Nora

She was almost overcome by the smothering humidity. The corset she was wearing under her long skirt and long-sleeved jacket was robbing her of breath.

Not that her companion looked much cooler, she had to admit. His thin shirt was soaked in front, and she was surprised that her eyes were drawn to the vividly outlined hard muscles of his arms and his hair-roughened chest. She had seen men of other races without shirts, but she had never seen any gentleman in a similar condition. This man was no gentleman, though. It was incomprehensible that a common laborer should stir senses that she had always kept impervious to any sort of physical attraction. Why, he made her nervous! And the slender hands holding the wooden handle of the neat fan, with its colorful representation of the Last Supper on one side and an advertisement for a funeral home on the other, were actually trembling.

“You work for my uncle Chester, do you not?” she asked, trying to make conversation.

“Yep.”

She waited, but the one word was all the response he gave.

“What do you do?” she added, thinking that he might work in some more skilled job than just punching cattle.

His head turned slowly. Under the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat, his silver eyes glittered like diamonds. “I’m a cowboy, of course. I work cattle. You might have noticed that my boots are full of…” He enunciated the slang word that described the caked substance on his boots. He said it with deliberate intent. To add insult to the word, he grinned.

The reply made her face red. She should hit him, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to do what he obviously expected her to do and rage at his lack of decency and delicacy. She only gave him her most vacant look and then made a slight movement of her shoulders in dismissal and turned her attention to the fall landscape as if nothing had been said at all.

Having traveled through West Texas once, even without stopping, she was aware of the differences in climate and vegetation from one side of Texas to the other. There were no cacti and desert here. The trees were magnolias and dogwoods and pines; the grass was still green despite the lateness of the year, and high where cattle grazed behind long white fences and gray-posted barbed-wire fences. The horizon seemed to sit right on the ground in the distance, as there were no hills or mountains at all. The haze of heat could be seen rising from the ponds, or tanks, where cattle drank. There were two rivers that ran parallel to the Tremayne ranch, her aunt had written, which might explain that lush landscape.

“It is very beautiful here,” she remarked absently. “So much more beautiful than the other side of the state.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “You easterners,” he scoffed. “You think a thing has to be green to be pretty.”

“Of course it does,” she replied simply, staring at his profile. “How can a desert be pretty?”

His head turned and he studied her with narrow eyes. “Well, a hothouse petunia like you might find it hard going, for sure.”

She gave him a hard stare. “I am not a hothouse plant. I have hunted lions and tigers in Africa,” she embroidered on her one-day safari, “and—”

“And one night on the Texas desert would be your undoing,” he interrupted pleasantly. “A rattler would crawl into your bedroll with you, and that’s the last you’d be seen until winter.”

She shuddered at just the thought of a rattlesnake. She had read about the vile creatures in Mr. Beadle’s novel series.

He saw her reaction, although she belatedly tried to hide it. He threw back his head and roared. “And you hunted lions?” he asked outrageously, laughing harder.

She made a harsh sound under her breath. “You nasty-smelling brute!”

“Well, while we’re on the subject of smells,” he said, leaning toward her to take a breath and then making a terrible face, “you smell like sunned polecat yourself.”

“Only because you refused to help me into the seat and I fell on your foul-smelling…” She gestured helplessly toward the wide leather chaps. “Those things!” She pointed at them, flustered.

He leaned a little toward her, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Legs, darlin’,” he contributed. “They’re called legs.”

“Those leather things!” she raged. “And I am not your darling!” she burst out, her poise deserting her as she flew off the seat.

He chuckled. “Oh, you might wish you were, one day. I have some admirable qualities,” he added.

“Let me out of this buggy! I’ll walk!” she raged.

He shook his head. “Now, now, you’d get sore feet and I’d get fired, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

“Yes, we would!”

He grinned at her red face and wide, furious eyes. They were like blue flames, and she had a pretty, soft mouth. He had to force his attention back to the road. “Your uncle couldn’t manage without me right now. Now, you sit easy, there, Miss Marlowe, and just let your blood cool. I’m a fine fellow once you get to know me.”

“I have no intention of getting to know you!”

