“Looks like a breed to me,” another of the four muttered.
Elijah saw Alice stiffen at the term.
Dakota drew near and touched the man’s stirrup to get his attention. “Cattan rechid lossin?” he asked, hope lighting his black eyes and high-cheekboned face.
“Do you know what he’s trying to say?” Elijah asked hopefully.
“Yes, we think he may be of mixed race,” he added, glancing at the one who’d made the remark. “Do any of you know any of the common Indian tongues or know how to do Indian signing?”
The four exchanged glances. Then the golden-haired one said, “Afraid not, Reverend. Maybe you should turn him over to the army, let them figure it out. Good day to you, sir, ma’am.” Lifting his wide-brimmed hat in a gesture of polite dismissal, he nudged his horse into a trot, and the other three followed.
Alice stood staring after them. “Well, it didn’t hurt to ask, I suppose,” she said with a sigh, and they walked on to the Gilberts’ campsite.
Dakota downed as much fried chicken as either Gideon or Clint could have, along with half a dozen biscuits and a helping of green beans—much to the delight of the Gilberts, who chuckled as the boy smacked his lips and rubbed his tummy in obvious appreciation of something he’d probably never eaten before. His black eyes lit up as Mrs. Gilbert sliced an apple pie and plopped the first piece onto his tin plate.
“Does my heart good to see a boy enjoy his food like he’s doing, poor mite,” Cassie Gilbert commented with a fond look.
Dakota lost no time in devouring the pie, also. Then, apparently sated for the time being, he took great interest in Elijah’s pocket watch, which Elijah obligingly handed over for his inspection. The boy opened and closed it and dangled it by its chain like a pendulum. Then he spotted a gray tiger kitten sitting under the wheels of the Gilberts’ wagon and patted the grass, chuckling when the kitten ran out and pounced on his hand.
“That kitten seems to have adopted us,” Keith Gilbert commented, as the boy picked it up. “Hungry little thing, just like the boy. Likes our scraps.”
Satisfied that Dakota wasn’t paying attention, Alice told the older couple about their encounter with the Security Patrol and the phrase the boy had repeated, doing a creditable rendition of the incomprehensible words.
“No tellin’ what those words might mean,” Keith said. “Hopefully that Lars fellow will have some idea.”
His wife’s eyes followed the child as he chased the playful kitten around the wagon. “We never got to raise children of our own, you know,” she murmured. “Why, Keith, he’s just about the age our boy would’ve been...” Her eyes grew misty, her face wistful, and she looked down at her own plate.
“Had a baby boy, but he only lived a few days,” Keith Gilbert explained, his voice thick and gruff as he patted his wife’s plump hand. “We never knew why. Then...well, the Lord didn’t see fit to give us any others. ’Course, we married late in life...”
Elijah hadn’t known about the lost son. Everyone had suffered losses, somewhere in the course of their lives, it seemed. Some losses were greater than others. He’d lost a fiancée, while Gideon had lost both a beloved wife and a daughter. He turned to study Alice now, who was distracted by the antics of Dakota and the kitten. What had she lost? Why was the pretty auburn-haired miss still unmarried? She professed not to need anything but her independence, but had there been some man who’d loved her, whom she’d lost to death? Or had the man—impossible to imagine—preferred another girl?
She’d lost her peace of mind, at the very least, Elijah thought, remembering the troubled look that occasionally stole over her lovely features.
* * *
“That was a delicious lunch, Mrs. Gilbert,” Alice said. “Thank you for inviting all of us.”
“Well, you’re as welcome as can be, Alice dear. Like I said, it’s the least we could do after your skill saved my Keith,” Cassie said.
Alice smiled gently. “The Lord must not have thought your husband was done with his earthly tasks just yet.”
Keith Gilbert grinned. “I believe you’re right, Miss Alice.”
