High Plains Bride

by Jenna Kernan

  The courage to step across the hall came easily. The nerve to knock on his door took more time to summon, but she did it. Her second knock was more forceful and still garnered no reply.

  At last she conceded that he was out, and so she waited with her door cracked to hear his approach. Not until after her usual time to retire did she recognize the sound of a heavy tread and then the metal scrape of a key against a lock. Rousing herself from her doze, she opened the door and drew a breath to call him. She hesitated.

  He stooped and examined the keyhole and then the key before trying again to couple the two, missing badly.

  She stiffened with suspicion. One deep breath confirmed her initial assessment. He smelled of stale beer and cigar smoke.

  Drunk.

  Just as Samuel had been more and more often in the final years. Seeing Thomas fall prey to the same demon forced a wretched cry from her lips.

  He turned to peer back at her, still stooped as he gave her a lopsided grin.

  “There’s my girl.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  He straightened. “Guilty.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow. You promised.”

  “Did I? Well, you should know I can’t be trusted to keep a promise any better than you.”

  That arrow struck straight to her heart, but he paused only to draw breath before continuing.

  “But anything to keep my best gal happy.”

  He hadn’t called her that since the Sunday before his leaving. The fact that he did so now, without any inkling of the burning sadness the endearment raised in her, shocked her near speechless.

  “Don’t you call me that.”

  He just grinned.

  “Go to bed, Thomas.”

  “All righty.” He turned and then seemed to remember something because he faced her again. He wobbled and tipped into the wall hard enough that she feared he would break through the plaster. “Whoops.”

  “Honestly.” She snatched the key from his hand and inserted it with more vigor than necessary into the hole.

  A click and twist brought the door open. She stepped back to wave him in and he staggered forward, reaching the bed and falling facedown. The frame groaned from the frontal assault but did not buckle. His legs dangled to the floor. He looked like a boy about to get a good paddling. Likely he deserved it more than most.

  She stood in the doorway, hands thrust on hips, staring daggers at him. He was beyond her scorn, so she sighed and let the anger clarify to heartache.

  “Just like Samuel,” she whispered.

  Tom lay motionless.

  “Is that the only way you men know how to solve your troubles?” she asked, but received no reply.

  “That or punching things,” she muttered. Lifting her voice again, she called to him. “I should leave you there.”

  A door opened and a woman peered out. Sarah stood frozen at her regard. The woman lifted an eyebrow before retreating and Sarah could breathe once more. She crept across the carpeted hall and retrieved the lantern from her room. Silent as a thief she returned, pausing only to remove Thomas’s key from the door. Such carelessness invited robbers, and he carried all their funds. Perhaps she would speak to him about that. If he was going to act with such foolish disregard, then she would carry them.

  Samuel had given her charge of all the money, or what little had been left after bankruptcy. A terrible possibility struck her like a blow. The money!

  She shook his shoulder until he groaned and then responded.

  “Celeste, leave off, I’m resting.”

  Sarah straightened, shock starching her spine. He’d called her by another woman’s name. This indignity kept her at bay a moment as she tried to stanch her outrage. Finally, her fears drove her back and she shook his shoulders until he bounced on the mattress.

  “Wake up, Thomas. It’s Sarah.”

  He rolled. “Sarah?”

  His bloodshot eyes stared up in wonderment as if she were some apparition come to seek him out.

  “Thomas, where were you? Were you gambling?”

  “I leave the window unlocked every night just hoping.”

  “What? Thomas, the money. Do you still have it?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got money now. More than we’ll ever need, if only you’d come back to me.”

  Thomas struggled to an upright position with the aid of a firm grip on the foot rail.

  “Oh, I forgot,” he slumped as the look of hope drained out of him like sand from a bag. “You belong to him now.” He lifted his watery gaze to her again. “Oh, Sarah. How I miss you.”

  “Tom, I’m here. Do you have the money to find Lucie?”

  “Lucie?” He swayed.

  “Where is it?”

