Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) (13 page)

             
Now, he said, "You did everything you could have done, Mr. Longren.  There was no way to know you were heading into that storm.  You took all the correct steps.  There will be no disciplinary finding, no steps taken against you.  Those people may well owe you their lives, though I doubt any of them feel friendly toward you right now."

             
Matthew shook the man's hand.  "I'm not feeling too friendly myself right now."

             
"Then let's get you all somewhere warm and dry," the inspector said.  He held out his hand to me, indicating the way to the waiting, puffing train.  "Ma'am."

             
With some trepidation, I stepped onto the next train, dreading the motion of the wheels, the feel of the train in motion, the idea that Matthew wouldn't be driving this one.  There was no other way out of the woods, though, and no other place really to go and make the snow stop falling down my neck.  I took a seat, as far away from other passengers as I could, too tired for thanks or recrimination, and made space on the bench for Matthew, who joined me soon after.  There was brief applause, which made him turn crimson.  His lips formed a thin line, which he turned into the attempt of a smile and offered to everyone, turning away as soon as he could and concentrating on the floor just past his feet.

             
Within minutes, we were underway, heading into Alturas, where I would meet Matthew's family.  I'd heard friends talk about their mothers by marriage.  They'd often told horror stories.  After our journey thus far, I wasn't up to a battle.

             
I thought I was due a pleasant experience.

             
The valley was beautiful.  I was so used to the closed in valleys of Virginia City, where rolling foothills created runnels of canyons and every turn on the road brought another turn not that far away, that the long stretched out valley of Alturas was as startling as the expanse of the San Francisco Bay.  Alfalfa fields were still green, even in October, and other fields, harvested, were dun brown and gold, dry and sere.  The effect was of a giant patchwork quilt stretching over the valley.  The valley itself stretched long and beautiful out to distant blue and green mountains dotted with evergreens.

             
His father had come, bringing a wagon and a team of horses.  Another Longren male, I'd have recognized him anywhere, the tall, lanky body, long muscle, thick shoulders, black hair and blue eyes.  The hair had some gray in it, I saw, when he took off his hat and swiped a forearm across his brow. Matthew helped me from the train and, together, we went to meet Mr. Longren. 

             
"Matthew, you're a damned sight for sore eyes," his father said and they both shook hands and embraced, slapping backs and bashfully dropping their heads. 

             
"You knew we were coming late," he said when he stepped back.  He was already reaching for me with one hand.

             
"Telegraph office sent word.  Train that came for you was sent from here.  No one's hurt?"

             
"Some sprains, nerves, bruises.  Father, this is my bride, Chloe Anders Longren."

             
Mr. Longren tipped his hat back on his head.  "Heard about you from Matt for a lot of years, missy.  What made you decide to marry him finally?"

             
As though it had been up to me all that time!  I wasn't sure I wanted to take responsibility for that.

             
"He finally asked," I said and that made him laugh.

             
"She's got spirit, son."

             
"She'd have to," Matthew said and put an arm around me, bringing me with him to the wagon.  We had a few bags, a few gifts and not much else.  "How's Mother?"

             
"Cleaning," said his father.  He addressed me with a smile.  "I told her you probably weren't coming to investigate her housekeeping, but you know women."

             
Sometimes, I wondered about that.  But I liked the smile and I returned it and we climbed in the wagon and headed for the ranch.

              Matthew's brothers met us on the road, riding sorrel horses with dark manes.  They were wind-tossed boys, who looked carved from the landscape itself, already work-toughened, in their mid-teens, with goofy Longren grins.  They rode around the wagon, staying out of reach of their father, who told them to stop but never with sufficient annoyance.

             
"You see where he gets it," Mr. Longren said, as if traits could have been passed from brother to brother and from younger to older, but I didn't question it. 

             
Instead, impertinent, I said, "From you?" and watched him smile a private, quiet smile, the way Hutch sometimes did.

             
With the Longrens, one had to stay on her toes and look closely for emotions.  What they announced to the world in broad gestures was only a fraction of what went on in the Longren men.

              There were far more outbuildings than house—barns, grain bins, milking sheds and the like.  The house itself was two stories, compact and whitewashed, peeling gently under the strong sunlight.  The yard was clean and cheerful and bird song sounded clear on the air.

             
Mrs. Longren came out when she heard the wagon pulling into the dooryard.  At my first glimpse of her, I thought for an instant that Annie was coming to greet us, impossible though that was, and after that, realizing this was Annie's mother, I was set to like her, and the rest of the fear, nestling in my mind since we had left Reno and exploding during the delays in the snow, melted away. 

              "Anyone can learn to cook," Cecilia Longren said.  "I can teach you.  It's really very simple.  Start with what you like, or what Matthew likes, or—"

             
"—Matthew would eat sagebrush if I put it on a plate," I said.  "And I like apples."

             
Cecilia laughed  Her big, sunny kitchen was built so she could employ girls from town to help during cattle drives when there were extra men to cook for and during branding season, calving, harvesting alfalfa, other times of year when the kitchen was in high use.  She looked capable of running it solely on her own and, during the few days we'd been staying with her, everything she'd made there was wonderful.

             
Our first morning, I'd offered to make biscuits, my one specialty.  I'd made them the next two mornings, too, until she offered to teach me something else and I panicked.

             
"It's trial and error," she said now, guiding me to a seat at the shining wood table.  Everything in her kitchen gleamed, clean and ready for use.  "Here, this is the cookbook I used when I got married."

             
It was falling apart, had been mended several times and now was tied with a piece of string when not in use.  She flipped gently through the pages, where line drawings strove to convince the reader such kitchen alchemy was possible.

