Faith felt a little ashamed to realize she had seen this man nearly naked and had never forgotten what a magnificent build he had. The thought almost startled her, for she realized she was appreciating his manliness, and he stirred feelings and needs she had not experienced since she’d first kissed Johnny Sommers. Then she had been so innocent, but now she knew the pleasure of lying with a man—or at least how pleasurable she suspected it could be when the man was gentle and understanding.
She thought how Gabe Beaumont was handsome in a different way from Johnny’s brash good looks. Johnny could get what he wanted by smiling and fast-talking his way; but she suspected Gabe Beaumont got what he wanted by sheer force, or maybe just because of his size and the air of authority about him. This man was much stronger inside than Johnny had been, she sensed, and certainly much stronger physically. He was quiet, experienced, probably not even aware of his good looks.
“Good morning.” She felt the color rising in her cheeks at her secret thoughts.
He nodded to her. “How is the boy?”
Gratitude swept through her. “He seems much better. There is no fever, and he’s breathing better. I sat up with him after you left, like you told me to do. I laid him down only a few minutes ago. I’d like to let him sleep as long as he can.”
Gabe nodded, thinking how pretty she was in spite of that plain, twisted hairdo, the simple gray dress she wore, no color on her face. This was a woman who would be easy to love. But she was white, and he suspected a man was the last thing on her mind. Faith Sommers was certainly a challenge for any man, but too much of a challenge for a half-breed. He would have to love her quietly. He would love her by staying there and helping her. He needed the work, needed someplace to call home. That place would be Sommers Station…unless it became too difficult to be near this woman and to ignore his desire to see her naked, feel her skin against his own.
“Sit down. I’ll pour you some coffee. I’m afraid it’s a day old and pretty strong.”
“I like my coffee strong.” He sat down at the table, and Faith poured coffee into a tin cup and set it in front of him. “I’m making some breakfast. I hope you like bacon.”
He smiled softly. “There is not a man alive who does not like bacon.”
Faith set the coffeepot back on the stove and turned the bacon, then poured herself a cup of coffee, facing him again. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I told you last night it is not necessary.” He drank some of his own coffee. “Letting me stay here is thanks enough. I will clean out the horse shed and turn the horses out to pasture. You should stay inside today with your son.”
“Fine. I will go out and milk the cow, though. She has to be milked every morning. Her calf died, but if I keep milking her, she’ll keep producing.”
Gabe leaned back. “I will leave that to you. I have never milked a cow.”
Faith smiled. “I guess there are a few things I’ll have to teach you.”
“I suppose. But I learn fast.”
She liked his deep voice, liked the way his full lips moved when he spoke, wondered how it would feel to be kissed by those lips. She turned away to finish cooking breakfast, frying some eggs in the bacon grease and putting three of them on a large dish along with a heap of bacon. She set the plate in front of him, then cut him some bread and poured more hot coffee into his cup. “One thing I’ve learned is how to cook. Sometimes I cook for several passengers. I actually enjoy it, in spite of the work. I’m hoping Sommers Station will grow when the railroad comes through, and I intend to open a rooming house then, maybe a restaurant. I’m so happy you’re staying, Gabe. I was actually considering leaving before you came along, losing hope. But now I’m sure I can stick it out here until the railroad comes.”
He ate voraciously as she spoke, mopping up the eggs with the bread. “Why did you stay so long?”
She shrugged. “I had no place else to go.”
Gabe drank some coffee, thinking how alike they were in some ways. “Well, then, this place must have an attraction for people with no place else to go. It is the same for me.”
Faith watched him devour the bacon. “I’m sorry you have no place to call home.”
Gabe met her gaze, realizing she truly meant it. There was something about her that reminded him of Little Otter, even though Faith was not Indian. He swallowed the bacon and washed it down with more coffee. He set the cup down and sighed. “At one time I felt I belonged to another kind of world, my father’s world. I traveled with him, hunted with him, lived easily in both the Indian and white world. But things were different then.” He touched the bear-claw necklace. “My father gave me this. It is made of bear claws and was a gift to him from my Indian grandfather, Two Moccasins.”
