The Genuine Lady (Heroines on Horseback) Read Free

the little boy’s hand splayed open upon his mother’s white-skinned breast.

CHAPTER TWO

    Jared thought he was going home. Jared’s horse thought he was going home. They traipsed out of town, Jared’s mind on bitter lost love, the horse’s mind on oats. The horse’s thoughts were more urgent than Jared’s, and that’s why when Jared reined back at the little cottonwood patch that marked the easterly line of his claim, and sat looking around the empty prairie in an uncharacteristic agony of indecision, the frustrated horse flung his head up and down with exasperation and was rewarded with a heel in the ribs.
    “Now you cut that out,” Jared scolded, voice harsh, and the roan horse dipped his freckled head, pretending to be contrite, but really angling his nose towards a lush-looking tuft of summer grass. Jared did not reprimand the horse as he might have usually, but sat gazing up the imaginary line, still studded every so often with the surveyor’s stakes that demarcated his claim from the neighboring one, wondering what sort of greenhorn would have taken on that rough patch of land to his north and east. The roan horse grazed and grazed, contentment in his heart, and Jared puzzled.
    It wasn’t just that there wasn’t much water on the land. Only about half the claim was any good at all. The south-half was just fine, sure. But the northern quarter of the tract was all badlands: just rocks and brush and snakes, no good for wheat. He’d ridden the entire section; hell he’d ridden the entire county, looking for the best possible claim to homestead, and this particular piece of land was about the worst bargain in the county.
    Now, sure, it was probably all that was left: the trains from the East had dropped off a steady stream of new homesteaders all spring. As soon as the snowmelt let them, the land offices sent out their wagons and riders to show off the land to the immigrants and failures and assorted hard-luck cases who had been studying their pamphlets on the Great Opportunity and the Breadbasket of America for the whole of a long bleak winter in the eastern cities, and lately fewer and fewer had been getting off at Bradshaw’s weathered depot, and more and more pale faces had peered out through the grimy windows as they went further west, to newer, rawer prairie towns, or even further, into the foothills of far-away mountains.  
    Fact was, Bradshaw and its neighboring towns were all claimed up. This late-comer had just settled for the land no one had wanted, rather than head deeper into the frontier. Whoever claimed this piece wasn’t just a greenhorn, he was a coward and a fool, most likely. Not worth worrying about; he’d be back on the train east before the first snow fell, his wallet as empty as his belly and his pantry.  
    But still Jared wondered about it. About him : the poor fool that had taken on the section. His conscience was eating at him. Wouldn’t do to let a neighbor starve to death without at least talking to the fellow and seeing what he had in mind. Might be he could convince the fellow to sell off his tools and his horses and get back on the train, east or west didn’t matter, on to some more promising piece of prairie or back to another box in another city. That would be a good deed, Jared supposed. And he was short on those.  
    Mind made up, Jared swung the left rein against the roan’s skinny neck. The cowhorse resisted with all his mind and body, bulging his neck against the rein and pointing his nose to the left. Home was left. Oats were left. Jared gave him another boot in the ribs. “Git up,” he ordered grimly, and the roan decided that he wasn’t going to win this battle without the sort of energy he hadn’t expended since he was a half-feral two-year-old, newly roped and waiting in a high-walled corral for the strange two-legged creature to make his move. And there just wasn’t any reason for exercise like that. He turned his nose back to the right, as requested,