Comanche Woman

by Joan Johnston

  Long Quiet pulled her into his embrace, his heart lighter than it had been since he’d come to Texas from Comanchería. Here was the confirmation of what he’d come to accept on faith—that Bay loved him and their child above all else.

  “So you can see this is all my fault. . . . The strain on my father, the threat of losing Three Oaks—it all must have been too much.”

  “If what you say is true, then this is as much my fault as it is yours,” Long Quiet said.

  “It’s true, all right,” Sloan admitted with a sigh. “If we don’t come up with the balance due by the end of the week, Jonas Harper will own Three Oaks.”

  “How much money do you need?” Long Quiet asked.

  “Thousands of dollars,” Sloan replied.

  “How much, exactly?”

  “Six thousand.”

  “I’ll have my banker in Houston write a draft to Jonas for the full amount,” Long Quiet said.

  Three sets of stunned eyes settled on Long Quiet.

  “Where did you get that kind of money?” Bay asked.

  “I told you once that my uncle was a banker in New York. What I didn’t tell you was that when I returned to Texas, he insisted on setting up an account for me in Houston and depositing my inheritance in it. ‘In case I needed it,’ he said. I’ve never needed it before, but this is certainly a good reason to use some of it.”

  Sloan whistled long and low. “Some of it?”

  “How much do you have?” Bay demanded.

  “Enough to buy anything you’ve ever wanted or needed,” Long Quiet said. He saw the look of chagrin cross Rip’s face and met it with a wry smile. The man he’d accused of being a poor match for his daughter was going to save Three Oaks.

  “Will pay you back,” Rip huffed.

  “There’s no debt to pay,” Long Quiet replied. “We’re family. What’s mine is yours.”

  Sloan shook her head in disbelief. “This is going to make Jonas furious. He had his greedy fingers all set to grab Three Oaks.”

  “That’s not all he’s had his eyes on,” Long Quiet said.

  Bay shifted uneasily under Long Quiet’s steady stare. She didn’t have a chance to pursue the matter because at that moment Cricket arrived with Creed. There was so much commotion, Bay easily could have slipped from the room, except Long Quiet took her hand and kept her at his side.

  “Guess we should all go and let you get some rest,” Cricket said at last.

  “Speak to Bay,” Rip said. “Alone.”

  Long Quiet squeezed Bay’s hand once before he left her.

  When the room was empty except for Bay and her father, he said, “Sit by me.”

  She sat again in the chair beside the bed but couldn’t meet Rip’s eyes.

  “Look at me,” he commanded.

  Bay lifted her gaze and met her father’s eyes.

  “So many plans for you . . . for all of you,” he said wistfully. “Nothing like I thought. Wanted the best. Did what I thought right. Don’t know how to show you . . . beautiful Bay . . . I love you.”

  His eyes closed. For a panicky moment Bay feared he’d died. She reached for his wrist to find his pulse. When she felt the faint throbbing beneath her fingertips, she dropped her cheek to Rip’s hand. The effort to speak had taken the last of his strength.

  Even if Rip died now, he’d given her the reassurance she’d wanted all her life that she was loved by her father. However disappointing she’d been, whatever plans he’d made that she hadn’t fulfilled, Rip still loved her.

  Bay felt joy crowding out the pain in her heart. She had the love of her husband filling her full, and now the love of her father to set the cup to overflowing.

  Bay stayed with Rip for the rest of the evening and wouldn’t have gone to bed at all, but Long Quiet came and picked her up once she fell asleep and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. “Come, wife,” he said. “I want to warm my heart with the heat of your flesh next to mine.”

  “Long Quiet?”

  “Go back to sleep, love. You’re safe with me.”

  In the middle of the night, Bay woke again and tiptoed down to Rip’s room. Long Quiet found her there in the morning, asleep with her head on Rip’s hand.

