s true,” he allowed, “that if there’s been an improvement in your output, I haven’t seen it.”

This was the old Angus, the one he knew. Jeb let the corner of his mouth quirk upward in a semblance of a grin. “Maybe I’ve changed,” he said. “Maybe I’m ready to take hold, make a place for myself.”

“About time,” Angus said, and shook his head, as if reprimanding himself for letting his tongue run away from him. With the old man, two words were a verbal stampede.

“It’s all right, Pa,” Jeb said quietly, and with a note of humor, shifting the pillows behind him in a vain effort to find some comfort. “I know what you think of me.”

“Do you, now?” Angus rubbed his chin again. “You just go ahead and tell me, then.”

Jeb shrugged his one responsive shoulder, cradled the slinged arm because of the pain. “I’m the youngest. Spoiled. Wild. Irresponsible. Not as strong as Rafe, or as smart as Kade.”

“The hell you say,” Angus shot back, in a rumbling huff. “The only thing you got right there is your being born last. I don’t compare my sons one to the other. I reckon that’s your own definition of Jeb McKettrick, but don’t go putting my brand on it.”

Jeb was at a loss, so he kept quiet.

Angus smiled, though sadly. “Here’s how I see you,” he began. “You’re
my son
, and you’ve got a steel backbone and a go-to-hell attitude. You’re the best rider and the fastest gun I’ve ever seen. You take too damn many chances, trying to prove you’re nobody’s little brother. And you’re smart as anybody, when you take the time to think before you jump, which—it seems to me—is a relatively rare occasion.”

Jeb swallowed, fumbled with the carafe on his bedside table, poured a one-handed slug of water. Angus, in typical fashion, didn’t try to help, just sat there, resting his arms on his thighs, fingers loosely entwined. Even an hour ago, Jeb would have interpreted this as pure cussedness, but now—well—he’d have to do some reflecting to line it all up proper in his mind.

“I want you to come back home to the Triple M,” Angus said forthrightly. “When you can ride again, and make yourself useful, we’ll talk about your wages.”

Something inside Jeb yearned to accept, but he resisted the pull. He had things to prove, though he wasn’t exactly sure what they were, and he knew he’d never come to terms with himself if he took to walking backward.

“I’ve got a job, Pa. At the Circle C.”

“You’re not going to be much use to Holt or anybody else with your arm tied up in a dish towel,” Angus pointed out. No sense slapping a coat of varnish on a perfectly good truth. Just lay the matter right out there, whether anybody liked it or not, that was the old man’s way.

Jeb swallowed again, though this time, it was more of a gulp. The things he felt were tangled and spiky as barb-wire, rusting in his throat.

“Holt wants me to look out for Lizzie until he can come up with a better arrangement,” he managed, after some struggle. “By the time he ropes in a housekeeper, I’ll be good as new.”

Angus studied him. “You’re going to be a babysitter.”

Jeb considered flinging the glass at his father’s head, but decided against it. He’d only duck, and he was still quick enough to get out of the way, for all his age. “Call it whatever you like, Pa. Holt can’t be with Lizzie
and
on the range, and he’s got a ranch to run.”

“You’ve developed quite an affection for your brother, it seems.”

“I’m fond of Lizzie,” Jeb insisted. “Just like you are.”

The big shoulders moved in a shrug. “That’s as it should be. She’s a child, a baby, really, and she’s a McKettrick.”

“Not according to Holt, she isn’t. He says her name is Cavanagh.”

“Holt’s just pissed off at me,” Angus said, and he sounded weary. “Can’t say I blame him, but damned if I know how to make it up.”

Jeb reached for the glass again, took a steadying sip. Where the devil was Doc with that shot? “What do you figure he wants from you? Holt, I mean?”

Angus got to his feet. “My blessing,” he said. “I reckon that’s what all of you want.” He shifted his weight, hooked his thumbs under his belt. His holster was empty, one of Becky’s house rules. “Well, for what it’s worth, you’ve got it,” he finished, and headed for the door.

Jeb didn’t want the old man to go just yet, but he was damned if he’d say so. “Even if I never come back to the Triple M?” he challenged, addressing his father’s broad back.

