By all rights, Miss Lisle Schmidt should have made a fine wife for Jacob Garrison.
They'd attended the same one-room schoolhouse, her five years after him. They knew each other's families to be steady and respectable.
"Hell," Cooper had remarked, when Garrison first mentioned calling on the young woman. "Put a beard and a Stetson on the gal, and she could be you."
But Lisle was not unattractive. Had the War not killed and crippled so many eligible men—including Johnny Huffman, with whom she'd had an agreement—Garrison would never have looked so high. Huffman's sad loss was Garrison's unexpected gain, for Lisle feared spinsterhood. Their families arranged a meeting, and then another. The pair found themselves of like temperament, with similar hopes for their future.
Once Garrison had earned enough on the McCoy drive to build a good house and start a small herd, the modest and soft-spoken Lisle Schmidt married him. That should have begun a life of domestic tranquility.
Instead, within a month, the thought of going home each night after working his cattle, or hunting, or helping neighbors build, had turned his stomach.
In contrast—
"Son of a BITCH!!!"
Because the wagons aimed to keep upwind of the herd's stench and dust, Elizabeth's shout floated right down to Garrison and several of his men, too.
Her timing could not have been worse.
He was sitting the blue roan mare his wife picked out, from the most gentle horses in the remuda. Side saddle. The availability of Murphy's string made the boys willing to trade out and, after four months on the trail, they knew these mounts well. Tomas had the mare wear the side saddle for several days, to accustom her to it, but now she needed a rider on the contraption. One who, unlike the wife, could risk being thrown.
Garrison could not ask the smaller boys to invite that kind of mockery without taking it himself, first. He did what must be done. But he immediately disliked the awkwardness of sitting a lady's saddle. It felt too small. Its stirrup could not accommodate more than the toe of his boot. One of its splayed horns curved dangerously toward his man parts.
He'd never felt so uncomfortable on a horse -- and the boys did laugh. They had that right, since he likely appeared ridiculous, but he did not have to enjoy the experience.
That was not the worst of the timing.
Garrison had just given Tomas the signal to flap a blanket in the direction of the mare, in imitation of blowing skirts. That was when they heard the faint, feminine shout, calling someone a son-of-a-gun.
But without the word "gun."
All heads turned toward the spot of striped calico by the distant calf cart, including Garrison's--
But Tomas flapped the blanket anyway.
The mare went one direction and Garrison went another, airborne. Only years of experience kept him from falling badly by holding onto the reins or flailing out or grabbing for the horse. He still fell. But he tucked into himself, landed on a shoulder, and rolled to a safe distance before sitting up.
Well... tarnation.
Now the boys laughed so hard, two of them fell down and the mare bucked off toward the remuda. They laughed at his spill, and they laughed at the side saddle, and some of them laughed in shock that a little gal like his wife knew such language.
Garrison did not laugh. His shoulder ached. His ankle still hurt, from two days earlier. His wrapped hand felt damp, like he'd torn it open again in the fall. And now his pride burned. He could hardly demand that his boys watch their mouths, if his wife refused to watch hers.
Time had come--had long passed--to lay down the law.
He limped to his buckskin, which wore his saddle.
He mounted, and he rode toward the calf cart.
Behind him, the boys stopped laughing.
Though Lisle had disliked his company from the start, she'd only taken to swearing after the birth of Thaddeas. Had the child not come in autumn, with him there, likely it would have died of neglect. Lisle had cried a great deal, for weeks and then months, more than made sense after being delivered of a healthy baby this time. She refused to nurse after her first uncomfortable try, so Garrison had to pay a Mexican family for goat milk to keep the infant fed.
He then found himself bathing it, tending it, rocking it to sleep on his own, too. Other men figured he went home for lunch, but he went home to change the baby's wet diapers, dry it, and feed it.
Lisle stopped bathing, ate like a bird, rarely got out of bed. He gave her a month of this before suggesting she do her job. That's when she began to swear like a sailor, words he barely knew himself, and laugh a frightening laugh. Sometimes she would then weep, and apologize, and claim she did not understand herself. But the language always returned.
