Walker's Wedding Read online

  Walker’s Wedding

  LORI

  COPELAND

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Cover by Left Coast Design, Portland, Oregon

  Cover photos © Plush Studios / Bill Reitzel / Blend Images / Getty Images; iStockphoto / lobaaaato; iStockphoto / tsmarkley; Kirk Geisler / Shutterstock; Author photo © The Picture People

  Published in association with the Books & Such Literary Agency, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  WALKER’S WEDDING

  Copyright © 2010 by Copeland, Inc.

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Copeland, Lori.

  Walker’s wedding / Lori Copeland.

  p. cm.—(Western sky series)

  ISBN 978-0-7369-2761-1 (pbk.)

  1. Marriage—Fiction. I. Copeland, Lori. Marrying Walker McKay. II. Title

  PS3553.O6336W35 2010

  813’.54—dc22

  2009053459

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 / DP-NI / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Other Books by Lori Copeland

  Other Good Harvest House Fiction by Lori Wick

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Wyoming Territory, April 1870

  S.H., I need a wife about as much as I need a square-dancing bull.” Walker McKay released the steer he’d just branded and shoved his dusty Stetson to the back of his head. What would he do with a wife? He had it made: no interfering woman to tell him what to wear, when to eat, or whom to eat with. His life was his own, and he had no intention of changing it.

  A cowboy galloped in, roped a calf, and then dragged it toward the branding fire. Drovers tackled a heifer and held it to the ground while Walker applied the mark of the Spring Grass Ranch: a large S with a lowercase g intertwined in the bottom. They had branded close to two hundred head since dawn; it would be close to five hundred before the work let up.

  “Yer as hardheaded as a blind mule,” S.H. complained. Sizemore Horatio Gibson—“S.H.” to friends—released the heifer, and the animal sprang to its feet bawling. Realizing she was free, she trotted off to join the others. The grizzled old man met Walker’s eyes. “How old will you be on yer birthday? Twenty-nine?”

  “Yes. Why?” But Walker knew why. S.H. was on him again about an heir, or rather, the lack of one.

  “Twenty-eight and nary an heir to carry on the McKay name. It’s a shame. Yer pa would sit up in his grave and spit if he knew how you were avoiding the altar.”

  If Walker had a brother or sister, the pressure to marry and have a child would be off him and he would be free to concentrate on running the ranch. He scowled. He probably would have been a father by now if Trudy Richards hadn’t walked out on him. Walker still saw red when he thought of how he’d spent two years convincing himself that he loved that woman enough to marry her. It had taken her less than a day to prove him a fool. He could still smell her rose-scented perfume even as he recalled the egg on his face as a neighbor informed him that Trudy had beat it out of town on horseback, running off with a fellow who sold hats—bowlers, no less; a drifter she’d met two weeks earlier at a town social.

  Dust swirled around the milling cattle, who bawled when the ropes found their marks and hauled them in. Overhead, clouds drifted across a clear Wyoming sky. Only the unusually warm spring sun, stinging horseflies, and memories best forgotten marred an otherwise flawless day.

  Walker laid the branding iron across a steer’s rump. Disgrace was still a bitter pill to swallow. Never again would he allow a woman to make a fool of him. Not for S.H. or anybody else.

  “You can’t let one woman ruin your whole life,” S.H. said, grabbing a steer and riding it to the ground. “You got to pray harder and ask that the good Lord will send the right woman. You got to produce an heir, son. Your pa worked hard for this land—nearly killed himself building Spring Grass. It was work that put yer mama in an early grave. You don’t want to leave the ranch to strangers, do you?”

  “I tried it Pa’s way and your way, and it didn’t work. I’m content with my life and I don’t intend to change it—not now, and not any time soon.”

  He had plenty of time to worry about marriage and kids. Youngsters were okay, but in Walker McKay’s book, women were good for just two things: cooking and childbearing, and not necessarily in that order. Other men might put up with being led around by their noses, but he sure as the dickens wouldn’t do it. After Trudy’s betrayal, it would be a cold day in July before he gave his heart to another female.

  “Who’s gonna inherit the McKay fortune if you die? You ever think about that?”

  Why think about it? He figured he had a good fifty years to settle the matter before his number was up. He wasn’t a gunslinger. He didn’t pick fights and tempt death to his doorstep. He ran a ranch, lived a temperate lifestyle, and visited town only when supplies ran low. He enjoyed hunting, catching a trout or two, and reading seed catalogues. Hardly the kind of lifestyle that threatened an early grave. He hadn’t even had a cold since the winter of ’62.

