To Love and to Cherish (28 page)

“You didn't let me finish.”

“Okay, but you can give that money away for all I care.”

“That's what I intend to do.”

Laurie grinned when Jared looked shocked. She was glad he wasn't entirely altruistic. She liked him better with a few faults. “I'm going to give the money to you. That way you can buy your Herefords and the men can have their original share of the income.”

“But it's your money.”

“If I marry you, it'll be
our
money just as it will be
our
ranch.”

“Will you stop saying
if
. I'm about to go crazy waiting for an answer.”

“If I marry you, will you teach me how to run the ranch?”

Jared was becoming frustrated. “Yes, I'll teach you how to run the ranch and anything else you want.”

“I want to learn to ride astride, castrate a bull, and everything.”

Jared gulped. “I'm not letting you anywhere near a bull that's being castrated. Not only is it dangerous to you and the men. Everybody in this town would think I was a callous fool.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

“Would you be serious!”

“I am.”

“No, you're not. You're just looking for ways to put off giving me an answer.”

“Actually I'm trying to decide what dress to wear. You don't think I'm going to get married looking like this, do you?”

Apparently having gotten the answer he wanted, Jared decided talk was no longer necessary, so he grabbed Laurie and covered her with kisses. Laurie agreed with his decision.

***

When Laurie and Jared entered the church, she found it packed with virtually every person in town. Cassie met them at the door.

“I'm the flower girl,” she announced. “Naomi is waiting inside to be your matron of honor. Sibyl wanted to be one, too, but they were afraid two might scare Jared off.”

“The only thing I'm scared of is Laurie changing her mind before I can say
I
do
.”

Dr. Kessling stepped up to join them. “Steve is going to be your best man,” he told Jared, “and I'm going to give the bride away.”

Jared turned to Laurie. “I had hoped we'd have a small wedding.”

“Laurie is related to half the people in this town,” Naomi said. “There's no way she gets married without us being here. No more procrastination. Martha is about to play a wedding march. When you get inside, make sure your answers are loud and clear. Everybody wants to hear them.”

Jared looked at Laurie, his eyes spilling over with love. “Even if I shout them, they won't convey how important this day is to me.”

“I'd prefer you don't shout,” Laurie said. “Everybody would think I was pinching you to get you to say yes.”

“The way you're looking at each other right now, nobody could possibly doubt that you're in love,” the doctor said. “Now get going. I hear music.”

***

Later, Colby came up to Jared. “I hate to interrupt you at your wedding reception, but I've got something to show you.”

Jared didn't know how she'd done it, but Sibyl had managed, with the help of every woman in town, to pull together a party to celebrate his wedding. There was cake, punch, and more sweet things to eat than he'd ever seen at one place. He had married into one incredible family.

“You look so serious,” Jared said to Colby. “Is something wrong?”

“No, but I thought you ought to know. I'd have told you before, but I didn't get it until today.”

“Get what?”

“Come outside. I'll show you.”

Jared didn't want to leave Laurie, but he was certain Colby wouldn't have asked him to step outside if it hadn't been important. “Colby wants to see me outside for a few minutes,” he said to Laurie.

“What's it about?”

“I don't know, but he said it wasn't bad news.”

Laurie gave him a quick kiss. “Don't be gone long, or folks will think you've deserted me on my wedding day.”

“Not a chance of that.” Jared gave her a kiss in return. “Just don't let Loomis poach on my preserves. I don't trust that look in his eye.”

“It's whiskey, not lust. Now go.”

Colby was waiting by a wagon when Jared went outside. “I wrote my family like you asked,” he told Jared. “I didn't expect an answer, but I got a letter a short while ago telling me my parents were dead and that I had a lot of money in the bank.”

Jared wasn't sure that this had to do with him, but he was listening.

“I couldn't believe they'd leave me anything, certainly not money, but the letter said they were sending a trunk my mother left to be sent to me if I ever tried to contact them.” Colby pointed to the trunk in the wagon. “This is it.”

“What's in it?” Jared asked. It was a little trunk. It couldn't hold much.

“Not what I expected. There's nothing about their family or where they came from, just some things I had as a baby. Clothes and a couple of toys.” Colby reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “And this. My parents were Randall and Betty Holstock. My name was Kevin Holstock. I'm your brother.”

