Jodi Thomas - WM 1 Page 2

  Sage nodded as if he made sense. “You’re tanned so dark, if one of the cowhands rides by, he might shoot you for an Apache.”

  He didn’t smile. “I am Apache.”

  “Half,” Sage said. “Just like all of us.”

  Travis pulled water from the well. Though Sage tried, her words never made him feel better. His high cheekbones and dark eyes marked him as mixed blood while his siblings could have been as Irish as their last name. “Lucky me,” he mumbled as he splashed water over his head. “Maybe they’ll shoot the half that’s Apache. Problem is, which half would that be?”

  When he shook the water from his hair, Sage had gone. He grabbed the lye soap and began to scrub away a month’s worth of trail dust.

  Martha came out once to ask if he wanted a steak or ham. The chubby little woman didn’t even smile at him, which didn’t surprise Travis. Martha hadn’t liked any of the McMurray boys since the day she arrived from New Orleans in answer to an ad. Teagen told Travis once that Martha had just gotten out of prison when she’d traveled to Texas for the job, but the boys had to hire her because she’d been the only one who applied after their mother died. She’d loved baby Sage dearly, but made the brothers sleep in the barn most of that first summer until they decided to act “house-broke” as she called it.

  To Travis’s knowledge, Martha had never left the grounds around the house, but she stood before Teagen each month and took her pay in cash. She would quote Travis her list of supplies before he went to town and insisted on paying for any items for her personal use. In the eighteen years since his parents died, food had been on the table every meal. Good, hot, solid food. That, Travis decided, said more than a smile.

  “You going to the Spring Dance?” Travis yelled as Martha turned to go back inside.

  “No,” she answered simply. “Sage is waiting to cut your hair. Best show some sense and get out of the rain before God mistakes you for a tree and strikes you with lightning.”

  Travis was so wet he hardly noticed it had started to rain. “I know,” he said, remembering what followed all her warnings. “If I get dead, it’ll mean more work for you.”

  “Right,” she mumbled into the thunder.

  He grabbed his clothes and made it to the porch just as a downpour hit. The log home his father built stood solid against the storm as Travis dressed on the wide porch. Ten years ago they’d finished out the second floor for the men, but everyone called the main part of the house Martha’s. From the moment she arrived, she’d treated the place like her own. That first year “Don’t get mud on my clean floors” had been a constant echo around the place. A few years later, when Teagen and Travis had been almost men, she’d added, “No smoking or drinking in my house.” They’d challenged her only once and watched their supper fed to the hogs.

  Travis smiled when he entered the house. Nothing had changed. His father’s tartan carried from Ireland still hung on the north wall. The beads his mother wore at her wedding were looped across the McMurray Clan colors. An Apache girl and an Irish boy had fallen in love and stood against the world.

  He crossed to the kitchen and wasn’t surprised Martha had cooked a table full of food. While the storm raged, Travis ate and talked of his life as a Ranger. Martha stood by the stove acting as if she wasn’t listening. Sage sat across the table taking in every word. If she’d been born a boy, she’d be riding with him by now, for Andrew McMurray taught his children to love Texas—he’d even died for its freedom.

  After dinner Travis watched the sun set over the newly washed earth as he smoked one of Teagen’s thin cigars on the porch. He was full and cleaned up to a point that he almost looked like a gentleman. Almost, he thought, for there was no amount of scrubbing that could take the wildness out of him. Part of him had to roam, had to live on the edge, had to be alone. He knew, without a doubt, that the west section nearest the hills would never have a house built on it even though the brothers called it Travis’s. His place would remain pasture land forever.

  Sage moved up beside him. “Teagen and Tobin probably won’t make it in tonight, what with the storm. They’d come if they knew you were here.”

  Travis smiled down at his little sister. “They’re staying away because they fear you’ll badger them about going to the dance.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe they finally decided to climb Whispering Mountain and sleep on the summit.”

