So Wide the Sky

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Ben glanced up, distress in his face. He'd obviously pieced together what had happened. He shook his head, reaching across to stroke Meggie's sun-bright hair.

  "What's going to happen now?" Hunter wanted to know.

  Ben sighed and leaned back against his desk. "That's something we need to discuss. Sally—" He glanced up at his wife. "Would you mind taking Meggie back to our quarters?"

  "No!" Meggie objected. "No, I want to stay with Cassie."

  Sally cooed and patted and promised Meggie cookies.

  "We'll be over as soon as we're finished here," Cass told her, and reluctantly Meggie agreed.

  On their way out, Sally McGarrity paused in the doorway. "You do the right thing by this child, Ben," she told him, her soft, pretty face gone suddenly fierce, "or don't you bother coming home to me!"

  When Meggie and his wife were gone, Ben eyed the two of them. "We need to talk about Meggie's future."

  The grim tone of McGarrity's voice frightened Cass. She had been Drew's wife. She should be the one to take care of Meggie now, but Ben seemed to have other concerns.

  "I don't think either Drew or his wife had any kin," Ben was saying when Cass looked up. "If they did, Drew would have sent Meggie back to the States long before this."

  "Then what do you mean to do with her?" Hunter asked quietly.

  She could see the concern in McGarrity's eyes. "Since you're not blood kin, Cassandra, regulations say I have to send Meggie back East, to Fort Leavenworth or to Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis, where they'll search for relatives and decide what's to become of her."

  "Oh Ben! How can you send her away? I'm her mother!" Cassie cried. "I've been taking care of her these last six months."

  "I know," Ben answered solemnly. "There will be a hearing. You'll have a chance to petition for custody."

  All three of them knew how little chance they had of convincing a military panel to let them take Meggie and raise her as their own. They'd take one look at Cass's tattoo and know what she'd been through. They'd see that she'd been accused of spying and abduction. They'd look at Hunter, a half-breed scout who had fought for both the North and South, and make their decision. It wouldn't matter that the two of them loved the little girl, or that Meggie wanted to be with them. And if there were blood kin somewhere, they wouldn't even have a chance to ask for the little girl.

  "Ben," Hunter said, his voice gone low, "let Cass take Meggie and leave today. You know how much she loves her. She's been more of a mother to Meggie than Drew ever was a father."

  Cass glanced up at Hunter, gratitude swelling around her heart. Everyone Meggie had ever loved had been taken from her, her mother and Drew and now even Cass herself.

  This was worse than losing Meggie to Drew. He had loved Meggie in his way and would have seen that she was adequately taken care of. There would have been Sally and Ben here at the fort to oversee things, and Lila to rock Meggie and pet her and hold her when she cried. But Cass couldn't let Meggie go back East, where she wouldn't have a soul who cared for her. She couldn't let that baby know that kind of loneliness, lovelessness.

  "Ben, please." Cass's voice was raw with misery.

  "I'm sorry, Cassie. This isn't what I want for Meggie, either, but my hands are tied. Even if I let you take her, how could you care for her? Drew didn't leave any money, only his clothes, a few household goods, and a portfolio of paintings."

  "I'll take care of them," Hunter offered. "I have land up in Montana. I have plans to turn the place into a horse ranch, and I've saved nearly enough to buy some stock. If Cass agrees to marry me, we can give Meggie a home and a family."

  "Damnit, Jalbert! I'm not authorized to make this kind of decision."

  "Do it anyway." Hunter's eyes were dark, his voice rough-edged with emotion. "Do it because it's what's right. Do it because it will make Cass and Meggie happy."

  McGarrity looked down at the floor. He looked at the two of them and heaved a sigh. "The army will have my head for this."

  Cass shot to her feet, giddy and laughing. "Oh, Ben!" she cried and reached out to clasp his hand. "Thank you. Thank you. You've made us both so—"

  Hunter gathered her up in his arms and hugged her hard.

  McGarrity scowled. "I don't know how I'll ever explain this to General Crook in Omaha, much less to the War Department." Then abruptly his scowl became a smile, and he reached for his hat. "Oh, hell, I'll worry about them later. Let's go tell Meggie she's got a brand-new set of parents."

  Meggie saw them coming the moment they stepped onto the parade ground. She bolted down the steps of the McGarritys' cabin and ran the length of officers' row, directly into Cassie's arms. Cass stood holding her, laughing and crying. Hunter pulled the two of them close against him.

  Cass smiled at where Sally McGarrity had come to stand beside her husband. "Thank you," Cass whispered. "Thank you both for giving me everything I've ever wanted."

  * * *

  Late that evening Ben McGarrity dipped his pen and signed his name at the bottom of his report to the War Department outlining the incident at the Cheyenne camp. He'd labored over it for hours. He'd always had trouble justifying a mission that failed, one that had cost brave men their lives. One that, in this case, had robbed the army of as fine an officer as Drew Reynolds.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes, wondering if he could have changed the way it had all turned out. But Reynolds had come west with his prejudices intact. He'd seemed sincere in his desire to marry Cassie Morgan and accept responsibility for her when she'd been returned to the whites. He'd been determined to avenge the deaths of his family, whatever that cost him. Ben didn't know what he could have done differently. Still, every officer had his share of regrets. He just knew that giving Meggie Reynolds to Cass and Hunter wasn't going to be one of them.

