Sarah flipped open the door on the potbellied stove and stirred the fire with a poker, then went back to breaking eggs. She seemed bent on cooking them all up, and he bit back the urge to tell Sarah to go easy and save some eggs for the rest of the day.
Without looking at him, Sarah said matter-of-factly, “She ain’t marryin’ you. So don’t even think about it.”
At Sarah’s comment, the two older girls turned on him like starving wolves that’d spotted a three-legged mule deer.
Silas was momentarily speechless. Then he remembered last night and set right out to put their fussy female minds at ease. “I wouldn’t marry your ma if you wrapped her up in ribbons and tissue paper and gave her to me as a Christmas present.”
“And I wouldn’t marry you either, Mr. Harden.”
Silas let his eyes drop closed at the belligerent tone of Belle’s voice. He collected his thoughts, turned to face her, and went right to setting her mind at ease, too. “Good. So we understand each other. Now explain it to your girls so we can get these cattle on the trail.”
He saw that reddish tint start crawling up her neck again, and he wanted to laugh. He didn’t think Belle was a woman who blushed very often, but she’d spent most of her time with him all pink and embarrassed.
She looked past him. “Girls, we’ve finally found a man we can stand to have around. I promise not to marry him. Now don’t scare him off until after the drive. Then I’ll help you scare him off.”
Silas turned to see how the girls took the news.
Sarah was still scrambling eggs.
Emma shrugged and set to untangling Betsy’s fingers from her braided hair.
Lindsay looked between the two of them, then, with a resigned sigh, she said, “You never learn, Ma.” She started setting the table.
Belle came up beside Silas with her arms crossed. The two of them exchanged a look that was in complete accord.
Children!
Then Belle said, “I let the milk cow out with the herd. She’s due to calf in about six weeks, so it’s the perfect time to dry her up. I penned the chickens up in the barn and gave them plenty of feed. They should spend this time setting chicks. I hope so, because if they don’t, they’re bound to escape that wreck of a barn and the coyotes will be thinning them out the whole time we’re gone. Otherwise everything was done. We’re going to get an hour’s jump on the sun thanks to you, Mr. Harden.”
“Go back to Silas. I had a schoolmarm who used to call me Mr. Harden when she scolded me. I keep half expecting you to take a ruler to my knuckles.”
Belle nodded.
Silas grinned.
Sarah fried.
Emma played with Betsy. Lindsay sighed again.
“Eat up quick, girls,” Belle said. “I want you all saddled so we can start punching those cattle up that high pass in fifteen minutes.”
Silas was a man who thought things through. Who considered angles before he acted or spoke. He was a man with a temper, but it wasn’t explosive. All of a sudden he figured something out he should have known all along. “We aren’t taking a baby on a cattle drive!”
The whole gaggle of women froze. Even baby Elizabeth stopped her cheerful torment of Emma and stared at Silas.
Belle stepped away from his side, where just a second before he’d decided it was to be the two of them against the girls and liked that just fine. She lined up with her daughters.
Sarah took the eggs off the stove and, with a towel wrapped around its handle, held the hot pan like it was a weapon. Lindsay set down the tin plates she was laying out with a sharp click.
The five women stood shoulder to shoulder against him.
They didn’t look much alike. Lindsay and Emma some, but otherwise they were as different from each other as if they shared not a drop of blood. But their eyes, whatever the color, held the same cold glare.
Belle could have slit his gullet with the sharp look she was giving him. She said quietly, but with a voice that spelled Silas’s doom, “There’s no question about the girls going on the drive. The only question is, are you going with us?”
Not his doom as in he was fired. His doom as in he was going to have to go on a cattle drive with a passel of women. One of ’em wearing diapers!
“B-but…but we have one hundred of the hardest miles of—” Silas sputtered to a stop.
“What kind of person are you who would go off and leave children home alone for that long?” Belle spoke with a rage that was deadlier for being quiet.
