Judith E French (12 page)

“You do think we’re behind the shootin’,” Rachel answered.

Shane shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Bull—” Earl’s wrinkled face flushed puce. “Manure,” he finished lamely with a quick glance at Caitlin. “Your uncle knew me for twenty years, McKenna. Have you ever heard of me backshootin’ a man?”

Shane shrugged. “I don’t think it’s you personal.”

“You think Big Earl ordered it done?” Rachel asked. Her voice was rough like a man’s, and Caitlin wondered again what kind of woman she was. “Nobody shoots anything on Thompson land without his say-so.”

“I guess we both have a pretty good idea what we think of each other,” Earl growled. Then he motioned to his daughter. “Take a look at that new filly. If it’s got a white star, we’re takin’ it home with us.”

“You lay a hand on my animal and—” Shane broke off with an oath as the cowboy with the drooping eyelid pulled a pistol from his belt and aimed it at Shane’s chest. “Damn you, Nate Bone, I warned you to stay off Kilronan.”

The man grinned, exposing a broken picket fence of blackened teeth. “I work for Big Earl, not you, McKenna. You or Gabe move so much as a finger, and I’ll blow a hole in you that yer missus kin drive an ox through.”

Rachel turned her horse toward the stable. Not knowing what else to do, Caitlin followed.

“Wait,” Caitlin said as the woman dismounted.

“Your man ain’t stole no breedin’, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry about.”

“Please, if you’d just listen to me,” Caitlin insisted. “Surely neighbors don’t need to fight over—”

Rachel yanked open the barn door, and Caitlin’s mouth went dry. Would Shane try to fight all these armed men when Rachel saw the white star on the new foal’s head?

She had only her husband’s word that he wasn’t responsible for breeding the mare to Thompson’s stallion. Could the accusation be true? Once she would have insisted that Shane would never be dishonest, but now she was no longer certain of anything about him.

It was dim inside the stable after the bright sunlight, but Caitlin didn’t need to see clearly. Star’s white patch would show up like a lit candle thrown down a well.

“Someone could be killed,” Caitlin insisted as Rachel
strode from stall to stall, inspecting the animals. “Don’t you care?”

The Missouri woman spun to face her. “Look, fancy city gal, you’d best learn how things work out here. Nobody steals nothin’ from Thompson land. Not water, not stock, and not Natchez’s seed. If McKenna’s stooped to thieving, he deserves what he gets.”

“Surely there must be laws? Why must this be settled with angry words and guns?”

“What the hell do you know about anything?” Rachel demanded. “You and your puffy little sleeves and dainty shoes too good to get cow crap on! My mother and two of my brothers died for our land. We’ve fought Indians, wolves, and renegades to hold it, and we’re not about to start backin’ down now.”

Caitlin retreated a step, scorched by the venom in Rachel’s voice. Then something moved, and both she and Rachel caught sight of a figure in the shadows.

“Mary?” Caitlin asked. She’d left the Indian woman in the kitchen with Derry earlier. How had she gotten into the barn without being seen?

Mary grunted and stepped out into the center passageway. “Mary give new mother vinegar. Good for mare. Make milk for baby.”

“That baby’s what I want to see.” Rachel leaned against the box stall railing.

Caitlin held her breath.

“I’ll be damned,” Rachel swore. “Talk about black Irish luck.”

Caitlin ran to the gate. The foal lay curled in the straw beside her mother, ears up, bright eyes alert. The tiny filly’s black face was damp; milk dripped from the corner of her mouth, and her bottlebrush tail flicked back and forth.

Her white star was gone.

Caitlin blinked. The foal was as black as Satan’s chimney, without the slightest hint of white on her face.

“I’ll bet you ten silver dollars that horse has Natchez’s blood,” Rachel said as she began to chuckle. “Damned Irish luck, that’s what it is. Every filly and colt Natchez sires is the spitting image of him but this one.” She slapped her palm against the top rail of the gate. “Guess Big Earl owes your man another apology.”

Still chuckling, Rachel Thompson walked out of the barn and swung up on her horse. “We were wrong,” she called to her father. “Nothin’ here belongs to us.”

Caitlin stood in the barn doorway. “I don’t understand why there are bad feelings between your family and ours,” she said. “Now that I’m here, perhaps we can change that.”

Rachel threw her a scornful look. “Can’t decide if you’re for real, fancy woman, but you’re sure good for a laugh.” Digging her heels into her mount’s sides, Rachel slapped the end of the reins against the gelding’s neck and rode back to join her father.

