IRONHEART

by Rachel Lee

  He glanced at Faith's smiling face and felt himself grinning back. "I have six cousins who have a slew of kids. Every time I go home to Oklahoma, I wind up baby-sitting, and so far there's always been an infant or two in the bunch."

  "Wonderful," said Faith, and she leaned forward, depositing Sally in Gideon's surprised arms. "I'm not above taking advantage of you." She laughed and smiled winningly. "If you don't mind, of course."

  "I don't mind." He looked down at the small bundle he now held and felt a stupid grin grow on his face. "She's a heartbreaker, all right. I'm already in love."

  Conversation resumed and flowed around him, but he only half heard. He supposed it wasn't something most men would admit—or even feel—but he got a kick out of babies and kids. That was why he always wound up baby-sitting when he went home, and it was never a chore. His cousins' wives had swiftly learned that Gideon was a sucker for babies, and there was never a family gathering where his arms weren't full of one infant or another.

  He was still holding Sally when they moved into the dining room for dinner, and he assured Faith that he was quite content to continue holding her. He felt Micah's eyes on him, but the man didn't say anything. Sara seemed equally fascinated by Gideon's fascination with Sally, and when he glanced her way, he saw a soft warmth in her brown eyes that made him ache in some indefinable way.

  Conversation wandered around the weather, passed over the assault on Zeke, and finally settled on the plans being made for this year's Fourth of July celebration. There was to be a picnic down by Conard Creek, where the Cattlemen's Association was planning to barbecue beef ribs for all comers. The Jaycees were organizing a parade, and a memorial service would be held afterward in the Courthouse Square

  .

  The only fly in the ointment appeared to be Micah himself. He was refusing to don his uniform, his green beret and all his medals, and give a speech.

  "I don't give speeches," he said now.

  "It's more than that," Faith said, utterly unintimidated by the dark look her husband sent her. "You'll never convince Micah he's any kind of hero, so he doesn't want to be treated like one."

  Micah scowled and said, "Actually. I just don't want to cut my hair."

  Gideon chuckled. "After twenty years of G.I. haircuts, I can understand it."

  Micah flashed him a faint smile.

  Sara spoke. "I really don't think anyone would expect you to cut your hair just for a couple of hours in uniform."

  "I would," Micah answered.

  Faith threw up her hands. "You see, Sara? He's impossible!"

  Just as dessert was served, Sally decided she was hungry and began to holler for her mother. Faith immediately came to the rescue, taking her daughter into the living room to feed her. Gideon's arms felt empty without the baby.

  "I miss her already," he said to Micah. "She's cute as a button."

  Micah fixed him with a stare. "She could sure use an uncle."

  Heat, then cold, washed through Gideon in waves as he stared into obsidian eyes. Shocked, he understood.

  Micah already knew they were brothers.

  * * *

  Zeke refused all offers of help cleaning up the meal, insisting that he and Joey would take care of it. Sara and Faith he shooed into the living room with coffee. Then he looked at Micah and Gideon, seeming to know they had a secret they had not yet shared.

  "You two need to take a walk. Go."

  Micah and Gideon looked at one another, Micah impassive, Gideon uneasy, uncertain whether he was angry or relieved. As one, they turned toward the kitchen and the back door.

  Outside, the spring night had already settled in, and a chilly breeze blew off the mountaintops. Micah wore a flannel shirt and seemed impervious. Gideon doubted he would ever feel any colder than he had felt in that moment of shock.

  "Want to walk?" he asked. "Or go talk in the bunkhouse?"

  "Walk," Micah said. Then, "You know."

  "Yeah, I know." And now he was feeling angry that Micah had known about him and done nothing. It was the rejection he had felt all his life long, and now it was being inflicted again.

  "Did you know when you arrived here?" Micah asked.

  "Yes." They headed down the driveway, each walking in a separate but parallel rut.

  Micah shoved his thumbs into his front pockets, looking for all the world like a man out for a casual stroll. "Why didn't you say anything?"

