Two Brothers (24 page)

Emily did not turn to look at him, and her face was hidden, once again, in the shadow of her hat brim. “I have
not been sleeping in grand hotels since I left Butte,” she said reasonably. “Spud and Walter and I, we like making our beds under the stars.” She sighed. “I did expect a house to take shelter in when we arrived, though.”

Tristan felt like the worst kind of brute, though he was fairly certain that hadn’t been Emily’s intention. “You can stay at my place. I’ll bunk in the barn.”

She spared him a glance. “I’ll sleep near my sheep,” she said. “Like I told you, they’re all I have.”

Tristan’s attraction to this woman was equal only to the exasperation she caused him. “You can’t do that. Between the bears and the mountain cats, your common drifter and some of those outlaws holed up on the Powder Creek spread, you wouldn’t be safe.”

“I’m not certain I’d be any better off in your ranch house. If indeed it
is
yours.” She rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I am weary of rough accommodations, though, I must confess,” she said.

They didn’t speak again until they’d reached the line shack, where Tristan permitted an old hermit named John S. Polymarr to reside, in return for the occasional bit of information concerning the goings and comings of the riders up at Powder Creek.

Polymarr stood in his doorway, wearing an undershirt and a pair of baggy trousers held up by suspenders, watching the sheep move up the draw in a noisy V, driven relentlessly by the dog.

“You better get them critters out of here before Kyle hears tell of ’em,” he said.

Tristan dismounted and removed his hat, more out of habit than real deference. His adoptive mother had been a stickler for manners. “Kyle is in the state penitentiary,” he replied. “He won’t be offering an opinion anytime soon, one way or the other.”

Polymarr spat, let his gaze move to Emily, still mounted on her horse. “I don’t hold with no sheep, myself,” he said.

“I don’t either,” Tristan answered. “All the same, I meant to offer you five dollars to look after them for a day or two. The lady there has business in town.”

The old man squinted in the gathering darkness. “That’s a lady?”

Tristan felt Emily stiffen, despite the distance between them, and was glad she couldn’t see that one corner of his mouth had developed a slight and intermittent twitch. He said nothing, but simply waited, thinking that she was an incredible woman, traveling all that way with only a dog and a mare and a flock of sheep for company.

“Five dollars?” Polymarr asked, and spat again.

“Two now, three more in a couple of days,” Tristan said. It was a ridiculous amount of money to pay, just to get Miss Emily Starbuck to pass an evening in town with him and spend the night under his roof, but he would have given a lot more to achieve his purpose.

Polymarr rubbed his beard, only pretending to ponder the offer. The acquisitive light in his small, rheumy eyes virtually guaranteed his compliance. “Well, all right,” he said, in his own good time. “But you just remember, St. Lawrence. I don’t hold with no sheep.”

Tristan didn’t bother to correct the old man’s mangling of his name, even though he greatly valued it. “Whatever your opinions,” he said, placing a pair of silver dollars in the codger’s hoary palm, “the count had better tally when I come back to collect those woolly wretches, or I’ll take the difference out of your hide.”

“Let me get my gear,” Polymarr said, and went back into the shack. When he came out a few minutes later, he had a haversack over one stooped shoulder and a blanket roll under his arm. Tristan took note of the ancient pistol in the old man’s belt. “What about that damn dog?” the old coot complained. “He bite or anything like that?”

“He’ll tear the throat out of anything or anybody that tries to carry off one of my sheep,” Emily said, without turning a hair. Tristan felt a wrench of tenderness, looking at her, thinking once again of all the miles she’d traveled
on her own. It was God’s own wonder she wasn’t lying beside the trail someplace, dead, the world being that sort of place.

They proceeded up into the high meadow, Polymarr plodding along behind, cursing in the midst of all those caterwauling sheep, and the moon was up by the time Emily had given him instructions and commanded the dog to stay. The animal yawped and ran a few paces after her as they rode away, she and Tristan, but in the end his sense of duty kept him with the flock.

