Megan Read online

  Webb cursed. “Did he—does he—?”

  “Does Tom still get drunk and pound on Ellie?” Jesse asked, with no discernible emotion. “No. Once she had the boy, she changed. Wouldn’t take no grief from him or anybody else, including Pa. First time Tom got himself drunked up—and that was a long time coming, considering the shape you left him in—she met him at the front door with a shotgun and swore she’d kill him if he ever raised a hand to her or the kid.” Jesse smiled at the memory, and there was a meanness in the expression that Webb despaired to see. “I guess he must have seen the light. There was never any trouble after that.”

  Webb’s mind reeled; he turned away from his younger brother, turned back. “My God,” he whispered, taking his hat off and then immediately putting it on again. “All this time—”

  “All this time, you’ve been looking over your shoulder, expecting a posse?” Jesse seemed to enjoy the thought. In fact, he hooted with laughter, and Webb might have punched him in the mouth if he hadn’t sworn off violence a long time before. He hadn’t used his fists or carried a pistol since that day on the Southern Star, when he’d left his own flesh and blood for dead, and he still didn’t trust himself.

  “You think that’s funny?” he asked, his voice very quiet.

  It was a warning, and Jesse caught on right away, for once. He paled and offered up a faltering, foolish smile. “Hey, Webb. It’s me, Jesse. Your kid brother.” He slapped Webb’s shoulder. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Webb had a thousand questions to ask, but he knew he would never be able to give voice to most of them. He’d confine his curiosity to Jesse himself, forget the old man and Tom had ever existed. As for the boy, Thomas Stratton III, well, he wasn’t ready to think about him at all. “No,” Webb said, “I’ll buy you a steak. We have some ground to cover.”

  Jesse was pleased at the prospect of a free meal; he’d always been a hearty eater—the work was hard on the Southern Star and on any other ranch, hard enough to stoke any man’s appetite, let alone that of a growing kid—and to Webb he looked a little down on his luck. No telling how long it had been since the boy had eaten anything but trail food, though from the look and smell of him, he hadn’t been passing up the whiskey.

  In the dining room of the Comstock Hotel, over slabs of beef cooked rare along with creamed corn and baked potatoes, the brothers gave abbreviated versions of their recent pasts. Jesse had left the Southern Star after a particularly nasty quarrel with the old man, and he’d been drifting ever since, stopping to punch cattle on some ranch or sign up with a trail drive whenever he ran low on money. He spoke wistfully of the home place, though, and Webb saw resentment flash in the boy’s blue eyes when he said he was sure their father must have signed the land and livestock over to Tom Jr. by then.

  Good riddance, thought Webb. He’d loved the land, of course he had, for he was a cattleman by blood, but he had a place of his own now, the ranch at Primrose Creek. He would build it into an enterprise to equal or even surpass the Southern Star, but that was where the similarity ended. He wanted children, sons and daughters, and if he was lucky enough to have them, he wouldn’t pit them against each other the way Tom Sr. had done, that was for damn sure. Nor would he wear out three wives, planting them one by one in a desolate, windswept churchyard overlooking the muddy Missouri River, along with their many illfated babies, laid to rest in coffins no bigger than shoe boxes.

  “Where’d you get the money to buy your own place?” Jesse wanted to know. He’d finished his steak and was starting in on a wedge of cherry pie.

  Webb had saved a part of his wages ever since he’d begun drawing them when he was fourteen, and after leaving the Southern Star he’d hooked up with a couple of cattle drives out of Texas and Mexico. In time, he’d become a trail boss, and, as such, he’d gotten a percentage of the profits. He saw no need to explain all that to Jesse, who was apparently more inclined to squander whatever came his way. “I worked,” he said. “I’m looking for some cowpunchers right now. You know of any?”

  Jesse beamed. “Sure I do. I’ll sign on. So will seven or eight of my friends, and a few strangers to boot, I reckon, if the wages are right.”

  “The wages are nothing fancy,” Webb said, “but there’s a good bunkhouse, and I’ve hired on a woman to cook.” It seemed an understatement of phenomenal proportions, describing Megan as “a woman to cook,” but hers wasn’t a name he wanted to bandy about. In some indefinable way, it was nearly sacred.