“Even then,” Angus said, without turning around. And then he went out.

“I’ll be a ring-tailed waste of skin,” Jeb muttered, grinning. The fly landed on his chest, but he didn’t try to whack it.

C
hloe assessed her students, one by one, now that their heads were bent over their slates, and they wouldn’t see her looking.

There was Harry Sussex, her favorite, at the left end of the first long table, facing her desk. He wanted, above all else, to be like Kade McKettrick. Not a bad objective, she supposed, though her goal for him was a little different. She wanted Harry to be Harry, in all his individual glory.

Next to him was Lucas, his brother, and next to Lucas was Benjamin. To his right sat Clarence and George, respectively, and the five of them made a set of stair steps. The baby of the family, a girl named Hortense, was too small to attend school. According to Harry, she’d “pitched a fine fit” that morning when she realized she was being left behind.

At the next table were the banker’s two daughters, nine-year-old Marietta and seven-year-old Eloise, well-shod and ringleted, wearing ready-made dresses, hair ribbons, and shiny shoes. They sat close together, primly intent on their slates. Chloe felt a rush of warmth for them; for all their confident appearance, they were as worried about fitting in as any of the others.

Finally, at the last table, were Jesse Banner, a big boy of nearly fourteen, a rancher’s son who had traveled since dawn to be there, and Jennie Payle, whose mother was employed at the Bloody Basin Saloon, doing what Chloe did not exactly know, though of course she had her suspicions. Walter and Ellen Jessup, brother and sister, made up the last of the crew. New to Indian Rock, like Jennie, they were motherless and even poorer than the Sussex children, living out of a wagon parked back of the church. Chloe hadn’t been able to learn much about their situation, beyond the fact that their father worked on the Triple M and wanted them to “git” an education. To that end, he’d left them to fend for themselves through the week, promising to return on Friday nights, after he’d gotten his pay. She worried over the Jessups; surely, they were frightened, alone in their little camp, especially when it got dark. On the other hand, they were probably used to hardship; many children were. Down South, they picked cotton and worked long hours in textile mills, and in the Pennsylvania coal country, they labored in mines.

Her misgivings aside, Chloe was deeply grateful for her students; without them, she’d spend far too much time thinking about Jeb. As it was, he crept into her mind whenever she left a space open.

She reminded herself that they’d resolved nothing, she and Jeb. She lived from her mind, he from his body. She was bold, but innately cautious, too, while he stuck his chin out at everything, daring life to thwart him. This wasn’t just her own supposition, either; Doc had told her several chilling stories about his exploits. He’d patched Jeb up on a regular basis from the time he was ten years old, and declared himself a born bronc rider.

Chloe sighed. It was God’s own miracle that the rascal wasn’t lying under six feet of dirt over at the cemetery instead of in a bed at the Arizona Hotel, complaining that he was bored.

Of course he was bored. He probably wasn’t happy unless he was barreling through the world like a runaway freight train, looking for something to collide with. Chloe sat down at her desk, cupped her chin in one hand, and wished she’d never complicated her life by making his acquaintance.

She had a lot to learn when it came to picking men.

“Teacher?” the small, earnest voice startled her, and she turned to see little Jennie standing practically at her elbow. “Are you sad? You sure do look downhearted.”

Chloe felt a pang. This ragged child, with her limp blond hair and shabby dress, was concerned about
her.
“I was merely thinking,” she said quietly, resisting an urge to put an arm around Jennie’s thin shoulders and draw her close for a moment. She didn’t want to risk hurting Jennie’s pride. “I can see where you’d get that impression, though. I can look
very
somber when I’m considering a matter.”

Jennie’s smile was tentative, and there was relief in it. “I finished with my numbers,” she said.

Chloe took the slate, examined the figures. “Excellent,” she said. The problems of addition were incorrect, the subtractions, perfect in every way. A commentary, Chloe thought, on Jennie’s life. Young as she was, she knew more about taking away than accumulating. “You’ve made a fine start.” She pointed out the errors as kindly and matter-of-factly as she could. “Try again,” she said.

