Frontier Fires

by Rosanne Bittner

  Leónes glared back at him, his dark eyes turning to narrow slits. “You have been warned, all of you Americans. Our presidente is very angry.”

  “And so are we,” Caleb answered.

  The lieutenant jerked his horse back and turned it, motioning for his men to follow. Caleb’s men moved behind them. “We’ll see that they get all the way off the land,” one of them yelled out to Caleb.

  “Start guarding the borders. Make sure they stay off,” Caleb answered.

  Lynda lowered the musket, her hands shaking now. She struggled against tears, looking up at her father. “This is what happens when you don’t get out there and take care of your land,” she chided. “When you sit around moping, so do the men, and Mexican soldiers ride right in without anybody knowing it! When are you going to stop sitting around feeling guilty about Lee, Father? You got John back. Lee gave up his life for John. He did what he had to do. Now it’s time for you to do what you have to do and run this place the way it should be run—the way only Caleb Sax can run it!”

  Caleb frowned, reaching out and taking the musket from her and handing it to Tom, keeping his eyes on Lynda.

  “What is this all about?”

  Their eyes held. “It’s about you … and me and Lee. Nobody is to blame, Father. And Lee would hate how you are acting, how I’m acting, too.” She looked down, touching her stomach. “Tom made me realize if I don’t take care of myself, I will lose Lee’s baby.” She met his eyes again. “I want this baby more than anything. And I want things to be as normal as possible again. I want to see you out here giving orders and helping round up some new horses and getting the barn rebuilt. And I don’t want you feeling guilty about Lee. I have never held you to blame.” She looked out at the barn and the disappearing soldiers. “Lee helped you build this place. You’ve got to get it back into shape.” She met his eyes again. “You owe it to those people who are buried up there behind the house.”

  A faint smile moved over his lips. “Well, by God, if you aren’t a Sax through and through. I think you really would have shot that man.”

  They both smiled. “I never told you how glad I was to see that you and Tom and John at least survived. I feel so selfish. I didn’t even seem to care that you had been wounded, that you had risked your own life. But I did care, Father. This would all be so much more unbearable if something had happened to you, too.”

  Sarah walked out onto the veranda then. Lynda turned to her and they embraced. Sarah looked up at Caleb and saw a brighter look to his eyes, saw a little bit of the old Caleb returning. Caleb turned to Tom.

  “Let’s go for a ride, son. It has been a long time since I rode the borders and took a look at what needs to be done. And we will hire a few extra men to get the barn built faster.”

  Tom grinned. “Chester Stone spotted some beautiful wild horses in the northern valley. You want to go check them out?”

  Caleb nodded. “Sounds good to me.” He looked back at Sarah, bending down and kissing her cheek, then Lynda’s. “I will be back by nightfall,” he told them.

  “I will be waiting,” Sarah answered, her green eyes shining with love. Their eyes held, and she saw a look there she’d not seen in a while. Caleb Sax was healing emotionally. And that meant he would come back to her in spirit—and body. She felt old sexual urges awakening as she watched him walk off, loving the easy gait of his long legs, loving Caleb Sax with every bone in her body. She just then realized she had never told him she had seen Emily Stoner. They had been so wrapped up in their grief over Lee, it just didn’t seem important. She would have to tell him, tonight. Tonight they would really talk—be the old Caleb and Sarah. The healing had begun. If only there weren’t this worry over Santa Anna and the Mexicans.

  Chapter

  Six

  * * *

  Caleb stretched out in bed, watching Sarah brush out her long, red-gold hair. There were times when she seemed eighteen again—still slender, her skin soft. Sarah had lost much of the weight she had gained from the baby, and it pained Caleb’s heart to realize that part of the reason was the work and worry of living in this land he called home. But Sarah never complained. They were together again. That was all that mattered. Caleb felt joy at the memory of the little girl at Fort Dearborn who, the first time he met her, had taken his hand and led him to the house, eager to teach her way of life to the Indian boy her uncle had brought home. She had not really lost that sweetness. Byron Clawson had tried to destroy it, but it had survived.