Silas had thought that about Belle earlier; still he had never considered—“You have…I thought you said one thousand steers…none trail broke…we…four cowhands …” He couldn’t give voice to the impossibility of what Belle was proposing.
“My older girls can ride circles around any man.”
Suddenly Silas quit being stunned. He was furious. He stepped forward and grabbed Belle by the arm and dragged her out of the house in a single motion and slammed the door behind them. He dragged her a dozen long strides from the cabin then turned her to face him and leaned down so his nose almost touched hers. “Don’t you mean they can ride circles around any man you’ve ever been so stupid as to let crawl into your bed?”
He saw the cold anger in Belle’s eyes switch over, all of a sudden, to blazing hot. “I owe you for your work, Mr. Harden. Thirty a month. You’ve worked one hour. I’ll get you your nickel and you can be on your way!”
Silas jerked her fully against him. “I can’t let you and a bunch of baby girls go off on a cattle drive alone. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“The usual kind, Mr. Harden.” Belle jerked against his hold, but he hung on. “Isn’t there only one kind?”
The door to the cabin opened, and in the gray light of the approaching dawn, Silas saw Lindsay standing in the door with a rifle. She had it aimed at him, and he had no doubt the girl could pull the trigger. Except for the part where he might end up with a belly full of lead, it made him feel a little better to see the young’un be so salty.
“Get your hands offa my ma and get away from her.” Lindsay levered a shell into the chamber with a sharp crack. It was a Winchester .44.
It occurred to Silas that this was the second gun pulled on him in recent months. The first one, bandied by Hank Tool, was to force Silas to stay close to Lulamae. This one was the exact opposite.
Silas let Belle go, raised his hands slowly, and stepped away. But he wasn’t done talking, regardless of the feisty young’un with the fire iron. “You can’t take them, Belle. You’ll have to wait. Find more drovers and send them on the drive.” Then he got slightly less reasonable as he thought of what the crazy woman was proposing. “You stay home and take care of your children the way a decent woman should!”
Belle took a step closer to him, which was just what Lindsay had been threatening to shoot him for. “Go back inside, girls. Mr. Harden and I are having an argument, but he won’t hurt me.”
Silas glanced up and saw four girls watching him yell at their mother and manhandle her. It made him feel like the lowest form of life that ever slithered across the face of the earth.
“Men have hurt you before, Ma,” Lindsay said evenly.
Silas’s stomach twisted at the hardness in Lindsay’s voice. He’d heard the girls’ hostility toward men last night, but it had all been talk about men being lazy and worthless. None of them had indicated a man had laid his hands on Belle in anger.
“Only Gerald when he was drunk. I took care of it then, and I can take care of this now.” Belle added, “Anyway, Silas won’t.”
Lindsay hesitated, the gun still raised.
“I won’t, Lindsay. Your ma and I might fight with words, but I’d never harm a woman.”
Lindsay kept the gun up.
“Go, Lindsay. Mind me.” Belle had the voice of a mother who’d had a lot of practice ruling the roost.
Lindsay gave them both a long look, then reluctantly she lowered the gun, backed into the cabin, and shut the rickety door.
Belle surprised him because she spoke softly. He assumed it was because she was afraid the girls might be listening, because her expression and the fire in her eyes were pure rage. “I may not be what you think of as a decent woman, Silas Harden, but I wasn’t born being what I am. Looking and acting like a man wasn’t something that I planned on. I didn’t ask to have to do everything alone. And it wasn’t my wish to raise up girls who wanted to be just like me. I know I’m doing wrong by my young’uns. I know I’m not a—not a decent woman.” Belle’s voice broke, and she fell silent.
It was then he realized she was speaking softly because his words had struck home hard.
After a second she continued. “But I have to make this drive. My cattle have to be driven to market. Now. Without delay. To avoid the winter. If I don’t go, all of them will starve to death by spring. My range will be ruined from overgrazing. My way to provide for my daughters will be destroyed. My girls can go with me and face hardship and danger by my side, or I can abandon them to the hazards of staying here without me to protect them.” Her hands clenched at her sides.
