“Your sister, Allegra, seems like a tough nut to crack,” Jude observed.
Alma grinned. “You sure know how to wind each other up.”
“What’s the matter with her, anyway?” Jude asked. “Why does she think she has to be a man?”
“She doesn’t,” Alma countered. “As far as I know, she doesn’t think she’s a man, and she’s not trying to be a man. She’s a woman, just like Amelia and me.”
“Then why does she act like that?” Jude asked.
“Like what?” Alma asked.
“You know what I mean,” Jude growled back. “She looks like a man and she does everything possible to act like one. She’s over there in the gulley right now, practicing her target shooting.”
“So is Amelia,” Alma pointed out. “We all wear range clothes. Is it her hair you mean that makes her look like a man?”
“It’s much more than her hair,” Jude told her. “At least you and Amelia wear your hair long. Anyone could tell you were women a mile away. No, there’s something hard and stiff about Allegra that you and Amelia don’t have. You must know what it is.”
Alma gazed across the landscape into the distant horizon. “She’s had a hard time. Maybe she’s never had a chance at life, not the way the rest of us have had.”
Jude wasn’t listening. “I pity the man who tries to marry her.”
“I don’t think Allegra will ever get married,” Alma murmured. “She’s said so many times, and I wouldn’t blame her if she spends the rest of her life alone. There’s no reason for her to get married.”
“What do you mean?” Jude asked.
Alma fell silent for a long moment. “Never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Whether you agree or disagree with the way we’ve run this ranch, just try to keep your opinions to yourself for now. Later on, after we’ve gotten to know you a little better, you can introduce whatever new ideas and I’ll support you. If you try to do it now, you’ll just make everyone mad and they’ll never listen to you.”
Jude picked up a stick from the ground and snapped it between his fingers. “You’re just being all-mighty stubborn, is all. You won’t listen to reason. You won’t see a better way of doin’ things when it’s shoved in your faces.”
Alma sighed. She stretched out her hand and laid it on his arm. “Maybe it’s because you’re shoving it in our faces that we don’t want to listen. I’m telling you, if you’ll just wait a little while longer, they’ll listen to you better and I’ll back you up. It’s just too soon. It’s your very first day. You don’t want to rub them the wrong way from the very start. Just let them do it their way until they’re ready to listen to a different idea.”
Jude threw the stick away. “Women running cattle ranches! Whoever heard of such a thing! It’s the ruination of the whole Western way a’ life!”
Alma clenched her teeth to stop herself from laughing in his face. He looked so comic when he said that, with his cheeks puffed out and his eyebrows jumping around. “Listen. I’m your wife, and I’ve been running a cattle ranch for years. I haven’t ruined the Western way of life, and I don’t seem to have ruined my chance to be the wife of a man, either. It can’t be as bad as all that.”
“I don’t mean you,” Jude replied. “You’re different. I meant more your sister, Allegra. If that’s what this country is coming to, then we’re all in big, big trouble.”
“How am I different?” Alma asked. “I can ride and shoot and brand ‘em as well as she can. I just have long hair, that’s all.”
“Maybe it’s the fact that you wanted a man, and you took steps to get yourself married to one. That’s what makes you different.” Jude turned toward her. “It’s not the long hair. It’s nothing to do with your appearance at all. It’s something underneath the surface, something very soft and feminine. You could be wearing a suit of plate mail, and it would still show through. You would still be pure female.”
“Hmm.” Alma followed the specks of cows wandering over the range on the valley floor below. “I thought the same thing about you last night. I haven’t spent much time around men in my life. In fact, I haven’t spent any time with men. But last night, I sensed something about you that seemed like pure male. I didn’t know what it was, but it was male—pure male.”
Jude stared hard into her eyes as she said this. When she finished, he slid his hips across the ground so he sat right up against her. His presence surprised her, and she looked up into his eyes.
“Did you enjoy last night?” he asked.
Alma blushed. “Yes.”
Jude glanced over his shoulder. “How long are they likely to stay down in the gulley shooting? We could sneak off right now.”
Alma’s eyes flew open. “What? Now? You can’t be serious!”
“Why not?” Jude asked. “We’re all alone. We’re a lot more alone now than we were last night.”
“We weren’t alone at all last night,” Alma replied.
“At least they were all asleep,” Jude remarked. “At least they didn’t hear us.”
“You hope they didn’t,” Alma corrected.
“We didn’t make any noise. Out here,” Jude swept his hand across the plain. “There’s no one to hear us. You could yell your head off and no one would know.”
“If I yelled,” Alma told him. “They would come running. That’s our signal to get back here pronto.”
Jude slid his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. “Come on. Let’s sneak off behind those bushes over there. We’ll be there and back before they know we’re gone.”
Alma laughed, but her body softened instinctively against him. She fell under the heady sway of his presence. He breathed through his nostrils against the skin of her cheek, and she thought she would lose consciousness altogether. Her head lolled back against the fleshy part of his shoulder, her eyelids drooped, and her lips hung open in hunger for him.
A buzzing in her ears blocked out the sounds around them, and Alma felt the same vibration spread through her whole body, dissolving her into tiny flashing lights like fireflies dancing here and there before dissipating into the fragile air.
Jude’s mouth drifted closer to hers and his breath fanned her skin. Could this happen here, on this ridge overlooking their cattle herd? She’d sat on this spot day in and day out for years, watching these cows and shooting any predators that came near. She never suspected she could experience anything so extraordinary here as the presence of Jude McCann.
His presence initiated her into the mysteries of woman more effectively on this spot than they had the night before in her own bed. His touch meant more here, and she wanted him more passionately here than in bed.
From a great distance, the popping of gunfire reminded her where she was. With an enormous effort, the knowledge that her sisters could come back at any time forced its way into her mind. Alma pulled away ever so slightly.
Jude sensed her hesitation. Like a candle blown out with a single breath, the fire burning between them died to a cold black cinder.
Alma opened her eyes and found Jude studying her. “We’ll have to go off somewhere by ourselves. That’s the only way we’re ever going to have any privacy.”
“Where would you like to go?” she asked.
Jude gazed off into the distance. “I don’t know. You’ll have to decide. I’m sure you know all the good hiding places around here.”
“We could go for a walk after supper tonight,” she suggested. “Papa and the girls will be in the house. We’ll be alone.”
Jude stretched. “No. Tonight, I sleep. I’m worn out from last night. Maybe tomorrow we can go.”
Alma smiled at him, but he didn’t see. “Alright.”
So this is how it would be from now on. Sleep meant more than anything else. They were married for certain now.
Chapter 21