OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 26: Useless (Garrison)

Elizabeth put him in mind of a guilty pup. "I pulled on the reins really hard, when Boy wouldn't turn. Then he started doing this." She proceeded to mimic a horse mouthing its bit. He found that strangely adorable to watch, but he seemed biased today. "I think I hurt his mouth!"

He doubted she had hurt anything. Her arms weren't that strong, not compared to a healthy gelding with standard tack.

Still, he weren't one to coddle a person--even a wife who alternately surprised him, confused him, delighted him, and made him feel oddly tender. He especially wouldn't coddle a gal over her treatment of her mount.

"Reins ain't fer pullin," he scolded.

"I know! And I feel terrible about it." She'd gotten that fretful crease between her brows, and her eyes shone extra bright. He hoped she didn't cry. "But he wouldn't go where I wanted, and I guess I was scared, because of... that is...."

He blamed himself. Hadn't he lectured her, just t'other night, that her horse needed a firm hand? He was the one taught her to ride in the first place, and had done a sad job of it. Then he'd left her alone on horseback to keep clear of a stampeded.

When he took off his hat and waved toward Tomas to ride in some replacement horses, he deliberately tipped his head toward Elizabeth, so the wrangler would bring her animals too.

Then he resettled the hat and told her, "Reckon I'd best learn you to ride proper."

Her guilty look wavered against something more hopeful. "Really? When?"

"We'll make time." He considered his unusual use of the word we. Had it ever in his life included a woman?

What an unexpected turn his life had taken, when he found her.

In fact... hesitantly, at first, he extended one hand and put his arm around his wife while they waited for the horses. She immediately leaned into his side as if she'd been designed to fit there, exactly.

The only discomfort he felt came from the newness of doing such a thing. His satisfaction at the sensation of her against him, though, and her clear pleasure with him overshadowed that discomfort.

Cooper would not believe how slick she'd handled Pritchett and Handley.

Schmidt, working behind them, made an unhappy noise.

Without looking, Garrison called, "Johnny Huffman."

Schmidt made no more such noises.

Elizabeth asked, "Who is Johnny Huffman."

"Friend of our'n. Died in the War." After deflowering Schmidt's sister, whom Garrison eventually married. The cook had no call to treat Garrison's new wife with anything but respect.

Elizabeth looked up at him in confusion, and Garrison shook his head, to indicate that he didn't want to talk about it. To his relief, she tucked her head right back against him, docile as a newborn calf.

Well he aimed to enjoy that while it lasted.

When Tomas arrived with a small band of horses, Garrison stepped away from the wife to rope and picket two of them--his buckskin and the blue roan he and the boys were lady breaking. The third, her sorrel, he roped and held onto, so that he could look at its mouth before risking a halter, much less a bit.

He put the rope's end in his wife's fancy-gloved hand, hoping the hemp wouldn't pull at the fine fabric, and placed her other hand in the sorrel's flaxen mane, to help hold it still.