To Have and to Hold (Cactus Creek Cowboys) (11 page)

“Why was it wandering around out here?” Naomi asked.

“I expect it’s because of some tragedy.”

“You mean Indians?” Ben asked, subdued.

“It could be that a wagon broke down so completely it couldn’t be repaired and they let their oxen loose.”

“Cholera has been reported all across the country this year,” Dr. Kessling said. “It can wipe out whole families.”

“Can that ox make us sick?” Ben asked.

“No.”

“Can we have it?”

“If you want it,” Colby said.

“It would be nice to have three full yokes,” Dr. Kessling said. “I’ve been worried we might be asking too much of the ones left to pull this heavy wagon.”

“I’ve been watching them,” Colby said. “They’re still okay. I was going to stop for a day if they needed more rest.”

“That wouldn’t have been fair to everybody else,” her father protested.

“The best interest of the train is served by making sure everyone’s stock and equipment is equally fit. You wouldn’t have left anyone behind who suffered a broken wheel, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we wouldn’t overwork any single team.”

The ox preferred freedom to the harness, but it didn’t take Colby long to get it yoked and hitched to the wagon. “Think you can handle three teams?” he asked Ben.

“You bet.”

“I’ll make sure he does,” his father said.

“Is there anything else?” Colby had turned to Naomi when he asked that question.

“I need to talk to some of the women about making Cassie feel she’s a part of this group. I didn’t realize no one was talking to her.”

“I can help with that,” her father said. “There’s nobody like a doctor for giving advice. They’re used to us telling them things they don’t want to hear.”

Ben had no interest in Cassie or her baby. “Can I have Papa’s horse?”

“Maybe this afternoon,” his father said. “This morning you have to teach this ox how to be part of our team.”

“I’ll tether the horse to the back of your wagon,” Colby said.

“That’s a mighty thoughtful man,” her father said to Naomi after Colby left. “I wish he were going all the way to Santa Fe with us.”

“Me, too,” Ben said. “I like him.”

“Everybody likes him,” his father said. “Considering our group, that says a lot.”

Naomi wondered if her father would be so sanguine if he had any idea how much she liked Colby.

***

“Are you sure you want to take care of the baby the whole afternoon?”

Colby was grinning at Naomi.

“You looked like you were about to swallow your tongue when you offered. I’d have sworn you spoke before you thought.”

“I did,” Naomi confessed. “I was feeling so guilty about an uncharitable thought I overcompensated.”

“What uncharitable thought?”

“Never mind.”

She had cleaned up after the midday meal. The men were either watching the livestock as they grazed or trying to catch a nap in the shade of the wagons. There wasn’t a tree in sight.

Rather than stay in Cassie’s wagon, Naomi had brought the baby back to her wagon. She was sitting in the shade cast by it. “Why aren’t you taking a nap?” she asked Colby

“I’d rather watch you take care of this baby.”

“Are you waiting for me to make a mistake?”

“Would I do that?” He could keep a straight face, but he couldn’t hide the merriment in his eyes.

“Don’t you believe every woman is a natural mother?”

“I don’t believe everybody is a natural anything.”

“Okay, do you believe every woman should be a mother?”

“Definitely not. My mother should have been barred from going anywhere near children.”

“Let me try once more. Do you believe every woman should be married?”

“No more than I believe every man should be married.”

“Everybody in Kentucky expected to be married and have a family.”

“There are several times as many men as women out here. In some places, there are no women at all, nice or otherwise.”

“Then why do the men come out here?”

“Adventure and excitement. Freedom from traditional restraints. To make their fortune or just find a place of their own. Some intend to go back. Others left something behind they hope won’t follow them. Still others are bad men who would be dead or in jail if they’d stayed east of the Mississippi.”

Naomi settled the baby into a more comfortable position. “You don’t make the West sound like a very attractive place for a woman.”

“It’s a perfect place for a certain kind of woman. I think it might be the perfect place for you.”

Unsure how to interpret that, Naomi asked, “Why do you say that?”

“We need women with the strength of character and independence of spirit to match the men who are trying to tame this wild country. At the same time, we need the civilizing influence and settling habits of women who want to have families and build something permanent. I think you have just the right combination of those traits.”

Naomi didn’t know what to say. She’d never attempted to analyze herself in the manner Colby obviously had. While she was sure he meant it as a compliment, it reduced her to a list of impersonal traits, much the same way you would list the strengths and faults of a horse you were thinking about buying. She’d always viewed herself as a single personality, not a collection of traits that may or may not mesh into a satisfactory whole.

