Wyoming Widow

Ignoring his rebuff, she turned toward the old man, who sat huddled in his wheelchair, toying with the food on his plate. His skin was gray tinged, his hollow cheeks etched with deep arroyos that flowed into the leaden tangle of his short beard. His flannel shirt was clean, his hair neatly trimmed and combed, but there was a wildness about Jacob Tolliver, a trace of the primitive that burned in his bloodshot yellow-green eyes.

She scrutinized his pitted features, searching for some resemblance to his offspring. But she found none. Morgan could have passed for a full-blooded Shoshone, and there was no echo of Ryan’s golden beauty in either of the two men. Jacob Tolliver’s sons, she concluded, resembled their respective mothers.

“The beef stew and biscuits Chang brought me last night were delicious, as well,” she said, pressing on. “Where on earth did you find such a treasure, Mr. Tolliver? Has he been with you a long time?”

For a moment Jacob Tolliver paid her no heed. Then the old man’s hooded eyes flickered toward her, as if he’d finally realized she was speaking to him. He cleared his throat as if he were about to launch into a story. Then his knobby shoulders sagged wearily. “You can tell her,” he said to Morgan.

Something flashed in Morgan’s black eyes. Was it hostility or only relief, perhaps even gratitude, that she’d steered their conversation onto safe ground?

“My father stole Chang from the railroad,” he said.

“Stole him?” Cassandra’s eyes widened.

“Stole him as slick as whiskey.” Morgan sipped his coffee, taking his time. “Chang came over from Canton in the mid-sixties to work as a dynamiter on the Central Pacific. When a rock slide crushed his leg, he was assigned to the kitchen crew. Chang had never cooked a meal in his life, but he took to it as if he’d been born in a stewpot. Before long, his reputation got around, and visiting railway bosses were coming by just to sample his braised mutton and biscuits.”

Morgan had settled back in his chair, cradling the coffee mug between his hands. Cassandra watched him, bemused by the discovery that this gruff, taciturn man possessed a hidden gift for words.

“My father owned title to some land in Nevada he’d won in a poker game a few years earlier. The railroad wanted to buy the parcel, so he traveled west to see the land for himself and negotiate the sale. The track boss made the mistake of inviting him to dinner. You can guess the rest of the story.”

Cassandra took what she hoped was a ladylike nibble of her scrambled eggs. The moist, frothy clumps were exquisitely seasoned—wild onion, she speculated, with a bit of sage and other flavorings so subtle she could not venture to name them. She took another bite, savoring the rich but delicate taste.

“I would guess,” she said, “that your father, the wily old pirate, found Chang, took him aside and made him an offer too generous to refuse.”

At her words, Morgan’s left eyebrow shot upward. The corners of his mouth twitched, threatening a smile—but only threatening. A real smile, she told herself, would probably crack that long granite face of his.

“Wily old pirate, am I?” Jacob growled. “That’s a right brassy tongue you’ve got in that curly head of yours, Red.”

“Well, aren’t you a wily old pirate?” Cassandra challenged him, her heart racing. “Besides, what makes you think I didn’t mean it as a compliment?”

He scowled at her. Then his thin lips stretched across his teeth in a skull-like grimace. “Right smart one we got here, Morgan. That’s just what happened. But Chang was a mean negotiator himself. Before he’d agree to come, I had to promise we’d send for the wife and two boys he’d left back in China.”

“Thomas and Johnny?” Cassandra took another forkful of scrambled eggs. “I met them last night when they brought in my bath. I must say, they have excellent manners.”

“Good boys.” Jacob nodded his agreement. “Weren’t knee-high to a grasshopper when they come here, but their folks raised them fine. Thomas sees that I’m decently washed and dressed, and helps his father with the house. Johnny took to cowboyin’ from the first time he laid eyes on a horse. Little squirt can rope any critter that runs on four legs and a few that don’t.”

