Maverick Heart

by Joan Johnston

  Rand was off his horse and down on one knee, trying to figure out what had happened. “Buffalo carne through here after them,” he said when Miles joined him.

  “We can take the chance they’re still headed south and keep going. Likely the sign’ll show up again,” Miles said, searching for movement on the southern horizon.

  “I think he might have changed his mind about going to Cheyenne,” Rand said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Freddy will convince Tom that he’s a dead man the instant he shows up in a crowd with her. She’s got a sharp tongue and a brain, and she’s not averse to using either.”

  “He could have gagged her,” Miles said.

  “I’d like to see him try.”

  Miles knew Rand had to make himself believe Freddy was unhurt, or he wouldn’t be able to function. Privately, he was less optimistic about finding Freddy untouched. There had been signs of a struggle in the grass where Tom and Freddy had spent the night. He wondered whether it made sense to prepare Rand for what he would probably find or keep his thoughts to himself.

  “When I find him, I’m going to kill him,” Rand said.

  Miles realized then that Rand knew the truth. Whether he could deal with it when he caught up to Tom was another matter. “Just don’t make the mistake of underestimating him.”

  Rand glared at him, clearly agitated at this setback, frustrated by their lack of success in finding Tom, and in a killing rage over what he believed had happened to Freddy. “I don’t need any advice from you!” he snapped.

  “I’m your fa—” Miles snapped right back. He cut himself off, but he could see it was too late. Rand realized what he had almost said.

  “My father? Is that what you were going to say?”

  The blood drained from Miles’s face at the look of revulsion on Rand’s.

  “Chester Talbot told me the truth before he died. I know you raped my mother. I know I’m your bastard son.”

  “There was no rape,” Miles said. “But yes, you are my son.” He was relieved to say the words at last. But there was no joy in them. Chester had sown seeds of deceit that had grown into full-blown hatred in his son.

  Then, because the dam had finally been broken, Rand’s questions came gushing out. “Why didn’t you marry my mother when she found herself pregnant with me?”

  “There were reasons—”

  “I can’t believe a pregnant woman would refuse to marry the father of her child,” Rand snarled. “Not if she lay willingly with you, as you claim.”

  “I didn’t know about you,” Miles snarled back. “She never told me!”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll have to ask her that.”

  They glared at one another, chests heaving, fists bunched, neck hairs on end.

  “I’ve done fine without a father so far,” Rand said. “I don’t need you.”

  Miles felt as though he had been stabbed in the heart. “Please, Rand, if you’ll only let me explain—”

  “No,” Rand said. “I’ve heard enough.” He turned and strode toward his horse.

  “Wait!” Miles had to grab Rand’s arm to stop him. “Wait, damn it!”

  “Let me go.”

  “Which way are you headed now?”

  For a moment it seemed Rand wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “I’m going north.”

  “There’s nothing up north but Fort Laramie. Tom wouldn’t go there.”

  “There are reservation Indians, hangers-on, living in tipis near the fort. I heard the men talking in the bunkhouse. Tom has relationships with a few of the squaws. I figure he’ll try to hide out with one of them.”

  “All right. We’ll ride north again.”

  Verity was waiting anxiously with the horses when Miles walked back to her. “I could see you arguing with Rand. Did you tell him everything?”

  “He had already heard everything from Chester. Only Chester had his own version of the truth—a little parting gift of malice before he died. He told Rand I raped you and then abandoned you.”

  “Oh, Miles, no!”

  “He hates me, Verity,” he said bleakly.

  “How … how does he feel about me?”

  Miles rubbed irritably at the days-old beard that shadowed his face. “I don’t know. I had to tell him you never gave me a chance to marry you. That you never told me you were pregnant. He asked why you hid your pregnancy from me. I told him he’d have to ask you that himself.”

  Verity’s face paled. Her world was shifting off its axis, and soon nothing would ever be the same again. She was trying to regain her balance, looking for a haven where she would be safe when things turned topsy-turvy. But it was difficult to anticipate the consequences of the looming disaster.

