A speculative murmur rippled through the crowd like wind through wheat.
"It would have to be someone with connections to the Sioux," one man said.
"Someone who knew how to get word to the Indians."
"It needs to be someone with something to gain."
Cass had heard this kind of speculation the night of the fire and dread seeped into her belly.
Tyler Jessup was the one who shouted the accusation. "I think our spy is Captain Reynolds's squaw."
A hundred gazes turned on her.
"She only come from the Indians a few months past," someone added.
"She had truck with that redskin's escape."
It was like rolling a barrel down hill. Once the allegations got started, there was no stopping them.
"She admitted to giving that Indian woman milk."
Cass looked to Hunter, seeking calm and sustenance in his eyes. They were stormy instead, dark and glittering with anger.
She shook her head, hoping he had sense enough to hold his peace. He would only undermine his position by defending her.
"Ask her!" someone shouted. "Ask Reynolds's squaw what she knows about the rifles."
Half the crowd mumbled in agreement.
"Here, now!" Major McGarrity protested. "We aren't about to accuse Cassandra Reynolds of anything. This isn't some damned witch-hunt!"
Drew materialized at her side, all honor and obligation. Cass wasn't certain why he'd come. He hadn't believed she was loyal to him or the army since the night of the fire.
Cass recognized Jessup's voice again. "You're going to make inquiries, aren't you, Major?"
"What we're going to do," McGarrity answered, "is get back to our duties. Lieutenant Gifford?"
"Sir?"
"Since our men were buried at Phil Kearney, did you bring home their effects?"
"I did, sir."
"See that they are distributed to either the men's commanding officers or their families. I also want a written report on the incident on my desk by noon tomorrow. As for the rest of you"—McGarrity let his gaze sweep across the crowd—"you're dismissed. Get back to work!"
With a few mumbles of dissent, the crowd broke up. Rather than turn back to the cabin, Cassandra pushed toward where Lila and Will Wilcox huddled together.
"I didn't think the Lord would take my Josh," Lila was whispering to her husband. "I didn't think He would see fit to take away all my boys."
Will didn't say anything. He rarely did. He just stood there rubbing Lila's hands between his own.
Cass suddenly saw how old their linked hands looked. They were reddened and scuffed and rivered with veins. These boys, Josh and his brothers, had been Will and Lila's life's work, their precious gift to a wondrous and dangerous world. And now they were gone.
Cass shifted Meggie in her arms and reached toward Josh's parents. "Lila, Will, I'm so sorry for your—"
Lila looked up. Her gaze sharpened as she realized who Cass was. "You!" she spit. "How dare you come to me now! How dare you tell me you're sorry! You knew those wagons were carrying guns. You sent the redskins word. You cost my Josh his life!"
"No!" Cassie gasped, wounded by the accusation. "I had nothing to do with the attack on the wagons!"
"I was your friend," Lila seethed, as if she had not heard. "When no one else would speak to you, I came by. When the others called you an Indian whore, I defended you. And this is how you repay me—by killing my son."
"No, Lila, please believe me," Cassie begged. "I swear I didn't send word to the Indians. I would never do anything to hurt—"
"Liar!" Lila accused before turning her head into her husband's shoulder.
"I think you'd best leave us alone now, Mrs. Reynolds," Will Wilcox said softly, and turned toward soapsuds row.
Cass stood there shaken, too stunned to breathe. How could Lila believe she'd had a hand in this? What had she done to make these people think—
"Cassie?" Meggie's voice cut into her thoughts. "Did the Indians kill Josh?"
"Yes," Cass answered. "Josh is dead, and Lila's feeling very sad."
Meggie hesitated, then looked square into Cassandra's face. "She said you did it, that you killed him."
Cass felt her heart catch fire. Tears sprang to her eyes.
"You know better than that, Meggie," she answered, her voice breaking. "You know how much I liked Josh. You know I would never do anything to hurt him."
"But Lila said."
