Heart of the Rockies Collection

by Kathleen Morgan

  “A white man,” he whispered.

  She searched for some reason to justify what he’d done. “But if it was in self-defense, and you had no other choice—”

  “It was my father.” His face contorted in anguish. “I killed my father!”

  20

  This time, it took Shiloh a lot longer to come to terms with what he’d told her. Finally, she expelled an unsteady breath, took his arm again, and motioned to some large boulders at the creek side.

  “Come, let’s sit for a spell,” she said. “I want to hear how and why it happened.”

  Gently, he extricated himself from her grip. “I’ll tell you, but I can’t sit while I do. There’s just so much boiling inside me to keep still.”

  “Fine.” Shiloh nodded. “You do what you need to tell me the story. I’ll go and sit there, though.”

  Once she had settled herself on the edge of one boulder, Jesse dragged in a deep, unsteady breath and began pacing back and forth. “For most of my life, I hated him. Only when Brother Thomas taught me of Jesus and His love for even His enemies did I manage for a time to look upon my father with more compassion. No matter what I did, though, my father never changed. If anything, he got meaner. By the time I was fourteen, I was as tall as him, and I think he became afraid of what I’d do if he hit me. So he added what he considered my share of beatings onto my mother’s.”

  His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and Shiloh knew, watching him, that Jesse was struggling with old, ugly memories. More than anything, she wanted to leap up, run to him, and enfold him in her arms. But she didn’t. He needed to tell his tale and tell it like a man.

  “Things came to a head the night my mother died,” Jesse finally continued. Sweat began to bead his brow, and Shiloh sensed the agonizing toll that the telling was taking on him. “You know the events of that night. How my mother died trying to keep my father from beating me half to death because Brother Isaac kicked me out of school. But what I never told you about was the murderous resentment and rage I harbored for my father, in those days afterward, while we prepared to bury my mother. If he’d even once expressed regret or sorrow for what he’d done to her, it might have eased some of my fury at him. But he never did. He never did . . .”

  His words ended on a strangled sob. Somehow, Shiloh knew Jesse’s grief wasn’t for himself, for never having the father he wanted, but for his mother. That she died as she had lived—unloved, unappreciated, and perhaps in some ways, even unwanted. Save for her son. A son who had also grown up feeling unloved and unwanted save for her.

  To keep from saying something that might seem trite or unhelpful, Shiloh twisted her hands in her lap. “Go on. Finish it,” she urged, for his sake as much as for hers.

  “He got himself drunk that night of her funeral.” Jesse’s voice went hoarse with emotion. “And that suited me fine, for I’d made up my mind to leave and never come back. We had an old earthenware crock where we kept our money. Since I’d already started working for pay at a nearby ranch mucking stalls after school, I figured some of that money was mine to take. My father, however, wasn’t so drunk he didn’t notice me with the crock.

  “First, he flung his now-empty whiskey bottle at me. I ducked just in time. Then he came at me with his hunting knife. We fought and I was finally able to turn his knife on him.” For an instant, Jesse’s voice gave out, then he forged on. “He died quickly. Too quickly for what he deserved.”

  Jesse turned to meet Shiloh’s anguished gaze. “I buried him that night. The next morning I rode out. Since he no longer needed it, I took all the money with me.”

  For the longest time Shiloh didn’t know what to say, and the silence stretched between them. Finally, she unclasped her hands.

  “You were defending yourself. And it was an accident.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact that I killed my own father.” Jesse laughed tonelessly. “Makes me pretty much like him, it does. My father killed my mother, and I killed my father. All either one of us ever knew was killing.”

  Why, Shiloh wondered, did Jesse insist on taking all the blame for what had happened during that fight? It was as if he felt he had to bear the burden of not just his own sins but also the sins of his father.

  Shiloh had opened her mouth to speak when Jesse picked up the thread of the conversation again. “He told me many times I’d never amount to much. That because of my mixed blood no one would ever want me. That I’d never fit in no matter where I went. But he was wrong. When I found the People, I found acceptance, respect, and love. I knew I’d come home. Where I’d amount to something. Where I belonged.”

