The Taming of Shaw MacCade

by Judith E. French

  He reined in and glared at her. "You've said enough. Let it lay."

  "I won't be quiet because you say I should. Eve's suffered enough for what the both of them did. And how can you sit there and tell me that I'll be safe at Angel Crossing when you know your brothers tried to burn us out?"

  He shook his head. "They were just foolin' around. It was Ewen and Payton. If they'd wanted to burn you out, they would have lit the house and the stables. It was wrong, dead wrong. And I'll see they pay for the damage they've done."

  "You admit it? You've known it all along?" She stared at him in astonishment. She'd married him, slept with him, given him access to every inch of her body, and he was a stranger to her.

  "Things have been done at our place as well, Bee. For months, years even. Fires. Fences cut. Livestock scattered. The tracks always lead back to Angel Crossing. What Ewen and Payton did wasn't right, but it was better than killin', wasn't it? They let off a lot of steam that they might have done worse with. It was wrong, but it was a hell of a lot better than shooting one of your brothers in the back."

  The pain in her stomach was real. It nearly doubled her over with nausea. "You still think Poppa shot Laird, don't you?"

  "Eve did. Bruce saw your father's gray horse in the woods that night. Couldn't see the rider, but recognized the animal. And Laird died from a bullet from your father's gun."

  "You've got an answer for everything, don't you?" she said heatedly. "If you find out who shot Laird and it is one of mine, do you think I'll stand by and let you take your Old Testament revenge?"

  "If I need to do that, you won't stop me."

  "That's what I'm afraid of most."

  Chapter 22

  Shaw and Rebecca covered thirty miles before sunset, and in all that time, they barely exchanged a dozen words. Rebecca was both hurt and angry that Shaw had kept the knowledge of who'd started the fire at Angel Crossing from her to protect his brothers. But even her seething sense of injustice could not temper the hard truth of his accusation that she put her family ahead of him.

  How could she explain the duty she felt toward Poppa, Grandma, and her brothers? Especially Noah? The possibility that her Uncle Quinn might be a murderer didn't take away the fact that he used to carry her piggyback on his shoulders. And it didn't erase the hours he'd spent with her, teaching her to shoot a rifle dead-on and track missing livestock over rocky ground.

  All she'd ever known from her uncle and father had been love and caring. And every tale she'd ever heard from them and from her grandmother about the MacCades had been bad ones. For the first time, she wondered if she'd been the one deceived. What if the Raeburns were as much or even more at fault for the ongoing feud? What if the people she loved were cold, stone killers? Could she still defend a brother or a father who could break the laws of God and man?

  And above all, had she been making a mockery of marriage when she said she'd be Shaw's wife for only a short duration?

  I've been a child, she thought.

  Loving Shaw wasn't enough. She had to trust him, to put him first above everyone else, or she didn't deserve to call herself his wife. The trouble was, she didn't know if she was brave enough. In the previous weeks, she'd found utter happiness in his arms. Today, she was bewildered and confused. She'd always felt that her love for Shaw would go unfulfilled. And now that they'd found each other, did she have the strength to turn away from him to stop a shooting war between their families?

  At last, Shaw gave the order to dismount. "We'll cool the horses off before we make camp for the night." His voice was frosty, distant, as if they were casual acquaintances, not a man and woman who had vowed to love and honor each other until death parted them.

  "You're right," she said, after they'd walked for the better part of a mile. "Most of what you said to me this morning was fair. But one thing I want you to believe. Even if we have to part, I'll never be another's wife. If I can't have you, I'll have no man. Not ever."

  She could live without him. She'd done it for years. She could go home and pick up the life she'd left behind. Her father's fury would pass, and he would forgive her. Even if he found out that she had been with Shaw, she had only to confess her sin, and promise never to see him again. She could once again be the dutiful daughter. But if she had to watch Shaw shot down by someone she loved, she couldn't bear it. She'd rather die than be the cause of shedding a drop of his blood.

  She couldn't find the words. Her throat clenched so tightly that she didn't understand how a sound could escape. Her stomach pained her as though she'd swallowed shards of broken glass. "I... I don't want anyone hurt or killed because of me," she said finally. "It's not that I put my family ahead of you. I couldn't. I feel torn in two. My heart wants you, and my head tells me that I should be loyal to my own people."

