Anna stopped cold.
Dolf reloaded and pointed the rifle at Nicolas’s head.
Anna looked up into Dolf s glazed eyes. “Oh, God, no! Please, no …” She sobbed quietly.
“He’s a filthy savitch, Anna. I must kill him for you.”
“No, please, don’t kill him.” She looked up at him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I love him. I love him. I can’t lose him, I c-can’t!”
Dolf’s face changed. The sickening, delusional adoration left his eyes. His expression became scattered, puzzled. “No,” he whispered. “You can’t love him. I must save you from him.”
“Oh, Dolf, please,” Anna cried. “I don’t want to lose him.”
He raised the gun.
“Nicolas!” She sobbed, unable to see through her tears. The gun went off. She threw herself on the ground, crying deep, aching sobs that squeezed up through her tight throat and echoed in the tall, green pines that towered around them.
A hand fell on her shoulder. She recoiled. “Don’t touch me. Oh, God, don’t touch me!”
“Anna, love, it’s me. I’m here.”
Still crying, she pushed herself up and looked into the face of the man she loved. “Hold me, please hold me.”
His arms enfolded her. She smiled around her gulping sobs. Over his shoulder she saw Jake restraining Dolf, who had a bullet wound in his shoulder. He tied Dolf’s wrists behind him.
Nicolas held Anna tightly against him and turned to his brother. “The others?”
With the butt of his gun Jake coaxed a weakened Dolf to the ground. “Dead. Joke and Sky are damned good shots.”
Anna went weak with relief. Then, remembering his hand, she ripped off a length of her apron and gently pulled his wounded fingers toward her.
“Oh, darling.” She wrapped the cloth around his hand. “Does it hurt very much?”
“It’s just a scratch,” he answered, kissing her on the nose.
She straightened and glared at him. “Nicolas Gaspard,” she said, her mouth quivering with relief and anger, “I’m not leaving you. I won’t You can put me on the stage and send me away, but I’ll just come back.”
Nicolas grinned at her. “Then that would all be a foolish waste of time, wouldn’t it?”
Relief coursed through her. She dove back into his arms and buried her face against his chest.
Epilogue
Anna folded the letter from her mother and slipped it into the pocket of her apron. Unlike the cold answer to the letter Marcus had sent her mother, this one was filled with warm family news. Anna felt she could truly be happy now. Everyone was well.
She walked to the window and looked out at the rows and rows of dormant grapevines. On the lawn, Two Leaf had organized a game of kickball She watched the children play, remembering the day many months before when she’d gazed out at a similar scene from the tiny window of her cabin at the compound. She’d been a prisoner then, unhappy, confused, and frustrated. Now, she was happy, clear of thought and completely at peace. And still the children played kickball She shook her head and smiled. Some things changed so drastically, while other things remained the same.
A loud cheer pulled her gaze to the schoolhouse that was under construction across the lawn. The laborers, mostly Indians and Mexicans, and all friends of her husband’s, had just hoisted the roof into place. Black Joke shouted something, and they all guffawed before they ambled over and attacked the food that was loaded on the tables under the trees.
“Señora?”
Anna turned to Concetta. Things had gone smoothly ever since Gretchen had packed up her father and left for San Francisco.
“Everything almost ready for the celebration.” Concetta glared out at the men devouring her food and frowned. “Just look at them eat. They leave nothing for the guests.”
Anna put her arm around Concetta’s ample shoulders. “There’s enough food to feed the entire county, and we both know it.” She glanced down at Concetta’s soiled apron. “Isn’t it about time for you to change your clothes? Jake will be here soon.”
Concetta clucked her tongue. “Just think. My leetle Yakub the new Indian agent.”
Anna smiled. Jake’s acceptance of the post was just one of the many things they all had to celebrate.
The leaders of the vigilantes were dead. Pine Valley, with its hundreds of settlers, was a good place to live. The men who’d been swayed by Marcus’s bigoted thinking had settled back into normal routines. They weren’t standing in line to hire the Indians, but in time, Anna hoped, they’d come around. Nicolas worked tirelessly, training the adults, giving them back a small measure of the dignity that had been theirs for centuries. Anna hoped the prejudices would change. She and Nicolas both knew it wouldn’t happen overnight, but she was more indulgent than her brash, impatient husband.
With Jake busy as the new agent, Nicolas was in charge of the vineyard. The first thing he did was hire Sky to work as his foreman.
“Has something special been planned for the children?” Anna asked.
Concetta grinned. “Si. June has many games for them to play. What energy that girl has!” She waddled into the hallway and came back with a box. “Look at these. She and Shy Fawn sew dolls and animals as prizes for the children.”
