by Kaki Warner
“It will take money to fix it up. My money, I’m assuming.”
“Who else has any?” Edwina met Lucinda’s wry look with a smile. “And it’s for a good cause.”
Lucinda stared thoughtfully out the window.
“The children and Amos and I can do the work,” Edwina pressed, as if a rush of words would force a favorable decision. “Chick is recovered enough to help with the painting, and perhaps Emmet Gebbers will donate building supplies like he did for the town house.”
“You’ll need tables and chairs,” Lucinda mused.
“And slates and primers and maps and books and pens and ink.”
“A stove for the winter months.”
“Curtains for the summer.”
Lucinda sighed. Turning from the window, she gave that distant, almost-sad smile that always made Edwina wonder what had happened to smother the spark in her lovely green eyes. Had her act of revenge backfired, hurting her as well as the man she had duped?
“You want this very much, don’t you?” Lucinda asked.
“I do. For Pru.”
A look passed between the two women, something they didn’t acknowledge by putting into words.
Pru might not come back.
“Then let’s get started.”
“Thomas, no!” Declan grabbed his friend from behind, using all of his size and strength to hold the shorter, stockier man back. “Let me speak!” he shouted in Cheyenne to Chief Lean Bear. “Let me speak!”
Thomas twisted in his arms, tried to snap his head back and clip Declan in the jaw, but Declan growled into his ear, “Thomas, I have to try! Think of Pru. Damnit, let me try!”
Thomas quit fighting, but Declan didn’t let him go. Instead, he watched Lean Bear, hoping the chieftain would be willing to hear him out rather than have members of his tribe killing each other.
“Let me speak,” he said again.
Finally, reluctantly, Lean Bear nodded.
“Translate,” Declan said to Thomas and loosened his grip.
Thomas lurched forward, whirled, and gave Declan a savage look, muttering threats in Cheyenne.
Declan ignored them. “This man,” he pointed to Lone Tree, “came into my village to steal this woman who is my wife’s sister. Say it!” he ordered Thomas.
Thomas translated into Cheyenne.
“Lone Tree has broken the laws of the white man. He killed my first wife and now he has stolen the sister of my new wife. He must come back to answer for what he has done.” Declan knew they would never let him take one of their own before a white man’s judge, but they might allow him to leave with Pru, rather than press it.
As soon as Thomas gave the translation, chaos erupted. Lone Tree yelled denials. Snarling braves edged menacingly toward Declan.
“And I have not come alone,” Declan shouted directly to Lean Bear over the upraised voices of his tribesmen. “Look.” He waved an arm toward the bluff across the river.
The Indians turned. Threats gave way to murmurs of confusion as the soldiers rose from their positions. Guthrie had made his men remove their jackets and drape them in the rocks so that from this distance, it appeared there was double the number of soldiers than were actually there.
Lone Tree shouted something and ran from the council.
Thomas knelt beside Pru. He pulled the rag from her mouth, then carefully lifted her from the ground. She had fainted and hung in his arms like a broken doll as he glared at the faces surrounding him. “This is my woman,” he thundered, then said something more Declan didn’t catch.
Alarmed voices rose. Women cried out and herded children toward the tipis. Braves milled uncertainly, shouting at each other and gesturing wildly with their bows and rifles.
“What did you say?” Declan asked, using his knife to cut through the leather binding Pru’s hands.
“I told them if they tried to stop me from taking her, the blue coats would shoot and many would die. Help me get her on my horse.”
Thomas mounted first, then Declan handed her up. By the time Thomas had her settled in front of him, Pru was coming around. She started to fight, then saw it was Thomas, and with a cry, slumped against him.
“Go,” Declan said. “I’ll follow.”
But before Thomas could rein his horse away from the throng of elders and braves, Lone Tree stalked forward, dragging a figure behind him.
It was a woman, small and thin, her blond hair matted around her face.
