Wyoming Wildfire (31 page)

“No, we won’t!” The unmistakable ring of challenge sounded in Sibyl’s words. “If there are any contests, my aunt and I intend to take part.”

“What can you do?” demanded Emma, making no attempt to conceal her sworn.

“We can have a target shoot and horse race for me, and a buggy race for my aunt.”

“And she’ll win,” bragged Lasso, bringing his open palm down on the table hard enough to make the glasses jump. “You ain’t seen nothing until you see this little gal with a whip in her hand.” Augusta looked as though she’d rather have borne the stigma of being a useless female who sat inside and made ribbons, but with Lasso staking his pride on her, she knew she had no choice, so she smiled bravely and tried to look pleased.

Burch was nearly as surprised as Emma when Sibyl announced that she would enter two contests. “Will you have time? With so many guests arriving and so much to do before tomorrow night, it seems unfair to ask you to do even more.” The concern in his voice made Sibyl all the more determined to go through with it.

There’s nothing that Rachel can’t do, as long as Ned and Balaam help her. Everything is ready.”

“Are you sure you’re really up to it? All of the ladies coming have been reared out here,” Emma pointed out.

Under her breath, Sibyl used one of the oaths she’d learned from listening to Balaam and Ned. “Fifty dollars says I’ll win at least one of the contests.” She’d show this brassy hussy she wasn’t the only female who could shoot and ride.

“I was just worried that they won’t be used to our rough sports,” Emma said to Burch in honeyed tones. “I wouldn’t want them to feel at a disadvantage.” She got up from the table without waiting for Sibyl to rise. “I accept your wager. Come on, Burch, I want you to hear that song I was telling you about.”

“You’ve got to hear it,” insisted Auggie, jumping up as well. “It’s the rage in Laramie.” The men rose from the table, leaving Augusta and Sibyl still seated.

“Aren’t you coming?” Burch asked when he saw that Sibyl and Augusta didn’t mean to join them.

“No, you go on. Well join you later,” Sibyl said, trying not to show her jealousy.

“You might enjoy it. Emma’s going to play her guitar.”

“Only one instrument?” Sibyl drawled with feigned surprise, her eyes glinting dangerously. “I expected her to play the violin, the piano, sing both parts, and turn her own pages at the very least.”

“I will see to the cleaning up,” Augusta volunteered. “ You go on and join the others.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Sibyl said, immediately regretting her outburst. “Well do it together. Then we can both join Burch and his friends. Don’t mind me,” she said, turning to Burch. “I’m just a little anxious about the party.”

“Are you sure that’s all?” he asked, unable to grasp the notion that anyone could be jealous of Emma.

“Burch!” called Emma’s piercing voice from the parlor. Get your saddlebags in here on the double.”

“I’m sure”, Sibyl assured him with a weak smile. “Now go to your guests before they come after you.”

She would say no more, and feeling unable to plumb the reason for her unhappiness before Emma came to bodily drag him away, Burch followed the others to the front room. Augusta saw the desolate expression on her niece’s face and rose to begin clearing the table without comment. With Rachel’s help, they soon had everything carried to the kitchen.

“I could not stay here if he married her,” Sibyl announced suddenly.

“No, I don’t think you could,” agreed Augusta, “but Burch is not interested in Emma Stratton as a wife.”

“That one’s a shrew” added Rachel, who almost never spoke.

“Then she shan’t have him,” said Sibyl decisively.

Chapter 20

The guests had been arriving since before dawn, nearly covering the prairie in front of the Elkhorn with their wagons. Some families had brought tents for sleeping, but most planned to adjourn to the cramped quarters of their wagons for the few hours during the next three days when they were not outside enjoying the spectacular weather, spirited company, and boundless food. The meals for most of the families not staying in the main house issued from communal campfires, generously fueled by scrap lumber from Sibyl’s furniture crates, but an inexhaustible supply of barbecued pig, roasted elk, and venison steaks issuing from fires zealously tended by Ned guaranteed that this would be the most memorable of all the Christmas parties ever held at the Elkhorn.

