Bittner, Rosanne (15 page)

He thought about his decision that maybe they shouldn't have any more, and he already knew that was impossible. Of course there would be more. After all, he wanted sons; and besides, how was he going to stay out of this beautiful woman's bed? "I hate this part of it, Lettie. And I hate waiting outside while you're in so much pain in here. The next time I want to be here with you."

Lettie saw the fear in his eyes. "I wanted you here. Henny said it wasn't proper, but I don't care. The next time I do want you with me."

"Thank you, Lettie, for our little girl." He gave her a wink then. "I guess instead of me getting a helping hand, you got yourself one."

She managed a light laugh. "Oh, yes, I planned it that way." Her eyes teared then at the sudden thought of how she used to help her own mother with cooking and housework. "I want to name her after my mother, Luke. Katheryn Lynn. Katie. Is that all right?"

"Of course it's all right." He closed his eyes and squeezed her hand. "Thank God, you're fine and the baby is healthy."

Outside, Will soothed a weeping Henny, neither of them aware they were being watched from a vantage point high in the foothills.

"You see, Red Hawk?" A fierce-looking Sioux warrior with a scarred nose turned to his fourteen-year-old son. "I told you these whites were here to stay, not just tend horses for the summer."

"It is just as you said, Father," Red Hawk answered. "He has collected many horses, built himself sturdy lodges."

Half Nose grinned. "Not sturdy enough, if we decide we do not want them here."

"Will we burn them down? Steal the horses?"

"Not yet. After another winter there will be even more horses. We will wait until we truly need them to keep fighting those who walk the road through our land to get the yellow metal. These here, they are not after the metal. It is the bluecoats, and the many men who come to dig the metal from the sacred Mother Earth, whom we will kill first. This man here, he will simply supply fresh horses for us... when the time is right."

"
I
will do it, Father. I will steal the horses from in front of his very face. The white settlers are cowards. They will shiver and hide in their log tepee when they see us."

Half Nose studied the several graves below, remembered that many bad white men often came to this place with many horses. He had stolen some of those horses from them a few times, but it had not been easy. Had they returned again this spring? Had the white man below fought with them and won? He was surely quite a warrior if he had.

"Do not be so sure this white man will run from you, like the other settlers, Red Hawk." He watched the little boy with white hair running about in the distance, and a soft wind carried the sound of the new baby's crying. "This one is here to stay. It will not be easy convincing him he does not belong here."

The winter of '64 to '65 proved just as bitterly cold, burying the Fontaine family just as deeply as the previous winter, but this time Lettie did not suffer quite the awful loneliness as the year before. She was growing accustomed to her new life, the ache to see her parents and siblings not quite so painful now. She had Nathan, who would be four the coming May, and who loved to help her with housework and with the new baby; and she had little Katie, who kept her busy with feedings and scrubbing diapers.

It was obvious Katie was going to be a pretty thing, her hair dark like Luke's, her eyes a hazel color. She was a happy baby, plump and healthy and already crawling on fat knees. Lettie was wondering how she was going to keep up with Nathan and her after yet a third child was born. Being alone so much and having the privacy of a bedroom had led to another pregnancy. The baby was due in June, only two months away. Maybe this one would be another son.

She picked up a straw basket full of wet clothes to carry it outside. This year it had not warmed so quickly, and there was still snow on the ground; but today was the prettiest day they had had in months. She was sick of hanging clothes inside the house. She left Katie sleeping in a small pine bed Luke had built for her and carried the clothes basket outside, setting it under the clothesline Luke had strung between two cross posts buried solidly into the ground. She smelled deeply of the sweet spring air, left the basket a moment to walk farther away and watch Luke ride amid the herd of horses below to single out the pregnant mares. He intended to corral them separately so he could keep an eye on their progress.

She smiled, thinking how Luke bragged about the fact that out of his herd of thirty-eight horses, twelve were pregnant. "Those outlaws picked a couple of good stud horses," he had told her the night before at supper. "At least they knew what they were doing, picked good stock. I can thank them for that much." She knew the killings still ate at him a little, and he'd seemed harder in some ways since then; but she understood the necessity of the act. Sometimes she sensed he'd like to talk about it, but he had not brought it up again after burying the men.

