Seven Brides - Fern Part 4

Not that she thought that was bad. After all the times she had waited for her father, or some other man, only to have him say he'd forgotten, or got busy talking, she would appreciate it. But she was irritated that Madison should be the one to be punctual.

Of course she didn't know he was punctual. That was just a guess. He could be hopeless when it came to keeping appointments.

But he wouldn't be. He wasn't the type.

Thirty minutes later Fern found herself pacing back and forth in front of the barn. She told herself it wasn't time for him yet, that she was too busy to worry about him, but she couldn't keep her mind on her work.

Just as she started to catalog all the terrible things she was going to do to him, she saw a rider in the distance. A short while later she recognized Madison. It couldn't be anyone else. Not even his brother could present such a lean, immaculate appearance.

The second thing that caught her eye was the horse. Madison was riding Buster, the best horse in the Twins Livery Stable. The big bay gelding was Tom Everett's favorite horse. He didn't hire him out to just anybody. He was a strong animal and not always easy to manage, but he seemed to be going easy enough for Madison.

The next thing to catch her eye was the way he rode in the saddle. Absolutely erect. He looked extremely handsome in his city clothes, but she couldn't imagine anyone who looked less as if he should be on a horse. She could think of several men she might call handsome, but they weren't a spot on this dandy. It was a pity he was a Randolph.

But he could ride. Not that riding a horse along a clear trail at a canter was anything to write home about, but it was the way he did it, with negligent ease. She didn't know how or where he'd learned, but he was used to being on a horse. Just how used she meant to discover soon enough, but for the time being she had to revise her opinion of him. He might dress like a useless dandy, but he didn't ride like one. Maybe he wasn't one.

But he had to be. He was from Boston, wasn't he?

Whatever he was, she'd never find out by standing around arguing with herself. She mounted up and rode out to meet him.

Chapter Four.

"We're going to have to travel fast," she told him, making certain not to look into his eyes. His forthright gaze disconcerted her. "Follow me."

He didn't move. "I thought I had arrived on schedule." He consulted his elegant gold timepiece. "I have two minutes to spare," he said, returning the watch to its pocket.

"I have a lot of work to do today."

"Ah, yes, those unfortunate bulls whose future you are determined to blight."

A bubble of laughter stirred in Fern's chest; she choked it back. It wasn't her habit to go around laughing all the time. She had noticed that the people who were most respected always looked somber or actually spent a large part of their lives frowning. She had achieved her perpetual scowl only after considerable effort, and she didn't intend to let this dandified lawyer bring it to naught. ''Steers gain weight," she snapped. "And bulls cause trouble. Even a lawyer from Boston ought to know that."

"Yes, but it has never been my ambition to gain weight."

"You prefer to cause trouble?"

"Are those the only two choices you're offering?" Madison asked.

He brought his horse to a stop alongside hers. They were only inches apart. She was sure he'd done it intentionally so she couldn't avoid looking directly at him.

"I'm not offering you any choices."

"How disappointing."

She was certain he meant something different from the words that came out of his mouth. Maybe he was flirting, but she couldn't be sure. His wasn't the direct way of Western men; neither was it the formal manner she thought would be favored in Boston.

Her chest constricted at his nearness. Even her breath seemed to shudder as it left her lungs. She told herself not to be stupid. He was baiting her. He'd like nothing better than to confuse her.

Now he was smiling at her, but there was something unfamiliar in his gaze. She didn't know what it was, but it made her uneasy. She felt intimidated. It infuriated her that he would try to overawe her, even more that she would allow him to succeed.

"Do you always talk nonsense?" she asked.

"If you were a man, you wouldn't consider castration nonsense. Do you know what they do to men in Turkey, the ones they use in the harems?"

"I don't know anything about the habits of heathens," Fern stated, "and I don't want to. If you want to see the Connor place, follow me. If you want to stand around talking about outlandish people in places I never heard of, you can go back to town."