Jared had wondered how he would feel when he finally found one of his brothers. Now that it had happened, he found it impossible to put into words. But when he saw tears streaming down Colby's face, he knew it meant even more to him. Without hesitation, he stepped forward to embrace the brother he'd lost so long ago. Soon tears were running down his face, too.

He tried to think of something to say, but no words were as powerful as his brother's embrace. He finally had a family, someone who was a part of him, someone
he
was a part of. He wasn't sure he'd ever thought it would happen. Now that it had, it would take some getting used to.

“What are you men doing out here? Come inside. Everybody's asking for Jared.”

When the two men separated, it was obvious they'd been crying. Immediately worried, Naomi hurried down the step to her husband.

“What's wrong? Did somebody die?”

When Colby couldn't speak, Jared answered for him. “He just got some information from his mother that proves we're brothers.”

Naomi let out a shriek and threw her arms around Colby. Both of them were crying, which started Jared tearing just in time for Laurie to come outside.

“What's taking so long?” When she saw Colby and Naomi embracing and crying, she hurried down the steps. “Why is everybody crying? What's happened?”

Jared wiped away his tears. “Nothing's wrong. Something wonderful has happened. Colby got a letter from his mother proving we're brothers.”

Laurie looked from her husband to Colby and back to Jared. Then she smiled and kissed her husband. “I'm so happy for you because I know how much you wanted to find your family, but I hope you won't be upset if I'm even more happy for Colby. At least you had a family that loved you. Colby had nothing.”

“His name is Kevin,” Jared said. “Kevin Holstock.”

Laurie looked to where Colby and Naomi were still locked in each other's arms. “You can't begin to know how important that man is to us. He's probably the only reason any of us are alive today. To us he'll always be Colby Blaine.” She paused. “Am I going to be Laurie Smith, or Laurie Holstock?”

Jared hadn't thought about that. As long as he could remember, he'd been a Smith. The name connected him with the only family he had. “Colby and I will have to talk about that someday. Until then, you're Laurie Smith and your husband is Jared Smith. We don't need a name to make us a family.”

As soon as Naomi and Colby released each other, Laurie turned to Colby. “Welcome, brother-in-law. You can't know how happy it makes me to know you're my husband's brother. Now let's go inside before our guests think we have abandoned them. We have something really special to celebrate.” She reached for Colby's hand. “I know the whole town will want to celebrate with us.”

So they walked back into the church, the two brothers with one arm over the other's shoulders and their other arms around their wives' waists.

Laurie sat quietly astride her horse, watching more than four hundred white-faced Herefords begin to spread out over the Green River Ranch. “They don't look like they're in good condition,” she said to Jared.

“That's the only reason I was able to buy them so cheaply. The owner didn't think they'd make it to California.”

Laurie reached over to grasp her husband's hand. “I was glad Colby offered to give you the money if you needed more to buy the whole herd.”

Jared squeezed his wife's hand in response. “He said we'd missed twenty-nine years of doing things together as brothers. Offering to be partners in the herd was his way of trying to make up for lost time.”

Laurie knew that the two men would never make up for the years they'd lost, but asking Jared to be the godfather of the child Naomi was carrying was a first step. She was certain Jared would ask Colby to be the godfather of their child. Laurie's hand moved to her stomach. Her body hadn't begun to swell, but she could feel the baby's presence within her. Jared hadn't wanted her to ride, but she'd insisted. She relished the time she spent in his arms at night, but she wanted to spend as much of her day with him as possible.

The sound of hammering drew her attention to a rise about a quarter of a mile from the river. A new house was going up, one big enough to hold all the children they hoped to have. Jared had said it didn't need to be so large, but now that Norman had relinquished control of Noah's estate, Laurie intended to spend her money on her family. It was hard for Jared to accept her affluence, but Steve had told him not to be an idiot, that if Jared didn't want Laurie's money, he'd be glad to take it. But Laurie intended to be very careful how she used her money. Jared's pride and self-respect were as important to her as they were to him.

Jared turned to his wife. “Colby told me he had stopped trying to find his brothers because Naomi and the children gave him all the family he needed. I didn't understand him then, but I do now.” He reached for Laurie's hand. “I'm glad I found Colby, and I'm glad I have Steve, but it wasn't until I found you that I knew what being part of a family really meant.”