  “You never married?” Jesse asked, between bites of pie.

  Webb shook his head. He’d loved Ellie, and they both knew it. Hell, everybody in Montana probably knew. “What about you?” he asked, though he was sure Jesse hadn’t gotten beyond the stage of chasing saloon girls.

  “No plans to settle down,” Jesse said proudly, as though he were the first man ever to come up with the idea.

  Webb smiled to himself. “I see,” he said, as a serving woman came and filled his coffee cup. “Well, you round up your friends when you finish up. I’ll hire on every man with warm blood in his veins and a horse to ride.”

  Jesse nodded. He would expect special treatment, Webb supposed, being the boss’s brother. No sense in disillusioning him too soon. In point of fact, Jesse would be expected to carry his own weight, just like all the others.

  He finished his pie and had a second piece, and Webb watched with amusement while that went down Jesse’s gullet as fast as the first one. Then, while Webb enjoyed his coffee, Jesse got to his feet, apparently restored. “Where do we meet,” he asked, “and when?”

  Webb had been lucky that day, and not just because of the reunion with Jesse, the brother he’d left behind. He’d expected to have trouble hiring the men he needed, but now it seemed that fate was going to provide those, too. It made him uneasy when things just fell into place like that.

  “I’ve got a room here,” he said. “I’ll talk to the men in the morning and buy breakfast for everybody who hires on. I’ll get you a bed if you want one.”

  That smirk lifted one corner of Jesse’s mouth again. “Oh, I’ve got me a bed for the night,” he said. “But thanks anyway. We’ll see you out front.”

  “Dawn,” Webb warned, although he was in no real position to make demands. Most of the men in Virginia City were miners, unlikely to saddle up and head out to ride herd in the high country. He’d take whatever help he could get and be glad of it.

  Shortly after Jesse had nodded and taken his leave, Webb finished his coffee, settled the bill, and took himself upstairs. In his room, he lit a kerosene lamp, kicked off his boots, and stretched out on the lumpy bed to read a book he’d brought along from home. Finding himself too groggy to focus his eyes, he finally undressed, turned down the wick, and lay down to sleep.

  Instead, he thought about the Jesse he remembered from seven years ago. The boy had been sensitive and skinny, with a love for books as well as horses, and he’d tried desperately to gain the old man’s approval, all to no avail. There was a cruel streak in Tom Sr., and the harder Jesse strove to prove himself, the less attention he was paid.

  At last, Webb dropped off to sleep, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to dream about the Southern Star, about the old man, about Tom Jr., about Ellie and Jesse, even about all those lost babies. God knew he’d had a hundred nightmares about them as a boy, dreamed they were calling to him, calling and calling, thin voices piping on the harsh Montana winds.

  Instead, it was Megan McQuarry who haunted his sleep. Megan, with her copper hair and impossibly green eyes, her fiery spirit and quick Irish tongue. He awakened well rested and eager to begin the long, hard ride home to Primrose Creek. Back to Megan.

  He was pleasantly taken aback to find Jesse waiting for him out in front of the hotel in the predawn light, his horse saddled and ready to ride. He was sober, incredibly enough, and so were the twelve men he’d recruited to sign on with Webb’s outfit. All of them had halfway decent horses and enough gear to see them through.


  Webb spoke with each one, and, although he disliked a fair number of them on sight, he was running low on choices. He had cattle and horses to round up and sell to the army, and he couldn’t do that on his own.

  Jesse at his side, Webb turned his own mount toward the mountains and rode for home.

  *

  He was back.

  Megan’s throat caught with the realization, and she watched from the patch of land she’d been clearing for a kitchen garden as Webb and a dozen men rode toward the house. His face was shaded by the brim of his hat, and yet she would have sworn he was smiling.

  She schooled her own expression to one of school-marmish dignity, though not before she’d forgotten herself and raised both hands to make sure her hair wasn’t coming down. While the other men made for the barn, there to stable their horses before staking their claims to spots in the bunkhouse, Webb and a young fair-haired cowboy rode toward her. Augustus, barking deliriously, came bounding around the side of the house and rushed to welcome his master.

