“Aw, that’s sweet.” The woman hugged the bucket to her chest. “He’s right handsome, too. Very dashing. A shame about his leg. I don’t reckon he has any other injuries that would prevent him from,” she moistened her lips, “well, performing his husbandly duties?”
“Martha,” Angela squeaked, heat flooding her cheeks.
“Oh,” the woman patted Angela’s head. “Don’t mind me. You know you can talk to me like a mother. I hope you’re happy. That’s all that matters.”
Angela absently flipped a bar of soap over and over in her hands. Happy? Will I ever be happy again? “Martha, has he softened at all?”
“Oh, love, I wish I could say he has. But you’re back now, with a husband, soon you’ll be starting a family. Maybe all of that will bring him ’round to being human.”
“I’m sorry I left. I would give anything if I could undo that.”
Martha squeezed Angela’s shoulder. “Try telling him that. Maybe it will make a difference. Or at least plant a seed.”
Angela nodded, a knot forming in her stomach at the mere thought of talking to her father. Something else had her nervous as well. “Would you bring us some extra blankets, please. I feel a bit chilled.”
Martha chuckled. “Yes, girl, but I doubt you’ll need them.”
8
Unable to use his spurs on both sides to kick Celia up to a trot, Joel made a tsking sound, squeezed his legs against her, and thrust his hips forward. “Trot up.” A truly intuitive horse, the mare hesitated only an instant before stepping up the gait. Pleased, Joel practiced posting for several minutes, rising and falling in the saddle with the horse’s rhythm. His back and leg couldn’t take much of the pounding, however. Without asking permission, he tsked again and Celia responded with a long, gentle lope.
Joel wanted to shout with joy. He felt good, stable, confident. The horse’s gait was as smooth as the rocking chair on his grandma’s porch. Was he grinning? Hugely, he realized, because his cheeks began to ache. The scent of horse and hay filled his nose. An unusually warm November sun warmed his shoulders. The creek of the leather serenaded his soul.
He couldn’t do any cutting or hard riding—yet—but he could build on this. Regain his balance, familiarity, and muscle control. It was all coming back.
Long Feather jogged over to an adjacent corral where four other horses were milling about. He whistled and a tall, black-and-white pinto trotted over to the gate. “Come, little one.” He opened the gate and the horse walked out. He closed it and swung up on the horse. As if he and the animal were one, they trotted back to the corral. Joel pulled Celia up.
“Come.” Long Feather opened the gate and waited for them.
“No saddle? No bridle?” Joel asked, passing through the entrance.
“I do not ride the way a white man rides. My horse obeys because I ask her to, not because I force her.”
The two kept the horses at an easy walk, ambling down the middle of the yard, passing in front of the house. A few hands loading barbed wire in the back of a wagon took slight note of them. Joel glanced up at the house. A curtain flicked in the cupola’s window, as if someone had stepped back. Joel took a deep breath and tried to commit every second of this ride to memory. It may be his last for some time.
“What do you do, Long Feather, if you get a horse that just won’t obey?” He’d seen more than a few of those in the cavalry.
“Then that is not the horse for me and I find another.” He grinned, white teeth showing against deeply tanned cheeks, wrinkles crinkling in the corner of his eyes. “Choosing a horse is much like choosing a woman. You want one who welcomes your touch, not one who bucks you.”
Joel’s thoughts immediately careened to Angela. Her gentle smile and warm, brown eyes could…
Could make a man forget he has a wife back home. God, forgive me…
“I see you think of someone.”
Joel tugged at his collar. “No one I have any business thinking of.”
Long Feather frowned and glanced back at the house. Joel turned away and focused on the long road before them and cattle milling around on all sides. In the midst of this herd, several cowboys on horseback were gathered around a cattle wagon. The conveyance was shaking and shuddering and something inside squalled and bellowed like an enraged titan.
“The general’s new bull.” Long Feather made a sucking sound with his teeth. “He does not sound happy.”
