The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series)

by Shirl Henke

  Clutching her ticket, she climbed a step onto the porch of the Union Pacific way station and entered the large edifice which still smelled faintly of raw lumber and sawdust. According to the clock on the wall, she had nearly an hour until the train pulled in, plenty of time to go into the dining room and order a meal, but the thought of food made her stomach rebel. Trying to ignore the smell of greasy pork and boiled coffee wafting out into the waiting room, she took a seat on a high-backed wooden bench in a dimly lit corner of the room, praying she did not look too conspicuous in her ill-fitting clothes. A woman alone traveling without luggage was always suspect.

  When she reached Julesburg she would get off long enough to purchase the necessities to see her respectably over the seventeen-hundred-mile journey back to Boston. The thought of foggy gray skies and narrow, congested streets filled her heart with near panic. There was no choice, at least none for now. Perhaps in time if the old reverend was kind, she could hope to bring her child back to his birthright here in the West.

  Nervously Stephanie looked around her, scanning the people in the large waiting area. The usual number of transients—drummers with their sample cases, miners, gamblers, even a few fancy women—sat or paced about the room. A couple of hard looking cattlemen bound for the stockyards in Chicago discussed beef prices and a homesteader's harried wife shushed two squabbling children as an infant dozed fitfully in her arms. No one recognized Stephanie.

  Smiling ruefully to herself, she realized Hugh would scarcely have advertised the scandalous circumstances of her disappearance by posting her photograph in public places. As long as she did not run into any officers or their ladies from Fort Steele, she should make it safely onto the train. Folding her hands in her lap, she leaned back and tried to relax. Soon her eyelids grew heavy in the stuffy warm air and she dozed off.

  The sounds of voices shouting excitedly awakened her. Blinking to orient herself, Stephanie looked nervously around and found the source of the noise. A burly clerk wearing a Union Pacific uniform was talking loudly to a crowd of people gathering around him at the front door.

  “They got ‘em, sure ‘nough! After all this time, the murderin' Injun.’’

  “You sure it's him?” a man in miner's clothes asked dubiously.

  “I seen him with my own two eyes. He's a dirty breed. Major's draggin' him behind his horse, right up Cedar Street to the jail.”

  At that, several men scrambled out the door headed to the next block to see the show. Nearby, Stephanie overheard a drummer ask the clerk, “Can Phillips collect that five-thousand-dollar reward since he's in the army?”

  Stephanie's heart began to thud as his companion commented, “Who cares? I'm just relieved to hear the White Wolf's raiding days are over. A body had to fear every time he rode the stage up to Dead wood.”

  Chase! Hugh had captured Chase! But how? Where? Surely not on his return to the stronghold or else they would have beaten her back to Rawlins. The clerk answered her frantic question and a painful vise squeezed her chest.

  “The major rousted a whole nest of them bloody devils up in the Bighorns. Found 'em hidin' after they sneaked away from massacring General Custer. Sent most of the bucks to the happy hunting grounds 'n' the women and kids to the fort. Said he was usin' our jail to make sure the White Wolf's safe until he stands trial for his murderin' ways. I 'spect he'll end up dancin' at the end of a rope ‘fore a trial.”

  Stephanie barely heard the last of the conversation as she darted across the crowded room and out the door. Directly in front of her, railroad tracks crisscrossed, some leading to the big roundhouse a few hundred feet down the street. The main track began to hum as the three-ten train rumbled toward Rawlins, screeching as the brakeman slowed its headlong rush. Ignoring it, she scrambled across Front Street, running in earnest now toward the sounds of an angry mob on Cedar.

  The crowd lined the wide street as Chase was dragged through the thick choking dust, his bound wrists secured to a twelve-foot rawhide rope tied to Hugh's saddle horn. Chase's skin was smeared with his own blood and coated with dirt from frequent falls as he had run behind the horses during the long journey back to civilization. Finally this last day, injuries, fever and exhaustion had claimed him. He slipped into semiconsciousness, unable to jog behind the Blue Coats' horses any longer.