  “Where is Rand going now?”

  “Rand thinks Tom is going to hide out with the reservation Sioux camped near the fort. He’s heading north again.”

  “What if we can’t find Tom’s trail?” Verity asked.

  “Let’s not worry about that until it happens,” Miles replied.

  The three of them rode north, their third day and night on the trail. They managed to avoid talking to each other. The questions about the future that funneled through all their minds remained unasked and unanswered.

  The morning of the fourth day dawned cloudy and cold.

  Verity felt a deepening sense of despair, which she knew Rand and Miles shared. After four miserable days on the trail, they were right back where they had started, not fifteen miles from the ranch.

  By noon, the temperature had dropped fifty degrees. It began to snow. It was hard to keep the horses headed into the frigid wind when their inclination was to turn their tails to it.

  The two men tied their bandannas around their hats to hold them on, donned their wool coats, and turned up the collars to keep the whirling snow off their necks. Verity did the best she could to stay warm, but her fingers froze in her thin leather gloves, and her feet felt like blocks of ice. It wasn’t long before her teeth were chattering, and her lips were blue.

  The snow fell in large, thick flakes. The horses began floundering in knee-deep drifts. It was difficult to tell which direction they were going. All landmarks were fast disappearing beneath a blanket of white.

  Miles kneed his horse to catch up with Rand, who had relentlessly ridden ahead of them the entire journey.

  “I’m going to take your mother home,” Miles said. “I suggest you come with us.”

  “What about Freddy?” Rand asked.

  Miles saw the fear deep in Rand’s eyes and knew there was no comfort he could give. “If Tom’s smart, he’ll head back to the ranch. At least he has a chance with us. Winter here kills without mercy, without discriminating between good and evil.”

  Rand shook his head. “I have to keep going. What if Tom leaves her out here somewhere all alone? I can’t stop until I find her.”

  “Likely Tom’s snug inside a warm tipi along with Freddy. You’re the one who’ll end up freezing to death.”

  “I don’t want to live without her.”

  Miles heard the vehemence in his son’s voice. And the resolution. He couldn’t—or rather, wouldn’t—force Rand to return to the ranch with him. But he doubted his son, the English tenderfoot, had the knowledge it would take to survive this kind of cold out in the open.

  “I don’t want us to part like this with things unsettled between us,” Miles said.

  “What else is there to say?” Rand asked bitterly.

  “I loved your mother,” Miles said. “We were engaged to be married when you were conceived.”

  “Do you love her now?” Rand challenged. “Is that why you brought her here? Is that why you married her?”

  “No,” Miles conceded. “I brought her here to punish her for marrying Chester Talbot instead of me. I never knew about you—never guessed I had a son—until I laid eyes on you.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Verity said,
reining her horse up beside Miles. “I was the one who lied to you, Rand. Or, rather, I withheld the truth.”

  Miles saw the struggle on Rand’s face. His next words seemed torn from him. “Why, Mother? All those years of whispers behind my back. All the teasing and the taunts. Why couldn’t you have told me the truth?”

  Her eyes were full of shared pain. “Chester Talbot threatened to repudiate you if I ever revealed the truth. He’s the villain in this piece—if you must have one. He and Miles were mortal enemies. Chester killed your uncle, Gregory, and he threatened to kill your father if I didn’t break my engagement to Miles and marry him. Even so, I didn’t know about you until after the vows were said.”

  “Talbot always knew the truth about who I was?” Rand asked.

  “Your hair is black, Rand. Like your father’s,” she said simply. “Yes. Talbot knew from the first.”

  “That’s why he kept himself from me?”

  “Yes. And why he lied to you on his deathbed. He hated Miles. He had since they were boys.”

  Rand’s gaze shifted from one parent to the other, as though to discern the truth from their faces, assimilating everything he had been told, evaluating it. It was clear he hadn’t yet swallowed everything they had fed him. Much of it was still stuck in his throat.

  “Rand—” Verity began.