  Bay spent the rest of the week by Rip’s side. His condition didn’t improve, but neither did it worsen. All those gathered in the house knew they were playing a waiting game with death. In a weak moment, Bay gave way to the tears that had blurred her vision for most of the week but which she hadn’t allowed to fall.

  “Is he dead?”

  Bay jumped at the sound of Luke Summers’ voice. She swiped quickly at the tears on her cheeks with the sleeve of her day dress. “No. Just exhausted, I think. What are you doing here?”

  “I was on my way back to San Antonio on Ranger business and heard about Rip’s stroke. Is he going to live?”

  “I . . . I hope so,” Bay said earnestly. “But he’s partially paralyzed. I don’t know how he’ll stand it if he has to live as half a man.”

  “He has a lot of courage. He’ll do what he has to do,” Luke said. “It runs in the family,” he added.

  Bay smiled wanly. “I hope you weren’t including me in that assessment.”

  “But of course I was. You’ve got more courage than both your sisters combined.”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” Bay snapped, rising from the chair to face Luke.

  “I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that. You survived three years of captivity by the fiercest savages on the frontier. You should know it takes more courage to endure than it does to strike out at your enemy so he kills you quickly. If either Cricket or Sloan had been captured by the Comanches, they’d probably have gotten themselves killed during the first three days, trying to escape.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I didn’t escape because I was too incompetent to do so?”

  “You survived. There was nothing incompetent about that.”

  “Why are you saying all this?”

  “Because you need to hear it.”

  Bay smiled again. “You’re right. I do. I just don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

  Luke reached out a hand and smoothed a strand of auburn hair away from Bay’s face. “Believe it.”

  Bay wondered why it seemed so natural for Luke to touch her. She hardly knew him. But there was something about the man . . .

  “You look like you could use a break. Why don’t you go find Long Quiet.”

  “You know Walker as Long Quiet? You know he’s Comanche?” Bay asked, startled.

  “Of course.”

  “And you don’t think less of him . . . or me.”

  “He’s a man like any other.”

  “I don’t understand you, Luke Summers. But I like you.”

  “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

  Bay grinned. “Are you coming?”

  “I think I’ll sit here with Rip for a while. In case he needs anything,” Luke said.

  “All right. Call if you need me.”

  Luke sat by Rip’s side through most of the afternoon, trying to make up his mind whether he should reveal the secret he’d kept safe for so many years. He’d been afraid in the prison at Perote that he’d die and Rip would never know the truth. It had never occurred to him that something might happen to Rip.

  Now there was a good chance his father wouldn’t survive this stroke. Rip would never know that the woman he’d charmed while his wife was pregnant at home with their first child had borne him a son. On the day of her violent death, Luke’s mother had been a penniless, diseased whore.

  Part of the reason Luke had never told Rip the truth was that he hadn’t wanted to hurt Sloan, Bay, or Cricket. He couldn’t explain the affinity he felt for his half-sisters, except that they were the only family he had. He’d die himself before he’d let any one of them be harmed. The rest of the reason he hadn’t told Rip the truth was that he blamed his father for the circumstances of his mother’s death. He wasn’t sure he wanted to give Rip wh
atever pleasure he’d find in the knowledge he had a bastard son.

  But he wasn’t about to let death cheat him of the opportunity to confront Rip, either.

  Rip’s eyes blinked and slowly opened. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “So talk.”

  The words I’m your son were on the tip of Luke’s tongue, but he couldn’t speak them. He couldn’t take the chance that the shock of his revelation would cause yet another stroke, one severe enough to kill his father. Instead, he said, “I was wondering if a tough old codger like you is going to let a little thing like a stroke get him down.”

  Rip tried to grimace, but only half his face responded. The grotesque look would have pleased Rip because it matched his careful, forbidding words, “Nothing is going to keep me down.”

  Luke laughed. “I could have guessed you’d say something like that.”

  “Young upstart.”

  “I’ll go find someone to bring you something to eat. You need to get your strength back if you’re going to be up on two feet in time for planting the spring cotton.”