Lone Tree slung her to the ground at Declan’s feet. “I did not kill your woman!” Lifting a foot, he kicked the woman onto her side. “Tell him!” he shouted in Cheyenne.
The woman scrambled into a crouch, brushed the lank hair from her face, and stared fearfully up at Declan.
Declan’s heart seemed to falter in his chest.
Her fear gave way to disbelief. “Bobby?”
Jesus.
He staggered back as if struck. His lungs wouldn’t work. His mind couldn’t grasp what his eyes were seeing.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
The woman—a wretched, filthy creature with the look of madness in her eyes—began to laugh, a high, brittle sound that doubled her over in a coughing fit that left a red stain on her lips.
The woman.
Sally.
His wife.
Come back from the dead.
Declan looked at Lone Tree’s grinning face and his fury exploded.
Nineteen
The next few moments passed in a blur. Declan’s mind in shock, his body reacted strictly on impulse, and before he knew what he was doing, he had Lone Tree in a choke hold and his knife against his chest.
“I’ll kill you,” he snarled into the Arapaho’s ear. “I’ll put you in a hole so deep you’ll never see the light of day again.”
The Indian twisted, his breath a hoarse gasp. The knife shifted and a red stain spread on the Indian’s buckskin shirt.
Only when he heard Thomas shouting and felt the cold press of a rifle barrel against his cheek did the red fog in Declan’s brain begin to clear. Realizing that the Indian in his grip was choking and clawing at his arm, he abruptly let go and stepped back, the knife clutched in his hand, his chest heaving as he gulped in air.
Dimly through the roaring in his head, he heard Thomas shout in English. “Get on your horse. Now!”
Still dazed, Declan blinked at the hostile faces surrounding him, at the rifles pointed at his chest, at the woman still huddled on the ground.
Sally.
His wife.
He felt like vomiting.
“Get the woman,” Thomas said in a hard, clipped voice. “Get on your horse and ride before they change their minds.”
Slowly the words sank in. With stiff, jerky movements, he bent and helped Sally to her feet. She weighed less that his oldest son, and felt as brittle as a stick doll in his arms. His emotions were so frayed by guilt and pity and fury he couldn’t even look at her. He quickly mounted, then pulled her up behind him. Gathering the reins, he looked down into Lone Tree’s furious face.
“If I see you again,” he said through clenched teeth. “I will bury you alive. I swear it.” Then he kicked his horse into a lope and rode after Thomas and Prudence Lincoln.
He expected to feel a bullet or arrow slam into him, but none did, and no one followed.
The troopers met them as they rode out of the canyon below the bluff. When Guthrie saw Sally, he reined in beside Declan. “Two for one, huh? Who’s this?”
“My first wife.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue.
“The dead one?”
Declan didn’t answer. Behind him, Sally clutched at the cantle, coughing so hard he could feel the heat of her breath against his back. He’d heard that wracking sound before and knew a consumptive cough when he heard one. He wanted to feel pity. He wanted to care that she had suffered and was suffering still. But all he could think of was Ed.
They rode for several miles before Declan managed to calm his racing thoughts. Turning to Guthrie,
he asked him to post guards on their trail to make sure Lone Tree didn’t follow.
“Already have.” The lieutenant leaned over to spit tobacco, then glanced at Sally slumped against his back. “She’s sick.”
Declan didn’t answer.
“She won’t be able to ride much farther.”
“I thought it best to put some ground between us and the village,” Declan said. “But if you see a likely spot, we can stop for the night. Someplace easily defended.”
Guthrie nodded and rode ahead to send out scouts.
Declan glanced over at Pru riding before Thomas. She seemed oblivious to what went on around her.
“Pru,” he said.
She turned her head and looked at him, her eyes dull and empty.
“We’ll get you home as quick as we can.”
She studied him blankly for a moment, then faced forward again.
Thomas gave a slight shake of his head, and Declan saw his own concern mirrored in the Cheyenne’s eyes. They were both out of their experience here, and Declan was anxious to get Pru home so Ed could help her find her way back.
