The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) (25 page)

He had strolled through the doors of the dance-hall with his head high and his eyes excited, happy despite his disappointments because he was going to see Hope again, and he had missed her — how he had missed her! — and he had never stopped to consider that he was neither expected nor welcomed on a Tuesday night. It was late, and the dancing was over, and he scanned the room, skipping past a dozen brightly-colored dresses before he landed on the daring white dress with its black lace and poufs, the one that Hope always said the boys liked the best, half wedding-gown and half negligee, she’d snicker, and there she was standing in a clutch of men, throwing back her head and laughing.

His heart soared at the sight of her — truly, four weeks felt like forever. He started forward, dirty boots loud on creaking floorboards, and then he stopped short, astonished by what he saw before him. Why, that couldn’t be Hope, taking the elbow of that delighted man in a top hat! Why, that couldn’t be Hope, gently leading him away from the group of men, while they cat-called and whistled after her! Why, that couldn’t be Hope,
his Hope,
taking the well-dressed fat cat up the stairs in the back of the room, arm in arm, her lips whispering in his ear!

The room was spinning; Jared staggered backward, trod on the toe of another well-heeled gent in black dancing slippers, received a curse and a shove for his pains, and found himself out on the porch, looking over the swinging doors in disbelief, with the glitter and laughter and the tinkling breaking glass somehow a hundred miles away from his shrinking little world.

He didn’t remember much about the rest of that night. He went back to the boarding-house and went silently up to his room and locked the door and drank a bottle of whiskey. The next afternoon he staggered out into the spring sunshine and asked the barman at the dance-hall to send for Hope.
 

The day-barman didn’t know Jared. And he wouldn’t do it, anyhow.

“She don’t take visitors until late,” the barman chided, rubbing at his glasses with his rag in that typical barman way. When Jared didn’t immediately leave, his glass-cleaning got a little more aggressive, and so did his tone. “You don’t look like you got enough brass for her, neither. Maybe you ought to just take yourself home, son.” One of his braces slipped and he put down the glass to straighten it. Jared took the opportunity to punch him in the mouth.

There was a lot of shouting after that, and Matt was summoned to straighten him out, and he was taken back to his room and put to bed and dosed with coffee. But nothing changed what he had seen, and the image was burned into his brain. Hope, laughing on the arm of that top-hatted dandy. Hope, taking him upstairs.
I’m just a dancer,
she told everyone, over and over.
I don’t take men upstairs.
 

But she had lied.

About everything?

The roan pricked his ears at a little stand of cottonwoods, and Jared let the horse pick his own path towards the stalwart prairie trees. Despite the rain that was coming from every direction, up and down and sideways and crossways, the horse was bound to be thirsty. It was past midday, he reckoned, though without the sun it was hard to tell, and they were still a few hours’ ride from the gray little town on the horizon. He was looking forward to getting a dry room and a dry bed with the first enthusiasm he’d felt for anything since he’d gotten the letter. He wondered, watching the roan’s ears swivel and his nostrils flare as he scented out the water ahead, if he oughten just turn around and go back home while he still could.

What if she had lied about the baby? What if she was lying now?

What if… what if… what if…

He remembered the wedding announcement in the paper; he remembered her calling at the boarding-house, veiled and hatted like a matron, crossing her ankles and sitting bolt-upright on the worn divan in the sitting room and telling him, without tears, that her condition was due to Mr. Howard T. Townsend of Townsend Cattle & Oil, and she would be wed to him within the month.
 

He had stared at her and said nothing at all. His mouth wouldn’t open; his tongue wouldn’t work.
 

“I’m showing, you see.” She had coughed delicately, as if to take away from the impropriety of her words. “Time is really of the essence.”

He found his voice. “You said he was mine,” he croaked hoarsely.

Hope had shifted in the divan a little. The shawl slipped, and he could see, just shyly peeking from beneath her modest gown, the swell of her belly.
 

“You said we would name him Andrew. For my father, you said. To remember him by.”

