Once Betsy was settled, Belle packed her horse and swung up. She rode a mile downhill until she came to an open meadow. Only then did she realize the weather had turned sharply colder during the day. Up until now the timber had cut the force of the wind. It was already late. Because Belle had no plans to come up here again until spring, she’d stuck it out doing everything that was needed.
She rode on for hours, winding closer to home with still a long, long way to go, when the cold got to be too much. Belle chafed at the delay, but she’d known she had to see to Betsy at least one more time, and she couldn’t unwrap the baby without a fire. She found an overhang, got a good fire going, and settled herself comfortably into a corner with the rock wall behind her. And suddenly she was waking up.
She’d only awakened because Betsy started crying in the bundle of blankets nestled beside her on the ground. Belle sat forward quickly, shocked at herself for falling asleep. Her stomach lurched then dived hard, and she just barely managed to set Betsy down and crawl a few steps away before she threw up in the grass.
When she quit retching, she wiped her mouth and slowly sat back down. Alerted by a particularly loud squall from Betsy, she unwrapped her baby, just over nine months old, and put her to her breast, which Belle noticed now was tender.
Belle was no schoolgirl still in pinafores. She’d been up and down this trail before.
She held Betsy in the waning light and stroked the cheeks that were hollow and too tanned for a baby.
And Belle Harden cried.
She was going to have another one. Another precious little baby. She could already picture a little girl who looked just like Silas. A little girl who was too quiet because she was raised on horseback by a ma who didn’t have time to fuss over every little whimper.
God, please let it be a girl.
That same old prayer. The one she’d spoken into so many lonely nights.
Belle remembered what it had been like when she had Emma growing in her and Lindsay strapped on her back. She’d built the cabin in that condition and rode herd for long days just like this. Surviving that year and the one after, with Lindsay a harumscarum three-year-old and Emma at her breast, had taken every ounce of strength she had.
And these two, Betsy and the new one, would be almost that close in age. She thought of the branding time to come in the spring. She would be trying to brand these vicious, wild two-year-old bulls and heifers she’d scared out of the hills as well as the spring calves. Last spring had almost killed her. Dozens of times she’d been kicked or knocked to the ground. She accepted the rough-and-tumble ways of branding. But more than once she’d taken a hard blow to the belly because she was almost due to have Betsy and her stomach was in the way something fierce. More than one night she’d lain in bed and felt pains start then ease off, and she knew it was the brutally hard work that was pushing the baby to come before time.
Anthony had of course done none of the spring work. Claimed he had a bad back.
This spring she wouldn’t be quite as close to due, but it would be bad enough. And if the baby did come, unlike Betsy who was close to ready to face the world, this baby would be too young. She stood a good chance of killing the poor little baby with her work.
God, please let it be a girl.
The fear and sorrow of that made her wish the baby away, and Belle hated herself for that. No baby deserved to come into the world with a mother who felt such awful things. She loved her girls. She was grateful to God for giving her every one of them, because her life would be empty without them. But she was a bad mother.
Belle admitted the real reason she cried was because she was going to give birth to another little girl who would never know a mother’s time or soft hands. A little girl who was going to have to get tough, grow up hard, and quit wanting a mother’s tenderness fast.
She looked down at Betsy who was nursing with her eyes wide open, staring at her sobbing mother. Betsy reached her thin, brown hand up and rested it on the swell of Belle’s breast and opened and closed her hand as if to massage more milk for herself.
Belle wiped her eyes against the sleeve of her buffalo-hide coat and slid her work-roughened finger into the tiny hand.
Betsy clutched onto Belle and kicked as she nursed.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been better to you, baby.” With her voice breaking, Belle pulled her knees up to more completely cradle her neglected little angel and tried to sing a lullaby, stopping several times as she sorted through her mind for a song that wasn’t one she sang to the cattle on the drive at night. She couldn’t think of any, and that made her cry some more.
In the end, she just hummed and cried and let Betsy hold her finger. She tried to remember the last time she’d sung to her baby. And when she couldn’t think of a single time, she cried all the harder.
Through her tears she thought of Silas. She thought of his charm with the girls and his gift for making her feel like a beautiful woman when she was so far from being one.
It was all lies. She knew that now. Yes, he’d worked hard beside them on the trail, and he’d been nothing short of heroic helping them get home. But now she could see that it had all been lies. He’d worked his way into her life; then he’d turned into another man who used her.
Exhausted from the early morning and the hard day and from growing a new life inside her, she slid down until she lay on the ground and curled her body around both her hungry old baby and her hungry new baby who was already making demands on her strength.
She’d known keen disappointment with all her husbands, but none had ever hurt like this. And it wasn’t because he’d turned out to be lazy. It wasn’t because he’d charmed the girls into loving him. They were so starved for a man to admire them that they would have fallen for anyone who spared them a single kind word. And it wasn’t because he had lied, at least lied to Belle’s way of thinking, because he’d let her believe he would hop out of the cart and pull along with her instead of going along for the ride like the other husbands. It was because she loved him.
