Judith E French (22 page)

“Men,” she grumbled aloud. “Naught but trouble from start to finish.”

As she reluctantly came from the house an hour later, Caitlin heard Derry’s laughter. She looked around and saw that Derry and Shane were together at the base of a large chestnut tree that grew near Mary’s cabin. Shane was pushing Derry on a swing—a swing that had not been there the day before.

Caitlin hurried toward them. Derry saw her and waved. “Hold on!” Caitlin warned. “You’ll fall.”

Derry squealed as Shane pushed her again.

As Caitlin drew near, she saw Mary sitting on a stool beside the open cabin door and Justice stretched full length on the ground. The boy appeared to be investigating a small mound of dirt.

“It’s about time you came out.” Shane’s twinkling eyes drew the smart from his brusque words.

“Be careful with her,” Caitlin warned. “She’s just a baby.”

“Not a baby!” Derry proclaimed. “Big.”

“Not very big,” Caitlin answered. It was true that she was growing like wild heather. Next week would be her third birthday, and dresses that had fit the child well when they’d arrived in Missouri seemed suddenly too tight and too short.

“Big,” Mary put in. “Big girl help Mary find good plants. Listen. Watch. Remember. Good eyes.”

Caitlin smiled at this unexpected praise for Derry. Not knowing what to say that would not destroy Mary’s mood, Caitlin glanced at Justice. “What are you doing?”

“Boy lazy,” Mary said. “Watch ants work. Learn.”

Caitlin wasn’t sure that this wasn’t a joke on her. “Watching ants,” she repeated. She looked at Shane, but he only grinned and kept pushing the swing.

Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Gabriel teach boy break horse,” Mary explained. “Easy jump on horse, spur, ride to earth. More work, talk soft, move slow, learn to think like horse.”

“Gabe breaks colts the Indian way,” Shane said. “He gentles them. He’s been working Star’s mother for you. Justice is training a gray to the saddle, but he was too impatient to suit Gabe or Mary. I think watching the ants all day is a punishment of sorts.”

Mary shifted her unlit pipe from one side of her mouth to the other and paused in sewing beads on a leather vest. “Not punish,” she corrected. “Osage not punish child. Teach. Ants good teacher.”

“Push me!” Derry reminded Shane. He did as she ordered, and the child giggled and kicked her feet.

“Careful,” Caitlin cautioned.

“Let girl be,” Mary said. “She fall, next time remember hold on tight.”

“I don’t want her to fall,” Caitlin said. “She might hurt herself.”

“Better teach girl swing high, hold on,” Mary observed.

Caitlin bit back a sharp retort and sighed. “Did you make the swing for her?” she asked Shane.

He nodded. “She was swinging on the kitchen door and the barn doors. She told me she needed a swing.”

“Big swing,” Derry said.

“You’ll have to swing yourself now,” Shane told her. “I’m going to teach your mama to shoot a rifle. You stay here with Mary and Justice. I don’t want you anywhere near us. Do you understand?”

Derry nodded solemnly.

Shane’s gaze met Caitlin’s. “Ready?”

She shrugged. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose. I still think this is a terrible idea.”

“This rifle is light, accurate, and dependable. I could teach Bessie to shoot it,” he replied.

She trudged beside him as he rounded the house and started toward the creek bank. “Wonderful. I’m certain your mule would enjoy it more than I will.” She hated guns, despised the noise and smoke, and was terrified of the damage they could do.

“You’ll have to trust my judgment on this.”

Caitlin didn’t answer. She could hear Derry’s high laughter behind them, and the rush of the stream just ahead. The sunshine was warm on her face and the sky as blue as a robin’s egg. A few lacy clouds floated along the western horizon, but the day was lovely by any standard.

She was happy, Caitlin realized. Just being there with Shane and Derry, knowing there would be food on the table and a roof over their heads. Missouri might be lonely, but it was beginning to feel like home.

“That story you read the other night …” Shane said.

“The book? After supper, you mean?”

“Aye. It was a good story. Justice and Gabe were talkin’ about it. Maybe you could read some more tonight.”

“Maybe.” She averted her eyes so that he wouldn’t see her amusement. “It’s a long story.”

“That’s all right.” They reached the edge of the creek, and Shane took her hand. A line of rocks formed a stepping
bridge over the fast-flowing water. “Watch your step,” he warned. “The rocks can be slippery.”

His hand tightened around hers, and she liked the sensation.