Cass took a steadying breath and turned toward their cabin. "Lila heard what the other people were saying and got confused. Once she's thinking more clearly, she'll realize she's wrong about what happened."
At least Cass hoped she would.
Drew was waiting on the cabin porch like a sentry guarding the gates of a beleaguered citadel. He let her pass and followed her into the kitchen. She set Meggie on her feet and began to gather up the pattern and the scissors she'd been using. She wiped the table with a cloth, laying out the plates and cutlery for supper. She stuck doggedly to her tasks, pretending that today was just like yesterday.
Drew stood watching her. "You knew about the shipment of the guns," he finally accused. "I told you myself. You could have sent the Indians word—"
His distrust added its weight to the crowd's wild accusations and Lila's reproach. Still, she wasn't surprised by his defection. "Oh, Drew," she asked wearily. "Do you really think I'm capable of betraying everyone at Fort Carr?"
Drew shook his head. "Oh, Jesus, Cassie! I don't know what you're capable of anymore."
Cass hadn't expected his resignation to hurt so much. She burned inside, raw and aching for a child and a man and a life she now realized were unattainable. She didn't belong here anymore than she had belonged anywhere else.
She fled out into the early twilight. She didn't know where she was going. She couldn't see for the blur of tears. She heard Meggie chase after her and call her name, but Cass couldn't go back.
She wasn't sure she could ever go back.
* * *
Hunter rose from sleep like a swimmer from a long, deep dive—breathless, disoriented, with blood rushing in his ears. It took him a moment to realize he was awakening in his own lodge, in his own bed, and that someone was tapping at the door to his tepee.
"Who's there?" he called out.
"It's me. Cassandra."
"Cass?" Hunter scrambled to his feet. He flung back the buffalo hide door and pulled her into his tent. Didn't she know the chance she was taking by coming here?
Dressed in nothing but his breechclout, Hunter stepped outside to look around. His end of Fort Carr's Indian encampment was deserted. No one could have seen Cass come to his tepee. In the dusk, he could see a bonfire and some sort of gathering down toward soapsuds row. He heard a fiddle's sweet lament and realized it was a wake for the men who'd been killed. The melancholy sound stirred Hunter's own regret. He'd done his best and failed those troopers, anyway.
Sighing, he ducked back inside his lodge.
Cass stood where he'd left her, her shoulders hunched and her head bent low. He thought she had been crying.
"Cass?" he said as gently as he could. "What is it? Why are you here?"
"I didn't know where else to go."
He heard the desolation in her voice, saw how frail and depleted she seemed. He eased her down into one of the canvas campstools drawn up to the edge of the fire pit and dipped water from the bucket by the door. He crouched before her and made her drink. Her hands were trembling when she gave the dipper back.
Hunter hunkered down again and waited for Cass to tell him why she'd come.
"Josh Wilcox," she began on a thready sigh, "was Lila's youngest son. Lila has been my closest friend—my only friend—here. She helped me with Meggie and stuck by me when all the other women turned away. But after what happened this afternoon, after what people said about me, Lila—" Cass lifted her gaze to his. "Lila believes I'm the one who told the Cheyenne and the Sioux about the rifles. She thinks I'm th
e reason Josh got killed."
Hunter recognized shadows of bewilderment and hurt in Cassie's eyes. If Lila had been able to look beyond her own bitterness and grief, she would have seen those things, too, and known that Cass couldn't have betrayed anyone.
"Lila has just learned her son is dead," Hunter began, trying to explain away the hurt. "She isn't thinking clearly. Once she has a chance to reconsider—"
"Everyone thinks I betrayed Captain Parker and his men!" Cass burst out, her voice rising. "Lila and Sally and maybe even Ben McGarrity—"
"I don't believe you had anything to do with it."
Cassie hesitated, reached out and brushed his arm by way of thanks. "You might not believe I betrayed them, but everyone else does—even my husband! Even Drew!"
Especially Drew, Hunter thought.
"He told me about the plan to take the rifles north, and now he's convinced..." Cass looked down at her hands.
