“Now, Connor,” Pa said, always kind, and yet he could be tough if necessary, “do you think I’d let her go traipsing off like this if I wasn’t assured it was safe? She’ll be living with the town parson and his wife. They have several small children, and the town has agreed to build a new room on the house just for Maggie. Her pay will make it possible for her to help out with food at the parson’s, and she can afford her own upkeep of any kind. The doctor’s office will be right next to the church and the parson’s house. The sheriff of Cutler is a good man. Maggie and I traveled there, and I trust him. The town is a peaceful one. Just because it’s remote doesn’t mean it’s not a friendly town with plenty of young churchgoing families and respectable businesses.”
“Why’d she make a deal like this?” Connor quickly glanced at Pa and then turned those wild blue eyes on her. “Your family could send you to school if you have to go. Then you could come back here right away and do your doctoring. You don’t need to take charity from a town full of strangers.”
“Connor!” she snapped, both her voice and her temper. “Of course my family could pay, but I wanted to stand on my own two feet.”
“By taking money from strangers who as good as bought you for five years?”
Maggie stood so quickly her chair skidded back and tipped over.
“By finding a way to pay for this myself.” Maggie slapped her hand down on the table and hit the spoon she’d dipped into her stew. The spoon flipped and landed right in Connor’s face.
He slowly stood and wiped at his eyes.
Audra jumped up and hopped over to grab a wet washcloth. Connor mopped supper off his face and hands with moves slow and deliberate and furious. He braced his knuckles on the table, then leaned so far forward that Maggie worried he might be coming all the way across.
“You did that on purpose.”
“I did not.”
“Aw, she didn’t either, Connor.” Pa rested his hand on Connor’s arm. “Now, c’mon. Don’t yell at Maggie. That was an accident.”
“My family didn’t want me to go. I had to push hard to even get permission to write a letter to the school.” She’d pushed more than hard, she’d tormented her parents until they said yes. She’d been desperate to get away.
“Well, they shouldn’t have given in to you. It’s not proper for a woman to go off alone to Denver. Even worse to go off across the state.”
“She’ll be safe,” Ma said. “We made sure of it. And women are becoming nurses and even doctors more every day. It’s quite common. And once the train goes through Cutler, she can come home and we’ll be able to visit.”
“The cost for the school is a good chunk of money,” Pa added, “but I would’ve paid her tuition. I told her I would. Then Maggie contacted the school and they said they could often find money from towns just like Cutler. We would’ve still paid, only Maggie’s a brave and independent woman now, and she wanted to do this without it costing everyone so much.”
Maggie righted her chair and sank back into it. She ignored the flying spoon and began eating with her fork.
“And after our visit, we knew what the situation really was. It’s a beautiful place. Snowcapped mountains and soaring eagles. A valley so green it’s almost blue. Elk and buffalo.” Pa’s eyes turned to Maggie and sparkled. “You’ll be handling buffalo like an old hand by the time you get back.”
Maggie’s attention was on Pa. Then a sudden movement from Connor drew her eyes. She stared at him as he sat back down, his jaw rigid.
He took a deep breath and visibly relaxed. He pulled his stew plate closer, moving Maggie’s spoon aside from its final resting place on his plate.
“We’ll talk about this later. And you can tell me about this dream of being a doctor. I didn’t know about that.” He smiled, but behind that smile his eyes still sparked and his temper simmered.
“Well, you’ve been gone for five years. You haven’t been around to tell.”
Connor’s eyes flashed but he calmed himself down. He turned to Audra. “Let me tell you about Carrie and Big John. He’s the law now in Broken Wheel, Texas.”
He went on to pleasantly share his family news. Carrie was Audra’s little sister and they wrote often, but Maggie had only met Aunt Carrie once in her life. The town Maggie was headed for was just as remote as Broken Wheel, sunk deep in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.
She forced her thoughts away from any doubts about the promises she’d made to Cutler and instead focused on her meal. Connor’s tone and expression might’ve been friendly enough to fool the rest of her family, but Maggie knew him too well. When he’d said they’d talk later, that was definitely a threat.
Chapter
4
I just came from the barn. Your pa is busy with a horse that went off its feed. He told us to head on over to Rafe’s place.”
Connor had announced this at breakfast when Uncle Ethan didn’t come in. Now he and Maggie rode side by side. They could’ve taken a trail that passed his parents’ place, but they took a shortcut instead.
His pa, Seth, the youngest of the Kincaid brothers, had a wild streak in him wider than most. Uncle Ethan, the middle brother, was a charming, friendly man who doted on his wife and their crowd of children. Rafe was the boss of the operation. He was a man who liked to be in control. Mostly Pa and Ethan let Rafe take charge. They all knew how to ranch in this rough area by now, so Rafe was just ordering them to do things they were going to do anyway, and it seemed to keep him happy.
They all had homesteads in a sort of curved line around the rugged base of the west side of Pike’s Peak. It was a land of heavy woods and wasteland, but there were some open meadows lush with tall grass. The Kincaids owned a whole lot of it.
They worked together as a fine team. Connor figured he’d be back here working with them for the rest of his life, which was part of the reason he didn’t hurry back from Texas. Not the whole reason, or even the main reason. In fact, he was riding alongside the main reason he did come back right now.
