by Jodi Thomas
As they moved across the vast plains, the nights grew colder, but the days still burned the already dry prairie. Wood for campfires grew scarce. Cain used buffalo chips and twisted tufts of dry grass to supplement the sunflower stalks and fast-burning mesquite trees.
Bethanie watched as buffaloes moved in long brown clouds across the endless land. She found the creatures interesting, for they ran with a rocking motion, raising the front and back part of the body alternately. Mariah found them fun to watch, but Cain was always careful to keep the wagon at a safe distance. The buffaloes were wild and stupid. They detected danger by smell and not by sight, so all the men were careful to stay downwind of the hairy, cowlike animals. Twice in the days of crossing the plains, Bethanie saw wagons loaded down with buffalo hides. Several times they passed piles of decaying carcasses, but most of the plains were an endless sea of green.
Bethanie allowed the swaying grasslands and slow sunset to soothe her mind. The recent pain dulled to an ache within her heart. She needed the hours of monotony to rest, free from conversation or responsibility. Cain seemed to understand; perhaps he had heartaches of his own to remember. He cooked meals and made camp with his gaze never more than a blink away from Mariah.
As they crossed the sandy banks of the Canadian River, Bethanie began to wonder if she’d made the right decision to go to Josh. How could he welcome her when she brought him the news that his brother was dead? They hadn’t heard from him for almost a year. At that time all he’d written about was working a mine and fighting off claim jumpers. He’d told of the past winter being so harsh it had killed off most of the cattle in northern Colorado. Ben had sent a letter promising cattle as soon as the snow melted and the trails were clear. He died before enough head could be rounded up.
Bethanie thought of Josh’s last letter so many months ago. What if he’d made a new life for himself and wanted no part of her? He could even be married by now and have a family on the way. No. Bethanie closed her mind to such a thought. She would see Josh and tell him of Ben. If she could just see him one more time in her life, it would be enough. It might have to be. She had loved two men in her lifetime and been married to one. It was enough to ask of life.
As the drive neared Fort Union in the New Mexico Territory, the men began to tell frightening stories around the campfire. The safety of the fort that they all called the Queen of Forts seemed to loosen their tongues as well as their fears. Bethanie found the tales of a bloodthirsty half-breed named Charley Bent the most upsetting. Bent’s grandfather had been a kind country doctor, and then his father had operated a trading post before being named Indian agent. But Charley hated the white man and became a master of disguise, sometimes hiring on with wagon trains to protect the people against the likes of himself. Rumors about his whereabouts spread like grassfire. Some said after he failed at trying to kill his own father, he committed suicide. Others claimed to have talked with men who had seen him captured. But everyone’s nerves were on edge, as if expecting to see him any minute.
The shadows became suspect. The call of wild turkey made cold sweat inch down everyone’s spine. Even the lonely cry of coyotes along the breaks carved into Bethanie’s sleep like tiny knives whittle away at soft oak. Late each night she would pace the edges of the campfire hoping to wear herself down enough to sleep. As the outline of the fort came into view, she still could not shake the feeling of waiting for terror to strike.
Just after sunset, Bethanie was so lost in her fears that she didn’t hear Cain silently step up beside her. “Don’t take the stories too seriously, Mrs. Weston,” he whispered.
Bethanie straightened on her three-legged stool and tried to make her voice sound light. “I know some of the stories are only tales. We have the same tales in Texas. When you live through hard times, they somehow change in the telling.”
“I was here in ’65 when the war ended and some of the Rebs came to fight Indians.” Cain squatted on the ground beside her stool. “Locals called them Galvanized Yankees. They were the meanest, fightin’est group I’ve ever seen. They put a stop to most of the raids. Some stayed on to help Dick Wootten build that toll road over Raton Pass. Some came south and worked on Fort Union. Most tried mining as every man does who comes into the mountains.”
Bethanie was surprised Cain was talking to her. These were more words than she’d ever heard him say. Perhaps the safety of night when she couldn’t see his scar loosened his tongue. Maybe he felt she needed calming conversation. Either way, she was thankful for his low, steady voice. She listened to his stories of the early days until her eyelids grew heavy, and she excused herself to crawl beside Mariah, who was sleeping under the wagon.
