Explaining Herself (32 page)

So he paid calls, and she accepted them.

As long as people thought they were courting, Alden Wright could stroll with her
—and Duchess— along leaf-littered streets between their families' in-town houses, recounting what he remembered of the Laurences. As long as people thought they were courting, they could respectably ride out together on a brisk Saturday morning, without even the dog as a chaperone.

Nobody had to know that Alden was taking her on a tour of places important to the Laurence family.

"They had a well here, under these rocks," he told her, kicking some large, flat stones piled in what was now just woods. "We covered it so nobody would fall in, after Father bought the land. The cabin stood over there, where those saplings are."

Victoria opened her latest newfangled gadget, a Folding Pocket Kodak Camera, and snapped a picture of the area he indicated, with the Big Horn Mountains looming in the background. Though a luxury at $10,
the camera delighted her. Once she used up the film, she would mail it to Kodak, along with a dollar, and they would send it back with new film and all her nice, round, black-and-white pictures.

If only she'd learned to use the camera before Ross left, she might have a photograph of him. She closed the camera and thought
—hoped—
When he comes home, I'll take his picture.
Then she went to the cabin site and noted the nearly flat ground beneath mulch and pine needles, all that was left of his childhood home since the logs had been dragged off. She tried to imagine a young Ross, chopping wood or playing with a hoop, but it was difficult to imagine him as anybody but the tall, quiet man she loved.
A man with a gun.

Even if he came back, he would still be a man with a gun.

"What happened to Mrs. Laurence?" she asked, unwilling to think about that
—and feeling like a coward for it.

"I heard she moved back east." Alden clasped his hands behind his back and gazed past her, a brooding-poet pose. "Over there, that really big spruce
—that's where I would hide and wait for Julie to meet me. We would hold hands and run together until we reached a field up that way, full of columbine and goldenrod. Would you like to see it?"

Victoria considered what he and Julie may have done in that field and shook her head. "No, thank you."

"You're right," agreed Alden with a sigh. "There certainly won't be any flowers, not this time of year."

No, there certainly would not.

"So where would you like to go next, Miss Garrison?" he asked, with a flourish of his arm toward the mountain vista, the blue sky. "Your wish is my command."

She took a deep breath, for courage. If she hoped to love Ross at all... "
I'd like to see where the lynch
ings happened."

His charming smile faded. "What?"

"If I'm to understand ... them ... I should see everything."

A new smile stretched across Alden's face, too quickly to be genuine. "That place holds unpleasant memories for me, Miss Garrison. This may be simply a matter of history to you." She'd claimed to be studying Sheridan's history and the role the Wrights had played in it. "But what those men did there .. ."

He still hadn't realized that, in not trying to stop them, he'd
been
one of those men. "I understand, Mr. Wright," she said. "If you would just take me as far as you feel comfortable, and then tell me how to go the rest of the way ..."

"What?" He said that a lot.

"I'm just trying to understand the Laurences, and what happened to them," she explained. "And if I refuse to look at the bad parts, aren't I somehow, well,
demeaning
them?"

He shook his head. "What do you mean?"

Ross, she thought, would have understood. "People's lives have both good parts and bad parts, don't they?"

"Not everyone's lives."

She remembered her horror at seeing Kitty crumpled in the stallion's corral. "Perhaps everyone's lives do," she suggested again carefully. "It's important to focus on the good, of course
—like with my little sister Elise, to encourage how bright and bold and lively she can be. But if we loved her without even seeing that she can also be a brat, would we really love
her,
or just the person we want her to be?"

Ross had wanted her despite her chatter and questions and nosiness. She loved him even though he'd

262

Explaining Herself

rustled cattle, had even killed people
—as long as he'd reformed, of course.

And if he hasn't?

She disliked her relief that she need not yet decide whether to trust him with what she'd learned.

"I hardly see what little Elise has to do with lynchings."

"I won't feel as if I understand everything," she insisted, "unless I understand
everything.
Even the bad parts. I can't explain it better than that. Won't you please take me as far as you can?"

He frowned
—no,
pouted.

But he was also weak-willed.

"She's what?" Laramie had to force the question out through a closing throat. Surely he'd misheard.

Mrs. MacCallum cast her husband another concerned look, as she'd been doing throughout breakfast. "She told me she's not serious," she assured Laramie quickly. "But they've been keeping company for several weeks now. Some people have expectations. I believe this is the day they'd planned for their picnic."

Only moments before, Laramie had been admiring the kitchen of Stuart and Mariah MacCallum's new stone house. And pretty Mrs. MacCallum's resemblance to her darker-haired sister. And their baby boy. Their world fed him far more than did the oatmeal Mrs. MacCallum put in front of him, despite his long ride. But now ...

Victoria was seeing the heir to the Triple-Bar Ranch?

What little money Laramie had saved felt embarrassing, in contrast. He'd been foolish to dream his hopeful, romantic dreams, to even pretend he could ever live in the wor
ld of the Garrisons and the Pem
brokes and the MacCallums
—the world where things
sometimes went right for a fellow. Except. . .

Almost against his will, he looked back toward the MacCallums. Mariah had put a hand on her husband's stocky shoulder, and Stuart met her gaze with some shared, silent affirmation. MacCallum hadn't had an easy life either. But he'd worked his way out of the sheep wagon where he'd first brought his bride and into this handsome, stone ranch house. Now he had a healthy son in his arms, gurgling and waving his chubby hands, while his blond wife
—her apron suspiciously round—oversaw breakfast for their unexpected guest.

