Bertie had encouraged her to keep the cloth tucked away in a special place to bring out whenever times grew rough or even just when Pieter started grating on her nerves. It would serve as a reminder of her commitment, her choice to bind herself to this man and hold fast to him.
“Adding new knots every day,” Claire said. “I do believe we’re so well tangled we’ll never be free of each other.”
Bertie’s eyes glowed with pleasure. “Exactly as the Lord intended. ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’”
“Aye, there’ll be no asunderin’ with us,” Claire vowed, seeking Pieter out where he stood among the men. His head turned as if he sensed her regard, and the heat of his golden-brown gaze warmed her down to her toes. “Just love, trust, and enough forgiveness and laughter to keep us smilin’ the rest of our days.”
The Tangled Ties That Bind by Mary Connealy
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Chapter
1
RAWHIDE, COLORADO
JUNE 20, 1883
Home. One more hour on the trail and Connor Kincaid would be home for the first time in five years.
Only he realized he wasn’t thinking of Pa and Ma and their house. He was thinking of Uncle Ethan’s place. Maybe because it was closer and he’d go right by—so of course he’d stop. Maybe because once he got to Uncle Ethan’s, he was on Kincaid land and that meant home.
Or maybe he was just wanting to see Maggie again. His childhood best friend. The beautiful fifteen-year-old girl who made Connor feel things he had no business feeling for a cousin—who was in no way a real cousin.
Those unruly feelings were a big part of why he’d ridden away. But he was all grown up now, and she’d be grown up, too, and he could feel anything he wanted.
It was a perfect day in the Rockies. He rode along the stony trail, trees thick on both sides, skirting around the northern base of Pike’s Peak, daydreaming about a grown-up Maggie.
A strange, unnatural rasp jerked his thoughts back to the present.
Between one heartbeat and the next he drew, cocked, and aimed his pistol.
A twig snapped.
“Who’s there?” A woman hollering was a whole lot more than a snapping twig to get a man’s attention.
Then she shouted, “Be careful!” A short scream stopped any more words from being voiced.
“Be careful of what?” He holstered his gun. He wasn’t going to start shooting until he knew what he was aiming at.
Through the thick leaves he saw the branches of a skinny oak tree shake like they were caught in a cyclone.
He ground-hitched his horse just in case the gray needed to make a run for it from whatever was snorting in the thicket over there.
Picking his way into the forest, he wound past a couple of trees and came face-to-face with a buffalo.
Connor could have reached out and touched its horns.
The huge cow was scratching her backside against a slender tree, which explained the image of a cyclone. Then she spotted him and snorted hot breath and buffalo spit in Connor’s face.
The buffalo swung its massive head at Connor, who threw himself backward. He crashed into a tree, so he didn’t get that far back. The horns barely missed him.
“Climb!” The screaming cut through his panic. He leapt, grabbed a branch, and swung his legs up. A slashing horn caught his left foot and ripped the boot right off.
The blow almost knocked Connor out of the tree. The bark scraped up both hands, and he banged his head against the bottom of the limb. But he had the grit to hang on, wrapping his legs around the branch.
The buffalo lifted its head high, missed him with her horns but cracked into Connor’s back. It sent him flying, except he somehow was able to cling to the branch. The painful whack had flipped him over the limb so that now he was on top of it and out of the buffalo’s reach.
He hoped, anyway.
He grabbed the branch above him and stood, finally able to quit fighting for his life, which gave him time to ache in every muscle and joint. He looked down, between the toe of one boot and the sock on his other foot. The cow looked up. Connor’s Stetson hung from one horn. The lousy hat thief.
The cow wasn’t that far below. Connor crouched, made a swipe, and snatched up his hat. She slashed at him with her horns and nearly snagged his arm. He decided he wouldn’t be so brave trying to fetch his boot.
He plunked his hat on his head with hands he noticed were shaking.
Then he heard, “I told you to be careful.”