Nathan ran past her then, grabbing the tail of a puppy Will had given him. "Bear's son," Will had told the boy. "Got it from a litter birthed by a big ol' collie that belongs to a neighbor of mine." Nathan simply called the dog Pup, and although it was obvious the animal was going to be as big or bigger than Bear, Lettie had a feeling the unlikely name would stick.

"Be careful you don't hurt Pup," she warned Nathan.

Nathan petted the dog then, rubbing its soft fur. "My puppy," he said with a delighted grin.

Lettie watched the boy and dog, wanting to remember the sweet scene, but her attention was interrupted when she saw riders approaching from the other side of the valley. Even from this distance she could see that their horses as well as their half-naked bodies were painted, and that they wore feathers in their hair. Indians!

Luke culled another pregnant mare from the herd, riding a sturdy gelded gray-and-white spotted Appaloosa he had favored since claiming the horses the outlaws had left behind. He called the horse Paint, because its gray coat was splattered and spotted with white, as though someone had spilled paint on it. He figured that whoever had originally owned the animal must surely have been bitterly angry over the loss when it was stolen, just as angry as he would be now if someone in turn tried to steal Paint or any other horses from him. He had grown as attached to the Appaloosa as he had been to Red, and he still mourned Red's loss to the thieving Indian who had stolen him.

He gave out a whistle and waved his hat, chasing the mare into the corral with eight others. He thought what a bountiful spring this was going to be, twelve foals, and another child of his own on the way. Life was good. He patted his own horse's neck and closed the gate to the corral.

It was then he heard the singing arrow. It whirred past him near his head and landed with a thud in the trunk of a nearby pine tree. He whirled Paint around to see eight or ten Indian warriors riding into the valley, shouting and whooping their war cries, out to claim some free horseflesh for themselves, at his expense. More arrows narrowly missed him as he pulled his rifle from its boot and rode Paint hard up a small hill to a shed he had built to store feed. Quickly he dismounted and tied Paint, then took a position behind a few bales of hay. The Indians were still coming, and an arrow landed in one of the hay bales right in front of him. He glanced up the hill at the house to see Lettie pick up Nathan and go running inside. He turned back and took aim then, realizing he had something much more precious than his horses to protect. Will had warned him that if Indians came to steal a few horses, he should let them have them rather than try to fight them, but he had two children and a pregnant wife to think about. He couldn't just sit here and let the oncoming savages get by him and possibly steal off with Lettie and the children. He leveled his rifle and took aim, waiting for them to get close enough that he was sure he could not miss.

All but one of them stopped then near the edge of the herd of horses. The one who kept coming looked as though he was built a little smaller than the others, maybe someone quite a bit younger. So be it. If he was old enough to steal horses, he was old enough to take the risks involved. If he let them get away with this the first time, they would keep coming back until he had nothing left. For all he knew this single warrior was some kind of decoy. They seemed to be playing a game, as though to tempt him, dare him. The lone warrior halted, daringly raised a bow, as though asking Luke to try to shoot him. He drew back the bow and let an arrow fly. It whirred through the air and stuck in the shed behind which Luke stood. The young man then maneuvered roughly ten of Luke's finest horses from the herd, laughing and whooping the whole time.

Luke kept his rifle level. He was one against many. Jim had gone into Billings to see about hiring more help. Had these Indians been watching him all along? Did they know he was here alone? Maybe they thought that because of that, he would behave like a coward. Maybe they thought he had run to the shed just to hide while they had their pick of his finest animals. He dared not allow any of them to get too confident or get too close. He kept the show-off warrior in his sight, then squeezed the trigger. The warrior jerked his pony to a stop, sat stiffly a moment, then crumpled and slid off his horse.

Luke felt his heart pounding as the rest of the warriors grew very silent.

"Luke!" Lettie screamed from the house.

"Stay inside!" he yelled back, keeping his eyes on the Indians. They seemed to be discussing something, and finally one of the biggest among them raised a lance with a white cloth tied to it, then rode toward the Indian man Luke had shot. He straddled a horse that looked familiar. "Red!" Luke muttered then. Was it the notorious Half Nose who rode his own stolen horse? He was too far away to get a good look at him. The man wore only a loincloth and a bone breastplate. He kept holding the lance in the air as though to signify he meant no harm, that Luke should not shoot.