  “Do you think there will be trouble with those Mexican soldiers?” she asked.

  “Most likely. But not just for us—for everybody. When I rode off with Tom earlier we ran into Wil Handel. He told us there is going to be a meeting in San Felipe in a couple of days with that Sam Houston fellow. I intend to go.”

  Sarah sighed and put down the brush, removing her housecoat as she approached the bed. Caleb turned on his side to watch her climb in. He reached out with a sore left arm and urged her to move closer. She reddened almost like the young girl she had been when he first took her. Neither of them had been able to think about sex in weeks; she had been big with child, then Caleb had left to rescue John, and then their awful grief had come between them.

  “I like you this way,” he told her, “all soft and warm in a flannel gown, your hair long and loose.” He bent down to kiss her, lightly massaging a full breast with his big hand. His lips hungrily met her mouth. Sweet, beautiful Sarah, his best friend in youth, his lover, now, finally, his wife. His lips left her mouth and traveled over her eyes, her cheek. “She’ll be all right, won’t she? Tell me she’ll be all right.”

  She knew he meant Lynda. “Of course she will,” Sarah answered softly. “She’s a Sax. We’ll all help her through this and when she has the baby it will help. And some day there will be another man for her. She’s so young and beautiful. It’s just so sad that she had Lee for such a short time. Things like that are so much harder to accept when you’re young.”

  “We both know that,” he answered. “Yet if I lost you now, being older wouldn’t help much. It hurts at any age.” He studied the green eyes. “I just hope I never have to go through losing you again.”

  She kissed his chest. “You won’t lose me.”

  He nuzzled her hair. “Who can promise anything anymore? This damned Mexican situation—”

  She put her fingers to his lips. “Let’s not talk about it.” She decided to change the subject before all his troubles and grief spoiled the night. “Caleb, I never told you—while you were gone I went to San Felipe with Mildred Handel, and guess who I saw. No, don’t guess. You’d never guess in a hundred years. Emily Stoner!”

  His eyebrows arched and he raised up, leaning on his right arm. “Emily? In San Felipe?”

  “Yes.” Sarah grinned. “And would you believe she has a husband?”

  He smiled, but he didn’t laugh. He rested his head on his hand. “I’ll be damned. I would love to meet the man. He must be a saint.”

  “Oh, Caleb, don’t tease. It isn’t funny, not when you see the look on Emily’s face. She told me he knows nothing about her past. When she first introduced us, she talked about her ‘first’ husband, how he helped her take care of you.

  “She has told Howard, that’s her husband, that she’s a widow. And she talks so fast around him, I think she keeps him confused enough not to question her. Her husband is a blacksmith and is from Texas. He was in New Orleans to recruit people to settle here when she met him. I really think Emily came here hoping she could start a new life and leave her past behind.”

  He lay down and pulled her into his arms. “Emily Stoner—married,” Caleb said reflectively. “At the time she was nursing me back to health, I could tell she was wishing she could live a different life. But she didn’t have much faith in herself. I tried to tell her what happened in her childhood—her tyrant of a father—and being captured by the Indians—didn’t have to stop her from being happy. What is her husband like?” he added tentatively.r />
  “He’s a big, rather clumsy-looking man in his forties, and I think he all but worships Emily—calls her ‘Emmy.’ You should see his eyes when he looks at her. His name is Howard Cox.”

  Caleb grinned. “Imagine that—Emily Stoner settled, and living right here in San Felipe.”

  “They might come and visit. If they do, you mustn’t give anything away. You have to act like it was she and her husband who helped you, not just Emily.” She sighed deeply. “We owe her, in spite of what she was, Caleb. She saved you from death, and later she came to see me in St. Louis to tell me you were alive. It helped me so much to know that, even though neither of us knew where to look for you. I at least had some hope. She didn’t want to be seen coming into my house that night, but I didn’t care who saw. And I’ll never forget how lonely she looked. I dearly hope she can be happy here.”

  Caleb frowned. “How did she explain to him about knowing us?”

  “She just told him we had all known each other at Fort Dearborn.”

