Nathan petted the dog then, rubbing its soft fur. "My puppy," he said with a delighted grin.
Lettie watched the boy and dog, wanting to remember the sweet scene, but her attention was interrupted when she saw riders approaching from the other side of the valley. Even from this distance she could see that their horses as well as their half-naked bodies were painted, and that they wore feathers in their hair. Indians!
Luke culled another pregnant mare from the herd, riding a sturdy gelded gray-and-white spotted Appaloosa he had favored since claiming the horses the outlaws had left behind. He called the horse Paint, because its gray coat was splattered and spotted with white, as though someone had spilled paint on it. He figured that whoever had originally owned the animal must surely have been bitterly angry over the loss when it was stolen, just as angry as he would be now if someone in turn tried to steal Paint or any other horses from him. He had grown as attached to the Appaloosa as he had been to Red, and he still mourned Red's loss to the thieving Indian who had stolen him.
He gave out a whistle and waved his hat, chasing the mare into the corral with eight others. He thought what a bountiful spring this was going to be, twelve foals, and another child of his own on the way. Life was good. He patted his own horse's neck and closed the gate to the corral.
It was then he heard the singing arrow. It whirred past him near his head and landed with a thud in the trunk of a nearby pine tree. He whirled Paint around to see eight or ten Indian warriors riding into the valley, shouting and whooping their war cries, out to claim some free horseflesh for themselves, at his expense. More arrows narrowly missed him as he pulled his rifle from its boot and rode Paint hard up a small hill to a shed he had built to store feed. Quickly he dismounted and tied Paint, then took a position behind a few bales of hay. The Indians were still coming, and an arrow landed in one of the hay bales right in front of him. He glanced up the hill at the house to see Lettie pick up Nathan and go running inside. He turned back and took aim then, realizing he had something much more precious than his horses to protect. Will had warned him that if Indians came to steal a few horses, he should let them have them rather than try to fight them, but he had two children and a pregnant wife to think about. He couldn't just sit here and let the oncoming savages get by him and possibly steal off with Lettie and the children. He leveled his rifle and took aim, waiting for them to get close enough that he was sure he could not miss.
All but one of them stopped then near the edge of the herd of horses. The one who kept coming looked as though he was built a little smaller than the others, maybe someone quite a bit younger. So be it. If he was old enough to steal horses, he was old enough to take the risks involved. If he let them get away with this the first time, they would keep coming back until he had nothing left. For all he knew this single warrior was some kind of decoy. They seemed to be playing a game, as though to tempt him, dare him. The lone warrior halted, daringly raised a bow, as though asking Luke to try to shoot him. He drew back the bow and let an arrow fly. It whirred through the air and stuck in the shed behind which Luke stood. The young man then maneuvered roughly ten of Luke's finest horses from the herd, laughing and whooping the whole time.
Luke kept his rifle level. He was one against many. Jim had gone into Billings to see about hiring more help. Had these Indians been watching him all along? Did they know he was here alone? Maybe they thought that because of that, he would behave like a coward. Maybe they thought he had run to the shed just to hide while they had their pick of his finest animals. He dared not allow any of them to get too confident or get too close. He kept the show-off warrior in his sight, then squeezed the trigger. The warrior jerked his pony to a stop, sat stiffly a moment, then crumpled and slid off his horse.
Luke felt his heart pounding as the rest of the warriors grew very silent.
"Luke!" Lettie screamed from the house.
"Stay inside!" he yelled back, keeping his eyes on the Indians. They seemed to be discussing something, and finally one of the biggest among them raised a lance with a white cloth tied to it, then rode toward the Indian man Luke had shot. He straddled a horse that looked familiar. "Red!" Luke muttered then. Was it the notorious Half Nose who rode his own stolen horse? He was too far away to get a good look at him. The man wore only a loincloth and a bone breastplate. He kept holding the lance in the air as though to signify he meant no harm, that Luke should not shoot.
