Abbie’s eyes teared. She remembered when Zeke had ended her little brother’s life to stop the boy’s suffering, knowing the child couldn’t possibly live. She could imagine the condition in which he had found the woman, and her chest ached as she walked LeeAnn back toward the house.
“You go inside and take a bath, LeeAnn, and change and rest. You can have whatever you want to eat. Just ask the cook. Enjoy the company of your brothers and Ellen.”
“What about Margaret?” the girl asked with concern.
“Now that your father is home, he’ll go after her and bring her home. I’m sure of it.” She banished the jealousy that streaked through her at the realization that Zeke would have to see Anna Gale. It didn’t matter. The important thing was to get Margaret home.
“You won’t go, will you, Mother? Don’t go away! I want to be with you for a while. Don’t go with Father. He can get her himself.”
She wanted desperately to go with Zeke, to be with him now for a while, to help him face whatever he must in Denver. But how could she leave LeeAnn? He would have to go alone. She wondered if the family would ever be together again, ever be normal. “I won’t go, LeeAnn,” she told her daughter.
As LeeAnn walked up the steps to rejoin her sister and her brothers, Abbie looked at Edwin. “He was badly wounded. Will you help LeeAnn find her way around? Give her a room and have someone help her prepare a bath?”
“I’ll watch after her. You’d better go to Zeke now.” Their eyes held for a moment and he smiled sadly. “Go.” He walked closer and helped her onto her mount, and she rode off toward Lillian’s grave and the lone figure who knelt beside it.
Within a few feet of the grave, she halted her horse. Zeke was shirtless, his buckskin jacket on the ground beside him. She knew why, knew what she would find when she walked closer, for he had lost a daughter. His long, shiny, black hair blew loosely in the wind, and the tiny bell he wore in his hair ornament was tinkling softly.
“She should be buried on our own land … beside Lance,” he said gruffly, his back to her.
She studied his muscular shoulders, the scars on his back from the whipping white men had given him many years ago. It seemed she had to strive for breath. “It was very cold … beginning to blizzard. It would have been a dangerous trip. I didn’t want to risk one of the other children getting sick. If it were possible, I’d have taken her there.”
He turned to look at her, quickly scanning the magnificent thoroughbred she rode, noticing she sat sidesaddle and wore an expensive yellow dress. Obviously it had been given her by Sir Edwin Tynes. Her hair was drawn up at the sides with fancy combs but hung long at her back. There was a reddish glow to it in the sunlight. She was beautiful, more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Apparently the Tynes estate had been a good place for her. But she was thinner, paler. He could imagine the hell she had been through.
Their eyes held for several seconds, saying many things without words. “It was … pneumonia,” she said finally in a shaky voice. Would he ever cease to overwhelm her with his virility and animal-like grace?
Blood trickled from a self-inflicted wound on his chest. She was not surprised or appalled. She had expected it. It was the Cheyenne way of mourning.
“We did … everything we could,” she continued. “We even sent for a doctor from Denver … but she couldn’t hang on. She was never strong.” She struggled to stay in control. “We picked this place because it was high and shaded.”
“We?” There was an odd, cold sadness to his voice. She realized how she must look to him. He must think she had easily adapted to this new life and was enjoying it. When he returned she had been out riding with Edwin Tynes. She wore a fancy dress and a cape, and was perched on one of Sir Tynes’s grand horses.
“Don’t look at me that way, Zeke Monroe! You know me better!” she said, suddenly angry. “I’ve been slowly dying day by day without you, and if you don’t hold me quickly, I’ll faint—right off this horse!”
He rose and walked to her, his dark eyes steady but bloodshot, his face tired—so tired. She noticed that he limped. “I’ll get blood on that pretty dress.”
“I should care at a moment like this.”