Earl Thompson nodded to Shane and led his riders away at a hard trot. Rachel fell in behind them, and as she guided her horse out of the yard, she glanced back at Shane and Gabriel one final time.

“Caity,” Shane called. “What just happened here?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” When he started toward her, she went back into the barn. She knew Shane would chastise her for not remaining in the house. But right now, it was more important for her to find out how the filly had lost her white star and why the Thompsons were their enemies.

Mary was still in the stable. Caitlin walked past
her and looked at the foal again. She could have sworn this was the same filly she’d seen Shane deliver the night before. “Mary?” Caitlin asked. “What did you do?”

The older woman shifted her pipe from one side of her mouth to the other and shrugged.

“This foal had a white star,” Caitlin insisted.

Mary stood, silent, unsmiling.

“You didn’t have time to put another foal in her place.”

Shane entered the barn and came to stare at the mare and filly. He didn’t speak to Caitlin, but she could feel his barely concealed anger.

“You should be in bed,” Caitlin murmured.

Shane glanced at Mary. She uttered a single word, then walked away without looking back.

“What did she say?” Caitlin asked. “Is that Indian she’s speaking?”

“Osage.”

“And you understand it? What did she say?”

Shane nodded. “I speak it some.” He leaned on the top rail of the stall gate and looked at the foal again. “Lampblack,” he said.

“What?”

“She dyed the filly’s white patch with lampblack.” He opened the gate and reached down to touch the foal’s head. When he pulled his hand away, his fingers were smeared with black.

“But how did Mary—”

“She’s an Indian, Caity. You live around them long enough, you’ll find out that they can do a lot of things that don’t seem possible. But that’s not what’s worryin’ me now.”

Caitlin brushed her hand against his fingers and stared at the stain. “What do you mean?”

“Rachel Thompson isn’t stupid. If I figured this out, she should have.”

“But she didn’t,” Caitlin insisted. “She told her father—”

“Never mind what she told Big Earl. It never pays to make quick decisions about people or situations, Caity. There’s more to Rachel than what you see.”

“Why do they dislike you so much?”

“Big Earl? He hates me. Beau hates everybody.”

“And Rachel? Does she hate you, too?”

Shane’s eyes narrowed. “Not as much as she’d like her father to think. I’ve known her since I first joined Uncle Jamie in Kentucky. Rachel was just a skinny kid in pigtails then.”

“Thompson knew your uncle?”

“They were friends and neighbors. Uncle Jamie and Earl scouted out this Missouri country together. They found Kilronan and bought it off a Spanish grandee.”

“You mean they were partners?” Caitlin asked.

“No. They divided the land right from the start. Half to Big Earl, half to Uncle Jamie. He won the toss of a coin and got first pick.”

“The families moved to Missouri together?”

Shane nodded. “Big Earl wanted to raise cattle and oxen. Uncle Jamie thought Kilronan was better for horses and mules.”

Caitlin clasped Shane’s hand gently, taking care not to put pressure on the lacerated palm. “I’d feel better if you’d come back in the house,” she said. “Your head and ribs … You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

He grimaced. “It doesn’t feel any better layin’ on my back,” he said before continuing. “The first two years here were rough—drunken trappers, army deserters, tornadoes. You name it. Earl’s wife and oldest son, Al, were
murdered by an Indian war party. A younger boy was shot by rustlers. Big Earl took it hard, but for Rach it was harder. She was startin’ to fill out into a woman’s shape, and she had nobody to teach her how she was supposed to act. She would have turned out better if her mother had lived.”

Caitlin liked the feel of Shane’s hand in hers. For all his hard manner, he made her feel safe.

“Are you listenin’ to me, Caity?”

“Yes, Shane. I am.”

“Earl hadn’t been around women much, so he didn’t know how to raise a girl. He just treated Rach like a boy. Her brother Beau was always a rotten apple, and Rachel got in the habit of followin’ me around.” Shane met Caitlin’s eyes. “Rachel was a kid. There was nothin’ between us but friendship.”

“Did she think different?”

“There weren’t many eligible men around, and none that Big Earl would let near her. And Rachel took a notion that I …” He picked up a handful of straw and began to scrub at the lampblack on his hands.

Caitlin waited.

