The Reluctant Bride (42 page)

“You’re the one who chose the place.”

“You
chose the place by following me here.”

“Did you think I’d let you leave and not follow?”

“You’re not responsible for me. I can go anywhere I please.”

“Not here. I won’t let you.”

Tanzy tried to walk past him, but Russ grabbed her wrist. She tried to pull loose, but he wouldn’t release her.

“Why did you leave?”

“I told you from the beginning I would never have anything to do with a man who was involved in a feud.”

“This is
not
a feud.”

“Call it what you want; people have died, buildings have been burned, cattle have been stolen. That’s more than enough for me.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not the same out here.”

“That’s another thing,” Tanzy said. “Every time I disagree with you, you say I don’t understand, that people do things differently out here”

“They do.”

That’s
your
opinion. Mine is that people are the same everywhere.”

“Something as small as that and you’d walk out on everything we had?”

Tanzy pulled her wrist from his slackened grasp. The light was poor in the hall, but she could see his face. He looked hurt, angry … afraid. “What did we have, Russ?”

“Everything.”

“We had a few brief hours when we
thought
we had everything. But morning came, as it always does, and daylight showed us nothing had changed. I was mistaken. You were mistaken.”

“We
weren’t mistaken.” He gripped her tightly by the shoulders. “Tell me what I have to do to get you back. I’ll do anything.”

Russ’s look of entreaty nearly destroyed Tanzy’s resolve to keep him from knowing what she was trying to do. She couldn’t let Russ know because he’d do everything he could to stop her.

“I won’t go back to the ranch. You and the boys will have to suffer with Welt’s cooking.”

“I don’t give a damn about Welt’s cooking. I don’t care if you never cook again. I want you back. I love you. I want to marry you. I want—”

Tanzy had to force herself to say, “We both tried, but we failed.”

“We didn’t fail. We didn’t even get a chance to try.”

“Another instance when you don’t respect my opinion.”

This is not about respecting opinions. You say you love me one night and the next day you leave. It’s like some child’s game, now you see it, now you don’t.”

Tanzy had to get away from Russ. If she didn’t, she was going to start crying. “I’ve said all I’ve got to say. I have to go.”

He reached out for her wrist again. She turned to face him. “What are you going to do? You don’t have a job. I know Ethel didn’t give you back the teaching job.”

“I asked Stocker for a job. I’ll begin working in his saloon tonight.”

She might as well have slapped him. It couldn’t have shocked him more. “I won’t let you work for that bastard.”

“I can work for anyone I please.”

“But this is a saloon.”

“I know, but Ethel will tell you working in a saloon is no different from working in a gambling hall.”

“I don’t give a damn what Ethel thinks.”

“Neither do I. It seems we do agree on one thing.”

“What is going on?” Stocker’s raised voice nearly drowned out Russ’s words. “What are you doing in my saloon, you lying, thieving murderer? Get out before I have you thrown out.”

“I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here,” Russ said, “but I’m not leaving without Tanzy.”

“She’s working for me now.”

“I won’t let her.”

“You can’t stop me from hiring her.”

“I can stop you by breaking your lying, cheating neck.”

“Both of you stop acting like little boys,” Tanzy said, moving between the two men before they started slugging each other. “I don’t need either of you to protect me. Stocker, if you’re going to start a fight every time somebody wants to talk to me, I won’t work for you.”

“I’m not starting a fight. It’s that—”

“And you,” she said, turning on Russ and cutting Stocker off, “are not going to start fights with anybody who will give me a job. Now you,” she said, turning back to Stocker, “have business to attend to, so go to your office and attend to it.”

“I won’t leave you here with that man.”

“Russ is not staying. He has a ranch to run, and he can’t do that from here.”

The two men glared at each other across her.

“I’m not moving until you do,” Tanzy said.

Still neither man moved.

“Stocker, I’m quitting this minute if you don’t go to your office. Russ, I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t leave this building.”

“If
you
don’t leave this building, we’ll have nothing to talk about.”

“In that case, you have no reason to stay.”

“You won’t come back?”

“No.”

“You’re going to work in Stocker’s saloon?”

“Yes.”

“I would have gone anywhere for you, done anything.”

She couldn’t speak. Her throat was too tight. She waited, and gradually she could see the hope die in him. The words he’d expected to change her mind hadn’t worked. Everything he’d dreamed had slipped beyond his grasp once more.

He turned and left without a word.

“Good. I hope that’s the last we see of that son of a bitch.”

Tanzy whirled on Stocker. “Let’s get one thing straight right from the beginning: I don’t know why you dislike Russ so much and I don’t care, but if you ever say anything like that about him to me again, I’ll walk out of here and never come back. Is that clear?”

“How the mighty have fallen.”

Betty Hicks had confronted Tanzy on the boardwalk: It was impossible to avoid talking to her without crossing the street. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you, you lying bitch.”

“Well, that’s making your opinion very clear, but I’m still not sure where I’ve fallen to or where I’ve fallen from.”

“Don’t play games with me.”

“I don’t recall doing anything with you except being forced to speak to you.”

“You can knock off the lady act. You’re no better than I am.”