She took the Lord's name in vain. She referred to him and their home and their families in vile terms. She even said of the baby, "Keep that damned thing away from me," or "Shut that bastard up." Then she would insist that she was sorry, that she loved the boy--but clearly she lied, because she could not bear to hold it before thrusting it back at him.
Garrison had not known how to handle such behavior--not in a woman. He'd demanded why she spoke that way, and she would claim ignorance or spit out, "Because I can!" He told her he disliked it, especially around the baby, and she'd sometimes apologized but sometimes said, "Good!" When he ordered her to stop, she called his bluff and accused him of fornicating with his mother.
Garrison learned to raise his voice to a woman, learned to bully her. He abhorred it, but at least he was not raising his hand to her the way she dared him to do. Because he was bigger, and louder, and increasingly stronger, he could loom over his wife and out-shout her, reducing her to honest tears. That stopped the profanity for several days at a time... but he felt sick and guilty for it, all the same.
If not for the baby, he might have left for a season, let the wife sort herself out. But he could not abandon a small, helpless creature in such a woman's care. Many nights he slept in the barn. With his son.
Both his mother and Lisle's thought she might revive once he got another child on her. That struck him as a poor gamble, to give a neglectful mother a second helpless infant to resent. But he had seen cows who rejected their first calf take to their second, and something had to change. Even Lisle, who had refused his touch for over a year, had begged him to try. She even washed herself, tried to eat. After so cold a house, Garrison was too easily seduced.
Briefly, it seemed to work. As she began to increase, Lisle's moods and her health rebounded. Even her distance from their early marriage faded. On her earnest reassurances, he took the next spring's contract--as long as his younger sister, Heddy, moved in to help with the boy. He had already learned not to trust his wife.
But he had not yet learned not to hope....
When he returned in the fall, with gold in his pocket and plans for a better future, it was to a second, tiny grave behind the cabin, a tearful sister, a wailing son, and an increasingly vulgar skeleton of a wife he barely recognized....
Now, somehow, he'd married another foul-mouthed woman.
To be fair, he had never figured the second Mrs. Garrison to be either steady or prudent. The manner in which he'd found her--naked and flower-scented and mostly clean-shaven--had him fearing he brought an immodest woman into his cow camp. She had later disabused him of that notion. Still, he'd heard her bad language early on, and saw her own brush with madness, first through her lost memories and, later, with her fantasy about coming from the future.
Had he not ruined her, and got a baby on her, he would never have married such a woman. And yet, their marriage pleased him more than he could have imagined--when it did not confuse him, or anger him, or intrigue him, or frustrate him.
Other than the occasional sore throat, he did not feel sick. He thought about Elizabeth easily, sometimes without even realizing it, often when he should be concentrating elsewhere. But that was his failing, not hers.
Unlike Lisle, Elizabeth smiled a great deal, at everything from horses to cowboys to sunsets, to him. She sang. She laughed. She stood up for a child she'd never met, against him. And....
Perhaps it ought not matter, but Elizabeth appreciated his bed. He'd enjoyed his second wedding night more than seemed possible, because of her unexpected pleasure in him. He sometimes ached with the memory of that, and often woke with a powerful yearning for her. Thanks to Cooper's interference, and perhaps his own pride, he could not escape her nearness. She always cuddled against him in her sleep, her head tucked, her hands gripping his clothes. She was the one thing on this drive that smelled clean, and gentle, and feminine, and he got to sleep with her every night. Nothing separated his hands from her warm curves except a thin layer of white cotton.
Garrison had always congratulated himself on his self-control while other men embarrassed themselves chasing calico. No more. Rather than avoiding distraction, his Ogallala decision jumbled his thoughts with his baser urges to the point that he feared he might accidentally kill himself before he made Wyoming. Perhaps he'd spoken too hastily, in demanding abstinence.
But spoken he had. Without his word, what was he?
In any case, he was unsure just how married she felt, during the day. She continued to wear her hair down, like a maiden. She never asked him to step down, when he rode by to see her of an afternoon, so he spent every visit on horseback. And now she swore loudly, shaming him in front of the outfit.
Garrison did not know what to make of her. But this last had to stop.
