Savage Horizons

by Rosanne Bittner

  Watching Tom, Caleb could see there was no hope of changing the young man’s mind. He and Lee were already talking about what they would say and do. Lee had been just a child when his father brought him west, so he remembered little about the States and more civilized places. Both were young and curious. They would go, and there would be no stopping them. But they were also Texans. Texans first. They would come back. Of that Caleb had no doubt.

  Sarah sat by the hearth, again grappling with the strange feeling she could not quite put her finger on, the strange aura that had settled over the house with Lynda Webster’s arrival. The girl had been with her for a month now, a very good worker and wonderful company. Sarah knew that the girl was an orphan from Philadelphia who had run away and taken up with a gambler named Luke, who was killed in a fight over a card game. She was sixteen, the same age Sarah’s own daughter would be if she still lived, and her pitiful state had led Sarah to let the girl stay and work for her.

  Sarah liked Lynda, even felt drawn to her. She was sure Luke had taken advantage of Lynda’s youth and vulnerability, but she understood that Lynda had loved the man and was suffering her own grief. Sarah couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, remembering some of the shocking, terrible moments of her own youth. Perhaps by helping this girl she would be helping heal some of her own remaining wounds.

  What disturbed her was the girl’s eyes and coloring. She looked so amazingly like Caleb that it was unnerving for Sarah to look at her. How could she explain her feelings to the girl? She didn’t want her to leave, but she surely would if she knew the effect she had on Sarah. She was an excellent seamstress and a great help. Sarah was able to take in even more customers and her business was growing.

  She settled back to watch the fire. It was February, 1832, and Saint Louis was booming. There was a lot of talk about a place called Texas, where a lot of Americans had apparently been settling, talk of perhaps annexing Texas to the United States. She had thought so many times about Caleb, wondering where he could be now. The territory west of the Mississippi was vast and wild. She had exhausted all efforts of finding him. It was over. To keep searching was to keep reawakening the pain of losing him.

  The fire crackled and the rocker squeaked, and again the lump came to her throat. Just that morning she had turned down an invitation to go to the theater with a reputable gentleman. Why was she unable to respond to another man? Why was she so afraid to care again? The mixture of her profound love for Caleb and the horror of her marriage to Byron was the answer. She could never love that way again, nor could she take the risk of marrying another man who would turn out to be as cruel and sick as Byron Clawson. It was easier this way, answering only to herself. She had had her glorious passion with Caleb. In spite of all that had happened to her since she would not change that memory for anything.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs and waited. She sighed and closed her eyes, rocking quietly as Lynda came into the room. The girl moved into the firelight and sat opposite Sarah.

  “I can start the dress for Mrs. Preston tonight if you want,” she said.

  Sarah smiled, opening her eyes. “No.” She sighed deeply. “I think I’d rather sit here and talk.” She studied the girl, again overwhelmed by her resemblance to Caleb.

  Lynda felt nervous, wondering what Sarah would want to talk about. Was she going to throw her out?

  “I’m so glad you came along, Lynda,” Sarah said, surprising and relieving the girl with the remark. “I didn’t want to admit it, but I was getting so lonely. You’re a pleasant companion, and being the same age as the child I lost makes it… I don’t know, somehow comforting, as though by helping you I’m being a mother to the child I never knew.”

  Lynda smiled bashfully. “I’m glad you feel that way, Sarah.” It had been difficult to call the woman by her first name, but Sarah Sax insisted on it within a few days. “I like it here. You’re a very nice lady, very kind. In fact, you’re the kindest person I’ve met in my whole life.” Her smile faded and she looked at her lap. “Except for Luke.”

  Sarah pulled a quilt over her lap to help ward off the cold. “But Luke didn’t really have your best interest in mind, Lynda. Surely you know that now.”

  The girl nodded. “I know. But he was never mean to me.”

  Sarah thought of Byron Clawson. It was no doubt better to be with a kind man and not married than to be married to someone like Byron. “Well, I’m glad of that,” she said aloud. “You took a great risk going away with him.”

