Six White Horses (17 page)

"Nothings stopping you." He glanced at the open passageway between himself and the car, and Patty walked hurriedly past him. "My business is going to take me a couple of hours, so the two of you can take your time."

"We intend to," Patty shot back, darting an angry glance at her grandfather for leaving her to Morgan's mercy and not attempting to rescue her.

Chapter Nine

DESPITE HER BOASTFUL BRAGS to the contrary, Patty raced through the first part of the exhibits and had to retrace her steps to see it again. It seemed impossible that her emotions could be in such a turmoil, so contradictory. While she had been quivering with desire to know Morgan's love, she had been shouting at him in anger. Or had it been frustration?

Her confusion was eased or at least distracted as she studied the art and sculpture exhibit with its renowned works of the great Western Art masters, including Russell and Remington. The National Rodeo Hall of Fame section she toured with her grandfather, enjoying his accounts of some of the rodeo contestants he had known, always conscious of the life-size replica of Russell's "Bronc-Twister" that dominated that section.

Finally Patty went to the last exhibit, the pure, gleaming white statue called "End of the Trail," symbolizing the end of the frontier and the life-style of the Indian. No matter from what angle she viewed the massive work, sitting on its matching white pedestal, it dominated and awed her. Strangely it stood out against its background of glass walls and steeply sloping white ceilings.

"It's impressive, isn't it?"

Patty had not paid any attention to the footsteps behind her, thinking it was another visitor like herself. A startled look over her shoulder was returned by Morgan's bland gaze before he reverted it to the statue. His hands were slipped casually in his pockets, his stand relaxed. Patty felt as taut as a high tension wire.

"Is it that late already?" She glanced at her watch. More than two hours had passed, closer to three.

"I haven't been here but a few minutes," he assured her calmly. "My business took longer than I anticipated. I was afraid you were waiting for, me."

"Grandpa—"

"I've already seen him," Morgan interrupted. "He told me where you were."

"If you'd like to leave now—" Patty began. She couldn't summon any coldness. He had caught her by surprise and her responses were stilted and nervous.

"No hurry." He brought his gaze from the statue to her face. "Have you seen the fountains?"

"Only from the windows."

"Let's go outside, then."

His fingers lightly closed around her elbow and guided her toward a glass exit door. Strolling around the walk, they followed the bridge walk that meandered over the fountain pools. The water shimmered a pale blue, reflecting the color of the milky sky. Here and there jets of water sprayed into the air. Once by the pools, Morgan directed her along a path to the point of the wooded hill. There they stopped and gazed back at the modern structure.

"The building was designed to symbolize the tents used by the early settlers. At night, with the light radiating from the center, it resembles a tent encampment around a camp fire," Morgan explained. "The fountains and pools are reminders of how very vital water was to the pioneers. The glass walls are to remind you of the vast spaciousness of the West."

"It's beautiful," Patty murmured.

Morgan nodded and guided her toward the graves on the overlooking nob of Persimmon Hill where some of the famous bucking horses were buried—Midnight, Five Minutes to Midnight, and others. There Patty paused, resting a hand against a tree and looking out over the valley below.

"It's quite a view."

"Nothing like what the eighty-niners saw," he agreed.

His voice came from directly behind her, but Party's sensitive radar had already signaled his nearness. She moved closer to the tree, leaning slightly against it for support.

"Shouldn't we be leaving?" she asked.

"Everett is going to join us out here when he's finished." Morgan braced an arm against the tree trunk, his hand inches from her head, but his gaze was on the city below.

A dangerous lethargy was seeping into her limbs. Patty shifted away from the trunk and Morgan.

"I'd better see what's keeping grandpa."

"I said he'd be along." His blue gaze swerved to lock onto hers.

"I know, but—"

"But you can't stand to be in my company another minute, isn't that right?" Morgan asked smoothly.

His lack of anger or mockery was unexpected. The expression in his face only revealed a calm acceptance of his statement.

"Not really," Patty contradicted him, even though it was true.

"I have some news that should bring a smile to your face," he continued without acknowledging her reply. "I'll be joining up with my brother on Sunday. He's going to help me with
the rodeo stock for a week, then come back."

"But I thought—" Frowning with surprise, she began to remind him that the two weeks weren't up yet.

Again Morgan ignored her words. "That calls for a celebration, doesn't it?" he smiled, a casual easy smile without any bitterness or taunting anger.

"That's unfair," Patty breathed, turning from him to stare sightlessly at the city below.

"Face it, Skinny, we're just making each other's lives miserable," he said quietly. "We're always at each other's throats in one way or another. You're not going to change and I won't.

Her hands were clenched into fists at her side, her fingers digging into the palms to keep the tears from filling her eyes.

"If you wouldn't make fun of me all the time," she began.

"And if you weren't so stubborn and proud," he supplied with a trace of humor. "There isn't anything we can agree on. All our conversations end in an argument of some sort."

"That's because you—"

"See what I mean?" Morgan queried lightly. "Already you're starting to argue. You told me once that you were tired of this constant state of war between us. Well, we can never be friends." His dark head moved to the side in negative resignment. "I couldn't make that transition after all this time."

His compelling look was asking her a question. "Neither could I." Patty accepted at last that she loved him, fully and completely. To be just his friend would be bitterly intolerable.

"But I admit that I'm tired of the fighting, too." His gaze swept the skies, then concentrated on some distant cloud. "But I also admit that I can't ignore you. Whenever you're around, the sparks are there, the friction. So I'm leaving, ahead of schedule."