  Stephanie caught a glimpse of him from between two buildings when Phillips reined in his horse in front of the jail, making a grandstand spectacle of his famous prisoner. Dear God, has Hugh killed him? Every nerve in her body cried out to run to her love and cradle his head in her lap, but she knew such a feckless gesture would not only be greeted with angry hostility by the crowd; it would also ruin Hugh's moment of triumph and turn his wrath on her. She had to think, to plan. There must be some way to free Chase. Perhaps she could wire Reverend Remington in Boston.

  Enveloped in the crowd, Stephanie worked her way toward Chase, wanting to glimpse him and assure herself that he was indeed still alive. Suddenly as she slipped surreptitiously between two cowhands, a sharp gasp of recognition directly to her side caused her to turn her head and meet the startled eyes of Abigail Shaffer.

  Her husband, a captain, was in command of Fort Steele in Hugh's absence, but young Lieutenant Grimes had been assigned to escort her into town. He, too, recognized their commander's missing wife at once.

  “Stephanie, my dear,” Abigail croaked, seizing hold of her arm with clawlike fingers. “However did you manage to escape? You poor, poor child.” Her eyes swept over Stephanie's sun-darkened face and took in the cheap, hastily purchased dress.

  When Stephanie tried to pull away, Abigail's grip only tightened. Lieutenant Grimes took her other arm a bit more gently but none the less firmly.

  “No reason to take fright, Mrs. Phillips. You're with friends now,” he said soothingly, as if comforting a spooked horse.

  “Please, let me go. I—I don't want Hugh to see me like this!” She struggled to keep the hysteria from her voice, but she knew the stark terror had to be welling in her eyes.

  “The major's been searching for you since you were kidnapped, Mrs. Phillips, driving his men every day, even in the face of winter blizzards. Why he'll be thrilled to see you safe and sound,” Grimes assured her.

  One look into Abigail Shaffer's glittering eyes told a very different story. Hugh would be livid finding her alive and well. Every respectable white woman was supposed to kill herself rather than let the unspeakable happen. She's looking at me to see if my mind's unhinged from my ordeal—or to see if I have some residual stain because a red man touched me.

  “Checking for lice, Abby?” She couldn't resist the biting words as Lieutenant Grimes propelled her through the crowd toward his commander.

  Hugh was discussing his famous prisoner with several freight line and stagecoach owners while the Rawlins sheriff looked on glumly, sensing the ugliness of the crowd and fervently wishing he was back in Kansas.

  “I'll expect you to keep the prisoner here while I inform Senator Remington. He was privy to our raid on the savages' hideout and is working closely with the Interior Department on this situation,” Hugh said to the unhappy lawman. “You should only have to be responsible for one. night. Then we'll—”

  Lieutenant Grimes's voice cut into the conversation just as Hugh caught sight of Stephanie emerging from the crowd. He fell silent, pole axed to see her alive and in Rawlins of all places. She was dressed in cheap clothing and her face was almost as brown as a squaw's. “If you'll excuse me, Sheriff, gentlemen,” Phillips said abruptly to the men he'd been conferring with. “I must see to my wife.”

  He quickly interrupted Grimes before the young idiot made the already untenable situation even worse by blurting out the circumstances under which he'd located Stephanie. “Take charge of the prisoner, Lieutenant,” he ordered, reaching out to Stephanie with mock tenderness.

  Stephanie felt the bite of steel in his fingers when they dug into the soft flesh on the underside of her arm, pulling her toward him amid t
he whispers and gasps surrounding them. Chase raised his head. Through fever-glazed eyes, he saw Stephanie's tall slender form and unmistakable bronze hair. She was in Hugh Phillips's arms. No, it couldn't be!

  During the hellish days on the trail, beaten, kicked and dragged, all Chase had been able to think of were his people. Red Bead had died, struck down by a Blue Coat bullet. Kit Fox had remained with the children until Stands Tall had been able to lead them through the aspen thickets across the creek. Chase did not know if they had made it to freedom or not. Some of Phillips's soldiers had been ordered to stay behind and search for escapees, mostly women and children. Many of his warriors were dead. Some had been captured and bound just as he was, then sent directly to the fort. Blue Eagle and Plenty Horses were among them. Only the White Wolf himself merited this exhibition in Rawlins. The rest of the village lay destroyed in the impenetrable fastness of the Bighorns. How had Phillips found them? Could Stephanie have...?

