Softly Falling (6 page)

It was on the tip of his tongue to warn the pretty lady beside him that if she had any money, she needed to squirrel it away, maybe hide it in her corset. Clarence Carteret had a bad habit of thinking he would win at cards.

Jack Sinclair said nothing. His mother had raised him better than that.

C
HAPTER
6

Y
ou’ll see the Bar Dot over this next rise,” Jack told Lily. “The Cheyenne L&C has five ranches in this district, and this is the smallest. Just fifty thousand acres.”

Lily knew she would have to reorder her idea of small and large, but she had been thinking that all the way through Nebraska and into Wyoming Territory, where everything seemed larger, from the sky on down.

“
Just
? Thank goodness for that! I could probably take a little stroll and not get lost on a mere fifty thousand acres.”

Mr. Sinclair chuckled at her little joke. He stopped at the rise, and there was the ranch spread out below. “That’s the big house where the Buxtons live,” he said, pointing to a smallish two-story house of regular boards, the only such building. “Horse barn, a barn or two, bunkhouse, cookshack—we all eat there; you too, probably—and my little place.” He counted in the air with his finger. “Your father’s place is farther away, and there are corrals and more sheds than we know what to do with.” He tipped his hat back. “You’ll find any number of hounds, but they won’t bother you. I advise you to avoid the cat, a tom named Freak.”

Lily felt the silliness overtook her. “A
cat
? You’re all afraid of a cat?”

“You will be too.” But he was still grinning. “There’s not a mouse on the place, no small feat.”

Lily shook her head over the cat. She looked at the ranch spread below, not certain what she had expected to find at the Bar Dot. It looked more like a bedraggled village than her idea of a ranch, gleaned from a Western novel or two she would never admit to having read. She noticed another log building nearby on the wagon road. “Over there?”

“That’s a schoolhouse Mrs. Buxton demanded we build. No one uses it.”

“Why ever not?”

“What would induce an Eastern schoolmarm on the search for a husband to drop everything and rush to all this splendid isolation to teach a coupla kids?”

Indeed, why?
Lily thought.
I would never do it
.

He shook his head. “There it sits, too far away to be of any practical use. Mrs. Buxton wanted to make sure that whoever ended up there had plenty of cold air to breathe in and out, on the way to an education. It’s healthy, she claims.”

“Seriously?”

“She actually told me that.” He frowned then, maybe thinking he had said too much about the people who employed him. “You’ll understand better when you meet her. I’ll take you around tomorrow.”

And that was the end of any more confidences from the foreman. Lily brushed a stray hair from her face where the wind had teased it. So many cattle everywhere—too many. She shivered inwardly, wondering—not for the first time—why the people who made the decisions never seemed to know as much as the people they employed. Thank goodness it wasn’t her problem. No one ever listened to her either.

Mr. Sinclair spoke to the horses and they started toward the odd conglomeration of buildings and corrals that made up the Bar Dot, plus one isolated schoolhouse.

No one seemed to be about, but cheery smoke poured from the cookshack chimney. Her stomach growled, too loud to be ignored.

“Beg pardon,” she murmured, embarrassed.

“You’ll do better here than chop suey,” he told her. “I’ll take you to your father’s first.”

“Doesn’t he eat with everyone else?” she asked, suddenly unwilling to be placed in the care of a man she hadn’t seen since she was fifteen.

Mr. Sinclair reined in the wagon in front of a shack no more dignified than the others. He set the brake, but made no move to get her luggage. He turned sideways on the seat and appraised her, his face troubled.

“How long’s it been?” he asked.

“Nine years.” She didn’t know Mr. Sinclair well enough to say that the occasion was Papa’s return from India, and what was supposed to have been a second or third chance to make something of himself. She was almost sixteen then, and down for a brief holiday from Miss Tilton’s, which kept her out of sight and out of mind. It hadn’t been much of a glimpse, either, just the sight of a slender man swaying, then collapsing into a chair. India had not been profitable. “Nine years,” she repeated more softly.

“A lot can happen in nine years,” the foreman said, and she knew he was hedging.

I can throw myself on this kind man’s chest and sob, or I can continue to be the dignified woman I know my mother was
, Lily thought. She looked Mr. Sinclair square in the eyes. “He drinks, doesn’t he?”

“A lot. He’s not a dangerous drunk, though, or I don’t think I’d leave you here,” Mr. Sinclair said, his voice flat.

“Where else would I go, sir?” she asked with some spirit. She had come this far; might as well finish. “I have five American dollars in my purse, which means the Bar Dot is my home now. If you would please get my luggage out of this wagon? I’ve taken up too much of your time, and you have been so kind.” No need to tell him about the hundred pounds that Uncle Niles had wanted her to give to his brother for cattle shares, the last thing she would ever do, now that she knew the situation.

Still he hesitated, which touched her, even though Lily knew he had no more choice in the matter than she did. She could strive for a more pleasant tone, though. She might need an ally in the months ahead. “I have very few expectations, Mr. Sinclair. Probably no more than you do.”

Her eyes chose to fill with tears then, but she didn’t think this was a man much moved by tears.
I don’t want your sympathy, but I do need a friend
, she thought.
Oh, I do
. “I’ll be fine, Mr. Sinclair,” she said, and almost meant it.