  For a minute Gideon didn't know how to react to that. In the depths of his hurt anger, he realized that Micah was asking him the question he wanted to ask Micah. And somehow he managed to shrug, as if none of this was as important as it suddenly felt. "None of it seems to make much sense right now. I wasn't sure you knew you had a brother. I wasn't sure that, even if you did, you would want to meet me. I wasn't sure I would want to know you. It just seemed more sensible at the time to wait and do a little reconnaissance before taking an irrevocable step."

  "I can see that." For a while they walked on in silence; then Micah spoke again. "That doesn't explain why you stayed silent."

  Gideon halted abruptly and faced him, old hurts suddenly fresh and sharp. Micah, too, stopped, and they stared at one another, separated by a gulf that neither was really sure he wanted to cross.

  "Our mother," Gideon said tightly, "died when I was just over two. I was raised in an orphanage until the age of twelve, when one of the nuns managed to track down my uncle. From then until now, there was never any indication that our father gave a damn if I was alive or dead."

  Micah nodded and tipped his head back, studying the stars. "I felt the same way about our mother."

  Gideon was struck. Somehow he had never imagined that, and now he felt stupid because of it.

  Micah continued his survey of the heavens. "I knew you existed, probably because I was older and had some kind of memory of you before our mother left with you. I asked Dad about it once when I was maybe seven or eight. He said they had agreed to each take one child rather than one of them having to lose us both."

  Gideon yielded a long breath and let go of an old, old tension. It somehow didn't sound as bad when put that way. "But he didn't keep in touch?"

  "He said he tried once but was told she was dead. I don't know if that's true or not." Micah lowered his gaze to Gideon. "Our father was not… Well, hell. Fact of it is, he wasn't much of a father. Oh, from time to time he got his father duds on and gave me a lecture about something. Once he even told me not to be ashamed of my ancestry, because on our mother's side I was descended from powerful medicine men."

  "That's true."

  Micah shrugged. "The point is, that was the extent of his fathering. He was a cold man, Ironheart. If you want the honest truth, he didn't have enough heart to make an attempt to keep after you or our mother. He would probably have been just as happy if she'd taken me, too, the way it felt at times. At best, I think he never forgave her for leaving. Anyhow, by the time I got old enough to ask any serious questions about you, he didn't remember anything useful, and then he died. And truthfully, it seemed like a lot of water over the dam at that point."

  Gideon nodded his understanding. Except for Barney's death, he never would have felt compelled to look for Micah. He started walking again, and Micah followed suit. What he had learned was hardly a blinding revelation, but it helped him understand.

  "Our grandfather didn't help matters," Gideon said. "He declared our mother dead when she married our father. Maybe that explains why he only once attempted to get in touch with her."

  "Could be. Did the old man ever come around?"

  "By the time my uncle took me from the orphanage, he'd lived to regret banishing her."

  Micah swore. "Never ceases to amaze me how people can mess things up. Things would just be so simple if folks would let them."

  They walked on a little farther in silence, then Gideon asked, "How did you know who I was?"

  "I heard there was a half-breed Cherokee named Gideon Ironheart in town. That got me wondering, because I k
new I had a brother named Gideon. Then I saw you. Don't know if this will bother you or not, but you got our father's eyes. I'd've recognized 'em just about anywhere."

  "You've known that long?"

  "Yep." He glanced over at Gideon. "You weren't saying anything, though, and I wasn't sure you knew. Faith was sure, though. That's why she dumped Sally in your arms tonight. She's been fretting that Sally wouldn't have any relatives, and now she's bound and determined you're going to be the baby's uncle. And I'd better warn you—when Faith makes up her mind, there's no deterring her. I've tried."

  Gideon couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him. The image of Micah being helpless before the determination of his tiny wife was inescapably amusing. "I'm being adopted?"

  "Reckon so," Micah agreed.

  Gideon tilted his head back, pretending to study the stars while he tried to cope with an unexpected tidal wave of feeling. His throat ached, and his chest felt almost too tight to breathe, as some ancient hurt began to let go. Then Micah astonished him by briefly clapping a hand to his shoulder.