He reached up and she let go of the reins and bent toward him. In the next moment she was in his arms. She broke into wretched sobbing, a mixture of renewed mourning over Lillian and utter relief at having her husband and daughter back. He held her tightly, the feel of her against him making him wonder how he would ever tell her she was better off without him. Yet he felt that he should leave her at this place where there was comfort and safety and beauty. His heart was torn between what he knew was best for her, and his own need. This was where she should be. He could see it, just by the way she looked now. She was all elegance and beauty. It was difficult to remember her wearing a tunic and sleeping beside him in a tipi. Yet doing what was best for her would mean that Sir Edwin Tynes eventually would make her his own, and the thought of any man touching her that way filled him with rage. He held her tightly, hoping there had been nothing between her and Tynes, knowing there had not been. His Abbie girl was incapable of it. If she were not the way she was, it would be easier to turn away from her.
“It’s all right, Abbie,” he told her, running a hand through her hair. “Things will work out somehow. I just… poor little Lillian. If I just could have seen her again.”
She felt him tremble, knew he was weeping, and they remained in an embrace for several minutes. Then he slowly released her, kissing the top of her head. She sensed something different now, and fear gripped her heart when she finally met his eyes. He was somehow removed from her.
“Why did you leave the way you did, Zeke? When I woke up you were gone.”
“You needed to rest. I had to get going and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
She pulled back, running her hands over the hard muscles of his arms and shoulders. “No. It was like … like you were saying that was the last time you would share my bed.”
She choked back a sob and he grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away. “There’s no time to talk about any of that now. I have to go after Margaret.”
She hung her head. She needed him to hold her—they had been apart so long—yet he didn’t seem to want to hold her. “Do you blame me … for her running away?”
He frowned. God how he loved her! How he wanted to hold her again! How was he going to be able to do what was best for her? She was his life’s blood. “Blame you? Why would I blame you?” He took her arm and helped her sit down, sitting down beside her and crossing his legs Indian style. The fringes of his buckskin pants danced in the wind. Everything about him was raw and rugged, a part of the wind, from the dancing fringes of his buckskins to his streaming hair and the soft tinkling bell. When he had held her she had breathed deeply of the familiar scent of leather and fresh air. “Tell me what happened, Abbie,” he said.
She wiped at her eyes and turned to grasp his arm, bending and kissing his shoulder. “First I want to know how badly you were wounded. LeeAnn said the Comanches stabbed your leg.”
He picked up a stick and traced it along the grass. A spring wind had already dried off the hill where they sat. “The Comanches have a strange way of making a person pay for information. I’ll be all right. It’s healing. I burned out the infection myself.”
She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder. “Dear God! I wish I had been with you. What about LeeAnn? How was she when you found her?”
He sighed. “She was wearing a Comanche tunic. She’d been treated roughly—rudely—but she wasn’t raped. I’m sure of it. She’ll have some pretty horrible things to forget, though. She’s a smart, tough little girl. She cooperated, knew it was best to do so if she wanted to survive. I think she’ll be all right in time. But she hates the Indians. Even I frighten her. I’ve not been much good to this family lately, have I?”
“That’s foolish talk.”
They looked at each other, and it seemed to her th
at he wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t, and she realized with surprise that he hadn’t kissed her yet. He turned away then. “Tell me about Margaret.”
She took a handkerchief from her cape again, untying the wrap and laying it beside her. Then she reached around and dabbed the handkerchief along the cut on his chest, worried by his strange, stubborn mood. It was as though she had just met him and didn’t really know him. How she wished she could say something to make him smile. But she had only bad news for him.
“She became interested in a young man here on the estate—a ranch hand named Sam Temple,” Abbie told him softly. “He was very good to her, or at least put on a good show of it. They became fast friends. Sam is young, handsome, nice enough—or so I thought. There was something about him I didn’t trust, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.” She sighed deeply, refolding the handkerchief and dabbing at a few spots that still bled. The rest of the cut was beginning to scab. So many scars, inside and out! “I love you, Zeke,” she said, suddenly feeling an urgent need to say it, suddenly aware of how much he was hurting.
