“I don’t know if I could or if I’d want to.” Jewel bent over and helped him catch a bulging corner. “I’m different now, and sometimes there’s no going back. They didn’t accept me and my new ways, just as they didn’t accept my French mother before she died. Only this time I was viewed as a deserter, a sellout. Like an ordinary white woman who left her Indian heritage behind.”
“Wait a second.” Wyatt grunted, hefting the sack to the other arm. “They sold you in marriage! How can they call you a deserter?”
“Marriages and treaties have been part of our culture for generations. My marriage was no different.” Jewel’s boots left tracks in the snow beside his. “But they expected something impossible—that I return to them the same way I left, when I was fourteen. It can never be done.”
She gave a soft sigh. “It’s like Abraham in that Bible of yours, Mr. Kelly. Try as he might, Abraham could never go back to Ur.”
“Of course not. He’d moved on.”
“More than that.” Jewel turned briefly to face him. “He’d come face-to-face with the living God, and he would never be the same.” Her breath misted. “Truth and character, Mr. Kelly, cannot be undone.” Her breath let out a frosty puff. “But I guess you don’t have a clue what it feels like to have no home, do you?”
“Me?” Wyatt chuckled. “You think I call my uncle’s ranch ‘home’?”
Jewel looked up swiftly, as if in surprise—and Wyatt shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. My uncle’s cared for me since I was a boy, and I’m grateful to him. I respect him as my uncle, and I will until the day I die. But I’ll never fit in there. He thinks I’m a nobody—with no potential.” He paused to scratch his red head under his cowboy hat. “And he’s probably right. Truth be told, there is no place for me to go, Miss Moreau. I’ve lost my parents. My sisters.” He swallowed, and his throat seemed to swell two sizes. “The only people I’ve ever truly loved in my whole life. What kind of God would do that to a boy, I ask you?” He sent a severe look Jewel’s way. “Since you’re so enamored with this God of Abraham?”
Jewel spoke so softly Wyatt almost couldn’t hear over the quiet crunch of her boots. “The same God who gave up His own Son for you,” she said, looking up briefly. “Without sparing Him or holding anything back. That’s the way I see it, anyway.”
Wyatt nearly dropped the bag of gold. He grunted and fumbled for it, mumbling something about the burlap being too old and too damp, and pretended not to hear her. He tramped his way through the spruce boughs toward the horses, trying to push away the image of the family Bible on Uncle Hiram’s table. The words and lines, burning deep into his heart. Resonating suddenly, like the gentle thunder of wind in the pines.
“So what are you going to do, then, with your share of the gold?” he finally asked, gruffly changing the subject and feeling inexplicably ashamed. After all the years that Bible had gathered dust on Uncle Hiram’s mantel, had he ever once cracked it open of his own accord?
“I’ll use the gold to take me as far as I can go and build my own homestead. Far from Wyoming, where people are hunting for my life.”
“You’re right about the ‘hunting for your life’ part.” Wyatt set down the heavy sack, groaning, and stretched his back. “So do you want to divide up the gold now or wait until we get back to the ranch? I swear I’ll give you your share.”
“You can stop saying that, Mr. Kelly.” Jewel touched his arm lightly. “I believe you.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” And he stood there like an idiot, not even moving to pick up the sack. Hands in his pockets and face hot as a griddle. Opening his mouth to say something—anything— that might make her stay at the ranch a little longer.
To forget Nebraska or her own homestead for a while.
“Let’s pack it on my pony, though,” she said, shivering as the wind changed directions slightly. “Bétee’s saddlebags carry more than yours, and she has more space. I ride bareback.”
“What?” Wyatt fidgeted in his pockets. She might as well have asked for the moon; he hadn’t heard a word she said. “Sure. Whatever you say.” He stepped over a clump of snowy roots and opened the pony’s worn saddlebag flap.
“What about you?” Jewel helped him tighten the twine at the neck of the sack, and they lifted it together. “You’ve never told me what you plan to do with the gold.”
Wyatt didn’t answer, and his face darkened. “Catch that end, will you?” he grunted, straining to hoist up the gold to a saddlebag. “This thing’s awfully hard to lift without splitting the burlap.”
