Bittner, Rosanne (6 page)

She smiled through tears. "You really believe that, don't you?"

"I'm sure of it, as sure as I am that I love Lettie MacBride."

His own excitement began to move through her blood, and she took comfort in the strength of the hands that held her own. She nodded. "All right. I'll marry you. Just be patient with me, Luke."

He pulled her close again. "I'll never rush you or hurt you. I'll love you, protect you and Nathan, make a home for you." He kissed her forehead. "I should tell you there was another woman I was going to marry, back in St. Louis. Her name was Lynnanne Haley. That was six years ago. When she found out I was a bastard, she called it off... married someone her father considered more proper and respectable." He studied her lovingly. "I hoped you would be different, and I was right."

Lettie felt a sharp jealousy that he had ever loved anyone else. Now that she had made her decision, she wanted Luke Fontaine all to herself. "Do you love me more than you loved her?"

He smiled, tears in his eyes. "Oh, yes, Lettie." He groaned. "Much, much more." He leaned closer, found her lips again in a gentle, grateful, possessive kiss that told her that from this moment on, she was Luke Fontaine's woman, come hell or high water. She wasn't afraid now, not of Montana, and not of this man who embraced her with gentle strength.

Lettie clung to her mother, both of them crying. Never in her eighteen years had she been apart from her family, but she was promised to Luke now and she knew in her heart she was doing the right thing, not just for herself, but for Nathan. Still, she knew that it could be months, maybe even years, before she saw her beloved mother and father again, her cherished brother and sister. This was her family, who had stuck by her through the awful times after her rape, who had loved her, supported her, loved their grandchild just as much as if he'd been conceived in love.

Henry MacBride stepped up to Luke. "She's a good girl, Luke. I'm trusting you to treat her with respect, never to hurt her, to be a good father to the boy."

"You know I will," Luke answered, picking Nathan up in his arms. "We'll write just as soon as we're settled and can get a letter out to you. That might take some time, so don't get worried."

MacBride took a smiling Nathan into his arms, while Lettie finally managed to pull herself away from her mother so she could hug her brother James, and her sister Louise. Then Henry handed Nathan to his grandma and there was another round of hugs. When Luke embraced Katie MacBride and Nathan both, Katie wept against his chest.

"Do take good care of our little grandson," she sobbed. "And my Lettie."

"You've got nothing to worry about, Katie. I love them both more than my own life." Luke turned to Henry, shook the man's hand firmly, their eyes holding in trust. Then Katie was in her father's arms, and Luke wondered if all the tears and hugging would end in time for them to leave with the rest of the wagon train. The MacBrides were heading south into Denver with three other families, led by a new scout they had hired from Julesberg. Luke and Lettie would go on northwest into Wyoming with the rest of the wagon train. Luke had bought the Nolan wagon and oxen, and some of their supplies. They would marry when they reached Fort Laramie. They would be on their own then, heading into a wild country that held mystery and danger, but Luke was not afraid. He had never been happier in his life. He felt more love from Lettie and Nathan than he had ever known from his own father, and he was anxious now to get to Montana and prove his own worth.

"Let's get moving!" Hank Preston shouted as he rode past them. "Time's a wastin'."

"Oh, dear!" Katie MacBride embraced her daughter once more. All of Lettie's belongings were already packed into the Nolan wagon, Luke's horse and mules tied to the back of it. The entire MacBride family hugged each other once more, cried even more, filled with the painful mixture of great happiness and sadness at the same time. Lettie turned to give Sadie a hug, and the big woman was sobbing, calling Lettie her "honey-child."

Finally Luke took Nathan from Mrs. MacBride, and lifted him up into the front seat of the wagon. He went to get Lettie.

"We have to go, Lettie," he told her, gently grasping her arm. "Nathan is already in the wagon."

Lettie wiped at tears with her handkerchief. "I'll write as soon as I can," she told them. "I love you. I'll always love you, and we'll be together in our hearts. Maybe someday we'll be able to visit somehow."

"And we'll always love you, child," Henry told his daughter. "No matter how far the miles, or how long the months apart, we'll be right beside you in spirit and prayer. You have a fine man, Lettie. You've made the right choice, and Nathan will have a good father."

Lettie squeezed his hands and nodded.

"Go with God, my precious," Katie told her daughter. "And always know you are surrounded with our love. If anything—" She glanced at Luke, then back to Lettie. "If anything goes wrong, you can always come to us. You know that."

"We'll be all right, Mama." Lettie kissed her mother once more, took one last look at her family, then turned and ran to the wagon.

Luke nodded to all of them. "Please don't worry about her. I love her very much, and I have big plans. She'll have a fine home someday and be living in luxury. That's a promise.

Henry shook his hand once more. "I believe you, son. God go with you."

Luke turned away and walked to the wagon, picking up a switch and giving one of the two lead oxen a little snap, with an order to get under way. Lettie sat in the seat clinging to Nathan, who in turn clung to his stuffed horse. She could not resist looking back once more. She waved and Nathan did the same, smiling, oblivious to what all the crying was about. In his little mind he was simply setting off on a great adventure with his mother and the nice man called Luke. He was telling grandma and grandpa good-bye, but it would only be for a day or two, wouldn't it?

"'Tana," the boy said, pointing to the wagons ahead of them.

"Yes, Nathan," Lettie answered. "We're going to Montana."

CHAPTER 4

Lettie shivered, pulling the bearskin blanket Luke had bought her in Billings closer around herself. Nathan lay sleeping in her lap, bundled into a warm blanket. "It looks empty," Lettie told Luke, her eyes on a small cabin that sat nestled into the side of a foothill several yards away.