“If I had known we were going to have a competition, I’d have brought my own rifle,” complained Sue Ellen Roberts, contemptuously examining the Winchester carbine in her hand. “You can’t expect anybody to shoot their best with borrowed firearms.’’

“You’re welcome to all the practice you like,” Lasso offered. “We can’t start until the rest of the guests arrive.”

“It’ll take me that long to get used to this
gun
” Sue Ellen sneered disdainfully at one of Burch’s finest weapons.

“You don’t have to enter the contest,” Emma suggested.

“And let you win?” hooted Sue Ellen. “Don’t be a fool. This was probably your idea anyway, wanting to show off in front of Burch Randall. Well, this is one contest you won’t win.” With that, the indignant woman aimed her rifle at a distant post and reduced a small stone that had been placed on top of it to dust.

“You can’t get any more accurate than that, strange rifle or no,” observed Lasso, leaving Sue Ellen to work out her frustrations in her own way.

The ugly look on Emma’s face gave way to a broad smile when she saw Burch heading their way.

“This place is busier man Cheyenne on hanging day,” he declared, pointing to the groups of cowboys laying out courses, setting up targets, and preparing their own mounts and equipment for the upcoming contests. This is going to be the best remembered Christmas party in the territory.”

“By the winners, at least,” added Lasso dryly. “When do you plan to start?”

“As soon as everybody gets here. I don’t want to lose any of the sunlight. You must be living right, Emma. I don’t ever remember a Christmas day like this.” It was indeed a beautiful day, with an absolutely clear sky. A chinook wind, one of the warm spells so characteristic of Wyoming weather, had followed hard on the heels of the blizzard, and the sun and wind had virtually swept the plains clear of snow. The air was quite brisk, the creeks were running high, and the ground was still a little soggy, but the winter sun was doing its best to make the weather perfect for the day’s activities.

Inside the house, Sibyl and Augusta continued to greet their guests and see them settled in their rooms. “Don’t you want to practice shooting?” Augusta asked after the last guests had arrived and they had a moment to themselves.

“Do you want to try out your buckboard?”

“Absolutely not!” responded Augusta, becoming agitated.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into entering this race.”

“You know it was as much Lasso’s doing as mine.”

“He’s so proud of teaching me, I couldn’t let him down, any more than you could Burch.”

It’s not the same at all. I already knew how to ride and shoot a little. Burch can’t take the credit or blame for what I do today.”

Then why did you enter the contests, especially two of them?”

Sibyl turned away, as though not wanting to speak at all but determined to choose her words carefully. “I can’t let that woman go on taking for granted that just because we were from the East, we’re not good for anything except cooking and scrubbing. I doubt she dunks I would even make a good brood cow.”

“Sibyl!

“I’m sorry, Aunt, but I can’t stand the way everybody acts like I’m helpless and have to be protected and hemmed in and kept from things that might shock me. That’s what I came out here to escape. To hear that harpy talk, you’d think I had never stepped out of the house without a parasol, at least one slave, and a freshly raked path to walk on. Do you know she actually had the nerve to tell Burch she felt sorry for me? She screwed up her face in that grimace she calls a smile and told him that it must be difficult for people like me to understand men like him, like we were from a different species.”

“What did Burch have to say?”

“What does he ever say to her? Some meaningless nonsense and men he started asking her about what she planned to do in Cheyenne this winter. Which I hope he didn’t do intentionally, because the slut invited him to spend the winter in Cheyenne too, telling him how much fun it was and how much he could learn from all the other important and successful men that would be there.”

“Sibyl! I don’t know where you picked up such words, but you’ve simply got to stop using them even if Miss Stratton deserves them, which I’m sure she does not,” admonished her aunt.

“Sorry, Aunt, I get so angry I forget to watch my tongue.”

“You have begun to do that quite a lot lately.”