  “Anything was better than that man at the factory,” the girl answered. She met Sarah’s eyes. “We’ve talked so much about me. What about you? You’ve never really explained about the baby girl you lost or why you live alone. You’re so beautiful, Sarah. You should be seeing men. You should be married.”

  Sarah’s eyes hardened slightly. “I was once.” She looked at the fireplace. “But he wasn’t the man I loved. I never had the chance to marry the man I really loved.” To her own surprise the story began spilling out of her. She realized she needed to talk about it, about Caleb. She needed to tell someone the story and share her great love with another human being who would understand. Lynda would understand. She had been in love. And she was young, still full of all the passion of youth.

  Lynda listened, enraptured, trying to picture Caleb Sax, for Sarah described him as a very handsome man, strong and brave and sincere. Sarah surprised even herself when she was so bold as to tell the girl about her affair in the cave, sensing Lynda would not look down on her for it. Why was it suddenly so easy to talk this way? She had kept all these things to herself for so long. It felt wonderful to finally talk about them. Perhaps if Lynda understood just how much she had loved Caleb, and how cruel Byron Clawson had been, she would understand why it had been so difficult to ever care for another man.

  Sarah went on, explaining how Caleb had been wounded, and that she had learned it was possible he was still alive somewhere.

  “But that does me no good now. At the time I was convinced he was killed,” she told Lynda. “And I found I was with child, Caleb’s child. The child needed a father, and Byron Clawson cleverly volunteered to make the baby legitimate and save my reputation. I was so ill and weak that between Byron and my—my father,” the word came hard, “I had no chance.”

  She went on with the story, and as she told it Lynda felt little pinpricks of familiarity, as though she had something to do with the story. Perhaps it was because it was so much the way she had pictured what might have happened to her own parents.

  “Caleb had given me a necklace,” Sarah went on, after describing the terrible birth. “It was a blue quill necklace his Cheyenne mother had made for him.”

  Lynda felt as though someone were draining the blood from her veins.

  “He called it a love gift and told me to keep it. I clung to that necklace,” Sarah said. “It seemed to help the pain. But then the doctor gave me something that made me groggy. I felt Byron tearing the necklace from my hand, and that was all I remembered until I woke up and was told my baby had died. Byron boastfully told me the child was already buried, and that he’d make sure I forgot Caleb. He said he’d buried the necklace with the baby so I’d never see it and think of Caleb again.”

  She had been staring at the fire the whole time and did not notice the strange look in Lynda’s eyes. She heard the girl gasp quietly and turned to look at her. Lynda’s eyes were wide, and she looked at Sarah with a mixture of shock and joy and even fear.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked. “Are you ill?”

  Lynda shook her head, swallowing. “Describe the necklace,” she said in a near whisper.

  Sarah felt a strange tingle, as she studied Lynda’s incredibly blue eyes. “It was an Indian necklace, made of painted blue quills. It was rather large. It had been made for a man, then given to Caleb’s mother who in turn gave it to Caleb to remember her by. It was held together by rawhide strips. It was quite lovely.”

  Lynda began to shake slightly, blinking
back tears.

  “Child, what is it? What have I said?”

  Lynda shook her head, closing her eyes and looking at her lap. “It’s probably just a foolish notion… a coincidence. It couldn’t possibly be the same necklace.”

  Sarah felt a numbness moving through her bones. “Necklace? What necklace?”

  Lynda met her eyes, searching Sarah’s almost lovingly. “The lady at the orphanage told me that a very fancy carriage dropped me off, as though someone wealthy had brought me there. I was left in a crate, along with a necklace. It was an Indian necklace made of blue quills.”

  Their eyes held, and suddenly Sarah was overwhelmed with the possibility her baby had not died at all! How many times had she felt it, doubted it, wondered about it? Byron Clawson was such a liar about so many things. This girl looked so Indian—except for her eyes.

  “Where was this orphanage?” she managed to ask.

  “Philadelphia.”