  "I told you," he said to Gideon, "life is really very simple. It's pointless to make it complicated. We're brothers. Whether that will become anything more than a word is something only time will tell."

  Gideon managed at last to draw a long breath. He faced Micah. "Just play out the hand and see what happens?"

  Micah nodded. "I spent my whole life telling myself I preferred to be alone. Faith convinced me I didn't really mean that. Reckon there's room for a couple more good folks, too."

  Sara was right, Gideon found himself thinking. Micah Parish had made peace with himself. And Gideon felt a stab of painful envy. He forced it down. "Faith is quite a steamroller, huh?"

  Micah laughed, a rare sound from the silent man. "You wouldn't believe one little moonbeam could throw her weight around the way she does. Take a word of advice, Ironheart. Don't even think of arguing with her about anything."

  * * *

  Sara's face was full of questions, but Gideon ignored them. After saying good-night, he turned and headed toward the meadow, thinking he would take a stroll and try to get his thoughts in order. He hadn't asked Sara to come to him tonight, so he was pretty sure she wouldn't. She didn't have enough self-confidence to push him. Another time that would have bothered him, but right now it was merely a relief. He had too many personal demons he needed to face tonight. He didn't have anything left over for anyone else.

  On the far side of the meadow, well away from curious eyes, he settled onto a flat boulder at the base of a tall pine and leaned back, drawing one knee up to rest his elbow on it. Around him the pines whispered of things lost and found of things to be learned and unlearned. An owl hooted eerily from somewhere above, and then the sense of something silent passing in the dark came to him.

  The sense of anticlimax was inevitable, he supposed. His discussion with Micah had been fraught with little of the intensity he had expected. Instead, they had behaved like two civilized men discussing the antics of people they had never understood. And somehow, as a result, the bitterness he had carried with him for so many years suddenly felt childish, self-indulgent, foolish.

  They would never know, now, what had driven their parents to behave as they did. Nor did it really matter. All of that was water over the dam, as Micah had said, and that was the realization that made Gideon feel foolish.

  Sitting there in the dark with only the stars, the wind and an owl for company, he faced the fact that he had allowed his life to be ruled by a confluence of events that had occurred at a point so early in his childhood that he could not even remember the time. He had no memory of his mother, and his father had been an ogre built out of childish resentment and a terrible sense of rejection. He had for a time even hated those who had come to his rescue, who had taken him in and tried to make up for their mistakes.

  For his entire life, he had worn his hatred, anger and bitterness like a shield to keep others away, to prevent anyone getting close enough to reject him again. The way he had once believed everyone had rejected him.

  But his mother hadn't rejected him; she had died. And his father had not rejected him either, he had simply failed, through a variety of reasons, to be there. Nor had his grandfather or uncle rejected him. Just as soon as they had learned where he was, they had come to get him.

  Ironheart. That was what he had wished for. He had buried his feelings in places so deep he could hardly find them anymore. He had skimmed the surface of every damn thing like some kind of water skate, until Barney's death had yanked him down into the depths of painful reality.

  He hadn't lost himself because of Barney's death. No, he'd lost himself a long, long time ago. Barney's death had just made him aware of it.

  * * *

  He wasn't sure what alerted him. He was still sitting on his rock, doing some long-overdue thinking, when it was as if the atmospheric pressure changed. The wind was rustling in the treetops too loudly for any but the loudest sounds to reach him, but still he felt as if he had heard something.

  Leaning forward intently, he strained every sense, convinced somehow that he was no longer alone out here. And the first thing, the very first thing, that occurred to him, was that Zeke's attacker had come back for some reason.

  But why would he? Zeke and Sara had very little apart from their land. There wasn't a thing in that house worth stealing, as the perpetrator had evidently discovered his first time through. And if he had wanted anything of value, why hadn't he taken Gideon's Zuni belt buckle?

  He strained his eyes, telling himself that it was late, that he had probably just dozed and dreamed without realizing it. But still he couldn't shake the conviction that someone else was out here.

