Allyson looked back at him, more tears coming. “You can’t—”
“Besides that, the fact remains you claimed these lots under false pretenses,” Jacobs interrupted, “and you obviously arranged a quick marriage because you thought that would save you; but you don’t have a leg to stand on.” The man took some papers from the inside pocket of his suit coat. “You are being officially evicted, Mrs. Temple. You have three days to gather your personal belongings and find other accommodations. This land now belongs to Nolan Ives. I’ll have the sheriff here give you twenty-four hours to bring three hundred dollars to his office to give to Mr. Bartel, or you will not only be kicked off this property, but sent directly to jail. Perhaps we can even arrange for you to be extradited to New York City.” The man grasped Allyson’s hand and shoved the papers into it. “Three days.”
“You…you can’t do this,” Allyson told him, shivering with horror. She couldn’t lose all this! She had worked too hard! She had risked her life! Toby had died for it! “This isn’t fair. I’ve worked myself nearly to death to build this. I was a settler, too. I had a right—”
“You were underage!” Ives roared. “You lied and cheated, and don’t think I have ever believed for one minute that you and your brother weren’t Sooners! You not only lied about everything, but you sneaked through the lines that night and were here before anyone else! Your Indian buck here might have stood up for you that day, but I knew the truth! And now he knows the truth about why you married him! I can tell by the look on his face he didn’t realize what was going on. You’ve lied to one too many people, Mrs. Temple! Just be sure you pay back that money and get yourself out of here in three days, or you’ll be in jail, husband or no husband!”
Ives turned his hefty body and stormed out, followed by Jacobs and the sheriff. Henry Bartel stepped closer to a shaking, pale Allyson. “You get me that money quick, Missy!”
Ethan pictured the man touching a young Allyson, scaring and humiliating her. He felt rage at how Ally herself had lied about why she married him, and that rage found expression through his fist, which crashed into Henry Bartel’s thin, fragile face. The punch caused a cracking sound, and people gasped at the sickening blow. One woman screamed and ran back into the kitchen. Bartel went flying halfway across the room, knocking over two tables on the way. He landed face-down and covered his face with his hands, screaming that Ethan had broken his nose. Blood began dripping through his fingers.
Sheriff Seymour hurried back inside, his gun drawn. “That’s enough, Temple! Touch the man again and you’ll go to jail, too!”
“He deserved it,” Ethan fumed. “And the mood I’m in right now, I wouldn’t go pulling a gun on me, Seymour! Just go on and get the hell out of here, and take that bastard with you!” He grabbed Allyson’s arm; she could feel his strength, knew he wanted to hurt her, too. “My wife and I have some things to discuss!” He dragged Allyson through the double doors toward his room, while witnesses gasped and mumbled and the reporter flew out of the building to get to the newspaper office.
“Three days!” the sheriff called out to Ethan.
“Fine!” Ethan fumed, more to himself than anyone else. He squeezed Allyson’s arm harder as he forced her into his room. “I don’t have much to pack. I can be gone in less than three days!” He slammed the door shut. “And I will leave, as soon as I get the truth out of you!”
Allyson rubbed at her sore arm and turned away. She heard Ethan groan, heard him moving around behind her, opening a drawer. A few clothes landed on the bed…the same bed where they had done such wonderful things the night before. None of this had turned out like she had planned, and right now she didn’t know which was worse…losing her restaurant and boarding house…or losing Ethan Temple. It was obvious she was not going to hang on to either one. She had always thought her business was the most important thing, but after last night…
“It isn’t like you think, Ethan. Please don’t leave.”
“It’s exactly like I’m thinking!” He grabbed up his saddlebags from a corner and began cramming things into them. “I can’t believe I was so goddamn stupid! Something kept trying to tell me there had to be a reason you suddenly wanted to marry me when I got back, but I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe it was real, that you loved me and wanted me for me, not because I was a man who might help you hang on to your property!” He strapped on his six-gun. “It must have been real disappointing when you found out my being Indian ruined it all. Something tells me you never would have married me if you had known that. That remark you made that first night a year ago about me being Indian should have warned me. I should have realized then that attitudes like that don’t change overnight.” He straightened, looking dangerous and furious. “I’m sorry my being half white doesn’t count for something, Mrs. Temple!”
