by Deborah Hale
His wide-brimmed hat fell on Lizzie’s neatly clipped grass. One long stride brought him within reach of Jane. And reach he did, grasping her shoulders. “How much did you hear?”
She held her gaze steady, and for a wonder, neither her lower lip nor her chin trembled. “Kindly take your hands off me.”
For a moment he looked at his large, powerful hands as though they didn’t belong to him. Then, as if by force of will, he lifted them off Jane’s shoulders and let them fall to his sides.
Jane tried to take another step back, but Lizzie’s rose trellis blocked any further retreat. “I heard enough to know I was a fool to think you cared about me. Any more than those horses you gentle for Caleb.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, Jane’s indignation ran away with her. “Your technique is very good, I must say. Took me in completely, fool that I am. Perhaps you should advertise in the papers—‘Domesticates bashful virgins for matrimony. Satisfaction guaranteed.’”
John winced hard and raked a hand through his hair. “Sure, it started out like that, but…tarnation, I’m sorry, Jane!”
“Sorry you led me on or sorry you got caught?” She hated to admit it, but there was something heady about calling a man to account for his actions.
“Sorry for everything.”
Though it sounded like surrender, his words brought Jane no satisfaction. He was sorry for everything. For making her care about him far more than she’d ever wanted to. For succumbing to the intensity of their mutual need and making love to her. For feeling pressured to “make an honest woman of her.” Jane had always wondered what that phrase meant. Now she wished she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry, too. I should have known better than to believe you could fall in love with someone who’s wrong for you in more ways than you can name. I’m sorry I threw myself at you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your offer of marriage for what it was.”
When he raised his hand, Jane flinched. But he only reached past her to pluck one pale pink rosebud from Lizzie’s trellis.
“Are you sorry for what we did together?” He offered her the rose.
A strangely vulnerable look came over his rugged, handsome features, as though her answer mattered to him more than anything in the world.
Jane wanted to lie.
After the way he’d deceived her, she certainly didn’t owe him the truth. It might only give him another weapon to turn against her.
Before she’d made up her mind exactly what to say, she found herself shaking her head. Accepting the rose, she bent to inhale its perfume. “Are you?”
“Hell, no!” The force of his reply ruffled a tendril of hair that curled over her ear. Softening his voice, he continued, “I never knew it could be like that with a woman, Jane. I swear. Whatever happens, I won’t be sorry.”
The warm moisture of his breath caressed her face. As did the melting blue of his eyes. His words and his nearness intoxicated her. Jane found herself wondering what it would be like to lie with him under the stars in a fragrant garden.
But there were harder truths she must face. “You don’t love me, though. Do you, John?”
If he did, the words would have come easily. Of their own accord. Instead, Jane sensed a fierce tension within him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I know I want you. I know I enjoy being with you. I know I worry about you and want to keep you safe. But I also know my feelings for you make me reckless. With my responsibilities I can’t risk being wild and foolish. I have to consider what’s best for everyone.”
What he described sounded perilously close to love. Could she accept this much for now and hope for more?
John stepped back from her, as if he feared her nearness might overpower his reason. “I’m not certain you’re best for me and I doubt like hell I’m best for you, Jane. While we’re being honest here, you’d better look into your heart, too. Can you swear you really love me? That you’re not just looking for a man you can feel safe with?”
Jane tried to speak. The ringing assurance she wanted to give him stuck in her throat. In one way, John Whitefeather seemed to offer her security and protection. But she had discovered the grave threat he posed to her heart.
He scooped his hat back up off the grass. “That’s what I thought. I don’t know what the answer is for us, Jane. I’m scared you’ll run off if life gets tough, or that we’ll make each other miserable, like Caleb and his first wife. The trouble is, we may have somebody to consider in all this besides ourselves.”
He averted his gaze from hers, and his mahogany skin suddenly looked badly sunburned.
“You mean…a baby?” Jane’s fingers fumbled on the stem of the rose, and one impaled itself on a sharp thorn. “Ouch!”
