OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 11: Reasons to Stay (Lillabit)

There's kind of a quiet intimacy in staying up all night with someone.

I use the word "with" loosely, since I'd been closer to Dave Murphy more of the night than to Jacob. Still, I felt proud of myself for helping -- both in preparing Dave for burial, and in contributing to the funeral. I would have liked to put flowers on Dave's grave, but didn't have the time or good enough night-vision to find any in the early gray of the morning. The plains offer a lot of pretty, tiny flowers, but you do have to hunt for them.

Still, I'd managed to remember the most basic prayers from my Nana's church and two verses of "Amazing Grace." The other cowboys seemed to appreciate that.

Jacob stood strong and silent beside me, just like I'd always imagined a husband would. Maybe he appreciated me too?

If so, the ride back to camp, behind him on the gray, was my reward. I loved wrapping my arms around his middle from behind, holding on physically as tightly as I wanted to do mentally. I rested my cheek against his broad back and savored the pink and orange swaths of sunrise still lingering in the brightening sky across the wide, wild landscape. Cue a sweeping, symphonic score... the kind I would never hear again, but that's okay. Despite everything that hadn't played much of a role my previous life, like the cattle and the birdsong and the wide-open spaces, I felt like maybe I belonged here.

Happy.

Safe... even if I didn't dare close my eyes, for fear of falling asleep and doing a belly flop off the horse, or maybe out of the 19th century entirely. I rode with both legs on the left, after all, without the side-saddle for support. I didn't need it. I had my husband for support.

I whispered, "I love you."

Jacob grunted, curious--and I chickened out of repeating myself so that he could actually hear. "Nothing important."

Nearing the chuck wagon, he reined in and dismounted, swinging his leg over the gray's neck, so as not to disturb my seat. Then he spanned his big, capable hands across each of my hips, his thumbs on my tummy where our baby lived and his fingertips toward my butt, and helped me back down to solid earth. I would forever connect the smell of leather and the huff of horses with this man, wouldn't I?

I slid my palms down his sleeves to his wrists. "Join me in our tent for a nap?" I asked, trying not to sound sultry. It would be hell, lying beside him without doing anything more. For weeks! But I'd determined to be the wife he needed me to be. "I promise to behave myself."

He squinted down at me, as if confused, and then looked toward the chuck wagon... to which Schmidty was hitching four mules, readying to move out for the day.

Following that lead, I looked toward where the tent had stood, near the bluff, and saw only flattened grass. When I glanced again toward the herd, I realized the cowboys were urging the cattle to their feet for another long day's walk.

"We're leaving?" I asked. Yes was such an obvious answer, Jacob didn't even bother making it.

"But some of the boys have been up all night!" As had he, and Benj, and me. I'd chosen to be. I guess I could have napped while he dug the grave and readied Dave Murphy's body on his own. Well, with Benj.

But still....

"Sleep come winter." I should have known better. The cattle, and the drive, meant everything. Getting them north to Wyoming before October was the whole reason we were doing this. Murphy had died for this goal!

I could deal... though I sure wished I'd had even a little of the coffee, before Schmidty poured it over the breakfast fire in preparation to leave.