"You've made this decision rather suddenly, haven't you?" She stared at the same cloud, a coldness in her heart.
 

"It's been building for some time, but I kept thinking something would change, if only for your grandfather's sake. I tried today to be impersonal and friendly, but it didn't work. So I'm getting out of the picture."

"I'm sorry, Morgan."

"Be sorry for yourself." He refused her faint apology. "You're the one who wants to live with ghosts for the rest of your life and you're too stubborn to open your eyes to see what else the world might have to offer."

"I do not—" Pain flickered in her brown eyes as she instinctively raised her voice.

"I take it back." His hand raised to hold off the rest of her denial. "I take back what I said. Our last private conversation is not going to end in an argument."

White teeth bit into her trembling tower lip before Patty exhaled a shaky sigh. "Yes," she agreed. "We should be capable of that."

"Here comes Everett." Morgan pushed his hands into his pockets and turned toward the lean older man walking their way.

A strange brooding silence hung over the Kincaid ranch on their return, one that had begun on their journey and remained to throw a dark cloud over Morgan's last two days. It was an atmosphere that everyone noticed and no one commented on.

For those same two days, Patty had carefully rehearsed the goodbye speech she was going to give to Morgan, a hopeful attempt to keep the door between them from closing permanently. When she came down to breakfast Sunday morning, she discovered that Morgan had left two hours earlier.

"But he didn't even say goodbye," she murmured in an unconscious protest.

"He told us," Molly Kincaid replied, "that the two of you had already said all there was to say." She hesitated, then added quietly, "I'm sorry, Patty."

Patty's fingers clasped the edge of the table as she stared at the coffee cup in front of her. "It doesn't matter," she replied tightly.

But it did matter. It mattered very much. The backs of her eyes were being scorched with tears. Any second now they would tumble into view. She pushed herself away from the table, mumbling a polite permission to be excused as she rose to her feet and hurried to the door.

In the solitude of the stables, the burning tears refused to flow while acid pain ate away at her heart. Her hand unconsciously caressed the butting head of a white horse, not even aware of which horse it was stroking.

"I think Lodestar could do with some exercise." Her grandfather's voice spoke quietly at her side.

She stared into the luminous brown eyes of the white horse. "You know why he left, don't you, Grandpa? It was because of me."

There was no need to identify Morgan. Everett King knew whom she was talking about.

"I guessed that," acknowledged Everett King.

"His parents?"

"I think they knew the reason, too."

The muscles in her throat constricted into a near stranglehold. She forced herself to swallow, lessening her throat's grip but not the knot in her stomach.

"I feel awful." She closed her eyes and rested her head against the horse's forelock, "How do you put up with me, gramps?

"I love you," he replied simply.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Why? Grandfathers are supposed to love their granddaughters," he teased, a sympathetic twinkle lighting his brown eyes.

"You must be so ashamed of me," Patty sighed.

"You can't help the way you feel toward Morgan any more than he can," he said quietly. "I must admit that I had hoped you might bury your dislike."

She started to explain that she loved Morgan, then stopped. Her grandfather had shared so much of her pain when Lije married. It wasn't fair to ask him to shoulder more of her misery. She was an adult, a woman. It was time she stopped carrying her tears to others and faced the consequences of her actions alone.

"I—I think I'll take Lodestar out," she faltered.

"That's a good idea."

The days trickled by with the slowness of grains of sand in an hourglass. Patty worked with the horses to the point of exhaustion, collapsing in bed at nights to cry herself to sleep. Her appetite was nonexistent and she lost weight. Her laughter, when it was reluctantly summoned, was hollow and without its usual zest.

To her grandfather's concerned queries, she merely shrugged that she was fine. But the frown of worry was almost perpetually lining his forehead.

One day he had asked pointedly, "Is it still Lije? Are you still breaking your heart over him?"

The rhythmic stroke of the currycomb hadn't paused as Patty had made her reply deliberately ambiguous. "You don't stop caring for someone simply because they don't care for you."

Her grandfather had sighed and walked away, his peppered gray head shaking sadly. From that day on, she had truly tried to regain her former buoyant spiri's to ease her grandfather's mind. But she didn't think she had fooled him, Two months later, she was driving the pickup that pulled their travel trailer through the entrance gate of the rodeo grounds. Until the moment she saw the stock truck and the bold letters Kincaid Rodeo Company, Patty hadn't realized how much she had been anticipating the moment when she would see Morgan again. Out of sight had never made him out of mind.

Her eyes searched the Western-clad figures for a glimpse of his ebony black hair and broad shoulders. But he was nowhere to be seen. There were plenty of welcoming shouts and waves as their van and trailer were recognized, but no sign of Morgan. He had known they would be coming. Her grandfather had telephoned last week to confirm that they would be keeping the engagement.

As the disappointment and depression set in, Patty realized that secretly she had been praying that Morgan would be there to welcome them back—if not her, then at least her grandfather. Hope was a difficult emotion to ignore.

All the while they were unloading the horses and settling them into the stall, she kept watching for him, trying to convince herself that the minute the word reached him that they had arrived he would come to greet them. News traveled fast around the rodeo grounds. Too many people stopped by especially to welcome her and her grandfather back to the circuit. Finally she could pretend no longer that Morgan didn't know they were there. He knew, but he just didn't care.

The bitter taste of rejection nearly gagged her as she walked to the trailer. She felt physically sick and utterly beaten. The pain in her heart that she had been certain couldn't get any worse throbbed with excruciating agony. She wanted to do nothing more than throw herself onto her bed and die, but she forced herself to go through the motions of putting the trailer in order.