"Are you Samantha?" Shaw asked. "Is Betty your mother?"
"Sam," Jamie corrected him. "Her's Sam." He grabbed hold of the girl's hand and clung to it tightly. "My Sam."
"Your mama's not dead, Jamie," Rebecca said. "She's waiting for me to bring you home to her."
"Liar," Sam said, but the blue eyes clouded with bewilderment.
"You cain't have Jamie. I look after him. He's jest little. I'm five." She held up five dirty fingers. "Five out."
Rebecca knelt on one knee. "Sam, do you believe in God?"
Samantha looked dubious. "Ada says she talks to God, but I ain't seen him around here."
"I do believe. And I swear to you," Rebecca said, "I swear that Jamie's mother is alive and so is yours." She glanced at Shaw.
He gave her a long look, and then nodded. "We came to take you both home," he said. "Will you come with us?"
"Me, too?" Sam asked.
Jamie looked as though he was about to burst into tears.
"Well, Sam?" Shaw said. "What do you think? Shall we take you home to your mother?"
"Ada comin'?"
"No," Rebecca said, trying to still her trembling. "Ada's staying right here."
Sam looked at Jamie and then back at Rebecca. "You swear Ada ain't comin'?"
Shaw nodded. "I give my word."
"All right," Sam agreed. "We'll go any damn place she ain't."
* * *
The four of them played Indian, creeping through the grass until they heard a woman's shrill voice. "Sarah? Thomas? Where are you? I'll tan your hides if you don't get back here!"
Shaw whistled, and Chinook rose up and came toward them at a trot and then a canter. "Run!" Shaw ordered. He put Jamie under one arm and tucked Sam under the other. They fled toward the big Appaloosa.
"Can he carry four?" Rebecca cried.
"We'll soon find out." Shaw thrust a boot in the stirrup, handed her the children, and swung up as the first outcry arose from the camp. "Give me Jamie," he said.
Rebecca boosted the child up in front of Shaw, then she pushed Sam onto the back of the saddle. Shaw pulled his foot out of the stirrup and grabbed her hand. She failed on the first attempt and made it on the second. Shaw set his heels into the stallion's sides, and the animal leaped forward.
Riders were coming after them. Rebecca heard a shot, and then curses. She clung to Shaw, her arms encircling the little girl, praying that Shaw had a tight grip on Jamie. The Appaloosa stretched out, powerful legs eating up the ground.
The shouts behind them grew louder, and suddenly, Shaw was yanking Chinook to a halt. Startled, Rebecca realized that they'd reached the black gelding. "You take the kids," Shaw said. "Give Chinook his head. He'll go straight for the other horses and mules."
Rebecca slid forward in the saddle and took the reins as Shaw dismounted. "Can you hold on?" she asked Sam.
"Hell, yes. What do ya think I am? A baby?"
Rebecca's heart pounded. "Shaw?" She wanted desperately to kiss him, but there was no time left.
"If anything happens to me," he said, "go home. Go to our cave and dig up what I left there. Don't stop digging until' you find it."
"What? I don't understand. What about the cave?"
"Do it!" He slipped his rifle from the saddle holster and slapped Chinook's rump. "Haa!" he shouted.
Looking back, Rebecca saw him vault onto the gelding's back and fire off a shot at the approaching Pennsylvanians. Then she tightened her arms around Jamie and concentrated on staying aboard as Chinook galloped flat out over the uneven prairie.
Chapter 24
Suddenly, the Appaloosa stepped in a hole and staggered sideways. Sam yelped and nearly lost her balance. Rebecca felt the girl sliding, tightened her right arm around Jamie, twisted, and seized the five-year-old by her smock. Frantically, the child scrambled up and clung to Rebecca with a death grip.
More shots sounded behind them. Mane and tail flying, streaming sweat, Chinook charged up a rocky incline. His hooves dislodged rocks and gravel and sent them spraying as he gained the crest of the ridge and half slid, half cantered down the far side.
Rebecca held Jamie so tightly that she was afraid she'd crush him as they splashed through a narrow stream and up the far bank. She could feel Sam's small fingers biting into her sides, but the girl didn't make a sound.
Abruptly Chinook came to a sliding halt, raised his head, and whinnied. An answering nicker came from the left. The stallion turned, picking his feet high as he maneuvered through a rock-fall. Once the ground became relatively level, the animal began to trot.
