Free Arizona Embrace by Leigh Greenwood

going to talk at all,” Trinity threatened. “Who knows, I might grow so old by nightfall I won’t be able to make it home on my own.”
    “Since I’m in the bloom of youth, I’ll help you.”
    “Not with broken bones you won’t.”
    “How ungallant,” Victoria responded with feigned shock.
    “You don’t think comparing me to Father Time is ungallant? A man’s age is a sensitive thing. A woman’s fate may depend on her beauty, but a man’s fate often depends on his strength and quickness as well as his youth.”
    “You don’t think brains count for much?”
    Trinity helped her up. She brushed off her skirt.
    “Yes, but unfortunately most young men don’t put much store by brains. They haven’t had enough experience to know better.”
    Victoria had started toward her horse, but the bitterness in his voice caused her to direct a sharp look at him.
    “Do you have something particular in mind, or is that a general observation?”
    “General,” he said, deciding to turn the conversation to something else. He didn’t want to go into his past. He didn’t want his foolishness exposed, but the buried vitriol pushed its way to the surface, and his anger and frustration poured out.
    “You’ve been complaining about being looked after and cared for and worried about until it’s about to drive you crazy. But men are taught to do that by women . By our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts! Everybody keeps telling us how we have to honor a good woman, cherish her, protect her from harm, give up our lives for her, until we can’t think any other way.”
    “It sounds like your education was a little excessive, but I don’t see how—”
    “Nobody ever tells us about the other women.”
    “Other women?”
    The ones who’ll cut your throat, or lie to you, or take everything you’ve got as quick as a man. They don’t teach you how to tell the good ones from the bad. All the women who hang out in saloons aren’t bad, and all the women who go to church on Sunday aren’t good. But nobody tells us that. They just keep telling us to worship at a woman’s feet until we can’t do anything else.
    “Of course the day comes when you meet your first other woman. And she takes advantage of everything you’ve been taught. It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby. Before you know it, you’re in so deep you don’t know which way is out. Half the time you wouldn’t get out if you could. Until the morning you wake up and find it’s all been a lie.
    “And do those good women help you then? Not a bit. They push you down farther. They tell you she was a bad woman and it was your own fault for putting yourself in her way. You deserved what you got. You’ll know better in the future. In fact, some of them are so helpful they want to keep you from having any contact with a good woman. Like that’s going to solve anything.”
    Trinity stopped abruptly, then took a long, slow breath as if to regain control of his stampeding emotions.
    “I wanted you to talk to me, but I didn’t know you were going to explode. I should have thrown a rock at you earlier.”
    “Sorry” Trinity replied more calmly. “You hit a sore spot.”
    “So I see.”
    Trinity helped her into the saddle.
    “You want to tell me about it?”
    “I don’t know why I mentioned it. It happened fifteen years ago.”
    “People can get hurt just as much at sixteen as any other age. Probably more,” Victoria added. “You have so little knowledge at that age. And no thick hide to dull the blows when they come.”
    “I certainly didn’t have one, but I guess that was my own fault. You don’t want to talk about my callow youth,” Trinity said, mounting up. He didn’t want to recall an incident which, after fifteen years, still had the power to make him feel stupid.
    “Girls want things that can do them just as much harm as the things boys want. I thought I wanted a husband who was handsome and rich and rebellious, but I only had to be married to