“I could teach Justice his letters,” she suggested. “He must learn to read, Shane.”

He nodded. “You’re right. And if he’s to learn, it will have to be you that teaches him.”

“Because there’s no school nearby?”

“None yet, but if there was, he still couldn’t go. Most folks wouldn’t stand for a kid with Indian blood sittin’ beside their children.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of!” she exclaimed.

“Might be, but it’s truth. I told you: the color of a man’s skin counts out here.”

“Justice isn’t a man; he’s just a little boy.”

“Folks figure that if he goes to school with their kids, he might expect to court one of their daughters. And that’s just not gonna happen. It’s a pity, but there’s no changin’ it. Take Gabe, now. A more decent man never walked the face of the earth. He’s smart, and he’s honest. He’d like to walk out with Rachel Thompson, but Big Earl would see him hangin’ from a rope first. People like Big Earl put Indians somewhere below mules.”

“It’s wrong,” Caitlin said. “It’s not Christian. The good Lord made Gabriel as he made Mr. Thompson.”

“Maybe so, but Gabe can’t set foot on Thompson land so long as Big Earl or Beau live, not if he wants to keep breathin’.”

“That’s ignorant.”

Shane shrugged. “Life’s not always fair. I can’t help what other folks do or think.” He stopped and pointed to
a tin can sitting in front of a large oak tree. “That’s your target, Caity.”

“That little thing?”

“By the time we’re done, you’ll be hitting the center of that can every time.”

“You can teach me to do that today?”

Shane chuckled. “Not unless you’re a better shot than I think you are. It will take a while, but I’m a patient man.”

“I doubt that,” she grumbled. But she gave him her undivided attention as he began to show her how to properly load the rifle.

Shane wasn’t satisfied with her marksmanship in days, or even in a month. But as the weeks passed and summer turned to autumn, Caitlin began to lose her fear of the weapon. Every afternoon in good weather, Shane took time to take her out beyond the creek for target practice. And three times a week, he had her mount Bessie and ride around and around the paddock under his watchful eye until her back ached and her thighs were chafed by the mule’s rough gait.

And evenings, after supper, Caitlin read to Derry, Shane, Gabe, and Mary. In time, she finished the
A Thousand and One Nights
and began another book,
Robinson Crusoe
. Persuading Justice that he had to learn his ABCs was easier than she’d thought it would be. For once, Mary, Gabriel, and Shane agreed that the boy needed to learn to read. Faced with such an array of formidable foes, Justice gave in with good grace and applied himself so enthusiastically that he memorized the entire alphabet in three days.

“I want to read books,” he insisted. “I don’t need to write letters.”

“You will when you’re a man,” Shane insisted. To
Caitlin’s surprise, he joined the two of them in the dining room for lessons every night after Derry was tucked into bed.

“You don’t,” Justice replied.

“No,” Shane admitted. “I don’t read or write, and many’s the time I’ve regretted my lack of schoolin’.”

“I could teach you,” Caitlin offered.

Shane grimaced. “Not likely.” But she noticed that he paid close attention to everything she told Justice.

Caitlin’s days were full. Her roses flourished, and she had hopes of seeing them blossom in the spring. Her riding improved, and Shane began to take her out with him to ride fence lines or check on the livestock.

When the day was finished and the house was still and locked, she and Shane made love and then slept wrapped in each other’s arms. They had moved Derry into Shane’s room, and Shane had joined Caitlin in the larger, corner bedchamber.

Why can’t I be satisfied with what I have? she mused one night when the only sounds she could hear were the chirp of crickets outside and the steady murmur of Shane’s regular breathing as he slept beside her.

But she wasn’t satisfied.

In the shadowy recesses of her mind, Caitlin knew that Shane still questioned her honesty and her ability to survive on the frontier. She had seen again this morning the brooding look on his face when he talked with Gabriel, and she wondered how many concerns her husband kept from her … and how many secrets.

He made glorious love to her, but he’d never told her that he loved her. They could have no chance at a lasting marriage so long as each continued to doubt the other. And until she knew that she was staying on Kilronan, she feared becoming pregnant.

“And I want to be certain of you,” she whispered as she stroked Shane’s tousled hair. “I want it with all my heart and soul.”

Nate Bone bellied down in the tall grass, steadied his rifle against a rock, and sighted down the barrel at McKenna’s wife. The red-haired woman on the back of that mule made an easy target silhouetted against the blue sky. The half-breed brat, astride a pinto, rode just ahead of her.