Before Joel could reply, the back gate on the wagon exploded. A writhing, twisting mass of brown and white fur, hooves, and horns convulsed from the wagon like a Texas twister. Cowboys cursed and horses shrieked as they scrambled to get out of the way.
“Git your ropes on it, boys,” a gangly, weathered cowboy hollered, reaching for his lariat.
His command seemed to restore courage to at least a few of the ranch hands. Two turned back, ropes at the ready.
“Cut to the right, Shorty.”
“Throw that riata!”
“Holy smoke, watch those horns.”
Ropes and riatas shot through the air but only one landed on the bull. The tug on his horns enraged him. Bawling, bellowing, he charged the cowboy at the other end. Eyes widening like full moons, the man dropped his rope and spurred his horse out of the way, narrowly missing a goring.
The commotion spurred the herd into action. Joel and Long Feather found themselves in a sea of antsy, complaining Herefords. Nothing too much to worry about until the bull broke from the cowboys and barreled toward them. The tang of panic hit the air and the herd jolted as if they were one creature.
Long Feather’s horse reared, confused by the bellowing, running cattle blocking its escape. Joel spun his horse to face the bull, its charge impeded by the milling bodies.
“Throw your rope, soldier boy,” Glenn, the bearded cowboy from earlier, demanded. He was trying to bring his horse up behind the bull, but he was fighting the flow of animals. “Throw it!” Spinning his own lasso over his head, he spat a curse at Joel and yelled, “Now!”
Joel was no roper, but he loosed the lariat from the saddle, whipped it free and swung it over his head. Celia pranced, back-stepped, side-stepped, searching for a way out of the herd. Her jerking, unpredictable movements challenged his balance, nearly throwing him, but he squeezed hard with his thighs and hung on. With a quick prayer, he tossed the rope. Almost as if by a miracle, the bull turned his head and the loop landed perfectly over his horns.
Joel snatched the rope tight as Celia side-stepped and the bull jerked backward. Hard. Joel didn’t have the rope all the way around his saddle horn. The bull’s strength snatched him right out of the leather. In an instant, he was flat on the ground staring up at wall-eyed heifers and a prancing horse, and he could hear the snorts of the approaching bull.
Scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he realized his prosthetic had jarred loose. Fear shot through him as he clawed for Celia’s reins. Panicked, she backed away, out of his grasp. The cowboys hollered and cursed. The antsy cattle mewled and snorted. And the bull was steadily charging his way through them. Joel had no way to run.
“Give me your hand.”
Long Feather.
Joel turned and raised his arm. The Indian grabbed for him and yanked. It took every ounce of strength Joel could summon to claw and heave his way up on the horse, spring-boarding off one leg. Tempted to curse, he clutched the loose prosthetic through his pants as Long Feather spun his horse, and the three charged through the horde, looking for open ground.
Behind them, the cowboys had regrouped. Shouts, flustered cussing, and ropes filled the air.
“Don’t let him slip into that maze of coulees!” Fairbanks’ voice rose above them all. “Lose him in there, it’ll take a month to find him.” A string of expletives erupted from the man. He cursed the bull, the men, everything beneath God’s deep blue sky. And still the animal ran, ducking, side-stepping. Evading capture. Dragging Joel’s rope.
Long Feather rode his horse up on a small rise—just tall enough
to give the illusion of safety—and camped there to watch. The bull was moving now in the opposite direction. Joel clutched his leg, but, in truth, he wanted to fling the thing away and rage just like that Hereford down there.
Fury and humiliation scorched his soul. He’d nearly gotten himself killed. He’d had no business trying to rope that animal. He should have gotten out of the way. Instead, he’d endangered himself, Long Feather, and both their horses.
“Are you all right?”
Joel took a long time to answer. When he did, he lied. “Yes.”