  He made a grab for his boot and missed, then toppled back, this time lying sideways across the bed.

  Sarah closed the chamber door, sealing them in. Unease crept upon her. She was again in a compromising position. If anyone saw her leaving, she could hardly explain why she was here alone at night in his bedchamber. But she was not here for bed sport. Her intentions were equally wrong.

  She knew she had no right to search him but that she would do it just the same. Her hand slid into his front pockets, finding a drawstring purse. She ripped at the strings and counted the coins. The total reached less than fourteen dollars. She hurled the coins upon the coverlet.

  “Oh, Tom. Damn you for failing me twice.”

  She felt the familiar burning in her eyes, but forced back the tears as she gathered his coins and placed his purse on the bedside table before turning to go. His symphonic snore stopped her. Biting back her disappointment, she lifted one foot and tugged at his boot. With some effort she released him from the leather. The second boot took more elbow grease. When his foot cleared the rim, a billfold flopped onto the floor.

  Her gaze pinned it like a cat targeting an escaping mouse. In a moment she snatched it up. It was stuffed with bills. Hundreds of dollars fanned out before her. Relief washed away her fear.

  She righted the boots, tucking the toes beneath the bed, and then laid the billfold beside the purse. Why did she always believe the worst of this man when all he had ever done was love her and believe his older brother when Samuel told him she had been untrue?

  She should have followed her heart instead of listening to the whining drone of her mother’s relentless insistence that she marry, she and Lucie would have been free when word came that Thomas lived. It hadn’t been his brother’s lies that had separated them all these years, but her weakness.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas.”

  He lay insensible, groaning as she lifted his legs onto the bed. Remembering that Samuel often drank to the point of illness, she feared to leave him. Thinking of Samuel this way stirred her misery. She remembered when the drinking had changed from moments of celebration to a daily affair. She now realized that his altered habits had coincided with his betrayal of his younger brother. When she had discovered that Thomas lived, Samuel’s drinking grew worse again.

  Samuel had been there when she’d heard the news from Harris. When she woke from her faint, Samuel knelt beside her. She didn’t see him at first, didn’t see anything past the joy.

  “He’s alive,” she whispered.

  He gave her a harsh shake.

  “He’s forsaken you. And you are my wife.”

  She hunched, recalling the pain of the instant when she understood that her lover lived and that he had abandoned her. He was as lost to her as if he were dead, for he walked the earth and she could not go to him.

  Her gaze met her husband’s, and she knew all her efforts to love Samuel were in vain. In that terrible moment she knew he saw the truth—that if Thomas had come for her, she would have left him.

  So she had wept, while he had grown sullen. Now she knew that Samuel had known all along that Thomas was alive and never told her. He had kept his secrets locked in his heart, imprisoning her.

  Sarah stared down at Thomas, who was lost in the obl
ivion of strong drink. Her best beau. Gently, she rocked him onto his side and bolstered him with a pillow. She paused to check her work and he rolled upon his back again. Again, she set him on his side. This time she was forced to hold him in place. This would not do.

  If the drink made him so insensible as to render him unconscious, surely he endangered himself.

  She crept across the floor and locked them in his room. Then she returned to his side.

  “Tom?”

  He made no reply but continued his light snore. She swept a lock of hair from his forehead and stooped to drop a kiss upon his brow.

  She placed the key beside his things and rounded the bed. To unfasten her shoes, she sat beside him, working the stubborn buttons through the leather eyelets without benefit of a hook. She removed nothing else before snuffing the lamp.

  Then, for the second time in her life, she lay in his bed.

  Chapter Nine

  A shove from the women sent Lucie stumbling into the large lodge, where she fell to her knees before the gathering of men. Lucie trembled, certain that they meant to burn her at the stake. Eagle Dancer presented her to a chief called Fast Bear.

  Her mother had kept her from much of the talk of Indians, but on the trail, when the sun had set and the wolves howled, the men and women spoke of little else. From within the thin walls of canvas she had listened to every grim description of evil deeds. Now they rose in her mind to haunt her.

