Softly Falling (2 page)

Suddenly Jack understood. The worm wasn’t brave enough to tell this Miss Lily Carteret he’d gambled away a paltry two-thousand acre spread. Obviously the little twerp had never learned to own up to a misdemeanor.

He tried again. “How long’s it been? She’ll probably want you to meet her.”

Carteret turned his attention back to the ledger before him. “Nine years,” he muttered.

“Suit yourself,” Jack said with a shrug, grateful that his own father, a hard enough man, was never so callous. “In case the platform is loaded with young ladies, how about a brief description?”

“You’ll recognize her,” Carteret said, obviously reluctant to continue the conversation. “She was tall for her age at fifteen. Looks like her mother.” His voice grew almost wistful. “Her mother was from Barbados.”

That was it? Did Mr. Remittance Man think Jack Sinclair was going to walk up to every woman on the platform and ask if her mother was from Barbados? “More information would be nice. Maybe even helpful,” he suggested.

Carteret gave him a long look. Jack thought he saw a little embarrassment in it, but he could have been wrong.

“Sinclair, do you know what
café au lait
is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Didn’t think you would.”

Jack ordered himself to count to ten. By twenty, he felt better. He gave Carteret his patented stare-down-his-long-nose look that generally worked with new hands and salesmen. Amazing, but Clarence couldn’t meet his glance. Jack hadn’t used the stare in a long while, but it still worked, apparently.

“What about cambric tea?”

With a shock, Jack understood. “I’m to look for someone not pasty white,” he said, feeling suddenly sorry for Miss Lily Carteret, who deserved a better father, no matter what her hue.

Clarence Carteret surprised him. “She looks like her mother,” he said again, and with greater dignity. “Quite a lovely woman. You’ll find her.”

In the past decade, Jack had made the short drive to Wisner more times than he could count, but as this hot and dry summer turned the corner into September, he was starting to dread the trip. The sky had been bright blue since April with no hint of rain. Brittle grass and parched ground outlined with cracks widened in the soil.

Too many cattle nosed in the dry brush and lowed by shrinking ponds. The commission agents had offered so little for this year’s four-year-olds that most of the ranchers chose to winter over their herds and hope for better prices in ’87. Jack shook his head as he threaded Sunny Boy through a regular convention of steers complaining about their lot in life.

He glanced west toward his own few acres. On the rare chance that the Cheyenne Northern was actually on time, he’d better ride for Wisner, get ranch business done first, collect Carteret’s mulatto daughter, and stop by the Two Jay on the way back to the Bar Dot.

Wisner wasn’t much, not an up-and-coming town like Wheatland, which had a merchants’ club and three banks. One bank, a post office, a Methodist church, one general store, one undertaker, a hotel, a greasy spoon, a lawyer, a saloon, and a sporting house made up Wisner. What more did a Wyoming town need? A doctor might have been nice.

Mrs. Buxton’s package was waiting for hm. The clerk handed it over with a frown. “Shake it.”

Jack shook it and rolled his eyes. “Let’s hope Mrs. Buxton ordered a parcel of broken glass from Monkey Ward.”

The clerk turned back to targeting pigeonholes with letters. Jack watched a moment, wondering what it would be like to receive a letter and be able to read it.

The chair in the impromptu barbershop constituting a corner of the general store was more comfortable than he remembered. Since the Cheyenne Northern was late as usual, he felt rich to the tune of another fifteen cents and included a shave with his haircut. Glory, but it felt good just to sit there with a hot towel on his face. If only there was someone to knead the knots out of his neck, which had tightened into bullets after a summer with no rain.

A visit to Vivian’s faro table would have been nice, but he had to save money. No telling how much hay and grain he’d have to buy for Bismarck and his harem this winter. He wasn’t any great shakes at faro, but Vivian was nice to talk to.

His face in the mirror was always a shock. His little scrap of a shaving mirror at home only showed a bit of personal real estate; here was his whole head. At least his hair wasn’t thinning, even if that strawberry blond color seemed childish for a man going on thirty-five. He had enough weather wrinkles to avoid the nickname of Babyface. Or at least no one called him that to his face, since he was the foreman and had certain powers of hire and fire.

Observing him, the barber was not helpful. “You could maybe grow a handlebar to cover that scar. Get it in the war?”

“Sure did.” He smiled at the barber. From his speech he was a Yankee, and he still held that shaving razor. No sense in mentioning that
his
army was Lee’s. “I earned it. How much?”

Transaction completed, Jack handed over his notes in the general store portion of the building and added Mrs. Buxton’s admonition about Pond’s Healing Cream. Good thing he never had acquired a wife or he might have had to pick up something that would make him blush. He doubted foremen blushed, and he didn’t intend to be the first.

As it was, the clerk handed over the jar with a flourish and added it to the pile. Madeleine’s chicken scratch seemed legible to the fellow, which relieved Jack.

“How’s Madeleine doing, anyway?” the man asked as he wrapped Jack’s purchases in brown paper and twine. “Must be a little tough without old Jean Baptiste to bring in wages.”

“It is.” He sighed, wondering how much to disclose of the cook’s anguish at her husband’s death. “Three little kids . . .”

Jack was no fan of small talk, but the brief exchange reminded him of the penny candy be had promised Chantal, rolling dough so diligently, and a bag of peppermint drops for Manuel, minding his ranch and Bismarck. Jack found what he wanted and kept it separate from ranch purchases, adding in a dime’s worth of lemon drops for himself. That and the shave constituted his splurges for the summer.