That love cut into her heart now like a dull-edged knife and carved out a piece of herself that Silas had awakened and warmed. Her love for him died along with her hope. She was going to have to go on handling the ranch just as she always had. She had been a fool, weak and stupid to want someone to carry the load. She deserved this. She had long ago learned she had to take care of herself. But now she knew, deep inside of her, she’d always clung to a tiny ray of hope that someone would come along and rescue her like she was some pathetic damsel in distress out of a fairy tale.
Well, there was no rescue coming. And she was no damsel. She was a cowpoke and a good one, and she was never going to be anything else.
Then she thought of the years ahead of her when she was going to have to be strong enough to deny Silas his husbandly rights. That had never been hard with the other husbands, but now the wonderful pleasure he’d introduced her to would have to die, too. If she didn’t keep him away, there would be more babies—the ones she took such poor care of. When he’d shown her how it could be between a man and a woman, she had longed for Silas’s baby. She had pictured herself with four more little girls, these girls chubby with light brown eyes and tawny brown hair streaked with gold from the sun. Silas’s girls wore ruffles and were easy to make smile, and her other girls fit right in with them, learning to laugh and dress pretty and work in the house.
Now she knew that for a fool’s dream. It would be impossible, because she didn’t have the strength to give Silas all his babies and run this ranch, too. In that moment she hated Silas Harden. She hated him for making her love him and for teaching her about what could pass between a man and a woman and most of all for giving her hope.
She grieved for another neglected little baby girl.
God, please let me be strong enough to survive this new mess I’ve made of my life. Forgive me for marrying him. Forgive me for being such a fool.
Crooning to Betsy, Belle wished the baby could forgive
her. But Betsy would never know what had been taken from her.
Wrenching tears wrung straight out of Belle’s heart, until finally she slept before the slowly dying fire.
CHAPTER 24
Silas laughed out loud in the chilly night. He was done.
Well, not all the way done. But close enough he could finally share his idea with his womenfolk. Tell them what he’d been up to for the last month.
Knowing he was hours late for supper, he pushed his horse hard, but the animal was game and rested from lazing the day away while Silas worked. They made good time, and Silas imagined being the hero to his women. Hugs and kisses and all that would come his way when he finally told them about his idea.
He shouldn’t have stayed so long today, but the long month of backbreaking work was worth it. He was overflowing with the pleasure of it. He knew he could never give to Belle what she’d given to him, but it was something.
It was a lot.
It was enough.
He thought about all Belle had given him. Of course there was the vast land holdings and impressive herd of cattle. But there was so much more. All of it more important than the ranch.
The girls.
“I’m a father.” Silas’s horse pricked up its ears when Silas spoke aloud, probably figuring his rider had lost his mind.
Grinning, Silas thought of his pretty, hardworking girls and patted his mount on the neck. “Never gave that much thought before, boy. If I had, I reckon I’d’ve thought of children as a heavy burden and a big responsibility. But I never figured it for the fun. I love being a pa to all those girls. I love hearin’ the word Pa from them.” He wouldn’t mind having a dozen more of them. Thinking about Belle having his baby was enough to make him slap his hand on the rump of his horse and gallop every step of the way back to the cabin.
No, there was no comparison to what Belle had brought to this marriage compared to what one penniless, cowardly cowpoke brought, but he knew Belle loved him. He returned that love in full measure. It was more than any man had given her before. He wished he had more, but yes, it was enough.
He rode up to the ranch yard under a high, full moon. The cabin had its feeble glow shining out of the cracks in the front door. Except there wasn’t much light showing—which meant there weren’t as many cracks. That meant the cracks had all been patched. He’d told Belle he’d get to it, but she must not have trusted him to do it. Of course he had no intention of doing it, but still she should have trusted him. Frowning with irritation, he almost let his good mood slip but shoved the crankiness aside as he put his horse up and hurried to the ramshackle house to make his announcement to his girls.
Before he could get there, the door flew open, letting the meager heat out of the cabin.
Sarah called out, “Ma, is that you?”
There was something he’d never heard in his stalwart little Sarah’s voice before. Fear. The cold night air whipped around him, but it was Sarah’s voice that chilled him.
“No, it’s Pa, Sarie. Isn’t your ma in yet?” Silas increased his already-hurried stride. His pleasure evaporated. Belle should have been home hours ago.
“Her horse came in alone.” Sarah’s eyes were shaded by the dark, but Silas could see the furrows in her brow and hear the worry in her voice. “Emma is trying to back-trail him, but it was already almost dark when the horse showed up wearing his saddle and bridle. Emma said he came from the far north where Ma was combing those breaks for any hide-out steers today. Emma headed up there.”
“Your ma was up in that steep timberland? I told her to leave that for me.” Silas forgot his fear for Belle for just a second as he digested this latest bit of proof that Belle didn’t want to move aside as boss and make room for him.
“I reckon she thought she was out of time, Silas.” Sarah sounded matter-of-fact. She obviously didn’t plan on Silas doing that work either. “Snow comes early up here.”