Faith tried to imagine what his life must have been like as a boy. “What was your father like?”
He stared at his coffee cup. “He was a big man, the kind your people call a mountain man. He was a good man, a friend to the Sioux. In the early days the Sioux did not mind such white men coming to their land. They came only to hunt and then they left again. They respected the Indian way, and many of them married Indian women. It is the kind of whites who come today who make the Indians raid and murder. They have no respect for the Indian way. They dirty the land and water, dig up Grandmother Earth, cut down the trees.” He sighed. “I know now they cannot be stopped.” He tipped back his chair. “I realize my father was also a man who lived in two worlds, even though he did not have mixed blood. He was a Frenchman, a fur trapper. He dressed like an Indian, lived like one most of the time.” He buttered another piece of bread. “The only English I learned was from my father, but we usually spoke to each other in French.”
Faith found this man utterly fascinating. What a wonderfully exciting life he had led, traveling to a city like St. Louis on a riverboat, living among Indians, scouting for soldiers, and, wrong as it was, riding with outlaws. “My life hasn’t been quite so full of adventure as yours.”
He rolled his eyes. “Most of it was not by choice. And I would not say you have not had an exciting life. Not many white women would choose to do what you have done.”
She poured herself some coffee. “Not many white women are quite as crazy as I am.”
Or as brave and beautiful, he felt like adding. “You are a strong woman.”
She drank from her cup, then just stared at its contents. “I haven’t felt very strong lately. Ever since…” She met his gaze. “Ever since you and those men attacked this place and I realized I couldn’t hold off everyone who comes along, I’ve been very shaken, I’m ashamed to admit. Then that thing with Johnny last night.” She looked back down at her coffee. “I felt so helpless.” She glanced at his big hand. He was circling a finger around the rim of his cup. She thought how that hand could clamp around her throat and choke her to death in moments…but maybe it could also be gentle.
“There is no shame in being afraid. Your fear was for your son in both instances, not for yourself. It is a natural thing.”
“Will you truly stay this time? If you don’t, I’ll have to leave, too. I can’t keep risking Johnny this way, but I’m so sure that I can make something of Sommers Station once the railroad comes. I don’t want to leave now, not when it’s getting so close.”
Gabe thought how the Sioux and Cheyenne hated the coming of the railroad, but he knew there was no stopping it. The Cheyenne had tried farther east in Nebraska, but they had failed. The iron horse was galloping ever closer to its destination, like an unstoppable monster. He looked into Faith’s blue eyes. “I will stay. I owe you, for the attack that could have cost you your life…or Johnny’s. I have lost everything that has meaning for me, so it makes little difference what I do now. By helping you I can at least make up for the wrong I have done you.”
Faith had found herself half hoping he was staying because of personal feelings for her. “Why would you care? I’m white.”
He rose, turning away. “You are not like other white women
. I have told you that before.” He slugged down what was left of his coffee. “I will go clean out the stalls. What else would you need done?”
“I’m not sure. You could fetch me some water, three or four buckets full. And you could bring in some wood. I want to heat the oven and bake several loaves ahead, get prepared for the next stage.”
He frowned. “Indian men do not fetch wood. That is woman’s work.”
Faith looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“Indian men do not fetch wood.”
She rose and put her hands on her hips. “Is that so?” She walked over and grabbed the cup from his hand. “I will remind you, Gabriel Beaumont, that you have decided to dress and behave as a white man. White men do fetch wood! They cut the trees and saw the logs and split them. They stack it and they bring it into the house. I’ve been doing that by myself for a long time, and if I’m going to hire help, that is one thing he is going to do for me.”
He rubbed at his lips as though to try to wipe away the smile that showed itself there. He sighed deeply, his green eyes moving over her in a gaze that made Faith’s blood tingle.