“So you won’t tell me.” Jewel shivered again, and this time her lips took on a purplish sheen below reddened cheeks as she helped him shove the sack in the saddlebag. She hopped from one foot to the other, blowing on her hands to warm them.
Wyatt took a long time adjusting the gold in the saddlebag and shaking it out to even the weight. He squeezed the saddlebag closed after three tries and strained to strap it shut then fiddled with the clasp on the buckle. “My father was killed by the Cheyenne,” he said in a taut voice, not looking up. “I’ve hated those people all my life.”
Jewel hesitated, straightening the blanket under her pony’s saddle pack, which gaped at the stitches from the weight of the gold. “I’d probably hate them, too, if they killed my father.”
“I loved my father.” Wyatt’s knuckles bulged as he squeezed the strap. “More than anything. And they killed him. Not only that, but they butchered my mother and sisters, too. I lost everybody. Everything.” He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing left but my uncle, and he thinks I’m a shrimp. A nobody. A good-for-nothing who will never make anything of his life. And he’s probably right.”
“Says who? Why do you think you can’t compare to your father?”
“He was a big man. Strong. Brave and bold.” Wyatt scuffed a boot angrily on the grass. “I’m none of those things. Never have been. I’m a homebody. A … a guy who faints when he sees a spider.” He shook out the pack to make more space. “I had tuberculosis as a child and was always this feeble, sickly thing. It’ll never change.”
“You don’t have to be a copy of your father, Mr. Kelly, to be like him.” Jewel poured a handful of loose gold into the pack. “You can follow his path in your own way.”
“What path? I’m no good at anything. My father had built his homestead, produced three children, and arm wrestled grizzly bears by the time he was my age. He cut our cabin out of the woods, right under the noses of the Sioux, and made a hearty living doing whatever he pleased. If I lived my whole life, I couldn’t be half the man he was.” He straightened his hat. “I can’t shoot. I can’t really do anything well.”
That was an understatement. The last time he’d shot at prairie dogs on the ranch, he’d wasted fifteen shots and not hit a single one. He did manage to shoot a window out of one of the barns, though—and Uncle Hiram pitched a fit about that.
“But there’s one thing I’ve been planning almost my whole life.”
“What?” Jewel took a step toward him.
Wyatt hesitated, fidgeting nervously with the leather fringes on his vest.
“The truth, Mr. Kelly.” Jewel crossed her arms. “I’ll find out soon enough anyway. You might as well tell me.”
Wyatt sighed. “Listen, miss. I don’t expect you to understand, but I know for a fact those Cheyenne who killed my parents—or their relatives—are sitting on a windfall of coal and natural timber. I’ve been studying the books for years, and that one little piece of prairie’s got more than enough resources to keep the US government happy for years. I’ll manage the land, and they’ll be delighted to hire me for such a fair price.” Wyatt stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ll finally make something of myself, after all these years. No matter what my uncle says.”
Jewel’s eyes narrowed. “On the backs of the Cheyenne. If they resist, the army will slaughter them, and you know it.”
“On the backs of the people who killed my family.” Wyatt stuck his neck forward. “
And isn’t that what you told me? To use my skills and discover my gifts?”
Jewel’s eyes snapped with unexpected fire. “On the backs of the people who were here first,” she corrected. “And you know that’s not what I meant when I spoke about your gifts, Mr. Kelly. Not that I condone slaughtering your relatives in any way. But answer me this—is there any chance the Cheyenne you speak of had been displaced from their original homeland already? Perhaps more than once? After years of broken treaties and failed promises?”
“Of course not.” Wyatt waved his hand in irritation, but he did not meet her eyes.
Her voice turned cool. “You’re sure about that? Because I’ve heard an entirely different story. And when your family is starving and you’ve been driven off your designated land and hunting grounds not once but three times—all the while cooperating peacefully and signing treaties that ultimately meant nothing—it makes for ugly politics.”
Wyatt crossed his arms stiffly, a vein pulsing in his neck. “You’ve said enough,” he snapped, his words coming out thin and taut. “I get it. The Cheyenne and Arapaho help each other out, don’t they?”