He lifted his head and looked straight into a pair of pale blue eyes, rife with irritation and maybe a little panic.
“Maggie?”
“Connor!” A bright smile bloomed on her face. “Welcome home.”
It was Maggie all right, and she sure had changed. Great land of milk and honey, cute little Maggie had grown all the way up into the most beautiful woman who could possibly walk the earth—or in this case, walk the tree limbs.
“That buffalo’s had me treed for almost an hour,” Maggie said.
Connor grinned. “Next time don’t yell, ‘Be careful.’ Instead yell, ‘Be careful of the buffalo.’ Things might’ve ended different, you know.”
The huge cow poked her head past the stand of trees lining the trail. She bellowed mighty loud.
Hoofbeats pounded away. Unfortunately not buffalo hooves.
“And there goes my horse.” That was all this mess needed. “Now I’ve got to walk this mountain trail another hour to Ethan’s house.”
“Assuming we ever get down from here.”
He glared at the little pessimist, then quickly perked up. “Unless you have a horse!”
He wouldn’t mind riding double with her.
“Nope. My horse ran off just like yours and for the same reason. It’s almost certain my horse will go on home. I honestly expect Pa here any second now.”
Her Pa was Ethan Kincaid. Uncle Ethan coming was a fine thing.
“He’ll be hunting me,” she said.
“Maybe my pa will come along, too.” Connor sure hoped so, as he couldn’t wait to see him. “I’ve missed him and Ma something fierce. I can’t believe how long I’ve been away. How did the years go by so fast, anyway? Yep, I can’t wait to see everyone again.”
“Oh, I should tell you: Julia was invited to the grand opening of a dinosaur museum. They promised her time to study the bones, and said they’d feature her books at the museum and offer them for sale. And your ma, Aunt Callie, did some paintings of the pictures in the cave. They’re big ones, not the sketches she does for the books. So her paintings will be there for sale, as well. Most of the Kincaids went south. They’re going to pick up Heath and his family at the Cimarron Ranch and then all go on together.”
“Ma’s gone?” She’d always been a fine hand with drawing, but she’d rather ride a horse and hog-tie a longhorn than make pictures. Except Julia could be mighty persuasive. Some might say a nag. She was also about the smartest, hardest-working woman Connor had ever known, especially when it came to that big old cave.
“Yep, and none of ’em will be home for a couple of weeks.”
Connor frowned. “I should have let them know I was coming.”
“You most certainly should have. But then they’d have stayed to see you and missed one of the few trips most of them have ever taken. Pa and Ma are here, but everyone else is gone. Even the young’uns went along on the train.”
“The young’uns aren’t all that young anymore.”
“No, though I will always be the oldest, of course. So you all seem young to me.”
Connor gave her a wild smile. “I’m counting the two of us as tied.”
Maggie sniffed. “Go ahead and pretend if it makes you feel better.”
For as long as he could remem
ber, Maggie had been teasing him about their age difference. She was a few months older and never let him forget it. He’d missed her like crazy.
“Pa went along, too?”
Connor’s pa, Seth, was Ethan’s little brother. Pa lived near Ethan and his big brother Rafe, Julia’s husband, on the Kincaid Ranch. Connor was well aware that, while Maggie considered Ethan her pa, Ethan’s wife, Audra, came into the marriage with two little girls. Maggie and Connor didn’t share a drop of blood.
“Only my folks stayed to do the chores. Ma has a sprained ankle, so she couldn’t travel well, and that made picking who stayed behind easy. I’m here helping take care of her.”
The tree started rocking back and forth. Connor gripped the wobbling trunk. He looked down to see the buffalo—its hide coarse from a half-shed winter coat—go back to scratching. She’d picked Connor’s tree this time.
“I can see why screaming kept you too busy to warn me better.” He wrapped both arms around the trembling tree. He held on so tight, the tree whacked him in the face.
