When Passion Calls

by Cassie Edwards

  Breathless, Melanie stopped alongside Shane. They stared at each other, then at the longhorns. "I've never seen anything like it," Melanie said, wiping her brow with the sleeve of her blouse. "But thank God for the favor!"

  The cowhands came riding up and drew rein around Melanie and Shane, awaiting further instructions.

  "Let's get them rounded up and back to the farm!" Shane said, looking from man to man. "And thank you all for your help. It won't be forgotten."

  The longhorns were circled around and led back inside the fence. Even without being told to, several men jumped from their horses and began repairing the damaged fence. Some took a count of the dead animals. Others checked over the ones

  that had lived through the ordeal, to make sure they had no serious tears or wounds.

  Melanie and Shane dismounted at the stable. As a cowhand came riding toward them, carrying something grotesque, they met his approach.

  The cowhand reined in his horse and jumped to the ground, holding the scarecrow out before him. "Seems this was used to start the stampede," he said. "I found it close by the broken fence."

  Shane took the scarecrow and examined it, then threw it to the ground and stomped away. He placed a foot on the lower rung of the fence and folded his arms across the top rung as he stared unseeing into the night.

  Melanie went to him and touched his arm gently. "We knew it had to be something like that," she murmured. "Stampedes like this don't get started for no reason."

  "I doubt if it will ever end, Melanie," Shane said, his voice breaking. "It just wasn't meant for me to come here. The cowhands were right to leave. I guess I should, also."

  "Shane," Melanie said, gasping. "Don't talk like that! You can't leave. Do you want to let whoever is doing this to you win? You can't want that, Shane. You can't!"

  Shane dropped his foot to the ground. He turned to Melanie and grasped her shoulders. "Go home, Melanie," he said flatly. He nodded toward her cowhands. "Take your cowhands with you. They've done their job. It is appreciated. But now I need time alone. To think."

  "Shane" Melanie protested.

  "Melanie, go home and get your rest," Shane said, his jaw firm. "Tomorrow is another day. You have your own responsibilities on your farm. You need the proper rest to perform them."

  "Shane, I'm afraid to leave you alone," Melanie said weakly. "You're acting as though you're ready to give up. Please don't leave tonight, Shane. Please?"

  "Just go home, Melanie," Shane said.

  Melanie stepped back away from him, numb. She knew that she had no choice but to leave. It was obvious that no arguing with him would change his mind. She had to take the chance that once he thought all of this over very carefully, he would know that he could not give up. The battle had just begun!

  She instructed her cowhands to go home and get some sleep. She took another lingering look at Shane, then rode away, carrying with her an aching heart.

  Shane watched Melanie until she was out of sight. Then he walked past the fenced-in land, out to the pasture where longhorns lay dead beneath the moonlight. Some of the carcasses of the steers were as flat on the ground as if their hides had been peeled off and staked out. They had fallen or got knocked down, and hundreds of hooves had trampled over them.

  He looked at the fence. He would see that a new one was erected all across his land! It would be made out of logs, not rails! It would be laid ten feet high between heavy posts sunk deep into the ground. Heavy log buttresses would brace the

  fence all around from the outside. It would be a pen nothing could break down!

  The bawling and lowing of the longhorns that had survived the ordeal was tremendous and drew Shane's thoughts back to the present. The sad refrain of the cattle was almost an extension of the sadness he was feeling in his heart. He had so badly wanted to make his new life work! Not only for himself, but also for Melanie.

  But thus far, the odds were against him.

  Someone hated him too much to let any of this work!

  But who?

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The early morning sun cast its golden light upon the land and the lone horseman riding in a slow canter through the forest.

  Shane had spent a restless night, nightmares causing him to awaken in beads of cold sweat. He had awakened feeling no better about life than when he had gone to bed after the stampede. He saw all of his attempts to adapt to the white man's life as useless, and thus far anything but pleasant. He had decided that for at least this one day he would leave his white man's life behind him and pretend that he was a part of the Chippewa again. He had slipped into his fringed buckskin breeches and moccasins and was now in search of a most perfect, private place in which to pray to the Great Spirit, to ask for strength and faith in himself!

