Merline Lovelace (26 page)

H
er clothing and arms stained with blood, Barbara cradled her brother’s head in her lap.

Zach ignored his blinding pain and went down on one knee beside them. A single glance told him it was useless, but he made the effort for Barbara’s sake. Dragging off his linen shirt, he stuffed it into the gaping hole in Harry’s stomach. The stab wounds to the throat and chest were still pumping blood. Zach covered the worst of them with his palm.

Chamberlain’s lids fluttered up. He stared at Barbara through eyes already glazed with death.

“Babs…”

The hoarse whisper brought a bubble of blood with it. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Barbara dabbed at the froth with a corner of her skirt.

“I’m here, Harry.”

His lids drifted down. Zach was sure he was gone, but the muscles under his palm moved.

“Didn’t…know.”

Barbara bent closer. “What, Harry? What are you trying to say?”

With agonizing slowness, his lids lifted again. This time his gaze fixed on Zach.

“White…stone. Babs…didn’t…know.”

Aw, Christ. Chamberlain was behind those false deeds. Zach should have guessed. Feeling a thousand years old, he nodded.

Chamberlain gave one more rattling breath and died.

Barbara clutched her brother in silent, stricken grief. Zach turned his head away to allow her a last moment with her brother and fixed his sight on the body lying in a crumpled heap a few feet away.

He’d hear the echo of Hattie’s enraged shriek for the rest of his days. It had brought him plunging through the underbrush, thumbing the hammer on his rifle as he ran. Things had a way of coming back to haunt a man, Zach thought. He’d rescued Hattie by putting a bullet between the eyes of her brutish master. He’d ended her life the same way.

With a ragged sigh, Barbara lowered her brother’s head to the earth.

“He told you the truth,” she said with infinite weariness. “As difficult as it must be for you to believe, I never heard a word about Whitestone Title and Deed Company until the sergeant showed you that bloodstained deed.”

She rested her hands on her belly. They were stained with blood and scraped raw at the knuckles.

“I guessed at once Harry was behind the company. He’d used the same name for the railway scheme that landed him in the gaol.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted to. The night before Nate’s funeral, I almost did. But you had vowed vengeance.”

Her gaze lifted to his. Death had stripped away the lies and half truths. All that remained was a desolation that went bone deep.

“Harry wouldn’t have let you take him. He swore he’d never go back to prison. He would have killed you…or hired someone to do it. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”

Zach believed her. Not because he wanted to. Because he knew she wouldn’t lie to him over her brother’s body.

Clenching his jaw against the pain in his back, he pushed to his feet. “I’ll send a detail back for the bodies. Let me take you home, Barbara.”

Home. Two small rooms at a remote outpost in the heart of Indian Country. They beckoned to her like a shimmering alabaster palace.

Not until she put her hand in Zach’s strong, callused palm did Barbara understand those two rooms didn’t represent safety and stability. That came from Zach, and knowing he loved her despite all.

With a last glance, she said goodbye to her brother and turned her face to her husband.

B
arbara delivered a son six days later.

The birth was relatively easy according to Sallie Nicks and the midwife, who washed and swaddled the babe with brisk cheerfulness. Barbara rather thought they made light of her ordeal.

Exhausted and drenched with sweat, she fell back on the birthing straw while the midwife fussed and cooed over the squalling infant. Sallie attended to Barbara, helping her into bed, cleansing her with a damp cloth, whisking away the soiled straw. Not until the new mother had donned a clean nightdress and had her hair brushed did the midwife go to fetch Zach. While she waited for her husband, Barbara cradled her son in her arms.

To Sallie’s delight, the babe took to his mother’s breast immediately and began to suckle. “He knows what he wants, that one.”

Disconcerted by the tingling sensation, Barbara cupped a hand over his soft, downy hair. It was as black as night, like his father’s.

“And his eyes are so blue,” she whispered, both awed and amazed at what she’d produced.

“Most babies’ eyes are blue at birth. They’ll likely change within six months or a year.”

“I hope so! My mother-in-law told me of a legend that has haunted her for most of her life. She’s convinced a blue-eyed child brings disaster.”

“Only if that child is female,” Zach said from the doorway.

He limped into the room, still wracked with pain from the jarring gallop down the Fort Smith Pike. Barbara’s wonder in her son dimmed when she saw the harsh lines that ride had etched in his face. His thought wasn’t for his pain, though, but for hers.

“Are you all right?”

“Now I am,” she said with some feeling. “I shall have to think a while before deciding whether to give your son a brother or sister.”

Chuckling, he brushed a knuckle down the babe’s red, mottled cheek. “My mother said the same after each of
my
brothers and sisters made their appearance. Lord, he’s a lusty little devil. Have you fixed a name?”

Barbara raised her gaze to his. “I thought we might name him Nathaniel.”

At the soft suggestion, Zach felt something shift inside him. He’d been sure that if she bore a son
she’d want to name him after her brother. Much as he would have disliked it, Zach would have agreed. Harry had been her only family, her only anchor in her topsy-turvy world.

Instead, she wanted to honor the man who’d been as close as a brother to Zach. She couldn’t have chosen a more direct means of telling him she’d put her past behind her and turned her face to the future. A future they’d build together.

“Nathaniel Morgan,” he said with a slow grin. “I think that’s a fine name. Let’s hope he lives up to it.”

W
hile Barbara and Zach Morgan are figments of my admittedly active imagination, the historical events referenced in this book are very real.

In 1836, President Andrew Jackson ordered the army to enforce the provisions of the Indian Removal Act. Those Native Americans who refused to voluntarily relocate were forced from their homes at bayonet point, incarcerated in hastily erected stockades, and eventually moved West. More than four thousand Cherokee died during the infamous march that became known as the Trail of Tears.

Fort Gibson served as the terminus of that exodus. For many years, it was also the primary outpost in Indian Country, later known as Oklahoma Indian Territory. The name Oklahoma first appeared in an 1866 treaty with the Choctaw tribe. Coined by a Na
tive American missionary, the term is a combination of two Choctaw words:
okla,
meaning people, and
humma,
meaning red.

You might also be interested to know Britain continued to use transportation and/or confinement to hulks to relieve overcrowded prison conditions as late as 1867. Overall, more than two hundred thousand convicts were transported to the Americas, Bermuda and the penal colonies of Australia. Many of the convicts who survived eventually flourished in their new lives.

Some weren’t as fortunate. Like the heroine of the next book in this series, they ended their days in prison or mounted the steps of the gallows. Watch for
She Shot Him Dead,
coming from MIRA in 2005, set during the wild-and-woolly outlaw days of Oklahoma Indian Territory.