“My, my, you do get riled easy, don’t you? And here I thought you rich ladies from back East were even-tempered.” He flipped the reins, increasing the horse’s speed gently.

“The ones who were probably hadn’t met you yet!” she exploded.

His head turned, and something twinkled in his silver-gray eyes before he glanced back toward the road with a tiny smile on his hard mouth.

Nora didn’t see that smile, although she had the feeling that he was laughing at her under the enormously wide brim of his hat. He’d knocked her legs right out from under her, until she couldn’t even find a comeback. It was a new experience for her, and not one she enjoyed. No man had ever made her mad enough to yell like a fishwife. She was ashamed of her outburst. She settled into her seat and ignored him, pointedly, for the rest of the drive.

THE RANCH HOUSE was long and flat, but it was white as sand and had a long, elegant front porch and a white picket fence around Aunt Helen’s beautiful mixed flower gardens. Aunt Helen was standing on the porch when the wagon pulled up at the walkway, looking so much like her mother that Nora felt immediately homesick.

“Aunt Helen!” she exclaimed, laughing as she stepped onto the hub of the wagon wheel and stepped gingerly down out of the wagon unassisted, before the man beside her could display more of his bad manners by showing her aunt how he ignored common courtesy.

She ran to the older woman and was hugged warmly. “Oh, it is good to see you again!” she enthused, her face animated and lovely as she pushed back the veil to reveal her exquisite complexion and bright, deep blue eyes.

“Mr. Barton, it would have been courteous to have helped Nora from the wagon,” Aunt Helen told the man who bore her luggage to the porch.

“Yes, ma’am, I meant to, but she lit out of it like a scalded chicken,” he said with outrageous courtesy, even tipping his hat to Helen, and he smiled charmingly as he waited for her to open the front door and direct him to the bedroom Nora would occupy. Beast! Nora thought. The word was in her eyes as he passed her, and his silver eyes registered it and twinkled with pure hellish amusement. She jerked her head around angrily.

When he was out of sight, Helen grimaced. “He is Chester’s livestock foreman, and he is very knowledge able about cattle and business. But he has a rather unusual sense of humor. I’m sorry if he offended you.”

“Who is he?” Nora asked reluctantly.

“Callaway Barton,” she replied.

“Who are his people, I meant?” Nora persisted.

“We don’t know. We know his name, but we know very little about him. He works during the week and vanishes on weekends—that was in the contract he signed with Chester. We don’t pry into people’s lives out here,” she added gently. “He’s rather mysterious, but he’s not usually rude at all.”

“He wasn’t rude,” Nora lied, brushing at the dust on her cheeks to camouflage their color.

Helen smiled. “You would not have said so even if he was. You have breeding, my dear,” she said proudly. “It’s very evident that you come from blue bloods.”

“So do you,” she was reminded. “You and Mother are descended from European royalty. We have royal cousins in England, one of whom I visit twice a year.”

“Don’t remind Chester.” Helen laughed conspiratorially. “He comes from a laboring background, and mine sometimes embarrasses him.”

Nora had to bite her tongue to keep back a blunt comment. She couldn’t imagine hiding any part of her own life to placate a man’s ego. But, then, Aunt Helen had been raised in a different era, by different rules. She had no right to judge or condemn from her modern status.

“Shall we have tea and sandwiches?” Helen asked. “I’ll have Debbie bring refreshments to the living room after you’ve had a few minutes to freshen up.” Her nose wrinkled. “I must say, Nora, that is a very…odd scent you’re wearing.”

Nora flushed. “I…fell against Mr. Barton getting into the wagon and brushed my hand against some of that…vile material on his…on those leather things he was wearing,” she faltered.

“His chaps,” she said.

“Oh. Yes. Chaps.”

Helen chuckled. “Well, it is unavoidable that working men get dirty. It will wash off.”

“I do hope so,” Nora sighed.

The tall cowboy came back down the hall, his burdens unloaded.

Helen smiled at him. “Chester wanted to see you when you got back, Mr. Barton. He and Randy are working down by the old barn, trying to fix the windmill,” she added.