“There is another Indian custom you will like,” he answered.
“I’m not so sure I’d like any of your Indian customs.” She could not help noticing the way his dark hair fell softly around his handsome face. His eyes were set wide apart, outlined with dark lashes and eyebrows, set above high cheekbones. His lips were full, and when he smiled, his whole face became even more handsome, but he did not smile often. Right now he was grinning almost teasingly, and she didn’t know whether to be angry or to smile in return.
“You will like this one.” He leaned closer. “Indian men make a great show of being brave warriors. They hunt, raid, kill, scalp.” He shook his head as though to pretend scorn. “They are wild and fierce, afraid of nothing…except their women. Inside the tepee it is the woman who gives the orders.” He straightened. “Since you are a woman, and I am in your tepee, so to speak, I will do what you ask.”
She could not help a grin of her own. “Good. We’ll get along just fine, then.” She walked back to the stove, uneasy about the feelings he stirred in her when standing close. “I will write to the powers that be at Wells Fargo and tell them I have hired someone to help me. I’ll give them your white name. They’ll never know the difference. I’ll see if I can get their approval, and that way they will pay you. You don’t have to stay here just for a place to sleep and eat. You deserve to be paid, and I can’t pay you out of my own minimal wage.”
“Good.” He walked to the door, taking his hat from a peg and placing it on his head. “Will that man called Buck accept me?”
“Of course he will. He took the bullet out of you, didn’t he?”
He rested his hand on the doorknob. “If soldiers come, use only my white name. Neither you nor Buck should ever tell them I rode with outlaws. They know only that an Indian rode with Chet Webster and his bunch. I killed Webster, and the one who got away is Ned O’Reilly. He’s probably still running, if I know Ned. There is no one left to identify me, and all they ever called me was Indian. The army does not know the name Tall Bear as far as linking me with outlaws.”
He turned and walked out, and Faith stared after him, shaking her head. Having Gabriel Beaumont there was going to be either a good thing, or the biggest mistake of her life. She walked over to Johnny’s cot to check on him again. He still seemed to be sleeping comfortably, his breathing rhythmic, although still congested, his skin cool.
“It can’t be a mistake,” she said softly. Any man who would sit up half the night with a child not even his own had a lot of good in him. She went to the door and opened it a crack, peeking out toward the horse shed. She watched him turn out the horses, smacking some of them on the rump. He leaped up on one of his own Appaloosas in a single swift movement, rode it around, bareback, for a few minutes, not even using a bridle. He sat a horse as though he were a part of it, and that was the Indian in him. Yet here he was dressing like a white man. She liked this new Gabriel Beaumont. She breathed deeply, enjoying the sight of him, then turned away and closed the door. “Faith Sommers!” she scolded herself. She should not be looking at him as a man…a virile man…a skilled man…an utterly handsome man. He was a wild half-breed who knew nothing of the word “responsibility.” He could disappear at any time, like a wisp of smoke. Gabe Beaumont was not the kind of man any woman should set her sights on. Sometimes she gave such thoughts to Tod Harding, but man for man, he couldn’t hold a candle to—
There! She was doing it again. She must stop this! Gabe Beaumont was going to be underfoot twenty-four hours a day. She could not allow herself to be attracted to him. She glanced upward, wondering if God ever got tired of hearing her prayers. So far he had answered every one of them. Perhaps she’d better pray about this, ask God to help her overcome her sinful thoughts about Gabe Beaumont.
Faith hammered another nail, hoping her repair job would fix the leak in the wood-shingle roof of the depot. A heavy spring storm the night before had revealed the leak, and she was only guessing its source, based on where the water had dripped through. Gabe had offered to do the work, but she had insisted she could fix it herself. She’d made roof repairs before. Besides, she’d told Gabe, what would you know about fixing roofs? Repairing a tepee skin might be more up your alley. She’d sent him off with a wagon to start gathering rocks. She wanted to stockpile them to use later with cement to build a foundation for an addition to the depot, whatever might be called for when Sommers Station became a real town. She had decided to think positive from now on. This place would grow, and she wanted to be ready.