Ed.
A sharp, gut-cramping pain rolled through him, leaving a gnawing emptiness in its wake. How was he to explain this to Ed? To his children?
He saw an intolerable choice looming before him. Abandon a woman who had already suffered so much and was likely facing a long, painful death—or turn away from the woman he had grown to love.
Duty or love.
He wanted to howl his despair to the heavens. Because he knew in good conscience he had only one choice, and once he made it, a lonely, bitter life stretched endlessly ahead.
They stopped in a small boulder-and-aspen canyon that offered good shelter for the women, a trickling stream, grass for the horses, and high vantage points for sentries above. While the soldiers set up camp, Declan pulled from his saddlebags a spare shirt for Pru to pull over her torn dress, a bar of soap, and a comb. Then, leading the women along the stream, he and Thomas found a private place in the aspens and left them to wash.
As they walked back to where the soldiers already had coffee boiling over small cook fires, Thomas said, “Have you told your first wife about your new wife?”
“No.” He and Sally had scarcely spoken at all. She hadn’t even asked about the children, which shouldn’t have surprised him, but did.
“She has the coughing sickness.”
“I know.”
“It is a common thing in the Indian villages. A slow death.”
“I know.”
Thomas kicked a pebble out of their path and sighed. “It is said that desert air helps. But still you cannot stop it.”
Declan didn’t want to move to the desert. He didn’t want to give up Ed or the ranch or hope. He didn’t want to go back to his lonely, empty life.
But he couldn’t abandon the mother of his children, either.
“I am taking Prudence into the mountains.”
Declan looked at the warrior in surprise, and saw the firm resolve in his friend’s eyes. “Why?”
Thomas shrugged. “Two wives, four children, the two women from the hotel . . . she would be lost among so many.”
Declan thought about the turmoil ahead and knew Thomas was right.
“The mountains will heal her,” Thomas went on. “I will build a sweat lodge for her, and lay in the rocks to heat and a skin of water to pour over them. As the steam rises, Grandmother Earth will pull the evil memories from her mind and the pain from her body.”
Declan had heard of the sweat lodge and its healing powers. He just wondered how he would explain to Ed why he hadn’t brought Pru back.
Thomas stopped and faced him. He put a broad hand on Declan’s shoulder and looked hard into his eyes. “She will be safe with me, nesene’. You know this to be true.”
Declan felt a flash of resentment that Thomas had found his woman, while Declan was about to lose his. Then shamed by that thought, he put on a smile. “I know.”
“We are brothers now.”
In Declan’s mind they always had been.
Thomas gave his shoulder a squeeze, then let his hand drop back to his side. “I will bring her back before the first snow flies.”
Declan wondered if he would still be here then or if he would be headed to the desert for the winter.
They continued walking. “Lone Tree will come for you,” Thomas said.
Declan looked over at him.
“You humiliated him before his tribe. He is a man full of pride but with little thought to what he does. This will not end until he is dead.”
Declan had figured that.
“I wish I could be here to guard your back, but I must tend to Prudence.”
“I understand, Thomas. I’ll keep an eye out for him.”
“You kill him this time, nesene’.”
Declan nodded but said nothing as they stopped beside the small fire Thomas had built earlier. “Now I must hunt,” the warrior said. “Prudence needs meat to make her strong again.” He started away, then stopped and stared thoughtfully into the distance as if debating with himself. When he turned back, Declan saw a troubled look in his dark eyes.
“It is a hard thing you face,” he said in his solemn way, “having two wives. But there is an Indian saying: ‘Our first teacher is our heart.’ So I tell you this, Declan Brodie. Listen well to your heart. It will show you the true path. And expect Lone Tree.”
Supper was miserable, despite the four grouse Thomas added to the usual beans and hardtack biscuits. Pru ate only at Thomas’s urging, and even though Sally ate well, she spoke little, and the seething resentment Declan sensed behind her watchful eyes made his own appetite wither.
