Harding was beginning to cry. “I…I don’t know. I did a stupid thing. I know that now. Just…please take me back to the cave. Don’t cut my feet. I’ll sign over the deeds and I’ll leave Sommers Station and never come back. You have my word.”
“And how good is your word?” Gabe sneered.
Harding sniffed, his hair filling with sleet that was freezing in place. “It’s good, Beaumont. You can have witnesses if you want. When we go back to town, you can call a meeting. I’ll announce in public I have signed the land back over to Faith, and that I will leave Sommers Station and cause no more trouble for any of you. I’ll keep men there to run my businesses, but I’ll stay away, and I’ll pay whatever rent Faith asks for the businesses.” He shivered violently, and his body jerked in a sob.
Gabe reached back and untied the rawhide laces that held a blanket and another pair of winter moccasins. “You are lucky that I promised Judge Isaac Parker that I would not kill you,” he told Harding. He threw down the items, then climbed down and unlocked the man’s handcuffs, taking them off and removing the rope. “Put those moccasins on your feet and wrap the blanket around you. You can get on the horse. I will walk it back to the cave.”
Harding broke down in sobs as he eagerly pulled on the moccasins. He wrapped himself in the blanket and stumbled over to the horse. Gabe gave him a boost, and he climbed on. Gabe took hold of the reins and led the animal back to camp. After nearly an hour of walking they reached the cave, and once inside, Gabe built up the fire. Harding sat close to it, still shivering and crying.
“Lie down and put your feet out,” Gabe told him. “I will put hot rocks around them.”
Harding obeyed, hoping the man didn’t mean to whip out his knife and cut into his feet instead. Had he done such things to others? At the moment it was difficult to believe Gabe Beaumont could be a gentle father and husband, but surely he was, or Faith would not have waited for him the way she had. Here was a man who represented the real West. Harding hated this land, hated its wildness, its lawlessness, the Indians, half-breeds like Gabe Beaumont, men who were half-tame and half-animal. He would be glad to go back to Omaha. In fact, he would go all the way back to Chicago, where true civilization existed. He wondered sometimes if it would ever exist in places like this. Hell, there was still a lot of Indian trouble out there, soldiers and forts all over the place, Indians still raiding and killing.
He would gladly sign over the damn deeds and get the hell out of there. Let men like Gabe Beaumont and women like Faith Sommers have their damned West. As far as he was concerned, it was good only for making money. Let the poor prospectors come there and look for gold. Men like himself came after them and bought them out, then mined the gold the right way and made millions. Let the settlers come and build up the land, build their little towns. Men like himself came after them with the railroad and land grants and businesses and found ways to make money off all the hard work the stupid settlers put into the land. There was timber out there, and men like himself had the money to send loggers out and cut that timber. Let the ranchers fight the Indians and the elements to build their cattle ranches. Men like himself came after them and bought the cattle, making millions selling beef back east, owning their own slaughterhouses in Chicago and Omaha, owning the railroad that hauled the cattle. The settlers and ranchers needed loans. Men like himself owned the banks.
Yes, that’s all this West was good for—so that men like himself could get rich off its minerals and timber and rich land. The only trouble was, there were a few, like Faith Sommers Beaumont, who rose above men like himself and stuck it out, finding ways to make their own riches without anyone’s help. People like Faith were too damned independent and stubborn. They came out there with big dreams, and they were willing to risk everything for those dreams. Then there were men like Gabe Beaumont. What Harding could do through legal channels, men like Gabe accomplished with brute force. In that respect they were not so different. Gabe was in his element out here in the West. Now they were dealing on Gabe Beaumont’s terms. He was completely dependent on the man for survival, and Gabe damn well knew it.
Harding shivered again, letting Gabe pack warm rocks around his feet and legs.
“You will sleep,” Gabe told him. “And come morning you will sign the deeds. Then I will take you back. You will get on a train and leave.”
It was an order—not a request, not a suggestion. “Gladly,” Harding mumbled. “Gladly.”
Fireworks filled the night sky with wild colors, and eleven-year-old Johnny and seven-year-old Alex watched with excited delight, along with their new brother and sister, two-year-old Sadie, named after her grandma Kelley, and six-month-old Matthew, who had his older brother’s middle name. Faith had decided to give her third son his grandpa Kelley’s first name.
To her deepest delight her father had come to visit Sommers Station with her brother, Benny, and his wife and three children. They had all come to town on the Union Pacific, which now made three stops a day at the evergrowing town of Sommers Station, two of them from the east, one from the west.
Faith had never known such happiness. She stood beside Gabe on the bandstand, holding little Matthew in her arms. It was July 1877. This Fourth of July celebration was made happier by the fact that Gabe had just been reelected for another three-year term as sheriff of Sommers Station.
In spite of his being half-Indian, he was well liked by everyone, an honest man who was fair in his dealings with troublemakers, but swift and sure, a man most would not want to go up against. He had foiled a bank robbery just last year, took a bullet in the back of his left shoulder.
So many wounds he’d suffered, but Gabe was tough. He had survived four horrible years in prison and had come back to her. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind of his bravery and skill, and the fact that he had rid the town of Joe Keller and his bunch, as well as having somehow managed to get the railroad land back from Tod Harding, was all the people there needed to keep supporting Gabriel Beaumont for sheriff. Everyone gladly paid a little extra in town taxes to meet his wages.
Buck was one of Gabe’s deputies, and to everyone’s surprise and no little amusement, Buck Jones had not married the schoolteacher but instead had married Bret Flowers two years ago—a comical pair indeed, but Bret seemed happy. Buck was fifty, but still hard as nails, and, according to Bret, “a whole lot younger in bed.” Faith smiled at the thought of the woman’s brash remarks.