             
"That's a roast," I said, pointing. "It has instructions on how to make a roast?"

             
Cecilia blinked.  "Yes.  Why?"

             
"But that's simple," I said.  "I mean, salt, pepper, root vegetables, big kettle, lots of hours, maybe some water and spices if you have them."  I looked away from the pictures that were making roasts more complicated than necessary and caught her smiling.  "What?"

             
She raised her brows, shook her head.  "Nothing.  Here, what about this?"

             
"Roast chicken," I said.  "Same kind of thing.  Sage is nice with it," thinking that Matthew actually did eat sage and that was handy, though not an entire brush, just a sprig or two.

             
"And stew?"

             
I started to answer, then stopped and stared at her. 

             
"Where do you buy your bread?" she asked, delicately realigning the pages in her cookbook and retying it closed.

             
"There's a nice bakery in Reno, but most of the time—" I broke off.  "I've started to make it.  If I can get sour milk, I can make a rye Matthew likes and, other times, I want to leave it overnight because I have heavy flour and it needs a long rise."  She looked so much like Annie.  "Why are you smiling?"

             
"You can't learn to cook because you already know," she said.  "If you have a cookbook, put it aside.  Listen to yourself.  You already know what you're doing and, from the look of things, Matthew's not starving."  She patted me and stood but she was no longer smiling.  As she put the book back on the baker's rack, she said, "He's worrying, though."

             
"The train," I said and stood, restless, tucking my hands into the pockets of the apron I wore.

             
"You said he did everything he could," she said, as if it were a statement she was making as she tidied an already tidy kitchen.

             
"He did.  There wasn't much.  He braked the way he should; Roy stopped feeding the boiler.  The train should have slowed.  But we had a head of steam, we were on a descent and the flood waters hit us."

             
Cecilia Longren leaned against her kitchen counter and studied me.  "What do you think?"

             
I raised my brows.  "I think he did everything right.  I think he saved the lives of everyone there.  I don't think there was anything else he could have done but that doesn't change the fact he did it.  He was calm, he thought things through, he moved fast and he got us through."

             
She nodded.  "You've told him that?"

             
That wasn't really her question to ask,
I thought, but I shook my head anyway.  "No.  The railroad inspector told him.  Now, Matthew needs to tell Matthew."

             
She considered that, nodded and stepped away from the counter.  "It might not hurt to hear it from his wife as well."

              I liked her advice about cooking.

             
But she was wrong about Matthew.

              That afternoon, David and Henry found me standing on the porch looking out at the ranch.  I wasn't really seeing it.  Beautiful country but I couldn't imagine living here with no neighbors in visual distance, no place to shop or see a play.  Restlessness was setting in, enough so that even my slight trepidation about trains wasn't sufficient to hold me back.  I wanted to be moving again.

             
David approached first.  His coloring was lighter than his brother, his Longren eyes almost green, his hair sandy.  He was taller than Henry and a year older, at 15.

             
They shared the Longren male ability to find trouble anywhere.

             
"Matthew says he taught you to shoot," David said, a challenge in his expression that I recognized from every playground dare.

             
It met the restlessness inside me.  "He did.  I asked him to."

             
"He said you're pretty good," Henry put in.

             
I raised my eyebrows quite high.  "
Pretty good
?"

             
Henry shrugged elaborately.  "Not as good as him, of course.  But good."  He looked up from his elaborate nonchalance.  "For a girl."

             
Oh, I was so being played.  "Well, and are you any good at shooting?  Can you shoot better
than a girl
?  Or did you come to ask me for a lesson?"

             
He sputtered so hard, his brother nudged him and I almost broke out laughing.  "I don't need no lessons."

             
"
Any
lessons," David corrected, trying hard not to grin.

             
"And maybe you do," I added, trying to get his goat.  It wasn't a fair fight.  I'd apparently gotten his goat before I even became involved in the conversation.  When Matthew told him I could shoot and that I was
pretty good
, apparently I'd brought out the male in Henry.

             
"Come on," I said, holding out my hand as I would to a small child.  "Let's go find Matthew and get his gun, and Matthew himself, if he's up to the challenge, and we'll go see which of us girls shoot the best."

              "Was there a reason you were trying to make my brother explode?" Matthew asked as we trailed behind the younger Longrens in the sunny, but cold, afternoon.  He carried the Colt on his hip.  I carried a basket with a picnic lunch his mother had packed.  His brothers carried guns their father had handed out warily and a sack of old cans and bottles.

             
"Entertainment purposes," I said lightly and was rewarded with only the smallest of smiles.  Matthew was going with us, but he wasn't back yet.  Still mired in his thoughts, in what he could have done and should have done when there wasn't anything else and everything had turned out for the best.

             
I was grateful, just then, for nothing more than that he was accompanying us.

              They set up the cans and bottles along the bank of a stream that ran through the Longren property, far enough away from any of the herds not to startle or chance wounding one, no matter how poor a shot the girl was, I suppose the thinking went.

             
As the sun came and went from clouds and the day warmed slightly and cooled significantly in October glory, we ate our lunch and sat talking about nothing in particular, with long silences filled with bird song.  At last, Matthew's brothers rose and set up the targets.

             
They went first.  It was their idea and they were the ones with the most to prove.  I had nothing in particular I wanted to prove.  I'd learned to shoot, I did it well, better, I thought, than Matthew, unless he had been humoring me, and I didn't think so.  I wasn't of a mind to let the boys out-shoot me, but watching Matthew as he brooded at the stream, I wondered if I should let him win.

             
Just as fast, I decided against it.  He'd know.  He already felt sorry enough for himself.  He didn't need both of us doing it.