He never broke laws, he reminded himself. But the man
was
a sheep farmer. That was almost as bad.

Seeing the satisfaction Victoria's oldest sister had brought to her husband, Laramie couldn't discount the possibility that sometimes good things did still happen. Especially where Garrison women were concerned.

At least,
he thought,
if Victoria's seeing Wright, she's not getting into trouble.
Which is when he figured it out. Maybe. It was more hope than even instinct, but. ..

"Is it possible
—"

Baby Garry squealed, and his poppa touched a thick, gentle finger to his cheek to silence him, waiting.

Laramie tried again. "Could Victoria be up to something?"

He almost winced, in expectation of their pity. Instead, MacCallum sent another of those unspoken messages toward his wife
—this time with dry amusement—and Mariah laughed. "Well, you certainly
have
gotten to know Victoria, Mr. Laramie. That's what we're hoping. It would be better than her going sweet on a
Wright!"

She didn't deny it. Victoria's own sister didn't deny it!

He tried another bite of oatmeal, and actually managed to swallow it. 'You don't like the Wrights."

"They're the ones who hired that awful range detect
—" Eyes widening, Mariah clamped her mouth shut too late.

"I've been worse than a range detective, Mrs. MacCallum."

"Well, I trust my sister's instincts," she told him firmly, lifting her son from her husband's lap and into her arms. "When it comes to people, that is. The way she takes chances, she needs a guard, not a dog. You don't suppose she's got Alden Wright helping her track down rustlers, do you?"

It surprised Laramie to realize that she wasn't just asking her husband. She was looking at him!

"I don't know Alden Wright," Laramie admitted. "And God only knows what your sister will do."

It unset
tl
ed him, how the MacCallums' shared smile now included him. Somehow either he or Victoria had misled them about his true nature.

But he savored that sense of being part of diem, even undeserving. Then he asked, "Where were
th
ey going to picnic?"

If Victoria were pursuing Sheriff Ward, she needed help.

Even if he
did
risk interrupting her Saturday picnic.

Alden really did take Victoria only as far as he was comfortable, in the foothills about half a mile from the box canyon where the lynchings had taken place. Then he drew his horse to a stop. "I'm sorry, Miss Garrison. That place..."

She supposed it would be difficult to face one's greatest failure. "It's all right. Just tell me how to get die rest of the way."

Then she left him comfortably set
tl
ed under a tree and rode on by herself. It bo
th
ered her that Alden
might still come between her and Ross, not because she had any feelings for Alden, but because of Julie. No; more than that. She still hadn't decided whether to tell Ross about Alden and Julie, true, but how could she trust him with her own life, if she couldn't trust him with someone else's?

She and her sorrel gelding, Huck, rode comfortably together, picking their way around rocks and trees in the direction of the little canyon Alden had described. She tried to imagine what other people had ridden this direction. The Laurences, including young Ross, moving their stolen livestock back home. The lynch mob, with Boris and Bram Ward, the Colonel and Alden Wright. Papa, following the sound of gunshots to interrupt their fate.

She could imagine the ugliness of it all too well, so well she could almost smell the stench of burning hair from a branding iron on the shifting wind.

Then, suddenly, she was almost on top of it! The stench hit her full in the face, along with a cow's distressed lowing, the chink of spurs, and a voice that sounded far too close saying, "We've got to be gone by this afternoon, savvy?"

Startled beyond breath, she reined Huck back, lifted her leg from behind the curved horn of the sidesaddle, and slid quickly to the ground where she could better hide. Huck, tossing his head at the acrid smell, backed away some, and Victoria leaned against the trunk of a large pine and made herself think
—all the more confusing a prospect when the wind changed and the noise and stench vanished with it.

Fall roundups were over. For a confused moment, she could almost believe that she'd ridden back in time, and was about to witness past horrors. Then sanity returned. So, along with another whiff of burning hair and the nearby bellow of an upset cow, did a clutch of fear.
Rustlers.
The wind shift had allowed her
to ride almost on top of them. And now she had to creep away from here without any of them seeing her.

Whoever they were.

That question stilled her, even as she extended one hand to begin crawling back toward her horse. Someone very important, powerful enough to help a man escape jail, was stealing cattle not only from her father but all the local ranchers. This wasn't merely a case of a hungry family butchering a "slow elk," as Papa called the occasional loss of livestock to settlers
—a loss most ranchers, himself included, bore without too much ill will. No, to account for the losses indicated by the recent roundup, this was practically a syndicate! And by accident, she found herself within crawling distance of seeing who was committing these crimes.

And she had a camera.

Victoria knew exactly what Papa, Thaddeas, Mama, Mr. Day, even Ross
—pretty much anyone she could imagine—would counsel her. Run home and bring help! And yet over that fear, with every beat of her panicked heart, beckoned treacherous opportunity.

If they're in a box canyon,
she thought,
they would have to look up to see me. Who looks up?

The posse was able to ambush the Laurences because it was so easy to see them without being seen,
she thought.

They 're leaving this afternoon,
she reminded herself.
If I go for help, there may be nobody left to capture.

And, most damning,
If I leave now, without finding out, how will I feel later?