He turned and met his eyes again. How handsome he was! It seemed aging had only made him more so. His skills had not lost their sharpness, his strength and hard-rock muscle were still intact. But how much suffering did he bear without telling her? Surely he was often in pain, but he never showed it. Again came the fear. Again he did not kiss her. The look on his face at that moment reminded her of the way he used to look at her when she was fifteen and crazy in love with him, when he’d argued that they should not marry because he was part Indian and it could be bad for her. He had been so stubborn then, so hard to convince that she loved him and didn’t care that he was Indian, didn’t care about anything but being his woman. Was he thinking now, after all these years, that they should not be together?
“I love you too,” he answered quietly. “More than my own life. That’s why I can’t stand being responsible for your suffering.”
“But with you at my side it doesn’t matter.”
He turned away again and stood up, walking away from her. “What happened with Margaret? Did this Sam Temple hurt her?”
She looked at the bloody handkerchief. She had lost him again. Why was he so elusive now, harder to hold than ever? “I was so … so upset over LeeAnn, and Lillian was so sick after you left. Then she died. I guess with all those things happening, I didn’t notice the changes Margaret was going through. She said she didn’t want to bother me with her problems. By the time I found out, the damage was done.”
“He slept with her and then he left her—because she’s Indian and that’s all Indian women are good for, right?”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Yes! But how did you know?”
He smiled, a sneering smile. “Come on, Abbie. I grew up in Tennessee among whites, remember? White men murdered my first wife and our son, just because Ellen was white and she had slept with a half-breed! I know how they think!” He drew out his knife and threw it hard. It stuck in the cottonwood tree with a thud. “I’d like to get my hands on Sam Temple!” He turned to face her. “You have any idea where Margaret went?”
She wrung the handkerchief she held in her hands. “That’s the hard part.” She swallowed. “She was … so hurt, Zeke. He was her first man, and he had promised to marry her. She was so sure of him. And then he just… left. He told her Indian women were great for sleeping with, but white men didn’t marry them. It made her hate herself, Zeke. She scratched half the skin off one hand, trying to scratch off the color, she told me. She was so … bitter. So full of hate. She got a wild look to her. I couldn’t talk to her. It was as though she wasn’t even Margaret anymore. She had a wicked look, like Dancing Moon had sometimes. And then she sneaked off in the night—even took some of our money. She paid a ranch hand to take her to Pueblo, paid with money and … and her body.”
He threw his head back and clenched his fists. “Damn!” he swore. “God damn all of it! How much is a man supposed to take!”
Abbie’s body jerked as she choked down a sob. “She told me before she left that she couldn’t live on a reservation but no white man would want her for a wife… so she’d have to seek other options.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “And then a few days ago I got a letter … from … from Anna Gale.”
His eyes hardened. “She went to Denver? My daughter went to Denver?”
She nodded, breaking into harder tears. “Edwin had men search … all over Pueblo, but they found no sign of her, nor did they turn up a trace of where she might have gone. Then I got the letter. I was getting ready to go there myself before you came … to try to talk her into coming home. We had a terrible snowstorm right after the letter came, and I wasn’t able to go. But Anna said she’d keep an eye on her, that whoever comes should see her first. She said she’d help … talk to Margaret… because she knows what the girl is going through and because she can tell her how unhappy she will be in the end if she lives a life of… of—”
“Prostitution,” he said quietly, the word almost a groan.
She cried harder. “Oh, God, Zeke, I feel so … responsible! I should have seen what was happening. I might have been able to say something… to stop what was happening, but Lillian—poor, sick Lillian …”
He was suddenly there, sitting down and facing her, pulling her into his arms and holding her tightly. “Stop it, Abbie. How can a woman who has just lost a child to death be aware of everything happening around her?” He rocked her gently. “Lillian was sick and dying, and for all you knew LeeAnn was dead too, or suffering. You can’t blame yourself. If anyone is to blame, it’s me.”