Laurie squeezed her husband's hand. “My parents sold me into marriage, and my husband disliked what I was. Despite being related to half the people in Cactus Corner, I never felt worthy of love until now.”

Jared leaned out of the saddle to kiss his wife. “I don't know of anyone more worthy. And I'm going to do my best to make you believe it.”

Laurie could think of no better way to spend the next fifty or so years.

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To Love and to Cherish
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Read on for an excerpt from

The Santa Fe Trail, 1865

Colby rode with a loose rein.

It didn't matter where he was going or when he got there. No one was expecting him and there'd be no welcome when he arrived. But that didn't bother him. That was the way things were, and Colby had learned to accept life as he found it.

His eyes narrowed to slits to keep out the glare of the blazing June sun. The dry air absorbed the perspiration as soon as it dampened his shirt between his shoulder blades. It was more than a hundred degrees on the plain, too hot to hurry.

There was no breeze. Nothing moved except the shimmering heat waves. Even the grass protested the heat. A wet spring had produced luxuriant growth, but the searing summer sun had turned green and gray to gold and brown. Stiff stalks brushed against his boots with the dry rattle of seedpods while the grass's rough edges tugged at the underbelly of his long-limbed Appaloosa stallion.

But Colby's thoughts weren't on his surroundings. He was entering a land of ghosts, the land of his past.

His destination was a rocky bend in a shallow tributary of the Cimarron River. Two graves lay hidden deep in the shade of a cottonwood grove, his parents' graves, parents he had never known, parents whose love and kindness hadn't been there to lessen the pain of growing up. A childless couple had taken him in, but they hadn't liked the boy he became. He left home at fifteen.

Eight years of drifting had earned him little beyond a horse, gear, and a distrust of women. Things hadn't been any better in the army. He had been too open in his contempt of incompetent men unfit for the ranks they held. He left the day the war ended.

Now he was drifting again.

The only place he'd ever felt at home was a cottonwood thicket, his only family the mounds of stones. He had had two brothers, but he'd never been able to find any trace of them. He would stay a few days, sleeping under the trees by day, walking the river by night. The graves had no past and no present, no hope, no expectation. They could mean anything he wanted them to mean, what he needed them to mean.

One corner of Colby's mind—the part always busy receiving and digesting information gathered by his alert ears, constantly moving eyes, and acute sense of smell—never forgot to be vigilant. He was in Comanche territory.

It had been a Comanche raiding party that killed his parents.

Colby glanced down at wagon ruts cut through the buffalo grass. He'd been following them for two days. It was a small train of just over a dozen wagons, but they had taken the Cimarron Cutoff. Did they know Comanche raids had closed the cutoff during the war? Nobody traveled this route without army protection. Colby scanned the horizon from north to south. He could see no sign of movement, but he didn't expect to see the Comanches until they were upon him. He grasped the reins more tightly, and the powerfully muscled horse between his legs snorted in protest.

“Easy, Shadow.”

Colby slowed his mount to a fast walk. The stallion sniffed the air and snorted. Apparently the scent of the train animals was still strong. They couldn't be more than a few miles ahead. As he studied the thin line etched into the dry sod of the plain, Colby felt his skin contract and the muscles in his stomach flutter. An odd foreboding settled over him. Senses honed through years of fighting told him something was amiss.

The crack of a rifle shot caused him to pull up. In the vast quiet, the sound was unmistakable. The wagon train was under attack!

Colby didn't stop to ask himself what one man could expect to do against a band of Indians. He thought only that some other child might be deprived of his family, might be forced to live a life of bitter loneliness.

Gripping the reins firmly and digging his heels into Shadow's flanks, Colby let out a yell that sent the powerful stallion into a flat-out gallop.

***

Naomi Kessling stumbled over a gopher hole as she walked beside the lead yoke of oxen. Muttering angrily as she regained her balance, she raked the back of her hand across her forehead to wipe away the drops of perspiration that seeped through her eyebrows and lashes to sting her eyes. She jerked her yellow gingham sunbonnet farther down, but it didn't help relieve the glare from the relentless sun. Stifling another curse she wouldn't have wanted her father to hear, she pushed her way through the dry grass that snatched at the hem of her dress, crushing it beneath her boots to clear a path for those who followed.

