Forget Me Not (14 page)

The whole cavalcade moved out in a jumpy rush, as if it had been held down too long. Boots kicked the brake free and just about threw the leather lines away as the mules jerked forward in their traces.

“Get on, you mules!” he called with a bit of undisguised cheer in his tone.

Josephine slanted a discreet glance at him from
beneath the brim of her hat. Boots's eyes were merry, the lines at the corners etched deeper into his hairline as he genuinely grinned.

Looking behind her as they turned, Josephine watched One-Eyed Hazel lift his hand in a gesture of good-bye from the porch, while Rio followed the wagon with at least four dozen spirited horses and a bevy of scruffy dogs. The riders behind him controlled the herd through the corral where one side of the wire fence had been dropped down.

Josephine faced forward and leaned into the hard-backed seat, her thoughts in a jumble. At this time last year, she'd been waiting for the arrival of her summer wardrobe from the dressmaker and had been planning a spring cotillion. Her tiny world had been shaped by a conventional and unobtrusive pattern whose moral clichés and attitudes she'd never had the foresight to question or doubt. Her first mistake had been to trust her husband; her second had been staying with him as long as she had. She'd had inklings that not all was right, but she would remember the Hugh she'd fallen in love with during their courtship. He'd been charming and witty, and she'd never been so happy.

Once they married, he changed. Their entire relationship crumbled to a stern reserve that Hugh imposed on her. Feelings would sometimes skim over her, but she had never reacted to them, as it was forbidden for a lady to ask her husband about his financial affairs. Of course, going to her mother would have been no help; and even if she'd wanted to, she'd lost her mother the Christmas of 1868 to a heart ailment. Nor could she have turned to her father for advice, for he had been absorbed in the Tilden offices, a two-room establishment staffed by himself and three clerks.

The door to his office had always been open, but he usually ignored anyone who came through it. He almost never looked up from his maps and ledgers, and when he did, he rarely said anything. As a child,
she'd been allowed to visit on two separate occasions. Most visitors found it prudent not to start a conversation with him when his head was down, and many simply walked away after having decided to say what was on their mind in a letter. Andrew Tilden answered all his letters personally. Though he had been self-absorbed, he wasn't selfish. He supported many charities and attended dinners regularly. It was because of his involvement on Wall Street, with financiers and brokers, that he'd lost his life. But Josephine didn't want to think about that right now.

Sighing, she held on to the bend of metal that was anchored on the side of the wagon seat. What would her parents think of her if they'd been alive? Surely they would be shocked. But no more shocked than she herself. For if the truth were being told, she would have to admit that she liked the wild enthusiasm of the pending excursion into the unknown. Because this time she had control of the situation. She knew what was expected of her, and gender played no part in it. She had been treated as an equal since coming to the McCall ranch. Though she didn't delight in some of the chores she'd been given, she found an uninhibited freedom that she'd never experienced before.

She held a cook's position, and those duties had been plainly stated to her. Unlike the duties of a wife, where subservience ruled the roost and there was no questioning allowed.

Boots gave a little holler of joy as the cowboys held the herd in an unbroken file of bawling and mooing, with dogs barking and dashing back and forth and the whistles of men as they cut through the grass on horseback.

Josephine contented herself for the first time since coming to Sienna. This was the beginning of a new adventure, and maybe she'd come out of it more like Pearl Larimer from the Beadle's Issue No. 639,
Rawhide's Wild Tales of Revenge in Sienna.

Her gaze fell on J.D., who rode in the lead some
ways ahead. The way the sun glinted off his brown hair that fell below his collar, and the striking pose he made sitting tall on that big white horse, she couldn't help thinking he looked a lot like how she'd pictured Rawhide Abilene.

•  •  •

J.D. could have sworn he'd seen a little smile out of Josephine as they'd left the yard. He'd turned his head for a moment to make sure everyone was filing in the way they should and had let his gaze drift to her. She'd had a slight curve on her lips as she adjusted the brim of her hat to fit more snugly over her hair. One hand held on to the side of the wagon seat, while the other rested in her lap. Her eyes darted from this to that as she took in all of the motions with an animated expression. She hadn't caught him gazing at her, and he'd turned away before she could.

