A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

ELEVEN

Win can take the cooking and housekeeping back over, and I could apply for her job as schoolmarm,” Molly said as she cleaned up after breakfast.

Falcon didn’t know nuthin’ about ranching and didn’t care to learn, so he’d come in and eaten breakfast in the big house.

Kevin and Win hadn’t shown up. Molly said she’d been told Win would cook for them in the ramrod’s house and not to plan for them.

Wyatt had gone out to look over the branded cattle, Andy with him.

Cheyenne was grumpier than usual this morning, and that was saying something. She’d stayed at the house.

She reminded him of someone. Falcon wasn’t sure who, but he found he liked Cheyenne, despite her quick ways with a scowl. He felt like maybe he’d known tough women before and they suited him.

Falcon really didn’t know what anyone was talking about most of the time. “You’re a schoolteacher?”

Molly nodded.

“Win too?”

“She was. She’s been teaching in Bear Claw Pass ever since she came back from finishing school in St. Louis. And I was a teacher back in Wheatfield, Kansas, before I moved here. Her pa went in and told them she was quitting without her permission. Then she got married, so she can’t work anymore.”

“Her pa did that?” Cheyenne lifted plates off the table and took them to the sink.

“I wonder if a teacher could teach me to—to—remember? Or help me remember things I’m supposed to already know?”

Molly settled a plate into a basin of hot water and turned slowly to look at Falcon. “Teach you . . . your past?”

Falcon shrugged. “I know it ain’t reasonable, exactly, but what about this is? I know my name. Now. I know this is Wyoming and the nearest town is Bear Claw Pass. I know most everything I’ve been told, and I remember all of it. So if I can’t remember things, maybe I can start over and be taught things again, and it’ll be like I remember.”

Cheyenne began wiping dry the plates Molly washed. “We could just spend the morning talking. I could tell you all I know about this situation.”

“We had to study Tennessee in school, so I could tell you what I know about it.” Molly scrubbed a cast-iron skillet and handed it to Cheyenne. “Tennessee is where you came from. The Blue Ridge Mountains.”

“And we’ve got papers here saying a very few things about the unknown brothers,” Cheyenne said. “Just where you lived so the lawyer could send a letter to you telling you to come and steal my land.”

Grumpy. Falcon ignored it. “So I’m from the mountains?”

“Yep.” Molly wiped out the basin and hung it on a nail over the sink. “But the mountains way back east.”

“Must be why, when first I come around in that river, I headed for the mountains as soon as I could get land under me. They seemed safe. It’s like I was called to them, like a bird heading for its nest.”

“Can you read?” Molly asked, untying her apron.

Falcon knew what reading was. Memory was a strange thing. “Nope. Well, I’m not sure.”

Cheyenne came and put a piece of paper in front of him with a pencil. “Write Falcon.”

He stared at the paper for a long moment, then picked up the pencil and wrote his name.

“I reckon that means I can. Not sure about anything else though.”

“Let’s go in my grandpa’s study,” Cheyenne said. “We left the will in there and copies of the letters that were going to you and Kevin. You can at least know that much about yourself. I can tell you about the ranch and Wyoming. Molly can tell you about Tennessee.”

“Maybe,” Molly said, “we’ll say something that’ll shake loose a memory.”

Falcon hated to get his hopes up. Hopelessness seemed called for at this time.

“Is that your ma?” Falcon stopped in the doorway of the front room and looked at the huge painting on a wall above the fireplace.

“Yes, it is. That’s Katherine LeRemy Brewster Hunt.”

Falcon heard sadness in Cheyenne’s voice and wished he had words that would make her feel better. But that seemed foolish. How could anyone feel anything but sadness over losing her ma? Falcon wondered about his own ma. Someone here had said she was dead, but he must’ve told them that. He couldn’t remember it.

The picture was hard to look away from, so he paid mind to it and not Cheyenne’s sad, beautiful face. Katherine Hunt had on a blue dress. Her brown hair was down in curls around her shoulders. She was standing in front of this very fireplace that the picture now hung over. Her arms came together in front, holding something Falcon didn’t recognize. A fancy thing, a fanned-out blue thing that matched Katherine’s dress. She had about the prettiest smile on her face Falcon had ever seen. Her skin was tanned, and her eyes snapped blue.

Falcon might not remember much about himself, but he knew this was a fine room. Pretty blankets were thrown over the backs of a settee and two chairs, and fine lacy circles draped over the chair and settee arms. He saw a small basket with something half-finished in it. It had to be Cheyenne’s work, or Win’s maybe? Cheyenne didn’t seem like the fine lacy type.

Looking back at the picture, he said, “She looks like you.” He knew Cheyenne had never smiled that way since he’d met her, but he wished she would. “You’ve got dark eyes, but other than that, you’re of a kind with your ma. Both beautiful women.”

Cheyenne turned away from the picture. “And you look like Clovis Hunt. I can’t tell you much about yourself. But I could tell you a lot about him.” She didn’t make that sound like he wanted to hear it.

She stepped through an open door and went behind a massive desk of solid oak big enough to nap on and opened a side drawer. She pulled out a packet of papers. “Here’s the will, and it contains instructions about contacting you and Kevin, including information about where you lived.”

“Then you know more about me than I know about myself.” He picked up the papers and unfolded them and stared awhile. Then he said, “I reckon I can’t read much besides my name.”

Molly hadn’t followed them into the study, but now she came in with a sheet of paper. “This is the map of the ranch. Kevin got it at the land office, and I had it in my room. You said you might build a cabin.”

“I did?”