Hunter's blood hummed through his veins like a swarm of bees. Goddamn Drew Reynolds! Damn his obsession with revenge and damn his blind expedience.
"After Lila accused me," Cass went on, "after Drew questioned my loyalty, I had to be by myself. I went down to the river so I could hear the water and see the sky. That always helped before." She raised her head and looked at him. "But this time you weren't there for me."
Her words surprised him, delighted him, and made him wary. But if Cass needed him, needed him enough to risk coming here, he couldn't deny her the comfort she was seeking. He closed the scant distance between them, gathered her up in his arms. As he did, he was suddenly awash in her scent, fresh as the wind off the prairie. In the lushness of her hips and breasts. In the silken texture of her skin and hair.
He'd wanted to hold her like this for what seemed like forever. He'd wanted to shelter her, offer her his strength and his protection. He'd wanted to let her know that she would always be safe with him.
Hunter just hadn't understood how much he'd needed that closeness himself.
She curled against him, her face nestling into the curve of his throat, her shoulders bowed beneath the contour of his palms, her long graceful limbs flowing against him. She fit him in a way no woman ever had, the curves of her body finding a perfect complement in the unyielding angles of his own. She seemed so fragile in his arms, yet her warmth and her compassion and her humanity seeped into him like rain to dry, parched earth.
Cass knew. She had wandered the wasteland between two worlds. She had experienced the isolation of never belonging anywhere. She understood how lonely that could be. And even in the depths of her own distress, Cass seemed able to soothe him. He closed his eyes and let the self-doubt, the tension, and the terrible regret of these last days drain away. He allowed himself to absorb her unexpected tenderness.
"Is there anything I can do to make Drew and Lila believe I didn't betray our soldiers?" she whispered.
Hunter could barely believe that after all she'd faced in these last five months, in these last nine years, this would be what broke her. But as she raised her head he could see that those pale eyes, the eyes he had once thought devoid of emotion, were sad and wet. Tears tracked down her face, shimmering like crystal in the half-light.
His chest filled. He went breathless and weightless and dizzy. He lifted his hands to cup her face. And then he kissed her.
The brush of his mouth on hers was delicate and tender, something he meant as comfort and consolation. Her lips were soft beneath his, full and pliant, spiced salt-sweet with tears. He tasted deeper, sipping at the corners of her mouth, laving the bow with the tip of his tongue. She opened to him, exposing the inner contours of her mouth to his slow, deliberate exploration. She brushed his tongue with hers and shyly curled away.
Hunter's heart tripped high in his throat. He deepened the kiss, savoring a suddenly fierce and compelling communion. He trailed his fingers down the ivory-smooth column of her neck, across her shoulders, down her back. He pulled her against him, length to length, her body conforming to his, chest and belly, hips and thighs. He caught her up in the breadth of his hands. Her flesh was warm against his palms, so vital, so feminine and ripe.
"Oh Hunter," she breathed into his mouth, and he felt as if he were coming home.
Never had Hunter known such fierce possessiveness, such a need to hold and defend, sustain and cherish. He wanted to kiss Cass awake in the morning and make love to her while the soft scent of sleep still lingered in the curve of her throat. He wanted to lie with her and whisper secrets in the dark—about how beautiful she was, how wondrous and special, how much he loved her. He wanted to hold her and tease her and pleasure her until she cried out with breathless joy.
Together he and Cass could make a place for themselves where the rest of the world didn't matter. Together they could start again. Together they could find—
Together? The word echoed in Hunter's head. He and Cass had no right to be together.
Cass was a married woman. Not happily married, not content with her life, but committed just the same. And he didn't have any more to offer her now than he had when she first came to the fort. Nothing but himself, nothing but his devotion and his understanding. He wished with all his heart that was enough—and knew it was not.
Hunter dug deep inside himself for the strength to break the kiss. When he raised his head he felt deprived of hope, of sustenance. Staring down into Cassandra's face, he thought she seemed as lost and bereft as he was. Still, he lurched to his feet and put the width of the fire pit between them.
