So Wide the Sky

by Elizabeth Grayson

  After weeks of unsettled weather, spring had finally gained a toehold on the prairie. The wind still gusted out of the west, but now there was the scent of earth in it, of life and growing things. Rains boiled over the plains and blew away. Beneath the wide, wild sky the grass was greening.

  Cassie knew what that meant. All the women did. The winter truce was over. The men were preparing for war.

  When Cassie pushed through the door to the cabin a few minutes later, she found Drew standing in the middle of the kitchen. "There's no hot water for shaving," he complained.

  "I just came back from the river. I'll put some on to boil."

  The corners of Drew's mouth tightened beneath his mustache. "I'm not sure I can wait. And why would you go all the way to the river when there's bound to be water in the water wagon?"

  "She says that water's dead," Meggie answered helpfully, plopping the mangled wildflowers on the table.

  "Dead?" Drew echoed. "What nonsense is that?"

  Cassie pretended she didn't hear him and hastily poured water into a small pot hanging over the fire.

  "Water that stands all night is dead," Meggie continued, repeating the explanation Cassie had given her weeks before when they'd begun the dawn trips to the river.

  "Cassie?"

  "I'll have hot water for you shortly," she promised.

  "Cassie?" Drew persisted. "Is 'dead water' some kind of redskin foolishness?"

  Cassie stood without meeting his eyes. Over the years she had learned that subservience sometimes deflected questions she did not want to answer.

  "Cassie?"

  She could hear the disapproval in his tone, the conviction that he was justified in questioning her.

  "The Cheyenne start every day by dumping out the old water and getting fresh," she explained as simply as she could. "It's something I got used to doing."

  "And you explained that to Meggie with some Indian fable?"

  "I suppose I did," she conceded.

  "Well then, let me make this clear to you," he blustered, standing over her. "I won't have my daughter exposed to heathen ways. Don't tell her any more stories. Don't expose her to any more Indian superstitions. And I won't have you practicing them either.

  "You said you wanted a place to belong. I married you to give you that. The very least I can expect is for you to act like an officer's wife. Giving up your Indian ways is the start of that."

  As if giving up my Indian ways will make a difference, Cassie thought begrudgingly. The tattoo on her cheek prevented anyone from seeing who she was or how she behaved. Even Drew.

  "Do you understand me, Cassie?" he demanded, still towering over her. "I'll hear no more about water going dead overnight."

  When she inclined her head in assent, he wheeled and went off to finish dressing.

  "I didn't think he'd get so mad about it," Meggie whispered when he was gone.

  "You had no way of knowing," Cassie consoled her. "And he's right. I should never have told you that story."

  "But I like your stories. Knowing about the Indians keeps me from being afraid when I see them here at the fort," Meggie admitted after a moment.

  Cassie sighed. "Be that as it may, I don't think I'll be telling you stories anymore."

  Once the water over the fire began to steam, she filled Drew's china shaving basin and took it into the bedroom.

  While Meggie finished breakfast, Cassie set about her tasks for the day. Someone—and she had a very good idea who—had been leaving her fresh game. There had been pigeons last week and a clutch of quail the week before. This morning two plump rabbits were on the step when she went outside. Taking time to skin them was what had made her late getting down to the river. Now she added salt to one of the buckets and put the rabbits in to soak.

  "What happened to their hair?" Meggie asked.

  "I skinned them."

  "Skinned them how?"

  Cassie didn't think Drew would like her regaling Meggie with the details. "Well," she said, "I imagine it's a little bit like the way a man squirms out of his knitted underclothes."

  Meggie hooted with laughter, then clamped her hands over her mouth as Drew came back.

  "I haven't time for breakfast," he told Cassandra just as reveille sounded. "And tonight I'm holding extra drill. This new group of recruits is as green as grass. Half of them have never sat a horse, and some barely know one end of a rifle from the other. We have to work them hard so they'll be ready when our orders come."

  She heard the eagerness in Drew's voice. He wanted to fight. He needed the riding and the shooting and the death to avenge their families' massacre. She just couldn't help wondering if once he'd had his chance to kill a few Indians his need would ease, or if the hatred had already bitten too deep.

