Explaining Herself (14 page)

Suddenly, she was pretty too.

"What do you say, Kitty?" prompted Victoria
—and Laramie caught his breath. How many years had it been since he'd heard someone ask that?

What do you say to the nice storekeeper, Julie? Ross, what do you say to your brother?

"Ross?" Victoria's use of his Christian name, his Anglicized name, startled him further. "I mean
—Mr. Laramie?" She glanced toward Kitty to make sure the girl was distracted by the horse. "Are you all right?"

He looked over his shoulder at the two-story ranch house, with its porch and its blue shutters and its flower beds. A swing hung from a tree in the yard. A small, single gravestone stood amid another bed of flowers under an elm, some distance from the house but clearly in view.

This was how a family lived. Little girls. Home. High-buttoned shoes.
What do you say, Kitty ?

It wasn't his world, the world of rustlers and killers, and that hurt.

"You're welcome," he said to Kitty's polite thank-you, and led Blackie the rest of the way to the stables. He felt unbalanced, out of place, a blight on their
world. It bothered him enough that he did not try to find the words to ask Victoria any of the questions still haunting him.

Knowing her, she would tell him anyhow.

Chapter Ten

It was a beautiful August day for a ride into the thickly wooded foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, and Victoria could not be more pleased by the company.

She'd feared Ross was avoiding her after last week, especially since she'd made it clear that they mustn't indulge in similar behavior unless he were actually calling on her, like a respectable man would. He'd disappointed her by not offering to call. But he was here now, and he'd been kind to Kitty this morning.

And watching him ride was its own kind of joy. He sat his horse as if born to it, and although he wore pointed Spanish spurs, she did not see him touch his horse with them once.

"So Papa, Mr. Laramie," she said, to make conversation. "If you were rustlers, where would you hide?"

She'd expected Papa's doubtful look
—her literal father did not play the "if game very well. She'd forgotten how fearfully Kitty might react.

"They aren't hiding
here,
are they?" the girl asked from her secure seat in front of Papa, as if bad men would step out from behind the next copse of pines, bandannas pulled over their faces and pistols smoking in their hands.

Then again, to judge from the revolver on Ross's hip, and rifles holstered on both his and Papa's saddles
—as well as the way Ross stiffened at her question—maybe they might.

"No," assured Papa, narrowing his eyes in warning.

"No, puss, not here," Victoria assured her. "We use this path too often. Right, Mr. Laramie?"

His gaze, when he slanted it toward her, smoldered with an upset she couldn't even guess. It took her a long moment to realize that Papa, too, was waiting his answer.

"Maybe to the north," Ross offered finally, so softly that they almost didn't hear him over their horses' slow hoofbeats. "There's arroyos, box canyons."

"Been rustlers there before," noted Papa, returning his attention to the path in front of him.

All Ross said was "I've heard."

Victoria, however, sat up straighter in her sidesaddle, "/haven't. When were there rustlers up here?"

Papa ignored her to bend closer to Kitty's ear, whisper something, and point. Kitty's face lit up at the sight of the rabbit he'd spotted for her. He was good at ignoring Vic.

But the way Ross was still staring at Papa's back, eyes narrowed, intrigued her. Something
else
to find out.

"A family outfit," Ross finally offered, low and bitter
—he must really dislike rustlers. "Immigrants, yes?"

"Yep," said Papa.

Kitty said, "Families
rustle
together?"

It surprised Victoria too, though maybe it shouldn't. Families worked together in so many other businesses
—even crime, like the Roberts brothers who
were still at large after the train holdup. Why not rustling?

"Jest the menfolk," Papa assured them.

Ross asked,
"Were
there women?" If she hadn't spent as much time with him already, maybe Victoria wouldn't have noticed the odd note in his voice. But she did, and the undercurrents of his question drew her like a fly to blackberry cobbler.

Papa glanced back at him, unreadable. "Not rus-tlin'."

The silence that followed lasted for some time. And Victoria knew they weren't close to telling her everything.

Just watching Victoria Garrison ride, primly sidesaddle, was enough to remind Laramie how ill-qualified he was to court one of the rancher's daughters. If he needed further proof, he got it at the horse ranch Collier Pembroke was building with Victoria's older sister, Laurel.

The homestead wasn't terribly imposing at first. Their footpath joined into a wider track, not large enough to be called a road, and over the entrance hung a sign announcing "The Lorelei Ranch." But that title was burned into a wooden board and hung between two lodgepole pines. Nothing fancy.

When the original homestead came into view
—a rough corral of split logs, a lean-to for riding horses, a small claim shack with tar paper tacked around it— Laramie thought he could do better than that.

But then they rode around another copse of pines and into a finer reality. At least four corrals were nestled among the trees, so new that the end of the log rails hadn't fully weathered. A long, formal stables was painted to match a new, two-story house. It had glass windows, a shingled roof, white wood siding not yet
stained by rain or winter, and blue
—no, purple shutters.

"It's so beautiful!" declared Kitty happily, so he guessed it was new to the family as well.

"They only built it this June, after rounding up the wild horses," explained Victoria, which relieved him. She'd been awfully quiet for the second half of the ride. "It's a mail-order house; it came in pieces, and a whole bunch of us got together and built it in just one weekend."

They reined to a stop by the original homestead's corral, and Laramie knew that, even mail order, he could never build such a house. Somehow, that bothered him.