  Longevity ran in the McKay family. Grandpa McKay lived to be way up in his nineties; Great-grandpa, ninety-six. If Pa hadn’t tangled with that bull last year, who knew? He might have lived to be a hundred. Maybe by the time Walker was forty, he’d give serious thought to death. Right now he had his hands full running the ranch. He was responsible—the ranch made a siza
ble profit each year, and he made sure that his thirty-five ranch hands were the first to help out when trouble hit the community. He went to church, took a bath regularly, combed his hair, and put on his clothes every morning all without a woman’s help.

  “Let me tell you, son. You don’t put off what needs be done today. A man never knows how long he’s got on this old earth.”

  A man S.H.’s age would naturally be worried about such things. “Can’t we talk about this another time?”

  “You ought to ask Willa Mae Lewis to the grange social Saturday night.” S.H. paused, knocking the dust off his trousers. “Now, that woman is as pretty as a prize heifer and bakes a mean rhubarb pie. Got the hips to birth a cow.”

  “I have all the livestock I need, S.H.”

  “Rolene Berry?”

  “Too immature.”

  “Ruthie Gaines. Now there’s a fine-looking woman.”

  “Vain. She’d rather stay home and stare at herself in a mirror than attend a social.”

  “Heidi Watson.”

  “Spoiled. Get off my back, S.H. I don’t want a wife.”

  A drover whistled loudly, ending the conversation. Walker stood and wiped sweat off his forehead. The whistle shrilled again and Walker turned, shading his eyes against the sun. A large bull, crazed with the need to escape the rope, twisted and bucked. Then, head bent and bellowing, the animal broke the cowboy’s grip.

  “Watch out!” S.H. bolted for the fence as the bull charged. Walker turned too quickly and lost his balance.

  Staggering, he retained his footing, but not before images of an earlier scene raced through his mind. Frenzied cries, pounding hooves, and the spurt of bright red blood as the animal’s horns sank into Pa’s flesh.

  “Walker!” S.H. shouted over the milling herd.

  Other warnings sounded. “He’s headed your way!”

  “Give him room!”

  Before he could respond, the bull struck. Walker let out a muffled yell. The impact propelled him backward and spun him around. Reeling, he struggled to stay afoot and catch his breath.

  The animal whirled and then paused for an instant to snort and wag his head before charging again, eyes red with rage as he thundered in for a second strike.

  Dropping to the ground, Walker curled into a tight ball, arms shielding his head. He gasped for breath, feeling a trickle of blood coursing down his chin.

  This can’t be happening! Not to me.

  Three ranch hands charged the bull, shouting, waving their arms in an attempt to divert the animal’s attention.

  Horns caught Walker in the side and he felt muscles tear, then blinding pain. Confusion broke out as other wranglers raced to the rescue, trying to divert the bull as it spun and lunged again, catching Walker in the upper thigh and tossing him like a rag doll. S.H. bolted to the fence where his rifle rested, shouting something Walker couldn’t make out.

  The bull struck again from a new direction. Walker struggled to stay conscious, trying to ward off the assault. From somewhere past consciousness he heard S.H.’s voice prodding him to produce an heir.

  The bull was going to kill him.

  I’m twenty-eight years old. I have all the time in the world…

  He burrowed his face in the dirt. His time was up, his number called. The realization was as certain as life itself had been only scant minutes ago.

  Riders galloped in and managed to divert the animal’s attention long enough for his men to pull Walker to safety.

  Drifting in and out of consciousness on a sea of pain, Walker opened his eyes to see S.H. hunched over him, getting in the way as ranch hands tried to cut the clothing from his wounds. The old man folded his battered hat against his chest, and tears rolled down his cheeks.

  “Come on, S.H.,” Walker muttered. “It’s just a couple of broken ribs…”

  But he didn’t need S.H. to tell him it was bad. He could feel blood oozing from his left side. Instead of S.H.’s voice, past conversations drifted through his mind.

  I’ll think about an heir someday. I have plenty of time.

  S.H. knelt beside him, openly weeping. “I tried to warn you! Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I heard you…S.H…couldn’t get out of the way.” Walker struggled to focus, barely able to comprehend or respond now. Men were working over him. The pain in his leg felt like a branding iron.

  “Hang on, son, hang on,” S.H. urged. “They’ve gone for the doc…don’t die on me, boy…”

  I’m twenty-eight…got all the time in the world…

  Reaching for the old man’s hand, Walker grasped it tightly. S.H. had been with Pa when he drew his last breath, had been with Spring Grass since Mitch felled the first tree. It was right that he would be here now.

  “Saw the bull…couldn’t…”

  “Lie still, son.” S.H. gripped his hand, and Walker felt the old man’s trembling. “You can beat this.”

  “Take care of Spring Grass, S.H., and take care of Flo. She’s a good woman…”

  “None of that talk. You’re not going to leave us, Walker. Hold on.”

  Walker closed his eyes, allowing the gathering darkness to suck him under.

  S.H. bellowed, “Where’s that doctor!” Sobbing, the old man sank back onto his knees.