  Cassie slid another slice of corn bread onto Meggie's plate. "Then you won't be home for dinner?" she asked him.

  When he shook his head, she continued. "I want you to know that I'm sorry about the water."

  "I shouldn't have to remind you that you're Cassandra Reynolds now, not some Indian squaw." He left with the ring of bootheels and the slam of the front door.

  Cassandra stared after him and sighed. Somehow the Cheyenne way of thinking had become ingrained in her. The basic beliefs, the innate practicality, the reverence for nature were as much a part of her as her heartbeat or her breathing. Hunter Jalbert had tried to tell her how much she'd changed, but she'd refused to believe him. What she had to find was a way to put that life behind her and become the woman Drew needed her to be.

  After she washed the breakfast dishes, Cassie went in to the bedroom and pulled her small, battered trunk from beneath the bed. Inside were her belongings, her beaded blanket, her leggings, and her moccasins. Her jewelry and her tools. Her precious herb and medicine bundles.

  Drawn by the creak of the trunk lid, Meggie appeared at the foot of the bed.

  "What are those?" the girl asked, staring at the leather-wrapped bundle Cassie had taken from inside the trunk.

  "This," Cassie said, picking out an angled buffalo bone, "is a scraper. This one's a flesher." She held up an angled tool with a metal blade. "And these are some pegs and an awl."

  "What are they for?"

  "Well, I thought I would tan those two rabbit skins," Cassie told her, "and make you a pair of slippers."

  "You're going to make me slippers from real rabbits? The hopping kind?"

  Cassie laughed. "I think all rabbits hop."

  Meggie threw her arms around Cassie's neck. Cassandra hugged her back, liking the weight and warmth of that solid young body in her arms.

  It's almost as if she's mine, almost as if she belongs to me, Cassie found herself thinking. But the little girl wasn't hers. She was Drew's—Drew, who didn't want the responsibility of a daughter. Drew, who had long ago pledged himself to something else entirely.

  Cassie frowned at the irony as Meggie squirmed away.

  "It will be a while before the slippers are finished. First I have to prepare the skins. Then I'll cut the pattern—"

  "Can I help?"

  "If you like," Cassie answered, ready to close the lid of the trunk. But before she could, Meggie reached inside and fingered the object lying on top of Cassie's beaded blanket.

  "Is this the doll you made for me?"

  Cassie nodded, watching the little girl, wondering what she was thinking. "Would you like to hold her?"

  Meggie hesitated then took the doll. She ran her fingers over its face and hair. "I remember that Mama's hair was the same color as this," she said. "And I always liked when she wore this dress, because it had a lot of red in it."

  Cassie waited, a strange, breathless heat collecting in her chest.

  "Papa said Mama is an angel now, that she comes and watches me while I sleep," Meggie confided. "Do you think that's true?"

  "If your papa says it is."

  "Cassie?" Meggie's voice shook a little. "I can't remember my mama's face. How will I know when she comes to me?"

&nb
sp; Cassie didn't know much about angels, but she was learning more about being a mother every day.

  "Oh, Meggie," she breathed, drawing the little girl into her lap. "Mothers always know their babies, and their babies know them."

  "How do they know?"

  "They know it with their hearts," she said, pressing one hand against Meggie's chest. "There's a special kind of love between mothers and daughters that isn't like anything else."

  Meggie stared up at her. "Papa said your mother died when you were little. Is that how you got to know about the special love?" she asked in a whisper.

  Cassie closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears, remembering her mother, feeling a bond with the woman who'd given her life. "That is exactly how I know," Cassie whispered back. "Do you think," she continued after a moment, "that it would help you remember your mama if you kept the doll?"

  Meggie hesitated, then nodded her head. "I think it might."

  "Very well, then," Cassie said, closing the lid and pushing the trunk back under the bed. "Bring your dolly along. We need to start work on those rabbit skins."

  Cassie was on her knees scraping the second rabbit skin when Lila Wilcox happened by carrying two huge baskets of clothes.