Jacob Tolliver chuckled humorlessly at his own joke. Then his eyes went hard. “That’s enough talk about Chinamen. What I want to know, Red, is what brings a woman in your condition all the way to this godforsaken spot. Hell, it’s a dangerous trip alone, even for a man. You and that old mule could’ve got yourselves drowned in a creek or picked clean by wolves…” His gaze narrowed and sharpened. “Did you come all this way to find your baby’s pa? Maybe get the bounder to marry you? Is that it?”

Cassandra laid her fork on her plate, her appetite suddenly gone. She felt the old man’s eyes drilling into her, felt the cold, silent threat in Morgan’s gaze.

“I don’t like secrets in my house,” Jacob said. “Tell us, Red. Now.”

Chapter Five

Cassandra felt her stomach clench. A wave of cold nausea crept into her throat. Determined not to disgrace herself, she willed it back. It was panic, nothing more, she told herself. She could—and would—control it.

“Cassandra doesn’t feel she owes us an explanation,” Morgan broke in before she could reply to his father’s question. “But, yes, she has reason to think her baby’s father might be working for us—maybe up with the herd in the summer pasture.”

The old man twisted a dangling strand of his drooping mustache. “Well, whoever he is, the damned fool ought to be horsewhipped, runnin’ off and leavin’ a young girl in a family way. Bring him in and I’ll do the job myself. What did you say his name was, Red?”

Cassandra felt her stomach clench again. The flapjacks and eggs swam before her eyes. “Would you please excuse me?” she said, rising. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. I need some…air.”

With as much dignity as she could muster, she strode out of the dining room and, once out of sight, bolted for the front door.

The morning breeze struck her face as she staggered onto the porch. She gulped it frantically, leaning over the rail like a seasick ocean passenger.

Little by little the urge to retch diminished. Cassandra closed her eyes, letting the wind cool her sweat-dampened face. It was all right—she was all right. But she could not make herself walk back into that dining room and face Jacob Tolliver’s question.

What should she have told him? Not the truth, heaven forbid. And not the lie she had carried all the way to the Tolliver Ranch. Morgan was right—the old man was not ready to hear the shocking news that her baby was Ryan’s.

If she’d had her wits about her, she could have given Jacob Tolliver the first name that came into her head. Then she could have made a dramatic show of searching for her lost sweetheart, bursting into tears when she learned he was not on the ranch. That, at least, would have satisfied Morgan. But it would have added one more lie to the sickening tangle she’d woven, a tangle that was already threatening to drag her down to eternal fire and brimstone.

Impulsively she stepped off the porch and wandered across the yard toward the corral. Waiting there, just beyond the fence, was her single true friend in this place—the one friend who had no need for lies.

“Xavier!” She held out her hand, wishing she’d thought to steal a biscuit from the table. No matter. At her call the old dun mule pricked up his ears and trotted toward her, his limp noticeably better.

“How’s it going, old boy? Are they treating you right?” Cassandra’s eyes misted as she stroked the velvet nose, then moved her hand upward to scratch between the long, rabbity ears. The irascible creature had been her confidant, her protector and her only companion on the northward trek from Laramie. “It’s a good thing you can’t talk,” she whispered, laying her cheek against the bony neck. “I’d have no secrets at all in this place, would I?”

The mule snorted, bobbing his massive head up and down as if sharing the joke.

“And what secrets would he be telling about you, Miss Cassandra Riley?”

The rough whisper, coming from just behind her ear, startled Cassandra into a fit of hiccups. She glared up at Morgan Tolliver, struggling to maintain her dignity while her diaphragm convulsed in painful spasms.

“Don’t you ever…hic…do that to me again!”

His mouth remained as grim as a hatchet blade, but his eyes, Cassandra noticed, glimmered with sparks of amusement.

“Do you make a habit of…hic…sneaking up on people and scaring them? What if I’d had a gun, or a knife? You could be…hic…bleeding right now!”