This Loving Land by Dorothy Garlock

have you given him that I don’t know about?”
    “Several.” Jesse stared straight over the horse’s back and Ellen gasped at his calm answer.
    “He’s just a boy! He’s no match for you in a fight.”
    The cool look he gave her caused Ellen to draw another quick breath.
    “He’s no boy, Ellen. He’s a twenty-five-year-old man, who acts like a spoiled kid a grabbin’ any and everything he wants. Keep him away from McLean’s Keep, or Slater will kill him. He still thinks he had something to do with Sam’s death, and he wouldn’t think twice about killin’ him if he gets to messin’ around the women.”
    Ellen’s face burned with anger “That’s ridiculous, and you know it. Travis may be a little wild, but that’s all. Scott was wild as a deer when 1 married him, and Travis takes after him. Sam was always the steady one, the dull one, just like Slater.” Contempt crept into her voice. “Travis will settle down when he has a wife.”
    “And you have someone in mind.”
    “Of course. Summer. It was a godsend for her to come back. She comes from good stock, and will make a perfect wife for Travis. And she’ll not come into the family empty-handed, either. That strip of land of hers will make the Rocking S one of the largest holdings in Texas.”
    Jesse’s voice was quiet, deep and abrupt. “You can’t be foolish enough to think Slater improved on that claim and brought that girl out here to stand aside and let her marry Travis.”
    “I don’t know what he can do about it.”
    “He can marry her himself, Ellen. So you better not get your heart set on the match.”
    “That’s the one thing I am sure of, Jesse. Slater will never marry Summer.” Ellen glanced at him, a strange, mysterious smile tilting her lips.
    “You can’t be sure of that.”
    “I’m sure,” she said confidently. “Slater may take up with the dance-hall trollop. Women are scarce, and she may appeal to his rude nature.” She let her hand slide down the inside of Jesse’s arm. “I know you were merely being chivalrous this morning, dear, but it wasn’t necessary. A woman like that is used to that sort of thing.” She smiled with disarming gentleness. “I’m sorry for my jealous little comments. It’s . . . it’s just that I depend on you so. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jesse.”
    Ellen could not remember a time when Jesse had not responded to her coaxing. He sat as if made of stone. There was not even a flicker of an eyelid to betray what he was feeling at the moment. It was impossible to tell if he had even heard her words, or if he was feeling anger, surprise or resignation.
    It wasn’t any of these things Jesse was feeling. It was something else altogether. Something he hadn’t felt for a long time. An emptiness flowed through him. Memory stirred, painfully, uncertainly, as the buggy traversed the lower slopes of the hill country. His childhood hovered, half-imagined, half-remembered. It was way back there, that childhood, but still familiar enough to imbue his stern face with a terrible loneliness. The inevitable waiting! The waiting was what he remembered the most. Waiting in that unloving, uncaring place.
    It had taken a long time. And then Ellen had come, so pretty, so gentle and caring. His features relaxed for a moment, then tightened. The interval between the home and coming out here with Ellen had not been easy. The hardest, dirtiest jobs for scraps of food were freshest in his mind. “Kid do this . . . hurry up, kid . . . you goddam kid . . .” One day, he was no longer a kid, and the orders stopped.
    He looked down at Ellen, and his steely-gray eyes lost the haunted look and stared with affection into hers. She began to smile, her flushed face and quivering mouth betraying only too well that she was aware she had been excluded from his thoughts, but that now his attention was back with her once again.
    “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Jesse,” she said again, and tears misted