“I never pretended I was. As you’ll recall, I didn’t believe working in a gambling hall made me a tramp.”

“You’ll find you’re wrong, especially now you’re nothing but a saloon girl.”

Tanzy smiled. “So you’ve heard already.”

“After the way Russ stormed through town, the place was buzzing. Everybody knows Russ threw you off his ranch and you came to Stocker begging for a job.”

Tanzy struggled to fight down the urge to set Betty straight, but she realized she’d have a better chance of finding out what Stocker was doing if everybody believed Russ had thrown her out rather than that she had left.

“Stacker offered me the job before,” Tanzy said.

“Well, now you’ll have to set your sights on somebody other than Russ Tibbolt.”

“So it seems. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

“You can drop those hoity-toity manners. They won’t be wanted in the saloon.”

“I can assure you whatever I do will be wanted.”

She just hoped she was wanted enough that she could get close to Stocker and find out what she needed to know.

“You can’t let her work for Mr. Pullet,” Tardy said. “You’ve got to bring her back.”

“She doesn’t want to come back,” Russ said. “Now forget it.”

“I can’t,” Tardy said. “She’s the only one who really likes me. Besides, I think Welt’s cooking will poison me.”

“In that case I’ll fix you something right now so we can have a little peace and quiet,” Welt said.

“You’ll have more peace and quiet than you can stand,” Tim said. “This place will be dull without her.”

Russ slammed his hand down on the table. “I’ve already told you, she doesn’t want to come back so stop talking about it.”

“Can’t one of us go ask her?” Tardy asked. “Maybe you asked her wrong.”

“Too late,” Welt said, disgust in his voice. “He never did know how to handle a woman.”

“Which is all the more reason for me not to get married,” Russ said.

“But if you married her, maybe you could learn,” Tardy said. “Being around these guys is nothing like being around a woman.”

That came close to making Russ smile.

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Welt said. “Have you any more words of wisdom or timeless advice before I throttle you?”

“Yes, I do,” Tardy said, his mouth tightening stubbornly “I don’t know what went wrong, but you’ll be real sorry if you don’t fix it. You won’t ever find a woman like Miss Gallant around here again, not if you live to be a hundred.” With that he jumped up and stalked out of the cabin.

“Eat your supper,” Russ said to the others. “I’ll go after him. Maybe I can do better with a troubled youth. At least I know what that’s like.”

Tardy had run off to the corral in the trees behind the cabin. Russ found him leaning on the fence, a betraying moisture in his eyes. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’re all going to miss her.”

“You’ve got each other. She was all I had.”

“You’ve got us.”

“It’s not the same. You think of me as a kid. I suppose I am, but I didn’t feel that way around Miss Gallant.”

“She was like that with all of us. Somehow she made us all feel a little bit special.”

“That’s because she likes people. She always saw what she thought I could become, not the stupid dope I am. I always tried harder because I didn’t want to let her down. Don’t you love her? She loves you.”

“How do you know that?”

“I may be a stupid boy, but I can see what’s in front of my face. She was always happier when you were around. She did little things because she knew you liked them. And she kept all those things you wrote. She used to read them over every day.”

Russ hadn’t known that.

“You never took your eyes off her,” Tardy continued. “Some evenings you’d sit in that big chair talking and acting like you were paying attention to what we were saying, but you’d be following her with your eyes.”

“It was better than looking at you or Tim.”

“You think I can’t tell when a person’s in love, but I can. I know you love Miss Gallant and I know she loves you. I was hoping you’d get married so I could live here with you.”

“You can still stay here.”

“I was hoping you’d have babies. I never had any brothers or sisters. I always wanted somebody I could hold and love. Babies don’t care if you’re lazy or ugly. They’ll love you anyway.”

The air had turned cool with the sinking of the sun. The gloom of the gathering dusk reflected Russ’s mood. He wondered how it could be that so many of the words coming out of Tardy’s mouth were his own, so many of his feelings shared as well. He wanted a wife and lover, but he wanted children, too. Someone who would love him without any qualification, would look up to him in awe, who’d think he was godlike, that his every word was wisdom, his every rule unquestioned. It was probably a character defect that he wanted to be loved like that, but after being scorned and hated for so long, he longed for it.

But no childlike love could take the place of the love of a woman who knew your faults, could list your imperfections without stopping for breath, and loved you anyway. He’d thought he’d found that with Tanzy. Despite what she said, he still didn’t understand what had gone wrong. He could have sworn she was willing to take a chance they could build a life free of the tension that had followed him for so long.

“I wanted just about the same thing,” Russ told Tardy.

“Then why did you let her go?”

“Because she didn’t want to come back. No matter how much you love a woman, how much you want her to be with you, you can’t force her. It won’t work. You’ll end up hating each other.”

“Do you hate Stocker?”

It surprised Russ to realize that in all the years Stocker had spent trying to ruin his life, he’d never asked himself that question. He’d thought he hated him, that he wanted him dead. He certainly thought he was a selfish, tyrannical man and wished Stocker would leave him alone, but that wasn’t the same as hating him. “No. I think he’s the worst man I know, but I don’t hate him. I guess I feel sorry he’s so miserable he has to be mean as a snake.”