  Sarah began to shake. “My God,” she whispered, looking down at her trembling hands. Philadelphia was close to Washington. Of course. It would all have been so simple for Byron. Get rid of the child and tell the mother it had died. Sarah had been so drugged she would never know the difference. And there would be no blood on Byron Clawson’s hands.

  “Sarah, are you all right?” Lynda asked, rising from her chair. She bent over and grasped the woman’s hands, then gasped when Sarah suddenly looked up at her and gripped her hands so tightly that it hurt.

  “The necklace. Show me the necklace!”

  Lynda’s lips puckered and she shook her head.

  “Show me the necklace, Lynda,” Sarah begged, rising but still clinging to Lynda’s hands as though she might fall if she let go.

  “I’m… afraid to,” the girl answered. “If it isn’t the same one…” She sniffed.

  Sarah’s own eyes teared. “Don’t be afraid, Lynda. For years I have prayed to find my Caleb again.” she paused. “Perhaps I never will. But if I could find my child, could know she’s alive, it would be all the comfort I could ask for the rest of my life. We have to know, Lynda. Please. Show me the necklace.”

  Lynda managed to free one hand and she wiped tears from her cheeks. Clinging together, they walked haltingly toward Lynda’s room, each of them filled with compelling anticipation and dread that this sudden discovery would lead to nothing.

  Lynda let go of Sarah’s hand and took her carpetbag from a closet. She reached inside and took out the necklace, bringing it over to Sarah and holding it up.

  Sarah stared at the necklace as though it were a ghost, her eyes widening more. She trembled violently, raising her eyes to meet Lynda’s again. She could no longer deny those eyes. How could they look so much like Caleb and not belong to him?

  “Your story… it’s true?” she asked. “You didn’t just find the necklace someplace?”

  Lynda shook her head. “No. It was in the crate they left me in. I was a newborn. The woman who took me said they had a hard time finding a nursing mother who would agree to feed me because I looked Indian. I almost died.”

  Sarah was smiling while tears spilled down her cheeks. “But you survived,” she said. “You survived because you’re Caleb Sax’s daughter. You’re strong like him.”

  Lynda studied the woman with a wonderful new love growing in her heart. “Like him? After what you went through, I’m not so sure who was the stronger, Sarah.”

  Their eyes held a moment longer and then they suddenly embraced, both of them too full of tears for the next several minutes to say anything. How could it not be true? It made too much sense. Yet Sarah knew there was one way to be very sure. Byron Clawson. She detested the thought of seeing him, but she had no choice. She must face him again to find out for sure.

  Yet in her heart she already knew. Instinct proved much more than physical evidence. This was surely her daughter, her beloved daughter, the seed of Caleb Sax. God had not abandoned her after all.

  Byron looked up from his desk, stiffening when he saw Sarah Sax standing in the doorway of his office. She was more beautiful than ever, with a woman’s firm roundness, a woman’s maturity and wisdom. Her red-gold hair was piled into great swirls topped with a deep green velvet hat that matched her velvet dress, cape and gloves. She was pure elegance, and none of the old fear was in her eyes.

  “Hello, Byron.” She smiled almost victoriously at his shaken appearance. She could tell by his eyes and his sallow complexion that he still drank. She swallowed back the nausea it brought her to see him so close again, to remember the hideous nights she had spent in his bed. He was older now, with crows feet about his eyes and a little gray in his receding blond hair. His gray eyes were steely and wary as he rose from his chair.

  “What are you doing here? I thought my father talked to you before I came back from Washington. You agreed—”

  “I know what I agreed to, Byron,” she interrupted in a silky voice. She turned and closed the door. “Don’t be so upset. Half of Saint Louis knows we were once married. The city isn’t that big, you know. What is the harm in a man’s ex-wife visiting him to express her hopes that he does well in his congressional campaign?”

  “Refreshing people’s memories that I am a divorced man won’t help,” he grumbled. “I wanted to keep all that quiet.”

