“Naw’? What’s that?”
Hesitantly she said, “Husband?”
Wade controlled his expression only because this day had been so laced with shocks he was numb. He remembered all too well Glowing Sun swinging up on the back of a horse and riding away last fall. He’d come only moments after she and Wade shared their first and last kiss. As she rode away, she had looked back with longing, but still she’d made her choice.
It had cut Wade’s heart out. He looked around at the devastation and found the man he sought. Dead, sprawled on his back, a tomahawk in his hand and so many bullet wounds it was clear it had taken a lot to kill him. “And she’s angry at you?”
“She blames this massacre on me because they didn’t hurt me. Instead they tried to take me with them.”
“That’s ridiculous. If they did leave you alive, they had terrible plans for you. And this killing is because they’re evil. That’s not your fault.”
Glowing Sun looked at the death surrounding them and caught a handful of her white-blond hair, twisting it as if to yank it out of her head.
Wade knew no one could deny what he’d said. The evil was too huge, too ugly. “She’s got no reason to hate you.”
Glowing Sun yanked that razor-sharp knife with the slender blade from behind her back. “She has objected to me joining her family from the first.”
“So you are married? Were married?”
She raised the knife to hack at her hair.
“Stop!” He caught her wrist.
Glowing Sun pulled against his iron grip. “Why do you stop me? Do you wish to own me because of my hair? Or love me? Or hate me because of it? I would rip it from my head, cut it away.”
“No, I don’t love you because of your hair.” Before this morning’s madness he would have said he loved her because of her heart, her fiery spirit, her courage, and, yes…her beauty. But he’d seen a savage side of Glowing Sun today as she’d slashed at her kidnapper. He realized he didn’t know her well enough to claim something as deep and profound as love. But he wanted to know her. Wanted to love her.
“We don’t have time for you to fuss with it. Let’s bury your dead and tend to the injured.” Wade wanted to ask about her husband. Had they been married before he’d rescued her from kidnappers last fall? And what did it matter anyway? Except that it meant he’d kissed a married woman. And more important, at least as it showed her character, the married woman had kissed him back.
“Where did you come from?” Glowing Sun dropped her hair without slashing it off.
“I’ve been living in the mountains. In a miner’s shack.”
“Nearby?”
“Near enough to hear the gunfire.”
Glowing Sun looked around the village until her eyes landed on her husband. “Wild Eagle.” Tears filled Glowing Sun’s eyes as she looked away. The tears overflowed as she pointed at two children lying dead, side by side. “And that is my brother and my sister.” Her voice broke.
She lifted her chin as if drawing courage straight from her spine. “My father is dead beside him. Better my mother is dead now than to face life without her beloved husband and children.”
“And what of you? Now you face life without anyone.” Except him. Glowing Sun had him whether she knew it or not.
“You speak truth. There is no time now for anything but seeing to my people.”
The sun rose high as they worked, exchanging few words. Glowing Sun carried water as her patients cried out with thirst and pain.
The older woman roused herself soon enough and, despite her ugly head injury, began tending the boy who had a chance at survival. She refused to let Glowing Sun or Wade near him.
The smoke dissipated as the tepees finally burned to the ground, leaving only the reek of ash and the scent of blood.
“We need to bury them.” Wade turned from the living to face the dead. “What can we use for a shovel?”
Glowing Sun nodded then squared her shoulders and approached her mother-in-law. They began to speak quickly. Wade wasn’t sure anymore if the words they exchanged were harsh or if the guttural language just sounded like it to his untutored ears.
At last Glowing Sun returned to his side, tears in her eyes that told him all he needed to know. “She refuses to let us touch them. She said she needs to go to the Bitterroot Valley and fetch a holy man to sing for them.”
“We can’t just go away and leave them lying here.”
“It is more the way of my people than to bury them. We believe people return to the earth when they die. Some tribes burn their dead on pyres. Some leave bodies to the elements, allowing the earth to reclaim them.”
“Which will you do?”
