Colorado Hope(141)
Clare bounced on her toes, her face alight with joy. “She did. Just like she promised. Made it exactly like the picture too. She’s some amazin’ seamstress.”
LeRoy merely nodded. Eli punched his shoulder. “Maybe she’ll make one for your bride someday.”
A laugh caught in LeRoy’s throat. He pushed words past it. “Don’t hold your breath, Brother. I ain’t fixin’ to get hitched anytime soon.”
“Why not?” Clare asked. She pursed her lips and stared LeRoy down.
“My, you’re being personal, Mrs. Banks,” Eli said, his eyes dancing with mirth despite the scowl on his face. “My brother’s just waitin’ for the right woman to come along. Ain’t that right, LeRoy?”
Clare rolled her eyes. “Huh. We’ll be waitin’ until the snow melts atop the Rockies,” she said, her tone chastising. “I introduced you to Shannon—ya didn’t like her?” she asked LeRoy with a raised eyebrow. “She’s every bit as good a rider as I am. Well, nearly—”
Eli playfully tugged Clare’s arm, tipping his head at the lodge. “Clare, leave him be. Your sister ain’t but sixteen. That makes LeRoy nearly ten years older.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?” She frowned at Eli, who tugged her a few steps toward the doors. Music drifted to their ears—a rousing tune of fiddles, bass, and washboard, and the accompanying stomping of dozens of boots on the wood-plank floorboards.
“Honey, don’t you wanna dance?” Eli asked her. “All the guests are gonna be wonderin’ where we went—”
“Oh, let ’em wonder.” She turned and pinned her eyes on LeRoy. “I’m serious, LeRoy. You need a wife. It’ll do ya some good.”
The laugh that had snagged in LeRoy’s chest now burst out. He shook his head. “Clare, I do love you. You’re . . . something.”
“Somethin’ else, for sure,” Eli said, giving LeRoy a surrendering shrug and that crooked smile of his.
“And I love ya too, LeRoy,” Clare told him, finally giving in to Eli’s urging and letting herself be dragged toward the doors. She waggled a finger at him with a giggle. “But I won’t brook rude behavior at my wedding. So c’mon back inside and give me that dance ya promised.”
“Will do, ma’am,” LeRoy said, touching the brim of his hat, still chuckling as Eli pulled his beautiful headstrong wife back inside Whitcomb’s lodge.
He caught a glimpse of his ma through the open doors of the big log house, her dark braided hair shining under all the many flickering Chinese lanterns strung along the rafters. She was chatting with Lucas Rawlings—LeRoy’s closest friend—but she suddenly turned and saw LeRoy, and fell silent upon seeing him.
LeRoy grunted. As if he could hide his inner turmoil from a Cheyenne medicine woman who knew him better than he knew hisself.
He had a sudden urge to head over to the bunkhouse to find a piece of quiet. He’d been living this past month among Whitcomb’s ranch hands, helping the rich rancher break the wild mustangs he and Eli had run down the mountain that day they’d gone after those two outlaws—the last of the Dutton gang. What a day that had been—cornering that varmint Wymore after he shot dead Monty’s lying snake of a wife, and watching him get trampled underfoot by the stampeding herd. Finding the other outlaw nearly dead, the cabin ablaze. Monty gone after Grace, who’d fallen with her baby off the cliff.
LeRoy shook his head and blew out a breath. That had been more’n enough excitement to last out the year. He was grateful for the predictable daily routine of working the horses, and although he considered Whitcomb’s men plenty amicable, he tended to keep to hisself. It took some adjusting—living with a dozen men in one room, with all their snores and stench. Some were plenty rough around the edges, and a few took issue with LeRoy’s Indian blood and made snide remarks, but Whitcomb brooked neither drunkenness nor tomfoolerly, and so any scuffling and contentions were soon snuffed out.
With Lucas married and living in his own cabin north of the Poudre, and Eli setting up a homestead in Fort Collins so Clare could be close to her family, LeRoy’s ma was all alone at their ranch north of Greeley. Despite her protestations that she was managing just fine—and enjoying some real peace and quiet for the first time in years—he worried about her. Well, he’d be back home in a few weeks, with some right fine mustang mares in tow to add to their breeding stock. The railroad might be replacing the stagecoach, but folks always needed horses. His ma would stay busy. And maybe that’d keep her from prying the lid off his inner rumblings.