It hardly seemed possible she was thirty years old herself now. Gabe was forty, but like Buck, he was not a man who showed his age physically. Their lovemaking was as beautiful and vigorous as it had ever been, and their resulting family was the greatest joy in both their lives. Faith could not help feeling proud, not just of her family, but of the dream she had managed to realize, the dream Gabe had helped her hang on to.
How strange that the Indian who had helped her find her way there twelve years ago, then ridden out of her life, had become such an important part of her life now…this man who had once ridden with the Sioux and attacked settlers…who had ridden with outlaws and attacked the stage station…who had once had a Sioux wife and son. She’d heard the news last year of the terrible massacre at the Little Bighorn up in Montana. She knew that the deaths of General George Armstrong Custer and over two hundred soldiers at the hands of the Sioux were a big blow to Gabe. The news had jolted him into realizing just how far removed he was from that life, and his heart was heavy at the thought that the massacre was only the beginning of the end for the Sioux. That way of life was over for him. This was his new life—a husband, father, sheriff of Sommers Station—but he still often wore the bear-claw necklace.
Alex and Johnny squealed when another firecracker exploded in a shower of red and green stars. Johnny was holding his grandfather’s hand, and Benny was holding little Sadie. Her brother and his wife and children all were enjoying the celebrations.
Faith turned to Gabe, putting an arm around him. “Congratulations, Sheriff Beaumont.”
He smiled, rubbing her shoulder. “You got me into all of this, you know. If I had never met you on the trail all those years ago…”
“You might be running from soldiers right now,” she finished for him. “Don’t forget you’re as much white as Indian, Gabe, whether or not you like to admit it. There is nothing wrong with that.”
“This is not just a celebration of the Fourth and of my election. This is for you. It is a celebration of Sommers Station. This place is all thanks to you, your determination, your bravery. You suffered through a lot to have this. There are not many men out here who are as brave as you are.”
Faith smiled. “I’m not so sure how brave I am. I came out here because of a rather wild heart, Gabe, a determination to have my own way. I guess we’re a lot alike that way, a bit of wildness in both of us, a carelessness that makes us appear brave when we’re really just determined to do things our own way.”
He pulled her away from the others and held her close, little Matthew between them. “Well, this wild heart is wildly in love with you, and this is one of those nights that I am anxious to get the kids into bed and glad your relatives are staying at the boardinghouse so they will not hear us in the night.”
“Hear us? Will we be making a lot of noise?”
He kissed her softly. “You will be making the most noise.”
A rush of desire swept through her blood. This man never ceased to bring out the wantonness in her soul. “I will, will I?” She ran her hands along his muscular arms. “Well, maybe you’re the one who will be making the most noise.”
He laughed lightly. “We will see.” He kissed her again, a long, sweet, deep kiss that suggested things to come. Faith could not imagine her life turning out any more wonderful than this. A parade moved through town, people dressed in silly costumes, a stagecoach decorated with flowers and banners. Faith turned to watch it, shaking her head.
“You know what is really strange, Gabe?”
“What’s that?”
“All these years I’ve been here, determined to build Sommers Station into a town, working for Wells Fargo, greeting hundreds of stagecoaches, welcoming the coming of the railroad…all these years, and never once did I ride in a stagecoach myself. I came here and never left.”
Matthew reached out for his father, and Gabe took the baby into his arms. “It’s almost time for your speech, Mayor Beaumont,” he told Faith.
Faith left him and walked to the edge of the bandstand, where a banner hung that said CHEERS TO FAITH BEAUMONT, MAYOR OF SOMMERS STATION. Nearby was a banner that read REELECT GABE BEAUMONT FOR SHERIFF. People were beginning to gather around the podium to listen to Faith talk about the future of Sommers Station, and it warmed her heart to think her own father was watching proudly. She had never dreamed that running away from Pennsylvania would come to this, and when she thought of poor young Johnny lying in that lost grave somewhere, her heart ached with the memory.
God led me here, and here I stayed, she thought. This surely was what God had meant for her, and she realized he had been with her all the time, through all the hardships, all the danger, all the tears, all the joy. The parade and fireworks ended, and the podium was lit with several hanging lanterns. Townspeople gathered for the final speech before heading home, and Faith’s eyes teared as she scanned the crowd, many of whom had come in answer to her ads to build a new life there. So many familiar faces, including Bret and Buck, who stood at the front of the crowd. Maude and her husband were there; the schoolteacher, Sandra Bellings; Preacher Ames; Stu Herron, the gunsmith; Jack Delaney, the blacksmith; Calvin Malone, who ran the town newspaper called the Station News; Harold Williams, the town’s new doctor was there; so many others—store owners, bankers, lawyers, hotel owners, restaurant owners, farmers, ranchers.
She loved them all, and they knew it. She opened her arms, smiling through tears. “Welcome everyone. Welcome to Sommers Station.”
Also by Rosanne Bittner
The Bride Series
Tennessee Bride
Texas Bride
Oregon Bride
Caress
Comanche Sunset
Heart’s Surrender
In the Shadow of the Mountains
Indian Summer
Lawless Love
Love’s Bounty
Rapture’s Gold
Shameless
Sweet Mountain Magic
Tame the Wild Wind
Tender Betrayal
The Forever Tree
Unforgettable
Until Tomorrow
Connect with Diversion Books
Connect with us for information on new titles and authors from Diversion Books, free excerpts, special promotions, contests, and more:
Tame the Wild Wind Page 41