Allyson swallowed, not sure whether even to touch him. Ethan was a big man, and she had seen him angry before. It was very intimidating to have that anger directed at her. “Ethan, you know how much this place means to me.” The tears of desperation came then. “But I didn’t marry you just for that, I swear.”
He leaned closer, and she wondered if he might hit her. “And I’m tired of your goddamn lies!” He brushed past her, almost knocking her down. He grabbed up a carpetbag and began throwing more clothes into that.
“Ethan…what are you doing? Where are you going?”
“Up north, which I should have done in the first place. I should never have come back here to see about you.”
“But…what am I going to do? I…I need you.”
He snickered bitterly. “You don’t need me, Ally, certainly not now that you know my Indian blood has spoiled your plans.” He straightened, glaring at her. “You don’t need anybody but yourself. You used to say that all the time, remember?” He walked to the wardrobe and took out more clothes. “You’ll manage. You always do, don’t you? You’ll find a way to lie or cheat or steal or use someone to get whatever it is in life you’re looking for.” He turned to stuff more things into the carpetbag, then faced her, a terrible hurt in his dark eyes. “How about last night, Ally? Was that a lie, too? Was it all just an act, pretending to be the good and loving wife? My God, you practically prostituted yourself just to keep this place! I might as well have been with a whore last night!”
“Don’t say that!” she screamed. “It wasn’t like that at all, Ethan! You must know that.” The tears came harder then. “And…and I made it legal. There was nothing wrong with it.”
Ethan closed his eyes and breathed deeply for self-control. Oh, how he wanted to hit her, but he could never lay a hand on her and he knew it. The worst part was he loved her as much as ever, but right now his anger and humiliation far outweighed any feelings he had for her. He watched her, wishing he could feel sorry for her, but he only felt a cold bitterness, even though she stood there looking so small and helpless.
There is nothing small and helpless about her! that voice inside reminded him. “Ally, maybe it was legal on paper; but what about in your heart? I was making love to you because I truly did love you. You were just consummating a marriage because you thought it meant you could keep your property.”
“No! I mean…it was like that at first…but after, I realized I really do love you, Ethan.”
He shook his head. “A man has his pride, Ally. That’s something you don’t understand yet. It runs a lot deeper than you think. You say I used you that night a year ago, but I didn’t. I loved and wanted you, and I would have stayed if you hadn’t made it very clear how you felt about me being Indian. When I came back here I didn’t give much thought to there being anything like that between us again, for the same reason. Then suddenly you went soft on me, made me believe you had fallen in love with me, made me believe you didn’t see me as Indian anymore but just as a man.”
“But I do see you that way, Ethan,” she sniffled.
“No, you don’t. Jacobs was right. You did marry the wrong man. You married a man who won’t be
used, and you used me, Ally, in a lot worse way than what I did that night I made you drink a little whiskey. My intentions have always been the same, but yours haven’t.” He walked into the washroom, coming back out with a couple of towels and his razor. He threw them into the carpetbag. “You know something? You’re stuck with an Indian husband now. Isn’t that ironic? I’ll bet you could just crawl under a rug.”
“Don’t say that!” She met his eyes. “Please, Ethan. It isn’t like that at all. Don’t go away! I’m not ashamed of your Indian blood. I love you!”
He smiled bitterly. “You don’t know how you feel about anything, and my leaving is the only thing that is going to make you think about what you’ve done. Don’t expect me to turn around and make this all easy for you, because I’m not going to. Right now, I need to go away, to sort out how I feel about you.”
Her slender shoulders shook in a sob. “But…don’t you love me any more, Ethan?”