  "Seems like I just get one load of clean clothes delivered, and there's an even bigger pile of dirty ones waiting to be washed," she complained, setting the baskets aside and lowering herself onto Drew's back step. "And can they pay me? No! There's not a soul in this whole damn fort with so much as a penny to bless him. If the paymaster don't come soon, there'll be a whole year of credit on everyone's books!"

  "It's the quartermaster's wagons I'm waiting on," Cassie confessed. "Drew keeps promising that there will be more than salt pork and cornmeal to eat once they get here."

  The older woman huffed. "Looks like you got some rabbits, anyway."

  "Someone left them on the step this morning."

  "Oh?" Lila angled. "Any idea who?"

  Cassie lowered her eyes. It was not unusual for the officers' ladies to have admirers, but she'd heard favors generally ran to flowers and poetry. She guessed she just wasn't the kind of woman who inspired verse.

  When she didn't answer, Lila turned her attention to what Cassie was doing. When she realized what it was, she gave a snort of derision and shook her head. "You just can't let a body forget how you got here, can you?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Not one wife here at the fort would touch a dead rabbit, much less skin the critter," Lila admonished her.

  With a huff of frustration, Cassie realized that Lila was right. And just this morning she'd been vowing to try harder to fit into her wifely role.

  "As if anyone could forget where I came from," Cassie challenged, "once they got a look at my face."

  "Some of us might be able to."

  Cassandra glanced up at Lila in surprise.

  "Stopping by every day or so like I've been doing," Lila continued, "I've got so what I see is how you are with that little girl. I see that you take time with her, that you play with her and teach her things. It makes me look at what you are down deep. And now that I can do that, the outside just don't matter so much."

  Cassie didn't know what to say to her. She hadn't dared to hope that what Lila said was possible.

  Certainly Drew hadn't learned to look past the tattoo. He blew out the light when they made love. He closed his eyes when he kissed her so he could pretend she was the Cassie he'd loved nine years ago. Knowing that made her want to rage and weep and shake him.

  Yet Lila had given her hope that Drew might learn to see her as she was. At least she had to believe that such a thing was possible.

  When Cassie didn't respond, Lila gestured to where Meggie was serving "tea" and "cakes" to her dolly.

  "Where'd she get the doll?"

  Cassie sat back on her heels and glanced across to where Meggie was playing. "She saw it with my things and asked for her. Said she couldn't remember her mother's face, that she thought it would help."

  "Do you remember yours?" Lila asked after a moment.

  "My mother?" Cassie asked, calling up the image of Claire Morgan, seeing her standing over the hearth of their house in Kentucky. "Of course I remember my mother, but I was a whole lot older than Meggie was when I lost her."

  Lila heaved a gusty sigh. "Sometimes it's a curse to remember the dead. When I look at Josh, all I can see is him roughhousing with his brothers."

  "I didn't know you'd had other children," Cassie said, thinking of the big, rawboned corporal who served in Noonan's infantry.

  "I lost three of my boys in the war—James at the first Bull Run, Richard at Chancellorsville, and Emmett at Petersburg."

  Cassie sensed the depth of Lila's pain, as if the most vital reason for living had been ripped away. Cass understood in a way she might not have mere weeks before. She understood because of Meggie, and the realization frightened her.

  Lila pushed to her feet as if she were irritated with herself for remembering. "I guess I'm not likely to get these shirts and socks and drawers dried before nightfall if I don't get at it."

  "Oh, wait," Cassie said, springing to her feet and rushing into the house. When she came back she was carrying what looked like a small, dark crock of grease.

  "What is that?" Lila asked.

  "It's an ointment for your hands. I noticed the last time you came how red they were."

  Lila took the crock and sniffed it. "What's in here?"

  "Well, there's bear grease and beebalm, beardstongue and blanket flower—"

  "Will it work?"

  "I use it myself sometimes."

  Lila thought that over. "So you know about herbs?"

  Cassie nodded. "Most Indian women do since they don't have patent medicines to rely on."