“She kissed me, and I didn’t handle it too well. I teased her and told her that she was too young to fool around with a married man. She told Big Earl that I’d tried to take advantage of her.”

Shane was telling the truth. He had to be, Caitlin told herself. Her husband would never try to seduce his neighbor’s innocent daughter. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

He nodded. “Aye, more. Big Earl lost his temper and rode over threatenin’ to horsewhip me. Uncle Jamie threw him off Kilronan. To my knowledge, the two of them never spoke to each other again.”

“And he blames you for that?”

“Earl blames me for Uncle Jamie’s and George’s deaths.”

“But why? It was an accident. You told me that they drowned in a flood.”

Shane’s mouth thinned. “They died, and I didn’t. And Kilronan came to me, lock, stock, and barrel. It seemed too much of a coincidence to Big Earl.”

“You loved your uncle. You would never have done anything to harm him or George. I remember you used to talk about them to me, years ago, before you came to America. You told me how you wished your Uncle Jamie was your father.”

“Aye, I did. Still do,” Shane admitted. “My father was a worthless drunk. He had a bad temper, and when he drank, it got worse. I never wanted to be like him.”

“You’re not.” She leaned her cheek against his upper arm. “You never were.”

Shane brushed the crown of her head lightly. “I’d like to think that, but I got his temper. Sometimes …” He drew in a slow, deep breath. “I’m tellin’ the truth about Rachel, Caity, and about what happened to my uncle. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“But you tried to make me think something about Justice’s mother that wasn’t true,” she reminded him. “You loved her—didn’t you?” Hurt shimmered in waves through Caitlin, but she braced herself for what she knew was coming.

“Maybe I did,” he said huskily. “Honestly, I don’t know if it was love or something else. But I care for Justice. Mostly, I think, I wanted to protect him. That’s why I didn’t tell you everything about Cerise.”

“She’s still here, isn’t she?”

“No, she’s dead.” Shane stiffened. “Dead and buried.”

“I wish she wasn’t,” Caitlin answered softly. “I wish she was still alive!”

“Why?”

“If she was alive, I’d have something to fight. How do I battle a dead woman’s ghost?”

An hour later Caitlin thrust a spade into the hard, dry soil beside the front porch railing. Derry, eyes wide with anticipation, hopped and wiggled around her.

“Berry help! Berry help!” the child insisted.

For once Caitlin was glad for Derry’s constant chatter. The day had started badly and gotten worse. Justice’s deliberate breaking of grandmother’s plate, Derry’s episode with the bull, Shane’s injuries, and finally the frightening visit from the Thompsons had all been the stuff of nightmares. The child’s familiar enthusiasm was comforting, and it helped, to calm Caitlin’s nerves.

“Berry dig!”

“Derry cannot dig,” Caitlin explained, driving the shovel into the earth again. She attempted to stamp on the top of the blade to tamp the spade deeper, but her boot slid off, and the corner of the metal sliced a hole in her stocking.

“Sweet—” She bit back an exclamation and tried to remain patient. “The ground is too hard,” she said to Derry. “You can help water the rose when it’s planted.” If it’s ever planted, she thought fervently.

“Yes, water! I help.” Derry drove both hands to the bottom of the bucket and splashed merrily, wetting the front of her smock and soaking her dimity pantalettes.

Caitlin had just bathed her and changed her out of the
outfit she nearly ruined in the bull pen. It was plain that Derry’s things were too fine for farm clothing, but she had nothing else to put on the growing child and no cloth to sew sturdier garments. Everything Derry owned, Caitlin had made out of her mother’s old gowns and shifts.

An uneasy prickling sensation on the back of her neck caused Caitlin to look up and see an obviously disapproving Mary watching them from the open doorway.

How did she manage to creep around without making a sound? Caitlin wondered as she forced a polite smile. It was positively spooky!

“I’m planting the rose,” Caitlin mumbled. Immediately she felt foolish. Of course Mary must know what she was doing.

The Osage woman had been spying on her upstairs in her bedchamber when she’d lifted the dormant plant out of her big wooden trunk and carefully unwrapped it.

Mary had scowled and wrinkled her nose. “Dead,” she’d observed.

“The rose is not dead,” Caitlin had replied with more enthusiasm than she felt.

She hoped it wasn’t dead. The rose had been out of the soil a long time. Her mother’s garden at home had been a wonderland of white and pink and red blooms; maiden’s blush, musk, damask, and white Lady Banks roses had filled the air with sweet scents of beauty.