His eyes moved over her, and pain filled him at the memory of their night together. God, how he wanted her that way again, but it was all spoiled now. If he stayed with her right now he’d hurt her somehow. It just wouldn’t be the same. “I honestly don’t know, Ally.” He sighed deeply. “I would have stood up for you all the way out there if you had just been truthful about the whole thing. You could have told me you knew Henry Bartel was in town. You could have told me what you feared would happen. Maybe I could have found a way to do something about it without you having to lie your way into being my wife. Maybe in time we could have done all this the right way, for the right reasons.” He walked to his chair and picked up his hat. He moved to grab his rifle from a corner of the room, then threw his saddlebags over his shoulder.
“Ethan, please, please don’t go! They’re going to take it away! They’re going to take it all away, and I worked so hard for it! If you leave me, too, what will I do? Where will I go? How long should I wait for you? Please come back. You will come back, won’t you?”
Damn her. He wanted to be able to hurt her without it bothering him. “I’ll come back, but I don’t know when. You’ve got money. Pay Bartel off and find yourself a job. You’ll manage. You’re a strong, determined woman, who will do anything to get what she wants. You’ll get by.” He picked up his carpetbag and headed toward the door.
“Ethan, wait! We have to talk about this! I’m your wife!”
Ethan studied the lustrous red hair, the pretty blue dress with yellow flowers, the one he had bought her a year ago. How could he have been so happy just a few minutes ago and so miserable now? “It’s just a piece of paper, honey, one that didn’t do you any damn good after all. Save your tears. They won’t work with me. You just think about things while I’m away and decide whether or not you want to stay married to an Indian for the rest of your life. If not, I guess you’ll just have to be a divorced woman.”
Her body jerked in a sob. “But…how long will you be gone? Will you at least write, let me know you’re all right, when you’re coming back? Ethan, you’re my husband!”
His dark eyes drilled into her. “That’s right, and until I decide what to do about that, you remember that you have a husband! Don’t be prostituting yourself with some other man just to get something you need!”
The words cut deep. “Oh, Ethan, you know better,” she said, turning away. “You know it in your heart.”
She began crying harder, and for a moment, Ethan was tempted to go to her, hold her, try to forgive her; but stubborn pride reminded him she had blatantly used him and was probably doing it again right now, thinking those tears would touch his heart. He felt as though someone had just rammed a fist into his gut. He turned away without another word and left.
Allyson heard the door at the end of the hallway slam closed. The tears came harder then. She walked to his bed, crawled onto it. His scent lingered there, the smell of man and leather. When she got her idea to marry him and allow him his husbandly privileges to make it legal, she had not considered the fact that she might really fall totally in love with him; that she might discover she enjoyed being naked in his arms, letting him be intimate with her, feeling him inside of her. She had truly been happy this morning when she woke up to his kisses and once again opened herself to him willingly before getting up to start the day. She had thought how wonderful it was going to be in his arms every night.
Now all she had was the memory of one night. There might never be any others. She had intended to talk to him tonight, to get it all out in the open, tell him she had fallen in love with him after all. She figured if she could tell him in the right way, he would forgive her. But now this had happened. She wished she could shoot Nolan Ives and Henry Bartel and Cy Jacobs.
No. She wished she could shoot herself. She deserved this. She should have known her tears wouldn’t work on a man like Ethan, should have realized he wasn’t a man to be used so easily.
Never had she hurt so deeply, not since Toby died. Right now she felt like Ethan had died, too. She grasped a pillow and pressed it against her, aching to have him beside her, but he was gone. Maybe he would write and tell her he was never coming back. Maybe she would never see Ethan Temple again. She never dreamed before last night that such a thought would bring such wrenching sorrow.
15
“She is young, Running Wolf. Youth takes patience.”
