The Taming of Shaw MacCade

by Judith E. French

  The yapping died away. The light faded as the door closed.

  She knows it's me, he thought. She knows I'm out here, and the river didn't get me.

  He shrugged in disbelief. Women. How could a man tell what they'd do next? He covered the rest of the distance to the first corral. Horses, mules, and oxen milled in the enclosure, but none of them were his. Shaw's temper teetered on the brink as he checked the second corral with the same results.

  What game was Becca playing? He was tempted to storm into the house and demand what was his. And if the Raeburns wanted a fight, he'd go toe-to-toe with the whole lot.

  Then, better sense took over. She didn't want trouble, or she would have let the dogs have him. She hadn't, and she hadn't sent her menfolk out to shoot him.

  Shaw put two fingers between his lips and gave a sharp whistle. Chinook's answering whinny came faintly from the far gate. He felt foolish not to have thought of that first. Becca wouldn't have wanted her father to see his livestock. She'd taken his animals to the edge of Raeburn land and left them tied there. She'd attempted to kill him, but apparently she hadn't turned horse thief yet.

  Shaw hurried down the lane to the gate where Chinook, the mules, and the mare Sasha were waiting. He spoke to them quietly as he approached and checked his packs. Nothing seemed to have been touched.

  He found the bundle with his spare clothing and paused long enough to don a shirt and trousers before swinging up onto Chinook's back. "Don't think I'll forget this," Shaw muttered, glaring back at the Raeburn blockhouse. But tonight wasn't the time to settle with Becca. He had something important to do before he headed home for a long-awaited reunion with his family.

  "Another time," he promised. Regretfully, he gathered the lead line in one hand, turned the Appaloosa's head east, and urged the horse into a mile-eating trot.

  Chapter 2

  Rebecca's hands trembled as she pushed the door shut and dropped the iron bar in place. Shaw was out there. She could feel it. She'd known he was too good a swimmer to drown when she'd pushed him in. Not that she wanted him dead, just far away in California or the Sandwich Islands or even China. Anyplace on the far ends of the earth would do, so long as he didn't come back to trouble her family anymore.

  Why, Shaw? Why couldn't you just stay away?

  She swallowed, trying to stem the aching despair. When she'd heard he was dead, she'd walled that part of her past away. She'd tried to forget him, to forgive what he'd done to Eve. She wouldn't relive that agony—couldn't go through it a second time.

  But Shaw was back, all six foot, 180 pounds of him, larger than life and as full of pepper and brimstone as ever.

  "Rebecca. We're waiting supper for you," her father called from the next room.

  "Why did you let those fool dogs in the house?" her grandmother asked.

  "Lay down, all of you," Rebecca ordered the five foxhounds. "Jess, I said lay down!"

  Molly, the oldest of the pack, curled on an old rug near the staircase and the others followed, crowding close, vying for a comfortable spot. Only Jess, the biggest of the dogs, continued to twitch his ears and prowl back and forth at the door.

  "Down, Jess," Rebecca insisted. Reluctantly, the animal crouched and laid his head on his paws.

  Smells of roast beef, hot applesauce, and cornbread drifted from the great room. Grandma had lit all the hanging lamps so that golden circles of light spilled through the open doorway onto the spotless, wide-planked floor of the wide entrance hall.

  She took a deep breath, trying to recover her composure.

  Uncle Quinn's soft Scottish burr drifted from the table. He was retelling the story of a bear hunt he'd taken part in, back in the Smoky Mountains—an outrageous yarn they'd all heard a hundred times. Her oldest brother Corbett was laughing, and Grandma was scolding someone for eating before grace.

  Rebecca's stomach churned. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts—couldn't imagine eating a bite. But there were no guests tonight. It was just family, a special time for them all. If she didn't join them for the evening meal, there'd be questions she didn't want to answer.

  She couldn't lie to her father—couldn't lie to any of them. But she didn't have to tell them that Shaw MacCade was back. Not until she'd decided what she was going to do about him.

  "Becca! We're starving in here!" Welsh shouted. "Drammond's already eaten half the biscuits!"

  "Coming," Rebecca answered. Washing her hands and tying a clean apron over her everyday work clothes, she took her place between her grandmother and Noah.

