Dorothy Garlock (29 page)

“He’s a
man,
Lottie!”

“He’s a breed! We heared it. Now we’ve put eyes on ’em, we know it! It sticks out all over ’em. Yore ma ’n yore pa’ll not rest easy in their graves ’cause a what ya done!” She shook her head miserably. “I’d never a thought it a ya. Ya seemed so steady ’n all.”

Rosalee was gripping the doorframe so tightly her arm shook. Now that the horror was upon her, she realized how unprepared she was for this—how defenseless. Searching for words to lay across the widening chasm between her and her friend, she heard Lottie’s voice coming at her again, hesitant yet determined.

“Ya kin stay here ’n help me with the younguns fer yore keep. Ben kin work with the boys. People’ll forgit in time ’n a decent man’ll ask fer ya.”

Rosalee knew then that Lottie would never understand, she would always condemn her for giving herself to a man she considered of inferior blood. It had been ingrained in her from birth that it was an unbreachable sin for a white woman to mate with a man who was not as white as she was.

“Logan Horn is the man I’ve chosen to marry,” Rosalee said in the backwash of silence, feeling more anger than she had ever felt in her life and trying hard to hold it down. “He’s a man of mixed blood, as most of us are. However, his mother was an Indian, his father white, and you consider him inferior. I don’t see him as anything but a man, not as an Indian or a breed, but as a man. He’s a good man, Lottie. If you should ever need his help, I’m sure he’d be glad to give it.”

“My land agoshen! Air ya gone dosey, too? Why’d we ask help of a breed? What’s turned yore head, Rosalee? I thought ya was so level-headed. Ain’t ya got no pride a’tall?” Lottie spoke in a tone of deepest regret.

“Yes, I’ve got pride. That’s about all I’ve got left except the love of a decent, honest man who happens to have Indian blood in his veins. His blood is red, the same as yours and mine. He eats, sleeps, loves, hates, and hurts the same as we do, Lottie.” Rosalee spoke quietly, proudly, wrapped in unconscious dignity.

“Ya jest ain’t agoin’ to listen, air ya?” Lottie moved a chair nervously. The legs rasped loudly on the rough plank floor. Her weathered face was set in wintry lines. “Mixed blood’s bad blood! There ain’t no gettin’ rid a the stain once ya got it. Ever’body knows it fer a fact. Well—” She seemed suddenly out of patience. “It makes me no never mind if’n yore of a mind to sink so low. I told the menfolk ya’d been tainted long ago by the book learnin’ yore ma give ya. It set yore mind on the wrong track. Ain’t there no way a turnin’ it back to what’s right ’n decent?”

“Thank you for taking care of Odell.” Rosalee swallowed her anger and took a long, deep breath to steady herself before she spoke in a low, controlled voice. “Logan will take care of us, Lottie. He’s starting a ranch on the range south of our place. Ben and Odell will be living there with us. You’ll always be welcome.” She turned to leave, but Lottie’s sharp voice called her back.

“Rosalee! Ya cain’t take that chile to live with that breed! Leave ’er here ’n I’ll raise ’er as mine. Thar ain’t no need for ’er to suffer the disgrace.”

Rosalee turned, and the look she gave Lottie was incredulous. “I’ll not leave my sister here so you can instill in her your warped sense of values and fill her head with the nonsense of mixed blood, bad blood, and tainted blood! I’ll not have her mind filled with a false sense of self-worth because she’s white! She’ll stay with me and Logan where she’ll learn to judge a man by his actions and not by who his parents were.” She stepped out onto the porch and called, “Odell.”

Odell came around the corner of the house as if she had been waiting. “I got my things.” She was carrying the pillowcase that held her extra dress, nightclothes, a doll and the wooden animals her pa had carved. “Are we agoin’ now?”

“Yes, we’re going. Tell Mrs. Hayward good-bye and thank her for the visit,” Rosalee instructed.

Odell mumbled the words without looking directly at Lottie and clung tightly to Rosalee’s hand. Logan was still mounted, holding the mare and the foal close to him. Brutus stood beside him, keeping an eye on the Hayward dogs that had come out to snarl and then slink away after a warning growl. Mr. Hayward and the boys had spread out as if ready to defend their home.

Embarrassment and shame washed over Rosalee like a warm spray from the hot spring. Shame for the Kentuckians, not for herself, and certainly not for Logan. She lifted her chin a little higher than she usually carried it and smiled at him as she walked toward him. His dark eyes were on her and she was determined that he not see a speck of defeat or regret on her face or in her attitude. He dismounted and she waited beside him while he tied Odell’s bundle to his saddle. Without a word, he lifted the child up onto the back of the mare and boosted Rosalee up behind her.