“Tell me where we are suppering,” Emily said, when the sheep and Polymarr and the dog were well behind them. “I’ve forgotten.”

“There’s no fault in your memory,” Tristan replied. “I don’t believe I’ve said where we’re headed. We’re joining my brother and his wife in town.” He hoped Aislinn had held the meal, for he did relish her fried chicken, but if she hadn’t, he would take Emily to the hotel dining room. What was it, he wondered, that made him want to feed her, protect her, scrub her down and buy her every length of lace and ruffle between there and San Francisco? There were other things he wanted to do, too, but the time to think of them had not yet come.

He cleared his throat. “You didn’t truly come clear from Montana all alone?”

“I did,” she answered, and sounded pleased with herself, too.

“Why?” He bit the word off, like a piece of hard jerky, his head full of ugly images. He’d seen the handiwork of renegade Indians and outlaws before, along the trails and on isolated homesteads, and although he admired her grit, it galled him that any woman would take such a risk.

“Why?” she echoed, her tone somewhere between incredulity and mockery. “Because it was the only way to get from there to here, that’s why.”

“I’ve made the trip myself. It isn’t an easy one.”

She looked at him; he felt her gaze even though he
couldn’t see her eyes for the hat brim. “It’s been my experience,” she said, “that not much is easy in this life. Some things, though—well, some things are worth fighting for.”

He agreed, and it was clear to him that there was a battle ahead, sure enough. He smiled to himself. There was nothing like a good skirmish.

Chapter 2

J
UST LOOKING UPON THAT STURDY HOUSE
in town, with its windows spilling light into a yard where flowers surely grew, Emily thought her heart would burst with wanting such a place for her own. She had kept her spirits up all the way from Butte, more from necessity than courage, though she had her share of that to be certain, but now, all of the sudden, weariness descended upon her, wings spread and talons bared. She had been wearing the same clothes since leaving Montana, and hadn’t managed more than a few washings in streams and rivers along the way. She’d probably forgotten the manners she’d taken such care to learn over the years, having lived roughly for so long, and she was bound to disgrace herself somehow.

“I can’t.” She didn’t glance toward Tristan, but she was aware of him there beside her, all the same, sitting that gelding as though he’d been born a part of it. Her face felt hot and her chin wobbled.

“Sure you can,” Tristan countered easily, just as if he knew beyond all doubt that she could. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him swing down from the saddle and tether his mount loosely to the picket fence.

Before she could rustle up a retort, the screen door
creaked open and two middle-sized boys erupted through the opening, whooping like red Indians.

“Thomas and Mark,” Tristan explained. He reached up and took Emily by the waist before she could deliberate further, lifting her down, setting her lightly on her feet. “In point of fact, they’re in-laws, but I think of them as nephews, most of the time.”

“And the rest of the time?” Emily asked, smoothing her trousers as though wishing and touching could make them into skirts of fine velvet, or at least clean calico. She took off the slouch hat and pegged it onto Walter’s saddlehorn, then smoothed her hair with unsteady hands.

The boys were hurtling toward them over the dark grass. “The rest of the time,” Tristan answered, “I pretty much accept that they’re savages.”

The screen door opened again, and a woman appeared. Her hair gleamed dark as onyx in the lamplight from inside, and her dress, though simple, draped her figure gracefully, for all that she was plainly with child. Once more, Emily felt the ignoble sting of envy; she turned and would have scrabbled back into the saddle and made a dash for other parts if Tristan hadn’t stopped her by taking a soothing grasp on her arm.

Thomas and Mark had gained the fence and, for a beat, they were quiet, peering at Emily in the faulty glimmer of a waning moon. “Who’s that?” one of them inquired.

“Miss Emily Starbuck,” Tristan said, as formally as if he’d been presenting her at some grand ball, “meet Thomas Lethaby, there on the left. That’s his brother, Mark, on the right.”

