She gasped when she felt it then, the huge hardness invading her, pushing deep, branding her as Luke Fontaine's property. Flashes of her rape threatened to spoil the moment; but all the while he whispered her name, told her he loved her, how good she made him feel. In moments the ugly memories were erased by this man who had waited so patiently for this, who had told her she didn't have to stay here.
How could she leave him now? No, she would stay right here with Luke Fontaine and help him build his dream. She arched up to meet his thrusts, and in spite of the cold room, she was warm with passion, protected by his own broad body and the wolfskin jacket he had not even removed yet. She knew they would do this again... soon... and the next time he would want to touch and taste her breasts and they would lie naked together. The thought no longer frightened her. He had awakened something wonderful in her, and she was overjoyed to know how good and sweet this could be. She felt a thrill at the way his strong hands grasped at her bottom while he thrust into her.
She truly belonged to him now, and he to her. She would make sure no other women shared his bed ever again, and she would never disappoint him the way Lynnanne Haley had hurt him.
To Luke's frustration, it was over quickly. He had been too long without a woman to be able to hold back. He figured maybe it was best this way the first time. As his seed spilled into her, he prayed it would take hold. Having a child together would put the past behind them once and for all. It would seal their love for each other, and help ease her longing for her family. He felt an ache inside at the realization that he had not minded leaving his own father and brother at all. He wished he had a family that missed him, like Lettie's.
This would be his family now. Nathan. Lettie. The children they would have together. This was all he needed, this and the land. He sighed deeply, kissed Lettie's eyes, studied them when she looked up at him. "You all right?" To his delight, she smiled.
"I feel wonderful."
Luke grinned. "It gets much better than this. I want to show you how much better."
She drew in her breath at the thought. "Then we'd better heat up this place and make it livable, and we'd better make up another bed so we can get up off this floor next time."
A rat skittered by several feet away, and Lettie cringed against him. Luke kissed her hair. "I've got poison for them. We'll be rid of them in no time. You'll see." He kissed her once more. "Thank you, Lettie, for marrying me, for staying here with me. It would be so lonely without you."
She traced a finger over one of his dark brows. "I'd have been lonely, too, even with other people around." Her soft smile faded. "And thank you, for loving me, for taking away the ugliness. I really am just yours now, aren't I?"
He moved a big hand over her breast, on up to stroke at her temple. "Just mine. In your heart I've been your first man. The rest is forgotten."
The bobcat growled again, this time sounding closer. Outside Red whinnied, and a couple of mules began to bray. "I'd better get out there," Luke said. Reluctantly, he moved away from her, stood up and buttoned his pants.
Lettie pulled her skirts down. "I'll get some wood and get that stove going so you can wash," Luke told her as she reached for her drawers. Now she felt a little embarrassed, glad when he turned away and went outside. She quickly cleaned herself as best she could for the moment with a handkerchief, throwing it in a corner and pulling on her drawers. Yes, she would be glad to wash. She wanted to clean up good before the next time they made love, wanted to be soft and powdered. She looked around the sorry little room, envisioning where to put another bed, where to hang blankets for privacy when she needed to bathe herself. There wasn't much room, but then as cold as the Montana winters got, maybe it was better this way. One little room was a lot easier to heat than a bigger house. Poor Luke would probably have little time for anything but cutting wood for the next month or so.
She tied her hat back on and went outside to help carry in supplies. Luke brought in some wood left stacked on the porch and got a fire going, then went back outside to unhitch the animals and see about putting them up in a lean-to several feet from the cabin. Lettie quickly washed herself as best she could. Amid all the bustle, Nathan finally awoke, rubbing his eyes in confusion. He scooted off the bed and stared around the room. Lettie turned from the sack of potatoes she was opening and picked him up. "It's about time, you little devil. You sleep as hard as you play when you're awake. I hope you'll sleep that well tonight."
"Pee, Mommy."
