Ruby (23 page)

Halfway to the finish line, he could hear a horse coming up on the left side and one still farther back on the right. Buck drove for the finish line, his ears flat against his head, nose reaching for the prize.

With each stride the captain’s horse drew nearer. At the flank, then the girth.

Rand glanced to the side to see the Thoroughbred’s nose even with Buck’s shoulder. The horse was coming up faster than the finish line.

Nose to neck.

“Come on, Buck.” Rand whispered in his horse’s ear.

The buckskin gave his last surge, and they were over. Rand had no idea who won. He eased himself straight up and back on the reins as gently as if they were riding on the ranch. Down to a lope, a jog, and a walk before he turned around to the cheering crowd.

“You did it, Rand!”

“Harrison, you ever want to sell that buckskin, I’ll take him.”

“Yeehaw, what a race.”

The men surged around him, patting Buck and slapping Rand on the knees, his hands. Rand glanced up to see McHenry shaking his head.

“Three more paces, and I’d have had you.”

“I know. That was too close for comfort.”

“You want to go in the half mile?”

“Nope. Buck only does the quarter. You going to run again?”

“Of course. Kentucky just got warmed up. Give him a few minutes’ rest, and he’ll run ’em all into the ground.”

While Rand and McHenry were talking, the others were laying out the turn. Since there wasn’t a convenient half mile of straight flatland to run on, they compensated with an easy turn and back to the starting line.

Johnny handed Rand the jingling leather bag. “Here you go. You won it fair and square.”

“Thanks.” Rand looked down to see Opal, eyes shining and with a grin from here to there, standing between Buck and the captain’s horse, one hand on each sweating shoulder.

“You were both so . . . so . . .” She made a funny face. “I can’t think of a word big enough and good enough.” Buck turned and whuffled her hair, making her giggle.

“Thank you, Miss Torvald.” Captain McHenry reached down and patted her hand. “Someday you’ll ride like that.”

“I think not.” Ruby stopped five feet in front of the horses.

But Rand could tell she’d enjoyed the race as much as her little sister. Excitement pinked her cheeks and widened her eyes. If he wasn’t mistaken, she had a slight case of the heaving bosoms too.
Harrison, keep your eyes on her face where they belong
.

“Hey, Rand,” Belle called, waving some bills in the air. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I never thought he’d do it,” muttered someone in the crowd. “Thought sure that big bay had it in the bag.”

“Thankee, boss man.” Beans waved as he headed back to tend the barbeque.

“Don’t drink it all in one place.”

“Never fear.”

“Are you going to race again?” Opal paced along beside him as he led Buck back to the long line to tie him up.

“Nope. Buck doesn’t do long races.”

“Why?”

“He’s bred for short spurts. That’s what makes him a great cow horse. He’s quick on the start, hits top speed, and can stop just as fast.”

“Like he did roping the calf?”

“Yep. That’s what cow horses need.” Rand flipped the reins around Buck’s neck and removed the bridle. He knotted a thick soft rope around the horse’s neck, gave him a pat, and headed over to check on the meat.

“They’re getting ready to run again.” Opal looked over to where the crowd had gathered again.

“You’d best get on back, or your sister will get after you.”

“I know. Thanks.” She waved and trotted back toward the stands.

Rand watched her go.
If your life had been different, you could have had a daughter her age. Or a son
. He shook his head and hung his bridle on the horn of his saddle that most likely Beans had brought back to the chuck wagon.
You can’t change the past, so let it go
. Sometimes the saying was easier than the doing. McHenry’s winning was a foregone conclusion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“I’m here to help, miss.” A young soldier saluted smartly from the bottom of the steps. “Captain said you could use a hand.”

“Why thank you and thank the captain. You are . . .?”

“Private First Class Adam Stone, ma’am.”

“I’m glad to meet you. You don’t by any chance have a team and wagon that we could use to haul all this food over to the tables, do you?”