“Yep,” Molly said. “You could use the map to decide where you want to build it. Maybe Cheyenne could tell you about highlands.”

Cheyenne took the packet of papers from Falcon and tucked them back in the drawer. “You didn’t need to get that in town. We’ve got a map here.”

Molly tipped her head and gave a tiny shrug. “I don’t think Kevin wanted to ask you for it. But he planned to ride your boundaries and find a likely spot, far enough away we wouldn’t bother you none.”

Cheyenne’s eyes glinted in such a way that Falcon knew the newcomers were always going to bother Cheyenne.

She went to a large wooden table standing in front of a bookshelf and pulled out a deep drawer. From inside she brought out a tube of paper. She brought it to the desk and unrolled it. Falcon saw it was a map. Very detailed and impressive compared to the quickly hand-drawn map Molly had.

Cheyenne picked up a book, a paperweight, and a stand that held an inkwell. She used them to weight down three corners of the map. She kept the fourth corner from rolling with her hand.

She began talking.

Falcon was impressed by how well she knew this land. Knew where the old boundaries were between the land her pa had owned and the Rolling Hills Ranch. Talked about how they’d joined them after her pa died.

“I was really young. I have only shadowy memories of my own pa. Ma and I moved over here after Pa died, bucked off a horse he was breaking. Grandpa was living in the foreman’s house then. He insisted we needed a fine house for the three of us, and built this. It was finished about the time Clovis Hunt came along.”

“And you’re saying Clovis was still married to my ma and Kevin’s ma when he married your ma?” Falcon rubbed one hand over his face as if he wanted to scrub that information away.

“Pa, is that you?”

Falcon jerked his head up. He looked around the room, but they were the only people in here.

Who was that? It was a man’s voice, and Falcon thought the question had been put to him.

“Pa, is that you?”

For a horrifying moment, Falcon thought he might have children somewhere. A wife. Where were they? Who called him Pa?

Falcon tried to focus on that strange voice he’d just heard. It had to be a memory, but thinking on it made his head throb. The women were poring over the map, not looking at him at all.

They didn’t notice him checking the room for someone.

Should he tell them? The headache grew, and to escape the pain, he forced his mind back to what was going on around him.

The lack of a memory made him feel like a strange kinda critter. He had no idea what was wrong with him, and he had a flash of, well, it wasn’t right to say he was ashamed exactly. But he felt so odd. Like he had a terrible weakness, and that made him a man who’d be picked out of a herd like a three-legged elk.

“Mark on my map where some highlands are for Falcon. And do you know where fertile farmland is for us?” Molly slid her modest little map onto the corner of the big, colorful map Cheyenne had.

“You drew your map wrong.” Cheyenne pointed to a curve on Molly’s map. “Our land goes out way farther than this. You drew your boundary so it follows the east side of Mount Gilbert, but it goes around the west side of it.”

Cheyenne took the pen off the desk, dipped it in an inkwell, and redrew Molly’s map to add a whole big stretch to match hers.

“No, Cheyenne. Kevin said he talked to the land agent the whole time he was drawing. He could’ve been off a little, but not that much. That stretch you just added to my map is part of the Hawkins Ranch. Win was with him and look at those tiny letters.” Molly tapped on the line that Cheyenne had added. “They wrote HR for Hawkins Ranch.”

Cheyenne’s always somber face twisted into anger. Falcon was getting used to seeing her that way.

“Then the land office is wrong, and Win is wrong.”

Molly and Cheyenne looked at each other.

Cheyenne said, “Win doesn’t know her ranch’s boundaries as well as I know mine.”

“Are you sure your grandpa and your pa really bought their land?” Falcon moved to stand beside the two women and looked closer at the map. “There couldn’t’ve been a land office out here when they settled. Maybe he only claimed the land, but when Hawkins came along, the land office showed open range, and he bought it.”

Cheyenne’s head snapped up, and she glared at Falcon. “This land is ours.” She slapped her hand on the map, and Falcon got the notion that she might want to slap him.

Weren’t his fault about the maps.

Her eyes narrowed, and he saw she was thinkin’ something as if she could see inside his head.

He surely wished someone could.

“Let’s go to town,” Falcon suggested.

“We should wait for Wyatt.”

Falcon smiled right in that cranky face. “You reckon he knows this land better’n you?”

Molly flinched at the challenge in his retort. Falcon saw it as she stood behind Cheyenne, and it was a mighty big flinch. But he didn’t let it move him from the stare locked between him and Cheyenne.

“No one alive knows this land better than me.”

“Considering that there might still be some varmints chasing after us, I’ll ride with you, if I can borrow a horse?” Falcon asked.

“This ranch owns about a hundred horses. And you own a third of them.” Cheyenne looked like she wanted to scream.

Just like always.

But without knowing a thing about what was normal, he decided he liked a feisty woman. By that measure, he liked Cheyenne Brewster more every minute.

“I think I’ll stay home and make a meal.” Molly drew his attention.

He’d forgotten she was in here.

She shook her head in a way that made no never mind to him, then turned and walked out.

Falcon said, “It’s a funny thing not to have any memories.”

Cheyenne’s scowl relaxed some. “I’ll just bet it is.”

“I’ve no notion of what I like and what I don’t like.” Then, bravest thing he ever did, or so he suspected, he chucked Cheyenne under the chin. “But I am finding myself liking you real well.”

Instead of biting his head off, she arched her brows, and her eyes went wide. She seemed frozen and didn’t say anything back.

Probably for the best. “Let’s go to town.”

Shaking her head, then nodding, finally she found her voice. “I’m bringing the maps.”