Lettie smiled and carried the boy to an outhouse behind the cabin, helping him undo himself. He was very proud of the fact that he'd learned to "pee" the way Luke had shown him. In the distance the bobcat squealed again, and Lettie felt a stab of anxiety. Luke had said he might have to hunt the thing down and get rid of it. What if he was attacked while he was out there working alone in the woods? There would be no one to help them.
As she and Nathan returned to the cabin, she gazed at the magnificent beauty of the surrounding country, the wide valley below the cabin, the purple mountains that rimmed the entire horizon. This was a treacherous beauty, a deceitful land, one that lured with its beauty and its promises of riches. She could only pray the land would not devour her husband, kill them all with its harsh climate and dangerous wildlife.
She spent the next few hours making the cabin as homey as possible for their first night. She hung a blanket in one corner of the room. Behind it she set a washstand and laid out one of the feather mattresses for her and Luke to sleep on. She put the other feather mattress on the small bed where Nathan would sleep and made up his bed properly. She cleaned up the rest of the cabin as best she could, stacking supplies wherever they would fit. Then she cooked supper, a difficult task on the small potbellied stove.
"I need a regular cookstove," she told Luke when he returned. He promised to see about it as soon as he could. He also promised to go to Billings and buy some tar paper to nail to the outside of the cabin to close off the cracks between the boards. But before he did any of that, he would have to spend the next several days cutting wood. Winter set into this land early, and any day could find them buried in a mountain snowstorm.
By the time Lettie got Nathan put down again for the night, both she and Luke were bone weary, yet both knew their work had just begun. Luke bolted the door and sat down on a crate quietly to smoke a thin cigar he'd taken from his gear. It was finally warm enough inside the cabin for them to take off their jackets. Luke even took off his shirt, under which he wore wool long johns. He watched Lettie take down her hair. "It's going to be hard, Lettie."
"I know. We can do it." She shook out her hair, turned to look at him. His long johns were unbuttoned, revealing the dark hairs on his chest. It was the first time she had seen him without a shirt on. Finally there was time to think about what had happened when they first arrived. She knew by the way his eyes moved over her that Luke was remembering it too. It had been beautiful. She wanted to feel that way again.
"Why don't you undress out here?" Luke asked, his voice soft.
The flames that flickered behind the open draft of the stove door cast ripples of light on her as she began removing her dress. She shivered, but she knew it was not from the cold. For the first time in her life a man would look upon her nakedness. The night of her attack, there had been only the rape. The men had not even removed all of her clothing. Luke would be the first man to set eyes on her breasts, to touch them, taste them. She was glad she had something left to give him that was still virgin, touched by no other man. She dropped her petticoats, removed her boots and stockings, unlaced her camisole.
Luke crushed out his smoke in a tin plate on the table, marveling that he had found someone so utterly beautiful on his way to Montana, that he had actually arrived here with a wife and a child to call his own. "Come here," he told her. He saw her nervousness as she approached and knelt in front of him. She closed her eyes when he moved his hands inside the camisole and pushed it away from her full breasts. They were firm, the nipples
a lovely pink. He pulled the camisole down her arms and tossed it aside, gently grasped her breasts, caressing them, toying with her nipples, until he saw her breathing quicken. Her head was flung back, her hair hanging in a cascade of waves down her back. He kissed her eyes, her lips. "They never touched you here, did they?" he said.
Lettie grasped his wrists. "No," she whispered. She opened her eyes to meet his gaze. He leaned down, licking at the white swell of her breasts, then took a nipple into his mouth, gently sucking, pulling, creating a sharp need deep in her belly. She grasped his hair, offered herself gladly, enthralled at these wondrous new feelings he created in her.
"Luke," she groaned, breathing deeply when he moved to her other breast to taste its sweet fruit.
"Lettie, you're so beautiful," he whispered. He picked her up in his arms, carried her behind the makeshift curtain and laid her on the bed. Lettie had spread the bearskin blanket over the top of the feather mattress, then covered that with more blankets. She sank into the pile of softness. Luke bent to remove her bloomers. As she lay there naked she curled up her knees and watched him undress, allowing herself to look at that part of man that had held such terrors for her.