  A warrior named Yellow Tomahawk produced a pipe and she was largely forgotten as they smoked and talked. The men shared venison stew as her stomach grumbled a loud complaint. More terrible than the fear and the hunger was her unabated thirst. She could no longer swallow.

  At last many of the men departed and two women entered. The older one grabbed a braid of Lucie’s hair as the younger tugged at her clothing, making exclamations of wonder. Eagle Dancer laid out the things he had bartered for. She gradually understood that she was obtained with the blankets, while the horse was traded for the items before her.

  She recognized her mother’s blue Ohio star quilt, two cast-iron skillets and a copper kettle. There was also a butcher knife and the Wagner’s Reader from their wagon. Lucie had not had a lesson in the three and a half months of her captivity. Her gaze wandered to the quilt as heartache hollowed her insides. How she missed sleeping snug and safe beneath that quilt. But it would not protect her now. Nothing would.

  Chases Storms lifted the book and laid it open upon her lap. “Talk words.”

  She did, reading to them in her own language as the chief, now wrapped in her mother’s quilt, watched with a solemn expression. The younger woman clapped her hands.

  Fast Bear held out a twig and spoke to Chases Storms, who offered her the stick. She held it without understanding until he swept a place clear in the sand.

  “Make stick words.”

  She wrote. Lucie Marie West, 1864.

  The two men exchanged a smile. They then handed her a letter and told her to read it. She unfolded the page, and she began in English.

  The men waited until she reached the signature of Lt. John Gaffney, 5th Cavalry.

  “What does it say?” asked Eagle Dancer.

  Lucie searched her limited vocabulary. “It say blue pony boy missing his goods.” She could not think of the word for money or pay and thought they had none. “He ask for…” She used her hands in a game of charades to count imaginary money.

  Eagle Dancer nodded. Fast Bear scowled fiercely, scooped up the book and departed without another word.

  Lucie did not know why she felt like a traitor. The communication was valueless. She had revealed nothing of importance. As she followed Eagle Dancer out of the lodge, she could not shake the feeling she had made some mistake. He told her to wait beside a strange teepee. In a few moments he brought a woman.

  Lucie’s heart leapt into frantic beating, for one look at the light brown hair and hazel eyes told her she met a captive. Lucie was so overcome with joy, she hugged the young woman. They sat together as Lucie shot questions at her like gunfire.

  The men moved off, sitting together to gamble. Eagle Dancer glanced toward Lucie on occasion.

  “What is your name?” asked Lucie.

  “I’m Alice French from Decatur, Illinois. And you?”

  “Lucie West. I’m from Illinois, too. Kaskaskia.”

  They hugged again, like long-lost family. Alice pulled back first.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  “A few months. The Sioux attacked our wagons and killed the men. I think my mother got away. At least I did not see her killed or captured, nor did I see her scalp lock with the others.”

  Alice’s head dropped and her words simmered with rage. “They killed my parents and little brother, when they took me. We were homesteaders in Kansas.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Seven years.”

  Lucie gasped. So long?

  “Now Fast Bear means to marry me.” Her venomous expression vanished and her eyes twinkled. “I’d sooner die than lie with a heathen beast. I may be leaving soon.” She produced a pencil and the Wagner’s reader. “Write your name here and if I reach the fort I will give it to them as proof you are alive.”

  The creeping unease grew stronger, at seeing the book Fast Bear had held as he’d stormed out of the lodge. After a moment’s hesitation, she snatched up the pencil as her heart fluttered with hope for the first time since her arrival. In a moment she wrote her name. Alice wrote hers beneath it.

  “I’ve told them a lie.” Alice shifted her gaze toward the men. “If they believe me, they may bring me to the fort.”

  “What lie?”

  “They brought me a letter to read. I told them it said there was a large reward for me. That any Indian who brought me safely to the fort would receive five boxes of ammunition and three rifles. Fast Bear wants more arms. I think he will take me himself.”

