Chapter 9 #3
“This is a little different from that.”
“Hmm.” He crooked his finger at her and pointed to his shoulder. She put her cheek against the spot he intended for her. “I don’t want to sleep in the other room tonight. Or any night from now on.”
“I am not asking you to.” When he was quiet, she lifted her head and looked at him. “Did you think I was going to argue?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still working out how marriage changes things. No woman’s ever let me stay in her bed.”
Jane blinked. She was quite certain it had required considerable effort for him to squeeze out these last words. “You mean I will be the first woman you’ve slept with?”
“Once we actually go to sleep, yes.”
Jane’s head dropped back to his shoulder. “I feel as if the appropriate response here is ‘I’ll be damned,’ but I defer to you on matters of blasphemous phraseology.”
Morgan gave a shout of laughter, turned, and pressed Jane’s shoulders into the mattress. “That mouth of yours,” he said, and then he brought his down on it and kissed her long and hard and deeply.
When he eventually let her go, Jane lay there, stunned into silence.
After a moment, she carefully touched her lips with the back of her fingertips.
It had been a very thorough kiss, and her mouth felt a bit tender and her lips still tingled.
She wanted to hold onto the sensation awhile longer.
Morgan, she noticed, was looking rather pleased with himself, and she bathed in the light that finally shone through his eyes.
“My parents slept together,” she said. “I remember that. In India, the accommodations were often cramped, and sometimes I shared a room with them. Sometimes a bed. What about your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
Jane let that pass. “Mr. Ewing and Cousin Frances had separate bedrooms. They did not even adjoin, but I have no idea who insisted on that arrangement. I suppose that means people can do as they like. You might discover you are not comfortable sleeping with me. I could jab you in the ribs or kick you. Steal the blankets. Rub my cold feet against your legs. I might talk in my sleep.”
“It would still be a respite from how much you talk when you’re awake.”
Jane poked him in the ribs with an elbow. “I might snore.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know.”
Morgan yawned in dramatic fashion. “I am not opposed to finding out.”
Jane turned so she was held in the crook of his arm again. “I like you, Morgan. I do.”
Morgan reached for the lamp and extinguished the light. He set his mouth at the crown of her head and whispered against her hair, “I’ll be damned.”
* * *
Jane heard Morgan get up in the middle of the night, but she let him go.
The back door opened and closed. She did not remember him coming back to bed, but he was there when she woke.
She carefully removed his arm from around her waist and slipped out of bed without disturbing him.
In fact, she managed all of her morning rituals while he slept.
It was the aroma of coffee that brought him out to the kitchen.
He stood directly behind Jane at the stove, peering over her shoulder as she poured.
His hands rested at her waist. To keep her steady, he said, and she did not disagree.
She needed a little steadiness this morning, especially when he put his lips to her ear.
Jem and Max came in the backdoor, each of them carrying a tin cup of coffee from the bunkhouse. They stopped so abruptly that coffee splashed the backs of their hands.
“This, uh, this a bad time?” Jem looked at Max, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. He mouthed the words “say something.” When Max just jerked his head toward the door, Jem cleared his throat. “We will, uh, that is, we’ll just show ourselves out, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Stay,” Jane said.
“Go,” Morgan said.
Max started to back up, but Jem pulled out a chair and sat down.
Morgan changed his mind about what he was going to whisper in Jane’s ear, and said, “We’ll talk about what you’ve done to Jem later.” He backed away, cup of hot, black coffee in hand, and took a chair himself. He waved Max over. “Jessop and Jake out already?”
Max nodded and sat. “They figured they’d go out to Hickory Lake first, seein’ as how the rail line cuts that way going to Cheyenne.
We all thought about what you said last night.
” He darted a look in Jane’s direction. She was humming to herself while she cracked eggs over the skillet.
He still dropped his voice to a near whisper.
“Seemed the most likely place to look around for jumpers.”
Looking at Jane’s back, Jem said more loudly, “Never know what one of those Herefords is gonna do.”
Max rolled his eyes. Morgan sighed and shook his head. Jane dropped both halves of an eggshell into a bowl and turned around. “Cows jump fences?”
Jem said, “Sure. One jumped over the moon, didn’t she?”
Jane gave him an arch look. “Clever, Jem. Very clever.” She turned back to her skillet and eggs.