Luke waited breathlessly. The warrior reached the fallen body, dismounted, and bent over it. After a moment he leaned back and let out a cry so heartwrenching that even Luke was touched. "Jesus," he whispered. Who the hell had he shot? Will had told him the one called Half Nose had a teenage son. The man picked up the body and laid it over the spotted pony that had carried it into the valley, then mounted Red. He picked up the pony's leather reins and sat staring up the hill at where Luke remained crouched behind the hay. He yelled something in the Sioux tongue, but Luke did not understand, except that the anguish in the man's voice told him he had killed someone very special. The man turned and rode off then with the other warriors.
Luke slowly rose, watching after them, glad Jim was due back tomorrow with extra men. They just might be needed in more ways than one. If the warrior who had just paid him a visit was the one called Half Nose, he would surely be back. "Damn," he muttered. His gut reaction had been to protect Lettie and the children, but now he worried he had just made things worse for all of them.
CHAPTER 9
Lettie took another loaf of bread from the oven, weary from so much baking and cooking, yet glad to do it for the extra two men Jim had brought back with him as hired help. Not only would it be nice to have other human beings to talk to in the coming winter, but the extra men kept her busy... too busy to get upset over the fact that Luke should have been back two days ago from his hunting trip. Ever since he'd killed one of the Indians who had tried to steal the horses, she had been sick with worry that while he was out alone he would in turn be killed. He had left five days ago to hunt for meat that he would smoke and store for the winter. He had said he would be back in three days, and she decided that if he didn't show up by tonight, she would send all the help out to find him, even if it meant she had to stay here alone.
She set the bread on the table to cool. The pleasant smell of freshly baked bread in her cozy new house usually cheered her, but today she hardly noticed. Every Sunday she fed the help a fancy meal and baked extra bread and pies for them, but the rest of the week they had to feed themselves. They also scrubbed their own clothes, something which the two extra men, who had always lived as single men, seemed adept at doing, although not often enough as far as she was concerned. Zeb Crandal and Horace Little had worked as scouts, hunters, trappers, and ranch hands all their lives. Horace had never been married, but Zeb had. His wife was dead now, his full-grown son off to California. The two men were older than Jim, she guessed roughly forty, and although they were congenial and were respectful of Luke and her, they were rather crude in their ways, men who had never lived a genteel life.
Neither she nor Luke minded, as long as they earned their keep, which both men did to full satisfaction. The bunkhouse was completed, another storage shed built, and the windmill was finished. Now she could draw buckets of water from a well. The best part was that there was always someone to keep watch at night, although how much help that would be against an entire Indian war party was doubtful.
She was trying to be strong about this, stay busy, master this fear of reprisal from the one called Half Nose, if indeed he was the one who had paid them a visit two weeks ago. There had been no sign of Indians since, and she had told Luke and convinced herself, too, that they could not stop living or give up out of fear of what might happen. Life went on. Now there were extra men to help out in return for a roof over their heads and food from the family garden and her own ovens.
She was proud of what a fine garden she had grown last summer. Already she had another garden started, even bigger than
last year's. She had never had a vegetable garden of her own before then, and she felt very accomplished that her root cellar still contained potatoes and carrots from last fall, as well as a basket of seed potatoes from last year that she would use to plant a new potato field this spring. Horace had already dug the trenches for her.
Two years they had been in Montana already. Two long, bitter winters. Nathan turned four just two days ago, little Katie was eight months. She thought she'd heard once that while a woman was nursing, she couldn't get pregnant again. How wrong that had proved to be! Apparently, when it came to a woman's body, nothing was guaranteed. She had barely recuperated from Katie's birth before realizing she was pregnant again. At first she thought it was just taking time for her body to get regulated again, as she had not had a period for three months after Nathan was born. But then she felt the life in her belly and realized it was growing again. Now she wondered if she would always get pregnant so easily. Luke was thrilled to be having another child, but very worried about her health. He had sworn they would simply have to stay away from each other for several months after this one, to allow her time to regain her health fully. She had to smile at the thought. How could they possibly refrain from making love, when it was so enjoyable for them both, and when the winters were so long and dark and lonely?
