Summer Moon

by Jill Marie Landis

  “Perhaps . . . perhaps he was afraid that you would worry about him. That if you knew, you would fear something like this happening. Perhaps . . . he was afraid you would stop writing to him.” Sofia was growing more and more uncomfortable.

  Just then, the hall echoed with sound as one of the men who had carried Reed upstairs appeared in the doorway. At least six feet and heavy-set, the older cowhand was sunbaked a nut brown. The hands that held his battered, stained hat were gnarled and scarred. His legs were bowed, his boots creased and dusty. He looked to be in his sixties. What was left of the grizzled hair at his temples stuck out in every direction.

  His eyes were full of concern. Kate had watched this rough man and a younger cowhand lift and cradle Reed in their arms and carry him upstairs as gently as if he were a babe.

  Now the man worried the hat in his hands, bobbed his head at Kate, and addressed Sofia.

  “The preacher’s here, ma’am. I tol’ him to wait in the parlor with the rest of them that’s gathered. Folks been pullin’ in since you came up. Near t’ ever’body who could get here on such short notice is come to bid Reed Senior good-bye.”

  “Gracias, Scrappy.” Sofia turned to Kate. “Señora, this is Scrappy Parks, the wrangler. He has been here for years.” Sofia paused as if making a decision, and then she said, “Scrappy, this is . . . Katherine Whittington . . . Benton. Reed Junior’s wife.”

  Kate expected a polite nod of acknowledgment, perhaps an offer of a handshake, but not wide-eyed, slack-jawed astonishment.

  Travel-weary, feeling out of place, and growing more uncertain by the moment, Kate forced a smile. She nodded at the old cowhand and murmured a polite greeting.

  “You go on ahead. I will be right down,” Sofia said, dismissing him.

  But Scrappy Parks made no move to leave. “There’s one more thing, ma’am. When Reed Junior rode in, he didn’t come alone.” His gaze flicked over to Kate, then back to Sofia. “He left a youngin’ tied to the hitchin’ post out front.”

  Sofia’s hand went to her heart. “Qué?”

  Kate thought surely she had misunderstood. “A child? Tied up outside?”

  Scrappy bobbed his head. “Comanch’. Damn near tried to bite my hand off when I put him in a stall in the horse barn.”

  Kate glanced over her shoulder. Reed had not stirred.

  She recognized the word Comanch’, a shortened version of Comanche. She had heard it often enough during the stagecoach ride to Lone Star.

  “You hear about the latest Comanch’ attack?”

  “Worse than before the war.”

  “You’d think the government would help.”

  “Who needs them? Hell, this is Texas. We take care of our own.”

  She watched Sofia struggle in silent debate. Her eyes were shadowed, her rich, olive complexion pale. The woman was torn, but her first responsibility was to the mourners gathering downstairs, to see the man she had loved and served so long laid to rest.

  Kate knew little of men, but she did know children, and she knew them well. How different could an Indian child be? As much as she hated to leave Reed now, Sofia had assured her that he would sleep for hours. Her decision was a simple one after all.

  “You are needed downstairs, Sofia. If you think Reed will be all right alone, I’ll go and see to the boy,” she offered.

  Scrappy shook his head. “Ma’am, excuse me, but I don’t think—”

  “I was a teacher at a girls’ orphanage for eleven years, Mr. Parks. I think I can manage one little boy.”

  Scrappy waited for Sophia to respond.

  She appeared distracted, and rightly so. “I think Miss . . . Katherine should see if there is anything she can do for the boy.” Once he left them, Sofia turned to Kate. “Reed Junior will sleep until the laudanum wears off. After you tend to the child, please join us in the parlor.” Then she seemed to draw on some inner strength, as if she had just come to terms with something that had been plaguing her. “As Reed Junior’s wife, you should be at the burial, but I am not certain this is the time to announce to everyone that you are married. A marriage is an occasion for a grand celebration. This is a day to mourn. May I simply introduce you as a guest of the family from the East?”