  Ben smiled when he thought how the three of them had looked as they'd headed off for Montana that afternoon. Jalbert had ridden tall and protective, obviously proud of his newly acquired family. Meggie was subdued by news of her father's death, but was obviously pleased to be riding up in front of the man who had taken her on as his own child. And then there was Cassandra—a bright new wedding band gleaming on her finger, her tattooed face aglow, her eyes filled with a happiness Ben had never expected to see in them. And now he'd done his best to ensure that no one would disturb the contentment they'd managed to find together.

  Ben could hear Sally puttering around behind him in the cabin's kitchen, grinding beans and boiling up a final pot of coffee. He heard her pull out the cookie crock she kept tucked away, and smelled the dark, rich sweetness of molasses. She set the crock on the table and came to stand behind him.

  "Have you found a way to make sure Cassandra and Alain Jalbert can keep Meggie Reynolds?" she asked him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pressing her cheek against his hair.

  Ben tapped one finger on the page that lay on the table before him, indicating the paragraph at the end.

  In spite of an intensive search of the village and the surrounding area, no sign of Meggie Reynolds was ever found. As with many of the whites who have been taken captive over the years, we may never know Meggie's fate. There seems to be no clue to her whereabouts, and I hold very little hope for her return.

  Sally leaned around and kissed his cheek. "You're a very clever man, Ben McGarrity."

  He turned and pulled his wife into his lap. "I've done my best—everything I can do to keep them safe."

  "And they will be," Sally whispered, kissing him. "This is the way it was supposed to turn out."

  Epilogue

  Late October 1867

  Southwestern Montana

  Cass stood on the porch of her brand-new cabin surveying the world Hunter Jalbert had given her. She looked out across the thick, rusty brown of the broomsedge meadow, out through the filigree frame of leafless trees, out at the sky. Bright veils of color streaked the length and breadth of it, deep blue-lavender wrapped closest to the night, scarlet and peacock blue hanging in the mid
dle ground, a tracery of pure rich gold outlining the crests of the peaks to the west.

  The sound of footsteps rustling through the grass made her turn from the sunset to where Hunter was coming toward her from the stream. His hair was damp, and his fresh shirt clung damply to his chest and shoulders. He carried a bucket of water in either hand.

  "Are we all moved in?" he asked her as he dumped the buckets into the barrel at the end of the porch.

  "Meggie's putting the last of her things away," Cass said.

  Hunter came to stand beside her at the top of the steps. "And does my wife approve of the view from her new front porch?"

  Though she could feel his gaze on her, Cass continued to stare at where the last orange sliver of sun was winking out.

  "It's wonderful," she answered. No words she knew were adequate to express what the cabin and the life he was making for them meant to her.

  For weeks he had worked from before dawn 'til well past dark to get this cabin built before the winter rolled in. He had laid up a proper stone foundation, hewn logs and set them in place, and shingled the roof.

  "Is it everything you hoped for?" he asked her. "Do you have everything you need?"

  Cass slowly turned to him. "Almost."

  She saw the smile on his wide mouth lose its crispness and concern crimp a line between his brows. A stillness settled over him. "What is it?"

  Cass gathered every scrap of her courage and looked into his face. "I'm going to have a child," she said quietly. "I didn't—didn't think I could have children. That's—that's why it took me so long to notice the symptoms and—and realize..."

  The spark of apprehension in his eyes danced away, replaced by a look of dawning wonder. A grin broke across his features.

  "Oh, Cass, that's wonderful. I've always wanted children, but I didn't dare hope—" His voice deepened, turning just a little husky. "When do you think we—"

  Cass sucked in her breath, knowing she had to tell him all of it. "We didn't," she answered with deep and genuine regret. "The child I'm carrying isn't ours. It's—it's Drew's."

  She waited, anticipating his disappointment or his anger or his censure, but the light in his eyes didn't change. They still shone that clear, dark blue that was so like the color of the midnight sky. They shone with the same softness, the same warmth as when he thought the baby was his.

  "I'm glad, Cass. I know how long you've wanted this, to carry a baby of your own."

  "Does it—" She didn't know how to ask the question, and yet she knew she must. "Does it matter that it isn't yours?"

  Hunter hesitated, his mouth bowing just a little. "I wish it were mine," he told her. "I wish we had made this baby together. But I think this is the way it was meant to happen. It's something you owe Drew for the old times when the two of you had dreams together."

  She felt tears thicken in her throat and burn beneath her eyelids. She had stood over Drew's grave in the little burying ground at Fort Carr more than six weeks before and promised never to forget him or how they'd loved each other once. Cass knew she would always have Meggie to remind her of Drew, and now there was a new life, a new child, a new reason to keep the good memories of their life together alive.