What could he do? He climbed down from the wagon, came around, and held out his hand. When she hesitated because the ground looked so far away, he grasped her waist, set her down, and then reached for her luggage.

He picked up both pieces and knocked on the door. “Mr. Carteret? I have your daughter,” he called, then opened the door and set her two cases inside. “Mr. Carteret?” He shrugged.

“Miss Carteret, it’s been a complete pleasure,” he said. He leaned closer and she could smell his shaving lotion. “We eat at the cookshack, and I want you to meet Madeleine.” He hauled out a timepiece. “There’s food on the table until six tonight, and breakfast starts pretty early at five thirty.”

Lily nodded, knowing she could not keep him there but wishing he did not have to leave her with someone barely more than a stranger. “Thank you,” she managed to say.

He took another look at her, hesitated, and then climbed back into the wagon seat. When he gathered up the reins, she stepped closer.

“Mr. Sinclair?”

He did not try to hide his worry. Maybe the foreman on a ranch felt he was responsible for everyone.

“I promise you that I will have a plan, next time I see you.”

He tipped his hat to her and was gone.

Lily took a deep breath and went into the shack. She noted the braided rug on the floor, a table and two chairs, and what looked like a packing crate with a lumpy cushion on it, a most primitive settee. At the end of the little room she saw a cot with folded blankets and sheets, but not made up. Someone had tacked up a thin wire, but the effort to stretch it to the other wall had proved too much, apparently. The wire was there, but drooping. Two gray blankets with “US” stamped in the center drooped too. Perhaps that was the makeshift wall.

That will be my room
, she thought, looking at the slack wire.

She crossed the main room in only a few steps and peered into what Mr. Sinclair had called a lean-to. “Well named,” she murmured, seeing a cookstove, counter space for a midget, and a stand with a bucket and dipper. A galvanized tub took up the rest of the space. She stared at it, wondering if someone her height could ever compact herself into such a space and bathe. It seemed unlikely.

The other door was closed. Lily stood a long moment in front of it, wishing it would open by itself and her father, smiling and well-dressed, would come out with a smile. She sighed, knowing she had not told Mr. Sinclair the whole truth. She did have expectations, and they were breaking her heart right now.

She looked back at the outside door, wanting to rush outside, commandeer the foreman’s wagon, and go . . . where? Using that strength of will she was only beginning to appreciate about herself, Lily forced down her rising panic. She made herself think how little she had left behind in England, and how she had yearned for freedom from her uncle and his pretensions.

Here you are
,
Lily,
she reminded herself.
You got what you wanted. Make something of it
.

Thus bolstered, she tapped on the closed door, then opened it. “Father?”

The curtains were closed, but there was enough afternoon sun to outline her father, sound asleep on a much better bed than the cot destined for her in the main room.

She removed her hat, set it on a bureau crowded with bottles, and pulled up a stool beside the bed. She sat down and regarded the man lying there so peacefully asleep, with his hands tucked under his cheek like a child. A nearly full wine glass was on the floor beside the bed.

There was no point in waking him; she would keep. Lily looked around the little room. She had taken the stool from beside a small desk. Quietly, she returned the stool to the desk and noticed a packet of letters tied with twine. She looked closer to see they were her own letters, written for years under some duress, because she could barely remember her father. Uncle Niles and the governess who had taught her manners, embroidery, and drawing had insisted she write her father two times a year. Gradually, that onerous chore to a person she barely knew had tapered off to one letter annually, and then none.
I should have written more
, she thought, stung by the slender pile.

Next to her own letters were a writing tablet, a fountain pen, and an ink bottle.
And you could have written to me
, she thought, trying to remember if he had ever sent her a letter. She started to turn away when she noticed that the wire trash receptacle was filled to the top with crumpled papers from the tablet. She thought she saw her name, so she reached for one page, straightened it, and then reached for another, and another. Across each page was written “Dearest Lily,” or “My Sweet Lily,” or “Dear Child.”

She dug deeper. “Dear Lily, I am so delighted that you are coming to stay at my . . .” she read to herself. She flattened out another failed letter. “Dear Daughter, Gracious, how time flies! And now you are coming . . .”

He hadn’t even the courage to face his own lies. Did he think a ranch would materialize before she arrived?

“Oh, Papa,” she whispered as she gathered up the pages and returned them to the waste basket. She went back to the bed and touched his shoulder, giving him a little shake. When he opened his eyes, she knelt by the bed and kissed his cheek, unsure of herself.

“I’m here, Papa. It’s your Lily.”

With a grunt that sounded like a protest, Clarence Carteret opened his eyes, closed them quickly, and then opened them again. “You’re really here,” he said. He closed his eyes once more. “It’s not much, is it?” he asked, and she heard the shame in his voice.

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed, “but I’m here and maybe we can make something better.”

He nodded but made no move to rise. Lily knelt there, uncertain, and then decided there was no time like the present to get to know her own father. She stood up, took his arm, and tugged him into a sitting position. His protest was feeble, and he sat there with elbows on knees, head in his hands. He still wouldn’t look at her.

“Mr. Sinclair tells me that the cookshack is open until six and I am hungry,” she said. “What do you plan to do about that?”

She had hoped he would rise to the challenge, but he continued to sit there, a beaten-down man.

“Papa?”

“I don’t usually eat dinner,” he said finally, his voice muffled.