She pinched the edges around the soft, raw crust of a pie, deciding that if and when God intended for her to have a child, she would have it, and that was that. Life with Luke, in spite of the dangers and hardships, had brought her more happiness than she ever dreamed she would have after the agony of her rape and the terrible loneliness that had followed; and she was glad that in turn, she and Nathan and all the other children she would have could help fill the emptiness Luke had known before meeting her.
She glanced over at Nathan who was piling up some blocks Luke had made for him. Katie crawled over to where he played and promptly knocked over the little tower. Nathan pouted and scolded her, then began showing her how to stack them up again. Lettie's attention was drawn from their play when Pup began barking and Jim knocked on the front door.
"I think he's comin', Mrs. Fontaine."
Lettie hurried over to the door and opened it. Jim pointed to the east, along the road that led to Billings. Pup, who seemed to gain a pound a day, bounded from the porch, out toward the road, and back again, still barking excitedly. "Horace rode out to greet him," Jim told her. "Paint was comin' in slow, and it looks like Luke was kind of slumped over, like he's hurt."
"Oh, dear God," Lettie muttered, stepping farther out onto the porch. She could barely make out horse and rider, but it did indeed look as though Luke might be hurt. She waited anxiously. It seemed to take forever for Horace to reach Luke, and she thought how in this land nothing was as close as it seemed. Whatever landmark a person picked, it took twice as long to reach it as one would estimate. Finally Horace reached him. He stopped for a moment, then dismounted and climbed up onto Paint behind Luke. "Jim, he is hurt. Horace is getting on Paint in order to hang on to Luke. Go out there and see if he needs more help!"
Her chest tightened as she waited and watched helplessly. Jim ran to the bunkhouse and mounted his own horse, yelling out to Zeb Crandal to get back to the house. Zeb was mending a fence several hundred yards down in the valley and was able to hear Jim only because the strong wind carried Jim's voice.
The wind. The constant wind. She remembered how it almost drove her crazy that first winter. Now she was so used to it that she hardly noticed it anymore, except on days like today, when the sight of her wounded husband reminded her how quickly one could get hurt and die out here. The land was so beautiful, and at the same time so cruel. A hundred things could happen to a man out hunting alone—flash floods in spring, drought in summer, ravaging cold in winter, wild animals... Indians. Had Luke been attacked by the Sioux? Was he dying? Was he dead already?
She reached down and petted Pup, who jumped up on her, tail wagging. He was already proving to be a good watchdog, guarded the children fiercely, slept on the front porch every night like a sentinel. "He'll be all right, Pup," she said absently, more to assure herself than the dog. She turned and went inside, ordering Nathan to take all his blocks into the bedroom he shared with Katie and to keep the baby in that room out from under people's feet.
"What's a matter, Mommy?" he asked.
"Daddy might be hurt. You be a big boy and help Mommy by staying out of the way."
The boy's lips puckered and his eyes teared as he hurriedly picked up a handful of the blocks and carried them into his room. Lettie did not have time to comfort him. She hurried into the bedroom and pulled back the bedclothes, then grabbed some clean towels from the washroom and set them on a table near the bed. She brought a wash pan from the bathing room and set it, too, near the bed, then checked to be sure the kettle of hot water sitting on the stove was full. She threw some more wood under the burner and said a quick prayer that whatever was wrong with Luke, it wasn't life threatening.
Zeb came riding up to the house then on his sturdy black mare. He was a short, hefty man who always wore buckskins and seldom shaved, a hard worker who spoke little. "What's wrong, ma'am?"
"It's Luke. It looks like he's hurt. Jim and Horace rode out to help him."