  Caleb’s heart tightened. He had never told Sarah the reason he had first fled Fort Dearborn in his teens and ended up living among the Cheyenne. Sarah had already been sent to St. Louis to be with her father when it happened. They had all been hardly more than children then. The promiscuous Emily Stoner seduced the then-virgin Caleb Sax into a torrid series of sexual pleasures, until her violent preacher father found them together, at which time a frightened Emily Stoner screamed rape and nearly got poor Caleb hung. He had to flee for his life, and not long after that Fort Dearborn had to be abandoned. In their flight south, Tom Sax and Emily’s father were killed by the Potawatomies, and Emily was taken as their captive.

  When Caleb ended up in New Orleans years later, during the War of 1812, he discovered Emily living there, working in a brothel. He hated her then, but later when she helped him after being wounded, they came to an understanding, and Caleb learned the horrors of what her life had been like with her crazed preacher father. His animosity left him, and they parted good friends. That had been at least eighteen years ago. And their teenage sexual fling had been even earlier than that. What was the sense of saying anything to Sarah now?

  “I’ll look her and her husband up when I go to San Felipe,” he said aloud.

  “You be careful in San Felipe. We’re caught between, you know. You’re an American settler, with the same complaints as the rest. You’re one of them, and yet you’re not. I have heard settlers grumbling about the Indians coming into Texas from the southern states. It would be easy for the talk to turn against all Indians.”

  Caleb began to unbutton her gown. “I don’t want to even think about it tonight.”

  She reached up and touched his face. “My strong, wonderful Caleb. The past few weeks, I hated watching you suffer so. It’s been so hard. I was wondering if you would ever be my Caleb again.”

  Pain stabbed at him again at the memory of Lee, but he forced it out of his mind. He had to remember the living and their needs. This was his Sarah—so special, so damned special. Caleb pulled her gown off her shoulder, exposing a breast. He bent closer and lightly sucked at the firm nipple, catching a taste of his own son’s nourishment. Desire ripped through him as she let out a small whimper. A man could take nourishment from a woman’s breast, too—a different kind of nourishment, a kind of security in knowing he was loved and desired.

  His touch brought out her own long-buried desires. “Oh, Caleb, it’s been so long,” she whispered.

  He nuzzled his face between her breasts then, eager from so many weeks without his woman. He kissed her slowly as he moved down, taking the gown with him, refreshing his memory on her every curve and shadow, her every secret place. He pulled the gown off her ankles and threw it aside, lost in her, hardly aware of her remarks about hoping she still looked good to him. How could she not look good to him? She was Sarah, and these were her lovely ankles he was kissing, her slender legs, her smooth, firm thighs. This was her secret place, owned by Caleb Sax, the first man to invade her, the only man she’d ever loved.

  Sarah was glad Lynda had chosen to sleep in her own cabin that night. She would not want the girl to overhear their sounds of lovemaking. Tom had long ago decided to sleep in the bunkhouse so his father and Sarah could have more privacy. John slept in the loft, and he always slept soundly. James slept in a cradle nearby. The house was quiet. Sarah could not control the whimpers and cries of ecstasy as her husband touched her in all the right ways, exploring, bringing out her every passion, reawakening desires that had not been stirred for a long time. Her pleasure came not just from his touch, but from the knowledge that emotionally he was healing and was her Caleb again.

  Caleb moved quickly, and she understood. It had been a long time. She was as anxious as he. His lips moved back over her belly, her breasts, to her throat. He supported himself mostly with his right arm as his powerful legs forced hers apart and that most manly part of Caleb Sax found its way into the nest of love that waited for him.

  He pushed deep and hard, groaning her name, needing this as a last step in overcoming his grief, needing to be human again, to know there was still life and love in a world of prejudice and violence. He moved rhythmically but almost frantically, grasping her hair, his body damp against her naked skin. Her own passion rose to greet him with a pulsating climax that sent fire ripping through his loins. He held out as long as possible, to satisfy her own intense needs. Then his life spilled into her, and he relaxed beside her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her hair.

  “I love you, Sarah,” he whispered. She felt his trembling, and when she reached up to touch his face, she realized his cheeks were wet with tears.