Glowing Sun shook her head. “It isn’t for me to say. She believes they died murdered, their souls stolen. I believe they died in battle. That is a noble death. It will be up to the holy man.”
Wade didn’t like it. But he wasn’t about to add to Glowing Sun’s distress. He walked to the side of the unconscious woman who lingered despite her devastating wounds.
“I’ll respect your traditions, Glowing Sun.” The sun lowered in the sky, and Wade knew it was too late in the day to begin the journey. “We’ll head for the Bitterroot Valley tomorrow.”
“Do not call me Glowing Sun,” she snapped. “Wild Eagle’s mother told me I’ve dishonored the name and my tribe.” She walked along beside Wade and knelt by the injured woman’s side, glancing over her shoulder to see if this would earn her a rebuke. “I remember my white name and will only answer to it from now on. Abby. I don’t remember the rest of it, but maybe it will come back.”
Glowing Sun’s…Abby’s…mother-in-law ignored them, as if she knew the woman they hovered over was beyond being hurt by them. “She can do this, Glow…uh…Abby? She can decide how to treat your parents after their deaths? Decide to strip you of your name?”
“We respect age. To defy her now would only deepen her contempt and anger. And she’s badly hurt, despite her refusal to let me help with the boy. I won’t make things harder for her.”
As they knelt, Wade realized that the woman’s shallow breathing had ceased. Her tenacious hold on life had been severed. Glowing Sun drew a blanket over the face of the young woman who had never regained consciousness.
“We’ve done all we can.” Wade rose and came around the woman to Abby’s side.
“You would leave me?” Abby looked desperately at him.
“No!” Shocked that she’d even think it, Wade rested his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get some sleep and set out in the morning.”
“Set out where?”
“The Bitterroot Valley.” Wade would see Abby home, though it hurt to send her so far away.
“Have you nowhere you need to be? Don’t you own a ranch?”
“My father owned a ranch, not me. No, I can go along with you and see you safely home.”
Abby looked at her village.
High mountains rose up on the north and a waterfall cascaded down into the valley, feeding the stream that cut through the center of the village. That stream flowed red with blood. The smoldering ruins of the village made a mockery of the lush grass and newly leafed forest that grew along the valley’s rim.
“There’s nothing left here.” Wade resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her. “Not for you, not for anyone.”
Sid Garver charged his horse up the last hard mile of the trail into his canyon hideout.
The animal faltered, heaving, exhausted from the hard run as Sid spurred it on, desperate to get under cover after being seen at the Indian village. As he neared the well-concealed crevice that led into the heart of this mountain, he heard a shout from behind.
He reined his horse in, fighting the bit of the mustang that he’d been pushing past its limit for two hours.
Hoofbeats behind him stopped. He wheeled his horse to see Harvey wriggling on the ground like a landed trout.
“How ’bout I just shoot him, Sid?” Paddy O’Donnell
had a big smile on his face. He swiped his mouth like the thought of emptying his gun into a friend made him drool with pleasure. “He’s gonna be heavy to haul inside, and he’s slowing us down.”
They hadn’t been slowed down at all. Harvey had stuck his saddle for this wild ride away from the Flatheads they’d slaughtered. But Sid wasn’t entirely opposed to Harv dying. Harv had bought into this fight by grabbing that woman. They should’ve killed her like the rest. They could have cleaned out that trash then rode away and come back in a month. No one would have tied them to that massacre.
Sid swung down off his horse, nearly kicking the quiver and arrows that hung from his saddle horn. He’d grabbed them on an impulse, stripped them off the body of a big warrior. It had suited him, taking this trophy of their kill. Sid could understand the bloodlust that led a man to take scalps.
Ground-hitching his horse, Sid strode to Harv’s side. It was obvious the man had been bleeding like a stuck pig the whole time they’d been riding. Sid hadn’t looked back or offered to help.