Her father dozed inside their wagon. He'd been up all night with Wilma Hill, who was expecting her first child in a matter of days. Ben, Naomi's younger brother, walked before her, beating the grass to scare away rattlesnakes. Mr. Greene, their guide, had ridden ahead to find a suitable stopping place for the night. His son drove the lead wagon while his son's wife and small son slept inside.

The Kessling wagon was second. Fourteen other wagons followed close behind, men and boys guiding the oxen and mules or herding the livestock, women and children huddled inside to escape the merciless sun. The journey had turned into a nightmare punctuated by the preparation of tasteless meals, fruitless attempts to rest, and one crisis after another. Tempers flared, anger burst from between compressed lips, and fear-haunted eyes searched the horizon for their familiar forested and well-watered hills. But every morning the ruthlessly unforgiving prairie stretched before them—flat, dry, and empty.

Until today.

There was no warning of the attack. The Indians seemed to rise out of the ground like morning mist from the surface of a pond. The first arrow knocked Abe Greene backward off the seat. The second buried itself in the ground at Ben's feet. The third missed its target because Naomi had already turned back to reach for her father's rifle.

So swift and unexpected was the attack that the Indians might have slaughtered them at once if Ethan, Naomi's seventeen-year-old brother following in the train's wake hoping to bag a sage hen for supper, hadn't knocked the leader off his pony with his first shot.

“I'll get the Greenes' wagon!” Naomi shouted to her father. She yanked Ben from where he stood paralyzed with shock, staring at the arrow buried in the ground, and shoved him behind the Greenes' wagon. Using the oxen as a shield, Naomi turned the wagon to start forming a circle.

Inside Cassie Greene screamed over and over again.

Somehow, despite the hail of arrows, the cries of the wounded, the gaps in the ranks, they completed the circle. Men crouched under wagons. Some lay flat on the ground; others shot from behind flapping canvas. Ethan, wide-eyed and breathless, came running up to join Naomi. Kneeling back-to-back in the grass under their wagon, they fired as rapidly as they could reload.

Naomi knew nothing about fighting Indians. She had listened to the stories Mr. Greene told of surprise attacks, but she hadn't taken them seriously. Thousands of wagons had traveled the Santa Fe Trail for nearly forty years.

Yet here they were, in the middle of a searing hot plain, some of their friends dead or wounded, she and her brother fighting for their lives from underneath a wagon.

The agonized moans from various parts of the train threatened to draw Naomi's attention from the attackers, but she couldn't worry about them now. Their wounds wouldn't matter if they didn't come out of this alive.

But would they? There could be as many as fifty Indians out there. She couldn't see through the thick grass to count them. She didn't know if any of them had been killed besides the leader. Even before the acrid smoke cleared, she aimed her rifle and pulled the trigger.

Medicine bag in hand, her father jumped down from their wagon and climbed into the Greenes'. A moment later Cassie began to cry with high keening wails. Naomi's father left the Greenes' wagon and turned his attention to other wounded.

Naomi knew Abe Greene was dead.

Suddenly the Indians pulled back. Accurate shooting and the constant boom of Morley Sumner's repeating rifle had enabled them to break the first attack. Now the train might have a chance.

Ben came running around the corner of the wagon to join them in the grass. “Abe's dead as a mackerel,” he said, the pallor of his skin betraying the fear he tried to hide. “He's got an arrow sticking out of his eye. There's blood and goo all over his face. Cassie's gone crazy.”

Naomi pushed Ben down in the grass. “I don't want to hear about it,” she said, fighting off nausea. “Can you load a rifle?”

“Sure,” Ben said, proud of his skill.

“Then load for Ethan and me. And keep down. Those Indians could come again any second.”

Norman Spencer stuck his head under the wagon. “Where's your father?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Naomi answered.

“We've got people hurt.”

Mr. Spencer had been the most important man in their hometown of Spencer's Clearing. Back in Kentucky he'd seemed like the natural choice to lead their community, but Naomi doubted he knew any more about crossing the prairie or fighting Indians than she did.

“Abe's dead,” Ben announced. “Got an arrow sticking out of his eye.”

