So Wide the Sky

by Elizabeth Grayson

  Drew scrubbed at his face with his hands and turned toward the door. He had to do something to silence the clamor inside him. He never allowed himself whiskey in the middle of the day, but today he'd make an exception. Now that McGarrity had denied him the chance to redeem himself, he needed something else—and whiskey would have to suffice.

  * * *

  Cassie didn't know why she'd decided to clean. It was hot. The bucket of water she'd brought from the water wagon was so full of silt she'd had to put it aside until the mud settled out. She had swept and cleaned the kitchen the previous day. Still, she hummed with a disquieting energy that propelled her through the house with her dust cloth and mop.

  She started in the parlor. Since their wedding, she and Drew had acquired a few more furnishings. There was a spoke-backed armchair with a padded seat, a footstool, and a three-legged table just big enough to hold a book and a lamp to read it by. She dusted each of them, wondering how Drew's meeting was going, wondering if Meggie was having fun wading on the far side of the bridge with Lila and the other laundresses.

  Perhaps she could have gone, Cass thought, knowing she would have been less than welcome. Still, it might have done her good to get away from the house. But then she would have remembered that day on the mountain with Hunter. The day she discovered who she was, or at least who she could be when she was with him. She had discovered Hunter that day, too, a man complete within himself. A slow, delicious shiver trickled the length of her back when she thought of how quiet and patient Hunter had been with Meggie and her, how wild-eyed and fierce he'd been defending them. That's why it wasn't safe to remember.

  She swiped at the hair tumbling over her brow and moved on to where Drew's campaign desk sat against the wall. He always kept it inspection neat. The company books lay to the left of the blotter. An oil lamp stood on the right. His paint box sat dead center on top.

  Cassie rubbed her cloth across the wooden case and wondered what enchantment it held for him. How could Drew spend so much time with his brushes and so little time with Meggie and her? When she opened the box she saw only crinkled tubes of pigment, sheets of paper, and an ivory palette for mixing colors. She could discern no magic there.

  She closed the lid with a snap and went on dusting. She whisked her cloth down the desk's narrow, crisscrossed legs and encountered Drew's green morocco portfolio braced against the wall. This was where he kept his paintings. His secrets.

  Cass could see the ruffled edges of the papers inside, hints of colors and shapes, elusive bits of a man who was inexorably turning from her. She bent over the loosely tied ribbons at the top, her fingers twitching. Perhaps if she glanced at them just this once, if she understood more about what drove him, she could be a better helpmate, a more loving wife. But Drew had hidden the paintings away deliberately. He didn't want her looking.

  But as she bent to wipe the back legs of the desk, the hem of her skirt snagged on the portfolio and knocked it sideways. The ribbons came undone and paintings spilled everywhere.

  They lay like a bright, tumbled patchwork across the floor, and for a moment Cass simply stared at them. Then with a jolt of guilt, she sank to her knees and began to gather them up.

  The first that came under her hand was a landscape of the prairie rendered with a skill and sensitivity that stole her breath. With a few swipes of his brush and a wash of color, Drew had captured the scope and beauty of this wide, stark land. He'd painted the breadth and clarity of her wondrous sky, shown the challenge and the freedom of those long horizons. Drew understood how this land could change a man, and Cass wondered how it was changing him.

  She reached for the next paintings in the pile and realized that each was signed and dated. How like Drew, Cass thought, gathering up the papers in sequence.

  Next came a series of watercolors that sparkled with wondrous vitality. A column of soldiers wound its way around a bluff. A muleteer leaned from the seat of his wagon, cracking a whip. A party of men mounted up for patrol. The paintings were such a perfect depiction of life at the fort that Cassie smiled.

  She gathered up several more papers and found that Drew had narrowed his focus to Meggie and her—Meggie hunkered down on the floor serving tea to her dolls, Cass whipping up some concoction in a crockery bowl. He had shown the concentration in her face, the errant curls that straggled along her cheek, the swipes she took with her wooden spoon. Drew took that moment in time and made it live again.