“Reverend... Alice...” Cassie began hesitantly, glancing at Dakota, who was now sitting with the kitten in his lap, twirling a bit of straw and laughing as the little gray tiger batted fiercely at it. “I was thinkin’ during the prayer service, and Keith and I discussed it on the way back here... I mean, I don’t know how you’d feel about it, and please say no if you’ve gotten attached, Alice, but...what would you think about Dakota stayin’ with us? Least till you find his mama and papa, that is,” she added in a rush.
Alice blinked in surprise and looked at Elijah, whose face mirrored the same astonishment. How did she feel about it? She’d been pleased and relieved that she hadn’t awoken to find Dakota gone this morning, but if she were honest with herself, she’d begun to worry about what would happen if his parents weren’t found. What would she do with Dakota while she made her nursing rounds in the evenings? How would she look after the boy on the day of the Land Rush? And even supposing that problem could be solved, what sort of life would that be for Dakota, living on the homestead with a couple of women—her mother and herself?
And what if her past caught up with her and she had to run?
Elijah was silent, seemingly waiting on her to answer.
“I... Are you sure you want to do this, Mrs. Gilbert?” Alice asked. “I mean, we have no assurance that Dakota won’t leave, now that he’s not starving, especially when we can’t communicate with him and know where he came from and how he came to be separated from his people.”
“If he stays around white folks, he’ll pick up English, I reckon,” Keith Gilbert said. “He’s obviously a smart boy.”
“It might be the best solution, if he’s willing to stay with them,” Elijah said carefully.
Alice glanced at him. “Yes...if he’s willing. If his people did abandon him, though, I don’t want him to think I’m rejecting him, too. Could we...wait until Lars is back, to see if he can talk to Dakota and discover how he came to be in Boomer Town, stealing scraps? He can find out if Dakota would like to stay with the Gilberts then, too.”
“That makes sense—” Mrs. Gilbert began, only to be interrupted when Elijah suddenly jumped up and began waving his arms at a man riding past the campsite at a trot. Tied on the back of the horse, Alice saw, was the carcass of a deer.
The big blond man’s head turned as he heard his name called, and he halted his horse. Lars!
Elijah dashed over to meet him. “You couldn’t have happened by at a better time, my friend,” Elijah said, shaking his hand. “How fortunate that your tent happens to be right down the row from the Gilberts’. We’re hoping you can clear up a mystery.”
Lars smiled and dismounted. “Always happy to help you, my preacher friend. What’s happened?” Then he spotted Dakota, who had seen his arrival and stood up to peer at him curiously. “Who’s this?”
“This is Dakota,” Alice said, coming forward with the boy.
“Come have a seat, Lars, and have some cold lemonade while you talk to the boy,” Cassie Gilbert invited, beckoning him.
“Don’t mind if I do, as you Americans say.”
Once he was ensconced on a hay bale with the promised lemonade, Alice quickly caught Lars up on events. Dakota inched closer, staring with obvious fascination at the Indian beadwork hatband on the hat Lars had doffed.
“So you see, Lars,” Alice concluded, “we were hoping you could tell us if Dakota is Cheyenne or not, and find out how he got here.”
Lars turned to the boy. “Tsitsistas?” he asked, pointing directly at Dakota.
“Ótsêhámóe! Tsitsistas!” the boy cried, nodding his head excitedly and pointing to his chest.
“Yes, he is Cheyenne,” Lars confirmed—unnecessarily, because everyone c
ould see the truth written on the boy’s face. “Though he’s of a different band than the one I stayed with. Their land is southwest of here. And he is eight years old.”
Eight, not seven, as she had thought, but she’d been close. Fear and hunger had a way of making a child look younger than he actually was.
Then Lars turned back to the boy and spoke to him in rapid-fire Cheyenne while the rest of them watched, excited that they would soon know the boy’s story.
Lars lost his smile as the exchange went on. Dakota’s face took on a tenseness, and his eyes looked dull with sadness. At one point, Alice thought she heard the boy utter that phrase again, “Cattan rechid lossin.” Surely soon they would know what it meant.