“I will go get one.” He saluted again and spun on his heel to mount the horse he’d ridden down.

“Oh, he’s so cute.” Milly stared after him.

“Perhaps you can dance with him this evening.” Ruby caught the wink that Cimarron sent her way.

“I’d like that.” Milly looked to have spent the last hour in the noon sun without a hat.

“Huh. I’d rather watch the garden grow.” Opal gave Milly a sad glance.

Ruby tucked her smile back inside. One of these days Opal might decide young men were cute too, but she hoped that was a long time coming.

Rand Harrison and two of his men were lifting the roasted half of beef off the spit when they arrived. Long trestle tables already held food others had brought. Coffeepots lined the edge of the long fire pit, and from the raucous laughter, it would be needed fairly soon, hot and strong, to counteract the effects of Williams’ brew among some of the men.

As Rand and his men began slicing slabs of meat off the carcass, the bugler called them all to eat with the army notes to charge.

And that they did. Soldiers, ranchers, townsfolk, hunters, women, and children all fell into lines on either side of the table and dished up their plates.

“Would you mind if I sat with you?” Captain McHenry asked softly.

“I thought I should carry the coffeepot around.” Ruby looked up from under the brim of her hat.

“I’ve set one of my men to doing that.”

“Oh, why then, I guess not.”

“You don’t have to be the hostess here, you know.”

“I feel like I do.” Ruby glanced over to see that Opal had joined up with several of the children of the military. Belle and the girls were surrounded by men both in uniform and in chaps and shirts. Since things seemed peaceful enough there, Ruby looked around. The military women, who’d come from Bismark and Dickinson, had gathered in a circle, and other women from the area were off by themselves.

“We don’t have much mingling going on here.” She shook her head. “I thought something like this would break down the barriers, you know?”

“The music and the dancing will help do that. The only other social events this town has known were put on by the army, and there weren’t enough people here then to make up a party.”

“I keep forgetting this town is so young.”

“If you want to call it a town. It’s more like a settlement, I’d say. There’s some room on those benches over there.” He nodded toward the shed-roofed barracks of the cantonment. With bleached vertical siding, the long low building looked like a series of shacks strung together to hold each other up.

“Not too impressive, I know. We never even got them painted.”

“And you’ve been stationed here for better than three years?”

“Our job was to keep the railroad safe, not to pretty up our housing. Besides, the army doesn’t spend much money on housing for the posts out on the frontier. This was never meant to be a fort.”

Ruby took a bite of her meat and closed her eyes to better savor the flavor. “This is marvelous.”

“I’m sure Rand will appreciate hearing that from you.”

“I doubt it.” Rand Harrison might know how to cook a cow, but as a gentleman he failed to make the grade. She glanced up to catch a question in the captain’s eyes, but he returned to eating without asking.

She watched Rand stroll over to the group that was laughing at something Belle had said. Insufferable would be a good word to describe him, far as she was concerned.

“May I sit with you?” Holding her full plate, Milly stopped in front of Ruby.

“Of course.” Ruby tucked her skirt closer beside her.

“I see Cimarron is still here,” McHenry commented.

“Yes, of course. Dove House is her home.”

“I wondered since I hadn’t seen her.”

“She’s the one responsible for all the hemmed tablecloths and napkins. Also for new clothes for all of us.” She caught herself before referring to them as “girls.” But the Cimarron of today looked far different than the one she’d first met. With her flaming red hair severely rolled around a long rat instead of piled high with curls, no face paint, and a high-necked demure waist, Cimarron looked the picture of elegance rather than flamboyance. Her wide-brimmed straw hat shadowed her flashing green eyes.

With her new name and modest demeanor, Daisy could have fit right in with the military wives or daughters, so only Belle spun a parasol that matched her emerald green silk dress complete with bustle, overskirt, and low-cut bodice.

Ruby savored every bit of the beef, having never eaten anything quite like it.

“Yep, that Rand sure knows how to spit beef.” Captain McHenry wiped sauce off his chin.