“I’ll put up the wagon and join him as soon as possible. Good day, ma’am.” He tipped his hat courteously at Helen.

He nodded politely at Nora, his eyes twinkling at her expression, and walked on toward the front door, his spurs jingling musically with every long, graceful step.

Helen was watching him. “Most cowboys are clumsy on the ground,” she remarked, “probably because they spend so much time on horseback. But Mr. Barton is not clumsy, is he?”

Nora watched, hoping that he’d trip over one of his spurs and knock himself out on the door facing. But he didn’t. She reached up and removed the hatpin that secured her wide hat. “Where is Melly?” she asked.

Helen hesitated. “In town, visiting a girlfriend. She will be back this evening.”

Nora was very puzzled as she changed her traveling clothes for a simple long skirt and white middy blouse and rewound her long chestnut braid around her head. Melly was only eighteen and she adored her older cousin. They were good friends. Why wasn’t Melly here to meet her?

She joined Helen in the parlor, and while they sipped tea and ate homemade lemon cookies, she asked about Melly again.

“She went riding with Meg Smith this afternoon, and I know she’ll be back soon. I might as well tell you the truth. She was in love with the man her best friend married, and she has been inconsolable. She couldn’t even refuse to be maid of honor at their wedding.”

“Oh, I am so sorry!” Nora exclaimed. “How terrible for Melly!”

“We pitied her, but it was fortunate that the man did not return her feelings. He had some admirable qualities, but he is not the sort we want to marry our daughter,” Aunt Helen said sadly. “Besides, Melly is sure to find someone more worthy to love. There are several bachelors who attend services with us every Sunday. Perhaps she might be encouraged to join a social group.”

“Exactly,” Nora said. “I’ll do my best to help her over this sad experience.”

“I knew you would,” came the satisfied reply. “It’s so good to have you here!”

Nora smiled affectionately at her aunt. “I am delighted that I came.”

MELLY RETURNED HOME barely an hour after Nora arrived, on horseback, wearing a riding skirt and a straight-brimmed Spanish hat. She had dark hair like Nora’s, but her hair didn’t have the same chestnut highlights as her cousin’s, and her eyes were a soft brown instead of blue. Her skin was tanned, as Nora’s was not, and she was delicate and very slender, like a little doll. Looking at her, Nora couldn’t imagine a man not wanting her for his wife.

“I’m so happy that you’ve come,” Melly said after she’d greeted her cousin with sad warmth. “I’ve been rather droopy, but you can help me liven things up.”

Nora smiled. “I hope that I can. It has been over a year since we visited when you came to Virginia. You must tell me all the news.”

Melly grimaced. “Of course. But you must realize that my life is hardly as full and exciting as yours. I will have little to tell.”

Nora thought of the times she had spent in bed, shivering with fever. Melly didn’t know—none of them knew—how her adventure in Africa had ended.

“Melly, I do wish that you would not make us sound so dull,” her mother murmured. “We do have some social life here!”

“We have square dances and housewarmings and spelling bees,” came the short reply. “And the abominable Mr. Langhorn and his son.”

“When we have gatherings with other ranchers in the cooperative, Melly helps serve,” her mother reminded Nora. “Mr. Langhorn is one of the local ranchers, and he has a little boy who is worse than a wild man. Mr. Langhorn does not control him.”

“Mr. Langhorn is the one who needs controlling,” Melly added with a chuckle.

“That is true,” her mother agreed. “He has a…reputation…and he is divorced,” she whispered the word, as if it were not fit to be heard in decent company.

“Surely that should not count against him,” Nora began.

“Nora, our family name is very important to us,” her aunt said firmly. “I know that in eastern cities, and in Europe, a woman is perhaps allowed more freedoms than out here. But you must remember that this is a small community, and our good name is our most treasured possession. It would not do for Melly to be seen keeping company with a divorced man.”

“I see what you mean,” Nora said gently, wondering just how confining this small society really was. Coming from a large eastern city, she was hard-pressed to understand small-town life anywhere.

After dinner they sat in a blissful silence, one so profound and serene that the grandfather clock could be heard vividly, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

The screen door slammed suddenly and heavy boots made emphatic noises on the bare wood floor.

