“Your mother?”
“No, my mother died a long time ago. But Gertie runs the house. She has her own private room and there’d be one for you near her. She would welcome your company. She’s always been able to handle my father, and she’ll teach you how, too.” Wade smiled, but he didn’t feel one ounce of happiness. “She could never teach me. But she spent a lot of time taking care of me after—” Wade fell silent.
Abby hesitated. “After what?”
Wade tensed and didn’t answer. There was no good reason for her to go home with him. He only knew he wanted her by his side when he faced his father. “If you don’t go with me, then I’ll go with you, Ab. I’m not letting you just wander off alone into the wilderness.” He said it as if he was worried about her, and he was. But he was almost as worried about himself.
“I will go as far as your ranch. If staying there suits me, I will stay until it no longer suits me.”
“Thank you.” Wade exhaled like a weight had lifted. He rested a hand on her upper arm and guided her around the corral to where the happy families congregated.
They saw Susannah squirming to get down. Red let her go and took the baby in his arms. Susannah went scurrying off toward some scrub brush nearer the cabin.
“Susannah, come back here.” Cassie smiled at the active little girl and went after her.
Wade reached the group just as a rattling sound jerked everyone in the group around. Only one creature made that deadly rattle. Wade, Red, Silas, and Belle all drew their guns.
“Susannah!” Cassie was in their line of fire. With a wild leap, Cassie hurled herself forward, stretched flat, inches above the ground.
A rattlesnake uncoiled from the brush, launching itself at the toddler.
A dull thud and the snake’s head stopped. Momentum carried the rattling end of the snake forward. The snake’s coils twisted around her and Susannah.
Cassie hit the ground on her belly. The rattler’s head was pinned to the ground by a narrow, razor-sharp knife.
Cassie shrieked and flailed at the snake. Red reached the two of them and swooped Susannah into his arms as he tried to get the bleeding snake off Cassie.
Wade, Silas, Belle, and Emma were only a step behind.
Cassie shoved at the moving snake, screaming.
Susannah started crying, frightened by her mother. Betsy and Michael bought into the noise, too.
The group extracted Cassie from the coils and comforted Susannah.
When Cassie was on her feet and double-checked for injuries, Silas looked at Belle. “Did you throw that?” “Not me.” Belle holstered her six-gun.
One by one, they all looked between each other then finally turned and looked at Abby. Wade noticed she only had eyes for the snake.
She strode toward the long, brownish-gray striped creature, jerked her knife free, and beheaded the serpent with a quick, ruthless swipe. Cleaning her blade by stabbing it into the ground, she returned it to the sheath at the back of her skirt waistband and picked up the rattler.
“Supper.” She sounded satisfied. Hungry, too. “Enough for everyone to have a bite. I know how to prepare it so the poison doesn’t—” She turned and looked at the others, all transfixed by the sight of that perfectly thrown knife and that long, still-wriggling snake. “What?” She glanced at the snake.
“You saved her,” Cassie sobbed. “You saved my baby girl.”
“You act surprised.” Abby frowned as if Cassie wasn’t talking rationally. “Far wiser to use the knife than your body. Do you know this snake is deadly if you let it bite you?”
Cassie flung her arms around Abby’s neck.
Abby staggered back a step and held her arms out at her sides, obviously shocked.
“Uh, we’ll probably just have beef stew.” Wade carefully reached for the snake dangling from Abby’s fingers. “Not rattlesnake. Okay?”
He didn’t want to upset Abby; after all, she’d just saved Cassie’s life. But he wasn’t eating snake. If he’d been starving…maybe.
Abby, with Cassie hanging from her neck, shrugged. “Rattlesnake is a special treat, but if the meal is already cooking …”
Wade tossed the snake away with terrified energy coursing through his veins at Susannah’s near miss.
“No, wait. Save the rattle. The children will enjoy playing with it.”
“Let’s wait to get the toy until Cassie calms down a bit.” Wade patted Abby on her arm.
Chaos erupted as everyone rushed forward to thank Abby.