She dug her heels into her horse's sides, and he bounded away. He was a swift, short-coupled horse, one more suited to cutting work than long rides across the prairie, but she felt more at home on him than on a big brute like Buster.

She was surprised to find Madison at her elbow almost immediately.

"I gather you don't approve of foreigners."

His comment made Fern painfully aware of her threadbare education. She had learned as much as she could, but she was certain that Madison knew more about everything than she did. That made her feel even more intimidated. And angrier.

"I have no doubt you know much more about foreigners than I do, especially barbaric ones, so I shall leave it to you to decide whether I would approve of them or not."

"How can I do that when I don't know anything about you?" he replied. "For all I know you might approve of castrating men."

"Do you always talk about such awful things?" she demanded, twisting about in the saddle.

"I'm not the one taking a knife to those poor bulls," he pointed out. "The way you mentioned it so offhandedly was quite callous. I would have thought that even here in Kansas, women would have had that kindness of heart, that gentleness of spirit that"

"You didn't think any such thing," Fern contradicted, rounding on him once more, much to the confusion of her pony who was at a loss to interpret the continual stops and turnings, particularly when there were no cows about. "You were just looking for anything you could say to annoy me."

"It seems I've succeeded."

"You certainly have," she replied, turning her horse back up the trail and digging her heels in again. "If you want me to take you to the Connor place, stop talking and ride."

Once more she set out at a gallop, and once more he was at her side in a matter of moments.

"You don't have to run from me," he said. For a moment she almost thought he sounded apologetic. But that was impossible. Men like him never apologized for anything.

"I wasn't running. You just made me mad."

"I won't do it again. Is this what your prairie looks like?" he asked, looking about. I thought it was supposed to be as flat as a spinster's chest and as dry as her humor."

"You are a truly disgusting man," Fern said. "Isn't there anything you respect?"

"Truth."

His reply nearly floored her. She had expected him to mention power and money. He exuded both.

"Everyone respects truth," she replied.

"That's where you're wrong. Most people are afraid of it. They actually depend upon lies, or at least false appearances, to protect them. The truth would ruin most of us."

"I should have expected something like that from somebody like you," Fern shot back. "You don't know anything about real honesty."

"What kind of person am I?" he asked. He looked at her with a penetrating look that unsettled her. "And why don't you think I know anything about honesty?"

The retort on her lips withered and blew away. There was something different about him now. The bantering look had left his face. So had his smile. Even his eyes seemed to have lost their glint of laughter. He simply looked at her. This was a trick, the way he unnerved his opponents, got them to say or do something without thinking. Well, he's not going to do it to me. Nothing's going to keep me from telling him exactly what I think of him.

"I think you're a slick lawyer used to getting the kind of verdict your rich clients want."

"And?"

She swallowed. "And I don't think you much care how you get it."

There, she had told him. But even though he now knew he couldn't intimidate her, she didn't feel better.

"At least you're not afraid of the truth all the time," he stated and dropped back to ride behind her.

What did he mean by that? She had never been afraid of the truth. That was why she'd started acting like a boy in the first place. She couldn't remember when she first realized her father didn't want a daughter. She supposed she'd always known it.

She did remember when she decided she didn't want to be a girl. It was at Betty Lewis's thirteenth birthday party. Fern had showed up in pants as usual. All the other girls wore dresses. Betty's was prettiest of all. Some of the girls whispered and pointed at Fern. They laughed when Betty opened Fern's present. Even Betty giggled. Fern had given her a pair of leather riding gloves to protect Betty's soft hands.

Betty didn't ride. She was afraid of horses.

In the following years, the chasm between Fern and the other girls had grown wider until they ceased to include her in their activities. She had become an outsider to her own s.e.x. She had to face the plain truth. She didn't belong.

And she'd been facing the truth ever since. <><><><><><><><><><><><> "There it is," Fern said, pulling up before a deserted sod house built into the side of a ridge along a tributary of the Smoky Hill River. "Troy's body was found inside."