“Toby Oliver, too,” Mr. Spencer said.

Toby! He was only nineteen, fresh home from the war and hanging around Polly Drummond with more than stealing kisses in mind.

“Will they attack again?” Ethan asked.

“I don't know,” Mr. Spencer said.

“I think they will,” Naomi said. “If they hadn't been meaning to, they'd have left by now.”

“Your sister's probably right,” Norman agreed. “You'd better keep your guns loaded.”

“You think they're just waiting?” Ethan asked after Norman had left.

“Yes,” Naomi answered. “I expect they'll attack again any minute.”

But they didn't. The minutes crawled by and the attack still didn't come. She had heard that sometimes if the defense was strong enough, Indians would go away rather than lose braves. But she was certain they weren't going to let them escape. The Indians meant to kill them.

The heat under the wagon was stifling. The tall grass prevented the breeze from reaching them. Bits of dried stalk, ground to a powdery dust under the feet of the restive oxen, coated her skin. Drops of perspiration washed furrows as they raced down her face or burned into her grazed knuckles. Naomi wiped the sweat from her eyes, her unwavering gaze on the circling Indians.

“How much ammunition do we have left?” she asked Ethan.

“We've used a lot already.”

“Don't shoot unless you have to.”

One of the Indians suddenly spurred his pony in the direction of the wagon, zigzagging as he came. Black hair flying behind him like the mane of a wild stallion and his face distorted by rage, he looked like a monster out of a nightmare. Naomi struggled to hold her fear at bay at the sound of his maniacal screams.

She fired and missed.

The Indian loosed an arrow that buried itself in the flesh of one of their oxen. As the animal bellowed in pain, the Indian turned and galloped off.

Furious at the attack on the team he cared for with such pride, Ethan crawled from under the wagon. Standing, he took careful aim and fired at the retreating Indian's broad, muscled back. When the smoke cleared, the pony was riderless.

The wounded ox bellowed and lunged against the traces. Worried the brake would come loose and they'd be crushed under the wagon's iron-rimmed wheels, Naomi thrust an ax handle through the spokes to lock the wheels.

The arrow had sunk halfway up the shaft just behind the ox's left shoulder. Naomi was certain it had entered his heart. One leg folded beneath the animal's weight. The ox fell to the ground and rolled on his side. He lifted his head to deliver a final bellow of protest, but the sound that came out was a death rattle from deep in
his throat.

“The bastards!” Ethan's voice was thick with emotion. “The heartless, stinking bastards!”

When he started forward, Naomi yelled, “Stay back!” and pulled on the straps of his overalls. “You can't do anything now.”

She wondered if the Indians intended to kill their oxen so the settlers would be stranded and die of thirst. It had been two days since they crossed the Arkansas River—it would take them nearly a month to cover the remaining four hundred miles to Santa Fe—and the water in their barrels was low. They had to do something, but what?

“We've got to get away after dark,” she told Ethan. Her throat was so choked with dust her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Where can we go?”

“I don't know. But they'll kill us if we stay here.” Suddenly, the air was rent by earsplitting yells and the Indians charged from all four directions.

“Get behind me,” Naomi shouted to Ben.

Their shots turned away three attackers, but the fourth came on, jumping down from his pony to get a better line of fire at the people under the wagons. Chalky colorings of black, white, and blue turned his face into a mask of terror. He had colored his body with a red stain, streaked his chest with a dark brown that made Naomi think of dried blood. More than a dozen strings of beads hung around his neck. Two scalps dangled from the string that held up his loincloth.

The Indian ran a few strides toward them, dropped to his knee, and loosed an arrow at Ethan. It found its mark with a sickening impact. With a cry of rage, Naomi snatched up the rifle Ethan dropped and thrust it up toward the Indian now only a few feet from her.

She fired, and the savage fell to the ground clawing at the gaping hole in his throat.

Fighting against the waves of nausea rolling through her, Naomi turned to her brother. Ethan lay huddled in the grass, his face ashen, his body motionless, the arrow protruding from his leg.

“Is he going to die?” Ben asked, rigid with fear. His eyes seemed to be entirely white.

“No.” Ethan struggled manfully not to give in to the pain. “I just got hit in the leg.”