Wade caught Abby looking from one grateful person to another as they swamped her. She acted as if they were foreign creatures. More dangerous to her than the snake.
Before long, Belle had Abby at her side talking. The two were swapping advice on how to best skin a buck.
Cassie gave Wade a smile and yanked on his beard. “It’s good to see you. I didn’t recognize you at first. You look a fright.” She gave him a quick kiss on his furry cheek then turned to go with the women.
“Keeping your knife razor sharp is the secret.” Belle pulled her knife out of her boot.
Abby produced her own skinny blade. “My stone got left behind at my village.”
“It’s sharp.” Belle admired it. “You did this with a stone? Can you show me? We’ve got a whetstone, but I haven’t been able to get the edge I want with it. I always use my strop.” Belle turned to Cassie. “Let’s sharpen yours while we’re at it.”
Cassie produced a knife. Wade was too surprised to notice where it came from.
“You’re carrying a knife now, honey?” Red, looking uncertain, pushed his hat back and scratched his head.
“Belle said I should. A woman has to be able to take care of herself.” Cassie followed after the other women, Emma and Sarah included, leaving the men alone with two babies and Susannah.
“Why did you throw your body instead of your knife?” Abby asked Cassie.
Wade didn’t hear the answer.
Red dropped back to walk beside Silas and Wade. “Uh…I don’t know if Cassie should carry a knife. She might cut herself.”
“Or you.” Wade chuckled.
Silas slapped Red on the back.
Susannah slapped Red smartly on the ear. “I wanna knife, Papa.”
Red groaned.
Silas started laughing.
The three men got along well. Which was a good thing, because without knowing exactly how it happened, they ended up being ousted from the house after supper to bunk down in the barn. Sure, the house was crowded, but Wade had a strong notion that Red and Silas would have liked to sleep next to their wives.
Maybe Wade wouldn’t rush into learning Belle’s new name after all.
CHAPTER 6
Abby watched the tension grow in Wade until she thought he might snap.
He looked more like himself with his hair cut short and his face clean shaven. It was easier to separate herself from the horror of her village riding beside Wade as he’d looked last fall. She did her best to turn her mind away from the death she’d witnessed. The gunshots still rang in her ears. The blood was there every time she closed her eyes. She tried to shut it down by focusing on Wade and this strange world of the whites.
She’d let Cassie convince her to don a gingham dress. It pushed up high on her legs as she rode her barebacked pony. Wade had urged her to use a saddle, but she’d refused to load the horse down with heavy leather and iron.
The closer they rode to Wade’s ranch, the tighter his jaw clenched. Tension vibrated off him in nearly visible waves.
A rugged trail opened to lush valleys of grass edging along the mountain slopes. As they rounded an outcropping of rock, Wade pulled up and turned on the trail to face her. “You told me you were a believer, a Christian…is that right?”
Abby wondered what the man was fretting over now. She thought of Wild Eagle and the steady way he faced everything. He rarely laughed, rarely got angry. He was a rock she could lean on. But a rock was hard, and she’d been hurt by that hardness m
any times. Abby felt like she knew every thought that went through Wade’s head, and if she couldn’t figure it out, she just had to wait a bit because he’d tell her.
“Yes, a Blackrobe lived among our people. He spent part of the winter with us, in our winter hunting grounds. He told us of the white man’s God and how He’d given His life to save us. A beautiful story, a story only God would have written. Our small village embraced Jesus. As I learned more, I remembered stories my own parents had told me of Jesus and Christmas and Easter. When the Blackrobe heard me speak to him in his tongue, he let me say his white words to my people in their tongue.”
“I noticed that you have been speaking English well. Would it be okay if we prayed right now?”
“Prayed? You and I together?”
“Yes. Once we round this bend, you’ll see my father’s house. I don’t want to make a show of praying in front of the cowhands or my father. There aren’t many believers among them. I’d like to go in there with another believer at my side.” Wade shook his head. “I’ve been praying since Red came to tell me I had to go home. I should have let Red come along. He’s a wise man. He fills in for the circuit rider in Divide, but he’d been on the trail a long time searching for me. He needed to get home.”