  The simple reaffirmation of her marital status helped ease Kate’s mind. Sofia was right. This was a day to mourn Reed Senior. With her husband wounded, given all the turmoil, why not wait to announce the marriage?

  She quickly agreed. After Sofia started downstairs, she gently closed the door to Reed’s room and went to find Scrappy in the barn.

  Pain ripped through Reed’s shoulder like a white-hot poker, ate at his flesh and his nerves, hot and hard, cutting through the cobwebs in his mind. His pulse pounded in his ears.

  He heard voices, smooth and warm. Women’s voices. Not what he was used to in his world of men and war. Blood and guns.

  There had been tenderness and caring in the hands that touched and ministered to him. The kind of touch he barely remembered.

  There had been so little gentility in his life for so very long now that he had forgotten the feel of it, but certainly not all the pain that memories of it would bring.

  Remembrance came to him in swift flashes of light, sound and fury. A bullet had torn through the fleshy part of his shoulder, barely missing bone. Another grazed his temple.

  Horses had screamed as they went down around him. Women and children cried as they ran, terrified, seeking shelter where there was none.

  There was nowhere to hide on the open plain. Nowhere to run to escape death. It rode over them. Trampled them down.

  Pain splintered through him again. He tried to cry out, to move and relieve the stabbing ache, but those gentle women had done something to him, something that failed to obliterate the pain but numbed his mind, kept him from thinking clearly, from moving. Even from crying out.

  Mercifully it made him oblivious to the deeper wound he had received in that last battle. A wound not of the flesh but of the soul.

  His blissfully befuddled, drugged mind would not let him contemplate that at all.

  5

  “You locked him in like an animal?”

  Kate stared at Scrappy Parks, wondering what kind of man could treat a child so abominably. Inside the cavernous horse barn surrounded by the sharp scents of horse manure and straw and the musty smell of cool damp earth, all was still.

  Not a sound issued from behind the high, locked door of the stall where a boy had been imprisoned.

  As they passed through the first floor of the house on the way out, she noticed the parlor crowded with people from all walks of life. Even a few children were present. The lane as well as the yard fronting the house was now filled with carriages and buckboards of all kinds. Benton House echoed with whispered condolences.

  But in the barn, Scrappy was silent and frowning. Kate folded her arms.

  “Unlock the door, Mr. Parks. Please.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think you know—”

  She shook her head. “I know exactly what I am doing. That boy is no doubt frightened out of his wits. Let’s not waste time arguing over this. Just open the door.”

  Edgy and tired, Kate had been through enough today. She was not about to back down now.

  Scrappy mumbled something under his breath and threw the iron bolt.

  When Kate first stepped into the stall, it took her a moment to make out in the far corner the small figure cowering in the shadows. He was small, perhaps no older than seven, eight at the most, seated with his back pressed to the wall, one leg extended, his arms crossed protectively over the tattered front of a faded red flannel shirt. His legs were filthy and bare. He wore a loincloth made of some kind of tanned hide and moccasins of the same material which were fancifully beaded with a decorative horse pattern, and very worn. His tangled, matted dark hair hung well past his shoulders and was littered with straw.

  Tearstains streaked his dirty cheeks. In a flash of bravado, he sat up and glared at Kate. Taking stoc
k of his condition, she was stunned by his thinness.

  Despite an occasional scowl, he looked very small and very, very frightened.

  She opened her arms wide, held her hands out in front of him to show she meant no harm.

  “I’m Kate,” she said softly as she slowly inched toward him. Straw rustled with every step. “I am going to help you.”

  She heard Scrappy snort and ignored him.

  The child did not move a muscle. She continued to step closer, assuring him that she only wanted to help.

  She felt confident and sure now, more self-assured than she had felt since she stepped into Benton House. When she was within arm’s length of the boy, she bent closer.

  Without a change of expression or hint of warning, he lunged at her, thin fingers curved like talons, teeth bared like a wild animal’s.

  She jumped back and crashed into Scrappy. The boy let out a yowl of pain and fell back into the corner. Despite his pain, he continued to spit and snarl.