  The two men stopped at the edge of the garden and swung down from their horses. Webb was indeed smiling, Megan realized, but she didn’t dare presume that she was the cause of his good spirits, the way he was wrestling the dog in greeting, so she kept her own expression solemn. Inwardly, however, she was overjoyed to see Webb again; a wild surge of happiness arose and danced in her soul.

  “Looks like you’ve been hard at work,” Webb observed, indicating the garden patch with a nod of his head. He was still smiling, as though he knew her own straight face was a ruse. Maybe he’d even guessed that she’d missed him sorely.

  Augustus had settled down a little, though he still whimpered in delight. Fickle dog. He’d hardly let her out of his sight from the moment Webb left the ranch, and now all his attention was reserved for someone else. Megan gathered up her skirts, suddenly conscious of the bright green silk, once trimmed with feathers at the neckline and hem. She’d torn off the fripperies and rolled up the sleeves, but the gown still looked like what it was—a fancy woman’s get-up, made for a stage, a dance hall, or some such place. She saw the boy looking at her with frank appreciation, though she was dirty from head to foot, and blushed. “I’ll get supper,” she said.

  Webb’s gaze narrowed as he took in her dress, and she thought she saw his jawline tighten a little. He nodded almost curtly. “That would be fine,” he grumbled.

  The young man elbowed him, and he started, first in a flash of temper, then in sudden amusement.

  “This is my younger brother, Jesse,” Webb said. “Jesse, meet Miss McQuarry, my housekeeper.”

  It seemed to Megan that Webb hesitated slightly at the word housekeeper, as if he wanted to say she was something more, but surely she’d only imagined that. She’d been working hard since Webb had left four days before, and she’d been outside swinging a hoe and picking rocks since noon. Little wonder, then, if she was getting lightheaded and perhaps a bit whimsical. “How do you do?” she said, addressing herself to Jesse. She was still painfully conscious of the dress.

  Jesse flushed. Perhaps a decade younger than Webb and not so ruggedly built, he was handsome all the same, and in time he’d be the sort of man to turn women’s heads, like his elder brother. “How do?” he responded.

  Webb pulled off one glove and indicated the outbuildings. “The bunkhouse is over there,” he said to Jesse. “Feed and water your horse, and put away your gear. Time you’re washed up, I reckon Miss McQuarry will have something on the table for supper.”

  Jesse looked somewhat taken aback, as though he’d expected to sleep in the house, and Megan was a little confused herself. In her family, kin was kin. They deserved—and got—the best of everything, no matter how little there might be.

  “Sure,” Jesse said at last, and led his horse away.

  Megan ran her blistered hands down the front of her dress, painfully aware of her appearance. If only she’d known when he was going to return, she found herself thinking, she might have bathed, dressed her hair, put on something pretty… .

  What was she thinking? She was a housekeeper, not a wife or even a sweetheart. Once again, she touched her hair. Then, embarrassed, she turned and hurried into the house, her face hot.

  She went to her room, washed quickly, exchanged her dress for the one simple print gown she owned, and did what she could with her hair. Thankfully, there was fresh-baked bread, and she’d put a pot of beans and hamhocks on the back of the stove earlier in the day. There were eggs, too, from Bridget’s hens, brought over the night before by Trace and Noah and stored in a basket in the ice house.

  She collected those and put them on to boil, opened several large cans of fruit from the kitchen shelves, and started some biscuits. She was rushing about the kitchen when she became aware of Webb standing just inside the doorway, his hat in his hands. There was a look of curious affection in his blue eyes.

  “It’s a little late in the year for a vegetable garden, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “It’s only June,” she said, flustered, dashing from stove to shelf to table and back again. “There are lots of things that will grow.”

  He shrugged, hung his hat on a peg next to the door, and stepped inside. His clothes were filthy, and he could have used a bath and barbering, but he looked spectacular to Megan just as he was. It made her pulse race to think that he’d be sleeping under the same roof again, as of that night. She probably wouldn’t get a moment’s rest.