  For a while, Shaw matched his rangy pace to hers. She studied his face, searching for a glimpse of understanding behind his steely facade.

  "I'm afraid of losing you," he answered finally.

  Her Shaw afraid of something? It was a notion that was difficult to fathom. He'd always been rock strong, sure of himself, never hesitating to leap first out of a tree or into the path of a stampeding steer.

  "Then don't drive me away from you. Stop threatening to hunt down your brother's killer and take vengeance. If Poppa or Uncle Quinn is guilty, then they deserve to be punished. But you should turn them over to the law, not become a murderer yourself."

  "Don't seem to me that the law has done much about Laird's shootin'."

  "I don't know the answer, Shaw, and neither do you. But I know violence is the wrong way to settle it. MacCades and Raeburns have been killing each other for hundreds of years. What good has come of it?"

  "Nothing but heartache for both sides."

  "Exactly. We've got this time together. Let's not waste it by fighting. You knew from the first that our marriage was only temporary. You promised to let me go if I—"

  "Hell, I wanted you so bad, I probably would have promised to sing in the church choir." He pushed his hat back, revealing the red line where the brim had rubbed against his tanned forehead. Dark eyes swirled with gray shadows. "That don't mean I intend to let you go so easily."

  "It isn't easy, Shaw. It's hard. Leaving you will be the hardest thing I've ever done. But maybe it won't be forever. Maybe the two of us can work out a way to end this feud and—"

  He laughed wryly. "You think I don't want that? But I'm struggling with the same problem you are."

  "I know that."

  "Do you?" He studied her. "It don't seem like it."

  "I don't—"

  "No, you listen. You can't change me, darlin'. I'll always be a MacCade. I was born one, and I'll die one. We're rough around the edges, but my ma, my kin, I feel about them the way you feel about yours."

  "I guess I forgot that."

  Shaw nodded, slapping a horse fly that lit on Chinook's face. "Even Pap," he went on. "He's a tough old nut, and we've had our differences. But he's honest to the bone. He's not a church-going man, never was. Yet I saw him go into the Little Smoke in a flood to save a stranger's dog. And I've heard him praying when he thought he was alone. Pap lives by his own code. But drunk or sober, he never lets a Sabbath pass without askin' Ma to read a passage from the Bible to him."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "Sorry I judged your kin. And sorrier yet, that I can't promise that I'll ride away with you and never look back."

  "Noah? I told you. He can live with us. If we go west, we can take him with us."

  She nodded. "I know you said that, but it's not so simple. Noah will always remain a child. He'll grow older in body, but never in his mind. It takes a world of patience to deal with him. What I'm afraid of is that he'll always be lost away from Angel Crossing. At home, everyone knows him. He's just Noah, who can always catch a string of fish and is willing to help out a neighbor. But in a strange part of the country, who would he be? Noah, the half-wit? I love him, Shaw. And it's so hard to walk away from him."

>   "I still think we could manage him."

  "There's Grandma, too. She's too old and too frail to cross the mountains to California or Oregon. She's cared for me since I was small. I can't desert her now in her old age."

  Shaw looked into her eyes, and she felt his gaze go right through to her soul. "Angel Crossing?" he murmured. "Would you give it up for me?"

  She didn't hesitate. "I would." She blinked back the moisture that clouded her vision. "I love the house and the river, but not more than I love you. It's just a place, Shaw. Wherever you are, heaven or hell, I could learn to call that home."

  "I s'pose that's a start," he said. "We've got a hill—or maybe a chasm—of differences to cross." He drew his lips into a tight line and nodded. "There's ways to get over a deep canyon. Some go around; others cut logs to build a bridge over it."

  "Maybe trying is what's important," she said softly. "Both of us trying."