  He refused to accept the horrifying idea. It was simply more than he could comprehend. There must be some other answer. Two of the soldiers grabbed him under his arms and dragged him inside the ugly squat stone structure that was the jail. Escaping from such a prison would not be easy. At the moment he felt little inclination to care what became of him as he was shoved into a hot filthy cell with one tiny window. Everything he had ever loved had been destroyed. There was nothing left to live for...until he heard Burke Remington's voice.

  Chase squatted on his haunches in the corner of the cell. The sudden blind surge of hate pumped adrenaline past his fevered exhaustion, fueling him with renewed energy. There was a reason to live—vengeance.

  “Now you look just the way you should—a half-naked, dirty aborigine huddled cravenly in a prison cell, waiting for the hangman's noose to tighten around your neck.” Burke's voice was rich with satisfaction as he inspected his nephew's battered and bloodied form. “As soon as I heard a savage had abducted your old flame, rather ironically Hugh Phillips's wife, I knew she was the key to capturing you.”

  Although his knees were like water and his head still spinning, Chase surged to his feet, standing straight. His eyes glared from behind the bars, locking with Burke's in a silent duel. He could feel his uncle's hate meet and clash with his own. He said nothing, only stared impassively, letting Burke do the talking.

  “After all these years, all the botched attempts to kill you...at last you're mine, you red bastard. I told Phillips to bring you here. The good citizens of Rawlins are understandably upset about the massacre of Custer's Seventh Cavalry. Oh, by the way, Reno and Benteen and their companies held out on the Little Bighorn until Terry and Gibbon arrived, but that's little mollified civilians from Wichita to Wyoming. They're out for blood.

  “And here we have the most infamous raider of our generation right in the Rawlins city jail. To cap off the matter, he's half-white, a real renegade. The perfect man to make an example of. If you entertain any hope of wiring Jeremiah, abandon it. My men are stirring up that lynch mob even now. I expect by midnight they'll be ready to string you up to the nearest tree...I make it that big cottonwood at the corner of Front and Third.”

  Chase knew Burke was baiting him, waiting for a response. As a boy he'd flown at his tormentor kicking, biting and punching and Burke had cuffed him away, amused by a boy's powerlessness. By the time he'd returned from the Cheyenne as a seventeen-year-old youth, those days were past. Their hatred had ripened into a more subtle thing after that. Denied all weapons and watched like a hawk at first, Chase knew he would have to wait out his uncle. Keeping his mother out of an asylum depended on his good behavior. A flat absence of reaction and sarcastic taunts became new weapons in his arsenal as he bided his time until Freedom Woman was beyond Burke's reach. And now things had gone full cycle. Once again he was as powerless as he had been as a boy, caged behind bars like an animal.

  “Gloat while you can, Burke. I will kill you before I die.” Having said that with quiet unshakable resolve, he let the words have their effect on the gray-haired aristocrat standing in front of him. Then Chase turned his back and stared impassively out the window, dismissing Burke Remington as if the senator were a petitioner.

  After Burke had left, Chase burned to know if Stevie had actually betrayed him and his people, but he would never ask. His uncle would revel in describing every detail—or lying through his teeth even if she was innocent. He moved around the small cell, studying the long narrow hall between the cubicles and the doors at either end, then settled back in the corner again to wait until the sheriff or a deputy appeared. There had to be a way out of here other than being dragged by a lynch mob.

  * * * *

  Down in the next block, Stephanie was ushered into the same room in the Rawlins House Hotel that she had occupied the past fall on her fateful excursion with Emma Boyer and Abigail Shaffer. Still numb from all the horrifying events of the past hour, she desperately wanted time to sort out her chaotic thoughts and find some way to escape and send a wire. Jeremiah Remington was Chase's last hope.

  Hugh did not intend to leave her unattended for even a moment. He had bidden Mrs. Shaffer good day in the lobby, thanking her and Lieutenant Grimes profusely for rescuing his poor abused wife, wandering unescorted through the streets of Rawlins. He then ordered Grimes to ride post haste to the fort and fetch her trunk, which had remained unpacked since it had been returned to him after her abduction. Once they reached the privacy of their room, his solicitude vanished abruptly.