  “I told you so,” Snappy barked. He sidestepped Kate with a gun in his hand.

  “Put that away!” She was frightened half to death by the sight of the firearm. “Don’t you dare shoot that boy.”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot him, for God’s sake. I’m just gonna scare the piss and vinegar outta him.”

  Shaken, Kate refused to give up. Somewhere inside the pitiful little creature cowering in the corner of the stall beat the heart of a child.

  “He’s only a little boy. Just because he’s an Indian doesn’t mean you have to mistreat him.”

  “He’s no Indian. He’s white, turned Comanch’. That’s even worse.”

  Kate swung around. “What are you saying?”

  Scrappy nodded toward the boy. “I didn’t notice at first either, but just look at them eyes.”

  She did look. The boy’s eyes were as blue as the Texas sky. Brilliant blue and filled with pain.

  “It doesn’t matter to me what he is. He needs our help. He’s badly hurt,” she said.

  “I figure his leg or his ankle’s broke.”

  “I’m certain Reed would object to this treatment. I want him moved to the house immediately.”

  “Hell, lady, Reed tied him to the hitching post and Miss Sofia—”

  “Sofia has her hands full.” Kate could see that nothing she said would make a difference to this man until she established her authority. She forced herself to sound calm and controlled. “Sofia is the housekeeper here. I am Reed’s wife. I want the boy moved.”

  “How come I ain’t heard about no wife of Reed Junior’s before today?” He pronounced Reed’s name as if it was all one word— Reedjunah.

  “Perhaps Reed’s father didn’t feel it was important for you to know. Now, are you going to help me? Or do I have to go inside and disrupt a man’s wake in order to get some help?”

  Mumbling under his breath, Scrappy holstered his gun. During their exchange, the boy had not moved. He continued to watch them warily. When Kate tried talking to him again, he spat at her, thrashing and kicking out with his good leg.

  “Got any fine ideas about how you think we ought to do this, teacher?” The cowhand did not try to hide his disdain.

  Afraid the boy might further injure himself if they wrestled with him, Kate conceded momentary defeat.

  “Maybe you’re right, Mr. Parks. For the time being he is safe and out of the elements. Bring him some water and food and perhaps he will calm down. That leg needs to be set if it’s broken or he’ll be crippled for life.”

  “No sense in wasting any food on him.”

  Kate had suffered all of the man’s ignorant intolerance that she could possibly bear. She whirled on him.

  “How can you be so insensitive? Would you starve him?”

  Scrappy tipped his hat up with his thumb until it rode the back of his crown.

  “He won’t eat. They been known to starve themselves to death when they’re locked up.”

  She arched a brow. “They?”

  “Comanches that are locked up. Even captives that have been with ’em too long starve themselves to death when they’re taken back.” He stared at the boy long and hard and then shook his head in resignation. “Sometimes the ones that’s turned Comanch’ suffer worst of all.”

  Wary of both white strangers, Fast Pony watched the woman carefully, trying to understand her. He already knew what was in the old man’s heart. The old one would kill him if he had a chance.

  But the woman was different. There was no hatred in her eyes, only curiosity and pity.

  And flashes of anger.

  The boy could see that she was mad at the old man. The angry sound of her strange white words and the way she stood, as stiff and straight as a lance, told him as much.

  It took all his strength to keep from crying in front of them, all his courage not to rant and scream and tear at his hair. He had not seen any sign of his mother when the Rangers herded them together like animals.

  Did she lie in the burnt-out shell of their tepee? Was she somewhere out in the open where the ravens and coyote and wolves would pick at her bones? Would he ever see his mother again?

  He had to be brave, for he knew his father, Many Horses, would surely come for him soon. Many Horses was a great warrior. His father would track and kill the other Rangers and find the tall, cold-eyed one who had brought him here.

  Until then, Fast Pony would watch and wait and find a way to escape.

  6

  “. . . and so we commit Reed Benton Senior’s body to the grave.”

