Read Online The Horseman by Marcia Lynn McClure - Free Book Online

warm cream…mmm! I can almost taste it now.
I must be hungry after that long ride with Sassafras.”
    “I would imagine so,” Gunner chuckled.
    There was silence between them for several
long moments, and then Gunner began, “I understand you lost your
guardian or someone recently.”
    Briney nodded. “Yes…Mrs. Fletcher,” she
admitted. She felt a blush of humiliation rise to her already red
cheeks, but for some reason, she continued, “I suppose you know
then that I was an orphan and that Mrs. Fletcher adopted me to be
her traveling companion when I was just a girl.”
    “No, I didn’t know that,” Gunner
admitted.
    His handsome brow furrowed into a slight
frown, and Briney sighed with disappointment. It seemed the
handsome Horseman of Oakmont was as disgusted by orphans as most
city people were.
    “People don’t like orphans,” Briney thought
aloud.
    “They don’t?” Gunner asked. “Why not?”
    Briney herself frowned—studied him for a long
minute before asking, “Are you in earnest, Mr. Cole?”
    “What do you mean?” Gunner asked. He seemed
sincere in his ignorance to the general population’s thinking where
orphans were concerned.
    “Most people, at least in my experience,
think all orphans are worthless, criminal types, not worthy of
befriending,” she told him.
    His frown deepened. “Why would people think
that?” he asked. “It’s not a child’s fault if their parents are
lost…if they’re left alone in the world.”
    Briney’s heart leapt with gratitude, and her
frown relaxed. “Well, your opinion is rare, Mr. Cole.”
    He shrugged broad shoulders and said, “I
don’t believe in judging a body by what their parents did or didn’t
do. Everybody had different circumstances growin’ up. Some are real
tragic.” He shrugged again. “And there are those who grow up in
such bad conditions that they fall into the same type of life they
were born into. Still, there’s plenty more that don’t.”
    Briney smiled as she listened to Gunner
speak—as she saw the sincerity on his face as he did.
    “Take me for instance,” he began. “One of my
grandfathers was a Quaker, born and raised. And he married a Quaker
woman, also born and raised. But his wife was meaner than an ol’
wet hen and twice as cold…quite the opposite of the kind, nurturing
Quaker mother my grandpa had grown up with. So one day my
grandpa…he just up and ran off with the woman who ran a local
brothel. He divorced his first wife and married the scarlet woman
who’d owned the brothel. Of course, his second wife…she retired
from her profession the minute she married my grandpa, and she and
my grandpa had four sons, one of which was my daddy. Well, just
because my grandpa had run off with a woman who’d once run a
cathouse didn’t mean my daddy did the same. My daddy grew up and
married a preacher’s daughter, my mother, and they were happier
than any married couple I’ve ever seen since.”
    Gunner paused a moment, his eyes narrowing
with near suspicion. “So do you think less of me because my grandma
was once a harlot?” he brusquely asked.
    “Why…why, of course not!” Briney exclaimed,
although she was astonished that a man she’d only met that very day
would share such a revelation with her.
    Gunner nodded with approval. “Then why should
people think less of you because you were once an orphan girl,
hmmm?”
    “Well…well, because they’re…they’re…” Briney
stammered.
    “Because they’re malicious in nature
sometimes…always trying to make themselves feel better about
themselves by defiling the character of others. Ain’t that the
truth of it?” he stated.
    Briney smiled. “So…you’re not only a superior
horseman and a fair businessman with a rare streak of integrity,
but you’re also much wiser than would be expected for a man under
the age of eighty,” she noted aloud.
    Gunner chuckled. “Oh, all that flattery ain’t
necessary, Miss Thress. I already offered you a good deal