  Hugh raked her disgustedly with cold dark eyes. “You look like a sodbuster's wife with those ghastly clothes and sun-darkened skin. I'm surprised you weren't all tricked out in buckskins and beads after living with savages.” He waited a beat as Stephanie remained silent, simply meeting his gaze without flinching. Her calm demeanor infuriated him and he ached to reach out and backhand the serenity from her face. But the situation was already bad enough. He must remain the long-suffering husband for now and not mark her. Perhaps there were other ways to crush her spirit. However, before he could begin she surprised him by breaking her silence.

  “I never intended to embarrass you by coming back into your life, Hugh. I was going to get on that train east and never return. You could’ve told everyone I was dead if Abigail and Lieutenant Grimes hadn't dragged me to you. I know you despise me. I didn't do the honorable thing and take my own life after surviving an Indian captivity.”

  “I knew you went with Remington when his uncle came last fall and told me his nephew was the raider I'd been searching for. Imagine my added surprise to learn he was also the breed who gave me this.” He touched the scar on his cheek. “Burke Remington has returned to Rawlins. He wants that bastard dead as much as I do...if that's possible.”

  “I'm not surprised, Hugh. Burke paid an assassin to kill Chase while we were still in Boston,” she replied deliberately, refusing to give in to the panic clawing at her. “Chase knew Burke was behind the reward posters with the photograph circulating across the territories. I suspect he was also behind your receiving your major's bars so quickly.”

  Hugh's face reddened with rage and he raised his hand to strike her, then regained control of his emotions. “Burke went to the jail to see your breed lover. By now he knows that his dear uncle has men whipping up a lynch mob in the saloons along Front Street.”

  “You planned this together, you and Burke Remington,” she accused. The certainty of Chase's death closed in on her with crippling pain. Be strong. You carry his child, the only hope for the future.

  Hugh watched for some chink in her armor, some sign that she was weakening. He wanted her to plead, cry, get down on her knees and beg. By God, he would reduce her to cowering, shivering terror so repugnant and uncontrollable that when she appeared to die by her own hand, everyone would accept it as a blessing and commiserate with him, the noble suffering husband! She stood with her back stiff and her chin, that irritatingly willful chin, held up proudly. He walked around her, but she remained motionless, staring straight ah
ead. He had to rattle her somehow.

  ‘‘What, nothing more to say, my dear? I can hardly let you ride the rails east now, can I? After all, you are still my responsibility, my wife.” He accented the word as if it were an epithet, hissing in her ear, as he raised his hand and insinuated it along her throat, then down to the swell of her breasts, straining against the weight of the shapeless dress, which was too tight across the bust and hung loosely around her waist. The slightest hint of repugnance seemed to emanate from her when he cupped her breast, but she did not flinch or draw away, just continued to stare straight ahead.

  She did ball her hands into tight little fists, almost hidden in the folds of her skirt. That made him smile. “You always were a cold stick in bed, Stephanie. Perhaps that was my mistake. I shouldn't have allowed you the comfort of a bed! Tell me, did lying in the dirt with a naked sweating savage pumping over you make it better?”

  “What made it good was love, Hugh. Something you know nothing about,” she replied quietly. He was going to play this out until he got some perverse sort of satisfaction from her. Damned if I’ll give it to him!

  “Love,” he sneered. “I'd believe it if he were still a Boston Brahmin, rich enough for one of the vaunted Summerfields to marry. But he left that all behind, more the fool he.”

  “You put a price on everything, Hugh. That's been your downfall all your life, cursing the Baltimore Phillips' decline in social position. You've become so obsessed with covering yourself in martial glory you've sacrificed your soul to achieve it...if you ever had one.”

  “I suppose that renegade killer has a soul? Or was it something as crass as his dark-skinned body that you craved? You broke your marriage vows for that buck!” Finally he struck a nerve. Her face flushed and the pulse at her throat sped up. “So, the truth at last. My prim little bluestocking lusted after that renegade. My mistake was believing you possessed ladylike sensibilities when all the while you had the morals of a scarlet poppy. Fitting since you seem to prefer red meat.”