Luke waited breathlessly. The warrior reached the fallen body, dismounted, and bent over it. After a moment he leaned back and let out a cry so heartwrenching that even Luke was touched. "Jesus," he whispered. Who the hell had he shot? Will had told him the one called Half Nose had a teenage son. The man picked up the body and laid it over the spotted pony that had carried it into the valley, then mounted Red. He picked up the pony's leather reins and sat staring up the hill at where Luke remained crouched behind the hay. He yelled something in the Sioux tongue, but Luke did not understand, except that the anguish in the man's voice told him he had killed someone very special. The man turned and rode off then with the other warriors.

Luke slowly rose, watching after them, glad Jim was due back tomorrow with extra men. They just might be needed in more ways than one. If the warrior who had just paid him a visit was the one called Half Nose, he would surely be back. "Damn," he muttered. His gut reaction had been to protect Lettie and the children, but now he worried he had just made things worse for all of them.

CHAPTER 9

Lettie took another loaf of bread from the oven, weary from so much baking and cooking, yet glad to do it for the extra two men Jim had brought back with him as hired help. Not only would it be nice to have other human beings to talk to in the coming winter, but the extra men kept her busy... too busy to get upset over the fact that Luke should have been back two days ago from his hunting trip. Ever since he'd killed one of the Indians who had tried to steal the horses, she had been sick with worry that while he was out alone he would in turn be killed. He had left five days ago to hunt for meat that he would smoke and store for the winter. He had said he would be back in three days, and she decided that if he didn't show up by tonight, she would send all the help out to find him, even if it meant she had to stay here alone.

She set the bread on the table to cool. The pleasant smell of freshly baked bread in her cozy new house usually cheered her, but today she hardly noticed. Every Sunday she fed the help a fancy meal and baked extra bread and pies for them, but the rest of the week they had to feed themselves. They also scrubbed their own clothes, something which the two extra men, who had always lived as single men, seemed adept at doing, although not often enough as far as she was concerned. Zeb Crandal and Horace Little had worked as scouts, hunters, trappers, and ranch hands all their lives. Horace had never been married, but Zeb had. His wife was dead now, his full-grown son off to California. The two men were older than Jim, she guessed roughly forty, and although they were congenial and were respectful of Luke and her, they were rather crude in their ways, men who had never lived a genteel life.

Neither she nor Luke minded, as long as they earned their keep, which both men did to full satisfaction. The bunkhouse was completed, another storage shed built, and the windmill was finished. Now she could draw buckets of water from a well. The best part was that there was always someone to keep watch at night, although how much help that would be against an entire Indian war party was doubtful.

She was trying to be strong about this, stay busy, master this fear of reprisal from the one called Half Nose, if indeed he was the one who had paid them a visit two weeks ago. There had been no sign of Indians since, and she had told Luke and convinced herself, too, that they could not stop living or give up out of fear of what might happen. Life went on. Now there were extra men to help out in return for a roof over their heads and food from the family garden and her own ovens.

She was proud of what a fine garden she had grown last summer. Already she had another garden started, even bigger than last year's. She had never had a vegetable garden of her own before then, and she felt very accomplished that her root cellar still contained potatoes and carrots from last fall, as well as a basket of seed potatoes from last year that she would use to plant a new potato field this spring. Horace had already dug the trenches for her.

Two years they had been in Montana already. Two long, bitter winters. Nathan turned four just two days ago, little Katie was eight months. She thought she'd heard once that while a woman was nursing, she couldn't get pregnant again. How wrong that had proved to be! Apparently, when it came to a woman's body, nothing was guaranteed. She had barely recuperated from Katie's birth before realizing she was pregnant again. At first she thought it was just taking time for her body to get regulated again, as she had not had a period for three months after Nathan was born. But then she felt the life in her belly and realized it was growing again. Now she wondered if she would always get pregnant so easily. Luke was thrilled to be having another child, but very worried about her health. He had sworn they would simply have to stay away from each other for several months after this one, to allow her time to regain her health fully. She had to smile at the thought. How could they possibly refrain from making love, when it was so enjoyable for them both, and when the winters were so long and dark and lonely?