The games were a tremendous success. The men joined in with borrowed rifles, horses, or lassos, and everyone displayed the good sportsmanship expected during the Christmas season. Even men of unequaled skill, certain to win their events with ease, were welcomed as competitors by those who had no chance of besting them, but not without a little good-humored ribbing.

“We shouldn’t allow Burch in,” joked one of his competitors in the target shoot. “If he can pick off an elk halfway from here to Montana, how can he miss anything as big as a bull’s eye?” Unfortunately, the women’s rifle shoot was not characterized by the same charitable spirit. Sue Ellen Roberts, openly disdainful of her competition, proceeded to put every shot through the center of the target. Most of the other women were delighted to hit the target at all, but there was a grim duel between Emma and Sibyl for second position.

Emma expected to be bested by Sue Ellen, but it never entered her mind that her nearest competition for the runner-up spot would be Sibyl. Both were coming up for their last round at the target, and Emma was only twenty points ahead.

“I should let you go first,” Emma said to Sibyl as she took her place at the line. “After all, you are the guest.”

“In my own home?” queried Sibyl, slightly perplexed.

“I meant in Wyoming.” Emma took aim too swiftly and her shot went wide, barely nicking the outside edge of the target. She glanced involuntarily at Sibyl, who continued to smiled sweetly. Emma’s next two shots were in the third ring. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath. She made herself breathe in slowly and deeply, steadied her aim, and placed the next two shots in the center of the target. She smiled politely to the onlookers but inwardly she raged; that first wild shot had given Sibyl the chance she needed.

Sibyl took her place at the line and paused a few moments to steady her nerves. She was close, but could she do it? She took careful aim and placed the first bullet in the fourth ring. Emma watched intently as Sibyl proceeded to put the next shots in the third and second rings. But that wasn’t good enough. She would have to put the last two shots into the bull’s eye just to tie. A wide smile of satisfaction spread over Emma’s face.

“How’s it going?” asked Burch, joining them from the men’s rifle shoot that he’d just won.

“Sue Ellen has already won,” Sibyl told him.

“I expected that . How’re you doing?”

“She’s laying third with a chance to tie for second,” one of the ladies informed him. “All she has to do is put her last two shots into the center.”

Burch didn’t need to be told why Sibyl was trying so hard. “Stubborn, hardheaded, and blind,” he parroted with a smile warm enough to toast her heart. “Is that enough or do you need egotistical, conceited, and insufferable?”

“That’s plenty” she replied, trying not to laugh.

“What
are
you talking about?” demanded Emma.

“Just a little joke,” Burch told her. Emma did not like to be kept out of anything involving Burch, and she showed it.

“Take your time and aim carefully,” Burch said softly. Sibyl dared not look at him. She was afraid if his eyes looked at her the way his voice sounded, she would be unable to hit the target at all. She forced herself to concentrate, breathe deeply, and squeeze the trigger gently.

“Just barely,” called the marker, “but it’s a bull’s eye.”

“Now do it one more time,” Burch encouraged her, pride and excitement in his voice. Sibyl’s hands were shaking so badly she had to take a few steps away from the line to regain her composure. She couldn’t bear to see that warm, admiring look fade from his eyes. She just
had
to hit the center of the target. With great deliberateness she took careful aim, closed her eyes for a tiny prayer, and fired.

“Dead center,” called the marker, “and there’s a tie for second.”

“Good girl, I’m proud of you,” Burch congratulated her warmly and gave her a carefully restrained kiss on the lips.

“What about me?” demanded Emma. “I bed her.”

“Then you get a kiss too,” agreed Burch, giving her a perfunctory peck on the cheek, “and Sue Ellen gets a bear hug.” Before the startled woman could escape him, Burch swept her into him arms and kissed her very thoroughly on the mouth to loud applause.

“Let me go, you ruffian,” squawked Sue Ellen, swinging her purse at Burch and trying to right her hat at the same time. She was a gruff woman who ruled her husband with an iron hand and frequently stated that she had little use for men, but the crowd suspected that had she been married to someone like Burch Randall, she might have revised her opinion.