Jewel ignored his question, taking one step closer. “What would you do, Mr. Kelly, if your family was starving and the Cheyenne took away your land three times? Each time they found gold, or coal, or something else of value, they canceled the treaties they’d agreed on and forced you off your land—sometimes in the middle of winter?”
“I’d take them all out, one by one.” Wyatt’s hands clenched with anger. “If I could shoot worth a lick, that is.”
“Well then.” Jewel crossed her arms. “Consider that a partial explanation of what might have happened twenty years ago. The men who murdered your family deserve to hang for their crimes but so do those who forced women and children out of their beds every time someone found coal or gold on Native land. Not all of those children made it, you know.” Jewel’s voice turned misty. “And not all the women and elderly. What if it were your little daughter or pregnant wife who didn’t make it?”
“I don’t know!” Wyatt cried, gripping his head with both hands. “I’m just very alone in the world, Miss Moreau—and I despise it. I just thought perhaps you’d understand, that’s all.”
Jewel stared, immobile, statuesque. “I understand all right,” she said coldly, folding her hands under her shawl. “You’re right. You aren’t half the man your father was then, if that’s what you consider a good use of your life. Revenge? Blood money?” She shook her head. “None of those will bring you peace. I expected so much more from you, Mr. Kelly.”
“Sometimes the truth hurts, Miss Moreau,” Wyatt whispered, staring out through the trees with hollow eyes.
Then he stalked back to the outhouse to gather up his things.
“I’ll pack the tools on Samson, then, since your pony’s loaded down,” Wyatt called after Jewel as the snow blew harder, stinging his cheeks with tiny ice particles. He tromped through the snow and picked up the ax and spades, hoping he hadn’t straddled the pony with too much weight. Bétee, Jewel called her—or something like that in Arapaho—was strong and sleek, but that much gold would weigh down any pack animal.
“Miss Moreau?”
Jewel didn’t answer, and Wyatt turned, looking for her. He tied the tools to Samson’s saddle and looked around uneasily. Samson reared suddenly, knocking snow off a spruce bough and into Wyatt’s face. He whinnied, ears flicking.
“Whoa there. What was that all about, fella?” Wyatt patted Samson’s graying head and swatted the snow from his face in irritation. “You mad at me, too? Or you just impatient for your oats?”
Samson’s ears pricked, and he backed up several paces, stomping the snow-softened grass and straining at the lead.
Wyatt heard something. A rustling in the trees and a scuffling. The sound of a low whistle, like a magpie.
“Miss Moreau?” Wyatt loosened Samson’s lead and then the pony’s, letting them drop into the snow. If a wildcat was on the loose, he’d be a fool to leave his horses hobbled to a tree, utterly defenseless.
The underbrush crackled, and Wyatt whirled around, reaching for his rifle. Nuts. He’d left it at the outhouse, propped up against the side when he grabbed their tools. No self-respecting man would leave his rifle lying in the snow—especially not the burly Amos Kelly.
Samson backed up and whinnied again, a fearful sound, and Wyatt reached for his Colt. Wildcats proliferated in these parts; one of his neighbors killed one as big as an ox just a few weeks ago.
“Miss Moreau? Where have you gone?” Wyatt stalked through the falling snow, his footsteps carpeted and soundless. An eerie silence filled the gray sky, save the soft rustling of the wind in the firs and the great rushing sound they made in his ears, like a stormy ocean.
Without warning Jewel whirled around a tree, putting a finger to her lips. “Shh!” she whispered, her face white and startled. She ducked her head and flattened herself against the shaggy bark, not moving. “They’ve found us! Didn’t you hear them?”
Then the world exploded. A blast of gunpowder, and a bullet whizzed past Wyatt, blasting the limb off a tree. Needles and snow whirled around him.
“Of all the …” Wyatt threw himself to the ground, pressing his face to the snow. Was Jewel trying to kill him after all, now that they’d found the gold?
Footsteps crunched through the underbrush.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Kirby Crowder standing over him, raising his musket to fire again.