“She seems determined to scratch her whole fur coat away.” Maggie looked to be calm now. Of course, it wasn’t her tree that was shaking. “I suspect every downed tree in this forest can be laid right at her feet.”
Watching the buffalo rub her hindquarters, Connor said, “Or laid at her backside.”
Maggie giggled. It was about the prettiest sound Connor had ever heard.
He looked around at the thick branches, all intertwined with other trees. “I think with some finagling I can climb from this tree to the one beside me. Then I can go on to the next and the next. I might get far enough away to get to the ground and run for help.”
“Don’t leave me here.” Her smile shrank away.
The buffalo quit scratching and ambled the few feet to Maggie’s tree. Connor was surprised how much better he felt without the tree shaking.
Maggie squeaked in alarm, threw her arms around the tree, and forgot about any continued conversation. Which gave him time to climb through the treetops like a giant squirrel. He looked around, saw a path of crisscrossing branches, and picked his way along them to circle around to Maggie.
She gave him a wide-eyed look while she clung to the tree.
“Do you think she’s choosing trees based on there being a person in them, or will she go back to the one I was in after a while? That’d get her to stop jiggling you. Then we can get out of here.”
The talk drew the buffalo’s attention. It stopped scratching and stared up at Connor.
“Climb over here right now, Maggie, while she’s distracted. And be quiet about it.”
Maggie’s hands didn’t come loose from the tree. In fact, her whole body seemed frozen in place.
Connor knew he didn’t have much time before that itchy buffalo started in again. Continuing his squirrel behavior, he scampered over to Maggie, drew her gently but firmly away from the tree trunk, and then, holding her hand, hurried back to his tree, then on to the next.
The buffalo kept on staring at them—all thoughts of scratching seemed far from her mind. She trailed along, winding through woods that gave before her size and weight, when Connor couldn’t see the least sign of a trail.
“We’ve gotta keep going,” Connor whispered.
“Maybe we should split up. She can only follow—” A sudden scream cut her off. Connor dove for her, catching her by one arm. Then his grip gave and he dropped her.
A squall shocked him, and he saw terror in Maggie’s eyes as a baby buffalo surged to its feet. It turned and gave Maggie a good solid bunt in the backside. Fierce for one so young.
Maggie sprawled face-first in the undergrowth.
The calf ran to its mother, stumbling and falling, bawling like it was fighting for its life.
The mama seemed to . . . Connor had never heard the sound she made. It was like she was gargling with odd grunts salted in.
Connor dropped to the ground.
Pulling Maggie along, tripping, falling, scrambling up, Connor glanced back to see the cow buffalo charging, blasting through the broken trees and scrub brush. He gave up any plan to run for it.
“Up!” he shouted. “Climb! She’s coming.”
He shoved Maggie up a limb, but she didn’t need shoving. She was moving fast, doing a good squirrel imitation of her own, and he kept right behind her. It was the first time he noticed she had on a riding skirt, and a bag hung over her head and under one arm.
He stepped on a twig poking out of one of the limbs and remembered he was missing a boot.
He didn’t pay much mind to it, though, because nothing got a man’s full attention like a raging buffalo.
The cow slammed into the tree only inches below his feet. The tree gave an ominous crack, but it stayed upright.
They gained a level far out of her reach.
“Change trees fast,” Maggie said. “One more blow and this one might go right over.”
The branches were as tightly woven here as they’d been before, so picking their way to the next tree worked.
Connor made it across, but the limbs were slender. His height made it possible to hold on to a branch overhead to lighten his weight and keep him steady.
“We’re too high up for these branches to hold.” Connor looked at Maggie. Her shining blue eyes were wide with panic, but she turned forward and kept moving. Maggie had always been a lot tougher than she looked.
The buffalo snorted beneath them. Connor had a sudden sick image of what would happen to Maggie if another branch broke, like before, and she fell. That buffalo would use her horns and hooves. Tough or not, Maggie wouldn’t last a minute with a cow dancing on her head.