“What is it you pray for?”
A humorless laugh escaped from Wade’s lips. “Courage.”
“Are you lacking courage? I had not noticed.”
Wade tilted his head a bit. “Thank you. But when it comes to my father…I’m afraid of everything. Afraid of what he’ll say. He has a cruel tongue, Abby. And there’s more. I’m afraid of my own anger. Red told me I’m to honor my father, and I know that’s true. God sets it down in the Good Book as a commandment. But my thoughts toward Pa are angry, even violent. I want to yell back at him all the angry words that I’ve got in my head, and I know that’s a sin.”
“Why is it a sin to tell him of your anger?”
“Because I picture myself screaming, ‘I hate you.’ And in my mind, while I yell that, I punch him and pay him back for all the years and years of hurt I suffered at his hands.”
Abby pursed her lips. “Well, take out the screaming and the punching, but the rest is just honest. There can be no honor without honesty. The words are the same.”
Wade looked at her as if he wanted to see inside her mind. “That’s true. I could just be honest but without the fury. I see rage as a sign of strength. But that’s from Pa. Truth is strong and needs no anger.” He nodded his head then rode up beside her so they faced each other. “It would be a…a light. There is so much darkness on the M Bar S.”
Wade tugged his hat off and hung it from his saddle horn, pulled away a single leather glove, and held out his bare hand. “Will you join me?”
Knowing it was what he expected for some reason, Abby took his hand. When he closed his eyes, she followed his lead.
It was a simple prayer. As he spoke quietly of his desire to be sinless and courageous, a sudden image of her white father kneeling beside her bed, holding her hand and praying with her, flickered and was gone. Was that a memory or her imagination? Was it just once, at the end of his life when he knew the family was dying? Or had it been a normal part of her day? For some reason she thought of bedtime and prayer together. But it was only an impression. There was no memory beyond that lightning-quick image of her father in prayer.
Wade finished his heartfelt words then looked up. Their eyes caught. Their hands held. A moment stretched too long and still neither of them looked away. Wade hadn’t given much thought to riding together, only Abby and him, for a few hours. But as he looked at her, he knew it was well they weren’t together longer.
At last Wade quietly dropped her hand. “Thank you, Abby.”
They rode forward, and it was as Wade had said. The second she rounded the outcropping of rocks, she saw the massive log house. “What kind of fool builds such a house in this cold land?”
Wade turned to face her, his brow furrowed. “A fool? You’re calling my father a fool?”
Not the best way to get along with Wade, but she reminded herself that she didn’t want him touching her hand. She didn’t want to look deeply into his eyes again. She had no wish to get along with Wade, so it mattered nothing if she insulted his home. “How many hours a day does he spend chopping wood to keep a fire going to warm such a monstrosity?”
Considering he was wound tight as a coiled rattler, that Wade managed to smile seemed akin to a miracle. “That’s good for me to hear. My father does struggle to keep it warm. And even with hired men chopping the wood for it, it’s never really comfortable in the winter.”
“And winter lasts half the year.” Abby sniffed her contempt. “Better to live in a tepee. One small fire would warm your entire home.”
Wade squared his shoulders. He appeared to have relaxed a bit. Perhaps she should insult his father more. It seemed to agree with him.
“How many trees were cut down so your father could be so…so…grand?”
“Too many. My pa was never one to worry about what he took from the land, only what it could give him.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I’m glad you decided not to stay with Belle.”
“Your offer of a job was the only way I could think to take care of myself right now. I have nowhere else to go.”
They rode up to the house, Wade on his chestnut, Abby on a roan mare.
Dismounting, Abby followed Wade up the four steps of the porch that stretched the length of this monster of a house.
The door swung open. A woman as wide as she was tall moved with startling speed for one so elderly. She darted across the broad porch and flung her arms around Wade.