  "You're late." Her grandmother's single faded blue eye twinkled. "We were getting worried about you." Jeanne Monro Campbell had lost her other eye from a bout of measles when she was a young bride, but it had always been Rebecca's opinion that Grandma saw more with one eye than most folks with two. "If anybody needs to cross the river, they can just wait until morning," Grandma declared. "The Little Smoke's no place for a woman at night."

  "Thought maybe you'd pitched into the river and drowned," Welsh teased.

  "Or took off for Californy," his twin suggested as he casually filched another biscuit from the platter. Welsh and Drummond sat side by side across the long trestle table, chuckling and nudging each other.

  Rebecca had hoped that the twins would be steadier now that they'd reached the age of majority, but the two were as much trouble as they'd been when they were mischievous ten-year-olds. Except now, she mused, the scrapes they got into were apt to be bigger ones, usually involving someone's pretty daughter.

  Strangers said they couldn't tell Drum and Welsh apart. Both men were tall and muscular with pleasing features. Each possessed the reddish brown hair, strong nose, gray eyes, and high cheekbones of the Raeburns, and both showed a dimple on their cheeks when they smiled. But Welsh's face was slightly thinner, and he had a small scar on his chin where Drum had pushed him off the barn roof when they were five.

  Welsh was older by a quarter of an hour, but Drum was no follower. Whether coming forward to be saved in a revival meeting or throwing the first punch in a fight, her little brother Drummond would be one jump ahead of Welsh. Of course, when Welsh did get there, he was likely to cause the biggest ruckus.

  "Mind your manners!" Grandma admonished, rapping Drum's knuckles with a silver serving spoon. "You wait until grace is said, like the rest of us."

  "Ouch!" he cried to Welsh's delight. "You oughtn't do that to me. One of these nights you'll break my hand with that spoon."

  Grandma sniffed. "Shouldn't, not oughtn't. You sound more like an ignorant sodbuster every day. And one of these nights you'll likely remember your manners."

  "I'm not a kid anymore," Drum grumbled.

  Rebecca's father frowned. "Drummond, show respect for your grandmother."

  "Yes, sir. Sorry, Gram." He made a show of rubbing his smarting knuckles.

  "Twenty-one or forty-one, you're my grandchild, and you'll be a gentleman at my table," Grandma insisted. "This is a Raeburn house, not a MacCade cabin."

  Welsh chuckled, and Drum elbowed him in the side.

  "River's running hard tonight," Rebecca said in an attempt to smooth over the fuss. Usually she found Drum's antics amusing, but tonight she had no patience with his nonsense.

  "Hard tonight," Noah echoed, nodding.

  His speech was garbled, but Rebecca had no problem understanding him unless he was excited. Whatever damage had been done to Noah at birth hadn't harmed his growth. Poppa always said that her youngest brother had the face of an angel, and she supposed that was true. His wheat-yellow hair, blue eyes, and flawless complexion seemed too beautiful for a boy, especially one that topped two hundred pounds and was still growing.

  Noah was big and strong, with little of the clumsiness most folks expected from someone touched in the head. He seemed normal until he spoke or until you looked into those vivid blue eyes and saw that something was missing. Noah's gaze wasn't blank, but there was a lost quality, one that shone through even when he was happy.

 
They had guessed Noah to be about two when her father had found him. The child had been all alone, tied by a rope around his waist to a cottonwood tree beside the river. If they'd judged correctly, that would make Noah about sixteen now. Three crooked letters had been stitched with scarlet thread into the boy's ragged garment: an n, an o, and an h. Poppa had decided that that must be the bairn's name. And when no one came to claim him, her father had told the traveling Methodist preacher to christen the child Noah Raeburn.

  Many people thought Poppa was a fool for taking a boy without a full measure of wits as his own, but that didn't matter to him. Poppa always said that nothing happened under God's heaven without a good reason, whether folks understood it or not. And what the Lord had planned for Noah, we'd just have to wait and see.

  Rebecca didn't need to wait. She loved Noah just as he was, and she knew that her little brother was devoted to her. They shared a love of animals and of taking pleasure in small things such as a summer rainfall or the first snow. And she always thought that whatever Noah lacked in brains, he had been given twice the heart of any other boy.