  He proceeded to the wash stand, the dog prancing happily along behind him, nails clicking, tongue lolling. Webb poured water from the pitcher to the basin and began soaping and splashing his face, scrubbing his hands. Megan stood frozen, watching him, and was nearly caught gawking, turning away just in time to avoid notice.

  The cowboys began to wander in soon after, led by Jesse Stratton, and they greeted Megan politely with nods and murmured “ma’am”s. They’d done their washing down at the creek, most likely, and while they were still far too dirty for decent company, they were hungry and minding their manners, for the most part, at least. She caught a few of them casting surreptitious glances her way and reckoned they’d seen her in her costume in the garden. None of them dared to make comment, of course, and they took their seats in good order, Webb at the head of the table, and tucked into the food Megan set out for them.

  Watching them eat while she brewed coffee at the stove, Megan reflected that Webb had been right—cooking three meals a day for so many men was going to be more work than she’d ever undertaken before. Oddly enough, she liked the idea; like the other McQuarrys, she didn’t take to idleness.

  When the meal was over, she fed the few scraps to Augustus, who had waited patiently, one eye open to monitor the proceedings throughout supper, stretched out on the hooked rug in front of the kitchen fireplace. The men thanked her modestly and took their leave, including Jesse, disappearing two and three at a time into the twilight, mugs of coffee in their hands, until she was alone with Webb.

  “That was a fine meal,” Webb said. He lingered at the table, watching her, the light of the lanterns glowing golden in his hair.

  She found herself smiling at him. “Why does it always seem to surprise you, Mr. Stratton, when I do something well?”

  He had the good grace to look chagrined. He even reddened a little, along that strong jawline of his. He needed to shave, and badly, but Megan realized she wanted to touch him, just the same. She was all the more careful to keep her distance.

  “I guess you look more like an actress than a housekeeper,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you had a brother,” she replied, because his remark disturbed her, and not in an entirely unpleasant way, and she needed to change the subject.

  He sighed. “Ah, yes. Jesse. I ran into him in Virginia City. Turns out he left home more than two years ago.”

  Megan began washing dishes in a pan on the long counter under the broad eastern window, where morning light would spill in, pink and gold, when the sun rose. “Home?” she aske
d very quietly. “You mean the family ranch up in Montana?” If he didn’t want to answer, if the question was too forward, he could pretend that he hadn’t heard.

  “For me,” he said without hesitation, “home is right here at Primrose Creek.”

  She was oddly pleased by his answer, even though she grieved for this land that had once been hers. “What made you leave there?” she pressed, scrubbing away at a plate and avoiding his eyes. What caused her to be so daring? Webb Stratton’s past was his own business.

  He was quiet for a long while. Then, with a sigh, he spoke. “Your family is close-knit,” he said. “Mine is different.”

  She waited.

  “We never got along, Pa and me. Tom, Jr.—that’s our older brother—and I could hardly stand to be in the same room together.”

  She felt a kinship with Webb then, for, of course, she’d known her share of familial turmoil, too. “What about your mother?” she asked gently.

  “My mother,” he reflected. She dared to steal a glance at him, out of the corner of one eye, her attention caught by something in his tone, and saw that he was staring off into the distance, his hands cupped around his enamel mug. He seemed to see something far beyond the sturdy, chinked log wall of the house, something that troubled him a great deal. “She died when I was five, I hardly remember her. Pa married Jesse’s ma, Delia, before mine had been gone six months—in all the time I knew her, I never heard him call her by her Christian name. She was always ‘woman.’ ”

  Megan couldn’t help herself. She went to stand just behind Webb’s chair, laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. Took solace in the fact that he didn’t pull away. “What was she like? Jesse’s mother, I mean?”

  He smiled, but a shadow of sadness moved in his eyes. “Delicate. Pretty. Hardly more than a girl when she first came to the ranch. She lost several babies before she managed to have Jesse, then passed on of a fever when he was just three. We didn’t have a woman in the house again until Tom, Jr., went back east and married Ellie.”