  "Do you know anything that can help an aching back?" Lila asked. "Will was helping the blacksmith shoe horses yesterday, and by nightfall he could hardly move."

  "I'll brew something up and send it over with Meggie."

  "Thank you," Lila said, hefting the baskets again.

  "I'm glad I could help."

  Lila nodded. "And you think on what I said now, girl, about giving folks a chance to look beyond the mark on your face. A fool's as blind as those who cannot see."

  Cassie watched Lila disappear toward soapsuds row and knew that here at Fort Carr she'd found at least one true friend.

  * * *

  Cassandra heard the front door slam and looked up from the dandelion greens she was slicing just as Drew loomed in the kitchen doorway. His eyes were blazing, and his face was like fire. He crossed the room in two long strides and waved a paper in Cassie's face.

  "What in the name of God were you thinking?" he thundered.

  Meggie looked up from where she was rocking her dolly to sleep in her arms.

  "Whatever are you talking about?" Cassie asked, moving to where Meggie was sitting, lifting the little girl to her feet, and propelling her out the open door. No child should be privy to her parents' arguments. Whatever had Drew so upset was between the two of them.

  Once Meggie was safely outside, Drew shoved the paper into Cassie's hands. "Do you know what this is?" he demanded.

  Cassie stared at the words and numbers on the page. Though her ability to read English was coming back, she couldn't make much sense of them.

  "It's the sutler's bill—a list of the things that have been charged to my account since the first of the year."

  Cassie's stomach lurched.

  "The way this works is before the paymaster gives any of us our wages, the sutler collects his due. Do you have any idea how much Tyler Jessup took out of my pay?"

  Cassie stared at the figure at the bottom of the column, her heart in her throat.

  "One hundred and thirty seven dollars," Drew answered for her. "Nearly half of what I made in four months' time. I expected the bill to be high. I told you to buy what you needed to make some clothes. I didn't want you going around in someone's castoffs. And b
ecause the commissary wagons didn't come until last week, we bought more from the sutler than we might have ordinarily. But there's this"—he pointed to an item two thirds of the way down the page—"thirteen cans of condensed milk. When I first saw the notation I thought it was a mistake, so I went to check with Tyler Jessup. And do you know what he told me?"

  Cassie knew.

  "He said you bought the milk, eighteen cans in all, and carted it off in a burlap sack."

  There was no denying what she'd done.

  "Now, Cassie," Drew asked with exaggerated patience, "since I've already paid for all that milk, I'd like to know what you did with it."

  Cassie had known all along she'd have to own up to this. She just figured she'd have some warning, some time to make up a story Drew would believe. She knew how he'd respond to the truth.

  Deliberately she bowed her head. While she was with the Kiowa and Cheyenne, she'd learned to subjugate herself, to acknowledge her mistake by silence and servitude. It was one way she'd survived, and it only cost her pride.

  But Drew wasn't Little Otter, who lived to see Cassandra humiliated. He wasn't Gray Falcon, who accepted her submissiveness as license for punishment. Drew stood over her waiting for an answer.

  At length Cassie dared to raise her head. A child was alive because of her, and she refused to disavow what she'd done to save it.

  "A woman I knew, a Cheyenne woman, came to me and asked for help," she began, explaining as simply as she could. "Her sister's child was dying for want of milk. I bought the cans so the baby would live."

  She heard Drew suck in his breath.

  "Let me understand this." His voice was so low and filled with fury that Cassie wished he were shouting. "You spent my money on milk so some redskin baby could live? You saved his life so that in a few years' time he can ride out in battle against me?"

  Cassie knew he spoke the truth. There were years of fighting ahead, and the child she'd done her best to save would undoubtedly become a warrior.

  Drew slammed his fist on the table beside her. "Damn it, Cassie, answer me!"

  Heat built inside her, filling her chest, making her ears ring and fingers tingle, it had been nine long years since she had dared to feel either anger or pride. She'd spent those years bowing her head and biting her lip, suppressing her outrage, and fighting down her indignation. Suddenly those feelings raced through her blood like a dose of spirits.