“I’m not sure I like the West. Even without the Indians and snakes, it’s not a pleasant place. It’s hot and dry, water is scarce, and trees are virtually nonexistent. The land is flat and the wind blows all the time. I’ve hardly seen any birds or flowers, while wolves lurk in the tall grass. I haven’t seen a town or village in more than a month, and there’s no such thing as a house, school, or church. People are free to indulge in violence without fear of retribution. If you can’t grow it or make it, you have to do without it. Strength rather than virtue is respected, and force rather than right rules the day.”

“I can see why you wanted to go back to Spencer’s Clearing. Do the others share your opinions?”

“I can’t see how they could feel otherwise. You’ve lived your whole life here, and what do you have to show for it?”

She hadn’t meant to be so blunt, but there was something about holding Cassie’s baby and seeing the world as Cassie must be seeing it that caused her to feel vulnerable. What about this miserable land could make her want to settle here, induce her to squander her
strength
of
character
and
independence
of
spirit
in an effort to build a life in a land that lacked nearly everything she considered good about being alive?

His faint look of surprise and disappointment told her she’d offended Colby, but she didn’t know what else he could have expected her to say.

“I didn’t mean there’s anything wrong with
you
, but you have only the clothes on your back. How could you support a wife and family?”

Before he could answer, the baby made a grunting sound and a frightful odor assailed her nose.

Naomi held the child away from her body.

“What’s wrong?” Colby asked.

“What do you think? There’s nothing wrong with your nose.”

Colby laughed. “Want some help?”

Naomi looked at him like he was crazy. “I’ve never met a man who wouldn’t rather do the roughest, most dangerous and disagreeable work he could find rather than change a baby.”

“Give me the baby.”

“You might drop him.”

“I’ve held newborn calves and foals. I expect a baby is a lot easier.”

Naomi reluctantly handed the baby to Colby who wrinkled his nose.

“The sooner we take care of this the better. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Down to the river.”

Colby held the baby out in front of him and Naomi followed. What would have been an innocuous and uninteresting ritual became embarrassing when every person they passed knew exactly what had happened. The men laughed, but the women and children, hungry for anything that promised to be entertaining, abandoned their naps and followed. Soon Colby was leading a noisy parade to the river.

“You going to toss him in?” Bert Hill, Reece’s oldest boy, asked.

“He’s going to build a boat like it says in the Bible and let him float away,” said another.

“I can’t wait to see this,” Elsa Drummond said to Mae Oliver. “In more than forty years, I have yet to see a man change a diaper.”

“I’ll lay you odds he sticks his fingers with both pins,” Alma Hale said to Alice Vernon.

“Is he really going to change the baby’s diaper?” Sibyl asked Naomi.

“That’s what he said.”

Colby took no notice of the loud, curious, and disrespectful audience. “I never realized changing a diaper could be so interesting.”

“It’s not,” Pearl Sumner told him. “Seeing you change a diaper is.”

Naomi was relieved to see Opal was one of the laughing children gathered around.

Colby joined in the fun. “As you see,” he announced, “the problem is a baby with a stinky diaper.”

“You don’t have to tell us that,” Bert called out. “We all got noses.”

“So what are we going to do about it?”

“Toss him in the river,” Bert suggested.

Colby laid the baby down on the riverbank. “I can see why your mother would have been tempted to toss you in the river, but we actually like Little Abe.”

Bert’s little brothers pounced on him with glee, the three of them roughhousing like frisky puppies.

“The idea is to get rid of the stink and keep the baby,” Colby said, “but first I take off the diaper.”

“Watch the pins,” one of the women cautioned.

Colby managed to remove the diaper without doing damage to himself. “You youngsters should observe while Naomi rinses the diaper so you’ll know what to do when you have your own kids.”

Ted Drummond looked toward Amber Sumner. “I’m not washing any diapers. That’s for my wife.”

“If you can find any girl desperate enough to marry you,” Amber replied.

The chorus of laughter didn’t dent Ted’s spirits any more than the noisy teasing and shouted responses bothered Colby.

“Being on the lazy side, I like to take the easy way out.” Colby waded into the river and lowered the baby until his bottom was submerged. “Once the diaper is off, the river makes a quick job of it.”

Some people laughed while others jeered. Little Abe slapped the water with his hands. After swishing him around a bit, Colby lifted the baby from the water and announced, “All clean. Once he’s dry, he’ll be as good as new.”

Nearly every female above the age of two converged on Colby. One took the baby while another dried him. Once he was diapered, everyone wanted to hold him.

“They act like they didn’t know he existed until now,” Colby said to Naomi. “What did they think Cassie gave birth to, a groundhog?”

“You did that.”

“What?”