  Travis looked west to where the hills were almost mountain height. One stood out, purple in the night. “Maybe none of us will ever climb the mountain.” He and his siblings had all grown up on the legend. The Apache believed that when a man slept on the summit of Whispering Mountain, he’d dream his future.

  “Father did,” Sage reminded Travis. “Right after he brought mother here, he climbed the mountain one night.”

  “He dreamed his death,” Travis whispered into the evening shadows, wondering what it must have been like for his father, newly married and not yet eighteen, to have dreamed that he would die before he turned thirty and leave his family behind.

  Sage slipped her arm through her brother’s and stared at the mountain. “The dream saved us,” she said, as if she’d been old enough to remember. “If he hadn’t dreamed, he wouldn’t have prepared. If he hadn’t left Teagen all the detailed plans, the three of you wouldn’t have been able to save the ranch.”

  Travis closed his eyes, wondering how long he’d have to live before the memories would fade. His father had gone to fight for Texas Independence. He’d left them alone as he headed for a mission called Goliad. Andrew McMurray had lined his sons up on the porch and hugged each one. Travis remembered thinking his father might crush his ribs with his hold. Then he told them to look in his desk for instructions if something happened to him. “Don’t forget,” he’d said as he rode off to join the fight for Texas.

  Three months later they got word that he’d been killed with hundreds of other Texans at a little mission. That night, the boys had gathered round their father’s desk and opened the bottom drawer. His letter began, “If you are reading this, I’m not coming back.” The writing was bold, direct, just as their father had always been. “Take care of your mother, and no matter what, hold the ranch.”

  The letter explained how Autumn, being Apache and a woman, could never claim the land as hers. But if the boys could keep everyone away until Teagen turned eighteen, then he could claim the ranch.

  The last words written to Teagen, eleven, Travis, ten, and Tobin, just barely six, were simple: “Today, my sons, you have to become men.”

  Sage pulled Travis back to the present. “I wish I’d been there to help,” she whispered as she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.

  “No, you don’t. It was bad. He’d taught us to shoot and to ride. He’d built his ranch so that no one could come near the center. But there was nothing he could have done to prepare us for the men who came to take our land by force. As soon as word circulated that he was dead, there were those who thought they could step on the land and take all we owned.”

  Travis finished his cigar and said good night. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but he needed to be alone. The memories of those early days were too thick in his head to allow him to be good company. Sage seemed to understand.

  Tomorrow he’d take her to the dance and try to make the best of it, but tonight he’d walk the boundary of Whispering Mountain Ranch with a rifle in his hand. He’d long since grown taller than his weapon, but memories would keep him company tonight. A part of the little boy who’d had to grow up at ten years old still haunted the man.

  CHAPTER 2

  TRAVIS SPENT THE NEXT MORNING TRYING TO AVOID Sage. Kid sisters were no fun when they turned into women. She pestered Martha, and then him, with worries over her hair, the length of her dress, and what ribbon to wear at her throat. Martha didn’t seem to mind the talk, but Travis escaped to the little study where the family kept their library of books. He pretended to be lost in a book every time she passed. He would have ridden the
ranch, but a fine mist started before dawn and, according to Sage, hung around just to frustrate her.

  Travis found refuge in the library. He loved the book-lined room almost as much as he loved campfires and night skies. Here, among the many volumes, he felt near his parents. Andrew McMurray had cherished books. When he came west, half the weight of his luggage had been reading material. He met their mother, Autumn, at a mission where he’d gone to teach reading. Both were seventeen—too young to care about their differences but old enough to recognize true love. According to Autumn, she’d fallen for Andrew the moment their fingers touched beneath a book they both held. After they married and settled Whispering Mountain, Andrew made the journey to the Austin Colony twice a year to pick up supplies shipped from New Orleans. He’d trade a horse for a wagonload of goods and always packed within the necessities would be the latest books from back East.