Silas imagined some of the peril the girls could face. No, they couldn’t stay here alone.
Belle lifted her fists and laid them on his chest without striking him. All she needed to do was to entwine her hands and she would be begging.
He hated himself for reducing this proud woman to that.
“The choices I make aren’t ones I’m proud of.” She tilted her head back to look up at him, her eyes almost level with his chin. He saw those eyes fill with tears. “They’re just the only ones I can live with.”
He hated himself for making her say she wasn’t a decent woman. So far she was the most decent woman he’d ever met.
“The worst part of all of this is you’re right. I can’t do it without you. I have my doubts if I can do it with you. But without you we’re beat before we start. I need you to go with me, Silas. To go with me and my girls.”
The tears and the pleading in her voice and the softening of the sky and the mourning dove’s song were all too much. Without any good reason why he would do such a fool thing, he leaned over and kissed her.
Belle gasped and jerked her head away.
For a long second their eyes met, as if a force stronger than both of them was binding them together.
A rooster crowed in the barn. The sun sent its first rays over the horizon. A lazy cow mooed in the morning breeze.
Silas’s hand went around the back of her neck and sunk into her long, chocolate brown braid and pulled her mouth back against his.
Her clenched fists held them apart until her hands opened and lay flat against his shirt. She tilted her head and let her neck drop back under the force of his kiss as she opened her mouth. Her hands slid up his chest to his shoulders and around his neck.
Silas slid one strong arm around her waist.
“Ma! You promised!”
Glowing Sun ducked under the low branches of the outstretched ponderosa pine, covering her mouth to still her laughter. She watched her little sister scamper about hunting. Hide-and-seek. A game Glowing Sun remembered from when her parents were alive. It was much like the one she now played with her new family, the Salish. Her parents had called them the Flathead tribe.
When yellow fever had taken the rest of the family, leaving Glowing Sun, nearly ten years old, alive and alone in the remote mountain cabin, a band of Salish warriors had found her, taken her home, and cared for her as one of their own.
Watching her little sister head in the wrong direction, back toward the village, Glowing Sun snickered. Then she realized she’d run too far away. Fear twinged her belly. Her Flathead mother had warned her often enough about leaving the safety of the village. She’d head back in soon, but not quite yet. She waited, grinning, for her chance to dart into the open and touch the base.
A hard hand clamped over her mouth.
Glowing Sun screamed, but no sound got past those hard fingers.
An arm circled her waist like a vise.
She reached behind her head, clawing. She kicked and twisted her body. Wrenching wildly, she tried to break the iron grasp. Then she thought of her knife.
As she reached for it, the man shifted his grip and trapped both her arms, locking her hands to her sides so she couldn’t get to the razor-sharp blade. The man holding her grunted in pain but kept a firm hold. “She’s wild. She don’t know we’re savin’ her.” Rasping breaths and vague, mostly unknown words sounded from behind her, not far up. The man seemed to be only a little taller than Glowing Sun.
From a foot or so farther behind, someone whispered, “Let’s put some distance between us and them Flathead.”
She jerked violently and nearly slipped from his grasp, but then his arms tightened. His smothering hand stayed in place, and her arms were bound even more firmly to her sides.
If she could just scream once, her father would come. Wild Eagle, too. They were promised to each other. Even her younger brother, Thunder Light. Her mother and sister would fight for her. The whole village. They had always protected her.
She hadn’t heard the white language for nearly eight summers, and few of their words were clear.
“I’ll grab her feet. Then we’ll make tracks for the nearest settlement.”
The second man rounded her, and she saw one of her assailants for the first time. His ugly, heavily furred face, his stinking body covered in crudely cut furs, his filthy hands reaching for her.