  Poppa cleared his throat meaningfully. "Corbett, will you ask the blessing?"

  Immediately, Rebecca bowed her head and clasped the waiting hands on both sides. Grandma's were small and sinewy; Noah's palms were big enough to cup a whole head of cabbage. She glanced up into his face, giving him a silent warning not to squeeze too hard. He smiled and nodded, gripping her fingers as gently as if he held newly hatched chicks.

  Corbett's grace was always short. The housekeeper Pilar rose to fetch more dishes from the kitchen as the amens echoed through the high-ceilinged chamber. Heaping bowls and platters were passed from one to another, and Uncle Quinn began to discuss the coming state election with her father. Rebecca hurried out to help the housekeeper remove another tray of cornbread from the oven.

  A few more trips back and forth to the cookstove, a token amount of food pushed around her plate, and Rebecca was able to make her excuses and retreat to her bedroom on the third floor.

  Upstairs, she removed a small rosewood chest from the window seat, pushed the yellow tabby over, and climbed onto the tall four-poster bed. Shoes off, legs curled under her, Rebecca unlocked the box and sorted through her most precious belongings.

  At the bottom, beneath a lock of her mother's hair, an antique silver brooch that had come from Scotland, and a daguerreotype of her sister Eve, she found the creased letters bound with a faded blue ribbon.

  Her throat constricted as she gently untied the fragile silk. From the center of the tiny bundle tumbled a rose quartz arrowhead, worn smooth by sand and water, almost translucent when she held it up to the light of a candle. A tear formed in the corner of Rebecca's eye.

  "Oh, Shaw," she whispered. "Why did you do it?"

  She squeezed the arrowhead so tightly that the point cut into the palm of her hand, but she didn't feel it. Her thoughts were racing back, back to the girl she'd been so many years ago that Sunday that Shaw MacCade had pulled her from the river.

  "Go out and play," Grandma had ordered. "Keep your dress clean for afternoon services, and stay away from that river."

  Naturally, being nearly eight and old enough to know better, Rebecca had headed straight for the place where the Little Smoke took a sharp bend and the willows pushed out over the bank. One tree was bent, making a perfect place to sit and read, throw stones into the water, or merely lie back and stare at the clouds.

  Pilar said that if a good Catholic child prayed hard enough, she could see the figure of the Virgin Mother or the crucified Christ in the sky. Rebecca, not Catholic or particularly good, had never seen either. Once she did make out what could have been a herd of buffalo, and another time, an Indian chief on a rearing horse, but never had she seen a virgin. Of course, she wasn't sure she'd know if she saw one. She'd asked Corbett what a virgin was, and he'd said there used to be lots of them, as many as passenger pigeons, but now virgins were extinct as bagpipers or flying horses. That hadn't seemed a satisfactory answer, so she'd asked her grandmother. Grandma had warned her not to use such talk and threatened to wash out her mouth with lye soap.

  On this particular day, there were no clouds for spying out pictures, just sky so blue and endless that Rebecca had to grip the cottonwood tree trunk hard to keep from tumbling off into heaven. It was springtime. The birds were singing, and the sunshine was warm on her face.

  The river wasn't clear as it had been a few days earlier. Instead, it was churned and muddy, rushing along as if it were going someplace in a hurry. All sorts of things were carried along in the flow: chunks of bark, leaves, an old boot, and even a live ground squirrel clinging to a tree branch.

  Rebecca stared at the river until her eyelids grew heavy. There was something about springtime that made a body lazy. Maybe it was the sweet smell of wildflowers or the lazy buzzing of bees that added to the sound of the water. One minute she was daydreaming about the dapple-gray pony that her father had promised to buy her for her birthday, and the next instant she was in the water fighting for her life.

  Choking, gasping for air, she struck out wildly with arms and legs. Silt blinded her eyes, clogged her nose, and poured down her throat. Black terror seized her as she realized that she was going to die.

  And then nothing.

  "Breathe, damn you!"

  Something hard struck her between the shoulder blades. She gagged and threw up half the river. She opened her eyes, could barely see for the grit that stung them. Her throat was raw, her mouth drooling slime.

  The blow came again.

