This Loving Land (2 page)

It was unbearably hot in the closely-packed stagecoach, and remembering the deep coolness of home—the Piney Woods—Summer felt even hotter under her cape of blue-black hair. She was pretty, sitting there in her cotton dress, the sun shooting lights through her hair. Small, pretty and determined; she was nineteen years old and she was on her way west with an eight-year-old boy in tow.

The girl’s face showed lines of tiredness, but the black-fringed violet eyes refused to close. She was determined to stay awake, using her hat to fan the flushed face of the child sleeping in her lap.

He was very dear to her, this small brother of hers. She had brought him up virtually alone. When he was three, their papa had been killed—a wheel of the wagon he was driving collapsed, throwing him and their mother down a steep incline. Their mother’s back was injured, and after that she never left her bed until the day she died. The responsibility of raising the boy and caring for her invalid mother had pressed heavily on the shoulders of the fourteen-year-old girl.

Summer watched the perspiring face of the sleeping child with troubled, patient eyes, as the slight breeze created by the hat lifted the damp hair on his forehead. They had come a long way from the Piney Woods.

Across from her sat a ranch woman in her forties or fifties; it was hard to tell a woman’s age in this country where the wind and dust ate into the skin, making it old and wrinkled after only a few years. The older woman sniffed and looked out the window. Summer knew what the gesture meant. She was piqued because she hadn’t opened up and told her their family history. The woman had been explicit with her inquiries, and Summer had told her no more than that a family friend awaited them in Hamilton.

“It’s a good thing. Hamilton’s no place for a girl alone.”

Summer didn’t tell her about the letter she had received signed simply S. McLean, or that the letter had contained the startling news that she and her brother owned a plot of land with a cabin on it. The letter had been short and curt, without warmth or welcome, but it was a letter nevertheless, and Summer’s hopes clung to the security of the written words.

They rode on in silence as still as the land they were passing through. The land looked lonely, Summer thought wistfully. She understood loneliness, because she had often been lonely herself—in between dilemmas, that is. And there had been dilemmas. Every day. What to do on a cold, windy night when she thought her mother was going to die? Should she run for help, leaving the five-year-old to watch his dying mother? Her mother, whose days were numbered, or the small boy with his life before him? It had not been an easy decision. She had stayed, and her mother had lived—to die three years later, under the very same circumstances. Her sweet, patient mother, who had suffered in silence, had left her and John Austin scarcely three months ago.

Summer smoothed the hair from the boy’s face with long, slender fingers. He has no one but me, she thought sadly. Then her eyes widened and the sadness was replaced by hope. No one but me and Sam McLean.

A nagging recollection of the hill country where she had lived as a small child with her mother until her papa came back from the war tugged at her memory. She vaguely remembered someone squatting down in front of her and saying: “Don’t cry, summertime girl. You go on with your ma and get all growed up and then I’ll come. I’ll come and fetch you home.”

The shadows were longish across the road as the horses sped through their own dust cloud, and into the new town of Hamilton that had sprung to life in 1850, just two short years ago. One rider raced ahead of them down the rutted road, hallooing to announce the arrival of the stage. The big Concord creaked to a halt in front of a lean-to with a shiny tin roof. Grubbi1y dressed men swarmed around the coach from all sides, craning their necks to see who was inside.

“This is Hamilton, John Austin,” she whispered to the tousled boy.

He did not reply. He was watching the dust as it lifted and drifted away, and wondered why he couldn’t see the wind that carried it. There must be a reason. He wished he had someone to ask. Summer was too busy taking care of them to think about the wind. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear what his sister was saying. Her voice drifted over and about his head, like the wind, but he knew well enough what she said: “Stay close to me, give me your hand.”

Summer stood beside the grimy coach and waited with the other passengers for the driver’s helper to hand down her trunk. She held tightly to John Austin’s hand, in case he saw something that interested him and tried to wander away. She glanced shyly at the people lined up to meet the stage: cowboys, drifters, soldiers from Fort Croghan. No one came forward to speak to her, but their interest was so embarrassing that she turned her eyes toward the stage driver and kept them there. In that brief look at the bystanders, she saw no one she would take for Sam McLean.

The driver climbed down, then reached up and swung their trunk to the boardwalk.

“Someone a meetin’ you, miss?”

“I don’t know. Ah . . . arrangements were made for us to stay at the hotel.” Her voice, which had begun strongly, coolly, faltered to a near-stop under the steady gaze of the driver.

Summer let her eyelids drop over her eyes and failed to see the expression of softness come over the weathered face.

“Wait right here. I’ll take you up there myself soon as I’m done. Ain’t no call fer you and the kid to be a walkin’ up there by yoreself.”

Summer hadn’t known how apprehensive she was until she realized how much his words relieved her. Pride made her cover up quickly.

“Thank you. Arrangements have been made for us,” she repeated, lifting her chin, shaking her head a little.

Hamilton, Burnet County, Texas, was not much of a place from what she could see. The wind blew dust clouds through the early darkness and drove grit into her eyes, making it just that much more difficult to see it. But as they waited for the driver, she was able to take a quick look around and her face fell. She’d seen quite a few new towns on the journey west, but she’d not set eyes on one as primitive as this. It was a hodge-podge of unpainted buildings and lean-to’s like the one used as the stage stop, and was strung out along a rutted track. Very few lights glowed in a street that swarmed with men, teams and wagons, saddle horses and soldiers.

The driver nodded to Summer and shouldered her trunk. She picked up her valise and, pulling John Austin along beside her, followed closely as he stepped off the boardwalk into the dusty street. It was all very new to her—this rawness, wildness, newness. Music, played on a twangy, out-of-tune piano drifted from one of the buildings they passed, a dance hall where men could have a rousing gallop around the plank floor with one of the girls employed there. There were only three or four horses tied in front of the building; but then, the night had just begun.