Leaning over Harv’s blood-soaked form, Sid thought about that beautiful critter this dumb ox had grabbed. All that blond hair stuck there in the middle of that Flathead village. Young and beautiful and feisty and hair glowing like gold.
Hard to blame Harv when Sid had wanted her himself.
But there was golden hair and there was just plain gold. Sid would have killed the woman without hesitation to clear the way to the gold. But he’d wanted those Flathead cleared out of there more and for the only reason Sid was gonna keep Harv alive.
“Grab him, Paddy.” Sid didn’t bother to ask Boog. The man had a bullet in his shoulder. Sid had been half afraid Boog would fall off his horse before they got home, too. But Boog was a hard man to bring down.
Paddy giggled as he swung down. He came up beside Harv. On opposite sides, the two of them hoisted Harv to his feet.
Harv clenched his jaw—his jaw slit by that wild woman’s knife. She’d cut his face and his arm, and she’d opened up wounds on his chest and neck, too. Harvey had to know he was lucky to be alive. “She got my mask off, Sid.” Harv grabbed Sid’s shirtfront in a death grip. “I’m done riding with you if we can’t shut her up.”
“You mean she can identify you?” Sid hadn’t so much as looked at Harv until they’d crossed the Flathead village and gone over the rim of that valley. Sid assumed Harv had pulled his mask down himself, though none of the rest of them did until they were well clear.
Sid’s fingers itched to put a bullet in Harv right now. But Harv had the whole gang over a barrel and knew it. “Yep, we have to shut her up.” It went against his grain to kill a woman. But if it came down to life and death, Sid reckoned he could do whatever was necessary.
Boog rode up beside them, his left arm hanging motionless at his side, blood soaking his shirtfront. His face was sheet white, but he still sat tall and steady in the saddle. “The man who shot me and saved the wild woman saw you, too.”
Sid’s jaw tensed. “You’re sure? No one’s gonna pay much attention to a half-wild woman been living with the Flatheads. But if a white man saw him …”
“I’m sure.”
“You’ll have to lie low awhile, Harv, till we make sure it’s safe.” Unless the cut turned septic and killed him. Save Sid the trouble but lose him a fortune.
Now someone had seen Harv’s face. If the man who’d shot Boog had a sharp eye, he might recognize them even with their faces covered. Western men knew details—boots, guns, saddles, brands. You didn’t always have to see a man’s face to recognize him later.
A gritty sound of pain escaped, but Harvey held his own weight and headed silently for his horse, which Boog had caught and led back. Nursing one arm, Harvey nearly fell as he struggled to remount.
“Just a coupla more miles and we can patch you up.”
Harvey nodded, but he didn’t unclench his jaw to speak.
Sid set a slower pace. There’d been no sign of pursuit, and they’d put hours and mountains between them and that village. They’d circled around the whole mountain valley because the man coming along had forced them to run for it to the west, but this canyon was on the east side of the Flathead village.
But now they could rest.
And plan.
CHAPTER 3
She was no longer Glowing Sun.
Her eyes flickered open at that thought. She didn’t know how to be anyone else.
Abby. No last name to her recollection. Just Abby. She’d been ten. Surely she’d known her last name. But her life with her white family had faded completely.
A flash of her white father laid out in his grave came from somewhere deep in her memory, and she wondered how much else was there.
She pushed back the blanket salvaged from the wreckage of her village. As she sat up from where she’d slept near Wild Eagle’s mother, she saw Wade sleeping on the far side of the fire. And no one else. “She’s gone!”
Wade was on his feet, his gun drawn, before Abby had finished speaking. Looking around, seeing no gunmen, he holstered his weapon and rubbed his eyes. “Who’s gone?” But he figured it out before she could answer. “She must have started out for the Bitterroot without us. They can’t go back alone. She’s hurt. The boy couldn’t even walk yesterday.”