  Her eyes narrowed and he felt a chill at the hatred in them. “Yes. You are very good at keeping things’ quiet, aren’t you, Byron?” She stepped closer, reminding herself she must be strong and demanding. “Like keeping it quiet that Caleb Sax was not dead when he left Saint Louis. And keeping it quiet that my own daughter did not die, but was shipped off to an orphanage.”

  She found pleasure in the way he paled, smiled at his attempt to keep his composure. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Yes, you do. I have found my daughter, Byron. Oh, don’t worry. I don’t intend to use what I know against you—unless you refuse to cooperate.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Cooperate?”

  She met his eyes squarely. “I want a simple yes or no, Byron. That’s all there is to it. I simply want to know if my baby girl was given away to an orphanage in Philadelphia and if Caleb’s blue quill necklace was with her.”

  There was a long moment of silence, after which Byron swallowed, remaining on his feet with effort. “All right,” he said quietly. “Yes. I gave her away. And don’t think me so terrible. I could have had her killed, but I simply wasn’t that evil. You might say you could thank me for that.”

  Her joy at his answer was overshadowed by the ridiculous remark that followed. “Oh yes. I have so much to thank you for, don’t I?”

  He folded his arms, trying to appear more masculine and overbearing. “How did you know? And what is this about Caleb still being alive?”

  Sarah smiled sarcastically. “You shouldn’t have thrown in the necklace, Byron. She kept it. I have found my daughter, but I won’t give you the satisfaction of the details. Nor will I tell you how I know Caleb was not killed along the river like you told me.” She smiled again. “But I would be careful if I were you, Byron. As I remember, Caleb was a vengeful man. If I should one day find him and he discovers what happened after he was shipped out of Saint Louis…” She shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. It would be hard to sleep at night.”

  His eyes glittered. “Bitch! I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? What will you do, Byron Clawson?” She struggled to control her shaking. Facing this man was the hardest thing she had done in a long time. She still feared him, but she dared not show it. She must be confident for Lynda’s sake. “You know I could destroy you, Byron.”

  His eyes were cold and piercing. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “I simply want extra insurance that you will leave me alone and never bring harm to me or my daughter. I am giving you a simple promise to never harm your career, as long as you never harm me. All I wanted was an honest answer about Caleb and my daughter, and now I have it. It’s that s
imple. I just wanted to be sure the girl I have found is really mine.”

  He gave her that victorious look he used to give her when he knew she would give up her pride and allow him his husbandly privileges. It sent shivers through her bones.

  “All right. It appears we’re at a stand-off. I won a victory of sorts, and so have you. We’re even. We can each go our own way now.”

  She nodded. “Fine. And I thank you for being honest about the girl. I had little left to be happy about. You destroyed my life. Now I have something to live for again. I will even go so far as to introduce my daughter publicly as simply a girl who has come to work for me. The child has suffered untold grief and trauma because of what you did, but just being together is all either of us needs now. Knowing for certain we are mother and daughter is recompense enough.” She looked at him haughtily. “Good luck in the political arena, Byron.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She turned, her profile beautiful, her green eyes dancing with victory as she faced him more fully.

  “What about Caleb?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” He swallowed. “What if—just what if—he really is still alive and you should somehow find him?”

  “So?”

  “Well, what would he do? What would you do?”

  She smiled at the worried look on his face. “I already told you what I would do. Nothing. I have given you my word. But I certainly can’t speak for Caleb. Perhaps he suspects you were the one who put the bullet in his back. Were you?” His face reddened and she had her answer. Sarah turned and left, unable to look at him another moment. She wished she could get away with killing him.

  Byron sank into his chair, opening a drawer and taking out a small vial of whiskey. He swallowed some, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

  “We should have killed him,” he muttered. “By God, we should have killed him outright that day. What idiots!” He glared at the closed door, then threw the small bottle against it, wishing the bottle were Caleb Sax. He had been haunted for years by what might have happened to the man, by the possibility he could have lived. It seemed so improbable. Apparently Sarah had never found him. And he had never shown up in Saint Louis again.