“Spit beef?” All Ruby could think of was the filthy spittoons that all of them hated scrubbing.

“You roast an entire half over the coals. The spit is what holds it up and what they turn it with. Didn’t you ever cook over an open fire or in a fireplace?”

“No.” She didn’t bother to tell him that she never really had much experience cooking. First her mother did it, then her grandmother, and the Brandons had a full-time cook. She’d done more cooking since arriving at Dove House than in all the previous years of her life combined.

“I see.”

“I think I better go around and invite everyone to join the dancing later.”

“Just get the music going, and that’ll be call enough. I’ll have a couple of my men do the cleanup. Most likely the leftovers will become a late supper.”

“Thank you for all your help.”

“You are most welcome. As soon as the sun sinks behind the hills, the flag will come down and our bugler will blow taps. That should be a good way to end a patriotic celebration like this one.”

“In the park at home there would have been bands, political speeches, fireworks, and ice cream with strawberries. New York does know how to celebrate.”

“Some different from here, all right.”

“Where is home to you?” She turned slightly to watch his face.

“I was born in Ohio, but we moved enough times that home is wherever I hang my hat. The army is my home, I guess, and wherever they send me, I’ll be content there.”

“And what about a family?”

“I figure somewhere, sometime, God has a woman for me.” His level gaze made her glance at the plate in her lap.

“Forgive me for getting so personal.”

“Ruby!” Opal skidded to a stop in front of them. “Mr. Harrison said I could ride one of his horses. Is that all right with you?”

“Who’ll be with you?”

“Mr. Harrison. We’ll just be right around the corrals and such. I won’t go out of sight.”

“Rand wouldn’t put her up on a horse she can’t manage.” McHenry leaned back against the wall.

Rand, as you call him, might do anything to aggravate me. In fact, everything he does irritates as bad as the pesky black flies
. “You be careful.”

The sigh and rolling eyes said it all. “I will.”

Ruby watched Opal run back across the parade field and follow Rand Harrison out to the long rope between fence posts where horses were tied.

The laughter of small children rang like music on the skittish breeze. Several of the young soldiers were playing mumblety-peg with a pocket knife, their expert tosses sticking the knife blade in the grassy bank. Several of the young boys were down wading in the shallows for crawdads. If she didn’t know better, Ruby might have believed this was a real community.

A young drummer beat the cadence as six soldiers marched onto the parade grounds, squaring off the corners as they marched half the perimeter and then straight into the circle around the flag pole, where the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the evening breeze. At a barked command one man unwrapped the lanyard and lowered the flag in cadence to the bugler blowing the haunting notes of Taps. Another soldier caught the flag, keeping it from touching the ground, and once it was unsnapped, two men folded the flag in half the long way and in half again, then starting at one corner, folding the triangles over, back and forth until the final end was tucked into the packet. Following more orders, they traversed the same pattern out of the parade grounds and took the flag inside the office.

“Dismissed,” barked the officer of the day, and the crowd relaxed again, a pleasant buzz echoing around the grounds as children darted and laughed and adults visited while they gathered up their belongings.

When the last notes of the bugle had drifted off, Ruby cleared her throat and blinked, hoping the tears that threatened would stay put. “My, that was beautiful.”

“It always chokes me up too, and I see it every day.” The captain settled his hat back in place and offered her his arm. “We’ll start the folks back up that way, and as soon as they hear Belle on the piano, they’ll know the dancing is about to begin.”

“Belle already left?” How strange it felt to have one’s hand imprisoned between a man’s elbow and chest. She glanced up from under the brim of her hat and saw him studying her, a slight smile on his smoothly shaven face. Hopefully her hat hid the beat warming her neck. Had her heart skipped a beat also?

The other officers gathered their families and followed suit. They passed Williams’ Saloon, which seemed to be doing a brisk business, if the laughter and shouting were any indication.