"Don't ever be afraid of it again, Lettie," he told her. He moved onto the bed, stretched out beside her. She ran a hand over his powerful arm, across his broad shoulders.
His lips met hers, and in spite of their weariness, their passion was too powerful to ignore. He moved between her legs, grasped one leg under the knee and pushed it farther to the side, and in the next instant he was surging inside of her for the second time in one day. He pulled a blanket over them. Again they were lost in each other, oblivious to anything around them, ignoring the dangers, sure their love would hold them together whatever the future held.
Outside the bobcat prowled, searching for wild rabbits, perhaps some rats. It decided not to invade the realm of the humans who had moved into its territory... not yet. And in the foothills and distant mountains wolves began their nightly howling at the moon and to each other, making sure to remind any humans who came into this land who really belonged here.
Something else also prowled and watched, something human in form, but more animal in instinct and senses. A teenage Indian brave named Red Hawk sat on his spotted horse watching the cabin. A tiny bit of light created by a dimly lit lantern inside shone through one small window, the only sign of life in the dark night. Red Hawk turned to his father, a fierce-looking and honored warrior who sat beside his son on his own horse. The boy admired his father greatly, was proud of the deep scar on one side of the man's nose, where a Crow Indian had cut it partly off. That Crow man had died a slow, painful death at the hands of the mighty Sioux warrior. It was after that fierce raid that Red Hawk's father had taken the name Half Nose, a name feared by all white settlers and even some Indians in the region.
"Should we go and kill them, Father?" Red Hawk asked in the Sioux tongue.
Half Nose watched quietly for a few minutes. "No. He has a woman and child with him. He is one of those who has come to stay. He will still be here when the grass grows green again, when we come back to the mountains from the sacred winter grounds. Perhaps by then he will have more horses, something worth stealing. We have no use for oxen or mules."
"He has one good horse, that red one we watched him put in the shed when it was still light."
"Yes, and we will take it! He will never know we were here until he finds it gone in the morning. Then he will know how quietly a Sioux brave can take whatever he wants. He is new to this land. He has much to learn." Half Nose grinned. "We shall teach him and have a good laugh over it. We will take his horse, then get back to our camp. Tomorrow we must head south and east. Winter is coming."
"Perhaps he and the woman and child will not last until the grass is green again. Perhaps they will die from the cold."
Half Nose laughed lightly. "Perhaps." He nodded. "They will learn that they cannot own this land. The land will own them. It will swallow them up and spit them out!" Half Nose dismounted, and his son followed suit. Both men crept down the hill with the stealth of the bobcat that prowled in the thick woods beyond the cabin. They sneaked into the shed where Luke kept his horse and mules, using their skill with animals to keep them quiet while they untied Red. They led the horse back up the hill and rode off into the night.
Inside the cabin, Luke and Lettie lay sleeping, naked body against naked body, dreaming of the empire they had come here to build together.
CHAPTER 5
"Hello, there!"
Lettie studied the man who had shouted the words, a bearded, burly-looking man in buckskins named Will Doolan, whom Luke had already learned was thirty-five years old and once scouted for wagon trains headed to California and Oregon. The man stood on the porch of his sturdy-looking log home east of Billings, a piece of property Lettie thought was not nearly as pretty a setting as the one Luke had chosen, but then Luke had gone into country still prowled by outlaws and Indians alike, country beautiful because of its wildness.
"Hello, Will," Luke called back.
Doolan stepped off the porch, the fringes of his buckskin jacket moving with him. In the past two weeks the weather had remained stable, cold but bearable, not a lot of snow so far. Lettie wore a heavy wool shawl and a wool scarf wrapped around her head and neck. Nathan was wrapped in several blankets. Luke waved to the man as he steered the wagon in which they rode up close to Doolan's house. A huge dog chained to the corner of the cabin began barking wildly at their arrival. It was a beautiful animal, looked as though it had to be part wolf.
"Shut up, Bear!" Will ordered the animal.