  Lucie’s jaw dropped. Words failed her as she realized what she had done.

  “Alice, did the letter say that a soldier was missing with the payroll?”

  Alice smiled. “Yes, how did you know?”

  The answer to her own question dawned upon her a moment later. She clutched fistfuls of her own hair and howled.

  “No! You did not read it. You did not.”

  Lucie rested a hand upon Alice’s arm to calm her. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  Alice pulled tufts of hair from her head as she wept. “I won’t marry him. I’ll run.”

  “No, you must not. Help will find us. My mother is searching.”

  Her eyes pinned her. “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Alice threw up her hands. “You don’t even know if she’s alive. They are not coming.” Her shoulders hunched and a bleak expression masked her features as she stared at the ground. “Seven years—do you understand me? Seven, and you are the first white I have spoken to, except for a boy who does not remember his language or his people. The rest are half-breed savages. You are the first and you betray me.” She threw herself facedown in the dirt and wept.

  A shadow fell across Alice’s back. Lucie turned to see Fast Bear standing over his slave. He hauled her to her feet and dragged her off as Alice sobbed and struggled.

  Lucie’s mouth remained open as she watched Fast Bear slap Alice and then pull her out of sight.

  “You will catch a fly in that mouth,” said Eagle Dancer.

  Lucie scowled at him. She wished to accuse him of trickery, but he was her only friend. Well, not friend, but protector. He gave her food and did not allow the children to throw sticks at her.

  She feared to anger him, but needed to know what fate awaited her. “Why you buy me—Alice?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why?” Ice filled her stomach as he smiled down at her sitting at his feet like his pet hound.

  He squatted and lifted one of her braids. “I want you.”

  Lucie drew back. “I am too y
oung.”

  How she hoped he would believe it. She knew two girls of fourteen already married. She did not fancy being one of them, especially if her husband was to be this man.

  “I will wait.”

  Lucie faced the same fate as Alice, unless her mother came. She prayed again to be rescued as she considered escape.

  Three days later Eagle Dancer came to the lodge of his mother, where Lucie now lived, and told them that soldiers were coming. The village had to move.

  Lucie was put to work lifting and carrying under the direction of Yellow Bird. This woman, at least, never raised a stick of firewood to thump her across the shoulders, but she was as watchful as a hawk.

  In a mere matter of hours, thousands of teepees were struck. Babies were bundled into leather bags and hung like sacks of grain from saddle pommels. Yellow Bird tied two tent poles to her horse, leaving them to drag behind the black and white pinto. Here she stacked the buffalo hide used as shelter along with all her household belongings. She ordered Lucie up onto the horse and loaded her down with bags and bundles.

  The caravan set out. At midday they forded a river, the men riding across on horseback, unencumbered by anything but weapons, while the women threw themselves into the water like cattle and swam across.

  Lucie squeezed her legs about her mount, praying she would not tumble into the water, as she could not swim. Behind them came the sound of war, shouts and gunfire.

  She glanced behind her, longing for a glimpse of army blue. Yellow Bird shouted.

  “Do not look back. Your place is here now.”

  The fury in the woman’s voice frightened Lucie into compliance.

  The woman riding beside Yellow Bird shouted at Lucie as well. “If we see them, I will kill you first. Do not think to escape so easily. Pray they do not come for you, for they will find you dead.”

  The afternoon wore on. Dust blanketed Lucie’s skin as the column of Sioux moved north. When once she prayed for delivery by the army, now she feared their victory.

  Yellow Bird explained that the Sioux killed their captives before surrendering them. Should the army win this battle, Lucie would die.

  The sound of a galloping horse brought her about. Fast Bear charged toward her, pulling up on the rein too late. His horse bumped hers, unseating her. She landed hard and the items she carried spilled about her on the ground. Fast Bear tugged again on his rein and his horse reared up. Lucie fell back, narrowly escaping the flailing hooves.