Chapter 9
Wyatt rolled out of the way and scrambled to his feet, hands and knees muddied and smarting with snow. Nothing made sense; not the frantic loading of the musket, nor the man in a coonskin cap who lunged after him, barely missing his jacket collar. Two other shadows crunched through the trees, and someone fired a pistol behind him.
“Kirby Crowder?” Wyatt shouted, ducking behind a tree with Jewel as another blast shook the forest. Limbs rained around him, making his ears ring. The acrid odor of black powder hung in the woods over the soft scent of spruce and snow. “I thought the army hauled you off to the guardhouse for poaching.”
“I busted out,” Kirby drawled, calmly reloading. “And I came back for what I intended to do in the first place—but with reinforcements. Didn’t expect to find you and that half-breed gal digging the place up. You’re lookin’ for ol’ Pierre’s gold, too, ain’t ya?”
Wyatt halted as he scrambled for his Colt. “You’re lookin’ for … Pierre’s gold,” Kirby had said. Did he not see them shove the gold in Jewel’s pony’s saddlebags?
“You know where the gold’s hid. It’s the second time I seen you down here snooping around, and it’ll be your last.”
“Get outta here, Kirby, or I’ll shoot.” Wyatt steadied his voice to keep his words from shaking as he cocked his Colt. “I don’t wanna shoot you, but I will. You almost blew my head off.”
“You? Shoot me?” Kirby’s laughter echoed through the trees. “I’m shakin’ in my boots, Wyatt. You can’t even shoot a prairie dog. Now come out with your hands up and tell me where that gold’s at, or I’ll fill you both full of lead.”
Wyatt spun around to Jewel. “How’d he know the prairie dog thing?” he whispered, humiliated. “I didn’t tell a soul.”
“What? Forget that.” Jewel smacked him. “The barn,” she whispered.
“It’s our only hope. We’re too far away to reach the horses, and they’ll slaughter us out here in the open.”
“How many guys are there?”
“I counted five. We’re done for if we don’t get to shelter—either from bullets or from freezing to death.” Her teeth chattered, and Wyatt noticed a bluish sheen to her lips.
“See over there in the trees?” Jewel pointed. “Another one of Kirby’s crew. They’re surrounding us. We’ve got no choice but to move while the snow’s the thickest. Cover me.”
“What? Cover you?”
“Shoot, for goodness’ sake!” Jewel pushed the barrel of his Colt tow
ard the forest. “Distract them while I get to the barn, and I’ll cover you while you run.”
The forest curved to reveal a dilapidated barn behind the outhouse, and Jewel crawled backward on her knees. She slipped behind a shrub and then into a stand of aspens. Wyatt could barely see her; a wall of snow blew in from the north, making it almost impossible to open his eyes.
Wyatt watched her go, and a strange emptiness welled up in his chest. Jewel’s strength somehow fortified him; when she was with him, she made him feel capable. Confident. Better than he was.
All he could do now was steady his shaking hands long enough to aim.
Wyatt blasted his revolver into the bushes then cocked and let the second bullet clink in the chamber. Two shots whizzed past him, and one grazed the skin of his shoulder, leaving a burned streak. Wyatt aimed, trying to see through ice-clouded glasses, and pulled the trigger. He heard a groan. A curse.
Had he really hit somebody? Wyatt lifted his head, surprised to see one of the men on the ground, holding his bleeding arm.
Well I’ll be. Wyatt glanced down at his revolver in surprise.
“Wyatt Kelly, you little runt! I’ll skin you alive for bustin’ up my arm,” a man’s voice rang through the woods. “Come out now and I’ll kill you quick-like. If not, you’ll take whatever I decide to dish out—and I won’t make it pretty.”
Wyatt licked his lips and tried not to picture what the man had in mind, and instead scooted backward on his elbow and belly. He scooched to the side and fumbled in his pocket for more bullets and then hastily reloaded his Colt.
He’d just aimed through a patch of spruce limbs when somebody grabbed him roughly by the collar and threw him to the ground. Knocking the breath out of him.
Through a snowy haze Wyatt saw a musket butt raised to strike him. A hand slapped his revolver to the ground, and Wyatt clenched his eyes shut. Preparing himself for the blow and the bullet that would knock him senseless, into the arms of a God he’d only just begun to think about.
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