“
That
.” She indicated the women and children around the baby. “I don’t know
how
it worked any more than I know
why
it worked, but you made Little Abe a part of our community.”

“By washing his butt in the river? It’s got to be more than that.”

“He’s a baby without a father and a mother who’s little more than a child herself. Everybody knew that before, but he wasn’t
ours
. Now he is.”

Colby stared at Naomi, then the women, then back at Naomi. His expression was one of complete bafflement. “I think every woman in the train has bats in her belfry,” he said finally.

“Careful,” Naomi said when she stopped laughing, “or you’ll destroy your image of a rough, untutored man of the wilderness.”

“We have churches with bell towers in Santa Fe,” Colby retorted. “Even untutored men like myself know what they are.”

“Don’t tell Ben. He likes to imagine you were reared by wolves.”

Colby scowled. “More like a snarling mountain lion and a two-faced coyote.”

“Do coyotes have two faces? It must be hard to keep two mouths fed and two faces clean.”

Colby burst out laughing. “You’re as crazy as the rest of your crowd.”

Suddenly the Hill boys burst from the group and headed back toward the wagons at a run. Colby grabbed Bert by the collar. “What’s the hurry?”

“Mama started talking about when we were babies.”

“That made all the girls laugh,” complained his brother.

“I was never cute.”

“You forgot adorable,” his brother reminded him.

“I wasn’t that, either.”

“I’m sure you were a pesky little urchin with dirt behind his ears and a rip in his pants,” Colby said.

“Did that happen to you, too?” the youngest boy asked.

“Got my head dunked in the horse trough I don’t know how many times.”

The boys grinned at the thought of a big man like Colby getting dunked.

“Now you’d better finish your nap,” Colby said. “It’ll soon be time to hitch up the wagons.”

“I don’t need no nap,” Bert insisted.

His brothers were equally adamant they didn’t need naps.

“Why don’t you watch the mules to make sure nobody steals them? If you hide under the wagon, nobody will see you.”

“Morley Sumner is watching the mules,” Bert said. “Ain’t nobody going to steal anything from him.”

“You’d better watch just in case someone sneaks up behind his back.”

The boys trudged off trying to decide who would watch first.

Naomi turned to Colby. “I never heard such nonsense come out of your mouth. And you had me thinking you were serious all the time. First you sweet-talk every female in the camp into being nutty over Cassie’s baby, then you gull those boys into thinking they need to guard the mules.”

“They’ll be sound asleep in less than ten minutes. I was a boy at one time, you know.”

“Somehow I find that hard to believe, at least not a boy like Reece’s boys.”

“No, I wasn’t like these boys, but I knew some who were. We got into trouble together then had to think of a yarn that wasn’t so far from the truth nobody would believe us.”

Naomi shook her head. “I’ll never be able to look at you the same way after this.”

“Considering what you used to think of me, that’s a relief.”

The easy, relaxed feeling disappeared immediately.

“I’ve already told you that my feelings have changed.”

“But you haven’t told me what they are now.”

Naomi was saved from having to answer by a gaggle of women and girls heading toward Colby. “Get ready for a little halo polishing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They do have churches attached to those belfries, don’t they?”

“Of course. I’ve even been inside one or two.”

“Then you know saints have halos. You earned yours by saving Opal. Changing Little Abe’s diaper warrants a polishing. You also gave him a name. He’s going to be Little Abe no matter what Cassie decides.”

“You can’t be serious about that halo thing.”

“Wait and see.”

Within moments Colby was surrounded. Having proved himself adept at handling medical and everyday emergencies, they bombarded him with a multitude of questions that would have caused an ordinary red-blooded male to turn tail and run. Naomi was amused at first, but gradually her amusement turned to admiration. It wasn’t that Colby could answer the questions. He couldn’t. It was the way he encouraged them to evaluate the problems and come up with their own answers. The whole community, he said, was more likely than any one person to come up with the best answer. He said there was rarely one answer for everybody, that each person should look for the best answer for them.

Pearl Sumner and Mae Oliver were the first to leave the group. “He’s a remarkable young man,” Pearl said as she placed Little Abe in Naomi’s arms. “You should convince him to stay with us once we reach Santa Fe.”

“Why would he listen to me?”

“He likes you,” Mae said.

“And you like him,” Pearl said. “Don’t try to deny it,” she said when Naomi opened her mouth to object.

“He’s not the kind of man I would have wanted for you if we’d stayed in Kentucky, but he’s what a woman like you needs out here.” Mae was Naomi’s mother’s second cousin, but she treated Naomi like a daughter after her mother died.

“He is interesting,” Naomi admitted.

“And attractive,” Pearl said. “Just what any woman would want.”