Rebecca had lost all sense of direction. She and Shaw hadn't come this way, so she prayed that Shaw was right, that Chinook would know instinctively which way to go. And now that she heard a horse ahead, she hoped it belonged to Shaw and not to one of Yoder's people.
Chinook stopped again, snorted, and pushed through a thick stretch of bushes to come nose to nose with one of the pack mules. The long-eared animal brayed loudly, laid his ears back, and glared menacingly at the Appaloosa.
"Utt-oh!" Sam gasped, let go of Rebecca, and slid off the far side. "Mean mule."
Rebecca followed, taking Jamie with her. Keeping the stallion between her and the bad-tempered mule that was now baring his teeth and turning his hindquarters toward them, Rebecca stood Jamie on a rock out of harm's way.
"Are you all right?" she asked Sam.
Sam's face puckered up. "Don't like mules." Her eyes were wide and glassy, her face so pale that her freckles stood out like paint spots. "Mule bit me one time when I was little."
"I won't let this mule bite you," Rebecca reassured her. "But those bad men are right behind us. We have to keep going." She didn't voice her fear for Shaw's life or the worry that he might have been captured. Instead, she untied the gentlest of the horses and led it close to the rock where Jamie was standing. "My horse can't carry three of us," she explained to the children. "I'm going to put the two of you on Brandy."
"Jamie will fall off," Sam said. "He don't know how to ride."
"No, he won't fall off," Rebecca said. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, and she was so frightened that her knees felt weak and she could hardly get enough air in her lungs. "When I was little, my Uncle Quinn taught me to ride this way," she said. "Don't be afraid. We have to ride very fast, but Brandy will follow the other horses."
She put Jamie on the saddle, then lifted Sam up behind him on the mare. Brandy looked back as if to ask what on earth Rebecca was doing, but stood quietly. Next, Rebecca ran a length of rawhide pigging string around the children's waists, tying them together. Then she took a second cord, looped it over Sam's right ankle, ran the rawhide under the horse's belly, and fastened it to the girl's left foot.
"There, you're safe as can be," Rebecca said. Please God, she prayed silently. Don't let the horse fall. "Can you two be very brave?"
"I s'pose," Sam said. Jamie's bottom lip quivered.
Roping the other animals together, Rebecca remounted Chinook and set off to the north as Shaw had instructed. For a minute or two, Rebecca was too frightened to look back, but when she did, she saw that Brandy had fallen into line a few paces behind the last mule. Both kids were sitting straight, and Jamie was holding on to Brandy's mane and grinning. Rebecca couldn't see Sam's expression because Jamie's hat was in the way, but the girl was in the saddle, and that was all that really mattered.
They rode at a hard trot for one hour and then another. Still, Shaw didn't come. Rebecca knew she had to keep the children safe. She had weapons, the tent, and supplies. Shaw had told her exactly what to do. But he hadn't told her how hard it would be to turn her back on him, to keep riding, not knowing if he was hurt—if he was even alive.
He hadn't told her how to ride in one direction when her life, her soul, her world lay in another.
* * *
The sun was high overhead when Rebecca came upon a muddy stream and decided that she had to stop and let Jamie and Sam rest. She gave them clean water from
a canteen and found dried venison and some of Shaw's camp bread in a saddlebag.
Even the sight of such an ordinary thing as the crumbly chunks of journey cake was enough to destroy Rebecca's composure and make her blink back tears. If she closed her eyes, she could see Shaw sitting across the campfire from her as he scraped the scorched flatbread off a rock. He'd accidentally dropped the first piece into the ashes, and she'd teased him about it. The tussle that had resulted had ended with her wrapped in his arms. They'd sat up late that night, watching the stars. They'd talked very little—hadn't needed to. Just being with Shaw had made her feel safe and filled with a buoyant jubilation that everything would turn out all right.
But it hadn't. Now, Shaw was gone, and she was terrified that she would never see him again.
Jamie's fussing that the bread was burned drew Rebecca back from her memories. Both children were so weary that they could barely manage a few bites, but she insisted. "I know it's yucky," she said. "But if you don't eat, you'll get too weak to ride." Telling them to rest, she left them in the shade of a boulder and set about watering the animals.