She rested her head against his shoulder, glorying in being able to share the burden, taking strength from him and giving it back to him. But his last statement alarmed her, and she tilted her head back to meet his eyes. “How on earth are you to blame, Zeke? You’ve been a good father to her.”
The slight sneer came back when he smiled at that remark. “That’s just it, Abbie girl. I am her father. I gave her that dark skin and those Indian looks that have her so confused. I don’t doubt the rest of the children have equal doubts. I should have listened long ago when a voice told me you belonged to your own kind. I had no right to drag you into this life, and now it’s affecting the children. Our little Lillian is dead because she wasn’t strong enough to bear this land; LeeAnn was taken from us by Comanches and her head is full of nightmares now; Wolf’s Blood is riding with the Sioux; and Margaret is selling herself to strangers just because a white man has told her she’s worthless.” The words stuck in his throat like stale bread, and he gently pulled away from her and stood up to pace. “I should wring her neck! Yet when I think about why she’s doing it, my heart bleeds for her, and I want to hold her and ask her to forgive me—ask all of you to forgive me.”
Abbie frowned and got to her feet. “Forgive you? What for?”
He stepped back from her. “You know what for. For allowing myself to weaken twenty years ago and marry you, just because I loved you so damned much and wanted you so bad!”
Her heart pounded at the words, as he walked to the tree and yanked out his knife. What was he telling her? He turned to face her, shoving the knife into its sheath. “The worst part is I still want you.” His eyes roved her body, seeing clearly what she could have been. “I will go and get Margaret. I will bring her home if I have to drag her by the hair of the head! Then we will make some decisions. I will make sure you are taken care of.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about? We’ll go home, Zeke.”
“Home! We have no home! Face it, Abbie. It’s all gone to hell! Even Tall Grass Woman is dead!”
He hated himself immediately for saying it. She paled and stepped back. “But you said—”
“I found her at Sand Creek, Abbie,” he said in a more subdued voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you now … not this way.”
She turned around, staring out over the open plains where once the Cheyenne migra
ted on summer hunts. Tall Grass Woman! Her good friend, so jolly and happy and loving. She felt Zeke’s strong hands on her shoulders then.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
She turned to look up at him. “Why do you say we have no home? Why do you talk as though there is no future for us?”
He studied the lovely face he loved so much. “Look at you,” he told her, stepping back slightly. “You’re dressed the way you should be dressed. You fit this place. This is the kind of life you should be leading. I don’t want the second half of your life to be as hard as the first half has been. Tynes loves you. Don’t deny it. I knew it when I left. I can’t imagine that he hasn’t told you so by now.”
Her eyes widened. “I don’t give a damn if every man in Colorado loves me! I love Zeke Monroe. Do you honestly think I could just forget you and go on with a new life and a different man after twenty years with you? After all we have been through together? After struggling to build that ranch, after agreeing to live out here with you—even among the Cheyenne those first years—after bearing seven children by your seed? How can you possibly talk this way? Do you want me to die, inch by inch, without you?”
He grasped her arm. “You won’t die. You have everything here. I want you to have peace and comfort and happiness, Abbie. I want you to have an easy life for your remaining years.”
“It would be no fife at all, and you well know it! I don’t give a damn about comfort and an easy life! I don’t feel any differently about you now than I did twenty years ago. You’re still my Zeke. I can’t survive without you.”
He squeezed her arms. “That’s the whole point!” he said urgently. “Look at the death all around us; then look at me! I won’t live to be an old man, Abbie. Can’t you see it? I’ve been damned lucky up to now, but violence and death stalk me constantly. You have a chance for safety and comfort here. You will be secure and cared for, and I won’t have to worry about what the hell you’ll do if something happens to me.”
Climb the Highest Mountain Page 28
