“You’ll never find me perched on one of those pancakes you call a saddle. We don’t ride for pure fun, lady. Out here, our horses are just equipment that allow us to do our work.”
“Well, I certainly don’t call this ride pure fun.” But, gradually, she caught the rhythm of the animal she rode and settled deeper into the saddle, rolling more easily with his gait. One hand slid from the leather of the saddle to smooth the mane, which flowed against the dark neck of her mount.
“Does this animal have a name?” she asked.
He shrugged at her question. “I think Claude calls him Brownie.”
Her hand ceased its motion.
“Brownie?” The word dripped with derision. “You actually call a horse Brownie?”
He swept her a mocking bow from his saddle, and his eyes sparkled. “Actually, I don’t call him anything. What would you call him back in Kentucky?”
“Our horses all have names they’ve been registered with, and we usually call them by some part of that name. Mine is Rawlings Sweet Fancy. I call her Fancy.”
“Well, today you’re riding a cow pony named Brownie, bred for cutting cattle,” he drawled, urging his horse into a slow lope. Hers followed suit, and she settled with relief against the saddle.
Emmaline scanned the horizon, where low hills melted into each other, covered with a dark underbrush and dotted with taller scrub. Before them lay a sparse pasture where mares and foals were kept. Surrounded by a double strand of barbed wire, the mares appeared to have docilely accepted their confinement. But the foals were frolicking, kicking up their heels and racing to and fro, carefree in the hot sunshine with their mothers close by.
“We’ll be working with these foals later today, if you want to watch,” Matt said, his gaze ever alert to her. She’d changed, thawing before his eyes as she watched the young ones leap and play in the pasture. A faint smile hovered over her lips, and the rigid control she’d donned at the beginning of this ride had slipped, to reveal the softening of the woman within.
“I’d like that. I’ve helped with the young ones back home,” she told him casually, and then, as her smile broke into a wide grin, she lifted her hand to point at one particularly adventuresome colt.
“Look at that little fellow,” she said with a chuckle. The long-legged dove gray creature had overestimated a leap and gone spraddle-legged in the grass, shaking his head and looking about in surprise.
Their horses had slowed as they spoke, and now they walked abreast of one another. The air between them was free of the abrasiveness they had set out with.
“Thank you for the loan of the skirt,” she said finally, after a few long minutes of quiet.
“No problem,” he answered curtly. “My mother was generous. She’d approve.”
“Tell me about her,” Emmaline asked, aware that her request might well be denied. Matthew Gerrity didn’t strike her as the kind to confide in anyone.
He surprised her, tipping his hat back and resting one hand on his thigh. “She was raised here in the territory—a real native, you might say. Her daddy was a brave from a tribe who took a shine to her white mother. That made her a half-breed, and not good marriage material. But she was pretty,” he said, his words tender as he thought of the young girl who had been an outcast.
“Anyway, when Jack Gerrity breezed by, he snatched her up and took her along with him. She was young when I was born, just sixteen, and too innocent to see through the black-hearted Irishman who fathered me,” he said with a twisted grin. “He was foreman on a good size ranch fifty miles or so west of here, and she made do as best she could. We lived in the foreman’s shack there on the ranch, and my mother took home the laundry from the big house.” His mouth tightened as he remembered those early days. “You sure you want to hear this?” he asked abruptly.
She nodded, almost afraid to speak, lest she break the thread of his story.
He shrugged and settled back into his saddle. “Jack Gerrity wasn’t a kind man.” His eyes flickered once in her direction, and the look in them was bleak. “Anyway, one day when I was about five or so, he hightailed it to town on payday, along with the rest of the ranch hands.” He lifted his reins, and the horse beneath him quickened his pace.
Emmaline looked at him with impatience, jostled in the saddle as her own mount followed suit. “And then what happened?” she asked after a moment of silence.
“We never saw him alive again,” he said. “He headed for town to drink and gamble away his monthly pay, and died when he slipped an ace up his sleeve.”
Her brow puckered and she shook her head. “What caused him to die?” she asked innocently.
“The gun of the fella across the table who caught him cheatin’ at poker,” Matt replied sardonically.
Her heart thumped wildly in her throat as Emmaline envisioned the bloody scene. “Whatever did your mother do?” Her voice trembled as she thought of a young woman left alone with a child to care for.
His shrug was eloquent. “We had to move to make room for the new ranch foreman. She managed to get another job, cooking for another rancher. Took me along and raised me in the kitchen.”
“How old were you then?”
His hand fisted against the solid flesh of his thigh, and his voice tightened into a deep growl. “Old enough to stay out of the way when the old man who owned the place got drunk.” He went on deliberately, as if he wanted to have the words spoken and done with.
“One day, my mother loaded me and all our belongings on a wagon and headed out. Your pa found us on the road and took us home with him. When the old man caught up with us, your pa sent him on his way. Paid him for the horse and wagon and told him to clear out.”
“Did they get married then?” she asked quietly, almost unwilling to interrupt, but wanting to know the rest of the story.
“No...she cooked and kept house for him until he heard that your mother had died, just ten years ago.” He scanned her with eyes gone hard and cold. “He thought you’d come back home then.”
“I was only twelve years old,” Emmaline said, defending herself. “My grandparents were heartbroken, and I was all they had left of her. I couldn’t leave them.” Her chin lifted defiantly. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to. My father had never shown any interest in me, anyway.”
His look was scornful. “We both know that isn’t true. I remember all the letters he sent, till he finally gave up on you.”
Those letters again. Maria had told the same story, and she’d spoken with such ringing sincerity, the words had begun to raise doubts in her mind. She shrugged them away, her heart unwilling to release the anger she had clung to for so long.
“Seems to me he had a family right here,” she said haughtily. “You and Arnetta filled the bill for him. He didn’t need a daughter.” As she spoke the words, a twinge of pain needled its way into her heart, and she recognized the envy that blossomed within her. “He didn’t need me,” she repeated stoically.
“You’re wrong.” Matt’s voice was firm, adamant, as he denied her claim. “He felt bad every time one of his letters came back unopened. Then he finally stopped sendin’ ‘em.”
She was silent, digesting the news he’d just delivered, tempted to admit her ignorance of the facts she’d just been faced with. But not for the world would she betray her grandparents, though dismay gripped her as she repeated his words to herself.
His letters came back unopened.
It was too late for mourning, she decided as her back stiffened. But unwanted tears burned against her eyelids, and she struggled to contain them. If he really wanted her, he’d have come after her, she reasoned