  He rode endlessly onward. The farther he got from his farm, the better. Today he must not have any connections with the white man. He must clear his mind and heart to pray. He would not even allow thoughts of Melanie to disturb what he must achieve today!

  Serrated silhouettes of evergreens were reflected in a lake just ahead. Shane rode to the lake and dismounted close to it, looking around, admiring the serenity. Across the way, the early light of dawn glinted off wind-bent trees in a quiet cove. He heard nothing but the quiet splash of water as it coursed its way over sprinklings of rock that jutted up out of the lake.

  ''Yes, this is where I will spend my day," he whispered.

  Dew sprinkled Shane's moccasins as he went to the embankment and bent to rest himself on his haunches. He looked around once more, then smiled. He had found the perfect place to pray and meditate. He had not found such a place of peace since he had left Canada.

  Raising his arms above his head, Shane turned his hands palm-side-up and spread his fingers. He raised his eyes to the heavens and closed them. Taking several deep breaths, he began to pray.

  But his eyes were drawn quickly open again when he heard something that was disturbing his first moment of prayer. It was the rattle of traps. A trapper was approaching.

  Springing to his feet, Shane ran to his horse and led it behind a thick cluster of cedar trees. After securing it so that it would not wander along after

  him, Shane moved stealthily from tree to tree in the direction of the sound of the traps. He had to see where the trapper was placing the traps so that he would not lead his stallion into one when he left the lake. If Shane had to part with his horse, it would be like parting with his own soul!

  Seeing movement ahead, Shane sprang behind another tree and stiffened himself against it. Stealing a glance, he was now able to fully see the man. He was large and sported a thick, gray-streaked rusty beard, and was dressed in sweat-stained buckskins. Carrying several steel traps, he passed close to Shane, unaware of being watched. A break in the trees overhead allowed the morning light to spiral downward onto the man's face, fully revealing his features to Shane.

  Shane's insides tightened and a strange sort of pressure, like a band being squeezed about his head, momentarily dizzied him. He knew this man! It was the eyes that made Shane recognize him. They were the same eyes that had haunted Shane since the day of his mother's death!

  His heart pounding hard, Shane turned his eyes away and pressed his back up against the trunk of the tree, splaying the palms of his hands against the rough bark until it began cutting into his flesh. It took all of the restraint that he had learned from the Indians in his youth not to cry out! He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, trying to block out the day the man with the peculiar eyes had crouched over his mother and stripped her delicate finger of her wedding band! But it was impossible! He would never forget!

  Then another thought struck him, like a bolt of lightning reaching from the sky to impale him at the pit of his stomach. Not only his mother had suffered at the hands of this evil man, but also Cedar Maid! Because of Trapper Dan, Cedar Maid too was dead!

  Shane's hand crept slowly to his sheathed knife. Slipping it free, he turned to wait for Trapper Dan to ge
t close enough to attack. The trapper would die slowly from his wounds. He would lie in the forest, bleeding to death, prey to any animal that would come sniffing, searching for food. Instead of the trapper ensnaring an innocent animal in his trap's steel teeth, the trapper would experience teeth just as sharpthe animal's!

  Shane's eyes wavered and his heart skipped a beat when, after turning to watch the trapper again, he discovered someone else walking close to the tree he lurked behind. He hadn't seen her before. Leading a horse that had more traps secured on it, she must have been lagging behind, only now catching up with her companion, the trapper.

  Blinking his eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing, Shane lowered his knife to his side and looked more intently at the Indian woman. He did not recognize her, yet he knew that he wouldn't. This trapper who was responsible for one Indian woman's death would not return to the same village for another. He had surely gone to a village far from Gray Falcon's!