Hope stood to leave, and he stood as well, reaching out to clutch at her wrist. By God, he’d been a wreck of a man that day, hadn’t he? To reach out and grab at her like that, to try and stop with brute force the woman he had loved for so long! But she had jerked away easily; his nerveless fingers dropped to his side. The clock on the dusty mantlepiece ticked. Somewhere out on the street, a frightened horse whinnied. And Hope turned her face from him, and went out of the sitting room, and down the hall, and through the door, and disappeared.

The roan drank deep from the little stream he had found for himself, his freckled ears flicking with every swallow he took. Jared stood up in the stirrups a little to be sure he could drink his fill. When the horse finished, he raised his dripping lips and turned his head around to look at Jared with impassive brown eyes. Then he took a step to the left. Towards Bradshaw. Towards Cherry.

But Jared flicked the left rein against his neck. “I’m sorry, boy. I think you’re right. I know you’re right. But whether she’s a lying bitch or not, I have to stop Hope in Opportunity, or she’ll raise all kinds of hell in Bradshaw.”

Cherry asked Matt to teach her how to ride astride.
 

Matt put down his coffee cup and studied her. “You want to ride in a cowboy saddle?”

She nodded. “It would be much safer for me.”

She didn’t elaborate on her meaning, leaving Matt to believe whatever he wanted about her intentions. Surely it would be safer just for rides across the prairie, to the claim and back on fine days. But Cherry had a deeper intention than just taking idle rides around the countryside.

Cherry had decided that riding astride was the key to her financial independence.

Even in England, when she had been a very daring rider, taking jumps other ladies would walk their horses around and forever exasperating her father by challenging grooms to races, there was a certain limit to just how fast or far or high she could ride her horse. That limit was, of course, the sidesaddle. It simply wasn’t safe to do much more than walk sedately on a park lane in the silly object, and the mere fact that any lady managed to get their horse onto the hunting fields at all was a testament to their riding ability and extreme courage. Cherry was a
very
talented horsewoman, but even so, her plans would not work if she had to ride half-tilted off the side of a horse all the time.

But the cowboy saddle, with its high cantle and pommel and stirrups on
both
sides of the horse, that would be the very thing for the plots in Cherry’s mind. And she had her eye on Patty’s big western-style saddle, the sort the cowboys used. It would let her ride astride, in a split skirt cut just for that purpose.
 

“We’d have to order you a saddle,” Matt said doubtfully. A good saddle wasn’t cheap.

“Why, she can use my saddle!”
 
Patty was in a cheerful and giving mood, especially considering it was only a day after she had informed Matt that she would kill Jared if he ever came back to Bradshaw. She had since relented, and promised her husband that she would
not,
in fact, murder his oldest friend. But she wasn’t making any promises about having him over for tea any more.

Matt, who didn’t care for tea anyhow, poured more coffee in his mug. “You’ll want my help putting it on your horse for a while,” he warned. “It’s a heavy old monster. I think it’s made out of bricks inside.”

“Don’t you make fun of my old saddle,” Patty scolded. She spread a generous amount of butter across her biscuit. Patty loved a good buttery biscuit, and she didn’t care one bit what it did to her waistline. She had her man. “I got that saddle from my father for a fourteenth birthday present. I’ve ridden all over the countryside in that saddle.”

“That’s precisely what I’d like to do,” Cherry said eagerly. She spread a much thinner pat of butter on her own biscuit. Waistlines were no laughing matter to an Englishwoman of the
ton,
even if she was sitting at a breakfast table somewhere out in the American frontier. Some lessons could not be unlearned. But as for riding…! “I love to ride, and it just looks so much more free than that sidesaddle I’ve ridden in my entire life. If I could try it out first, I would order my own from the harness-maker’s.”

“Mr. Handler will make you a beautiful saddle,” Patty announced with authority. “I saw one he made for Mr. Morrison. Hand-tooling of a bird on the panel. I have no idea why Mr. Morrison should’ve wanted such a thing on his saddle but it was beautiful.”

“Mr. Morrison is a strange fellow,” Matt mused, and they all at once took a drink of coffee and reflected upon the strangeness of Mr. Morrison.

After breakfast and the washing-up, Patty declared that she wanted to play with Little Edward and
must
have him for the morning. Cherry dragged Matt out to the stable to see about fitting the saddle on Galahad. There was a dark cloud looming and rain was on the way, but she thought they could fit in a riding lesson.