Bethanie curved her body around her child and watched Cain’s shadow in the firelight. Every night he would circle the ground around the wagon with his rope, believing snakes would never slither across it. Next, he would round up a load of wood to keep the fire going all night, even though the nightly chill would not freeze. Last, he always checked his knife and propped himself up so that he could keep a steady eye on her and Mariah. His actions tonight, as every night of the drive, brought Bethanie comfort and, she slept soundly knowing he was standing guard.
At dawn they left the protective shadow of Fort Union. The soil turned black, and piles of rocks jutted from the earth every few hundred feet. The cone hulls of longdead volcanoes spotted the land on either side of them as they neared Raton Pass. Cain told of a man who had opened a toll road over the pass the year the war ended. Wootten’s twenty-seven-mile road was the fastest route to northern Colorado.
As they reached the small settlement about dusk, Cain suggested going into town and finding a room for the night. The thought of a real bed and maybe a bath sounded heavenly to Bethanie. Cain said he knew of a woman who would wash all their clothes and have them ready by noon. Bethanie looked at all her dingy dresses. Even though she’d scrubbed them at the water crossings along the way, everything she owned was stained with the red mud from the Canadian River or the black dust of New Mexico Territory.
Bethanie rode over to the trail boss. “I’m going on into town. We’ll catch up with you by tomorrow afternoon.”
Williams smiled and gave a respectful tap on his hat. He’d been with the Westons for several years. He knew enough not to question Bethanie.
Within an hour, Bethanie and Mariah were checked into a hotel room and had ordered a bath. Cain had gone to see about the horses and laundry. He’d told her simply that he’d see her at noon tomorrow. Bethanie had learned to trust him over the past weeks, so her mind was freer from worry than it had been since Ben’s death. She and Mariah took a long bath and ate dinner by the tiny fireplace while their hair dried. Mariah crawled up in Bethanie’s lap and fell asleep. Bethanie sat watching the fire die down and let her mind drift from one thought to another.
She had just put Mariah into bed, when she heard a sound muffled by the hall carpet. Someone was walking past her door. Bethanie scolded herself. This was a hotel; of course there were people outside the door. But hadn’t she taken the last room in the hall?
Another set of steps slowly passed the door. Bethanie lowered the wick on the lamp so that the room was almost black. She could see the light from the hall shining under the door.
A third person walked along the hall toward her room. The steps were louder, definitely those of a man. His boots were heavy and made an echoing thud as he drew closer.
Bethanie was wide-awake now. Half her mind told her it was nothing, as the other half demanded that she move around the bed to where she had left a gun by the washstand. Halfway round the bed, her muscles solidified suddenly as the footsteps in the hall stopped. A dark shadow blocked part of the light coming from the hall. Someone was standing outside…waiting.
She heard the unmistakable clank of a key against a metal lock. She held her breath as the knob rattled. To her horror the lock gave with a twist, and light fanned in around her. A stranger in buckskin bolted into the room. He was followed by t
wo other sets of footsteps, and the light vanished with the closing of the door.
Bethanie’s nightgown showed milky white in the darkness as she backed away. Her mind flooded with one thought. The gun!
Frantically, she jumped for her weapon, but a huge arm swung around her waist and pulled her to the floor. The grimy hand covered her half-scream as the man’s two friends ran closer. The smell of cheap beer and tobacco assaulted Bethanie’s senses as she fought violently. In answer to her struggle, his arm tightened and the large hand moved to cover her nose. Within seconds blood seemed to swell into her brain demanding she breathe. She stopped trying to hit him and concentrated on freeing his fingers enough to allow air to pass. He slid a muscular leg over her waist and grabbed both her wrists with one hand.
As he pulled her arms above her head she felt his laughter in her face. “Settle down, lady. We ain’t gonna hurt you none.”