She pressed the wounded finger between her lips.
“What will you do?” John’s eyes pleaded and challenged with the same look. “If you are?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t want you to marry me out of pity or obligation, but…”
His straight, dark brows raised in a wordless question.
“…I also wouldn’t want to keep you from your child.”
The way the Indian agents took you from your family. Jane didn’t say it. Perhaps she didn’t have to.
“I have to go away for a spell. Caleb wants us to round up all his cattle, and I don’t know how long it might take us. Will you promise me you won’t leave Whitehorn until I get back and we can talk some more? By then you should know….”
She had planned to stay, anyway. That still didn’t make it easy to comply with his request. What if Emery arrived in town while John was on this cattle roundup? What if some other kind of trouble reared its head? Could she surrender the choice to leave if she felt the need?
Lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, Jane tried to look resolute. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
John acknowledged her pledge with a nod and turned to go.
“Be careful on that roundup.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
He froze in midstride as though jerked back by a lasso. Then he pivoted to face her again. “Don’t suppose you could spare me a kiss goodbye?”
The question set her insides wriggling. Or maybe it was just the mellow caress of his voice.
“My feelings for you make me reckless, too, Taa’evâhe’hame.” She approached him half eagerly, half warily and lifted her face. “I can’t afford it, either. And I don’t like it any better than you do.”
Their faces moved toward one another. Then hesitated and veered apart. Then tried another advance.
With a maximum of awkwardness and self-consciousness, they met. Afraid to seem overeager. Reluctant to forfeit control. Cautious of demanding what the other might not be able to give.
It was not a very satisfactory kiss.
Yet, when the screen door swung closed behind John Whitefeather’s retreating form, Jane pressed her eyes shut and tried to recapture the unsettling magic of it.
Chapter Sixteen
“Tarnation, John, quit your woolgathering!” Caleb pulled his black mare alongside Hawkwing. “At the rate we’re going, it will be fall by the time we get this damn stock rounded up.”
John knew his brother-in-law too well to risk saying “I told you so.” He took considerable satisfaction in thinking it, though.
They’d decided to make a wide circular sweep of the eastern range, sending individual cowboys riding out each morning to round up as many Kincaid cattle as they could find by midday, then driving them back to a rendezvous point before sundown.
“We need more manpower, Caleb, that’s all there is to it.” John surveyed the pitiful number of cows they’d collected together on their first day’s ride. “It’s liable to get worse the farther on we go, because we’ll need to keep more of the hands with us to drive the big herd.”
Caleb unstopped his canteen and took a long swig from it. He looked as though he w
ished it held something stronger than water. “You got any bright ideas?”
That was as close as he was apt to come to admitting John had been right in the first place.
Partly to keep his mind off the perplexing riddle of himself and Jane, John had been forcing himself to mull over this cowboy shortage problem.
“You may not like it,” he warned Caleb, “and the hands sure won’t.”
“Out with it.” Caleb veered his horse away from the trail of rising dust thrown up by Cookie’s chuck wagon. “You might be surprised what I’m prepared to abide to save this year’s herd. The hands can like it or lump it.”
“I might be able to recruit some of the men from Sweetgrass to help us with the roundup. They’re good riders and they’re used to tracking and driving buffalo.”
Caleb considered the idea for so long John was certain he meant to reject it. Finally he spoke. “Do you think they’d come?”
“Maybe. If we make it worth their while. They’ll be losing time away from their hunting. We’d need to compensate them for that, somehow.”
John paused to take a drink from his own canteen. He had an idea, but he hoped Caleb would come up with something similar on his own.
“What if we give them some of the cattle?” asked Caleb after a while. “All the old and sickly ones. They’ve still got meat and hides on ’em, just like buffalo. A mite less dangerous to kill, too. Maybe the Cheyenne at Sweetgrass should think about trying a little ranching.”