  She caught her breath when she saw the next painting in the sequence. She and Meggie were curled together in the rocking chair. Depicting them in soft, subtle shades of sepia and mauve, Drew had shown the trust in his little girl's face, the love and pride in Cassie's eyes. He had captured the delight and heartbreak, the infinite complexity of the bond between mother and child. He had seen how things were between Meggie and her and set down not just their likenesses, but their emotions.

  Cass stared at the painting through a sheen of tears. No man could paint his child with such tenderness or his wife with such sensitivity without loving them both. This painting proved Drew's feelings. The man who painted this was lurking inside her husband somewhere, close enough to access with a brush, close enough to see what he was missing. If that were so, Cass could reach him, touch him, make things better.

  She clung to that image and that promise until the next paintings that fell under her hand extinguished all her hope.

  They were portraits of Drew's parents, Julia, his brothers and their wives. Beautifully and meticulously done, they showed the resolve in his father's stance, the mischief in Julia's eyes, the steadfastness in both Peter and Matthew's faces. And each of the portraits had been smeared with red.

  "Oh Drew," Cass moaned, crushing the papers against her chest.

  Until now Drew's art had been small, eloquent spills of color and emotion, ways of showing his joy, his love, and his awe. In those paintings he had been able to both express and control what he was feeling. In these Cass felt the pure, raw magnitude of Drew's pain. It was as if by acknowledging the massacre Drew had forfeited his control, torn open old, festering wounds, revealed himself in a way that wasn't safe. That wasn't even rational.

  Cass tried not to look at the last of the pictures, yet she was drawn to them. With trembling hands, she spread them on the floor around her.

  Each was more terrible than the last—that canyon with its hazy light and high, steep walls; their five tiny wagons orange with flame; their two shattered families sprawled broken and bleeding on the earth.

  A hot wash of horror swept through her as she stared at them, remembering her family dying before her eyes. Her wrists seemed to burn as if still chafed by her bonds. Her throat felt raw from screaming. Her eyes stung with smoke and tears. She did not need Drew's paintings to remind her of what had happened.

  Yet somehow Drew's memories were even more vivid than hers, as if he'd courted those moments of pain and death to fuel his hatred. As if he hadn't dared forget. These paintings were why Drew had no room in his life for Meggie and her.

  Cassie swept the papers up in her hands, frantic to get them out of her sight. She'd been wrong to trespass inside Drew's world, inside Drew's mind. It was best for both of them if he never knew she had.

  She froze at the thump of footfalls coming up the steps, at the rumble of boots across the porch. Cass's heart stood still as Drew loomed up in the open doorway.

  She crouched on the floor, guilty as Cain standing over his brother's body.

  Drew saw what she had done and tightened joint by joint, growing taller and taller.

  "Oh, Drew, I'm sorry—"

  "Jesus, Cassie," he muttered through lips so stiff she was surprised that he could speak at all. "Not this. Not today."

  She shuffled the papers, cowering. "I was dusting and the portfolio..."

  Drew surveyed the scene with eyes as bleak as a January sky. "And once the paintings were out, you decided to paw through them, didn't you?"

  Cassie's voice shook as she apolog
ized. "I didn't mean to look. I didn't want to see—"

  "Then put the paintings away, Cassie," he told her, his voice so low she could barely hear it. "We'll forget you ever saw them. We'll forget I ever painted them."

  He dismissed her with a glance and headed for the kitchen.

  Cass sprang to her feet and scrambled after him. "How can I forget what's there?" she demanded, surprising herself with her willingness to confront him. "How can you?"

  "I don't want to talk about the paintings!" he shouted, and cleared the kitchen table with the swipe of his hand.

  Tin plates and pewter ware clattered to the floor. Wooden candlesticks bounced and rolled. A small glass of wildflowers shattered, staining the wooden floorboards with wet.

  He looked down at the wreckage, breathing hard.

  Cass shrank back against the doorjamb.