By the time Rebecca finished caring for the stock, the children were sound asleep. She hadn't taken time to drink herself, and she was shaking from head to foot. Whether the trembling was from exhaustion or simply the aftermath of their near disaster, Rebecca didn't know. Taking her own advice, she forced herself to sip swallows of the warm liquid and to eat a portion of the smoked meat and a few crumbs of journey cake.
"What have we gotten ourselves into?" Rebecca agonized. She was hell and gone from Missouri, responsible for two helpless children, and had only the faintest notion of how to get them all back home. If she'd lost Shaw...
Numb with worry, unable to sit still, Rebecca took a rifle and climbed a rise to look back the way she had come. Far in the distance, she saw a grazing animal that might have been a deer. Other than that, the rolling landscape was brown and as empty of life as the first day of God's creation. Above her arched a great blue bowl of sky, cloudless and almost transparent.
Apprehension crawled along her spine, making her want to scream, to shout, and to pound something. But she was done with tears. She could not allow herself the luxury of weeping. "Oh, Shaw," she raged. "Where the hell are you?"
After a while, Rebecca got the sleepy children up and put them back on the mare. They rode north again, putting miles between them and the Beachy brothers. Using a compass she'd dug from Shaw's pack, she plotted a course and held to it. Doggedly, she kept going until dusk, then made a dry camp in a small grove of trees. Here, she built a fire and sat beside it with a rifle across her lap, long after the children fell asleep.
She had just gotten to her feet, intending on circling the area one last time before trying to rest, when she heard a twig snap. She spun around, weapon raised. "Who's there?" she cried with more bravado than she felt. "I've got a gun."
"Don't shoot!" came the answer. "I surrender!" Shaw appeared at the edge of her campsite, a boyish grin on his face, slouch hat pulled low on his forehead.
"Shaw!" It took no more than a heartbeat to lean her weapon safely against a rock. She screamed with joy and flung herself at him. She locked her arms around his neck and kissed him as though she would never let go.
He embraced her heartily, returning her kisses and lifting her free from the ground to spin her in a circle. "Found you," he said huskily. "You thought you could get away from me, but I found you. I saw your fire."
Safe in his arms, she began to tremble, then to shake, and finally to weep. She cried and cried and could not stop. He tried to tease her out of it, but finally, just held her so close that she could feel the beating of his heart. "You're not dead," she sobbed. "Not... not dead. I... I... was... was afraid that..."
"Shhh, shhh," he soothed, cradling her against him, kissing her mouth and her tear-streaked face. "It's all right, Becca. It's all right. I'm here, and I'll never leave you again."
"And I won't be parted from you," she vowed. "Not for anyone or anything."
Shaw looked deep into her eyes. "I'm going to do what I should have done all along," he said. "I'm going to face your father, tell him that we're married and that we intend to make a life together. I don't want to tear you from your people, but if they can't accept us then it's their choice."
She nodded. "Whatever comes, we'll meet it together."
* * *
It was early afternoon on the fifth of October when the four of them reached the bank of the Little Smoke and rang the bell for the ferry.
Rebecca watched anxiously as Noah pulled the raft across the river. She wanted to see her brothers, her father and grandmother, Uncle Quinn, but she knew the homecoming would be anything but peaceful.
"Becca!" Noah shouted across the water when he was close enough to recognize her. "Hey, Becca!" His handsome face split in a grin as he waved frantically.
"At least someone's glad to see me," Rebecca said.
Shaw chuckled and put his arm around her. "Reckon this is the lull before the storm?"
"All hell will break loose when I tell them," she replied.
"When we tell them."
She nodded. "But don't be surprised if you end up in front of a preacher. I warned you, Poppa doesn't believe in civil marriages."
"Whatever it takes, darlin'."
Noah was so excited that he could barely keep from bursting out of his skin as they loaded children, horses, and mules onto the ferry. "Eve. Eve, here," Noah managed. "Eve! Eve and Becca!"
"Eve's here?" Rebecca demanded.
Her brother nodded. "Eve here." His glee became puzzlement as he struggled to find the words. And then his blue eyes lit with resolve. "Eve bringed a dog. Noah's dog."
"Eve brought you a dog?"
He nodded again. "Noah's dog."