“Bye, Mr. Hayward. Bye, boys,” Rosalee called as the mare followed Mercury out of the yard. Brutus brought up the rear, keeping a leery eye on the Hayward dogs to be sure they kept a respectful distance from the colt.

“Looka thar, Pa. She aridin’ bareback ’n follerin’ ’im jest like a squaw.”

The boy’s voice reached Rosalee and she flushed angrily. She had heard the words clearly and she knew Logan had. Her heart went out to him and she longed to turn and shout that he was a fine man, a credit to the territory, and persuade them that they were wrong to despise him because of his mixed blood. Where was the logic, she thought tiredly, that a man like Shorty Banes could be held in higher esteem than Logan because his parents were both white and one of Logan’s was an Indian.

Logan worked his way north, weaving in and out of the forest, riding the crest of the hills. Under the aspens and close to their groves were stands of golden cinquefoil. Mixed with other wild flowers were the beautiful columbine Rosalee loved. She saw them, but today her mind was so busy she couldn’t appreciate their beauty.

“Where’s Ben?” Odell had been unusually quiet since they left the Haywards.

“He took a wagon load of our things and went to Mrs. Gregg’s. Mr. Clayhill had been at our place and said he was sending his men back to burn us out. Some of his men waylaid Mr. Horn on the trail and beat him terribly. He was in terrible pain and had the fever on him. I drove his wagon and took him into the canyons to hide until he could recover.”

“Where’re we agoin’ to live? Mrs. Hayward said we could live there, but Mr. Hayward said you was ruint, and folks’d look down on them for takin’ us in. Oh, Rosalee, they said you’d not show your face again after what you did. They said you’d not come back.”

“Oh, honey, I’ve done nothing that I’m ashamed of. I did what I had to do to help Logan and myself. I wouldn’t leave you. I thought about you every day. I knew you’d be all right with Lottie. Did you have a good time with Polly and Sudie May?”

“I did . . . at first. Then some men came and talked to Mr. Hayward. After that I heard them talking about you and Mr. Horn. They said . . . they said . . . Oh, Rosalee, they said he was taintin’ your blood ’n that a white woman who’d hump a breed was lower than a snake’s belly! They made it sound real bad. Does it mean you’ll die like Pa and Mama?”

“No, of course not! It means that they’re stupid and ignorant!” Rosalee said angrily. “My blood can’t be tainted by anyone, honey,” she explained in a softer tone. “As for the other, I think they meant that if I should marry Mr. Horn and live with him as his wife it would make me a low-down person. That isn’t true, Odell. I’m who I am, regardless of whom I marry. And I am going to marry Mr. Horn. We love each other and we want to live together for the rest of our lives. You and Ben will live with us until you grow up and find someone you want to marry.”

“Oh, Rosalee! You can’t!”

“Why not? You liked Mr. Horn. You told me you did.” Rosalee was so angry at the Haywards she was almost ill, but sheer determination held her anger down and permitted her to speak in a calm, reasonable manner.

“I did! But I didn’t know he was dirty . . . and stinkin’!”

Rosalee gasped. “Is that what Mr. Hayward said? How dare he say that about Logan! Logan is the cleanest man I’ve ever known!” Anger and frustration surfaced and knifed through her. She ground the words out angrily, knowing it wasn’t personal filth Mr. Hayward had referred to. “I’ll do my best to explain it to you, Odell,” she said minutes later when she had her anger under control again. “Logan’s father was a white man who went to an Indian village and married a girl who was part Indian and part Spanish. The white man later deserted the girl and her baby. You saw Logan’s mother when he brought her to our house. He said she was very beautiful when she was young. How can they honestly say that Logan is ‘dirty’ and ‘stinking’ and has bad blood because that Indian woman gave birth to him? He loved his mother, just as we loved our mother. I don’t understand why the Haywards and people like them feel the way they do about Indians and about those who are partly Indian. Logan is a good, kind man, Odell. He’d give his life to protect us.”

“Mr. Hayward said he stole the money to buy the land, and Mr. Clayhill was right to chase him off it.” Odell’s voice wavered.

“Mr. Hayward knows nothing about it. Logan was raised by his father’s brother in Saint Louis and his uncle left him the money when he died.”