A horse and rider galloping toward them dragged Joel’s spirits even lower. General Fairbanks, his face set in a hard scowl, pounded up to them. “What in the Sam Hill did you think you were doing? You had your rope on him.” His burning glare deepened. “Because of you, that bull is on the loose. We don’t keep him away from the cows, I won’t be able to prove his offspring. Offspring worth four thousand dollars a head.”
Joel clenched every muscle in his body to keep from wilting under that venomous expression. And to keep from defending himself. He couldn’t say anything that wouldn’t sound like whining to this man.
“Who knows how much money you just may have cost me.” The general spared one last, disdainful glance at Joel’s leg. “If you can’t ride, son, stay out of the saddle.” With that, he jerked his horse back toward the herd and thundered off to rejoin the growing company of cowboys chasing after the bull.
Long Feather slowly swished his reins back and forth. “My grandfather used to say arguing with an angry man is like stealing fish from a hungry bear. He will feed on his fury and then feed on you. I never understood that until I met the general.”
“Why do you work for him?”
“If I were not here, I would have to spend too much time on the reservation. I prefer being around the horses… but sometimes I do want to skin a bear.”
9
Joel washed up in a rain barrel at the corner of the barn. The cool water was refreshing, and jolting enough to clear some of his thoughts. But not lift his mood. He was tempted to dunk his head in the water and just stay till his breath left him.
No, I’m sorry, I don’t mean that, Lord. But she’s right about him. General Fairbanks has a mean, hard streak in him. Help him see his daughter with new eyes. I don’t care about me. But he has to love her. He has to forgive her. This lie isn’t sitting right with me, but I do believe if she had come back with a baby on the way, and no husband, he would have turned her out. So, right or wrong, God, I pray this lie makes a way for Angela to come home for good.
“We will ride again tomorrow.”
Joel slung dripping hair out of his face and turned to Long Feather. “Much as I would like that—”
“The general is wrong. You will be a fine cowboy. Better than his other hands. Better than him. To prove it, though, you will have to run a gauntlet…of his making or your own.” Long Feather lifted a brow.
Joel straightened and reached for his cane, avoiding the Indian’s intense, dark eyes. Long Feather spoke with wisdom beyond his years. Wisdom that could make a man uncomfortable with its brutal honesty.
The Indian did not wait for a response. He dipped his head in goodbye and strode past Joel, headed who knew where.
Henry Long Feather leaned against a tree and studied the white woman. She taught the children from the Bar FB three days a week and often brought them out of the little shack Fairbanks had built for a school. This was a rare thing for a white teacher to do, but she—Laurie Wilcox—was different from most whites Long Feather knew.
She was older, like him. Perhaps fifty summers or so, but youth still lived in her smooth skin and ready smile. Everything about her was light and delicate and fascinating to him. From her long, golden braid that gleamed even when there was no sun, to her slight nose, to her haunting eyes—the icy blue of a stream in winter. But they warmed him, like now.
She raised her gaze over the heads of her students and beamed at him. “Mr. Long Feather. Come to join us for a lesson?”
A dozen little cowboy hats and twin braids all swung round to him, showing young faces bright with curiosity. Shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he pushed off the tree and strode over to them, more than happy to forget the event with the bull. “Not today, Mrs. Wilcox. I have come for Joseph.” He tapped the top of a brown hat and the freckled-face boy of eight beneath it grimaced up at him. “Yes, you. Your father has need of you in the blacksmith barn. He asked me to send you over.”
“Aw,” the boy moaned, kicking at a dirt clod.
“That’s perfect timing. We just finished our lesson.” Mrs. Wilcox snapped her Bible shut. “You go on, Joseph. Don’t keep your father waiting. The rest of you,” she surveyed the ring of a dozen or so students, “Spelling test tomorrow. Make sure you study.”
The children gave her their own collective groan and drifted away, a few darting for trouble at various places on the ranch. When they were gone, their teacher rocked on her heels and smiled up at Long Feather, an awkward kind of sign that he couldn’t read. But there was much he did not understand about Mrs. Wilcox.
“What kept you busy today, Mr. Long Feather?”