When lunchtime came, Marietta and Eloise went home for their meal. The Sussex children played in the yard, pretending not to care about food, Jennie nibbled at a biscuit and a chunk of cheese, probably purloined from the spread at the saloon, always on hand for the customers, and Jesse Banner opened a brown paper parcel, containing a sandwich and two hard-boiled eggs. Walter and Ellen Jessup simply sat in their places, staring straight ahead and waiting for class to start again.

Emmeline, who spent a lot of her time at the hotel, being part owner, appeared out of the blue, with a large pan in her hands, just as Chloe was about to fetch crackers and fruit from the cottage and set them out for the taking. Mrs. Rafe McKettrick swept into the schoolhouse in a breeze of calico, closely followed by the Chinese cook from Becky’s kitchen, bearing plates and spoons. The Sussex children crowded in behind them, all eyes and twitching noses.

“To celebrate the first day of school,” Emmeline announced, setting the pan in the middle of the front table with a flourish. “Everybody, help yourselves.”

The Sussexes swarmed, while Walter Jessup peered at the contents of the pan, a noodle casserole with a creamy sauce and various vegetables mixed in, his small sister at his side.

Walter’s expression was stoic. “Me and Ellen ain’t eatin’,” he said.

The two women exchanged glances, both of them laughing silently.

Bless you, Emmeline,
Chloe thought. Not only had she been generous, providing badly needed food, she’d done so graciously, in a way that wouldn’t make the children feel like charity cases.

The Chinese cook trotted out, and Emmeline dusted her hands together, as if to declare her business finished. There was a flurry of eating, and, at long last, the Jessups relented, joining in. The way they tucked away food made Chloe wonder when they’d last had a decent meal.

Having little or no appetite herself, Chloe sat on the front steps, with Emmeline perched beside her.

“That was a very kind thing you did,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

“We’re glad to have a school,” Emmeline replied, as though that settled the manner. “Not to mention a teacher. Becky’s going to ask the town council for a food allowance for the children. She says if they refuse, she’ll see to it herself.” She smiled. “That’ll shame them into doing it.”

Chloe laughed, but the sound fell away in the air as she gazed toward the Arizona Hotel, where Jeb lay, recovering. He’d get over the wound, according to Doc, but he was bound to go looking for trouble as soon as he could ride. Chloe knew he half hoped Sam and his posse wouldn’t find his assailant—he wanted to do that himself.

Emmeline must have read her mind, at least partially, for she patted her hand. “Jeb will be fine,” she said softly.

Sudden tears stung Chloe’s eyes, and she tried to blink them away. “Will he?” she asked. “What about next time?”

Emmeline frowned. “ ‘Next time’?”

“He’s got no sense at all,” Chloe fretted, wringing her hands a little. “He’s such a—such a—”

“McKettrick?” Emmeline supplied.

“Yes,” Chloe said. “Do they all think they’re immortal?”

“Pretty much,” was the quiet answer.

“How do you stand it? Don’t you worry about Rafe?”

Emmeline sighed. “Of course I do,” she said. “But if he wasn’t hell-bent-for-election, he wouldn’t be Rafe. And if he wasn’t Rafe, I wouldn’t love him so very much.”

The children, crowded into the schoolhouse, were making a great deal of happy noise, and that lifted Chloe’s spirits a notch. They were life itself, those little ones, dancing, laughing, chasing each other on the very edge of the abyss. But they were
children
, and Jeb McKettrick would be thirty in a couple of years. What was
his
excuse for tempting Fate the way he did?

Come and get me,
he seemed to say, to man and cosmos alike.
Catch me if you can.

Respecting Chloe’s silence, probably well aware of the turmoil within her, Emmeline squeezed her hand once, then stood. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, musing. “That’s the first rule of the McKettrick clan. Better to die in a hail of gunfire than whimper behind a wall and survive.” She turned to look at Chloe, and her eyes were bright with conviction. “Much as I’d hate to lose any one of them, especially Rafe, I wouldn’t ask them to live any other way.”

“You,” said Chloe, without particular admiration, “are a very brave woman.”

Emmeline smiled. “I have to be,” she said, then she was gone.