  He caught her hand and squeezed it in his big one. "There's more of Pap in me than I'd like to admit. I was wrong to try and keep you—"

  She covered his lips with two fingers, raised on the toes of her boots, and kissed his cheek. He needed a shave, and the dark bristles scraped against her mouth. I don't want to fight, she thought as her heart swelled with wanting him. I want you to hold me. I want you to make love to me. I want to be with you—just you. I don't want to be responsible, to do my duty. I just want you. But she couldn't bring herself to say those words. Instead, she said, "Does that mean I can come with you to find Jamie?"

  Shaw scowled and tugged his slouch hat low over her eyes. "If you get me killed, I'll come back and haunt you."

  "I won't get you killed."

  "If you do," he growled only half in jest, "don't say I didn't warn you."

  She flashed a smile up at him. "What will we do when we find Jamie? Just walk up to those farmers and claim him? What if the Beachys don't want to let him go?"

  "One thing my Pap taught me, Bee," he answered. "Never skin your bear until you've got him treed."

  * * *

  They slept that night on the same blanket, holding their differences at bay. Their lovemaking was none the less passionate for being bittersweet. Rebecca didn't care. She surrendered everything to Shaw and took equal measure. She wasn't ready to give up on their marriage. But if this was all they would ever have, she would do her part to make it precious.

  The following morning they rose early, ate a cold breakfast, and set out for home. Shaw made no attempt to track the exact path of the Yoder party. There were only a few places where wagon trains could cross the rivers, and sooner or later, he'd find them.

  "We won't catch them before they reach the North Platte," he told her. "And they might beat us to Fort Laramie, but I mean to have the boy before the Oregon and California trails split beyond Fort Bridger."

  Shaw saw no use in telling her what troubled him most: that a group leaving Independence so late had no chance of crossing the Wasatch Mountains alive. Early snowfalls would make the steep canyons and rocky passes impassible. Yoder could either turn back or risk his party ending up as tragically as the Donners in '47. And no child of three could survive that horror of starvation, cannibalism, and high-country blizzards.

  "It's a far piece where we're bound for, Bee," he said quietly. "Are you up to it?" She didn't answer, just dug her knees into Sasha and urged the Appaloosa mare into a canter. "Raeburns," he muttered. "Stubborn as mules, every one of them."

  * * *

  When they reached the border of MacCade land, Shaw left Rebecca at a hidden spot in a grove of trees near their cave and rode in alone in search of Bruce. The two returned at dusk leading four more horses and three mules loaded with a tent and supplies.

  Shaw whistled, and Rebecca stepped out of the trees to meet them. She nodded a greeting to Shaw's cousin, but didn't speak.

  "Becca." Bruce took off his hat and tucked it under his arm. "It's all right. We're alone. And you don't have to worry none about your sister. I'll be proud to bring her back." He glanced at Shaw. "I hear you're going to fetch Laird's boy."

  "We are," she replied warily. "Do you have a problem with that?"

  "Not me!" Bruce threw his hands up, palms out, in mock surrender. "But you can guess that Uncle Murdoch ain't gonna be any more pleased than her kin. It's a toss-up as to which one will shoot you first."

  "You worry about Eve, and I'll look after Becca." Then to her, Shaw said, "I told him that if Dewey's willin', he can bring him along, too. Always room for another pair of hands on a spread this size."

  "Did you hear anything about Noah?" she asked.

  Shaw nodded. "Noah's recovering from his gunshot wound. Same with Ewen. Other than a no-holds-barred fistfight between Nigel and Corbett at the mill last week, things are pretty quiet around here. Your father and the twins are back. Bruce saw them in town, Saturday."

  "And they're well?"

  "No funerals, and no one's sent for the doctor," Shaw said.

  "Uncle Murdoch tore the hide off Payton's backside for setting fire to your shed and turning the pigs in your house," Bruce said. "He sent me to your father with two pair of oxen to pay for the damage. I reckon Ewen will get his comeuppance when he's hardy, but Aunt Fiona won't let Uncle Murdoch lay a hand on him until then."

  "Shaw told me what happened," Rebecca said. "About the fire. Are you sure you had no part of it? Can I trust you to bring home a Raeburn woman?" She glanced back at Shaw. "And how do I know that Eve will be welcome here?"