Her weight and enthusiasm nearly knocked Wade down the steps. He grabbed for a sturdy pillar and caught himself in time.
“My boy! My boy is home!”
Wade hugged the woman close, leaning his tall frame down to press his cheek on the gray head.
Abby had to wonder if Wade was correct about his mother being dead. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing a man would be mistaken about.
“I heard about Pa.”
The woman nodded her head but didn’t speak, her face still buried in Wade’s chest.
Abby came up beside Wade and watched the reunion. The longing she felt for this kind of contact was stunning. Her Salish…no…Flathead—that was the white word—mother had been kind to her, but the woman wasn’t given to hugs. Her Flathead father had been as quiet as Wild Eagle. Abby had no memory of her own long-lost ma.
A fleeting image of a woman as thin as a sapling pulling Abby onto her lap was there in her mind. Was that her white mother?
Ma…Yes, thinking of the woman as Ma fit. But what other name? What first or last name? It itched inside Abby’s mind that she’d so completely left her white family behind. Perhaps more would come back to her now that she had reentered the white world. As she thought of that, her anger welled up. The white world had killed her Flathead family. But now the rest of her tribe didn’t want her. She belonged nowhere.
The woman pulled away from Wade, wiping her eyes on her apron. Finally, she looked up. “Mort’s fit to be tied. Laid up in bed, near to thrash anyone who comes within reach. He’s spitting mad that he can’t move his legs. The foreman comes and takes his orders and gives reports. Besides him, I’m the only one who goes in his room. It’s like trying to talk to a wounded grizzly.”
Wade’s shoulders slumped. Abby knew he was dreading this meeting.
“He’s been shouting for someone to find you and bring you home. He won’t be happy to see you, though. He’ll just take more of his temper out on you, son. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll see him and give him a chance, Gertie.” Wade slid his arm around the stocky woman’s shoulders. “That’s all I’ll promise.”
“No.” Gertie’s hand clamped on Wade’s. “Give me more than that. We need you here, Wade. The men aren’t working anymore. Most of the old reliable hands have left. And new ones have come
in that…that scare me.”
She looked hard into his eyes. Abby felt the force of the woman’s will and knew this one was strong. Despite the tears and the hugs, there was an iron core in the woman.
“I can’t leave your pa, and I’m afraid to stay. Afraid for both him and myself. Please promise me you won’t leave, at least as long as your pa is alive. Once he’s gone—the doctor says he can’t live long like this—we can let the jackals take the ranch.”
“Take the ranch?” Wade shook his head quickly. “It’s Pa’s ranch. Who’s gonna take it?”
“Anyone who’s strong enough, Wade. This is the West. There’s no law outside the city limits of Divide. And precious little there.”
“Divide’s a quiet little town, Gertie.”
“Not since the rustling started.” Her tight bun quivered as she shook her head. “People are on edge. Mort’s new hands are too quick with a gun. The old sheriff quit and moved to Helena to live with his son. The new one isn’t strong enough to keep the peace. Mort either holds this place or loses it with the strength of his back and his will. And his back doesn’t work anymore.”
“Let’s go see him.”
“Promise me first.”
Wade fell silent.
They stepped inside the house.
Abby’s eyes widened at the huge living room stretching to her left. A set of stairs rose up along her right. Doors opened on the left side and at the far end of the massive room. Foolish whites to close in the outside then be forced to heat it and clean it. Waste. Pride. She was ashamed of the color of her skin. “Foolish.”
Wade turned to her.
The old woman did, too.
“Excuse my manners. You taught me better than this, Gertie. Let me introduce Abby. We found her along the trail. Her…uh …”
Abby saw him flounder. They hadn’t discussed what to tell people. Did she want the whole world to know she’d spent years with the Flathead tribe? In the gingham dress Cassie had given her, with her hair neatly braided, she outwardly fit in with the white world, even though her soul boiled with contempt for the whites, for their violence and lust for her blond hair and their stupid, immovable homes.
Mary Connealy Page 62