  All the lights below were out now, indicating that everyone was in bed. Glancing at his watch, tipping it this way and that, he finally managed to see that it was after midnight. Definitely too late for someone to be stirring.

  Sara. Perhaps Sara had gone to the bunkhouse looking for him, after all. The thought brought him instantly to his feet. He was halfway across the meadow before a warning prickle caused him to stop and stare into the dark ahead of him. The starlight provided scant illumination, but enough to make the familiar shapes of the house and barn visible.

  And then, against the light tan color of Sara's police Blazer, he saw a low, crouching shadow move.

  There was no way on earth Sara would be skulking like that in her own yard. Moving as quietly as he could, counting on the rustling wind to cover any inadvertent sounds he made, Gideon hurried forward. Whoever was down there in the yard wouldn't be expecting anyone to come from this direction, and he was counting on that to keep him undiscovered until he got closer.

  And it did. He made it to the rear of the bunkhouse without being spotted. Then, working his way carefully around, he looked into the yard. The shadow was still there, and he could swear it was checking out Sara's vehicle, looking for something.

  Or tampering with something…

  A flicker of light betrayed that the shadow was using a small flashlight. He was definitely looking around under the Blazer.

  Gideon measured the distance between himself and the vehicle. Maybe twenty yards. If he alerted the guy to his presence right now, the man would probably get away. Gideon might be in great shape, but he was no world-class sprinter, and cowboy boots were the devil's own invention when it came to running. He spared an instant to wish he was wearing his work boots instead.

  He eased out of the shadows around the bunkhouse and headed across the yard at a steady, quiet walk, figuring to get as close as he could before he was noticed. Then he'd charge.

  Later, Gideon was to consider his own stupidity with disgust. At the time, though, he was merely amazed that he got as close as he did without the other man becoming aware of him.

  But the other man was aware of him, and when Gideon was almost on him, he rose in a fast, blinding whirl and struck out, catching Gideon in the side of the head with something hard and
heavy. Then he took off at a dead run down the driveway.

  Gideon swore, battling a momentary confusion resulting from the unexpected blow. Then, damning his cowboy boots, he charged after the assailant.

  For a hundred yards, two hundred, they ran down the rutted driveway, the other man managing to keep a good lead. And then Gideon began to gain on him. The other man was tiring, he thought, ignoring the fire that seared his own lungs as he struggled for added oxygen. Damned if that bastard was going to get away!

  Just as he was almost close enough to make a leaping tackle, the guy swung around. Gideon had just enough time to throw up his left arm in front of his face to block the blow. Something as solid and heavy as a lead pipe connected with his forearm, and shock waves of pains hot up his entire arm. He glimpsed another swing coming his way and ducked, but as he did so, he stepped into a rut and went sprawling, getting a solid, crippling blow to his solar plexus when he hit the ground.

  His assailant took off again, evidently not having murder on his mind. Gideon lay there, struggling to get his diaphragm to work, struggling to get air into his lungs, and wondered why he had ever been so stupid as to think he might be cut out to be a hero. He should have scared the guy off and gone in to call the cops. Or at least to get Sara to unlock her damn gun and go after him in a vehicle. That would have accomplished a hell of a lot more than chasing after him on foot in the dark. Idiot!

  "Oh, God," he muttered as he dragged in the first few lungfuls of blessed air. "Oh, God." But now that he could breathe, his arm sent excruciating signals flashing to his brain. For a moment all he could do was roll onto his side and hold his arm like a baby while a long moan escaped him. Fighting ten guys in a parking lot had never hurt quite this badly.

  Some damn hero!

  At last he rolled to his knees and managed to get to his feet while cradling his arm. The damn thing was broken. Of that he had not the least doubt. Over the years he'd managed to break a bone or two, and he knew the sensation. Well, once it was set it wouldn't be much of a problem.

  He was feeling a little ragged, he thought as he made his way back to the house. Not quite with-it. When he reached the yard, he considered going to bed and waiting until morning to ask someone to drive him to the hospital. But then he staggered to one side and realized he was feeling a little drunk. Maybe it wouldn't be smart to wait.