“You’re a girl?” the one called Mark wanted to know. He seemed skeptical.

“Howdy,” Thomas said, simultaneously elbowing his sibling in the ribs.

“Boys! Come inside, this minute,” the dark-haired woman commanded, with loving authority. She stood partway down the walk, and the children obeyed her reluctantly, casting backward glances as they went, while Tristan opened the
gate and stood aside to let Emily precede him. She had to force herself through for, drawn though she was, a part of her still wanted to bolt.

“Are we too late for supper?” Tristan asked, addressing the woman. There was a smile in his voice, and a degree of caring too pure and quiet to be without meaning. He’d swept off his hat, as well, holding it loosely in one hand.

The lady of the house laughed. “You know you could turn up in the middle of the night, looking for a meal, and never go away hungry.” She put out a hand to Emily. “Good evening,” she said. “I’m Aislinn McQuillan.”

Emily responded with a handshake and gave her name shyly.

“Won’t you come in?” Aislinn asked. By that time, she’d curved an arm around Emily’s waist and was gently propelling her toward the house. A man stood on the porch now, leaning with his hands braced against the whitewashed railing, the warm light glowing golden in his fair hair. Although Emily could make out only the outline of his frame and a general sense of his manner, she recognized right away that he was a twin to Tristan.

Emily was secretly mortified by the state of her person, particularly her clothing, as she passed along the walk, up the steps, into the house. She regretted letting Tristan persuade her to accompany him here and, at one and the same time, yearned to be taken into the laughter, into the light, if only for a single evening. Like a ragged and piteous wayfarer, warming her hands at a friendly fire. “I’ve been traveling for many weeks,” she said, in an effort to explain the trousers, the serape, the collarless shirt made for a man.

“With sheep,” Tristan added, in the entry way.

The other man gave a low whistle of exclamation.

“This,” Aislinn said, smiling as she turned to indicate Tristan’s precise replica, “is my husband, Shamus McQuillan. We call him Shay.”

“Sheep,” Shay marveled, as though he’d not heard of such an animal before.

A table was set in the dining room, with candles and
china and silver shining fit to dazzle the eye. There was nary a sign of Thomas and Mark; Emily suspected they were looking on from some hidden vantage point, though. She couldn’t help a small smile, nervous as she was.

“This way,” Tristan said, before Emily had to ask for a place to freshen up. He took a light hold on her arm and led her on through the dining room into the spacious kitchen behind. After fetching a basin and a ladle from the mud room, he lifted a lid on the side of the huge black cookstove, trimmed in gleaming chrome, and soon there was hot water. Soap.

Emily yearned toward those plain refinements just as she had toward the house itself; she removed the serape, at a gesture from Tristan, and washed her face and hands as sedately as she could. Her every instinct bade her plunge into that basin, splashing exuberantly and shouting for joy, so welcome was the prospect of being even moderately clean again.

When Tristan led her back to the table, where his brother and sister-in-law waited, talking in low voices, she felt almost presentable. She had decided that, in this one instance at least, she would suspend all thought of her troubles and allow herself to enjoy a pleasant meal in this merry and benevolent place. For much of her life, she had lived in the future, plotting and planning and worrying, anticipating and preparing, but tonight, by conscious choice, she would confine herself strictly to the moment.

It proved dangerously easy to pretend that she had a place in the midst of this glad gathering, that she truly belonged. She forgot her dreary life in Minnesota, where she had been the child bride of a man her uncle’s age, and subsequently a widow, forgot the difficulties she had had to face on her arrival in Butte, and the long, lonely and perilous trip overland to Prominence. For a little while, in her mind at least, her clothes befitted a woman, her future was a thing of bright assurance, and she had every right to enjoy the laughter and talk crisscrossing the table.

Only when the evening was drawing to a close, and the
four of them were taking rich coffee from china cups, did the subject of sheep come up again.