Cal Barton stuck his head around the door, his hat held in one hand. “Excuse me, Mrs. Tremayne, but Chester would like a word with you on the porch.”

Nora wondered why his spurs didn’t jingle until she looked down. Of course; his spurs were covered with…that. So was the rest of him, Nora thought, her expression revealing her opinion of it eloquently as she sat elegantly on the sofa in just the correct posture, looking so at home in the opulence that it put Cal’s back up at once.

He saw the disapproving, superior look she gave him, and it irritated him out of all proportion. He didn’t smile this time. He simply looked through her, with hauteur that would have done a prince proud. He nodded politely when Helen commented that she would be right out, and he left without another glance in Nora’s direction.

She was miffed by his sudden aloofness, and spent the rest of the day wondering why the opinion of a hired man should matter to her. After all, she was a Marlowe from Virginia, and that unwashed son of the great West was nothing more than a glorified male milkmaid. The thought sent her into gales of laughter, although certainly she couldn’t share the joke with her ranching hosts.

Chapter Two

NORA’S UNCLE WAS HOME in time for the evening meal, looking dusty and tired, but as robust and pleasant as ever. He welcomed her with his old enthusiasm. Later, while they sat together at the table, he passed along some worrying news to his family.

“There was some gossip today, about the West Texas combine not being pleased with my handling of the property. A visiting businessman from El Paso said that he knows the Culhanes and they have not gotten the results they expected from me,” Chester told the others, grimacing at his wife’s expression. “They must remember that I would have lost this ranch myself if they had not bought it—”

“Because of the low prices people were paying for our beef and produce,” his wife argued. “There is not enough money in circulation, and people are not buying agricultural products in enough quantity to let us make a profit. The Populists have tried so hard to effect change. And we have, after all, read that William J. Bryan has been nominated by the Populists to run against McKinley. He is a good man and tireless. Perhaps some changes will be made to benefit those of us in agriculture.”

“Perhaps so, but that will hardly change our situation, my dear,” Chester said heavily.

“Chester, they would not have let you manage the ranch for so long had they not had confidence in you. You are not responsible for low market prices.”

“It might not seem that way to a wealthy family.” He glanced at his niece placatingly. “Not yours, my dear. The family I’m worried about is from West Texas, and the father and sons head the combine. The Culhanes are a second-generation ranching family—old money. I understand from Simmons that they don’t approve of the fact that I haven’t adopted any of the machinery available to help plant and harvest crops. I am not, as they say, moving quickly into the twentieth century.”

“How absurd,” Nora said. “These new machines may be marvelous, of course, but they are also very expensive, aren’t they? And with people needing work so badly, why incorporate machinery to take away jobs?”

“You make sense, my dear, but I must do as I am told,” he said sadly. “I don’t know how they learned so much about the way I run the ranch when no representative has been here to see me. I could lose my position,” he said starkly.

“But where would we go if you did?” his wife asked plaintively. “This is our home.”

“Mother, don’t fret,” Melly said gently. “Nothing is happening right now. Don’t borrow trouble.”

But Helen looked worried. So did Chester. Nora put down her coffee cup and smiled at them.

“If worse comes to worst, I shall ask Mother and Father to help out,” she said.

She was unprepared for her uncle’s swift anger. “Thank you, but I do not require charity from my wife’s relations back East,” he said curtly.

Nora’s eyebrows rose. “But, Uncle Chester, I only meant that my parents would offer assistance if you wished them to.”

“I can provide for my own family,” he said tersely. “I know that you mean well, Eleanor, but this is my problem. I shall handle it.”

“Of course,” she replied, taken aback by his unexpected antagonism.

“Nora only meant to offer comfort,” Helen chided him gently.

He calmed at once. “Yes, of course,” he said, and with a sheepish smile. “I do beg your pardon, Nora. It is not a happy time for me. I spoke out of frustration. Forgive me.”

“Certainly, I do. I only wish that I could help,” she replied sincerely.