He looked up at his friends. “See, I told you boys this would be the easiest way to get us a few head of cattle. Now we got somethin’ to bargain with. You’ll see how fast that trail boss hands over a hundred head.”
Bethanie heard the two shadowy figures laugh. They both made a high giggly sound of men who were long into drink and short on brains.
The man on the floor used one knee to hold her down. He held her hands tightly above her head. His weight was pulling her gown dangerously low over her bust. His hot breath stung the clean flesh of her throat. She could see his eyes grow fiery with lust.
“I think we may have found more than we hoped for,” he mumbled as he slid his fingers off her mouth to grab the fullness of one of her breasts.
One of his partners sucked in air, whistling softly. “I ain’t never had a white woman,” he snickered.
As the leader’s hand pulled at her nightgown, Bethanie drew needed air into her lungs and screamed with every ounce of energy left. He abandoned his pursuit and covered her mouth once more.
“Why you…” he began as footsteps sounded in the hall.
Before any of the men could move, the door exploded open and Cain’s shadow blocked the light from the hall. The buckskin-clad man rose from Bethanie and was turning as a blow struck him at the side of the head. Bethanie scrambled to Mariah’s side. She lifted the half-awake child gently and crawled under the bed.
The fight sounded as if a furious storm was raging above them. She could hear the loud, drunken cries of pain from the two smaller men and the powerful slam of muscle and flesh colliding.
“Stay here,” Bethanie whispered to Mariah. She crawled to the washstand and lifted the gun. Cain was strong, but the odds of three to one was not in his favor.
Bethanie heard the clang of metal and saw Cain’s knife slide across the floor to the foot of the bed. The hand that grabbed it was clad in buckskin. Bethanie peeked over the bed and saw two men in a dance of violence before her. The buckskin arm raised with the knife flashing silver in the night. As his arm plunged toward Cain’s back, Bethanie raised the gun and fired.
Both men fell to the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
Bethanie dropped the gun on the bed and reached for the lamp. Before she could turn the key, light flooded the room from the hallway. People rushed forward in a noisy mass, drawn by the sound of gunfire. Mariah crawled from under the bed and scrambled into her mother’s arms. Bethanie held her tight as she advanced toward the two huge men locked together on the floor. The stranger in buckskin was on top. He raised slightly and rolled off Cain as Bethanie neared. Blood spilled from his side and ran across his tan clothing like a tiny red river across sand.
Cain sat up. He slowly plowed his fingers through his thick, white-streaked hair and looked around at the three men he’d been fighting. The leader lay dead, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. One of his friends was unconscious near the fire, while the other whimpered like a wounded animal in the corner.
Bethanie knelt beside Cain. “Are you all right?”
Cain shrugged, his voice shaking slightly. “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Weston. Important thing is, are you and the child unharmed? If these men hurt you, I’ll send them all to meet their Maker.”
Bethanie noticed that none of the people filtering into her room seemed to think Cain was suggesting anything out of the ordinary. They seemed merely interested, not judgmental.
With a smile, Bethanie realized how welcome she’d felt to see this face she’d once thought was the ugliest on earth. “No, thanks to you, Cain, we’re fine.”
Cain retrieved his knife and slid it back into its Indianmade case. “Thanks to your shot, I’m alive.” He thought for a minute. “There’s a proverb in the Orient. When you save a man’s life, it belongs to you.”
“Couldn’t we just call it even?” Bethanie touched his shoulder and felt the muscles tighten and withdraw. She made a mental note not to repeat her daring action.
“We’ll call it even, Mrs. Weston, when it is.” Cain’s words were little more than a whisper, but a stubbornness blended among them.
A wiry man with a badge pinned on his vest wandered into the room as if it were a public place. He nudged the body of the buckskin-clad man with the toe of his muddy boot. Glancing up, the lawman seemed to recognize Cain and smiled out of a corner of his tight-lipped mouth.
Cain stood and grabbed the marshal’s outstretched hand. “Good to see you again, Bill.” Cain turned toward Bethanie. “This here’s Marshal Hickok, Mrs. Weston. He used to ride shotgun when I drove stages for the Barlow-Sanderson Company a few years back.”