Riding through the pasture with its tender rye grass and clover, J.D. couldn't help thinking the expressive sight of Josephine Whittaker was a far cry from the woman who'd busted into Sheriff Tuttle's office ranting she'd been robbed. Maybe his treating her like one of the cowboys had done her some good.

As the sky blossomed into a ribbon of oranges and blues, he and the boys kept the herd strung out well yet close enough to let them feel one another. They crawled past the top pasture, an area also referred to as the Tepee Range. J.D. liked the solitude up here and came as often as he could.

During his reflections, as the hawks rode the updrafts from the ridges, he would sit on the grassy precipice and think that he was untouchable. A calm freedom would overtake him, and he'd tell himself that he'd done all right in spite of everything. Though he was twenty-eight, he had broad aspirations that reached beyond what he already had. The more land a cattleman owned, the bigger he could expand his operation. There was a handsome parcel—one hundred and sixty acres—that Buffalo Creek flowed
through at the southernmost point, and he'd been meaning to buy it on his next trip to town. But each time he went into Sienna, he inevitably got sidetracked by something and never made it to the land office.

The available property was sort of inside his, like the middle arc of the letter C. The land had been vacant for years, and nobody had filed a claim on it, as eighty percent of the boundaries were tucked into McCall land. That left expansion nonexistent for any interested parties. Homesteaders would likely never file on the dormant parcel, because after proving up for a year they wouldn't be able to use the desert rights which entitled them to another one hundred and sixty acres. J.D. already owned the surrounding land.

He relaxed in the saddle and let his body sway with Tequila's easy motion. He slowed his pace and fell back to let his left and right point riders, Gus Peavy and Jidge Dooly, take over the lead. The cows were strung out for almost a mile with the sun flashing on their horns. Orley Woodard and Dan Hotchkiss, the swing men, steered the group, while Seth Winters and Birdie Tippett rounded out the ensemble as the flank men. In drag, Print Freeland and Ace Flynn ate the dust. All but the two point riders shifted positions daily to relieve those on the dusty side and those riding drag.

Glancing over his shoulder, J.D. frowned when he saw that the wagon had veered south under Boots's guidance. Reining left and turning around, he nudged Tequila into lope. The horse was full of vigor, eager to run and work away winter idleness and shed his heavy coat. All the horses seemed filled with a rough playfulness that taxed their riders and kept the dogs scurrying.

The chuck wagon ambled along closer to the middle, but at the side of the winding group to keep the dirt and debris at a minimum from coating the
interior. The mules had gained speed as if Boots wanted to beat the herd to the noon stop as Luis always had. This was Boots's first jaunt behind the wagon's reins on such a grand venture. He'd always accompanied Luis, but Luis had done the driving. Luis had been known to take the shortest route—trail or not—and J.D. guessed that Boots was aiming to do the same. Only Boots wasn't as capable a driver as Luis had been, and J.D. didn't need the wagon busted up.

Boots saw him bearing down on the wagon, and J.D. could swear the old cuss clicked his tongue and set those mules off faster.

“Slow 'em down,” J.D. called as he fell in line next to Boots's side of the wagon.

“Can't do that,” Boots rebuffed without looking at J.D. “Got to get to Willow Creek before the boys so she can set up the victuals.”

“She can set up once we're there.” J.D. kept Tequila in a fast trot. “Pull back on those reins, and slow the mules down.”

Boots remained silent, and J.D. glanced at the anxious expression on Josephine's face. “Reach over,” he told her in a loud voice, “and put pressure on that brake lever. Push it back.”

“Don't you come near this brake,” Boots warned.

Josephine stayed put, confusion and indecision in her eyes as she held on to the bench seat for support.

J.D. fought to control his anger. “You're headed for the sagebrush. You don't know straight up about driving this wagon through it.”