She studied the repaired area, seeing nothing that looked as though it could leak. The western sun was mean on wood, quickly drying it out, curling it up, always creating problems. She was proud she had learned how to repair such things, proud she could survive out there as good as any man…well, almost as good. She looked far out in the foothills, where she could see Gabe performing the rather grueling work she’d given him, lifting rocks of all sizes and lugging them to the wagon.
“Lord knows there is an endless supply of rocks out here,” she muttered.
Gabe had taken Johnny with him. Nearly a month had passed, and the boy was healthy and full of vinegar again. He had warmed to Gabe almost immediately, and now he followed the man everywhere. It was almost comical, and Gabe was ever patient. She suspected he didn’t mind because Johnny helped heal the wound in his heart from losing his own little boy.
A pang of guilt stabbed at her for her rather cruel remark earlier that she could probably fix a roof better than he. After all, he was a man, and a man had his pride. He could probably have done it just as well as she, but lately she’d had this anger inside her, and it was her own fault. She was angry over her feelings for Gabe Beaumont, and she was taking that anger out on him, trying too hard to show him she didn’t care, hurtful words coming out of her mouth almost without control. Here Gabe had saved Johnny’s life, and already she could see the tremendous help he was going to be, and she was finding ways to insult him. For the first time in years she had a few chances to relax, more time to play with Johnny. It was good having him there, and he had not complained about a thing, and yet she had this anger to deal with. She felt truly safe and unafraid for the first time since settling there, and Gabe had been courteous, had kept to himself, never bothered her at night. He had—
Damn it! She knew deep inside that was the problem. He had never bothered her at night. The only reason for her anger was because she was fighting her own emotions. She was alarmingly attracted to the man, and it was wrong. She was taking her own weaknesses out on Gabe, doing everything she could to make him hate her, to make sure he never got any ideas about her. And yet there were times when she caught him watching her, and the look in his handsome green eyes—
She angrily threw the hammer to the ground. If she kept treating him the way she had been, he would surely leave, and she realized how lonely s
he would be if that happened…how much she would miss him. She scooted down the roof, dragging along the bucket of nails. She started to put her foot on top of the only ladder she had, which was getting old and also becoming dried out. The moment she stepped on it, she heard a strange cracking sound and felt it giving way. Quickly she scrambled back onto the roof, and the ladder tilted sideways. She was afraid to try to use it again. The last thing she needed was to break a leg and be laid up.
“Damn!” she swore again. She glanced toward the spot where Gabe had been gathering rocks and noticed he was in the wagon and headed back toward the depot. It was almost lunchtime. She climbed back up and sat down on the roof to wait. She could see little Johnny sitting between Gabe’s legs, pretending to be driving the team of horses. The boy already all but worshiped the man, and that made her own feelings even more difficult to deal with. Gabe was even already teaching Johnny how to ride.
“Indian boys begin riding this young,” he had told her, “someone with them, of course. By the time they are four or five, they are riding just fine by themselves.”
She could hardly believe that, but, then, she had to consider Gabe’s own riding skills. Indians seemed to do everything at an earlier age, according to Gabe…including marrying.
The wagon came closer, and she thought how in this land one could watch something like that, thinking it would arrive any moment, but it would take much longer. She had watched the stagecoach this way, winding along the twisting road, disappearing behind a foothill, appearing again, a thundering, clattering, noisy vehicle, yet soundless when it was far out in the rolling hills. Sometimes it seemed more like a vision, silently winding its way on the horizon. Buck had said that the hills acted like a sound barrier, that a whole tribe of Indians could be behind one of those hills and one would never know it, never hear them. She could see how true that might be.
Tame the Wild Wind Page 25