He’d figured he had plenty of time; he never imagined anything back here would change.
Now here was a big old change.
“Maggie, when—”
“Connor, do you—”
They both spoke at the same time, and both fell silent. Then Maggie plunged on.
“Do you want to go down in Julia’s cavern while we’re at Rafe’s place?”
That sure enough wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. “We can go down if you want,” he replied.
“I would love to see that cavern again,” she said. “I haven’t been there in a long time. Between last winter penning us in, then calving and spring roundup, and then moving to Denver—and honestly I had no real need to see it, I’ve seen it a thousand times, after all—I haven’t been down there in close to a year. I miss it.”
Connor was afraid to open his mouth. He figured she was mostly talking nonsense to stop him from having his say.
He’d better shock her into listening. “I thought we meant something special to each other, Maggie.”
She turned her head so hard he could almost hear the snap. Her eyes flared with a temper she rarely showed. As a rule, she was a sweet little thing. Even when they were youngsters and she was punching him, there’d been no real mean in her.
“You’ve been gone for five years.” There was nothing sweet in her tone now. “I decided you weren’t coming back. Nothing very special about that.”
“Of course I was coming back. Everybody knew that.”
“I knew it, too, for about two years. The third year I decided I’d better figure out what to do with my life. The fourth year I got an idea, and I started learning about medicine and working with the doctor in Rawhide and hunting for herbs, talking with a few Indian folks still around about their natural cures and treatments. The fifth year the idea grew into a real dream. I went from thinking it’d be a decent thing to do with my life to feeling God’s leading. I can help people, Connor. I can treat the sick an
d comfort the dying. Tend families in trouble and in grief. Bring babies into the world. Set broken bones. I can make life better for the folks in Cutler. And after I’ve been there a while, if I want to, I might come back and help folks here, including my own family. By then I should be an experienced doctor.”
Connor watched her and listened to every word. “So you admit you were waiting for me?”
He saw her swallow hard. Quietly, with steady control, she said, “There was never any kind of understanding between us, Connor. We were good friends, close family. I know we share no blood, but we were raised family.”
She reached across to rest her hand on his arm. She was being so kind it scared him.
“But you didn’t come back. Years and years went by and you didn’t come back.” She lowered her arm, and her chin dropped nearly to her chest. “The truth is, Connor, you only had these thoughts of me when you got home and saw I’d grown up. That’s flattering, I suppose, but don’t act like you asked me to wait or that I’d promised to. That never happened. So I grew up and found something to do with my life that will serve the Lord and make the world a better place. I’ve given my word. I’ve taken money from the folks in Cutler and signed a contract, one I intend to honor.”
Connor waved his hand impatiently. “The worst they could do is sue you, and only then to get their money back, and that’d come from the college because that’s where they sent it. If they’ve paid for a room in Denver, we can chip in to repay it.”
“What about the contract I signed?” she asked indignantly. “What about the hands I’ve shaken? Men and women I’ve looked in the eye and given my word to. My honor is something I value. I can’t legally or morally change my mind. And honestly, the moral part of this means more to me than a signed contract. If a lawyer or a cash payment could get me out of it, I’d reject the lawyer and the money. I’m going.”
Connor kept his mouth shut as they rode up to the corral, dismounted, and turned their horses loose. Up here was a hole in the ground that opened treacherously into a deep cavern. They looked at the little building resting over the top. They had both helped build the shed and then installed a ladder that stretched down into the hole. The shed was locked up tight so no one could fall in by accident. There was a much safer entrance across the fast-moving stream they needed to cross. Rafe’s herd was over there.
“We can go down from over by Rafe’s house.” Maggie had grown up running free in the cavern. Connor, too. They knew its dangers, and Pa had made sure there were plenty of torches handy. Maggie patted the little tin of matches in the pocket of her brown riding skirt. She never went anywhere without matches.
“That’ll be fine,” Connor said and started for the ford. “We’ll go exploring if we have time after chores. If your pa shows up and wants to, we’ll go down.”
They faced a stream that had an almost vertical bank. A line of rocks stretched across the stream, then a steep rocky trail led back up.
Once across, they saddled up a pair of the horses the Kincaids kept pastured on this side. Soon they were riding toward the canyon where Rafe lived.
Up until now, they’d walked the horses. Connor couldn’t fail to notice Maggie was galloping. Made it a lot harder to talk. Her rigidly clenched jaw made it hard, too.
“Maggie, slow down! I wouldn’t ask you to break your word or to do something you felt was dishonorable.” Well, he had started asking her to do exactly that, but once she’d started talking about honor and morality, he’d seen the error of his ways. Besides, she looked stubborn, so he picked another method of persuasion.
She reined in to a walk but didn’t say anything. He reckoned it must be his turn.
“What’s in my head, well, it came to me last night while I lay awake thinking how much I was going to miss you. I’d hoped you would just change your mind about school and becoming a doctor, but I can see why that’s impossible.”
Honestly, he’d only been awake a while. He was a man who’d always slept well. But while he waited those couple of minutes, he’d done some thinking and this had occurred to him, and he’d immediately set it aside as . . . yep, crazy.