  “Don’t say another word, Mother. I’ve heard quite enough.” Rand kicked his horse and headed him north into the sleeting wind.

  Verity sat paralyzed on her horse, unable to believe her son could speak so sharply to her.

  “Wait here,” Miles said. “I’ll be right back.” He quickly caught up with Rand. He reached over to catch Rand’s reins and draw his horse to an abrupt halt. “There was no need to hurt your mother like that.”

  “She hurt me,” Rand replied.

  “Not intentionally. You must know that.”

  “I don’t know anything for sure right now.”

  “I meant it when I said I’m returning to the ranch,” Miles said. “I won’t take a chance with your mother’s life.”

  “I’m going on,” Rand replied.

  Miles didn’t know what he could say to stop Rand from taking a course he thought would only result in his son’s death. He grabbed at his Stetson when a gust of wind threatened to whip it off his head. The storm was worsening. “You know, Rand, Freddy may already be dead.”

  Rand turned glittering, savage gray eyes on him. “Don’t say it! Don’t even think it!”

  “That doesn’t keep it from being true.”

  “I would know if she were dead.” Rand pounded a fist against his heart. “I would feel it here.”

  Rand didn’t say more, but he had bared quite enough of his soul. Miles knew what his son hadn’t said. She’s the other half of me. That’s how I would know. Miles glanced over his shoulder at Verity, shivering, teeth chattering with the cold. And knew what his decision had to be. He could not save them both—the woman who was the other half of him, the son he barely knew. He would have to choose.

  “I’m taking Verity home,” he repeated for the last time. “I think you should come with us.”

  “I can’t.”

  Miles offered his hand and waited to see if Rand would take it.

  He didn’t.

  Miles withdrew his hand and tugged his hat down once more. “Take care of yourself. A word of advice. Don’t fall asleep. If you think you can’t go any farther, stay close to your horse, use his body heat to stay warm. If he freezes up, wrap yourself in your ground sheet and your blanket and cover yourself with snow. It’ll keep you warm.

  “If you survive the storm, keep heading north until you reach the Platte. The Sioux will be camped somewhere along the river. I won’t look for you—I won’t tell your mother to look for you—before the snow thaws. That could be a couple of weeks … or a couple of months.

  “If we don’t see you before Christmas, I promise I’ll hunt for you—for what’s left of you—in the spring and see you get a decent burial.”

  For a moment he thought Rand would change his mind, that he would see the sense of returning to the ranch to wait out the storm. His son was made of sterner stuff. He stood his ground.

  “Good luck, Rand. And good-bye. You’d better get going. Your mother’s likely to set up a howl when she finds out you’re not going back with us.”

  Miles had already turned his horse’s tail to the wind when Rand called out to him.

  “Miles!”

  He looked back over his shoulder.

  “Take care of her for me.”

  Miles felt the lump in his throat and swallowed it down. “I will.”

  He kneed his horse back to where Verity waited for him. “We’re heading back to the ranch.”

  “Thank God. I’m half frozen. Tom will find a place for him and Freddy to get out of the storm, won’t he?”

  “If he doesn’t, there’s nothing we can do to save them. We’ll be lucky to save ourselves.”

  Miles headed northeast, so Verity wouldn’t realize they weren’t following Rand, using the rapidly disappearing shape of the landscape to guide him home.

  Verity kicked her horse and followed after him. She kept her eyes focused on the wind-swept tail of the horse in front of her, which was about as far as she could see in the blowing snow. She was muffled to the ears in her scarf, her shoulders hunched down deep in her coat, so numbed with cold that she never realized they had left Rand behind.

  17

  Rand knew the bitter taste of failure. His father had been right. He was no match for a Wyoming blizzard. There was little chance he would be rescuing Freddy; he would be lucky to escape with his life.

  His horse had stumbled into a prairie dog hole hidden by a drift and sprained a hock. He had unsaddled and unbridled the animal and left it to fend for itself. He had taken what supplies there were, tied them in a pack on his back, grabbed the rifle from the boot on the saddle, and kept walking into the wind. Rand figured that had to be north, but he had no way of knowing for sure.