"What about Grandma? Is Grandma here? And Poppa?"
"Here!" He laughed.
When Rebecca saw several women step out the kitchen door, she shouted to them and waved. And as soon as the raft touched the dock, Rebecca grabbed both kids by the hands. "I don't see Poppa," she said. "Just give me a moment."
"All right," Shaw agreed. "I'll be with you as soon as I unload the horses."
Rebecca hurried toward the house with the children. "Grandma! Eve! We've got him! We've got Jamie!"
Eve shrieked and ran toward them calling her son's name. Behind her, Pilar and Grandma stood close together, waving and calling Rebecca's name. Dagmar Hedger came out on the porch steps with small Annika in her arms. Just behind her came three dogs, with Jess in the lead.
Jamie tried to hide behind Rebecca.
"It's all right," Rebecca urged gently. "That's your mama. Go to her." Rebecca put a reassuring arm around Sam as Jamie took several hesitant steps toward his mother.
Eve was crying and laughing at the same time as she snatched the boy up and hugged him tightly.
"That's Eve," Sam said. "I guess you wasn't lying to me."
"No, sweetie," Rebecca answered, "I wasn't lying. And I'm not lying about your mother either."
"Is Betty here?" Sam asked. Intense blue eyes went wide with hope.
"No, she's not here," Rebecca reminded. "We think she's in Saint Louis. But we'll take you to her soon."
"And Jamie," Sam said firmly. "Jamie and me. I take care of him, because he's little."
Rebecca started to explain that Jamie would be staying here with his mother, but she thought the better of it. That unwelcome news could come later.
"Becca!" her grandmother called. "Are you going to stand there, or are you going to come and give an old lady a proper greeting?"
"Come on, Sam," Rebecca said. "That's my grandmother. You'll like her. The other two women are friends, Pilar and Mrs. Hedger. No one will hurt you here. I promise."
"Can I pet the dogs?" Sam asked. "I like dogs better'n people."
"Go ahead," Rebecca. "They won't bite you."
"Come'ere, dog," the child called. "Come'ere." Eagerly, she ran to meet the
hounds. Within seconds, she was sitting on the ground laughing as Jess licked her face.
* * *
Rebecca had hugged Eve for the second time and was trying to break the news to Grandma of her marriage to Shaw when her father came out of the house carrying a long rifle. "Poppa," Rebecca cried. "Poppa, I'm home, and I've got Eve's Jamie!"
He stared past her as if she didn't even exist. "What are you doing here, Shaw MacCade?" He raised the gun to his shoulder and pointed it at Shaw.
Confused, Rebecca glanced over her shoulder to see Shaw striding toward her. "Poppa, it's not what you think. Shaw and I are—"
"Quiet, Becca," her father answered harshly. "This is between him and me."
Rebecca tried to go to Shaw's side, but Eve and her grandmother hung on tightly to her arms. "No," she said, struggling to pull free. "Let me—"
"No, don't," Shaw said. "It's all right, Bee. Your father's right. We need to settle this between us." He looked directly at Campbell. "Becca and I are married," he said.
"Step away from my girls," her father ordered. "Drummond! Corbett!"
Corbett came around the corner of the house from the garden. He had his new five-shot Colt revolver aimed at the center of Shaw's chest. Rebecca gasped as she saw Drum, armed with the big scattergun, come running from another direction.
"Didn't you hear what Shaw said, Poppa?" Rebecca cried. "He's my husband. Shaw and I are legally married!" She broke loose and tried to run to Shaw, but Uncle Quinn was suddenly there, blocking her way.
His scarred hand clamped like a vise around her wrist. "Quiet, girl," he said. "You heard your pop."
"Listen to me!" Rebecca shouted as Pilar and Dagmar hustled the two children into the house. "Please!" Rebecca looked at her grandmother. "Tell Poppa that we're married! Don't let him—"
"First Eve, now Becca," Campbell said harshly. "I should put a bullet through your head, you MacCade son of a bitch."
"Poppa, I told you that Jamie's Laird's boy," Eve said. "Grandma, make him listen."
"No need to try and defend Shaw, Eve," their father said. "I forgive you for what you've done. I was wrong to hold it against you so long. The Bible says we must forgive if we expect the Lord to forgive us."
The Taming of Shaw MacCade Page 27