  “It’s all right now, Caleb,” she said softly, curling up against him and kissing his chest. “It’s over. Lynda will heal. We all will heal.”

  Steam poured from the water into which Howard Cox was dunking a red-hot horseshoe. He looked up for a moment, just in time to see a couple entering his small work shed. He grinned when he recognized Sarah.

  “Mrs. Sax!” He removed the shoe from the water with hammer tongs and hung it over an iron bar. He then wiped sweat from his brow with his sleeve and dried his hands on a heavy apron. “Nice to see you again.”

  Caleb studied the big man, whose smile and eyes suggested a very decent, good-hearted person.

  “We asked where we could find the new blacksmith,” Sarah told him, walking up to him and putting out her hand. “We knew if we could find you, we could find Emily.”

  “Oh, ma’am, I can’t take your hand. I’m too dirty.” Cox looked somewhat embarrassed, as Lynda and Tom also came inside, standing near Caleb. He ran a hand through his dark, curly hair.

  “Well, not too dirty for another man,” Caleb put in then, putting out his own hand. “I’m Caleb Sax!”

  “Well, well!” Cox shook his hand heartily. “I’ve heard so much about you. Emmy has told me all about you folks. Why, you’ve got to go and see Emmy. She’d be real proud to see you walking so tall and strong, Mister Sax.”

  Emmy. Caleb was astounded to see immediately that this man seemed to have no inkling of his wife’s past.

  “Yes. They were very good to me,” he replied, letting go of Howard’s hand.

  “Well, I’m real glad you two found each other.”

  “And we’re glad to see Emily is over the grief of losing her first husband and has found herself a good man,” Caleb answered.

  Cox just laughed. “Well, I was never one to settle … roamed the mountains mostly—trapped, hunted, laid trails. But I always knew smithy work—just never stuck to it. Now that I have a wife to support, and couldn’t quite make it at farming, I came to town to do what I do best.”

  Caleb grinned. “I’m sure you’re good at it. I’m here to go to the meeting. I want to get a look at Sam Houston. What do you think of him?”

  Cox shrugged. “Seems like a good man.”

  “Well, I’d like to see Emily and then go to the meeting. He turned to the others. �
�This is our daughter, Lynda; and my son Tom by my first wife. I guess you’ve already seen the baby.”

  Cox nodded to Lynda and Tom and turned to Caleb. “Right handsome family you’ve got, Mister Sax. And a new baby to boot. You must be a very proud and happy man.”

  Caleb nodded. “I am. I have another son at home—John.”

  Cox wiped his hands again. “Well, then, you did get him back from the Comanche. Emmy said you would—said no Comanche could take on Caleb Sax and win. Is the boy all right?”

  “He’s fine. But my son-in-law—Lynda’s husband—he was killed.”

  Cox sobered, turning to Lynda with genuine sorrow in his eyes. “Oh, I’m real sorry about that, ma’am. Real sorry.”

  Lynda gave him a faint smile. “Thank you.”

  “Well, you’ve got a fine family to support you and help you—strong parents, an older brother who I’ll bet would defend you to the death. Isn’t that right, Tom?”

  The man looked at Tom and the young man grinned. “Yes, sir. We will take care of her.”

  “Of course you will.” Cox looked back at Caleb. “Emmy and me live in a little cabin up at the left end of the street.” He walked out of the small shed. “Right up there. She’s got roses all around the front step. You’ll see it. Lord knows there’s not much in flowers around here, or women, for that matter.”

  “Thank you, Mister Cox.” Caleb shook his hand again. “I really am glad to meet you.”

  “Call me Howard. And any friend of Emmy’s is a friend of mine.”

  The man’s almost innocent ignorance was close to amusing, if it were not for the wonder of what he would say or how he would feel if he knew the truth about his Emmy’s past. Caleb was truly glad for Emily. The problem was how sad it would be for her if her husband discovered she was once a prostitute.

  “And to you I am Caleb. Bring Emily out to our place some time. Sarah and Lynda don’t get much chance to visit.”