  Drew was quivering as if he might shatter.

  She ventured toward him with the same care she might take in approaching a snarling wolf.

  "What is it? What's wrong? This is about a good deal more than those paintings."

  "Goddamnit, Cassie! Leave me alone!"

  Drew stalked to the shelves where he kept his whiskey, poured himself a drink, and brought the bottle to the table.

  "This is about the rifles, isn't it?"

  The whole fort knew what had arrived the night before, just as everyone knew where they were headed.

  Drew sank onto the bench as if he were a hundred years old.

  Cass crossed the room and knelt beside him. "They aren't going to let you take the rifles north, are they?"

  Drew poured himself another drink. "Parker's taking them," he admitted after a moment. "He and forty men are heading out on Thursday by some damned route Jalbert has found."

  He took a gulp of the whiskey. "Goddamnit, Cassie, I'm the one McGarrity should have picked. My troops are better trained than Parker's. I'm a better officer."

  He finished the liquor and set the glass aside.

  "I've been waiting all this time for my chance to fight the redskins—waiting to get through West Point, waiting for the war to be over, waiting for the posting to Fort Carr, waiting for the goddamned orders to come. And now there's finally a chance to see some action, McGarrity gives the assignment to someone else! After what the savages took from me, I deserve—"

  Cass remembered what she'd seen in those last paintings, and tried to reach him anyway. "I know, Drew," she crooned. "I know. I lost my family the same as you. But killing Indians won't bring them back."

  She took his hands.

  "Drew, please," she whispered, looking into his face. "That day destroyed everyone we loved, every hope we had. But it was long ago. It's time for you to forgive yourself for living when everyone died."

  "I don't deserve to be forgiven."

  Cass swallowed hard, thinking of Julia. "I didn't think I deserved to be forgiven, either, but neither of us could help what happened. Neither of us could change it."

  Drew let out his breath on a sigh and looked away.

  "I know what you're feeling. I know how to face the past and get beyond it. If you let me, I can help." Cass was all but pleading, both for his life and hers. "Please, Drew, I can help you forget. Please, let me do that."

  Drew shifted his gaze to hers. She saw the weariness and longing in his eyes. He raised one hand to cup her face. With infinite deliberation he traced the lines that radiated across her cheek.

  "Oh, Cassie," he whispered, shaking his head. "You can't ever help me forget. You're part of the remembering."

  Cassandra read the truth in Drew's eyes. Inside her the hope that she's been nurturing crumbled away. She breathed the lingering dust of those shattered hopes and felt them rasp and burn inside her.

  "I think—" she said, coming slowly to her feet. "I think I need to be by myself for a while."

  When Drew didn't say a word, she ran out the kitchen door and didn't look back.

  * * *

  Hunter leaned against the porch of the headquarters building, scuffing up dust and waiting—though he couldn't say for what. Only when Cass came bolting out the door of her cabin did he realize he'd been waiting for her.

  He lit out after her, lengthened his strides to keep her in sight. She scurried on ahead, her shoulders bowed, her head bent, and her arms wrapped around her waist as if she hurt.

  As if the captain had hurt her. Bile washed up the back of Hunter's throat. If Reynolds had so much as laid a hand on Cass...

  God knows the captain was coiled tighter than a watch spring these days. He'd been driving his men and himself. Everyone knew Reynolds had wanted to take those rifles north. It must have all but killed him to sit there and listen to McGarrity give the assignment to someone else. He'd held all that inside during the meeting, but he must have let loose once he got home. No wonder Cass had come flying out of that cabin.

  Hunter caught up to her on the riverbank. She stood facing the water, her head bowed and her shoulders heaving. He slowed his steps. He didn't mean to startle or intrude on her.

  "Cass?" he called out softly.

  She swung around to face him, and Hunter froze.

  Out on the prairie defending her own, Cass had been magnificent. She'd been tall and proud and possessed of a courage any warrior would envy. She was a husk of that woman now—pale and shrunken and small—as if Reynolds had sucked the life from her.