The little spotted pony was busy spreading perfectly nice hay all over his loose box, a specialty he had that was quite hard on the feed bill budget Cherry had set for herself, but he was happy enough to see them, charging forward and pushing his head over the wooden half-door. Cherry gave him a rub under his long brown and white forelock and then took his head-collar in hand. “Come on, lad, it’s time for a new sort of ride,” she told him, and opened the door.

Cherry brushed him with a curry comb and a dandy brush while he dozed in the shadows of the barn aisle, loosely tied to a ring in the wall. Matt leaned on the wall and watched her.

“I wouldn’t have thought a fine lady from England would know how to rub down a horse,” he said suddenly. “But then again, I wouldn’t have thought she’d come to Bradshaw and take up a claim, neither.”

“I have done many things most ladies do not do,” Cherry admitted. “But learning to take care of a horse is not so uncommon. I am a country girl, after all. I spent plenty of time dogging the footsteps of the grooms, asking them to take out my pony for me. After a while, they just taught me to do all the grooming and tacking so that they wouldn’t have the trouble of it. And I found I was happier taking care of my pony myself.”

“It’s soothing work,” Matt agreed. He turned over a metal water bucket and sat down on it. “Soothing for the horse and soothing for the folks.”

“It’s messy work, though,” Cherry grimaced, looking at the white hairs that had settled all over her plain brown coat. The cheap fabric seemed to attract horse-hair. “I always end up with a shiny horse and a filthy habit.”

Matt grunted and got up again. “Clean enough for a saddle, I reckon.”

He came out of the tack room with a brightly colored Indian blanket and the heavy Western saddle, carrying both on his forearms like a footman carrying clean napkins. He gestured with the blanket and Cherry laughed and snatched it off of his arm, placing it gently on Galahad’s back.
 

“Further up,” Matt instructed. “This has a lot more leather than your little saddle.”

She lifted the blanket and placed it halfway up the horse’s neck.

“Be serious, wontcha!”

“Ye of little faith.” Cherry slid the blanket down the neck until it rested just above his withers. “To keep the hairs on his back from pinching.”

Matt just grunted and lifted the saddle onto Galahad’s back. The pony stepped restively under the weight. “Settle, boy,” Matt crooned, and Cherry smiled.

“You’ll want to watch how I do up the cinch,” he said, showing her all the knots and loops that went into tying the cinch tight. It seemed a very complicated way of doing things, but she supposed, a buckle could break and a knot never would.
 

“Now then, ready to get up?”

Cherry studied the saddle. This was it, then. The moment of truth. The ultimate independence: mounting a horse without assistance. She had borrowed Patty’s split skirt; she had seen Patty mount — just like every man in the world, poking a boot in the stirrup and lifting off. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it?

“I’ve never mounted from the ground by myself,” Cherry admitted at last. “I don’t know how. I had a rock out at the claim, you know, and here I’ve always gotten a leg-up.”

Matt nodded. “That’s just fine. We’ll use the rock out back.”

They went outside and Matt led Galahad over to a large, flat-topped rock which sat behind the barn. It was only about a foot high, perfect for sitting on: Patty and Cherry occasionally sat on the rock in warm weather, to soak up the sun, and she had seen Matt dry saddle blankets on it as well. Now Matt encouraged Galahad to stand up right next to the rock, so that the left stirrup was dangling over top of its flat surface. Cherry followed uncertainly: it didn’t look high enough to get her into the saddle.

“Come on over here.”

Cherry squared her jaw, climbed up on the rock, and marched over to Galahad. The good pony glanced at her but didn’t move a muscle. She looked at the stirrup with uncertainty. It still seemed very far away from her foot. She `wasn’t sure she could ever lift her leg high enough. And once it was there, what would happen? How would she get the rest of her body up in the air, over the saddle, and onto Galahad’s back?

This was impossible.

But no — Patty could do it, so could she.
 

“Put your left hand in his mane, and your right hand on the cantle,” Matt said encouragingly. “That’s right. Now you’re gonna put your left boot in the stirrup, and give a little jump and bring your right leg over the saddle. You can push on his neck and the saddle to hold you up.”