He shrugged, not quite prepared to share all the details of his day. “The boys brought in a couple of Indian ponies Fairbanks wants me to train to the saddle. They are willing. It will not be much work.” Unlike this new task of training Joel Chapman. “And you, Mrs. Wilcox? What does a teacher do with herself when the students have gone?”
“Please, call me Miss Laurie. Everyone does.” He nodded, acquiescing to her request and she continued. “I have my own homework—some papers to grade.” She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head in a way that made him want to brush his hand down her cheek. “Could I see them? The Indian ponies.”
“Surely.” The answer slipped out before he’d had a chance to think about it. A missionary, Miss Laurie was liked on the ranch, but the hands kept their distance, as if her religion might be catching. Long Feather harbored no such fear. Instead, he wondered what they would say about her strolling with an Indian if she wasn’t preaching at him.
She scrunched her forehead at him. “You don’t want to show me?”
Her perceptiveness caught him off guard. “No, it is not that. You are a white woman.”
“Yes, I was born with the affliction.”
Her joke took a moment to light on his brain, but when it did, he offered her a reserved chuckle. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly, Mr. Long Feather. And as a child of God, I love all people. I can’t help what others think about that. I don’t let their prejudices dictate with whom I stroll.”
He pushed a hand over his mouth, sighed, and gestured back toward the way he’d come. “After you.”
As they meandered through the ranch, both of them well aware, he suspected, of the curious gazes, she held her chin high. He found her courage endearing if not wise. Around them, the ranch was still busy with riders coming in and going out. The dinner bell clanged jarringly from the bunkhouse. A flock of chickens raced out of the way of a freight wagon headed to the barn. The cowboy’s day was yet to die down, despite the lengthening shadows.
“We were discussing the creation story today,” she said, pulling her woolen coat tighter. “Last week, Running Squirrel told me the Cheyenne legend. It was very interesting.”
She divided her time between the ranch and the reservation. The children in both places loved her dearly, but the Cheyenne children had given her a special name Tóéhné'e, best translated as Holding Woman or Woman-Who-Holds-On, for she was always embracing them. She cared for his people as much as he did and that moved him. “What did you like about the story?”
“The similarities between God and Maheo, for one.”
“That he is everywhere, all around us?”
“And that he is good and loves us. All of us.”
“Your white god does not seem to love us all so equally.”
He
r face clouded with sadness. “That’s not true. You only think so because too many white men have failed to reflect Jesus as we ought. I know I fail regularly.”
“I doubt that. I see you with the children. You love with an open heart.”
The light returned to her face. “Their innocence is precious. They haven’t learned to hate yet.”
“You truly believe love can make us all one big, happy tribe?”
She cocked her head at him. “I believe with God all things are possible. You don’t believe we can live together in peace?”
“Peace, yes. Because these are the fading days of a war. The white man is winning a victory over my people. Over all the tribes. We will live in peace…as defeated foes.”
“But not as equals? Not as friends?”
“The white man will not allow it.”
They strolled on in sad silence for a moment, when Long Feather saw the barn cat, a tiger-striped tabby, playing with the foreman’s young dog, a hound named Bill. Both of the animals were lying on the ground, Bill biting playfully at the cat who had his ears pinned back and was taking gentle swipes at the dog’s mouth.
“They’re getting along,” Miss Laurie pointed out, following Long Feather’s gaze. “They’re living together as friends.”
Long Feather lifted a corner of his mouth, his smile real but a little sad. “They grew up together. But still, they will never be the same. They will never be treated the same by others. And the dog will not become like a cat and the cat will not become like a dog.”
“But they’re living together in peace, side by side.”
“Living together, yes. But they will never be together. They will never be…one tribe.”
Miss Laurie hugged her Bible to her chest. “I understand your point, but love in and of itself is a miracle, Mr. Long Feather. It crosses many divides, builds bridges, cancels out a multitude of sins. I choose to believe we can all be a family someday.”
The Brides of Evergreen Box Set Page 42