At last, Lars turned back to the rest of them and reported, “Dakota’s mother is dead. She died when he was a baby, and he was raised by an aunt. His father was an officer in the U.S. Cavalry, and he abandoned the baby who was born of the union between himself and Dakota’s mother when Dakota was born. His name was Captain Richard Lawson.”
“Cattan rechid lossin—Captain Richard Lawson!” Alice breathed. “Of course! He’s been trying to tell us that name ever since we found him. That’s why he wanted to talk to the Security Patrol privates—he saw their uniforms. His people must have told him how the soldiers dressed, or perhaps this Lawson left some clothing behind.”
“You said his name was Richard Lawson. Is he dead, too?” Elijah asked Lars.
Lars spoke to Dakota again.
A puzzled expression crossed over the boy’s face. He shrugged, then uttered another spate of Cheyenne to Lars.
“He doesn’t know,” Lars translated. “His aunt told him only the man’s name, and when Dakota heard that there were soldiers here guarding the borders of the territory, he ran away from the tribe to come and find his father.”
“So he wasn’t abandoned,” Alice said. It was a relief to hear, but what were they to do about that? Help him find his father, who hadn’t wanted him as a baby, or help him return to his home and his people?
Lars spoke to the boy again.
“No, he wasn’t thrown out of the band, but he says he always felt as if he wasn’t fully accepted because of his white blood. He wants to see if his father will let him stay with him now that he is almost grown to manhood.”
Alice’s heart ached for the boy. How hard it must have been, growing up a little different from the other boys in his village, abandoned by his own father, who’d apparently used his mother and then cast her aside. Her own childhood, in comparison, had been so full of love from both her parents.
“I could make inquiries of the army officers stationed along the border,” Elijah said. “Surely someone will know if Lawson is still in the territory. I suppose he must be given the chance to step up and accept responsibility for the boy.”
From his voice, Alice could tell Elijah didn’t think that was likely any more than she did.
“Please tell the boy I’ll go to the army officers at the border and inquire tomorrow,” Elijah said to Lars.
Dakota looked pleased when Lars relayed the news. And warily hopeful. Alice was all too afraid that anything Elijah was likely to find out would only crush that fragile hope. If Richard Lawson hadn’t wanted his infant mixed-blood son, why would he want him now? She felt fiercely protective of this child, and resentful of the man who’d apparently carelessly taken his pleasure and left when the situation became difficult.
More proof that men are not to be trusted.
Well, she shouldn’t make assumptions, she supposed. They would have to wait for that answer.
“We have another question,” she said to Lars. “I kept the boy last night, but the Gilberts have offered to take Dakota in, at least until his situation is made clear. Could you ask Dakota if that’s all right with him?”
She could see Cassie and Keith Gilbert hold their breaths as the question was put to the child through Lars, but they needn’t have. The boy’s mercurial smile lit his face.
“Dakota says ‘it is well,’” Lars reported. “He likes the Gilberts and is fond of Mrs. Gilbert’s cooking, too. He says he hopes there will be more fried chicken.”
Cassie Gilbert laughed. “You tell him, just as soon as Keith buys another at the butcher’s tent!” Both Gilberts looked happy enough to burst.
Alice was happy for the boy, of course, but she couldn’t help feeling wistful, too. Even for such a brief time, she had felt good taking care of someone besides herself.
As if he read her mind, Dakota came to her then, and placed his hand softly on her cheek. “Néá’eše, Alss.”
It was as clear a thank-you as she’d ever received. As she watched, her eyes stinging with tears, Dakota went to Elijah, too, laid a hand on his shoulder and said the same thing. Maybe independence wasn’t to be prized as much as she had thought.
Chapter Ten
“They look so happy,” Alice murmured later, as she cast a backward glance at the Gilberts and Dakota. Lars had already departed.
She looked a little melancholy, Elijah thought. Had Dakota filled a void in her life, even for that short period of time? This was a woman who should have children, and a husband, he thought, though he knew better than to say so. She’d already made her feelings clear on that score.
