Clicking his tongue at the beleaguered buggy horse, Corin turned it again and drove them toward the teepee and dugout. Surrounding the two dwellings was an array of washing lines and drying racks, ropes, tools and harnesses. A fire was burning outside the tent, and as they approached a small, iron-haired woman emerged with a blackened pot to place over the embers. Her back was bowed, but her eyes sparkled from deep within the creases webbing her face. She said nothing, but straightened up and nodded, eyeing Caroline with quiet interest as Corin jumped down from the buggy.
“Good morning, White Cloud, I’ve come to introduce my wife to you,” Corin said, tipping the wide brim of his hat respectfully at the old woman. Caroline’s legs, as he helped her down, felt unsteady beneath her. She swallowed, but there remained a lump in her throat that made it hard to breathe. Her thoughts swirled inside her head like a blizzard. A man came out of the dugout, followed by a young girl, and another woman came from the teepee, middle-aged and severe looking. She said something incomprehensible to Corin, and Corin, to Caroline’s utter amazement, replied.
“You speak their tongue?” she blurted out, and then recoiled when all eyes turned to her. Corin smiled, somewhat diffidently.
“Indeed, I do. Now, Caroline, this is Joe, and this is his wife Magpie, most commonly known as Maggie.” Caroline tried to smile, but she found that she could not hold the gaze of either one of them for more than a few seconds. When she did she saw a stern, dark man, not tall but broad across the chest; and a plump girl, her long hair prettily braided with colored strings woven through it. Joe’s hair was also long, and they both had high, feline cheekbones and a serious line to their brows. Magpie smiled and ducked her head, trying to catch Caroline’s eye.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Massey,” she said, and her English was perfect even if her accent was strong. Caroline gaped at her.
“You speak English?” she whispered, incredulously. Magpie gave a cheerful chuckle.
“Yes, Mrs. Massey. Better than my husband, although I have been learning for less time!” she boasted. “I’m so glad you are here. There are far too many men at this ranch.”
Caroline took a longer look at the girl, who was wearing a simple skirt and blouse, with a brightly woven blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her feet were shod with soft slippers of a kind Caroline had never seen before. Her husband, who wore a heavy, beaded vest beneath his shirt, muttered something sharp in their own tongue, and Magpie scowled, answering him with something short and indignant. Joe did not smile as readily as his wife, and his expression seemed, to Caroline, most hostile. The blackness of his eyes alarmed her, and his mouth was a straight, implacable line.
“I have never met any Cherokee… people before,” Caroline said, somewhat emboldened by Magpie’s cheerful demeanor.
“Still you have not.” Joe spoke for the first time, wryly. His accent was so guttural that it took a little while for her to understand him. Caroline glanced at Corin.
“Joe and his family are of the Ponca tribe,” he explained.
“But… Hutch told me these lands were Cherokee before…”
“They were. It’s… well, put simply, there are many tribes in this country. It was Indian Territory before it was Oklahoma Territory, after all. Joe and his family are a little out of the ordinary, in that they have chosen to adopt some of the white man’s ways of living. Most of his people choose to stay with their own, on reservation lands. Joe here got a taste for cattle driving and has never looked back-isn’t that right, Joe?”
“Got a taste for beating you at cards, mostly,” the Ponca man said, twisting his mouth to one side sardonically.
As they moved away from the teepee, Caroline frowned.
“Joe seems an odd name for an… for a Ponco…”
“Ponca. Well, his real name, in his own tongue, is just about unpronounceable. It means Dust Storm, or something of that kind. Joe’s just a lot easier for folk to say,” Corin explained.
“He does not seem to show you much respect, considering you are his employer.”
At this Corin glanced at Caroline, and a frown shaded his eyes for a moment. “He has plenty of respect for me, I assure you; and it’s respect I’ve had to earn. People like Joe don’t give out respect because you’re white, or because you’ve got land, or you pay their wages. They give it when you can show you have integrity and a willingness to learn, and can show respect to them where it’s due. Things are a little different out here than in New York, Caroline. People have to help themselves and help each other when a flood or a freeze or a tornado might wipe out everything you have in an instant…” He trailed into silence. A warm wind blew off the prairie, singing through the spokes of the buggy wheels. Stinging with his rebuke, Caroline sat in unhappy silence. “You’ll soon settle in, don’t you worry,” Corin said, in a lighter tone.
A few days later, they took their honeymoon picnic; setting out in the buggy while the sun was skirting the eastern horizon, and heading due west of the ranch for three hours or so, to a place where the land rolled into voluptuous curves around a shallow pool, fed by a slow-running creek. Silver willows leaned their branches down, shading the water’s edge and touching it in places, pulling wrinkles in the wide reflected sky.
“It’s so pretty here,” Caroline said, smiling as Corin lifted her down from the bench.
“I’m glad you like it,” Corin said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “It’s one of my favorite places. I come here sometimes, when I need to think about things, or when I’m feeling low…”
“Why didn’t you live here, then? Why did you fix the ranch over to the east?”
“Well, I wanted to fix it here but Geoffrey Buchanan beat me to it. His farmhouse is another two miles that way, but this land is in his claim.”
“Won’t he mind us coming here?”
“I doubt it. He’s a pretty relaxed kind of fellow but, more importantly, he won’t know we’re here,” Corin grinned, and Caroline laughed, crossing to the edge of the pool and dipping her fingers into the water.
“Do you come here often then? Do you get low, out here?”
“I did sometimes, when I was first here. Wondered whether I’d staked the right claim, wondered if it was too far from my family, if the land was right for the cattle. But I’ve not been back here for many months,” he shrugged. “It soon became clear to me that I never did a better thing than staking the claim I did, and making those choices. Everything happens for a reason, is what I believe, and now I know that’s right.”
“How do you know?” she asked, turning to him, drying her fingers on her skirt.
“Because I have you. When my father died, I thought… I thought for a time that I should move back to New York and look after my mother. But the second I got back there I knew I couldn’t stay. And then I found you, and you were willing to come away with me… and if any good thing could come from losing my father, then you are that good thing, Caroline. You’re what was missing from my life.” He spoke with such clarity, such resolve, that Caroline was overwhelmed.
“Do you really think that?” she whispered, standing close to him, feeling the sun’s heat flush her skin. It shone brightly in his eyes, turned them the color of caramel.
“I really think that,” he said quietly; and she stood up on her toes to kiss him.
In the shade of the willow trees they spread out their rugs, unpacked the hamper and unhitched the buggy horse, which Corin tethered to a tree. Caroline sat with her legs tucked carefully beneath her, and poured Corin a glass of lemonade. He lay down easily beside her, propped on one elbow, and undid the buttons of his shirt to let the cool air in. Caroline watched him almost shyly, still not used to the idea that he belonged to her, still not used to his relaxed manner. She had not known until her arrival at the ranch that men grew hair on their chests, and she examined it now, curling against his skin and damp with the heat of his body.