He was breathing hard. By both white and Arikara standards, what he and Cass had done was wrong. Yet he refused to feel dishonored by loving Cass, by kissing her—just this once.
"I didn't mean to make things more difficult," he told her.
Cass resettled herself on the stool, curling up, withdrawing inside herself. "I wish we could just run away."
Hunter stared at her. He hadn't expected a woman like Cass would even consider that course. That she might gave testament to how hopeless she felt, how tired of trying. Even if they could run away together, there was nowhere for them to go.
Except Montana.
The idea of taking her up into the mountains where no one could find them, of living suspended between earth and sky, teased the edges of his imagination. But he couldn't lure her with promises of another life when she was bound by love and honor to people here.
If he cared for her, he must hold his peace. If he wanted what made sense for her, he must help her keep her vows—even if they were promises she'd made to someone else. If he loved her, he must offer her hope.
"Perhaps by tomorrow everyone will realize how wrong their accusations are," Hunter said almost desperately. "Perhaps McGarrity will discover who really sent word to the Sioux and Cheyenne about the rifles."
"Perhaps," Cass said on a sigh, and rose from the campstool.
He hated to let her go like this. "What are you going to do?" he asked her.
Cassandra shrugged. "Go back to the cabin. Make peace with Drew as best I can. Mother Meggie. Hold my head high and wait."
"Wait for what?"
Cassie didn't answer him. She smoothed her hair and wiped away the last traces of tears with her fingertips.
Hunter had never felt more helpless. "Do you want me to walk you back to the cabin?"
She shook her head. "I don't think we dare take that chance anymore." And then she was gone.
Alone in the tent, Hunter sparked up the fire and stared into that red-orange glow. Now that he was taking time to think, he realized that someone here at Fort Carr must have sent word to the Sioux not only about when the new rifles were being shipped, but by what route. How else would the Indians have known where to ambush the wagon train?
Hunter straightened. There was a traitor among them. Someone had forfeited those men's lives. Someone was offering Cass as scapegoat to hide his own treachery. But who would have been privy to the details of the trip north, the timing and the route? Who could have sent word
to the Indians without arousing suspicion?
Who had turned the blame on Cass?
He thought back to the confrontation on the parade ground this afternoon: the heat of the setting sun on his back, the bone-deep weariness, and the bitter taste of failure. He heard angry voices in his head, filled with pain and rage and grief.
Then one voice rang out above the rest. Though the man hadn't said much—just a word here and there to goad the crowd—Hunter realized who the informer was. But he needed proof before he could approach Ben McGarrity with his suspicions.
He'd need a confession from the man to clear Cassandra's name. He'd need to settle his own score with the traitor for offering up the lives of Captain Parker and those young troopers, lives that had been entrusted to him.
Hunter was sure who had betrayed them. Seeing what other people missed had always been his gift.
* * *
Cass fled from Hunter's lodge into the deepening dark. She fled with her skin on fire and her heart fluttering inside her like a moth trapped in a lantern. She fled with the taste of Hunter on her mouth and the heat of his flesh still warming her palms. She left when she desperately wanted to stay. She had committed herself to Meggie and Drew months before, and she would remain with them until everything was settled.
Hunter knew that as well as she. It was why he hadn't asked her to stay with him. And while she might ache with denying herself, she knew where she belonged.
The music drifting up from soapsuds row matched her mood. The high, clear promise of a tin whistle's tune was offset by the soft, sweet weeping of some trooper's violin. In a better world, she might have been invited to join the women who were crying for their friends and sons and lovers, and the men who were mourning their fallen comrades. But not tonight, not when she was who she was, not when everyone thought she had betrayed those fine, dear men.
Still, the music soothed her, made returning to the cabin she shared with Meggie and Drew less difficult. She paused just shy of the front steps and glanced back to where Hunter's tepee stood, to where the man who knew her heart was left alone with his regrets. To where—for one agonizing moment—Cass longed to be.
So Wide the Sky Page 28