“It’s an idea so crazy it must be right, ’cuz who thinks up crazy stuff otherwise?”
“Uh, your pa.”
“Now, Maggie, Pa hasn’t been what you’d call crazy for a long, long time.”
“He has been if you count—”
“And then it never lasts long.” Forging on, Connor said, “Ma has a way of shaking him out of it.”
She usually threatened to “shake” him with the butt of her Winchester to the head, yet that was a detail Connor skipped. Although she never actually hit him, apparently Pa wasn’t that confident she wouldn’t because it really did clear his thinking.
“I suppose that’s true. He wanted to offer guided tours into unknown parts of the cavern, parts he’d never even been in. He said he’d charge extra if at any point in the tour it looked like they were going to die. For some reason he thought folks would consider that a great experience.”
That did sound a little touched.
Connor changed the subject back to what he’d been going to say, which, confound it, sounded crazy. “What if we . . . ?” Then his throat went bone-dry. Though he had his canteen handy, taking a drink in the middle of his sentence would be wrong. Only a galoot even dumber about women than Connor would be foolish enough to do that. He cleared his throat, then cleared it again. “What if we g-get . . . m-married?”
Maggie jerked her horse’s reins so hard it reared and neighed. Connor reached out to grab the bridle and pull down on the horse’s head to keep it from going over backward. Maggie was a hand with horses so she’d have probably been okay. She quickly got her mount calmed down.
“What if we get married?” she repeated, her voice loud and high.
Connor fought the urge to cover his ears.
“That’s how you propose to someone?”
Honestly, he figured the idea itself was outlandish enough without his dropping to one knee.
“I want you to be safe, Maggie. And I want to be with you.” Maybe he should have said that first. Although judging by Maggie’s mean, narrow gaze, there really was no right way to say this. “If you won’t stay, then I’m going with you. And if you won’t marry me, I’ll follow you to Denver and find some work there and we’ll see each other whenever we can. You said the schooling is hard. I’ll be mindful of that, just like you’re mindful of how busy we are during roundup.”
Maggie opened her mouth, then closed it, her forehead furrowed.
Since she was struck dumb, he kept on talking. “But I don’t want to follow you, live near you, see you only once in a while. I want to stay with you in Denver and in Cutler. At the end of your day of study or work, I want you to come home to me. And to do that, we have to get married. Honestly, yesterday, after one look at the beautiful woman you’ve become, added to the great friends we always were, I’d already decided to start chasing you so hard you’d marry me just to get me to leave you alone. This just gets the chase over fast.”
Faintly, Maggie said, “Fast is a fair enough word.”
“I saw it in your eyes yesterday, Maggie. You missed me and you were happy to see me. We were friends, but even back then it was more than that—at least for me. I went away in part because I was feeling things for you that were wrong when we were so young. I left when I was fifteen, and if I hadn’t, I think we’d have ended up married when we were sixteen.”
A snort from Maggie wasn’t encouraging.
“But at sixteen I was too young to be able to take care of you. I’d have been a child myself—a full-grown, hardworking child, but my pa and my bossy uncles would have done everything for us, given us land they managed, built us a house the way they wanted it, and set it nearby my ma and pa so we would have help whenever we wanted it, and a lot of times when we didn’t. My whole life, no matter how much land and how many cattle I owned, I would’ve been nothing but a hired hand. Working for
people who love both of us and only want to take care of us, but that wasn’t the way I wanted us to live, you and me, the eternal children being cared for by our parents. So I rode away to grow up, and also to learn more about the Texas toughness I love in my ma.”
“The Kincaid men are plenty tough.”
“They are, but I wanted to learn more. I wanted a chance to grow a sterner spine. I spent plenty of time missing you, Maggie. But I needed to wait until I was man enough to be worthy of you. Once I got back, I figured to start up on my own, make sure I could take charge of my life, and then I was coming for you. All this does is speed the whole thing up.”
Maggie’s eyes were locked on Connor. She let her horse go on walking, not bothering to guide it. The horses knew where they were going. So Connor ignored his horse, too, and stared right back at her.
“It’s too sudden, Connor. We can’t know if we’ll suit each other. What a terrible thing it would be for the family if we married and then had strife between us. It would spread through all our kin and be worse than if we married outside the family.”
“There’s nothing sudden about it. Not really.”
“There most certainly is.”
“We’ve known each other all our lives. We like each other. I respect you. I know you’re a good and decent and kindhearted woman. I know you’re plenty smart enough and hardworking enough to make a fine nurse. And if you’re a doctor, I’d be proud to have you sew me up and set my broken bones. There is no possible way I can think of where we don’t suit each other.”
Maggie hesitated as she watched him. Suddenly she pulled her horse to a halt and swung down. “Get off your horse, Connor.”
He didn’t even consider disobeying her.
They stood between the horses, facing each other. Maggie looked so deeply into his eyes she tugged on his heart.
“Kiss me.”
That startled him. Honestly, he’d not given much thought to kissing any woman, and it seemed strange to start with his old friend Maggie. Beautiful, grown-up Maggie . . .