  His words plucked at a memory. A memory of her brother Cord observing that Jesse was a very angry man who didn’t appear to know where he fit in. Yet, that only seemed to happen—his anger and confusion—when he was in the white man’s world, trying to find some way to be part of it. Part of it for her sake, and never solely for his own.

  The realization that she could never ask him to leave the Utes filled her with a bittersweet pain. Sweet because Jesse was whole and happy living with the People. And bitter because either she adapted to that reality or there was no hope for them. She loved him too much to ask him to live any other way.

  “I’m happy that you’ve finally found your heart’s desire,” Shiloh said softly. “And, because you’re my heart’s desire, I’ll remain with you here. Be your wife. Birth, raise, and educate our children with a love and respect for what is best of both the Indian and white man. But I would ask two things of you in return.”

  “And what would those two things be?”

  “That you would marry me in a Christian ceremony and allow me to teach our children of Jesus.”

  He stopped and looked down, and as the seconds ticked by, Shiloh realized he was fighting a battle within himself. Though she wished mightily to intercede, to utter all the reasons why he should acquiesce to her simple—her only—demands when she was giving him so much more in return, she forced herself to quietly let him work it through himself. Jesse knew, as well as she, that just as his need to remain with the Utes wasn’t negotiable, so was her need for her and their children to live as Christians.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, Shiloh. I just can’t.”

  The words sounded torn from some deep place within him, and as he lifted his head and met her gaze, Shiloh saw the agony burning in his eyes. But she also saw the honest refusal there as well. It ripped open her heart.

  Compromises that are usually the most important are also the most painful . . . Unbidden, Kwana’s words crept into her memory. Somehow, Shiloh had feared this moment, this decision. Because if neither met the other halfway, there could be no hope for a lasting relationship.

  “You can’t have everything as you want it, Jesse,” Shiloh said. “Your love for me has to be enough to transcend some of that pain you’ve suffered all these years. And if it can’t, then I guess it’s not strong enough.”

  She stood and met his burning gaze, something within her firming, hardening. “I’m sorry too. But it seems I’m not the woman you need.”

  His glance turned flinty. “And I’m not the man for you either.”

  Tears filled her eyes. She had finally hit a wall their love couldn’t seem to overcome. But then, perhaps it had never been meant to. Perhaps, all along, it had only been her stubborn determination that had brought their relationship as far as it had come.

  “So be it then.” The words were torn from her heart, leaving it shredded and quivering. “When the rescue party comes for the other women, I’ll be going with them.”

  “Shiloh—”

  “No.” She held up a hand to silence him. “It’s over between us. Just . . . just let it go.”

  With that, she turned and walked away. As she did, Kwana’s words, once again, echoed—prophetically now—in her mind.

  Compromises that are usually the most important are also the most painful.

  More painful than losing the one you love?


  Sometimes, little one. Most unfortunately, sometimes . . .

  Late the next day, General Adams and his party arrived. Much time was spent in stormy negotiations with the Ute chiefs before Adams finally won the agreement to release the White River Agency women and two children. That night, after Jesse informed Shiloh of her upcoming departure on the morrow, he escorted her to Johnson’s tepee, where she rejoined the other captives at last. Their reunion was so joyous that Shiloh failed to notice when Jesse quietly slipped away.

  The next morning after breakfast, Kwana rode over to Johnson’s camp to say good-bye. The old woman already knew the reason why Shiloh had decided to leave, but still hugged her and cried all over again. Shiloh had hoped Jesse would come to say his farewells, so they could at least part on a cordial note, but he was nowhere to be seen. As the ponies were being saddled for their imminent departure, she hurried back over to Kwana.

  “Would you give this to Jesse,” she asked as she unfastened her chain and removed the tooled silver eagle, “and tell him I’ve worn it since the day he gave it to me? That I wanted him to have something to remember me by and because, along with my cross, it has lain so long over my heart. And that I cherished them both because they always reminded me of my two greatest loves.”