“I know when snow comes,” Silas snapped, annoyed with the way Sarah called him by his first name instead of saying, “Pa.” He looked at his upset little girl more closely. Her worry for her mother was only part of what the little girl was feeling. He detected a note of…resignation. Like the little girl had resigned herself to something, but Silas couldn’t think what. And under that, so slight he hoped he misunderstood it, he got an impression of disdain. “Follow me to the barn while I saddle a fresh horse.”
Sarah trotted to keep up as he rushed toward the barn. “I should have gone with Emma, but she said I should tell you what’d happened. Emma said you might help.”
Silas looked at her, not breaking his stride. “What do you mean, I might help? Of course I’m going to help.”
Sarah shrugged. “We’re used to doing for ourselves.”
Silas bit back an angry retort. “How long ago did the horse show up?” Silas had been unusually late. He’d thought he’d come bursting into this tumbledown house and make his big announcement and be greeted like a conquering hero. Instead, the house held only one scared, disrespectful little girl.
“Hours. Emma’s been gone for hours. She told me which way Ma rode.”
“You can’t go, Sarie. You need to stay here and take care of Betsy. Does she have enough to eat?” He knew the baby still nursed.
Sarah grabbed a lasso and went out of the barn to the yard where the riding stock was corralled. Over her shoulder, she said, “Betsy’s with her.”
“With Emma?” Silas followed her and watched Sarah disobey him and lasso a horse. He clenched his jaw but said nothing. If she wanted to come, she could come.
“No, with Ma.”
Silas had been leaving earlier than Belle most mornings. He hadn’t realized Belle took the baby along. “She takes Betsy with her to work the cattle?”
“Ma has to take her if she’s gonna be gone over a feeding time. How else can she manage?” Sarah led her horse into the barn to where her saddle was kept.
Silas felt a twist of fear as he threw a loop over a fresh horse. Not only was his wife missing, but his baby might be in danger, too. Hopefully the horse had just broken its reins while it was tied up, but anything could happen in the wilderness. His fear bloomed into anger at Belle for putting herself in danger.
He and Sarah were saddled and on the trail in minutes. As they rode out of the yard into the cold night, Silas asked, “Do you know where she was headed exactly? Did she tell you?”
“It weren’t no secret, Silas.” She guided her horse in the direction she’d said Emma went.
Silas caught up and rode alongside his daughter. “Why are you calling me Silas tonight? I thought you were going to call me Pa.”
“You’re not my pa is all.” Sarah didn’t look at him. She just urged her horse a little faster and said over her shoulder, “I forgot that for a while. And I don’t like the name Sarie anymore neither.” She took a narrow trail that headed virtually straight up.
Silas couldn’t ride alongside her, so he trailed behind an eight-year-old girl. The little slip of a thing was more in charge of this Tanner Ranch than he was.
As they pushed hard up a trail that was treacherous even in the light, he worried and fumed and prayed for Belle to be all right so he could yell at her until she stopped thinking she was the head of this family.
He made Sarah stop so he could check for tracks. Belle’s riderless horse had left a clear trail coming home, and Emma’s horse was heading out this same direction. He got on his horse, and Sarah took the lead again.
As the trail ride grew long, Silas turned his mind away from the worry gnawing away like a rat in his gut, knowing panic would do no good. His mind wandered to his news. He’d expected all his girls to be excited.
As they rode, he drew his coat more tightly around his neck against a wind that was increasingly bitter. He tried to set his hurt aside as he thought about his wife and his girls and how happy he was going to make them and how wonderful it was to be part of this family. Then a new idea popped into Silas’s head. He’d grown up aro
und women—too many women. He knew more about women than any man ever should, including very personal female things. He’d wished long and hard as a boy that he’d be spared the knowledge of a woman’s ways. No young man wanted to learn such—but he had.
And that led him to his wife and what womanly event hadn’t occurred with Belle in their month together. She could be expecting their child.
Silas’s heart thumped hard as a quiet assurance settled on his heart as if whispered by the mouth of God. Belle was going to have his baby.
Belle, lost in this vast, cold night with a baby on her back, doing all the work of a ranch hand with no help because she was too stubborn to step aside and give him a chance. And she was carrying his child.
When he got that woman home, he was going to nail her chaps to a rocking chair and make her stay in the house! Things were going to change around here!
He didn’t care who had built this place up. He was the husband, and it was the Harden Ranch, and Belle could just accept it and obey him, despite ducking the vow to obey with that infernal weak-kneed preacher.
His hands tightened on his reins and his mount sidestepped a bit until Silas brought himself, and his horse, under control. All that yelling would have to wait until he found Belle and made sure she was safe.
They had been on the trail for hours, and only fear was keeping Silas awake. Sarah wasn’t speaking to him—which wasn’t like her. She was a talkative little thing.
They got past the steepest part of the ride, and Silas rode up beside her. “You’re sure she was going to the north timber?”
“You’re a husband.” Sarah didn’t look at him as she pushed her horse faster. “Don’t you ever talk to her? She always tells us where she’s going.”
Silas didn’t like the way he’d been dropped back into the pack of husbands. They all talked about “the husbands” as if they were a group, not worthy of being remembered as individuals. He’d never minded that until all of a sudden he was one of them.
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