  "I spoke to my mother." Shaw began to saddle a long-legged roan. "You take that black gelding, Bee. I'm leaving Sasha here. She's in foal, and I think the trip might be too rough on her." He tightened the cinch and knotted it. "Ma gave me the mules and the supplies, had them ready to sell to a couple of miners. I told her about Laird's boy, who he was, and what I was plannin' on doing. And I asked her if Eve Raeburn would have a place in her house."

  Rebecca waited anxiously for him to finish. "And she agreed?"

  Bruce grinned. "You don't know my aunt Fiona or you wouldn't have to ask. She'd trail a rogue Comanche over hot coals for one of her grandkids. Don't worry about Eve. She'll get fair treatment here."

  Rebecca put Sasha's blanket on the black horse's back. The gelding turned his head to look at her with huge, liquid eyes. He had a white star in the center of his forehead and one white stocking. She liked the looks of the stocky animal and hoped his disposition matched his sweet looks. She reached for the saddle, and another question rose in her mind. "What about little Jamie?" she asked. "Will he be a bastard Raeburn?"

  Brace's grin became laughter. "Not within Aunt Fiona's earshot." He slapped his leg as though that had been the funniest thing he'd heard in weeks. "More than one woods colt running loose on Raeburn land," he said. "And none the worse for it, neither."

  "But what about me? Did you tell your mother about us, Shaw?"

  He busied himself with securing the lead ropes on the spare mounts. "Thought that was something we could tell her together," he said finally. "If it ever comes to that." He motioned in the direction of Angel Crossing. "It's not too late to change your mind, darlin'. It would ease my heart if you'd go home and wait for me to get back."

  "Not on your life," she said. "With your reputation?" She shook her head. "I'm not letting you out of my sight." It was a statement that Bruce found exceedingly amusing and Shaw hardly did at all.

  The first day out it rained. They rode through a downpour for hours, finally camping in the shelter of an overhanging bluff when the thunder and lightning got so fierce that it put them in danger.

  Rebecca made a fire, and Shaw balanced a coffeepot on three rocks over the coals. They made their supper on beef, biscuits, and cold sweet potatoes that his mother had packed in the saddlebags. And later, as the sun went down and the storm passed, the stars came out, followed by a brilliant crescent moon.

  Rebecca curled her feet under her and laid her head against Shaw's chest. They stared at the red-and-yellow flames and liste
ned to coyotes howling in the distance.

  "Havin' regrets?" he asked her.

  "No."

  "Good." He tilted her face up and kissed her tenderly. "You're one woman in a thousand, Becca," he said.

  "Just in a thousand?"

  She parted her lips for his next kiss, and they made slow, delicious love in the firelight. Later, Shaw banked the coals, hobbled the horses, and lay down beside her. Rebecca closed her eyes and dreamed of riverboats and music spilling across the muddy waters of the Mississippi. And at dawn, they rose to saddle their mounts and ride for another day.

  The days became weeks. Following the trail west was no problem; a child could have done it. Hundreds of wagons and thousands of draft animals had worn deep tracks in the earth. Sometimes they passed the buzzard-picked bones of horses or oxen, and sometimes they rode by small, crude crosses that marked the last resting place of an emigrant who would never see the Pacific. All these markers were sorrowful, but it was always the children's graves that chilled Rebecca's spine and sent gooseflesh prickling over her arms.

  Oliver Laurence McCoy

  Age 10 Months Three Days

  Ague Took Him

  When the tiny graves had no name, she feared the dead child could be Jamie, and nothing Shaw could say would help. They always rode on without talking for a long time afterward.

  For hours Rebecca mused on the sacrifices these pioneers made to open new land. Not that children didn't die in civilized places; of course they did. But not in the numbers they did on the trail. Babies and adults alike fell to bad water, overturned wagons, drowning, snakebite, and sickness. But the lure of free land in the west was a siren song, luring the poor and the adventurous by the thousands.

  She wondered again at the itch some folks had to see new places. She loved the experience of traveling with Shaw across these prairies, but it was because she was with him more than anything. And the farther they rode from Angel Crossing, the more she found herself thinking fondly of the Little Smoke River, her family, and the home she'd left behind.