“Watch and see for yourself.” The gauntlet had been thrown down, and J.D. was supposed to leave Boots alone while he proved himself to nobody but himself. He made no bones about the fact that he owed nothing to any man, and in return he expected nothing from anyone. After he'd retired himself from sitting astride a saddle some years back, he'd acquired the habit of considering himself invincible. J.D. imagined
that Boots thought his whole destiny was in his hands now. But J.D. couldn't let him go on with his foolishness and find out for sure, because there was somebody else's safety to think about.

Galloping, J.D. shifted his reins from his right hand to his left, intending to jump on one of the mules.

The unrelenting fast and rickety sounds of squeaking harness leathers and the jingle of brass rings made him spur Tequila on. Boots immediately gave a loud holler of “Whoa!” to the mules. Then he spit the cold nub of a cigar from his mouth, the butt barely missing J.D.'s thigh before it hit the dirt.

“Hazel wouldn't cotton to having you ride on one of his mules without them being properly saddled up,” Boots sourly proclaimed, the four leather reins still woven between his fingers. He sat hunched over the box, his blue eyes sharp and fiery. Sweat beaded beneath the lower lashes and above his gray brows.

“It wouldn't have been an option if you'd stopped when I asked.”

“What are y'all going to do?” Boots inquired with a stinging verbal venom that prickled the hair at the back of J.D.'s neck. “Send me back home?” He went so far as to drop the reins and stand up. “Give me a canteen, missy, so I don't dry up on the walk.”

Josephine shifted her gaze between J.D. and Boots before venturing in a soft voice, “Is he really walking back?”

“Sit down, goddammit,” J.D. barked.

Boots's knee joints cracked as he sat down with a snort of disgust. “William wouldn't have stopped me. He was a son a man could be proud of.”

J.D. didn't think; he reacted. He began yelling. “What do you want me to do? Kill myself? Would you be happy if I was dead like William and Lewis? Then you'd have three fallen sons instead of two. Wait, mine wouldn't be a death on the battlefield, so it won't count as glorified.” He clenched his fist on the stitched horn of his saddle. “Do you think it's easy
living? At least my brothers don't have to remember. I do. I have to live with memories I don't care to think about, much less talk about. But because I'm here to remind you that I didn't fall under Yankee fire like my brothers, you make me pay for their deaths every damn day.

“Hell, if it'll make you feel any better, I'll give you the bullets for that Remington and you can shoot me yourself. It won't be as good as a yellow belly doing it, but one bullet should be as good as another.” Fumbling at the row of bullets he kept on his gun belt, J.D. fingered a few out of their slots and threw them at Boots. They clattered at his feet, one bouncing off the tip of Josephine's boot. “Go ahead. Load up. What are you waiting for?”

“Y'all've got no call to be going on with her sitting here,” Boots said, not moving for the bullets. “This is between me and you.”

“You worry about her now?” J.D. countered. “A minute ago, you didn't give a damn about her or yourself when you were running these mules hell-bent for leather toward that sage.”

“There's a road there!”

“None that I can see.”

“Then y'all aren't looking, because Luis drove through this sage dozens of times and you never told him to slow up.”

“I could trust Luis's judgment.”

“But y'all can't trust the judgment of your own father.”

J.D. shook his head, gazing downward with a cynical smile, then facing off with Boots. “You're my father when it suits you, and that hasn't been a hell of a lot in the past twenty-eight years.”

Boots cursed his hide, then stood again and attempted to put his leg over the side so he could disembark. “I'm going home.”

“The hell you are.” J.D. put his hand around
Boots's arm, reacting angrily to the deflated intonation in Boots's voice. “Sit down!”

Their eyes locked in a silent but volatile battle. Unspoken retorts hardened Boots's wrinkled features. J.D. was breathless with rage, afraid that his temper would get out of hand and he'd hurl Boots onto the seat. He had to get out of there before he did further damage. He let Boots go and repeated in a calmer voice, “Sit down. You're going to drive the wagon.”

Boots didn't readily move, and J.D. backed away, his thoughts swirling ahead of him on what to do next if Boots really did intend to walk home. Luckily, J.D. didn't have to contend with that problem. Boots slid back onto his seat, tucked his hands into his armpits, and stared dead ahead.