  Kwana put out her hand, and Shiloh dropped the eagle into it. “I will tell him. I will give this to him,” the old woman said.

  Then it was time to leave. With heavy heart, Shiloh mounted the pony lent to her and, as they rode from camp, she searched one last time for sign of Jesse. He wasn’t there.

  She had such mixed feelings, leaving the Utes. Though the reason for her captivity was indeed tragic and filled with hardship and fear for her life as well as those of the other Agency women, in the past three weeks she had also discovered that Jesse loved her. Yet, as much as she loved him in return, if he couldn’t find it within himself to accept her people and beliefs as much as she tried to accept his, then there was no hope for them. It was as if he wanted her, but only certain parts. He just couldn’t seem to understand that she could never be whole without the part of her that honored her family, her white heritage, and her faith.

  Once again, Kwana’s kind words plucked at her memory. She had said that Shiloh wouldn’t be who she was if she wasn’t just as she was. And that Jesse wouldn’t love her as he did if she changed.

  At the time, Shiloh had greatly appreciated the old woman’s encouraging words, thinking that Jesse would quickly come to that same realization. But now, with the time to think on what Kwana had said in the long hours as they rode farther and farther from the camp, Shiloh delved deeper into herself. And she reluctantly admitted that true love wouldn’t demand that the people involved give up their very personhood for the sake of the other.

  Perhaps she was asking that very thing of Jesse in requesting they wed in church, and that she raise their children as Christians. But a church wedding, in which he repeated vows he surely meant even as he took her as wife in the Ute way, didn’t seem such a threat to his personhood. Nor did allowing his children to learn of the Christian God.

  But maybe that was the essential problem between them. Neither could see that what the other asked was fair and reasonable. One thing she was certain of, however. Her faith was an integral part of her. She couldn’t turn her back on it for anyone, no matter how much she loved them.

  As the sun dipped toward the west, a cool breeze began to blow. Shiloh hunkered down within the blanket she’d wrapped around her. Every mile they rode toward home and freedom was another mile away from a life she’d once thought would be hers. A life with Jesse.

  The admission sent a shard of pain through her heart. She had always loved him, and always would. There was just no hope left for them. But love . . . there would always be love.

  Jesse fingered the tooled silver eagle, silent and torn between pain and an unwanted sense of finality, of completion. That Shiloh had worn this since the day he’d given it to her filled him with joy. But the fact she’d now returned it to him also ripped open wounds he’d thought he’d managed to close. Perhaps not yet healed but at least closed.

  “That was all she said, that this had been with her since the day I gave it to her?” Jesse asked Kwana the evening of the women’s departure.

  Not certain he could watch Shiloh ride off, he had stayed away the entire day. It had been an excruciating sacrifice to let her go, but he’d done it for the sake of the People. The People, who meant more to him than anything he’d ever known.

  Anything except Shiloh . . .

  Furiously, Jesse clamped down on that traitorous thought, then crammed it back into the farthest recesses of his mind. The People were all that mattered. They had to be.

  Kwana eyed him disdainfully. “And why would you wish to know more? Why make the parting even harder for yourself than it already is? You already know she loves you and would’ve sacrificed almost everything for you. And that still wasn’t enough. So how could a few more words from her now make any difference?”

  Anger flared, hot and bright, before Jesse was able to tamp it down. Kwana and Shiloh had become close in the past weeks. It was understandable that the old woman was on Shiloh’s side.

  Her words were also wise. What was the matter with him, that he seemed so intent on wringing the last bit of agony that he could out of this? To punish himself for his cruelty to Shiloh in refusing two simple requests? To flail his heart one more time for his selfishness, his fear, his inability to forgive himself?

  Fool!

  “You’re right,” Jesse said with a nod. “Nothing’s accomplished by dragging this out. And, as you say, it makes no difference.”