Ruby hoped that anyone too drunk to behave properly would not bother to come to the dancing but stay inside that vile place and drink to their heart’s content.

“A fiddle.” Ruby glanced up at her escort. “Did you know about that?”

He nodded. “It’s one of my men. Rand plays a guitar, so I imposed on him to join the musicians.”

Opal caught up with them. “Sure is pretty.”

“You didn’t ride long,” Ruby smiled back.

“I didn’t want to miss out on anything. Hasn’t this been about the best day ever?”

“You said it just right.”

“Come on, folks . . . find your partners and Virginia reel.” Charlie stood on the porch step, his voice carrying above the music, his bowler hat pushed back on his head.

“Shall we?” The captain bowed slightly and motioned toward the couples lining up, men on one side, women in a line about eight feet in front of them. Feet tapping, they waited for the signal for the first couple to sashay out and do-si-do. The captain’s smile when she met him again to promenade made her heart skip a beat.

With so few women present, the men lined up to dance with them. Ruby had never danced like this in her entire life. She waltzed and reeled, two-stepped and polkaed. She learned some names and forgot others. Even Mrs. McGeeney danced to near collapse. When Belle struck a couple of resounding chords, the music stopped, and everyone collapsed on benches, railings, porch steps, and chairs brought out from the dining room. More food and a huge bowl of punch waited on a table.

“Charlie, is that your doing?” Ruby nodded toward the table.

He just grinned at her and shrugged as if he didn’t know what she might be referring to. “Help yourself folks,” he invited, as if he were the host and all those in attendance his personal friends.
No wonder people frequented Dove House,
Ruby thought.
I never realized how charming he can be. He and my father must have been quite a pair
.

Little children were carted off to bed before the music began again, and whether her feet thought it a good idea or not, Ruby danced with the rest of them. The moon rose, changing from orange to silver, shedding enough light for the dancing to continue.

“Did you order this all up?” Captain McHenry asked when he got a turn to dance with her again.

“Of course, I waved my magic wand, and presto, we had light.”

He swung her around, and her feet hardly touched the ground.

“No, I said it, and I meant it!”

Ruby stopped in midskip. Cimarron’s voice. McHenry turned at the same time, searching for the culprit.

Ezekiel Damish, one of the faithful customers at Williams’ Saloon, had Cimarron by the arm. She jerked back, her jaw clamped, enough fire flashing from her eyes to light up the area without the moon.

At the captain’s nod, two of his men grabbed the offender by the arms and hauled him off behind Dove House. Someone else stepped into his place, and the music picked up again as if nothing had happened.

As the final chord drifted away, swaying skirts settled back primly about weary ankles, and people thanked the musicians for playing, Rand for the meat, and Charlie and Ruby for all they’d done. Within a few minutes the street was empty but for the military detail cleaning things up and putting the chairs back where they belonged.

“That was some to-do.” Belle let them carry her stool back inside. “Best thing that happened to this town since it came into being.”

Ruby followed her inside. Late as it was, they would still have to have breakfast ready for their guests by seven. And all those dishes to wash. They trailed back to the kitchen to find everything cleaned up and put away.

Ruby stared at Charlie.

He shrugged. “They must have taken turns. I thought every soldier from the cantonment danced tonight.”

Milly smoothed her hair back from a brow still damp from all the dancing. “I never . . .”

Cimarron draped an arm over her shoulders. “Me neither.” At Ruby’s questioning look, Cimarron shrugged one shoulder and tipped her head slightly to the side. “It was bound to happen. Several gave me a hard time, but one of ’em just got too insistent. I was about to deck him myself, but the men in blue saved his hide and his pride.” She raised an eyebrow and rolled her bottom lip to be smoothed by her upper teeth. “I do know how to protect myself. Never fear.”

While her words sounded brave, Ruby felt sure she saw a hint of fear in Cimarron’s eyes, or was it rage?

“Hey, Milly,” Cimarron called, “did you dance with that young private? The cute one?”