Anna smiled, a warmth stealing through her as she looked at the beautifully stitched handmade dolls the women had made. One was wearing a brown ceremonial dress that looked very much like the one that had belonged to Nicolas’s mother—the one she’d spent weeks painstakingly repairing.
“They’re wonderful,” Anna said with a soft smile.
“Si, aren’t they?” Concetta returned the box to the hallway then shuffled over to the quilt that was pulled taut on the quilt rack next to the white marble fireplace. “You want I should move this for tonight?”
Anna joined her and ran her fingers over the delicate stitching that depicted the story of Hissik the Skunk. It still pleased her that she and Shy Fawn got along so well now. They worked on the quilts together many hours a day. Of course, Sky’s presence in Shy Fawn’s life had made a difference. They shared a well-built cabin on the vineyard grounds, and Cub had been heard calling Sky “Pa” more than once.
“No. I want everyone to see the quilt and know what kind of work Shy Fawn does. Let’s move the green chair and put it there.”
“What’s this talk about moving furniture?”
Warmth and love flooded Anna’s senses at the sound of her husband’s voice. It was a reflex, like breathing. Being loved by this man had given her more joy and happiness than she’d ever thought possible.
She turned. Nicolas walked toward her, carrying Summer piggy back. He looked at her. His eyes were warm, but as always, they held a deep, unreadable urgency that he never voiced. She knew he was still haunted by the ghosts of all of his people who had died at the hands of the vigilantes. His love for his people was a part of him. She’d understood that a long time ago.
“You weren’t going to move that chair, were you?”
His concern made Anna smile. Her pregnancy was in its earliest stages, but already Nicolas was overreacting to everything she did.
“I wouldn’t think of it, darling.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“Me, too!” Summer leaned over Nicolas’s shoulder and gave Anna a noisy kiss on the forehead.
“I take Summersita to the kitchen for a treat.” Concetta held out her arms for the child, and Summer tumbled into them.
After they’d left the room, Nicolas touched the racing pulse at Anna’s throat. “Is this for me?”
She gave him a lazy, sensual smile. “You know it is.”
He bent and kissed her. Her response to his touch never ceased to amaze her.
He left her for a moment and went to the drawer of the highboy where he pulled out a package. He held it out to her.
Anna frowned. “For me?”
He nodded, the light dancing in his eyes.
“What is it?”
He shrugged,
and she took the heavy package from him. “I can’t imagine …” She ripped the paper off and found a leatherbound book inside.
“Oh, Nicolas,” she said as she read the title. “How did you know?”
“Two Leaf dropped a few heavy hints.”
Anna ran her fingers over the fine leather cover. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She opened the inside cover and saw the inscription. Her eyes flew to his face. “He signed it to me. How … how did you do that?”
“I have connections, sweetheart.”
He took the tome from her and put it on the candle-stand. Then he pulled her against him and ran his hands down her back, following the gentle swell of her buttocks, then around to her flat stomach. “How are we today?”
“We’ve never been better.” She rested her face on his chest. She felt a movement against her stomach and smiled.
“How long before this affair starts?” He pulled her tighter.
A flush of longing stained her cheeks. “Hours,” she whispered.
“Well, how about a little game of stallion and mare?” he asked between kisses that became increasingly ardent.
A wonderful burst of warmth exploded inside her, but she gently pushed against him. “Cub’s asleep on our bed.”
Nicolas pulled away and glared down at her like a little boy about to have a tantrum. “Why isn’t he asleep in his own bed, at his own house?”
“Because,” she said, giving her husband a chaste peck on the cheek, “Sky and Shy Fawn are having a little game of their own.”
The front door opened, then, and Two Leaf clattered in, followed by several other boys.
Nicolas scowled at them, then turned his frown on his wife. “I feel like I married the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe.”
Anna couldn’t help smiling. “Just think how much fun she had filling that shoe.” She gave him a pat on the behind. “Are you up to it?”
The furrows in his forehead smoothed, and he chuckled. “I think I’ve already proved that, haven’t I?” He gave her a hard kiss on the mouth before they followed all the children into the kitchen.
Primary Bibliography
Du Bois, Cora, Wintu Ethnography, California, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1935
Handbook of North American Indians, #8—California, Smithsonian Institution, 1978
Heizer, Robert F., and Elsasser, Albert B., The Natural World of the California Indians, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1980
LaPena, Frank, and Bates, Craig D., Legends of the Yosemite Miwoks, Yosemite Natural History Association, Yosemite National Park, California, 1981
Margolin, Malcolm, The Way We Lived, Heyday Books, Berkeley, California, 1981
Miller, Joaquin, Unwritten History: Life Among the Modocs, Orion Press, Eugene, Oregon, 1972
Russell, Andy, Grizzly Country, Alfred A Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York, N.Y., 1985
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Secrets of a Midnight Moon--The Moon Trilogy--Book One Page 30