“They might go for that.” John pulled up his necker-chief, less to keep the dust out of his face than to mask his grin. If his plan worked out, not only would Sweetgrass be a step closer to supporting itself, but he could get back to Whitehorn and Jane all the sooner.
“I’ll tell the fellows tonight,” said Caleb. “Then you can ride off to Sweetgrass first thing in the morning. As many Cheyenne as you can bring, come and meet up with us at the first creek that feeds into the Musselshell.”
Nothing more was said about recruiting Cheyenne hunters to help with the roundup until after sundown, while all the men sat around the campfire.
As the last strains of the “Red River Valley” quavered from Clel Harding’s harmonica, John heard a couple of the cowboys telling some wild story about a fortune in gold hidden in Whitehorn.
“True as your life. I got it straight from Miz Cilla at the Double Deuce. Or was it Miz Lulubel?”
Abruptly, Caleb scrambled to his feet and silence fell around the campfire. “I wouldn’t pay much mind to any foolishness you hear from a saloon gal, boys. We’ve got to keep our minds on the job we have to do. You’ve been working hard, but I reckon you all know a few more hands would make this roundup go a lot faster.”
A murmur of agreement traveled around the circle.
One voice, a bit louder than the rest, quipped, “Where are we gonna find more hands out here? Set prairie dogs on horseback?”
All the men laughed, including Caleb. “We aren’t that hard up, boys. In fact, I know a bunch of fine riders who might be willing to lend us a hand if John can talk them into it.”
“Injuns herding cattle?” a voice challenged. Then came a sound like spit, followed by ominous muttering.
John started to his feet, but his brother-in-law restrained him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I guess any man who can go after a buffalo with no more than a blanket tossed over his pony’s back for a saddle isn’t going to have too much trouble with my cows.”
Most of the men laughed. John got the feeling they might be willing to give his Cheyenne friends a chance. From a few spots around the fire, he still caught a dark mutter or two, and in other places sullen silence. Would his plan solve one problem for Caleb only to spawn others?
As the men retrieved their bedrolls from a covered cart hitched behind Cookie’s wagon, John overheard Floyd Cobbs grumble to Clel Harding. “Mark my words, them Cheyenne are gonna make off with two steers for every one they rustle up.”
In the flickering shadows of the campfire, Floyd might not have realized John was close enough to hear. Or maybe he did and was hoping to provoke a reaction. If so, he was about to get more than he bargained for.
“Why don’t you say that a little louder, Cobbs, and let the boss know what you think of his idea?” John suggested, in a tone of muted menace.
Judging by how the mouthy cowboy jumped and gasped, he hadn’t reckoned with Kincaid’s foreman being so near.
“It’s still a free country, ain’t it?” he snapped. “No law against a feller speaking his mind.”
“The trouble is, you don’t speak your mind, Cobbs. You gossip behind folks’ backs and hint at things without coming right out and saying what you mean.”
“Yeah?” Floyd yanked out his bedroll, while Clel backed away, perhaps hoping to distance himself from the trouble to come. “Well, how’s this for coming right out and speaking my piece? That pretty little Miss Harris up and left the ranch ’cause the foreman wouldn’t keep his hands off her.”
Red-hot coals exploded inside John’s head and his fist went racing toward Floyd’s jaw before his natural prudence could stop it. His knuckles collided with something solid, but in the shifting shadows, John wasn’t sure what. A balled fist found his belly, driving the air out of him. The next thing he knew, they were rolling on the ground, whaling away at one another with fists, knees and elbows, each trying to gain the advantage of height.
“What the hell’s going on?” Caleb’s voice rang out.
John blinked against the bright glow of the lantern in his brother-in-law’s hand as the other cowboys pulled him and Floyd apart.
“Cobbs, I’ve had as much of your shenanigans as I can stomach!” Caleb bellowed. “At first light, you hightail your sorry rump back to Whitehorn and collect your pay from my brother William. Anybody else want to go with him?”