“The Lord is so good to us,” he said, determined to share the thankfulness that had welled up in him when he’d first spotted Lars and even more when their friend was able to break down the language barrier between themselves and Dakota. Perhaps it would distract her from her sadness. “Just think—He sent Lars along right when we needed him as a translator, and He provided the Gilberts to watch over the boy, which will be a godsend for Dakota as much as for Keith and Cassie.”
“Yes....” Alice murmured.
Her face was in profile to him as they walked along, but he could see her expression was still pensive. “‘All things work for good,’ it says in Romans, and we have to believe He will work out Dakota’s circumstances for good, too.”
“I do,” she said, a little too politely and lifelessly.
“There I go again, throwing Scripture verses at someone, just like a preacher.”
That made her lips curve upward. “You are a preacher.”
“Yes, but I try to avoid stepping over the line into sanctimoniousness.”
“You do avoid it,” she assured him. “Elijah, could I ride out with you to see the army officers tomorrow? Just for something to do,” she added. “Before Dakota came along, I’d planned to ride Cheyenne some more....”
The thought that she would be with him made him happy, even though he supposed her request might be motivated more from a sense of being at loose ends now that she wouldn’t be responsible for Dakota than a desire for his own company.
“Of course,” he said. “Tomorrow being Saturday, there’s no chapel service, so we can leave in the morning while it’s still cool.” It had grown steadily hotter as April wore on, so perhaps they could find out what they needed to know and return before the temperature climbed too high.
Her expression brightened somewhat. “I’ll make us breakfast before we go.”
* * *
Alice spent the rest of the day quietly. Before chapel this morning, she’d poured water over dried beans, and now she added vegetables she’d purchased at the greengrocer’s tent and set the pot to simmering over a low fire. Vegetable soup would make a nourishing light dinner—if she ever got hungry after the delicious noontime feast with the Gilberts. At the moment, it didn’t seem possible.
She had a lot to think about while the soup simmered. The past twenty-four hours had been eventful, to say the least—she and Elijah had found a starving Indian boy; fed and bathed him; found him a new, if temporary, home; and through an amazing combination of events, found out why he had come.
Elijah was
right. The Lord had been good to them in sending Lars right when He did, so that they could leave Dakota with the Gilberts with a clear conscience, knowing Dakota would not feel rejected by the change. And through Lars’s translation, they now had direction as to where to seek information about Dakota’s father. She was fairly certain their inquiry would be fruitless. The U.S. Army was made up of thousands of soldiers—what was the likelihood that he’d still be in Oklahoma Territory and that any of those guarding the border would know Captain Richard Lawson? They could but try, she supposed, in the hopes of finding some answers for Dakota.
But if they weren’t able to find Lawson, or Lawson had no interest in the boy, were they honor bound to try to send word to Dakota’s band of Cheyenne, in case they wanted to take the boy back? Lars could take the message, she supposed, either before or after the Land Rush, for he would be able to explain in their own tongue what had happened. She did not like to think of family members—hadn’t Lars said that Dakota had been raised by an aunt?—worrying over the boy’s disappearance, fearing he was dead.
What Alice wasn’t so certain about were her feelings regarding Elijah. Yes, she’d indicated to him that her independence was her most prized possession. And he’d professed that he had felt called by God to remain celibate to serve Him. Neither one of them was looking to marry.
So if that was true, why was there such a definite pull between them? She couldn’t ignore it, any more than she could ignore the fact of gravity. After all, she’d invited herself along on his errand tomorrow like a shameless hussy! Now she regretted having done so, even if she could claim it was because of her interest in Dakota.
It made her protestations of craving independence pretty unconvincing, didn’t it? No one would believe she meant it, not when the preacher was single just as she was, and they spent so much time together. Yet she couldn’t seem to help herself. The request to accompany him had just tumbled out of her mouth seemingly by its own volition.
She should write a letter to her mother, Alice thought. That had always had a way of sorting out her thoughts when she’d been at Bellevue for her nurses’ training, and afterward, when she took on the daily challenge of being a nurse in the busy wards of the hospital.
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