The dog quieted, but it watched them warily. The front door of the cabin opened then, and a woman appeared, smiling. Lettie knew it must be Henrietta Doolan. Luke had met Will the first time they arrived at Billings, and the man had told him to come by for a visit anytime. All Lettie knew about these two was what Luke had been able to learn in town—that they had been here for about ten years, struggling against Indians and the elements to build a ranch, a man with the same dream Luke had. The couple was childless.
The woman Lettie saw in the doorway looked as though she had once been very pretty, but now her hair showed gray, and her face was beginning to wrinkle considerably. Lettie wondered if she was really a lot older than Will, or if the harsh living out here had just aged her well beyond her actual years. She was a little heavyset, but still had a nice shape.
"Henny, this here is the new couple I told you I met in town about three weeks ago—Luke and Lettie Fontaine. Luke went on west of Billings to see about claiming some land there."
"West!" Henrietta exclaimed in a rich voice. She looked surprised. "Well, what brave souls you are! Welcome! Do come in!" In spite of the cold, the woman rushed out to take Nathan from Lettie's arms so Lettie could climb down from the wagon.
Luke got down from his side and tied the lead mules, then shook Will's hand. "My wife could use a woman's company," he said with a grin. "This is the first time away from her mother and sister and the rest of her family."
"Well, I understand that feeling," Henrietta said in a friendly voice. Lettie smiled at the woman, and they exchanged a look of longing, both of them delighted to have another woman to talk to.
"I'm afraid I'm a bit of a city girl," she told Henrietta, taking Nathan back into her own arms. "I'm from St. Joseph, Missouri."
A distant loneliness shone in Henrietta's eyes. "Well, I was raised in a city myself. I came west from Chicago in '49 with my family. My father was on his way to California to look for gold. I took one look at our scout, who happened to be Will here, and I fell in love. I was only sixteen, Will was twenty-one. We got married at Fort Laramie, and I lived there for about five years while Will continued to lead wagon trains west—didn't get to see him much." She led Lettie toward the house. "We both finally got tired of being apart so much, and Will was always the type who hated too much civilization, so he chose to come up here to settle."
&nb
sp; The woman rattled on nonstop, and Lettie sensed she needed to talk. She wondered if it would be that way for her in a few years, hungering for company, aging ahead of her years. If her figuring was right, the woman couldn't be more than thirty years old. She looked fifty.
"Luke and I had to come to town for more supplies," she explained as she walked inside the cabin. "Luke wants to get some tar paper for our cabin, and we need to stock up on more food."
"Well, out here it's a must that you get to know your neighbors, even if they're eight or ten miles away. You never know when you'll need them," Henrietta answered rather wistfully. "Please, take off your wrap and sit down. And let me see your little son! Will told me the boy's father was killed back in Kansas. I'm so sorry. I'm glad you found a good man who can be a father to him."
Lettie felt a flow of love for Luke at the words. In spite of the hardships and loneliness of the past three weeks, she couldn't be happier with the man she had chosen for a husband. The days were long and filled with backbreaking work that left them both exhausted at night, yet there had been few nights when they hadn't found the energy to explore the wonders of their passion. Luke was a good father to Nathan, always took time for the boy, even on the days when he worked so hard cutting and stacking wood and building fences for the animals that he could hardly walk straight when he came in at night.
"Yes, Luke is a good man," she said. "I met him much the same way you met Will—on a wagon train west. My family was headed for Denver. I just couldn't bring myself to let Luke go on alone when we reached Julesberg. I had to make a decision, and I know it was the right one." She set Nathan down, and he toddled off to explore the cabin. "Luke wrote out a paper for me back at Fort Laramie, where we married. He put it in writing that he has legally adopted Nathan, giving him full rights to anything Luke owns. He even had it witnessed. He wanted it as legal as possible, considering there are no judges out here for such things. I told him it wasn't necessary to put it in writing, but he insisted, not just for me, but for Nathan's sake in future years. Nathan already looks to him like a father."
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