  She rose onto hands and knees, gasping, weeping, and looked up to see a huge pair of liquid brown eyes staring into hers.

  "Little fool!" the boy said contemptuously. "Can't you swim?"

  He was as wet as she was. A mop of black Indian hair hung over his forehead, nearly hiding his sun-bronzed face. He was eleven or twelve, tall and wiry, and stark naked.

  Rebecca wiped her face with the back of her hand. She was crying muddy tears, still choking. But she could feel a flush scalding her cheeks as she fought to regain her dignity. Shaking, she got to her feet. "Haven't you got any decency?" she demanded. "To run around bare as an egg?"

  Pizzles didn't bother her. A girl didn't grow up with four brothers in the house without seeing her share of bare buttocks and swinging male pizzles. Still, Indian or not, it wasn't proper for him to go around showing it off like Adam in the holy garden.

  She smoothed down the ruins of her Sunday dress and drew herself up to her full height, hoping he wouldn't notice that one of her shoes was missing. "You must be no-account," she declared with a superior air. "Only savages and suckling brats run around in front of gentlefolk without their britches."

  Now it was the boy's turn to redden with shame. "I ain't no Indian," he shot back. "And you ain't nothing but a snot-nose baby. Maybe I am a savage, but I got more sense than to go swimming in the Little Smoky in my clothes."

  She inspected him more closely as he strode back up the bank to fetch patched trousers, moccasins, and a homespun shirt. "If you're not an Indian, who are you?" she asked. "I know everybody around here. And I don't know you. No travelers have come through here in two days." She took a few steps in his direction, and her remaining shoe squished noisily. Worse, she'd realized that she was on the far side of the river from home.

  "I'm Shaw MacCade. And you're the one ain't decent," he answered hotly. "I saved your hide, and you ain't even got the decency to say thanks."

  "I didn't ask for your help. I could've..." She sniffed. "I could've got out by myself."

  "Sure you could. All dead and drowned. Swollen up like—"

  "Stop it!" She put her hands over her ears. He was right, of course. He had saved her, and she hadn't thanked him. Things were getting worse and worse. And once the twins found out that she'd almost drowned and had to be pulled out of the river by a MacCade, they'd never let her live it down.

  "I know who you are," the boy said. "You're th
at Raeburn gal."

  She nodded. "Becca." Her lower lip quivered. There'd be no hiding what she'd done to her dress or the fact that she'd lost a shoe. Grandma would probably give her a good switching. She wasn't afraid of a licking, but Grandma would tell Poppa for certain. He'd be angry, maybe angry enough that she wouldn't get that pony she'd been praying for her whole life.

  More tears slipped down her cheeks.

  "No need to take on," the boy said gruffly.

  "I'm not allowed to talk to you," she said between little choking sobs. He was one of the wild MacCades, and no Raeburn ever spoke to a MacCade. She wanted to tell him to go away, but a fresh wave of nausea hit her. And to her utter shame, she threw up again.

  She was crying in earnest now. She never cried. Not when she'd cut her foot and Grandma had put nine stitches in it, and not when she'd fallen off Corbett's pony and put a knot on her head the size of a duck egg.

  The boy touched her shoulder gently with a lean brown hand. "Stop that caterwauling."

  "I'm... I'm trying."

  He flashed a crooked grin. "You think I'm supposed to be talking to you?"

  "You're not?" She sniffed and drew in a ragged breath.

  Shaw shrugged. "I was looking for arrowheads. Sometimes they wash out of the banks after a heavy rain. I found one too." He dug into his pocket and produced a perfect quartz point. "You can have it if you stop crying."

  "I can?"

  "Sure. I can find lots more." His dark eyes took on a mischievous gleam. "You know why it's red, don't you? That's blood. This arrowhead belonged to the most fiercest, meanest Indian that ever rode across Missouri."

  "Oh." She held out her hand, and he dropped the prize into it. "Thank you," she murmured softly. "And thanks for saving me." She chewed at her lower lip. "I can't swim."

  "Knew that good enough when I saw you tumble in."

  "I'll keep it forever," she said. "This is about the nicest thing any boy ever gave me." It was the only thing a boy had ever given her, if you didn't count that black eye Welsh had given her when they were playing river pirates.