She lashed out a foot, and he grabbed it, then caught the other and wrapped his arms around her knee-high moccasins. He caught her deerskin dress, wrapping it around her legs like binding. He sneered. A thick scar glowed red across one eye, down into his beard, and up his forehead into his heavy beaver-skin cap.
The man behind her kept a tight hold, solid as an iron clamp on her waist, never releasing her mouth.
She fought them and saw the beading of her dress snap. The pretty beads she’d sewn so painstakingly along her neckline scattered. She wanted to cry. The beads were so dear. She yanked at the man’s arm, substituting rage for sorrow. Rage made her strong, sorrow weak. She’d learned that well, despite the words of the kindly missionaries who told her anger was a sin. Surely it wasn’t a sin to hate men such as these. She cried out in her heart for God to send her family, the Salish.
God save me. Save me from whatever these vile men have in store.
She shouted her fury, but the words remained buried behind the suffocating hand.
The men carried her at a near run away from her village.
Oh why hadn’t she listened to her parents and stayed near safety? She clawed at the wrist of the captor behind her, but he began nearly crushing her, and she quit so she could breathe.
They slipped along, dodging trees, sliding more than walking down the steep, heavily wooded mountain that surrounded her village.
A cold wind warned of approaching winter. If they took her far, her family would have to leave for the winter campgrounds. She would never find them again.
Their tepees were set up along the low valley, surrounding the crystal water rushing through this part of the Bitterroots. It was the tribe’s favorite fall hunting ground. Trout swam thick in the rushing stream, and elk and bighorn sheep were abundant. They could gather food for the harsh winter months ahead.
She left that safety farther behind with every step. Her muffled shouts did nothing to stop the men. Rescue became more and more distant.
A desperate jerk pulled her foot loose. She drove her heel into the man’s belly.
His eyes turned wicked, furious. He snagged her flailing foot and wrapped one arm around her feet so tightly she cried out in pain, but no sound escaped.
The man at her feet swung back a fist.
“Not now.” The man gagging her lifted her higher against his chest, her breath nearly cut off. “How’re ya gonna hit her without hitting me? Knock my hand away, and she’ll get loose hollarin’. We’ll be out the reward her famil
y’ll pay.”
Family. She recognized that word. What were they saying about her family? She couldn’t bring in a breath. The men roughly pulled her this way and that as they stumbled and ran and moved, moved, moved ever farther from home.
Emerging from the thickest trees, the men picked up their pace. She’d heard horrid tales of the white man, especially from Wild Eagle and Thunder Light, who delighted in scaring her to death. She was old enough to remember that her real parents were good. She understood the Salish people’s fear yet knew the wild tales of evil didn’t apply to all whites. But these looked like the kind her white mother would have feared and her white father would have watched with cautious eyes. She had no doubt they meant her ill.
Too long without a deep breath of air. Too long fighting and turning. Too long terrified. Her head began to spin. She wrenched her neck, trying to find even a small bit of air.
The man stifling her breath gripped her face harder.
Her cheeks burned from the fight. Her thoughts slowed until she felt dull and stupid. The edges of her vision grew dark until she was looking down a tunnel.
No, Lord, I have to stay awake. I have to be ready if there is a chance to escape.
But the hand tightened more. The arm around her waist weighed on her lungs like stone. The eyes of the man at her feet burned evil, as if he only waited for his chance to repay her for that kick.
She shook her head, trying to say no without the ability to speak. Trying to beg for air.
“Horses just ahead. We’ll gag her, and I’ll carry her on my pack mule. We can be far from her village before they know she’s gone.”
“Far…village …”
Those were words she understood. She’d been alone before. She’d lived for weeks in her family’s cabin after her parents died. She’d buried them one by one in the hard, rocky ground. Digging those graves nearly killed her, and she’d prayed that the sickness that was taking her mother, father, and two little brothers would take her, too.
She’d stayed healthy in that house of death, with no idea how to exist except one day at a time. The aloneness after her real family’s death haunted her. To this day, she often woke up screaming to find she’d been trapped back in that deserted cabin.
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