  He wanted to gather her up in his hands and give back everything the captain had taken away—her pride and her vitality and her belief in herself. He wanted to punch Drew Reynolds so hard he'd be spitting teeth for a week.

  "Are—are you all right?" he asked instead.

  Cass nodded that she was.

  Hunter didn't believe her—not when he could hear the uneasy cadence of her breathing and see how her hands were shaking.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No, of course not."

  Damn her for denying it. For denying him.

  Hunter jammed his fists into his pockets and stepped beyond her down the bank. He ground his teeth and cursed the captain and convention and the people in the fort. He cursed everything that prevented him from taking Cass in his arms and giving her the help and comfort she needed.

  They stood there for a very long while. In the end it was Cass who broke the silence.

  "Do you know how a Cheyenne husband divorces his wife?" she asked him, her voice all shivery and small.

  Hunter shook his head. He didn't dare turn and look at her.

  "He throws her away," she told him. "That's what Gray Falcon did. When he wanted to take a new wife, one who could bear him children, Gray Falcon took a stick out onto the floor at the dance lodge and danced with it. When he was done, he threw the stick away and announced he no longer wanted me as his wife."

  She faltered for a moment. "Then he went to our tepee and threw out all my things. He said any man could have me after that. All my new husband would have to do to claim me was to offer Gray Falcon a brace of rabbits and a twist of tobacco."

  Hunter stiffened as she spoke, angry at the low price Gray Falcon had set for her, angry that she had been bid and bartered for a second time.

  "And though I was skilled in quilling and beading and preparing skins, no man wanted a woman who could not bear him sons. That's why the Cheyenne returned me to the whites, because no man would claim me, because no man would make such a worthless woman his responsibility."

  Hunter choked back the words—words that might have softened those old hurts and whatever Reynolds had done to torment her today. They were words that praised her courage and her smiles, words that revealed a tenderness Hunter had never felt for anyone.

  "I was so determined to make a place for myself when I came here." Cass sounded as if she were dying inside. "I thought that because Drew and I had loved each other once, we could make a life together."

  Hunter turned and looked at her. "What is it? What's happened?"

  Cassie's face was flushed and mottled from cry
ing. "Drew says he'll never be able to forget the massacre—what happened to us, what happened to our families—because every time he sees my face the memories come back."

  She scrubbed at the star burst on her cheek as if she could wash it away with the salt of her tears.

  Hunter pulled her hands away.

  "My husband hates this mark so much—" she said so softly he could barely hear "—that he only ever comes to me when it is dark."

  Fool. Hunter's brain smoked with an image of creamy skin and tumbled hair, of rounded shoulders and slender thighs. Goddamned fool!

  "Oh, Cass!" He breathed, holding her hands in both of his. "Do you know what I see when I look at you?"

  She shook her head.

  Hunter fumbled for words that could soothe her hurt. "I see a woman who is as beautiful as she is brave," he said slowly. "I see one who shines with compassion, who is always helpful and kind. Of course I see the mark, but it's only part of who you are. No more or less than the color of your hair or the gentleness of your hands or the goodness of your heart."

  Cass blinked back her tears and smiled at him. It was a rare, soft smile that seemed to make the sun shine brighter. Hunter's chest filled with the pleasure at seeing a flicker of light at the backs of those pale eyes.

  Then a wistful turn of her lips dimmed the sun. "If only Drew could see me the way you do," she whispered. "If only he could stop remembering..."

  Hunter released her hands and glared past her to where the roofs of the buildings were visible at the top of the bank, thinking of what the people there had done to her.

  He could have done better for Cass than Reynolds had. He could have protected her, cared for her, given her a place to belong. But he had been as big a fool as Reynolds. He hadn't even tried to claim her. He hadn't known his own mind. He hadn't trusted what he felt. He hadn't believed that anyone could matter as much to him as Cassandra did. He hadn't believed that he could be better for Cass than Drew could be. But he'd been wrong.