Zeb dismounted and tied his horse, then walked to the other side of the garden at the east side of the house. The three riders disappeared temporarily behind a stand of pine trees, then came into view again. Jim was leading Horace's horse while Horace remained on Paint hanging on to Luke. Finally after several minutes that seemed like hours to Lettie, the men made it to the gate at the east entrance to the drive leading to the main house. Lettie ran partway out to greet them, then struggled not to gasp when she saw Luke. The May weather was warm enough to go without a coat, but the wool jacket Luke had worn was still on him, although in shreds. Every stitch of clothing was soaked with blood, and more blood had crusted on the side of his face. He looked white as the snow that lingered on the surrounding mountaintops.
His eyelids drooped when he looked at Lettie. "I'm... all right," he muttered. "...grizzly." His eyes closed then, and he started to slide from Horace's hold.
"Oh, my God," Lettie groaned, trying to help catch him.
"Don't you be strainin' yourself," Horace told her. The slim man was having trouble holding up the much bigger Luke, and Jim quickly dismounted to help. Zeb grabbed
Luke about the waist and Horace dismounted then. The three men carried Luke up the hill and into the house, laying him on the bed as Lettie instructed them to do. She quickly poured hot water into a the dishpan beside the bed and asked Jim to keep an eye on the children, while Horace and Zeb helped get off Luke's gun belt, boots, pants, and shirt.
For a moment Lettie froze, just staring at the deep claw marks on her husband's body and one side of his face. He had lost a lot of blood, and her first thought was that if the wounds didn't kill him, infection might. There was still no doctor in Billings that they could send for. There was no one but herself and these two men to help, and they could only act on instinct and what little they knew about what to do for such wounds.
"You all right, ma'am?" Zeb asked. "We can tend to him if you want."
"No," she answered quickly. "I'll do it." She struggled against an urge to scream and weep. "I'll just need you to stay close by, help me turn him over after I get the front of him washed."
Both men saw the terror in her eyes. "In all my years, I've known the Indians to use moss to help against infection, ma'am," Horace spoke up. "It can work pretty good. Once we get him cleaned up, I'll ride up and down the streams, check out the north side of some of the pine trees and such, see if I can find some. We can use it to pack against the wounds."
Lettie swallowed, thinking how just minutes ago she had been so full of resolve, baking bread and pies, sure they could survive here after all. She had been worried about an Indian attack, but it was a grizzly that had nearly taken her husband from her. Luke had just written his father t
o tell him about the beautiful place where he had settled, that he had a wife and two children and another on the way. He was so happy and proud to be able to tell his father how well he was doing.
She wet a towel and laid it gently against the wounds on his chest to soften the dried blood so she could wash it away. His eyes fluttered open for a moment, and he smiled at her. "I still have... a lot to learn... about living out here... don't I?" he tried to joke. He grimaced with pain then.
"We'll learn together, and we'll make it, Luke," she assured him.
"Meat. I left... a nice buck... and a dead bear... up by Turtle Creek." He looked at Horace. "Take Zeb... try to salvage some... of the meat... before the wolves get it all. We'll need it... this winter."
Horace nodded. "We'll see if we can find it. Just don't you worry about it, Luke."
Luke closed his eyes again. "So much... to do. I can't... lay here too long."
"You'll lie here as long as it takes for you to be completely well," Lettie scolded, needing desperately to cry. She couldn't now. She had to be strong. She suspected Luke had no idea just how badly he was wounded. She gently washed away some of the blood, and already she could see signs of infection, a deep red in the skin along the line of the cuts.
Dear God, don't let him die, she prayed inwardly. She turned to rinse the towel, shivering at the sight of blood swirling in the water as she wrung it out... Luke's blood. He had shed blood in the confrontation with the outlaws. Now he was shedding blood again, all for this land he was bent on calling his own.
Lettie lay listening to her husband's deep, steady breathing. Silent tears slipped down the sides of her face, tears of joy as she inwardly thanked God for giving Luke's life back to him. After eight days of terrible suffering, his fever was finally gone, and he seemed to be healing; but for the rest of his life he would carry scars from the grizzly attack.
Wildest Dreams Page 12