  I thought I had all the time in the world.

  Chapter One

  Boston, Massachusetts, June 1870

  I’m dying. I’m dying, Wadsy.”

  “You ain’t dyin’, honey chile. Now hold still and let Wadsy put this cold cloth on your forehead. Lawsy me, you’re hot as a poker.” The old nanny squeezed water from a cold compress and laid it across Sarah’s forehead. “Runnin’ off in this cold rain, entertainin’ the idea of marryin’ some no-good riverboat worker. What were you thinkin’, baby girl? Tyin’ yourself to some man who’d end up breakin’ your heart? Goodness, do you want your papa’s dyspepsia to flare up again? He’s gonna have a conniption fit when he hears what you been up to!”

  Sarah lay on the bed, arms flung spread-eagle, staring at the ceiling. Hank was a bit unstable, and Papa would point that out, ranting about how she’d known the “scoundrel” less than a week, but the riverboat worker had promised to settle down and devote himself tirelessly to family life. He’d vowed he was weary of traveling from town to town, wasting his life on women and strong drink.

  Unlike Papa, she didn’t have to know someone a hundred years to judge his character.

  “I was this close to marriage, Wadsy.” She measured a minuscule distance with her thumb and forefinger. “I could have been a bride.”

  Wadsy groaned. “Praise the good Lord that he intervened. Law, girl, you’re going to put this ol’ woman in an early grave.”

  “This close,” Sarah repeated. “Why did Abe have to come along when he did? Why couldn’t that old mare have thrown a shoe any other time but today?”

  “You’re ‘this close’ to feelin’ the strap of your daddy’s belt to your backside, Sarah Elaine Livingston.” Wadsy lifted the cloth off of Sarah’s forehead and soaked it in a pan of cool water. “Good thing Abe came along when he did or you’d be in a fine how-de-do.”

  Curling up into a tight ball, Sarah released her misery in wailing sobs.

  “Now, child,” Wadsy soothed. “It ain’t the end of the world.”

  “But it is!” Sarah cried. “All I have ever wanted was to marry and have children. Just look at me. I’m twenty-five and an old maid!”

  Sarah wadded up her pillow and wept into it. Her muffled voice came through the crisply ironed pillowcase. “I’m going to die before I ever get to be a wife.”

  Every time she got close to the altar, someone interfered with her plans. When would she ever escape Papa’s attempts to suffocate her dream? When would she finally have the husband she ached to care for or an infant to call her own?

  Wadsy rescued the pillow, clucking her tongue and shaking out the creases. “Never seen such carrying-on. Sit up, honey chile. Your nose is gonna be all red and uglylik
e. You’ll never find a husband if you have an ugly red nose.”

  Sarah bolted upright, pinning Wadsy with a cold stare. “I’m never going to find a husband no matter what my nose looks like. And who cares? No one, that’s who!”

  Old Abe could have helped today, but no. He had to come by the landing on his way to have the mare shod, spot her boarding the boat with Hank, and drag her off like an errant child. And the worst was yet to come. She still had to face Papa.

  “We all care, baby girl. We just don’t want you goin’ off half-cocked and marryin’ the wrong man.” Settling her bulk on the side of the bed, Wadsy smoothed Sarah’s fiery red tendrils from her forehead. The dark-skinned woman had practically raised Sarah from infancy; she was like a second mother. “I know how your heart aches for a husband. Lord knows you’ve clomped around this house with a curtain over that unruly hair, wearin’ your mama’s gowns, gettin’ pretend married since you could toddle. Lawsy me, I’ve attended more weddin’s during your childhood than I can count, but marriage is powerful serious, baby girl. The good Lord intends marriage vows to be spoken in earnest. You got to get it right or you’ll live with the mistake the rest of your life. None of us want to see you go through that—cain’t you understand?”

  “Oh, Wadsy.” Sarah sniffed and then blew her nose into her handkerchief She knew she was spoiled and demanded her way, but how long could she stay under Papa’s thumb? Marriage was sacred and shouldn’t be entered into lightly, but the perfect man—the one Papa insisted on, simply didn’t exist. Papa was rich beyond belief—he owned his own railroad, half of Boston, and hundreds and hundreds of acres of abundant cotton land—so he could purchase anything she wanted. Yet he was powerless to buy what she needed: a husband, someone to love and care for, someone who would love and care for her when Papa and Wadsy and Abraham passed on.

  No amount of money in the world could assure that kind of happiness.

  Over the years dozens of young men, mostly men who worked for Papa, had courted her. Something—usually Papa—always interfered with those promising relationships. No one was ever good enough for her in her father’s eyes, though he insisted that she was being overly dramatic when she said so. Yet here she was, getting older by the minute and not a lick closer to a husband than she’d been the day Wadsy helped Dr. Mason bring her into the world.