  As Trapper Dan and his woman came closer, Shane moved stealthily from the tree for a greater cover behind some flowering bushes. Spreading the leaves and flowers aside, he looked up at the woman as she passed only a few feet away from him. She was beautiful. She was young. And she did not seem all that unhappy to be with the trapper! She did not walk with her eyes downcast, as one who was sad. She looked straight ahead, a softness in her dark eyes. If Shane killed the trapper, what would she do? She would be a witness to his crime.

  Shaking his head, Shane settled down onto the ground and buried his face in his hands. What should he do? The man he hated with every fiber of his being was only footsteps away, setting traps in the forest not a day's ride away from his farm. He should be able to take his revenge. But he could not. Because of the Indian woman, he could not.

  Trapper Dan and the Indian woman had gone past him, and Shane began quietly following along behind them. He had to see where the trapper lived. He could plan his revenge later!

  One by one the traps were set, until there were no more on the horse. Shane held his breath as the trapper swung himself up into his saddle, then reached and pulled the Indian woman up behind him. They rode away slowly, giving Shane the opportunity to continue following them on foot. When he spied a cabin up ahead in the forest, he jumped back behind a tree and waited for the trapper and his woman to go inside.

  Breathless moments passed while Trapper Dan watered down his horse and gave it a bunch of hay to munch on. But finally both he and the woman were inside the cabin.

  Shane crept to a window and looked in furtively. Everything seemed so normal. Trapper Dan lit a fire on the hearth. The woman set a pot of water into the flames. Then she turned to Trapper Dan. Shane watched guardedly as the woman slipped the trapper's buckskin shirt over his head, then kneeled to remove his boots. Shane's eyes narrowed as he saw the woman pull the trapper's breeches down, to reveal a large erection.

  Hating the trapper even more fiercely, Shane witnessed the lust in his eyes as the woman stepped out of her buckskin dress, revealing a shapely bronze body with lovely breasts, a tapering waist, and a triangular bush of raven hair at the juncture of her thighs.

  A bitterness rose into Shane's throat when he saw the Indian woman climb onto a bed, obedient to the white man. He momentarily turned his eyes away when Trapper Dan plunged himself inside her and began thrusting wildly, his grunts and groans reaching Shane's ears through the crude walls of the cabin.

  He listened for any sign of the woman being uncomfortable, hoping that would give him a reason to believe that she would welcome rescue.

  But he heard none. Perhaps she was even enjoying being with the trapper.

  Perhaps she loved him . . . .

  "How could she?" Shane asked himself. He jerked away from the window. It took all the willpower that he could muster not to go inside the cabin anyway, to get his revenge now! He had waited twenty-five years! How could he pass up the opportunity?

  But he did not want to take the chance of hurting the woman.

  It would come later, he told himself. He moved stealthily away from the cabin, entering the shadows of the forest again. For now, he must get away from there.

  Seeing the Indian woman had brought back too many memories. Shane wasn't ready to return to the stiff, white house in which he now resided. He longed for his wigwam, the life that he had once known when, at the rising sun, he knew what the day would have in store for him. Indians did everything with a pattern, a plan. The white man's life had nothing in order. And he still did not know who was trying to make life even more difficult for him at the farm. Should he allow them to succeed at running him off?

  For now, he wanted to be at peace with himself and nature. He needed time to contemplate this latest discovery. He had much in his life to sort out.

  Avoiding all the traps that had been set in the forest, Shane went back to the lake where he had originally planned to pray and meditate. He jerked his horse's reins free and swung himself up into his saddle. He couldn't stay there. He had to move on.

  He had to put many miles between himself and the trapper.

  Shane rode with abandon for some time, until the pines began to cast long shadows all around him. He rode away from the forest and across a meadow where dew was already capturing reflections of the evening sky. The air was cooling. It was time to stop and build a fire.