The marshal removed his hat and nodded respectfully to Bethanie. “Please to meet ya, Mrs. Weston. Sorry these varmints bothered you and your daughter.” He motioned for men to take the body out. “I’ll see to ’um. Now you just rest easy.”
“Thank you,” Bethanie whispered, feeling extremely uncomfortable standing in her nightgown before everyone. She glanced at the small crowd and relaxed as she noticed all eyes were watching two men roll the dead man’s body in a faded rag rug.
Hickok pulled the man’s gun from its holster and spun the chambers. He held the gun to the light, then pulled a rolled ten-dollar bill from a chamber. “At least the fellow was considerate enough to pay for his own burial.”
Bethanie had always heard of gunfighters leaving the chamber under the hammer empty to prevent accidental firing. A man could lose a leg from a black powder burn, even if the bullet only grazed the leg; but packing the empty chamber with money for the undertaker seemed morbid.
Marshal Hickok dusted his hand as if to rid himself of the dead man and turned back to Cain. “Good to see such a peace-loving man like you in these parts again. I knowed if you killed someone, he must have needed it powerful bad.”
“I seen these boys downstairs drinking up courage and knew they were up to no good. That’s one reason I bedded down close by.”
Hickok patted his gun like a fat man pats his belly. “The territory’s full of men like these three. Every one of them huntin’ for that bloodthirsty half-breed, Charley Bent, ever since a five-thousand-dollar reward was posted on ever’ tree from here to Santa Fe. But I heard a rumor today that he and his Dog Soldiers been killed by a group of Kaw Indians down by Fort Zarah. If that be true, maybe some of these bounty hunters will go back to farming and mining.”
Bethanie was turning red from embarrassment down to her toes by now and wondered if the marshal planned on staying half the night to talk. She wished suddenly she hadn’t sent her only wrapper to be washed, for even holding Mariah did little to cover her. She caught Cain’s eye and thought he must have read her mind, for he put his arm around Hickok’s shoulder and started moving him toward the door.
As Hickok turned to talk with his men in the hallway, Cain looked back at Bethanie. “Good night, Mrs. Weston,” he said. “I’ll spread my bedroll at the foot of the back stairs. I’ll be there if you need me again.”
“Thank you.” Bethanie thought of asking him to call her by her first name, but instinctively she knew he wo
uldn’t approve. He was a man who valued his distance from people.
Mariah was too young to feel his withdrawal from the world. She ran holding her arms out to Cain. The huge man lifted her gently, as though she were a priceless treasure. She kissed his cheek and hugged him around the neck.
When Cain looked up, Bethanie thought she saw tears in his eyes. “I’ll be near if you need me,” he said as soothingly as a father would calm a frightened child.
Long days filtered by while the wagon moved through Raton Pass. Bethanie was amazed at Cain’s stamina. Though he must have been twice her age, he never seemed to tire. The mountains grew huge and snowcapped. Forest covered the sloping land in thick shades of green with only scatterings of silvery aspens to sparkle in the emerald forest. Though the late summer days were mild, the nights now required a blanket.
Bethanie loved watching the countryside. After the flat land of Texas, this country quilted her scattered nerves together with its loveliness. The wind blended colors and smells fresher than she had ever known. Crystal streams of icy water crisscrossed the mountains as if in welcome to all visitors.
She saw signs of earlier travelers along the way. Sometimes the rotting frames of less sturdy wagons could be seen from the trail. Once Bethanie even noticed a faded banner across one of the wrecks. “Pikes Peak or Bust” was written in red. Black paint had been splattered across it announcing, “Busted, By Gosh.” She couldn’t help but think about all the men and women who had traveled here since 1849, their dreams no more at risk than her own right now.
As dusk brushed gold across the mountaintops, Williams, the trail boss, showed Bethanie her first view of Josh’s home. Aspens nestled in a small valley and a huge white house stood guard at the edge of the trees. Though mining was a fever in this country, Bethanie couldn’t help but think ranching would have to prosper in this beautiful valley, at least in the warmer months.