  Luke found everyone eating supper in the dining room, and it gave him a rush of pleasure to realize that by virtue of his blood-tie, he belonged with them. “I promised Rip I’d have someone bring him something to eat.”

  “I’ll take him something,” Cricket volunteered.

  Luke helped himself to a plate and filled it with food from the sideboard—roast beef, boiled potatoes, green beans, and bread with butter—and sat down at the table in the only available place, Rip’s chair at the head of the table.

  There was a moment of silent acknowledgment and acceptance of what Luke had done before Creed asked, “How are things in Shelby County, Luke?”

  Luke glanced at Bay before he replied, “Rotten to the core.”

  “So there’s corruption in the Shelby County land-title office?” Creed said.

  “Sure is,” Luke replied. “I not only found charges of theft, but accusations of murders done to hush things up when the theft was found out. The whole county government’s corrupt. The citizens are divided into two camps—those who are doing the stealing and those who are being stolen from. Each side has organized an army and the ‘moderators’ and the ‘regulators’ have gone to war. It’s going to take more than one Ranger to straighten it all out. I’m heading for San Antonio now to talk with Captain Hays. I don’t think anything less than martial law is going to solve the problem, and he’s going to have to go to President Houston to ask for that.”

  “What about Jonas?”

  There was a moment of silence after Bay spoke before Luke answered, “Jonas Harper is smack in the middle of the worst of it.”

  Chapter 26

  JONAS HARPER HAD DISAPPEARED.

  President Sam Houston had declared martial law in Shelby County, and the Texas Rangers had gone to Shelbyville to restore law and order. The evidence they’d found had proved corruption in the land-title office, so they’d proceeded to restore property to its rightful owners—those who were still living. For those who’d been murdered, the Rangers sought justice. Months later, when the hangings began in Shelby County, Jonas Harper remained as elusive as ever.

  Bay lived in a state of constant anxiety—afraid Jonas would be caught, and afraid he wouldn’t. Because from the moment Long Quiet had agreed to pay the loan on Three Oaks, she’d known Jonas would seek revenge. Knowing Jonas had resorted to murder in the past to achieve his aims had put her on pins and needles wondering when and how he was going to retaliate. The constant waiting for disaster to strike made her short-tempered with Long Quiet over anything and everything. His patience with her only increased her ire.

  In the early months of her pregnancy there were times when she’d felt buoyant, awake and alive as she’d never felt before. Now in mid-May, only two weeks away from being full-term, she simply felt fat, ugly, lumpy, and uncomfortable.

  “Why do you have to leave so early in the morning?” she complained as Long Quiet rose to go to work.

  “It’s cooler to work before the heat of the day sets in,” he answered her calmly. “If you don’t feel like getting up with me this morning, then don’t.”

  “Of course I want to get up with you. What kind of wife do you think I am? No, don’t answer that. I hate the way I am right now. I hate myself. I feel awful.” She rolled over onto her side and pulled the covers up over her head, groaning into her pillow.

  Long Quiet sat back down beside her on the bed and rubbed the lower part of her back on either side of her spine, finding an ache she hadn’t even realized was there.

  “Mmmmm,” she moaned as the tension eased.

  He moved his hands to another spot.

  “Ahhhhh.”

  And another.

  “Mmmm.”

  “If you were a cat, I’d say you were purring. Feel better?”

  “Mmmm,” she replied.

  He was grinning, but only because he knew she couldn’t see his face. He wouldn’t have hurt her feelings for the world, but he found her recent childish petulance so out of character it was funny.

  “Do you want to get up, Bay?”

  “Mmmmp.”

  “All right, then get some rest. I’ll see you tonight.” He reached out a hand and caressed the hard, taut mound that was causing Bay so much trouble. “It won’t be much longer until our child makes his way into the world. Be patient, love.”

  She rolled onto her back again and uncovered her face. He could see the tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I’m acting like such a ninny. I—”

  Long Quiet’s mouth came down on Bay’s and cut off her apology as he sat down and lifted her up into his lap. He placed his hand on her belly and gently stroked it, then kissed away the tears at the corners of her eyes. “I love you, Bay.”