When breakfast was over, Jem and Max headed to the barn. Morgan lingered at the table for coffee and conversation.
“Jem’s face looks worse today than it did last night,” Jane said. “But I suppose that’s to be expected.” She began gathering plates and utensils, pulling them toward her to stack.
“Leave them,” said Morgan. “Drink your coffee. I’m not sure that you’ve ever finished a cup that was still warm.”
“Morgan. I have things to do.”
He pushed the plates out of her reach. “So do I, and all of it will be there in ten minutes when I get up from this table.”
“All right.”
“Cows don’t jump,” he said. “A steer will buck and charge and carry on like he has no sense, but he won’t jump barbwire.”
“I knew that. I remember what you said about the cows stopping at the fences in a snowstorm.”
“I figured you did, especially after Jem used a nursery rhyme for supporting evidence. The jumpers that Max was talking about are the men that beat up Jem. Marshal Bridger put them on a train going east. We’re only supposing they might jump the train and circle back this way.
That’s why Jessop and Jake rode out to Hickory. ”
“What in the world has Jem done to these men that they might come after him?”
Morgan shook his head. “If they do come back—and, again, there’s no certainty that they will—it’s the cattle that they’re after, not Jem.”
“Rustlers.”
“We think so.”
Jane did not reply. She slowly turned her cup in its saucer.
Her prolonged silence finally prompted Morgan to speak. “What is it?”
She shrugged, sighed. “I appreciate that you want to offer me the explanation I’ve been asking for, but I had hoped for something that might at least rub shoulders with the truth. Frankly, Jem’s cow over the moon reasoning was easier to swallow.”
Now it was Morgan who fell silent.
Jane said, “I’m sorry. It is just hard to believe.”
“I don’t know why.”
“The risk, for one thing.”
“Thieves aren’t necessarily smart, just determined. What’s the other?”
“The coincidence. As far as I can tell, you have no reason to suppose the men that fought with Jem are cattle thieves unless you know of some connection between them and the rustling happening here at Morning Star. If there is a connection, you should tell me that, because it seems incredible that they would stop bedeviling you and your men and your cattle to go into Bitter Springs and pick a fight with Jem.”
Morgan sat back in his chair. “How long have you known there’s been rustling here?”
“About as long as you have been trying to keep it a secret.”
“Huh.”
“One of the things I have not understood, other than why you thought I should not know, is why you have been so insistent that I remain indoors. That insistence has taken away my opportunity to learn to ride, to shoot, even to gather eggs and work in the garden. When it comes time to hang the laundry, there’s always someone else around to do it.
I went to the corral one day, just to watch you and Sophie, and you shooed me away like one of the hens.
What danger do you suppose rustlers present to me that someone’s always close by?
They are interested in cattle. Why would they come here? ”
Morgan’s mouth twisted wryly. “This is just a guess, you understand, but I’m thinking what you know about rustlers you got from a book.
Nat Church and the Hanging at Harrisonville comes to mind immediately, but I will allow that some badly researched story in one of those important New York newspapers could also account for it. ”
Jane pressed her lips together.
“I thought so,” he said. “They’re cattle thieves, Jane.
Horses are cattle, too. Taking stock from the barn and corral is easier than rounding up mustangs on the range.
Not only easier, but the stock is better.
Our saddle horses are good animals. Put aside all your thoughts about what you think they’ll take, and consider nothing else but the fact that they’re thieves.
They have no honor, no scruples, and no respect for what rightfully belongs to someone else. ”
Morgan leaned forward, set his arms on the table, and regarded Jane frankly.
“For all kinds of reasons I’d rather not say out loud, I don’t want them anywhere near you.
Maybe trying to keep what’s been going on from you was a mistake—you’ve proven to me that we’ve been pretty clumsy at it—but I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. ”
Jane laid one hand over his. “I know that. I’ve always known that.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, Jane. That part about it maybe being a mistake, well, that’s when I look at it sitting where you are. From where I’m sitting it still doesn’t strike me that I did something wrong.”
“I suppose it’s a disagreement that we’ll have from time to time.” She squeezed his hand before she released it. “Now tell me why you think there is any possibility that Jem’s fight was with the same men you’ve been hunting.”