Winter's Touch (26 page)

Winter Fawn glanced at her brother, who sat next to her, but he was so intent on devouring as many of Bess’s biscuits as possible that he paid no mind to the conversation around him. Her father was likewise occupied.

From the opposite end of the table, Carson met her gaze. “Your father has agreed to stay and help us get the ranch on its feet.”

“On its feet? I dinna understand.”

Carson smiled. “Sorry. We have a lot of work to do to make the ranch profitable. Your father says he’d like to give staying in one place a try for a while and help us.”

She looked at her father, her heart pounding. Staying in one place? “Is this true, Da?”

“Aye,” he said around a mouthful of biscuit. “I was thinkin’ you and your brother might want to stay, too. You’re half white. ‘Tis time—past time, I’m thinkin’—for the two of you to learn white ways.”

They would stay. Winter Fawn looked down at her plate, the fork feeling awkward in her hand. She wanted very much to stay with her father. She wanted just as much, if not more, to remain near Carson. But what of Our People? Was she never to go back? Did she want to?

“Give it time,” Carson said quietly.

She looked up to find him watching her with understanding in his eyes. Did he know her so well, then, that he could see how she was pulled in two directions?

“I’m sure your father would understand if you decided you didn’t like it here and wanted to go back to the Arapaho. As for us—” Carson glanced at Bess and Megan, including them in his statement. “We hope you and your brother—your father, too—will stay as long as you want, as our guests.”

“Ach, now,” Innes said. “There’ll be none of this guest business. MacDougalls earn their keep, they do. I can do whatever needs doin’, fix whatever might get broke.”

“There’s plenty around here to fix,” Frank added.

“No foolin’,” Beau agreed, laughing.

“Winter Fawn,” Innes said, “can sew and cook and all sorts of other things to help the young lass run the house. And Hunter, why, you’ll be findin’ no better man to work your horses. He’s got a gift, does the lad.”

“A gift?” Bess asked, her gaze locked on Hunter. “What kind of gift?”

Hunter stopped eating long enough to look at her. If Winter Fawn did not know what a cocky young man her brother was, she would almost swear he was blushing. “’Tis nothing,” he murmured, looking back down at his food.

Winter Fawn nearly choked. Modesty? From Hunter? Even their father, who was not around often enough to know either of his children well, raised a brow at Hunter’s response.

“Nothing, is it?” Innes said with a chuckle. “I’ll tell you, Miss Bess, ‘tis nothing short of magic, is what it is. All he has to do is whisper in a horse’s ear, and the animal will stand on his head, if the lad asked it of him.”

Megan, seated directly across from Hunter, stared at him in awe. “Really? I’ve never seen a horse stand on its head before.”

When presented with the prospect of helping Bess around the house, Winter Fawn had feared that she would feel much as a second wife, having to take orders from and bow to the wishes of a jealous head wife. Only for them, there was no husband.

But such was not the case. Bess eagerly accepted Winter Fawn’s help.

Not that Winter Fawn felt especially helpful. There was so much to learn! White people, it seemed, went to a great deal of trouble to create work for themselves.

A fire pit did not have to be scrubbed. A cast iron stove, it seemed, did.

A lodge with a dirt floor did not have to be swept clean of dirt. A wooden floor did.

A trade blanket and a buffalo robe did not show soil. White sheets of cotton did.

Moccasins did not require polishing. Leather shoes and boots did.

The list of chores for a white woman was apparently endless.

White men, however, also worked, she discovered. The men of her tribe were responsible only for hunting, protection from enemies, and the care and acquisition of weapons and ammunition. The rest of their time was spent gambling, racing their horses, or sitting around watching their women work. White men had to build corrals, dig wells—why was a mystery, since there was river so close at hand—herd cattle, and any number of other chores that apparently kept them as busy as any woman.

Everything was new and, at first, strange to Winter Fawn. Learning to use the cook stove, the unfamiliar foods, boiling water over a big fire outside to wash clothes and bedding. Dusting, sweeping, breakable plates.