And then Connor would have to get danced on, too, because he’d have to try to save her—what decent human being wouldn’t? And he had a pistol but thought it might only make the buffalo more furious. He’d lose a fight between him and the two-thousand-pound beast. So Connor hung on tight, and when the branch he was on felt sturdy, he towed Maggie to a stop.
He inched forward until he was beside her. They leaned against the trunk and breathed hard for a few minutes, Maggie held tight in his arms. Tight except for a slender tree trunk between them, and her arms securely around him.
“Thank you, Connor.” She spoke into his ear and showed no sign of letting go anytime soon. Now the buffalo stood directly below them.
“I think that answers your question about splitting up.”
“Yes, it does,” she said with the fervor of an oath sworn before God.
“Why are you out here, Maggie?” Might as well visit while they were trapped.
“There are some herbs back in these woods. I use them for medicine. For heaven’s sake, I come here all the time. There’s never been a buffalo before.”
“I’ve heard they usually stay out on the prairie—but they can be notional. There were a few around Uncle Luke’s place in Broken Wheel.”
“And this one got a notion to walk in the woods and have her baby. Just my luck.”
“We don’t need to be this high. Let’s go down some. The lower we get, the sturdier the branches, although that gets us mighty close to that cow.”
“I didn’t think the branches were weak there when I fell on top of that poor baby buffalo.”
“The branches where we first stood weren’t so wobbly. We must’ve found a young tree. And the calf is no poor baby.” Connor pointed. “He’s as tough as they come.”
Maggie rubbed her backside and nodded.
Connor forced himself to look away. “He’s already forgotten about being pounced on by a woman. Now he’s frolicking alongside his mama, stealing a nip of milk. Look, the baby’s not even all the way dried off yet. It really is newly born.”
They stood and watched the little calf’s antics for a few minutes under the watchful eye of mother cow. Connor spent the time catching his breath and hunting up his backbone.
“Trees ought to be more dependable.” Maggie sniffed, then straightened away. “Let’s go
on away from her and—”
The cow bellowed, and Maggie fell silent again.
Connor finished. “And be more careful about each step.”
They descended to the next lower branch, and the buffalo raised her head and grunted. Connor felt hot buffalo breath on his socked foot.
“I think we’d have gotten out of sight if that tree hadn’t wobbled so bad. She’s moving slow in these woods.”
“She charged mighty fast,” Maggie reminded him.
“True enough. But you tried to kill her baby and set it to crying.”
Maggie glared. “I did no such thing.”
Connor jabbed a finger at the buffalo. “Tell her.”
Maggie sighed. “Let’s try again. Try not to shake the tree and be quiet. Maybe we can leave her behind.”
They climbed until Connor glanced back—for the fiftieth time. He whispered, “She’s out of sight.”
“Shhh . . .” Connor helped Maggie climb down. She didn’t need much help. She’d relaxed and was quick and nimble, as steady as he was, if not more so.
The Kincaids had always been a family crazy for climbing. His pa craziest of all, though Rafe’s wife, Aunt Julia, was always climbing around in that cavern, to the point that they called it Julia’s Cavern.
They finally reached solid ground, and Connor stepped on a sharp stick, remembering too late that he had only one boot on.
“I have to go back,” he said.
Maggie’s hand wrapped around his arm with the force and sting of a bullwhip. “You will do no such thing.”
“I’m half barefoot.” He pointed at his sock.
“I don’t think going back is a good idea.” With a wary eye, Maggie looked between the rock-studded road and the trail leading back the way they’d come.
“I reckon not.” He wiggled his toes. Honestly, these were the only boots he owned. “I have to get back my other boot at some point, but for now, considering the buffalo, let’s head for home. Later, when we’re sure that cranky mama is gone, we’ll come back.” He hesitated. “Can we find the exact spot?” He hadn’t been here in a long time, and the trail had changed a lot.