  Kate stood among the throng of mourners assembled in a tight knot on a windswept knoll a half mile from the ranch house and watched as the plain pine coffin was lowered into a grave carved out of Texas soil.

  The site was surrounded by people who had known Reed Benton Senior as friend, employer, or both. Shoulder to shoulder, rough, weather-beaten cowhands of all ages, prosperous ranchers, dirt-poor farmers and settlers, a butcher, a dry goods store owner—all of them stood equaled by loss as they bade the founder of Lone Star farewell.

  The wind whipped long, wayward strands of hair around Kate’s face, wrapped her skirt against her thighs, revealed the high tops of her black leather shoes. Desperate to return to her husband’s bedside, she thought about slipping away, but Sofia had again assured her before the burial that Reed would remain in a laudanum-induced sleep for quite some time.

  There was so much she wanted to talk to him about, so much she wanted him to explain.

  Why hadn’t he told her that he was a Ranger? And what of the strange child? Why had he left the boy tied to the hitching post? Why had Reed brought him home?

  She felt a tentative touch just above her elbow, which shook her out of her reverie. Turning, she found herself looking into the eyes of Reverend Preston Marshall.

  The preacher was near her own age, in his late twenties or early thirties, of medium height and build with light brown hair, pewter eyes, and strong, handsomely cut features.

  Except for the white band around his throat, he was dressed entirely in black. The empty left sleeve of his jacket was folded under and pinned in place.

  “Excuse me for interrupting your solitude, ma’am.” He tipped his hat politely. “I thought I might walk back to the house with you, Miss Whittington.” The discreet tone of his soft, Southern drawl soothed her.

  Glancing around, Kate realized that while her thoughts had centered on Reed, the ceremony had ended and the crowd had already begun to disperse. Three cowhands lingered a polite distance away, shovels in hand, ready to close the grave. While a handful of folks tarried, speaking in hushed tones, others walked back down the hill toward the house.

  “It’s finally over.” Kate caught herself. “I’m sorry. I . . . I’m anxious to get back.”

  She glanced down the hill. Benton House was separated from the ranch outbuildings, solitary, empty, and alone.

  “I usually try to keep these things short, but Reed Senior cut quite a public figure around here. M
any of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.”

  “How so, Reverend Marshall?”

  He began to walk beside her as they headed downhill. Used to elderly priests relegated to saying Mass at the orphanage, Kate was surprised by the minister’s youth and striking good looks.

  “Reed Senior founded the ranch over thirty years ago and established the town of Lone Star smack in the center of it, hoping the ranch hands would marry and settle here. If they had a stake in the place, he figured that they would stay put through lean years and the threat of Comanche and Kiowa attacks.

  “He started with a saloon, branched out to a dry goods store, brought in a butcher, and offered a free cabin to any man who wanted to marry and move in a family. When there were enough families to warrant it, he built a school. Two years ago, he built a church. That’s why I came to Lone Star.”

  Her mind went to the child locked in the barn. The white child “gone Comanch’.”

  “It appears he was able to hold the Comanche back, at least from Lone Star.” She took care walking. The ground was hard and uneven, pocked with prairie-dog mounds and tufts of buffalo grass.

  “Things went fairly well—after his first few years.” He paused to help her steer clear of a hole. “He gave the Indians occasional heads of beef when they needed it, and he was able to show plenty of firepower. There have been outlying raids along the borders of the ranch over the years, but it appears Lone Star’s been left pretty much alone.”

  He continued to defy both her perception and firsthand knowledge of a man of God. “Do you have a family, Reverend?”

  He paused, looked out across the open plain to where the sun was low in the afternoon sky. Clouds above the horizon had already begun to blush.

  “I fought for the Confederacy. Even had a fiancée before the war started, but afterward—” He shrugged the shoulder above his empty sleeve. “—Well, let’s just say things didn’t work out. My only living relative is my maiden aunt. I brought her to Texas with me. If you get into town, I know Aunt Martha would love to have you to tea. She makes a cream cake that’s the talk of the town.”