"Laurel and Collier married last November," Victoria continued, dismounting from her gelding's sidesaddle before anybody could offer assistance. "At first Laurel wanted a cattle ranch, but then they decided to raise
—"

The bugle of a horse
—unmistakably a stallion—interrupted her, and everyone looked uphill. Sure enough, a paint mustang paced his corral, clearly watching the new arrivals. As if to show off, he lifted backward onto his rear legs, pawing the air, trumpeting again.

A blond man stood in the corral as well, some distance from the beast, and raised a coiled rope in slow greeting.

Jacob Garrison growled something under his breath.

"He's not
that
close to it," defended Victoria, waving back. As if there was such a thing as being a safe distance from a stallion, much less what looked like a
wild
stallion.

Laramie glanced at her, annoyed by her innocence, noticed Garrison doing the same thing, and looked away.

A second figure strode toward them from the stables. She wore a man's hat and a man's shirt over a split skirt, and she resembled Victoria, maybe older. Her face wasn't as round, and she had straighter hair. "Hi, Papa!" exclaimed Laurel Pembroke. "Kitty-kat, come here! Hi, Vic!"

It took longer for Collier Pembroke to safely skirt the stallion, duck through the extra-high rails of the fence, then hike down from its more isolated corral. Victoria easily filled the time. After hugging her sister, she introduced Laramie to Mrs. Pembroke. She told about helping her sister homestead in the tar-paper cabin the previous summer. Mrs. Pembroke explained that they were breeding thoroughbreds with mustangs, for polo ponies. Then Victoria explained how they'd captured not just the bandit stallion, off in the high corral, but his band of almost thirty horses, most of which they'd sold for extra funds.

"Nobody will buy the stallion," Laurel Pembroke explained, taking her story back from her younger sister. Laramie saw her gaze settle on his gunbelt, though she said nothing of it. "So Cole's trying to gentle him."

Garrison snorted.

"If anybody can, it's Collier," insisted Mrs. Pembroke. "We can still, well,
alter
him if we have to, but Collier thinks it would be kinder to put him down than do that. So we'll try this first."

In his years of ranch work, Laramie had castrated more bull calves and yearling colts than he could count, much less remember. It was a necessity of raising livestock, no more, no less. But those animals were usually young.

He again glanced uphill toward the stallion, magnificent despite its mustang size, and he thought,
Collier's right.

"Kill
him?"
exclaimed Kitty. Laramie wasn't sure the child even knew what "altering" meant; it unsettled
him that her sisters did. But she clearly understood "put down." "Why don't you just let him go again, if nobody wants him?"

Garrison snorted again. This was clearly a topic of some contention between him and the Pembrokes.

"Because mustangs have a price on their head," explained Victoria patiently. "There's a reward for them, like outlaws. You know how the jail has Wanted posters that offer money for bad men, dead or alive?"

Eyes wide, Kitty shook her head.

"Oh." Victoria winced toward her father in an apology that did nothing to dispel his glare. "Well, there are. Since they're bad, like train robbers, a cash reward is offered to the person who brings them in. And there's a reward for the bandit stallion too, but only if he's dead."

Laramie wondered how many of his old companions had just such prices on their heads, and he liked the Pembrokes for not killing the mustang stallion for the bounty.

Kitty asked, "Is he a bad horse, then?"

"Yep," said Garrison firmly.

"No,"
protested Laurel, scowling at her father. "But I guess he is a thief, because if he's loose he'll just steal other people's mares again. He doesn't understand that they don't belong to him. It's his nature."

Garrison stared at her. "Don't make him
good."

The Englisher, a remarkably good-looking man, arrived with handshakes and hugs. He sounded pleasantly like Laramie's old boss from the WS Ranch when he spoke. The family sent Kitty off to the stables to see the foals, so that they could discuss the rustling without frightening her, and headed for the fine new house.

But Laramie glanced uphill again, to where the stallion watched them, and he thought the Pembrokes
were making a mistake trying to tame a wild creature like that.

Jacob Garrison was right. Whether a critter was bad from its upbringing, or its lack of understanding, or its nature, didn't matter.

Bad was bad.

Victoria had loved homesteading with her older sister, living by themselves, chopping wood and patching leaks and even shooting rattlesnakes on their own. It had been the first time in their lives they couldn't just call for Papa
—not quickly, anyhow—when things went wrong. She'd felt frightened, and excited, and capable, and ... and
free.

Then she got her job at the newspaper. Laurel married up with Lord Collier. And it all seemed over. Now Laurel was leading her guests into her sparsely furnished front parlor and asking if anybody wanted lemonade. Laurel the cowboy. Laurel the homesteader. Worse, when Papa said that would be fine, Laurel said, "Come and give me a hand, Vic?"

It wasn't that hot a ride.
The refusal had almost reached Vic's lips before her confused gaze glanced by Ross Laramie again. He still stood uncomfortably in the front foyer, as if unsure he qualified for the parlor, hip-shot and head down. His boots were awfully dusty. Back when he'd lifted Kitty onto his horse this morning, Vic had noticed the briefest wince, so she knew he was still hurting from whatever had been bandaged two weeks ago. And he'd ridden all this way without complaint.

Suddenly, she wanted him to have lemonade. So she spoke to the men instead of Laurel. "Don't say anything important."

The men looked innocent
—except Collier, who subtly caught his wife's hand as she passed, trailing their palms off to their fingers and then letting go.

When he noticed Vic noticing, Collier raised his eyebrows in seeming innocence, even while Laurel vanished into the kitchen. The Pembrokes loved each other; that much Vic knew.

Maybe there were other ways to prove one's independence than to live alone, at that.