He saw her pacing, before he even reached the calf cart. Amos stood a distance back, as if uncertain whether to interfere. The girl moved her arms, sometimes fisting her hands, sometimes flaring them, apparently talking to herself, which hit Garrison like a gut-shot. Like Lisle....
But then his wife looked up at his approach, and distress eased visibly from her pretty face, as if his mere presence pleased her. In this, she was distinctly unlike Lisle.
Could that be why he did not dread thinking of her?
Could it be so simple as her not dreading him? Could marriage prove so easy as that – barring further outbursts?
"Did I worry you when I yelled?" she asked, coming to his gelding's shoulder as if drawn. "I'm okay. I was trying to nap, and I woke up suddenly and slammed my head into the wife cart. Wham! Here, feel."
She took his hand to lay it across her uncovered head.
Her syrup-brown hair felt unnaturally silky beneath his palm, its softness so foreign a sensation in his dry, dirty world, that for a moment Garrison forgot why he was touching it. He knew only the sensation of her, and that nobody else could touch her.
He had a powerful desire to run his hands through her tresses, like through a current of water.
"See?" she asked, and he remembered to find the goose-egg she'd raised. There. He disliked that she'd hurt herself. Worse, she'd assumed he'd come only to ascertain her safety. She clearly thought he was a kinder man than he was, and in that destined herself for great disappointment.
"Mind yer language on the Sabbath." He immediately wished he hadn't added that last part, because she ought not talk so on any day.
Elizabeth covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide over them, and her next question came out muffled. "You heard that?"
"Downwind."
She made that face of hers, tilting her head and wrinkling her little nose, which meant she did not understand. He enjoyed that particular face, because it gave him the chance to teach her something. Now, he pointed toward the herd. "Sound carries."
"So the boys can hear us?" She half whispered now, putting her hands on his thigh to stand even closer, which distracted him some. He wished his position, astride, did not have him staring down at the pretty buttons that traced the curve of her bosom.
He did his best to concentrate. The boys could hear her.... "When you vociferate."
She considered that. Then, to his surprise, she turned, cupped her hands around her mouth, drew a deep breath, and bellowed, "Have a nice day, boys!"
Like some low-class woman, maybe worked in a saloon or a factory. Could be he'd destined himself for disappointment as well.
Garrison reined his buckskin in a calming circle when it shied at the sudden noise. Although he could not hear the men's answering whoops, he--and Elizabeth--could make out how they waved their hats at her, pleased by her well wishes when it wasn't them she shamed.
"I think I can use that," she mused. "As long as it won't startle the cattle. Will me shouting your direction startle the cattle?"
"Ain't proper." One aspect in particular. "Won't have such words--"
"I know, I know -- not from your boy, not from men who do a good day's work, and not from me. Sorry. I know ladies don't talk that way. I'll try to do better."
Just like that. No need for shouting. No need for threats. He did not know what to do with so pliant a woman. It unsettled him, like he was being played.
Then she grinned, dimpled and mischievous. "At least when I'm upwind."
The grin was what did it--fogged his thoughts with memories of their wedding night, confused his purpose for the afternoon, discomfited him in a manner to teach him not to feel superior toward other men. He had to leave. But before he rode off, he remembered to say, "Good day, Mrs. Garrison."
"Where's your hat?" she asked, which stopped him. Was he not wearing his hat?
"Got throwed," he remembered.
"From a horse?"
He waited for her to piece that bit together, eased some by the stretch of space between them.
"Okay, sure, so I doubt you tried bull-riding. But you're too good a rider to get thrown."
Though complimented, he could not let her ignorance stand. "Everyone sits a horse gets throwed."
"Are you okay?" The concern pinching her forehead, softening her blue eyes, unnerved him further.
He tried again. "Good day, Mrs. Garrison."
She started toward him, wincing in concern, her striped skirts swinging gently like a bell in the wind. "I think your hand is bleeding again."
"Tend it later."
She began to reach out. "But--"
Rude though it was, Garrison rode away from her.
One might say he fled, but for wholly different reasons from which he once avoided his first wife.
Once he got back to work, the girl lost some of her hold on him. He could become a man he recognized, a man who could control himself and manage his world....
For a few short hours, at least, before shiny hair and dimples threw him harder than her blue roan mare had.