  He had spent the day traveling, squinting against blowing, blinding snow, but he didn’t think he had gone very far. Even where it hadn’t drifted, the snow was thigh-deep now. It was hard to hold on to his optimism through the day as the wind rose higher, the snow layered deeper, and the temperature plummeted. The snow had stopped falling, but the wind never died, and the sun never came out. Gray clouds hovered, waiting to drop enough snow to bury him once and for all.

  He had never felt such cold in his life. He could barely bend his fingers, and his feet felt too heavy to lift. Soon he would no longer be able to walk. Miles had warned him not to sleep, but he was so tired, he didn’t know how long he could keep going.

  Then he saw them. Except, where he had expected to find two figures, he found three.

  Rand shook his head, thinking perhaps the cold had affected his vision, or maybe he was only wishing the figures there, because he wanted so badly to catch up to Freddy. He looked again. And saw three again.

  Because of the way they were bundled up, he couldn’t tell who they were. Maybe it wasn’t Tom and Freddy, after all. Maybe it was three completely different people.

  He started to shout and wave his hands to attract their attention. He didn’t know what stopped him, but suddenly he knew it was the wrong thing to do. Maybe those were Sioux.

  Better to find out who they were before he identified himself. He had to get closer. But there was no way to hide himself in the snow. He would simply have to hope they didn’t look in his direction.

  Finally, he was close enough to make out faces. His heart skipped a beat. He felt a surge of triumph. It was Freddy and Tom. His gut tightened as he identified the third person. Hawk.

  Rand could see Tom was holding a gun on the Sioux, who stood about five feet away from him. The snow around the Indian was stained a vivid red. It appeared Tom had shot Hawk. But Rand couldn’t see enough of the Indian’s body beneath his shaggy buffalo robe to know how bad the wound was
. The Indian held his hands away from his body, and it was plain he had no weapon.

  Rand watched Tom raise his gun and aim it at the Indian’s belly and realized all at once that he was going to murder the man in cold blood.

  Rand struggled to his feet, rifle in hand, and yelled as loud as he could, “Tom! Tom!”

  The crisp, cold air carried his cry to the threesome. Tom turned to look, and the Indian made a run for it. He didn’t get far before Tom turned his revolver back on him again. Tom was going to shoot Hawk in the back!

  Everything seemed to happen in the flicker of an eye.

  When Rand heard Tom fire, he felt as though he had been shot himself. It was cold-blooded murder!

  Then he realized Tom’s shot hadn’t killed the Sioux. Hawk had grabbed his side and was still running—staggering, actually—away.

  To his horror, Rand saw Freddy grab Tom’s wrist and struggle to wrest the gun from him. In his mind’s eye he saw the revolver accidentally discharging, killing Freddy. He had to save Freddy. He had to kill Tom.

  At Birdie Arthur’s hunting lodge in York Rand had snuffed twenty candles at twenty paces after drinking an entire bottle of brandy. He ought to be able to hit a target as large as Tom when he was stone-cold sober. But he had never pointed a gun at another human being, and he found it difficult to hold the rifle steady. His hands were shaking too much.

  A blast of wind sent snow swirling into his eyes. He swiped at his eyelashes to brush away the flakes that had caught there, blinding him. When he looked again, Tom was raising his gun to hit Freddy with it.

  Rand held his breath and squeezed the trigger slowly, easily. He heard the deafening report in his ear … and watched Tom fall.

  He ran then, as fast as his frozen feet could carry him through the heavy snow, toward the brutal tableau before him. When he arrived at the scene, Freddy was kneeling beside Tom.

  “Hold it right there!” she called to him. She rose and faced him, Tom’s revolver in her hand—aimed at him! She was wrapped up in a blanket so that all he could see were eyebrows white with frost and a nose as red as a berry. She couldn’t keep the revolver level in front of her, even with both hands.