"And you say this happened at night?" Madison asked. He dismounted and allowed Buster's reins to trail on the ground. Fern wondered whether he knew he had just ground-hitched Buster, or whether he was too stupid to think about it at all.

She decided that whatever Madison Randolph was, it wasn't stupid. He must know, but how?

"Sometime after midnight, according to Dave Bunch. It was pretty dark that night, but there was enough light to see. There always is on the prairie, even when it's real cloudy."

Madison didn't answer. He walked inside. The house was abandoned, but in remarkably good condition. Three sides and the roof were made of blocks of sod cut from the prairie. The fourth side had been dug out of the side of the ridge to help keep the house cool in summer and warm in winter.

"Did anybody find a lantern?" Madison asked, emerging from the house.

"Why would anybody want a lantern?"

"You couldn't see an albino elephant in this place at night without one. It's hard enough to see into the corners with the sun blazing down."

She'd never thought of that. She'd only visited the house during daylight. She slid off her horse and entered the soddy. She couldn't see anything until her eyes adjusted. The only window was so covered with dust and cobwebs it admitted virtually no light.

"What was he doing out here?"

"I don't know. He used to live here when he worked for us, but he moved into town when he left."

"Could he have been shot in town and come here to hide?" Madison asked.

"Maybe, but that would mean Hen followed him and shot at him again. Dave said he heard the shot just minutes after he saw Hen."

"He said he recognized Hen's horse. I haven't heard anyone say he recognized Hen himself."

"You try getting anybody else to ride that crazy horse. If there was anybody on him, it was your brother."

She could see Madison making a mental note to check that out. He would get a nice surprise there. Hen's white stallion was almost as notorious as Hen himself. Not only was he an evil-tempered beast, the jagged black markings on his rump and hind legs were impossible to miss.

"Did your cousin tell anybody he was coming here?"

"n.o.body had seen him since that morning."

"When did the marshal actually find him?"

"About an hour after Dave rode in."

"Did anybody notice whether the body was stiff?"

"I don't know . . . come to think of it, somebody did say he was awfully stiff. They put it down to it being night and so cold."

"Were there any marks on the ground, footprints, signs that something had been dragged across the floor?"

"Why should anybody look for those things? Troy was dead, and everybody knew who killed him."

"Did anybody actually see Hen fire the shots?"

"No, but . . ."

"Then you didn't know any such thing, and your marshal conducted a very sloppy investigation. I'm sure you could have done better yourself." "Since that wasn't meant as a compliment, I won't take it as one."

Instead of paying attention to her, he scrutinized the ground, climbed the ridge, and scanned the prairie all around.

She didn't know what he expected to gain by insulting everyone in Abilene, but he would soon find that Marshal Hickok, for all that he was as lazy as a cat, wouldn't take kindly to having his actions criticized. Not that this man would care what Marshal Hickok thought. Never in her life had she seen anybody so c.o.c.ksure.

Still, she had to admire his tenacity. She didn't know whether he really believed that his brother was innocentshe didn't see how he could in the face of the evidencebut clearly he was determined to leave no stone unturned to prove his innocence.

Fern found herself wishing that someone felt that strongly about her.

She immediately chastised herself for doubting her father's affection, but the feeling wouldn't go away. There were times when she wondered if he cared about her at all except as a pair of strong hands to help run the farm. He never asked her how her day was going, never offered sympathy if she was feeling out of sorts, never offered her a hand when he was idle and she was still busy.

Odd that she should feel certain that Madison would. He was so ruthlessly efficient, you wouldn't think he had time for anything except business. But he had put aside his work to come out to Kansas to defend his brother. Just once it would be nice if somebody would do something like that for her.

Madison emerged from the cabin.

"You ready to go?" Fern asked.

"I'm not finished yet, but you can go on if you need to. I can find my way back." "I'll wait." She had to know what he was doing.

She didn't understand why he should have such a powerful effect on her. It would be much easier just to dislike him, to hate him even.