  Bay hid her face in his shirt and wailed, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I feel so strange.”

  He carried her into the other room and set her down on a chair at the table. “Maybe some breakfast will help.”

  “Don’t you have to leave?”

  “This won’t take long,” he said.

  Bay was feeling just awful enough that she not only let Long Quiet wait on her, but she enjoyed it.

  He made her laugh with the food he cooked and the way he served it so that by the time the sun was fully up and he had to leave, she was willing to let him go.

  “Come home early,” she coaxed. “I’ll make you something special for supper.”

  “All right,” he agreed, his hands framing her face. “If you promise you’ll keep this smile on your face until then.”

  Bay grinned at the absurdity of smiling through a whole day of being eight and a half months pregnant. “I can only promise I’ll be smiling when you get here.”

  He kissed her hard and left, because he knew that if he didn’t he’d end up spending the day with her—and he had work that had to get done.

  “I’ll ask Juanita to stop by at noon and see how you are.”

  “That’s not necessary. I’m fine. I feel great, in fact, now that I’ve had some breakfast. Go on, now. Get to work!”

  Long Quiet had been gone about an hour when the back pains got worse. Bay pressed as hard as she could with her fists against her back to counter the ache, but it didn’t help. She tried lying down, but it felt better to keep moving, so she rearranged the furniture as she’d been meaning to do since the beginning of the year. She’d shoved the table and chairs into the center of the room when she felt the wet warmth flowing down her legs and splashing onto the dirt floor.

  “Oh, my.” She wasn’t so dumb about babies now as she’d been eight and a half months ago. She knew exactly what had happened and what it meant. “Oh, my,” she said again. “I’m going to have a baby.”

  She wished she’d agreed to have Juanita come by at noon, but it was too late for wishing now. “This is supposed to take hours the first time,” she said aloud, “so Long Quiet
will be home in plenty of time to help.”

  Only she didn’t count on it. More than once Long Quiet had gotten home much later than he’d promised. Tonight might be no exception, and she didn’t intend to get caught unprepared. She tried to decide whether she could ride to Three Oaks. She knew there was help there.

  She felt fine right now, except for the backache of course, but what if she got halfway to Three Oaks and couldn’t get any farther? No, she’d be better off staying right here. At least she had a roof over her head if it rained. Bay looked up at the roof that leaked like a sieve and smiled. At least none of the leaks were near the bed.

  Bay made sure there was a clean blanket in the wooden cradle Long Quiet had given her two weeks ago, then straightened the sheets on the bed and put some clean linen down where she could lie to have the baby. She was so involved in preparing everything for the baby that she didn’t hear the horse approaching. She wasn’t even aware someone was in the house until she turned and found herself facing Jonas Harper at the bedroom threshold.

  “Hello, Bayleigh.”

  “What are you doing here, Jonas? The Rangers are looking for you.”

  He smiled at her. A sad smile. “I know.”

  Jonas took a step farther into the room. His glittering eyes were sunken in their sockets, his face was covered with a scraggly beard, and his hair was matted and tangled. His once-fine clothes were wrinkled and soiled, with one sleeve nearly ripped off at the shoulder. He looked like the fugitive he was.

  Bay backed up a step but realized she had nowhere to go except up onto the bed, so she held her ground. Despite what she knew Jonas had done, she felt sorry for him. Once, she’d loved this man. Was it the blindness of youth that had kept her from seeing him for what he was? Or had the Texas frontier tested his mettle and found him lacking?

  “You shouldn’t be here. Long Quiet will be returning soon,” she said.

  “Worried about me, Bay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  Bay winced. “No, you don’t, Jonas.”

  “Yes, I do. I want you for my wife.”

  Bay felt a frisson of fear chase down her spine. “I already have a husband, Jonas. I’m going to have his child.” She curved her hands protectively over her belly.