  He closed his fingers around the silver eagle. “I thank you for giving this to me.” With a nod, Jesse turned to go when Kwana laid a hand on his arm.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind,” she said, her dark eyes piercing clear through to his soul. “All it takes is for you to face your pain and see it through to its end. The soul pain. The spirit pain.” She pointed north. “Go. Find your poo-gat and speak with him. Now, before it’s too late.”

  With that, the old woman released him and hurried away.

  Jesse watched her go, mystified at what she had said and meant. One thing he did understand was her instruction to find his poo-gat. The one who knows the way.

  Frustration filled him. There was only one man whom he would ever consider his poo-gat, and Jesse had no idea how to find him. That man was Brother Thomas.

  “What will you do with your life, Shiloh? Now that your dream of teaching the Indian children is over?”

  Snugly ensconced in the library, with a fire blazing in the hearth to ward off the chill November day, Shiloh glanced up from the chemise she was mending. The lace border had finally come loose after many washings and was so fragile she was tempted to rip it all off and apply new lace. The frustration with the task did little to soothe her frayed nerves or the sudden surge of defensiveness her sister’s question engendered.

  Yet, when she met Jordan’s curious gaze, she saw no smug sense of “I told you so” or barely veiled meanness. Her blue-green eyes were serene, if concerned. And that was all. No more, no less.

  It had been nearly five weeks since her return from her captivity with the Utes, and Thanksgiving was in just another few days. After leaving the Ute camp, it had taken them a four-day ride to reach Ouray’s house on the Uncompahgre River near the Uncompahgre Indian Agency. After resting overnight there, where they were most kindly treated by Chipeta, Ouray’s wife, the other women and children continued their journey on mail coaches to Alamosa. There they boarded a train to Denver, eventually arriving in Greeley, where the Meekers had a home. Amidst tearful farewells, Josie had promised to write Shiloh just as soon as she got home, and the two young women made plans to visit each other.

  Shiloh stayed behind while a telegraph message was sent to Ashton, which was delivered to Castle Mountain Ranch the next day. As she awaited her brother
Cord’s arrival, she enjoyed the hospitality and unexpected luxuries of Ouray and Chipeta’s home. It had Brussels carpets, glass windows with window curtains, good beds, rocking chairs, mirrors, and an ornately carved bureau. Chief Ouray, Shiloh observed, had wholeheartedly tried to adapt to the ways of his white brothers. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been enough to convince most of his people to do the same.

  That time, if it ever arrived, would be long in coming, Shiloh thought as she pulled her attention back to the present. And, in the days that passed since her return home, she had long mulled over Jordan’s exact question. What would she do with her life, now that her dream of teaching the Ute children was over? Or was it?

  “I’m considering taking Ouray up on his offer to come to the Uncompahgre Indian Agency and teach the children there,” Shiloh finally replied as she continued to industriously stitch the lace back on the chemise. “At least there, thanks to his influence, the parents are willing to have their children educated.”

  “So, you’re bound and determined to become a spinster schoolmarm, are you?”

  Shiloh chuckled along with her sister, even as a sharp, sudden longing for Jesse stabbed through her. The hurt would dull in time, she well knew, but it would take a while. A long while.

  “Maybe so,” she replied. “You just never know. In the meanwhile, I’ll certainly have my fill of children. Day in and day out. I’ll just be able to send them all home at the end of each day.” She managed a weak grin. “Can’t think of a more perfect way to have my cake and eat it too.”

  “That half-breed. Jesse,” Jordan ventured, evidently catching some undercurrent of sadness in her sister’s voice. “Whatever happened to him? Emma told me he’d brought you back from the Agency when you heard I was . . . hurt.”

  And what else did Emma tell you? Shiloh thought. Well, no matter. “He’s still with the White River Utes. They took him in a long while ago, and he’s happy there.”

  Jordan glanced briefly away, then riveted the full force of her gaze on her. “Emma said you were in love with him. What happened?”