  Travis ran his hand over the leather-bound copies on every subject from law to ranching. He also noticed the stack of new novels piled on the desk and wondered if his brothers ever had time to read them. When Sage was in school, her teacher, a widow named Mrs. Dickerson, always sent home lists of books the boys should buy each year. She might not have taught them, but she made sure they were well read.

  He pulled a book called The House of the Seven Gables from the stack and dropped into the nearest chair. Anything would be better than listening to Sage plan her husband-hunting trip to the dance.

  Hours passed. He was lost in the book when Sage tapped on his shoulder.

  “You’d better get dressed. We need to leave before it starts raining again.”

  Travis stood, reluctant to pull away from the fiction. “All right. Hitch the wagon while I change into the clothes Martha ironed for me this morning.” He might as well stop dreading the evening and start getting it over with.

  Sage folded her arms. “I can’t. I’m all cleaned and pressed.”

  He looked at her. True. She wasn’t just clean, she was spit and polished. For a moment he wondered where his sister was beneath all the ribbons and ruffles. The brothers had tried not to make her into a boy, but they may have gone too far. She looked as if she were wearing a bushel of lace.

  “Hurry up.” She pushed his leg off the arm of the chair. “I don’t want to be late to the year’s only dance.”

  There she was, he thought, bossy as ever. He remembered when she’d been five and Teagen had ordered her a china tea set for Christmas. She’d made them all sit down and have tea every night for a month. The conversation was always the same. They drank lukewarm tea, and she threatened to kill the first one who broke a piece of her set.

  Travis took the stairs three at a time wishing either Teagen or Tobin had shown up to take his place. He’d made it to twenty-eight without ever having attended a barn dance and dreaded this one more than any gunfight he’d ever experienced. The folks around, even the upstanding ones, had never been too friendly toward him, and he guessed nothing would change just because they set the meeting to music. But Sage seemed to have her heart set on going.

  Thirty minutes later he waited beside the buckboard while Sage stood on the porch and tied a scarf around her hair as if it were the most important thing she’d done all day. “I don’t see why we can’t ride horseback,” he mumbled. “We could make it in half the time.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He studied the sky while he waited. Rain still lingered far off along the horizon. He’d lived outside for so many years, he could feel the weather as if it were a part of him. When he noticed Sage still standing on the porch, he got the hint and tromped through the mud to carry her to the wagon.

  “Don’t drive too fast,” Sage said as she settled on the bench. “I don’t want to lose all the curl I burned into my hair.” She pulled her skirts around her knees. “And don’t get those muddy boots within a foot of me.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said after he circled and climbed up on the other side.

  “I’m sorry.” She touched his arm. “I’m just excited. You don’t know what this means to me. I’ve been planning it since Christmas.”

  He smiled, for the first time understanding how important this must be to her. The brothers had each other when their parents died, but Sage had only been a baby. “Well, then, I’d better get the prettiest girl in Texas to Old Elmo Anderson’s annual party in one piece.” He held the reins to a pair of matched bays that could have pulled ten times the wagonload at twice the pace. The McMurrays raised horses, and these were fine examples of their stock.

  Twenty minutes later the wagon rolled across the only bridge that connected their ranch with the rest of the world. Travis sometimes told people he lived on an island, for it seemed that way. The river bordered the ranch from the north and east, the hills from the south and west. A lone man on horseback, if he knew the exact path, could make it through the cliffs between their land and the settlement in a few hours. The boys, when they traveled that way, never left any sign.

  The bridge, two miles north of the ranch house, made access to the ranch easy but almost doubled the time it took to reach the settlement. Travis remembered, down to the smell, what it had been like the day he and his brothers burned the old bridge. Their father had been specific: If they were to survive, they had to totally isolate themselves from the world. The bridge that had taken Andrew McMurray a month to build burned within an hour.

