Pemberley Ranch - Jack Caldwell [8]
“It is very far away from here—that’s true.”
“It’s not Texas that I’m talking about, but the Texans! I haven’t forgotten that they turned their backs on the Union and most disgracefully took up arms against us, all to preserve their vile practice of slavery!”
“Beth, we are taught to forgive. Perhaps they have seen the wickedness of their ways and have repented.”
“Perhaps,” Beth said, but to herself, she thought, You may forgive them, Jane, for you are good. But I will never forget that if not for them, Samuel would still be alive. I will never forgive them. Never.
1 A fortification that has two projecting faces and two parallel flanks.
Rosings, Texas—September, 1870
A LONE FIGURE SAT astride a tall, black Arabian under a single oak tree atop a ridge. It was a hot day, and in the early afternoon sun, the shade was welcomed by horse and rider alike, standing as still as a statue. He was a tall man in a white shirt with dark trousers and black boots, his unbuttoned vest flapping in the slight breeze, a tan, wide-brimmed, ten-gallon hat pulled low over his brow. Before him stretched a sea of prairie, dotted with hundreds of cattle, lowing and grazing. They were not alone; a handful of wranglers carefully moved their cowponies around the vast herd, keeping an eye out for trouble. The movement of the horses disturbed the man’s mount, and he reached down to gently stroke its neck.
“Whoa there, Caesar, rest easy,” William Darcy cooed. “We’ll just stay here under the shade for now. Enjoy the cool.” The stallion nodded his head in apparent agreement and bent to take a few nibbles of grass. The man’s attention returned to the scene before him, his bright blue eyes taking in every detail.
A flash of moving white caught his attention. He turned away from his perusal of the herd and twisted in the saddle. There! Across the ridge of hills was a rider, moving fast. Darcy narrowed his eyes in concentration. The horse was a brown-and-white paint, and none of his riders had such a horse. A stranger—on his land! Caesar began to prance in place, feeling his master’s tension through the reins.
The rider seemed to be alone, and while Darcy had left his gun belt and Colt revolver at the house, he did have a rifle holstered to his saddle. “What say we go check that out, boy?” The horse agreed, and they loped down the hill.
Darcy moved at an angle to the stranger, holding Caesar back until necessary. The intruder was at a full gallop, flying across the crest. Darcy lost sight of the paint as he reached the valley between the hills, and he allowed Caesar his head. The stallion dug in and moved quickly up the rise, and Darcy saw with confidence that he was in the proper position to cut off the paint. Caesar spotted his quarry and headed toward the other horse, waiting for direction from his master.
As they grew closer, Darcy could see that the rider and paint moved in perfect harmony. The horse was rather small, but so was the rider. A boy? Darcy thought, before noticing the wild, curly hair flying on either side of the rider’s hat. As Darcy pulled to a halt, blocking the paint’s progress, a shock of realization coursed through him. That’s no boy—that’s a girl! A girl in men’s clothing!
He pulled his hand away from his rifle, and unarmed, raised his palm in an unmistakable sign. “Hold on, miss!”
The surprised girl came to a halt a few feet away, dust swirling in the breeze. She had on a red-and-white gingham shirt and dungarees, boots firmly in the stirrups. She wore a wide-brimmed floppy hat, shading her face, but even at that distance, he could see her blazing eyes.
“What do you want?”
Her voice was lower than Darcy expected from so short a person—she could not be more than five feet two inches—but it was not unpleasant to his ears, though it was Northern and unfriendly. Darcy was not used to answering demands from anyone in the last four years, and he wasn’t going to change