Nate paid him no mind. “Bang. Yer dead,” he said, pretending to pull the trigger. And then he laughed.

Beau Thompson wiggled back until he reached the shelter of a tree before climbing to his feet. “Hellfire, Nate, that ain’t funny. Shootin’ McKenna’s one thing. The bastard deserves it for futterin’ my sister. But killin’ a white woman—Big Earl would shoot lightnin’ bolts out his ass over that.”

“Shit on Big Earl.” Nate pushed up on his elbows and spat a wad of tobacco juice at a beetle trudging through the grass. “I didn’t shoot her, did I? Can’t you take a joke?”

“McKenna’s the one what wronged us. I ain’t gonna see you shoot no white woman, Nate. You listenin’? I ain’t part of murderin’ no decent females.”

“Not like McKenna, are ya? He sure sliced that Cerise Larocque. Blood so deep on that whorehouse floor, they said, you had to wade through it.”

Beau stiffened. “Reckon he did carve her up, but a half-breed whore don’t hardly count.”

“Shit, Beau. I didn’t shoot McKenna’s wife, did I? Had her dead in my sights, but did I pull the trigger?”

“No,” Beau admitted, “but—”

“You’re soft as a lil’ girl,” Nate scoffed. “How do you expect to best a hard case like McKenna without having some iron in your bowels? No wonder your old man beats the shit out of you. He ain’t got one girl; he’s got two.”

A purple vein throbbed along Beau’s temple. “I ain’t no girl, Nate. Don’t be callin’ me no girl.”

“If you had balls, you woulda got settled with McKenna by now,” he taunted as he shoved his rifle in the saddle holster. “Rachel’s got bigger stones than you do.”

“Shut up about Rachel,” Beau warned. “I caused McKenna plenty of trouble before you came to work for Big Earl, didn’t I? I been pullin’ down his fences and shooting his calves ever since he murdered his uncle and his cousin.”

“Shit! Pullin’ down a few fences? You think that’s scarin’ him? That’s pissant stuff. Why, your sister Rachel—”

“Why you keep bringin’ up Rachel? You best not be gettin’ ideas about her.”

“You think I got a taste for her? She ain’t what I look fer in a woman.” He coughed and spat again. “Now, McKenna’s woman, that’s something else. I wouldn’t mind havin’ a taste of that.”

Mollified, Beau nodded. “Me, too. She’s a fine handful of woman.”

“You ever had a lady?”

“Reckon I have. Had me a French whore in Saint Louis claimed to be a countess.”

“What did I say before?” Nate exclaimed. “Whores don’t count. Real ladies is bred tight as a rattler’s skin and hot as gunpowder.”

“That Frenchy girl, she was like that.”

“I’d like to give McKenna’s woman a ride she’d remember.”

Beau reached down under his belt and adjusted his genitals. “I saw that, first time I lit eyes on her.”

Nate grinned as he gathered his reins and mounted up. Baiting Beau and then making him forget he’d been insulted was as easy as shooting snapping turtles in a barrel. But anybody as stupid as Beau Thompson deserved what he got.

He glanced over at the younger man. “Remember, your ole man ain’t gonna live forever. I’m your amigo, ain’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m lookin’ out for what’s best for you. When Big Earl’s dead, who does his spread belong to?”

“Me and Rachel.” Beau reined his bay close to Nate’s horse.

“And if McKenna was dead, who does Kilronan go to?”

“That Injun boy. Him or McKenna’s woman.”

“Not if you deal the cards right,” Nate said. “The boy’s a half-breed. McKenna murdered his uncle to get the place, so why would the law hand all that prime land over to a redskin bastard or a foreign woman?”

“I never thought of that.”

Nate took the lead, urging his mount down the steep hillside away from McKenna’s property line. Keeping Beau Thompson worked up against McKenna was gettin’ to be a full-time job. If his own aim had been a little better when he’d gotten a shot off at him this summer,
McKenna would be rotting in his grave, but the darkness had made it a tricky shot.

Nate spat out his wad and stuffed a fresh pinch of tobacco in his cheek. Maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t killed McKenna outright. Nate was a patient man, made more so by two years’ captivity among the Comanche when he was only half grown. Them filthy savages had murdered his father and treated him worse than an animal. Yep, he reasoned, the Injuns had taught him how to hate deep and wide, and how to take his time in getting revenge.