But Winter Fawn did not mind the work. For once, she felt truly needed. There was far too much for Bess to manage on her own. Especially when trying to keep a six-year-old girl entertained and out of the way. Not to mention taking care of all of Megan’s little scrapes and bruises. The child could get into trouble so fast it was amazing.

“Megan, I’ll swan,” Bess said, exasperated when Megan rushed in from outside tearfully begging Bess to pull out her newest splinter. “I’m buried in bread dough right now. See if Winter Fawn can help.”

“Help what?” Winter Fawn asked, having just finished changing the bedding upstairs.

“Kiss it,” Megan cried, holding up her tiny forefinger. “It hurts.”

“Here, let me see.” Winter Fawn seated Megan on a chair at the table, then knelt before her. A thin sliver of wood protruded from the tip of the finger. “How did you manage to do this?”

Megan pouted. “The porch grabbed me.”

“It did? Well, we’ll have to be having a talk with that mean ol’ porch, won’t we?” While she spoke, she quickly caught the splinter between her fingernails and pulled it free. A tiny drop of blood oozed out of the hole.

“You’re supposed to kiss it and make it better.”

Winter Fawn smiled. She remembered her own mother kissing her skinned knees to make them better. She raised Megan’s finger to her lips and placed a kiss on the hurt spot. Then she pressed the finger into her palm.

Megan tilted her head and watched. “What are you doing that for?”

Winter Fawn felt the heat, the tingling, the slight sting on her on forefinger. “Making sure the kiss won’t fall off.”

Megan’s eyes grew large in her face. “Does that work?”

“Sometimes.” She released the finger. “There, is that better?”

“Oh, yes! Thank you, Winter Fawn.” She threw her arms around Winter Fawn’s neck and hugged. “You’re the best hurt-kisser ever.”

Feeling the child’s arms around her neck warmed Winter Fawn’s heart in a way nothing else could have.

As the days passed, a deep bond was formed between the three females. Winter Fawn sometimes feared she was growing to care too much for Bess and Megan. They became the sisters she had never had. When it was time to leave the ranch she would miss them terribly. But she did not try to stop herself from loving them, for they needed her even more than she needed them.

Bess was grateful for an older woman to rely on, even though that woman knew little about white ways. And Megan was starved for attention. The three became inseparable.

Winter Fawn was so happy with her new life that the thunderstorm took her completely by surprise. It struck late one night when she was fast asleep. It began with the low rumble of distant thunder and hurled her, still asleep, back in time until the spring of her twelfth year.

Over the trickling sound of the creek came a faint rumbling. Startled from her daydream, Winter Fawn looked up. The sky overhead, what she could see of it above the tall cottonwoods lining the creek, was cloudless. Not thunder, then.

Could her uncle and the other men of the band be moving the horses?

No, it was too soon. They had only started packing this morning. Her mother had told her they would leave at midday on their journey to join the rest of the tribe. There was time yet before Winter Fawn needed to go help her mother dismantle the tepee.

With an exaggerated sigh, Winter Fawn trailed her fingers in the icy waters of the creek and felt them instantly start to numb. She did not want to move. She liked it best here in this spot in the foothills of the great mountains. She liked it best when it was just her band.

Her father had told her many times about the white man’s custom of most people living in one place year-round. It had sounded impossible to her young ears the first time he had told her. Did the white man have some sort of magic to make the buffalo come to them, then? How else did they manage such a mystery as staying in one place all year?

But the white man, her father had told her, did not live off the buffalo. He instead raised cattle and other animals, grew crops, and bought other goods in towns.

Impossible, she had thought. But, being a white man himself, her father should know.

Now, facing her twelfth summer, Winter Fawn wondered what that might be like, staying in one place all year. She thought it sounded fine.

But they did not live in the white man’s world, and it was time, as happened every year when the snows melted, for her band to journey out onto the plains and join with the rest of Our People. Arapaho, the whites called them. Southern Arapaho.

Some day she thought she would like to know what it was like to not have to move constantly. To know upon awakening how far she was from water, that her favorite tree stood not far away, that the same bald hill stood in its same spot as always.

Someday…

The rumble sounded again, and this time she knew it was thunder. She glanced up to see dark, angry clouds boiling across the sky.