Her first look at the hotel told Summer why the driver had elected to escort them. One of the town’s four or five wooden buildings, it was hard to distinguish from the saloon. Split log steps climbed to a board porch lined with benches, occupied by an assortment of men of all ages and, from their attire, all occupations.

A handsomely-dressed man in a dark frock-coat and ruffled white shirt lifted his bowler hat as she passed. His dark eyes roamed her figure boldly, and he showed even white teeth beneath a trim black mustache when he smiled, knowingly, at the crimson that flooded her face. He moved to approach her, bowing slightly, then whirled away, as if suddenly changing his mind.

There were two slatted, swinging doors leading off the porch into the saloon and a tall, narrow door that opened into the long, thin hotel lobby. A fat-faced man sat behind a counter eating a bowl of stew that reeked of chili powder. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and got to his feet.

“Ya got lodgers, Bill?”

“You got room for ’em?”

“If’n they’s the Kuykendall kids I do.” He grinned at Summer, showing that most of his upper teeth had been removed.

“Well, one of ’em ain’t a kid, so watch yore manners.”

“Is them the Kuykendalls, Bill?” A short, bowlegged, gray-whiskered man came puffing in through the saloon door. “Ain’t ya in a mite soon?”

“No, I ain’t a mite soon. And you ain’t neither.” Bill eased the trunk off his shoulder and lowered it to the floor. “You ain’t never been on time in yore life, Bulldog!”

“Well . . . I . . .” Bulldog’s expression was of surprise, then pleasure, as he stopped speaking and looked at Summer.

Summer looked back with interest, then shook her head, an unconscious habit of hers when confronted with curious eyes. The lamplight caught the movement, and her hair shone blue-black against the walls of the room. Dust clung to her face and dress and her hair was disheveled, but no one noticed, least of all the man called Bulldog. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

“You were expecting children? Didn’t Mr. McLean tell you about me and my brother?”

“Well, yes’m, he did. But he didn’t say nothin’ ’bout one of ya bein’ so growed-up.”

“One of us is indeed growed up, as you can see.” Pride added a touch of hauteur to her voice.

“Yes’m. He tol’ me a boy and young lady. I jist never give it no thought you’d be so growed and purty.”

“You got a room or don’t ya?” The stage driver was impatient to be on his way.

“They got a room. Give me the key.” Bulldog picked up the key, lifted the trunk, and started up the stairs.

“He’ll look after you, miss. Don’t pay no never mind to how he looks, but listen to what he says.” The driver chuckled.

“Thank you,” Summer called after the ambling form of their driver.

The room at the end of the upstairs hall was small, but had a good-sized bed and a cot. A bureau and washstand with a blue-glazed pitcher and bowl were the only other furnishings.

Bulldog set the trunk at the foot of the bed, and John Austin went immediately to the window to look down on the busy street.

“Ma’am, I’m just plain old sorry I warn’t thar to meet ya.”

Summer smiled. Her heart was lighter than it had been in months. This man, this small, grizzled cowboy, was her first link with the Sam McLean who would take care of them. All she had to do, her mother said, was tell him who she was. He would take the responsibility for John Austin.

“It’s all right. The driver looked after us.” Her mouth curved in a lovely, sweet smile and her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Will Mr. McLean be coming for us?”

Bulldog looked uncomfortable. “No, ma’am.”

It was the expression and not the words that affected her. She went quite still, as if she were suddenly depleted of all strength. Her hands pressed down the sides of her dress.

“You’re taking us to him?”

“No, ma’am . . . yes’m . . . thar aint nothin’ but a creek a’tween the two places. Yore place is fixed up real good fer ya, and ya can have a Mex woman to come and stay if ya wants.” His hard hands twisted his hat. He sensed her disappointment and didn’t know what to say.

Disappointment wasn’t exactly the word for what Summer felt. Heartsick might have described her feelings better, or anger at herself for her impossible dreams. And dream she had, because she needed hope badly. She had built up an imagined figure; a tall, strong rancher, hard from life on the prairie, but kind. He would be someone of their own . . . a second father, a friend. Was it possible her mother had been mistaken? That Sam McLean didn’t want to be responsible for them? How could she and John Austin make a living out on a homestead, even if it was just across the creek from Sam McLean’s?

Summer swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked. Her small, round chin tilted, her dignity returned in the guise of very stiff, proud posture.

“It was kind of Mr. McLean to see us to our . . . ah . . . homestead. Please express our appreciation and tell him we’ll try not to be a bother.” Summer’s lips pressed together, revealing more in silence than in words.

Bulldog scratched his head and looked down at his feet.

“Can I trouble you for one more thing?” Summer was sorry now, impatient with herself for her cool words. “My brother will be hungry, and I don’t know if we should go down on the street alone.”

“No, ma’am, ya ain’t better. Anything happen to ya and I’d have my hide took right off.” His faded blue eyes crinkled when he grinned. “I think it best to have some grub sent up fer ya and the boy. And—ma’am, I’ll be here in the mornin’ to take you all out to the Keep. Ain’t no more than twenty-five or thirty miles out. McLean’s Keep reaches way out to Spider Mountain. Now, that’s a fer piece.”

“McLean’s Keep? Is that Mr. McLean’s ranch?”

“Yup.”

It was clear he was not giving out any more information about his employer than he had to.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bulldog. It isn’t your fault that Mr. McLean didn’t choose to meet us. There must be a reason, and I’d rather he not know of my disappointment and think us ungrateful for what he’s already done for us.”

John Austin, leaning forward, elbows on the window sill and chin cupped in his hands, was not listening. He was watching the street, and particularly a fight in progress in front of the saloon. He always left everything to Summer. Summer would know how to handle things. She always did.