  It wasn’t rebuilt for seven years. Until then, Travis or Teagen had packed everything they needed into the ranch using the hidden path between the hills. Their mother’s father and a few braves had come for a short time a year after Andrew and Autumn died. He’d taught them how to mark a trail that they could follow but that no one else would see. He’d also shown them secrets about raising horses that not even their father knew. Then one night he and his men had left as silently as they’d come.

  Travis watched the land as he drove the wagon looking for any sign that his grandfather might still be watching over the ranch. Once in a while he swore he saw one of his grandfather’s markings on a branch or in dried mud, and he wondered if the old man were still around.

  Twilight cooled the air by the time they reached Elmo Anderson’s barn. Bedrolls spread out beneath buckboards revealed that some of the families must have arrived the day before. Several covered wagons, loaded for travel, stood circled to the south of the barn. New folks moving in or passing through, he thought. People were coming to Texas by the thousands—Germans, English, French—as well as a steady flow from the other states. Some wanting to get rich quick, but most only wanting a fresh start.

  Travis noticed horses tied to a line thirty yards from the road. Saddles and gear had been stacked a few feet away. Hired hands, he thought, and from the looks of the mounts, some must have ridden long and hard to get here. Not counting those married, men still outnumbered women twenty to one out here. Sage would have her pick of single men, and Travis would make sure her pick measured up.

  Sage had been wiggling in the seat for an hour. She was starting to look more like she thought she might be shot before anyone asked her to dance. “Promise me you’ll stay close, Travis. There will be people here I don’t know.”

  “You’ll recognize most.” He winked. “The others will want to know you.”

  She nodded but didn’t look like she believed him. The McMurrays hated strangers with good reason.

  “I won’t let you out of my sight.” He knew few in town and remembered only one young woman near his age. Madeline Ward. She’d been a few years younger than he, but he’d seen her in the settlement on trading days. Her father started blacksmithing at the post about the time Travis joined the Rangers. She’d be twenty-five by now and probably had half a dozen kids, so Travis saw no problem in fulfilling his one duty of keeping an eye on Sage.

  His sister had a death grip on his arm as they walked into the barn. “Take it easy,” Travis whispered. He thought of adding that it was just a dance, but he guessed she might get violent. Apparently, th
is was her grand crusade.

  Suddenly she smiled and let go of his arm. He watched as she ran to a circle of young people about her age who’d gathered near the fiddler’s stand. They all hugged and squealed, welcoming her into their group.

  Unlike her brothers, Sage had attended the little school in Mrs. Dickerson’s kitchen after Teagen turned eighteen and it was safe for the McMurrays to leave their ranch. School ran three days a week every fall and spring. If the weather turned bad, the girls spent the night in the widow’s parlor, and the boys took the loft in her barn. Ten families were each responsible for a month of provisions and wood for the widow, in exchange for the schooling and occasional lodging of the students. Tobin had been thirteen when they’d rebuilt the bridge. He could have gone to school a few years, but either he thought he was too old or he feared people too much to bother. Travis and Teagen saw no point in trying to make their little brother leave the ranch, so only Sage attended.

  Travis couldn’t help but laugh as Sage hugged all her friends. He didn’t call one person in this part of Texas friend, but his kid sister had more than she could talk to.

  Moving into the shadows, he watched her. He couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if his father and mother had lived and the McMurray boys had been allowed to grow up a little at a time. Maybe Teagen wouldn’t be so angry. Maybe Tobin would talk to people. Maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to look behind himself so often.

  Travis took a step backward, hoping to go unnoticed, and slammed into something soft and alive.

  “Beg your . . .” he started as he turned to find a woman, no taller than his shoulder, standing behind him.

  Fiery green eyes glared up at him. “Almost killed me, ye did!” She swore, using words he’d never heard come out of a woman’s mouth. “If ye’d hit me any harder, I’d be dead on the spot.” She rubbed her hands across her body as if checking for broken bones. “Ye make a habit of backing about in the dark?”