  She just hadn't expected Hunter to understand what she owed Drew, why it was important that this baby carry on Drew's legacy. But Hunter had known her down to her bones from the very beginning and had accepted her as she was. He had given her a security she had never expected to have.

  Hunter pulled her against him, and she nestled close as they stood together on the porch. He was broad and strong against her. He smelled of pine and wood smoke, of earth and wind, of freedom and home. She curled her hand around his neck and clung to him, to the fortitude and goodness of the man who was her husband.

  "I love you, Cass," he murmured against her hair. "This child is part of you, just as Meggie is part of you. And you are part of me. Yours and mine are ours to share. And where one child finds purchase and grows strong, others will follow. Someday the child you carry will be yours and mine. I can wait. As long as I have you with me, I can wait."

  She raised her head and looked into that broad, handsome face, into those calm, dark eyes. "Thank you, Hunter, for accepting this child. Thank you for giving me all of this."

  He kissed her then, slowly and deeply, as a lover kisses his mistress, as a man kisses his wife. She sighed with contentment and delight.

  This man was her heart. He was her home. Here beneath the wide, wide sky, Cass had found the place where she belonged.

  The End

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  COLOR OF THE WIND

  The Women's West

  Book Two

  Author's Note

  The photograph of Olive Oatman sent chills up my spine. I found it in one of the Old West Series of Time-Life Books, and I couldn't stop staring. It was a picture of a woman dressed in Victorian clothes, a woman with sweeping skirts and wide pagoda sleeves, a woman with her hair carefully parted and curled. A woman with fascinating and intricate Indian tattoos curling over her chin. I was struck by the contrast in the way Olive was dressed and the way she must have been perceived from the moment her brother found her and arranged for her return to the whites.

  The dichotomy in that photograph whispered to my writer's mind about the conflicts Olive Oatman must have faced, about the difficulties she must have had reconciling a part of her life she could never deny and the simple joys Victorian women were raised to appreciate.

  With that photograph, the story and character of Cassandra Morgan began to take shape in my mind. Though in the end, the life I created for Cassie was vastly different from the one Olive Oatman lived, I suspect the difficulties of being marked in such a way and living in what seems to us a very repressive society must have been similar.

  In creating that society, I took Fort Caspar, Department of the Platte, as my model. Initially, and as late as when the excerpt of So Wide the Sky appeared in the back of my previous novel, A Place Called Home, I was using the fort itself. But as the story and characters took on a life of their own, I began to feel I might be intruding on the lives and personalities of people who may well have felt and thought very differently from the lives I was inventing for them. In other words, I decided to change the names to protect the innocent. Doing this also allowed me the freedom to move the story back a year. By August of 1867, Fort Caspar had been abandoned in favor of Fort Fetterman farther east. Still, the descriptions and the layout of Fort Carr are very much based on my research into the site and early garrisoning on Fort Caspar.

  In writing this book, certain volumes were crucial in creating the ambience of life on a frontier fort. First among these was Frontier Regulars by Robert M. Utley, who initiated me to the organization of the U. S. Army in the period following the Civil War. I also drew heavily on Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay by Don Rickey, Jr. For the parts of the book that deal with women living on the frontier outposts I used Glittering Misery: Dependents of the Indian Fighting Army by Patricia Y. Stallard. I also read a number of diaries and memoirs left by the wives of soldiers serving in the West. My visits to both the reconstructed forts at Fort Caspar and Fort Laramie were instrumental in helping me create what I hope is the flavor of life on the Plains.

  Reconstructing the past from a twentieth-cent
ury perspective is a business fraught with peril. Perhaps the best test of what I accomplished lies with you and the viability of the characters and the story I have created. My fondest wish is that you have enjoyed them both.

  Happy Reading,

  Elizabeth Karyn Grayson

  P.S. Since So Wide the Sky was published, a non-fiction book, The Blue Tattoo, written by Margot Mifflin, has come out. It deals not just with Olive Oatman's captivity, but her later life. It is a well-researched volume, and I recommend it to you if you're interested in knowing more about the real Olive's fate.

  I have no idea how Ms. Mifflin's research might have changed Hunter and Cassie's story if I had had access to it when I was putting my novel together, but I am happy with my tale as it stands. Interestingly enough, in the chapter Ms. Mifflin devotes to Olive's literary legacy, So Wide the Sky is prominently mentioned.

  Want more from Elizabeth Grayson?

  Page forward for an excerpt from

  COLOR OF THE WIND

  The Women's West

  Book Two

  Excerpt from

  Color of the Wind

  The Women's West Series

  Book Two

  by

  Elizabeth Grayson

  Award-winning Author

  COLOR OF THE WIND

  Reviews & Accolades

  "...a beautiful tale of redemption and reclaiming lost love. There is a power to Elizabeth Grayson's story that will move readers."

  ~Kathe Robin, Romantic Times

  "Each character suffers disappointment and loss—but in the end, they come together, learning what it means to be a family."

  ~Publisher's Weekly

  "...a compelling and rich story. This is one to savor."

  ~The Rocky Mountain News.

  Boston

  April 1882