Maybe they wouldn’t take down the tepees just yet. Maybe the women would wait until the storm passed. Maybe by then it would be too late to start out today, and the band would spend one more night in Winter Fawn’s favorite spot.

She thought about following the creek back to camp, but that would not be fair to her mother. The creek wound and twisted and snaked around rocks and hills on its way to the river. It would take much longer to follow it than to simply climb the bald hill behind her. Camp was just on the other side.

“Good-bye, creek,” she whispered as she pushed to her feet. “Good-bye, tall willow.” A tree grew strong and sturdy by staying in one spot. So, too, she thought, might she.

But it was not to be. Not now. For now it was time to go. Already the wind was whipping the branches and the sky looked dangerous. Winter Fawn hurried away from the creek and toward the hill.

As she left the trees and neared the hill, she heard her mother’s voice calling her name. Looking up, she spotted her standing at the top of the hill, waving.

“I’m coming, Mother!”

She should have returned sooner. It was not fair to force her mother to come looking for her. Winter Fawn began to run.

This side of the hill was not steep, but once on top a person could look out over the tops of the trees lining the creek, for the hill, with no trees of its own, was the tallest thing around. When Winter Fawn reached the top where her mother waited, she paused.

“Hurry, child, a storm comes.”

“Just one last look,” Winter Fawn pleaded.

Smiling, her mother turned with her to take a final look at their winter home. “One look, to last until next autumn.” Winter Fawn’s mother always smiled. That was why she was called Smiling Woman.

As they stood atop the bald, flat-topped hill and gazed at the small valley nestled in the foothills of the mighty mountains, Winter Fawn felt a sudden prickling along her arms. The sensation spread until it felt as though every hair on her body was standing on end. It tickled.

Laughing, she glanced at her mother.

Smiling Woman was no longer smiling. She was looking up at the clouds, her eyes wide, her breath coming fast.

“Mother?”

“Run,” her mother cried.

“What? Why?”

“Run, child!” Smiling Woman grabbed Winter Fawn’s hand and began to run toward the far side, toward camp.

Stumbling in her mother’s wake, Winter Fawn felt the prickling along her skin intensify. Now it did not tickle. Now, it hurt. It stung like a thousand bees. “What’s happening?”

“Run!”

As they neared the edge, where the bank cut sharply down, Winter Fawn tried to slow. It was steep there and she had no desire to fall.

But Smiling Woman would have no slowing. Screaming now at Winter Fawn to run, she planted her feet in the gravely dirt and flung her daughter over the edge of the hill.

For one horrifying instant, Winter Fawn hung suspended in the air, staring in shock at her mother standing on the hill. While she watched, helpless, arms flailing, a bolt of lightning reached from the dark sky and struck Smiling Woman.

Before Winter Fawn could even scream her mother’s name, her mother was thrown into the air, her body arced like the curve of a bow, before slamming back down to earth. Then Winter Fawn herself dropped like a stone from the sky. She hit the ground hard, felt the sharp scrape of rock against flesh and tumbled down the steep slope. She screamed. And screamed, and screamed.

The harsh effort of her own screaming brought her upright in bed. What in her sleep had been a scream was no more than a harsh exhale. Her throat was locked and could make no sound.

Icy sweat soaked the nightgown Bess had given her. Terror and anguish clutched her throat. Every flash of lightning outside her window made her flinch in terror.

She would not think of her mother. Would not allow herself to remember the bolt of lightning that had struck and killed her mother right before her eyes.

Yet how could she not remember, when the nightmare was so fresh and vivid and every few seconds the room filled with another flash of light as bright as midday, and the thunder sounded like the end of the world?

Winter Fawn buried her face in her shaking hands and prayed for the storm to stop.

Think of something else. Anything else.

Carson. She would think of Carson. Had the storm awakened him?

Don’t think of the storm!

What about Bess and Megan? Were they frightened of the jagged lightning, the crashing thunder?

Don’t think about the storm!

Carson, she reminded herself. She must think about Carson.

Deliberately she let herself remember the taste of his lips, the way the hard calluses on his fingers and hands felt scraping tenderly across her skin.