He put the parcels in the buckboard, which already held the windmill parts he had picked up earlier. A brief visit to Stockmen’s Savings and Loan assured him that he could treat himself to lunch at the greasy spoon, grandiosely named the Great Wall of China. It was run by a Chinaman who wielded a great cleaver to send poultry to a better place.

But there was the Cheyenne Northern, less late than usual. Maybe Miss Carteret wouldn’t be too refined for the Great Wall of China.

One middle-aged lady got off the train and looked around. Her anxious expression changed to relief when a middle-aged gentlemen stepped up, Stetson in hand. Jack watched them out of the corner of his eye. When all they did was shake hands and leave considerable distance between them, he figured her for a mail-order bride. Give’um a year and there’d be a baby. Someone had to populate this sparse territory, since he wasn’t doing any heavy lifting in that regard.

The train next coughed up what looked like a preacher and a salesman. He watched, and there she was.

How in the world did she do it? Every person who got off the Cheyenne Northern was windblown and blowsy. There wasn’t a hair out of place on Lily Carteret’s head, from what he could see of her dark hair under the small hat, tipped forward so stylishly. He knew she had been traveling from New York City, long enough for her clothing to be wrinkled and travel stained. But she looked as though she had just stepped out of a fancy store, as neat as wax.

“
Jee
-rusalem Crickets,” he murmured. “I have died and gone to heaven.”

C
HAPTER
2

I
t couldn’t be anyone but Miss Lily Carteret. Clarence Carteret was absolutely right about the cambric tea color of her skin, but that wasn’t the first thing Jack noticed. In fact, it was way down his manly list.

Like the other lady, she stood on the top step, looking around, but with a striking difference. She seemed to be assessing her surroundings instead, weighing Wyoming Territory in the balance. He couldn’t tell from her expression how the scale tipped.

As he stared at her, he decided it was her eyes that held his attention, even before her shape, which was bounteous without being ostentatious. Her eyes were deep brown. He saw no fear or doubt in them, only interest, as though she was trying to figure out what life planned for her here.

It was impossible to ignore her beauty. Her skin was indeed cambric tea, or that pretentious French phrase Clarence Carteret had tossed about. A bold man could stare at her for some time, wondering if she was English, French, Spanish, or African. Since he knew something about her, he knew she was all of that, and she wore it well.

She helped herself down, since the conductor had turned away. Jack didn’t have to gird his loins for this. He knew that meeting Lily Carteret was going to be a pleasure. There had been so little genuine pleasure in his life that he almost didn’t recognize the emotion.

Grateful he had visited the barbershop, Jack took off his Stetson and stepped forward. “Miss Lily Carteret?” he asked, also grateful that his voice did not squeak. He was well beyond that particular felony, thank the Almighty.

“That would be I,” she said, and he nearly swooned—if men swooned—with the loveliness of her English accent.

He had become familiar with proper English because the Bar Dot was a British consortium, pompously titled the Cheyenne Land and Cattle Company. The various owners had visited the ranch through the years, and he liked to listen to them. None of those men sounded as well-bred as Lily Carteret.

“I’m Jack Sinclair, foreman on the Bar Dot,” he said, using the ranch’s nickname. “Your father asked that I escort you to the ranch.”

“And his first name is . . . ,” she began. Jack silently applauded her circumspection. This was not a woman to be easily gulled by some flat looking at her luggage for her name and taking advantage.

“Clarence Carteret,” he answered.

“Bravo,” she said and held out her hand.

If she was disappointed that her father was not here to greet her, she didn’t let on. It seemed to Jack as if she did not expect him, anyway.

“He, uh, said he was busy, and, uh . . .”
Stop, you idiot
, Jack ordered himself.
Just stop talking
. “It’s a busy time of year, ma’am.”

She smiled at him and looked over his shoulder, which made him turn around too, like an oaf. “My luggage.”

Her voice was so lovely. Someone watching him would think he had never seen a pretty lady before. He must have, but he couldn’t remember when.

He picked up the suitcases. “If you’ll just follow me.”

“Why should I do that?” she asked, sounding completely reasonable. “Papa never mentioned a foreman. Yes, you know his name, but after only an overnight sojourn in Cheyenne, I’ve decided everyone knows everyone in this territory. Do set down my luggage until we sort this out.”

He couldn’t help smiling. “You’re right there, ma’am. It’s that small a territory.” He set down Miss Carteret’s suitcases. Obviously she needed a little more explanation to budge herself off the platform. “You don’t have foremen in England?”

She shook her head, showing no apprehension, but also showing no inclination to move until he proved up. “Do you tend the cattle?”

He thought of all his duties, most of which involved monumental cursing and brute force against stubborn animals.
Tending
sounded so kind, almost benevolent. Miss Carteret was in for a rare experience, if he ever convinced her to come with him to the Bar Dot. “I . . . I suppose I do. The Bar Dot is a huge spread.”

“Papa told me his ranch was two thousand acres, so that must be huge. He also called it simply the Carteret, not Bar Dot.”

Now what? Did he have to explain what had happened before this person would take another step? “It’s like this, ma’am,” he began, after a lengthy pause.

She put up her hand, her eyes kind, the starch out of her, somehow. “There’s no ranch, eh?”

Jee-rusalem Crickets, why in the world did Clarence Carteret have to be a fool
and
a coward who couldn’t even do his own dirty work? “There is and there isn’t.”