Ethan sat near a campfire with his Cheyenne grandmother, Sky Dancing Woman, who always referred to him by his Cheyenne name, Running Wolf. A black kettle filled with potatoes and rabbit meat hung simmering over the flames, and every once in a while his grandmother would get up and stir it. In the distance Ethan could hear the constant drumming and singing of the Sioux, as the tribe rotated its members in taking turns at keeping up the unending Ghost Dance ritual. They believed that if they kept up the dancing, their dream of a returning Messiah who would bring back their dead would be realized even sooner. Ethan’s uncle, Big Hands, and his three cousins and their wives were all involved in the dancing.
All the way here, through the various Sioux reservations, Ethan had seen and heard the same thing—special dances, special songs, special “protective” Ghost Shirts, as well as the constant vigilance of nervous soldiers who tried to assure even more nervous white settlers that the Sioux were not planning to make war. It was a volatile situation, and Ethan was glad he had come. He had decided to volunteer his services as a scout, interpreter, and general go-between for the army, hoping to use what expertise he had in these situations to help avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and conflict; but he could not avoid a feeling of dread about the whole situation. Whites were demanding action, wanting the army to put a stop to the new Indian religion that was making the Sioux feel stronger again.
Ethan was glad for the diversion. It kept his mind off of something he would rather not think about—more to the point, a red-haired woman he ached to hold again, to touch, taste, enjoy again. He had needed to tell someone, to sort out his feelings. His grandmother had always been easy to talk to—still was, even though he was a grown man now. For her sake alone he was glad he had come. She was more frail than he had ever seen her, and he knew deep inside that once he left her again, she would die before he ever got to come back, if he came back. Maybe it was time to make a final choice. If he did go back to Allyson, he would have to live for once and for all the white man’s way in the white man’s world.
“I have the patience, Grandmother,” he told the old woman. He sat shirtless, his hair brushed out long over his shoulders. It was hot, like it usually was in the Dakotas in July. He supposed few places had such extremes of cold in winter and hot in summer as this land did, but it was beautiful country. He just wished he could have seen it when the buffalo ran so thick a man could walk on their backs. His grandmother loved to tell that story. “If what she did was just a mistake of youth, I could put up with it,” he continued, speaking in English. His grandmother had learned to speak the white man’s tongue from missionaries, convinced it was the wise thing to do. “But w
hat she did was deliberate and heartless. I won’t be used that way. She made a fool of me. I can hardly believe I was stupid enough to believe she really loved me for who I am.”
The old woman smiled, showing no teeth. “You should be easy for any woman to love,” she answered. “You are pleasing to the eye, my grandson, strong and handsome.”
Ethan grinned bashfully. “White women don’t see me that way.”
“Oh, I think you are wrong.” She shook a bony finger at him. “You look in the mirror, but you do not really see yourself, Running Wolf. Just today, when you took me to the reservation supply post, I saw a white woman watching you. She was the wife of one of the soldiers, but that woman, she could not stop staring at you. I know it is because you are so fine-looking. You turn women’s heads, Indian and white.”
Ethan chuckled. “You’re just prejudiced because I’m your grandson.” He reached over and took a pouch of tobacco and a cigarette paper from his gear. “Even so, I should never have considered marrying a white woman. I should have stayed on the reservation and looked for another Indian woman.” He began rolling a cigarette.
“Maybe. But sometimes a woman gets in your blood, and there is nothing you can do about it. I am thinking maybe this red-headed woman you call Ally is deeply regretting what she did. I am thinking that once she slept with you, even if she only married you for her own gain, she woke up feeling different. A good woman cannot lay with just any man without having feelings for him. Surely you could tell when you were with her that way if she truly wanted you or was just pretending.”
Ethan thought about their wedding night, the glorious ecstasy, Ally’s surprising, unbridled passion. Once she had gotten over her fears and ugly memories, she had turned out to be more woman than he had expected.
“It’s hard to say, Grandmother. You had to know her. She’s quite the little actor, a clever liar. Whether she was serious about that or not, it doesn’t erase the rest of it.”
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