“I suppose she decided she’d rather risk death than travel with me.” Abby pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her face against them, closing her eyes against the pain. She’d known she wasn’t her mother-in-law’s choice for Wild Eagle. But Wild Eagle had wanted her, and the woman had accepted it. Only now did the woman show contempt. Maybe with the death of her family, all Wild Eagle’s mother had left was hate and she’d needed to aim it at someone. Abby would never know.
“We’ll catch up to them.” Wade began packing his bedroll. “You can go to the larger village to live.” Wade appeared eager to be rid of her.
“I won’t return to the Salish people. That life is dead to me.” She reached for her hair. Usually she carefully tended it, running a comb through it and braiding it every night. Then upon waking, she let the braid free, combing and braiding it again.
It reached nearly to her waist, and she’d had it unbraided when the men attacked yesterday morning. She’d washed it in the cold creek the night before the attack and let it dry in the spring breeze. Then all day yesterday, after Wild Eagle’s mother’s cruel words, she’d ignored it, hated it. She’d never given a thought to ridding it of its knots. She might as well have a rat’s nest on her head for the snarls.
A sudden bitter wildness gripped her, and she pulled her knife. Hating her hair. Hating that her difference had separated her from the life she loved. She slashed a chunk of snarls away and grabbed for another.
Wade’s running footsteps warned her, and she turned. He caught her hand. “Stop!”
“You like my hair, then?” She slammed the hank of white snarls against his chest. “Take it. I’d been kidnapped for it last time we met. My village had been slaughtered for it. Wild Eagle’s mother hates me for it. My yellow hair affects white men like it is truly gold. It makes you all act like fools. So of course you like it, too, Wade.”
“Glowing Sun, I didn’t—” Wade held on to her knife-wielding hand.
“No!” She pulled against his grip, eager to fight, to rage instead of hurt. “My name is Abby. I will never answer to my Salish name again. Strike it from your mind.”
Before she could attack, the sound of hoofbeats pulled her eyes toward the rim of the mountain valley.
Two horsemen appeared.
Wade shoved her behind him and pulled his gun with the soft whoosh of leather against steel.
They rode silhouetted against the morning sun and appeared only as black shapes, faceless. One led a packhorse behind him.
“Perhaps the men from yesterday have returned.” Abby stepped to his left side. “Perhaps the gold of my hair is too much for the fools to resist.”
Wade reached for her then looked at her knife. A smi
le spread across his face. A handsome face, Abby realized, though it was lost behind whiskers. And she remembered she’d thought so when they’d been together last fall. And now he seemed to approve of, even enjoy the fact that she’d drawn a knife.
What a strange heart for a white man. Not a brutish coward like those who had attacked her village. She well remembered from last fall that he’d also been kind when other white men had tried to take her from her village. Wade had come along and protected her. Not that she wasn’t doing well at protecting herself, but he’d helped. And he’d been so kind. It was his kindness that had captivated her far more than his looks. His kindness had made her long to stay with him when she was promised to Wild Eagle.
And now he looked like a crazy man, his dark hair flowing, his beard covering every inch of his face. But his kindness was still there in every word and deed.
The disloyalty to Wild Eagle, only hours dead, shocked her into raising her knife toward the men.
“Wade!” one of the men called out.
“Stop!” With a lightning-quick move, Wade caught her hand as she prepared to send her knife whizzing at the intruders. “I know one of them. He’s a friend. Red Dawson. These aren’t the men who attacked you.”
“He is white.” She twisted, trying to escape his grip. “He cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted.”
“You trust me already, Abby. You’re just mad. I don’t blame you.” Wade hung on gamely to Abby’s wrist with his left hand while he holstered his gun with his right. “They mean us no harm.”
Abby had to give Wade credit for not trusting her, because he wrested her knife away from her.
“Ow.” He looked at a quarter-inch slit in his thumb, wiped the blood on his shirt, and arched one brow at her as he tucked the knife into his boot. “Behave yourself.”
Abby wanted to claw his eyes out. The arrival of the two men intervened.
Red pulled up beside Wade and swung down, the other man just a moment behind him. “What happened here?”
Mary Connealy Page 59