He shook his head. “No, I shall find a way to placate the owners. I must. Even if it means seeking new methods of securing a profit,” he added under his breath.

Nora noticed then what she hadn’t before: the lines of worry in his broad face. He wasn’t being completely truthful with his wife and daughter, she was certain of it. How terrible it would be if he should lose control of the ranch his grandfather had founded. It must be unpleasant for him to have a combine dictating his managerial decisions here; almost as unpleasant as it would have been for him to lose the ranch to the combine in the first place. She must learn what she could and then see if there was some way that she could help, so that he and his family did not lose their home and only source of income.

After that, conversation turned to the Farmers Congress in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and to the Boer War in South Africa, where a Boer general named De Wet was growing more famous by the day with his courageous attacks on the superior forces of the British.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed peacefully. The men were away from the ranch most of the day and, it seemed, half the night, bringing in the bulls. Within a couple of weeks, they would be starting the annual fall roundup. Nora’s opinion of the “knights of the range” underwent a startling transformation as she saw more and more of them from afar around the ranch.

For one thing, there were as many black and Mexican cowboys as there were white ones. But whatever their color, they were mostly dirty and unkempt, because working cattle was hardly a dainty job. They were courteous and very polite to her, but they seemed to be shy. This trait had first surprised and then amused her. She went out of her way to flirt gently with a shy boy everyone called Greely, because it delighted her to watch him stammer and blush. The stale ennui of European men had made her uneasy with them, but this young man made her feel old and venerable. She had no thought of ridicule. It was the novelty of his reaction that touched something vulnerable in her. But she’d flirted with him once in front of Melly, and Melly had been embarrassed.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she told Nora gently but firmly when Greely went on his way. “The men don’t like being made fun of, and Cal Barton won’t stand for it. Nor will he hesitate to tell you to stop it if he ever catches you.”

“But I meant no insult. I simply adore the way he stammers when I speak to him,” she said, smiling. “I find this young man so refreshing, you know. And besides, Mr. Barton has no authority to tell me what to do, even if he did catch me,” Nora reminded her.

Melly smiled knowingly. “We’ll see about that. He even tells Dad what to do.”

Nora took the remark with a grain of salt, but she stopped playing up to poor Greely just the same. It was unfortunate that she should mention him, and why he amused her, later to her aunt when Greely was within earshot. After that, she had no opportunity to see him. His absence from her vicinity was pointed, and he had a somber, crushed look about him that made Nora feel guilty until finally he seemed to disappear altogether.

NORA WAS INVITED OUT to watch the cowboys work, and she accompanied Melly to a small corral near the house where a black cowboy was breaking a new horse to the remuda, the string of horses used by the men during roundup. Melly explained what would happen in the upcoming roundup, all about the long process of counting and branding cattle, and separating the calves from their mothers. Nora, who had known nothing of the reality of it, was appalled.

“They take the little calves from their mothers and burn the brands into their hide?” she exclaimed. “Oh, how horribly cruel!”

Melly hesitated, a little uneasy. “Now, Nora, it’s an old practice. Surely in all your travels, you have seen people work on the land?”

Nora settled deeper into her sidesaddle. She couldn’t bring herself to ride astride, as Melly did, feeling that it was unladylike. “I have seen farming, of course, back East.”

“It’s different out here,” Melly continued. “We have to be hard or we couldn’t survive. And here, in East Texas, it’s really a lot better life than on the Great Plains or in the desert country farther west.”

Nora watched the cowboy ride the sweating, snorting horse and wanted to scream at the poor creature’s struggles. Tears came to her eyes.

Cal Barton had spotted the two women and came galloping up on his own mount to join them. “Ladies,” he welcomed.

Nora’s white face told its own story as she stared at him coldly. “I have never seen such outrageous cruelty,” she said at once, dabbing at her eyes with an expensive lace-edged silk handkerchief. “That poor beast is being tormented by that man. Make him stop, at once!”

Cal’s eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Make him stop,” she repeated, blind to Melly’s gestures. “It is uncivilized to treat a horse so!”

“Uncivi… Good God Almighty!” Cal burst out. “How in hell do you think horses get gentle enough to be ridden?”