“Why did Mr. Hayward say those bad things about you and Mr. Horn? I hate Mr. Hayward!”

“No, you don’t hate him. You should feel sorry for him and all people like him because they’re so self-righteous and because they’re so narrow-minded and stupid!”

Logan heard the low murmur of voices behind him and knew what was happening. He felt his resentment rising and cursed the day the white man came to his mother’s village. He cursed his uncle for taking him away from it and raising him in the white man’s ways. Here he teetered between two worlds, and the woman who was the personification of all the yearning dreams he’d had through all the years of empty waiting was being made to feel she was sinning against both God and society for mating with him. A wave of sickness rolled over Logan. The bridges were burned behind them. Come what may, there was no turning back now.

His attention was drawn to Brutus, who had stopped in the middle of the narrow animal track. He pulled Mercury to a halt, turned back to Rosalee, and held his finger to his lips. Brutus continued to stand on stiffened legs, his ears up, his tail extended. Logan’s eyes scanned the area for cover and spied a large boulder through the thin stand of trees. He pointed to it. Rosalee nodded and turned the mare. Within seconds they were out of sight.

With a light hand Logan lifted the stallion in a pivot that set it squarely down on its backtrail. He moved over the tracks made when the mare and the foal turned off the trail and then moved into the trees in the opposite direction. From her position behind the boulder, Rosalee could see what he was doing and knew he was making a trail away from them.

“What’er we adoin’ this for?” Odell whispered.

“Sshh . . . Someone’s coming up the trail.”

“But—”

“Sshh . . .”

The rhythmic sound of horse’s hoofs striking the hard-packed path became louder as the rider approached. Rosalee edged the mare forward until she could peer through the brush. The man, riding a handsome, prancing buckskin, sat tall in the saddle. The brim of his hat shaded the upper part of his face, but she could see that the lower part was clean shaven. There was no bedroll tied behind his saddle, so he wasn’t a drifter. He carried a rifle in a scabbard and a six-shooter lay snug against his thigh. He pulled the buckskin to an abrupt stop when he came to the place where Logan had pivoted the stallion. It was plain the man was trail-wise. He’d recognized immediately what Logan had attempted to do. He studied the tracks, then moved forward slowly and cautiously.

When Rosalee recognized the rider something like relief flowed through her. She was sure it was Cooper Parnell, although she had seen him only once or twice and always from a distance. Was he looking for Logan, or was it just a coincidence that he had met up with them on the trail?

“Parnell?” At the sound of Logan’s voice a gun leaped into the rider’s hand and the stallion jerked to a halt. A few seconds later, Logan went slowly out of the thick pines and onto the trail ahead of Cooper.

“Howdy, Horn.” Cooper slid the gun back into the holster and visibly relaxed. “I didn’t think I’d come on you so soon. You’re a ways from where I expected you to be.”

“Where was that?”

“Malone said you’d be at the Indian houses on the cliff, or nearby.”

“You know about them?”

Cooper grinned. “I know about them. Tracked a herd of wild horses in there a time or two.”

“Is Malone all right?”

“Clayhill sent an addle-brained fool out to kill him when he burned the Spurlock place. Malone’s shot up some.”

“Sonofabitch . . . I figured something had to have come about or he’d be back by now.”

“The backshooter was Shorty Bane’s sidekick, Shatto. Malone blew his head off,” Cooper said matter-of-factly, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He pulled the makings of a cigarette from his shirt pocket and began to roll a smoke. “I took your papers to Denver and had them recorded. Mrs. Gregg thought it a good idea. I was going anyway.”

“I’m obliged to you. They were giving me some worry,” Logan said with a slow smile. He eased himself in the saddle. From the concealing shadow of his hat brim, he surveyed the fair-haired man with the sharp blue eyes. He had a sudden feeling of something familiar. It was in the way the man sat on the stallion, in the long, thin fingers that rolled the cigarette, in the slant of the eyebrows and the tilt of his head. There was something else, too. He felt strangely at ease with him. Here was a man he could stand back-to-back with in any fight.

“You going to make Miss Spurlock stay behind that boulder all morning?”

Logan’s eyes flicked to the boulder and back to Cooper. “I must have done a mighty sloppy job covering the tracks if you can see them from here,” he said disgustedly.

“You covered them. It’s Roscoe. He’s got a two-track mind; running and pleasuring mares. He can smell a mare a mile away even if she’s not in heat.” He held the smoke between smiling lips and took a match from a tin box.