Mae wasn’t in total agreement. “Maybe after a fashion.”

Pearl motioned Sibyl and Laurie to join them. “Do you find Colby attractive?” she asked.

“Sure,” Sibyl said then laughed. “He hasn’t a penny to his name or a change of clothes, but he’s completely outshone Norman.”

Pearl turned to Laurie. “What do you think?”

She looked stricken. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“You don’t have to pretend with us,” Mae said.

“I really
haven’t
thought about it,” Laurie insisted. “I sometimes swear Noah can see inside my head.”

“Well think about it now,” Mae said.

Laurie turned to where Colby was talking to Elsa Drummond. “I think he’s perfect. If I weren’t married, I’d chase him down and tie him up.” She laughed, a little hysterically. “If you hear Noah shouting at me tonight, it’ll be your fault. Now I’d better go.” She hooked her arm in Sibyl’s and the two cousins walked back to the wagons.

“I’ll never understand why her father insisted on marrying her to that dried-up shell,” Mae said.

“Money,” was Pearl’s succinct answer.

“Money wouldn’t have been enough to get me to marry him, and he’s my age.”

“With that body, her parents were afraid she might get in trouble.”

Naomi envied the lush curves and blond prettiness that compelled the attention of every man who laid eyes on Laurie. Unfortunately nature’s bounty hadn’t brought her happiness.

“Colby is coming this way,” Pearl told Naomi. “You can change his mind. I know you can.”

“The only reason that would give me the right to try would be that I wanted to marry him. He fell in love some time ago, which I gather didn’t end well.”

“Why would he tell you about that?”

“I was trying to avoid him in the beginning. He told me so I wouldn’t be afraid he might make improper advances.”

Pearl subjected Colby to a moment’s scrutiny. “He doesn’t look like a man suffering from unrequited love to me.”

“He wouldn’t be if he was interested in Naomi,” Mae said.

“He’s not interested in me, and I won’t try to talk him into changing his plans.”

Pearl sighed. “It seems such a waste to let some other female get him.”

They couldn’t say more because Colby and Elsa Drummond came to join them.

“He’s a perfect baby,” Elsa said of Little Abe. “I’ve never heard him cry.”

“Hopefully he won’t until I take him back for Cassie to feed him,” Naomi said.

“Why isn’t he with his mother?” Elsa asked as they headed back to the wagons.

“She needed a break. She’s had a horrible week and no one to help her with the baby.”

“We can help,” Elsa offered. “There are a dozen females with nothing to do most of the day.”

By the time they reached the wagons, the women had organized a week’s help for Cassie.

Colby shook his head. “At this rate, Cassie will barely have time to feed him.”

“And all because of you.”

“It’s you,” Colby said. “You’re one of them, and they trust you. You reached out to Cassie so they felt free to follow your example.”

Naomi was distantly related to a third of the people in Spencer’s Clearing, but that had never given her any influence. She couldn’t imagine why that should have changed now. “It doesn’t matter who did what or why things changed. I’m just glad they have.”

“Maybe it will give people something to think about other than why they hate each other.”

“Nobody hates anybody.”

“Have you seen the way Frank Oliver looks at Norman? That’s hate.”

“He’s just upset over Toby’s death.”

“Everyone’s
upset
over Toby’s death. What Frank feels is something else.”

“Do you think he’ll go after Norman again?”

“I don’t know, but if I held a man responsible for my only son’s death, I’d want to kill him in the slowest and most painful way I could devise.”

The coldness, the biting edge to his voice, caused Naomi to stare at Colby. “Could you kill a man in cold blood?”

“I wouldn’t hesitate.”

She shuddered. “It’s a good thing you don’t have a child.” When something inside Colby seemed to go dead, she asked, “You don’t have a child, do you?”

He answered between gritted teeth. “You know I’m not married.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“I know what it
doesn’t
mean, but I don’t have a child. Do you think I’d leave it if I did?”

“I don’t think you would. No, I
know
you wouldn’t.”

“Now that we’ve settled that, let’s forget it. You need to get out of the sun, and I need to check on the livestock.”

Okay, he didn’t have a child, but there was more to his having fallen in love than he’d told her. She told herself to stop trying to come up with answers. It was none of her business. Yet she couldn’t stop wondering if Colby was still in love with that woman.

***

Except for Paul Hill, whose turn it was to watch the livestock, everyone was taking advantage of the opportunity for a nap. For the last three days, a cloudless sky had allowed the sun’s rays to beat down on them unmercifully. Colby had announced that they were to take a longer midday rest and drive later in the evening when it was cooler. Naomi had tried to sleep, but she was too restless.