  Choosing an isolated spot beside a river that snaked its way down from a mist-mantled foothill, Shane dismounted. After building a campfire and a makeshift lean-to, he took his saddlebag from his horse and settled down on a blanket beside the fire.

  Smiling, he reached inside the saddlebag and withdrew a cigar, his deck of playing cards, and a silver flask of whiskey.

  He lit the cigar and dealt out two hands of poker, then opened the flask of whiskey. He removed his cigar from his mouth long enough to take a quick drink of whiskey, then held the silver flask up before him.

  "Here's to you, old chief," he murmured, pretending his old friend was there beside him.

  Melanie sat before the fire in her parlor, trying to concentrate on her embroidery work. But it was hard. She had only a short while ago gone to Shane's farm to see how he was faring after the stampede and had discovered him gone. The same fear that he was going to escape back to his other

  way of life had stabbed at her heart, but she had to have more faith in him than that. She would give him time before she panicked. He would come to terms with himself. He was not the sort to run away from a fight.

  But she had looked around the farm and understood why a man would throw his hands up in the air and walk away. All of Shane's cowhands were gone. The longhorns that had been killed during the stampede still lay across the land. Josh still wasn't there, to make things right.

  She had promptly gone to work with a small crew of men, doing what she could. When Terrance had showed up, looking for her, she had put him to work, even though he grumbled all the while he burned the stiff longhorn carcasses. When Shane returned home, he would find everything in place, as though he had a whole crew of men seeing after his farm.

  "I certainly hope you're pleased with yourself," Terrance grumbled, lumbering into the room. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of whiskey. "I'm plumb tuckered out from that work you forced me into at Shane's. Damn it, Sis, why should we be doing his chores? We've enough of our own to keep us busy from sunup to sunset."

  "You haven't got one ounce of pity in you for that man, do you?" Melanie asked, giving Terrance a flash of fiery eyes. "What if you were in his shoes, Terrance? It's just a twist of fate that he's where he is in life. He's a wonderful, very likeable man. If you'd give him half a chance, you'd see that too."

  "What if he isn't back tomorrow, Melanie?" Terrance asked, moving to stand over her. He leaned down, close to her face. "I'm not going to Shane's again and do what he should be doing himself. If you ask me, he's run off like a scared puppy with his tail tucked beneath his hind legs."

  Melanie challenged his steady stare, laying her emb
roidery work on the table beside her. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she said. "Behind my back, where I can't see you snickering, I bet you're laughing over all of Shane's misfortunes."

  She placed a hand to Terrance's chest and shoved him away from her, then rose to her feet. "Well, go ahead and laugh," she said. "Shane will be back. He'll make things work."

  Terrance followed her out into the foyer. He grabbed his hat from a chair, where he had absently tossed it. "You can waste all the time you want to worrying about that man," he said. "But I've better things to do."

  Melanie spun around to face him. "Now let me see," she mocked. "Just where are you off to? It wouldn't be a saloon, would it?"

  Terrance plopped his hat on his head and, laughing, left the house. Melanie sighed heavily and began climbing the stairs to her room. Suddenly she felt drained, empty, and so very much alone.

  Where was Shane?

  Didn't he know that she would be worried? Did he care so little about her state of mind?

  Then she felt guilty, knowing that he was the

  only one who mattered. He had the battles to fight. Her only battle was for him!

  As Melanie reached the upstairs landing, a sudden shudder swept through her. She stopped and looked from side to side. Somehow, she did not feel alone. There was a sense of foreboding in the air all around her.

  But why? She and Terrance had been home long enough to bathe, eat and relax before the fire.

  But when they were gone earlier, had someone gotten into the house? Was he hiding there now?

  Her eyes brightened. "Shane?" she whispered, taking hasty steps toward her bedroom. Had he been here all along, waiting for Terrance to leave?

  Melanie hurried into her bedroom and searched with her hand for her kerosene lamp beside her bed so that she could light it.