John shook off the restraining hands of three men and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. “It was my fault, Caleb. I threw the first punch. If you’re going to fire anybody, it had better be me.”
He cast a baleful glare at Floyd Cobbs. Sure he’d been provoked, but he should have kept a cooler head. A good foreman didn’t go around clobbering his cowboys. Besides, it would only prove to the men what many of them believed already—that Indians and whites couldn’t live in peace.
“Good enough, then—you’re fired,” said Caleb.
The range froze in a breathless hush.
John shook his head. Surely he hadn’t heard his brother-in-law right? What would become of Sweetgrass if he lost his job at the ranch? How could he possibly persuade Jane to marry him?
“Mr. Kincaid, sir.” Floyd Cobbs shook off the men holding him. “I reckon I had that punch coming on account of I said something about Whitefeather and Miss Harris. You can’t hold it against a feller for defending a lady’s honor.”
Had he taken a harder blow to the head than he thought? John wondered. Floyd sticking up for him sounded even more unlikely than Caleb giving him the sack.
Sharp shadows cast by the lantern made Caleb’s rugged features look hard and ornery.
Slowly, he looked from Floyd to John and back again. “If you pair of fools insist you’re equally to blame, I suppose I’ll have to keep you both on, at least till we get the stock rounded up. But I’m warning you, and all the rest of you, too. I can’t afford to lose good hands on account of they’re beating each other senseless. The next one I catch or hear of fighting will be fired on the spot. Or we may just hang him on a charge of assault. Is that clear?”
He bellowed the last words. Off in the distance a cow bawled back.
“Hell yes, boss.”
“Real clear.”
“Yep.”
The bedroll cart emptied in record time.
“Listen, Caleb.” Bedroll tucked under his arm, John strode after his brother-in-law. “I’m sorry about that. I should have known better—”
Caleb chuckled under his breath. “Don’t know ho
w I’d have backed out of that if Floyd Cobbs hadn’t done the right thing for once in his life.”
“But…” John’s mouth fell open.
“I reckon we won’t have any trouble between my cowboys and your Indians on this roundup, now.” Caleb sounded in better humor than John had heard him since the roundup started. “Guess I owe Jane Harris a little something for provoking that fight between you and Cobbs. Remind me to buy her a new dress when we get back to Whitehorn.”
“We’d like to look at some dress goods, Mrs. Dillard.” Lizzie pulled Jane up to the main counter of Whitehorn Mercantile. “Something serviceable, but pretty.”
Mrs. Dillard swept a glance over Jane. Had the woman heard some gossip and wondered about her abrupt change of employment? Jane forced herself to stare right back with a confident smile. At least, she hoped it looked confident.
“I got a real nice calico print in last week, direct from Saint Louis.” Mrs. Dillard rummaged beneath the counter for the bolt of yard goods.
The bell above the door tinkled as new customers entered the shop. “Na-na-na!”
Jane spun around. “Barton!” It had been only a few days, but she was so glad to see his dear little face her heart hurt. “Na-na!”
He wriggled and kicked in the arms of a stout, motherly woman until she passed him to Jane with a smile. “We’ll have no peace until he’s said howdy-do. You must be the girl who was filling in for me. I’m Peggy Muldoon.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Muldoon. I’m Jane Harris, and this is Caleb and Ruth’s sister-in-law, Lizzie Kincaid.”
A queer mixture of feelings churned inside Jane as she held Barton close and planted kiss after kiss on his plump brown cheeks. She was glad to know Mrs. Muldoon had finally arrived from Bismarck. Now Jane could stop feeling so guilty for deserting Ruth. A dismaying stab of jealousy marred her sense of relief. She didn’t want someone else taking her place at the Kincaid ranch and in Barton’s life.
Like an arrow piercing her chest, the truth hit her.
She wanted a dark-haired baby all her own. One who wouldn’t call her Nana, but Mama. Even if it meant all the complications and potential heartbreak of marrying John Whitefeather.