The air cooled as the sun dropped. Seeking warmth, they lingered by the fire, the women using a log for a seat, Thomas hunkered beside Pru, and Declan on a stump across from them. No one spoke.
Before long, Pru was nodding off. Helping her to her feet, Thomas led her to the canvas and brush shelter he and Declan had constructed for the women earlier. When he didn’t return right away, Declan figured he was staying with her until she drifted to sleep or until Sally came.
Resting his crossed arms on his raised knees, Declan glanced across the dying fire at his wife—his only legal wife, now—and found her staring back at him through a veil of smoke. She looked much better—cleaner—than she had earlier. With her blond hair combed back and her mouth pressed in a belligerent line, and that angry glint in her hazel eyes, she looked so much like Joe Bill when he was in a snit it was a bit disconcerting.
“Why didn’t you come for me, Bobby?”
He’d been expecting the question. But he still didn’t know how or where to start his answer. And he was more surprised than he should have been that her first words were about herself, and not the children she’d left behind.
“I did look for you, Sally. Then troopers found what was left of the stage you were on, and several burned bodies, and they said you were dead.”
“You believed them?” Her voice dripped scorn. And fury.
“One of the bodies was your—was Slick Caven’s. The others were too burned to tell who they were. But they showed me your bloody dress and the locket you always wore. So yes, I believed them.”
She looked off, blinking against tears or the sting of smoke. Or both.
“I’m sorry about Slick,” he said.
“I’m not.” When she faced him again, that anger was back, brighter, harder, reflecting in her eyes like twin flames on polished glass. “He tried to save himself by trading me to them. ‘Take her, take her,’ he kept saying. But Lone Tree just laughed and pulled out his knife and had his fun. I wasn’t sorry at all.”
Declan didn’t know what to say. So he remained silent, which seemed to fuel the anger until her thin body shook with it and her voice vibrated like taut wire in a high wind. “Four years, Bobby. For four years I was beaten and kicked and forced and treated worse than the lowest dog. And you never came.”
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“I would have had I known.”
“That doesn’t account for much now, does it?”
He had no defense, so he said nothing.
“I’ll never forgive you for that. For giving up and leaving me with them. Don’t even ask me to.” She started to say something more, but broke into a coughing fit that bent her over her knees, her hands pressed to her mouth. When the spasms passed, she straightened and wiped her palms, leaving red smears on her tattered buckskin skirt.
“Consumption,” she said, her voice hoarse from the coughing. “Lone Tree’s mother had it, and my task was to nurse her or be beaten.”
“We’ll go see Doc Boyce as soon as we reach town.”
“Don’t bother. I know what’s ahead.”
Silence, except for the snap of the fire and a whiffling snore from a nearby soldier. Somewhere on the picket line a horse whickered, and two men spoke in low voices as they shared a smoke. Sad, lonesome sounds.
Declan tossed a small branch onto the coals. After the flames flared in a shower of sparks that spiraled up to fade against the stars, he said the words he’d been putting off. “I took another wife.”
She watched him through the smoke but said nothing.
“About a month ago. I needed help, and . . .” He stumbled to a stop, not knowing how to go on from there. “Her name is Ed. Edwina.”
“I’m your wife. Your only legal wife.”
He looked at her.
“What do you intend to do about her?”
“I don’t know.”
Another long silence.
“Well, take heart,” she finally said, rising to her feet. “You won’t have to fret over it long.” Then she turned and walked into the darkness toward the shelter.
Declan continued to stare into the fire until weariness overcame him. With a sigh, he dropped his head onto his folded arms and closed his eyes. His last thought as he sank into an exhausted sleep was that Sally still hadn’t asked about her children. By now, though, he was no longer surprised.
When he awoke, it was morning, Thomas and Pru were gone, and the soldiers were already breaking camp.
He roused Sally. After a quick breakfast of jerky, hardtack, and coffee, they mounted up and set out, knowing that they had a hard day ahead if they were to reach home sometime tomorrow morning.