Luke turned up the collar of his own wolfskin jacket against a stinging wind that hammered at them out of the nearby mountains. "Appears that way." He reached under the wagon seat and retrieved his Winchester, then climbed down. "Stay put."

Lettie watched anxiously as he approached the cabin.
Sure, there's plenty of free land yet just southwest of here,
the land agent in Billings had told them.
If you can wrestle it from the outlaws who use it to hide stolen cattle and horses.
The man's name was David Taylor, a short, stocky soul who had hinted that he would not be particular with facts and figures if Luke wanted to claim a little more than the 160 acres he was allowed under the Homestead Act. Lettie didn't trust Taylor one bit, and she wondered how much money the man was making on the side by accepting money to "alter" deeds and land boundaries.

It mattered little at the moment. Right now, Luke had to decide on the land he wanted to claim in the first place, and as soon as they had come over the last rise and he saw the wide valley stretched out before them, he knew what he wanted. Although there was a dusting of snow over all of it, he could see acres and acres of winter grass. She prayed Taylor was right that the outlaws who roamed these parts usually didn't show up until spring. They needed a place to hole up for the winter without having to spend money on room and board. When Luke had spotted this little cabin across the valley, backed by splendid mountains that seemed to watch over it like sentinels, he was sure they were "home." He had driven the wagon up to the cabin, and now was inspecting it to see if anyone had lived there recently.

Lettie suspected the place was not livable. She watched Luke go inside, waited, weary from the weeks of hard travel it had taken to get here. They had managed to latch onto another wagon train heading out of Fort Laramie north to Billings in Montana Territory. From there the others went on west into the Rockies to look for gold, in spite of the danger of Indian attack. Luke was more interested in claiming land, and the first thing he had done was find the land agent. Taylor's office was nothing more than the corner of a sorry-looking saloon in a settlement that was hardly big enough to be called a town, but the citizens of Billings seemed proud of their accomplishments. Taylor himself was not so proud. He seemed to detest his job and detest the entire area, a government man doing only what he'd been ordered to do.

Lettie was grateful that they had had someone with whom to travel most of the way, since all anyone could talk about was the danger of Indians. So far, no Sioux had given them trouble, but now that she and Luke were alone, she was more frightened than she had been since leaving Fort Laramie to come here. She jumped with alarm then when she heard two gunshots. From the sound of them, they had come from the six-gun Luke wore on his hip, something he had started doing as an extra precaution since they had left Billings.

"Luke!" she called out in alarm. Nathan stirred on her lap, but he did not come fully awake. "What is it!"

She breathed a sigh of relief when he appeared at the doorway, the rifle in his left hand, his six-gun in his right. "Rats," he told her. "I got a couple of them." He turned back inside, reappeared with the dead rodents and tossed them off to the side of the cabin.

Lettie struggled to hide her horror.

"The place looks as though it hasn't been lived in for quite a while," Luke continued, shoving the handgun back into its holster. He stepped off the sagging porch to come back to the wagon. "It's small, but there's a cast-iron heating stove inside, and a small, homemade bed. Nathan can sleep on that. It will keep him up off the floor away from drafts and varmints." He was beside the wagon now, his eyes apologetic. "Don't worry. We'll rig something up to keep
us
off the floor, too. I'll gather some wood and we can get a fire going. It's getting dark. We'll bring in most of the supplies in the morning. I'll tend to the horses and maybe you can get some supper going as soon as we get the stove heated up." He leaned his rifle against the wagon wheel and reached up to take Nathan from her lap so she could climb down.

"Are you sure no one is around?" she asked.

Luke studied the surroundings while Lettie retied her hat against the cold. The only sound was the soft moan of the mountain wind. Lettie wondered if the wind ever stopped blowing in this land. They had not had a still day since before leaving Fort Laramie weeks ago, and sometimes she thought she might go crazy from the constant droning sound and the fact that everything had to be tied or weighted down to keep things from blowing away.

"No tracks anyplace, no food inside the cabin," Luke answered. "If we're lucky, whoever built this place isn't coming back, at least not until spring."

"And what if it's outlaws who want us out?"

Luke turned and handed Nathan back to her. The boy's eyes fluttered open, but he seemed to be too sleepy to realize where he was. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and kept a tight hold on his horse. "I like this area, Lettie. No outlaws are going to chase me out of it. Right now my biggest concern is to get you and Nathan settled inside and get some heat going. I've heard enough about Montana winters to know I have to get busy cutting wood. It's only the last of September, and if it's this cold already, you can imagine what it will be like by January." He saw the concern and fear in her eyes, gave her a light hug. "It's going to be all right, Lettie. I promised you that, didn't I? You have my word that come spring, I'll build you something a lot better than this sorry shack, and I'll have laid claim to all of this and more." He turned from her and walked around to the back of the wagon to remove a couple of carpetbags of clothing and some blankets. "Come on," he told her, his arms full.

Lettie walked ahead of him into the shack, swallowing back an urge to vomit. Never had she been surrounded by so much danger and desolation. She didn't want to hurt Luke by showing her terror, or letting him know how crude and distasteful she found the cabin. She couldn't scream. She could only breathe deeply and make do with what was here. She heard the thud of the carpetbags, watched the blankets land on the small bed where Luke threw them. The bed was plenty long, but very narrow.

She gazed around the cabin, noticed a few cracks between the boards that were sure to let in cold drafts in the winter. Another rat scurried across the floor, and she stepped back. The room was very small, perhaps fifteen feet square, with a potbellied stove in one corner, a few shelves built against one wall, and a crudely built table in the middle of the room, with two crates to serve as chairs. The bed was made from pine, with ropes for springs and no mattress on top. She was glad her mother had given her two feather mattresses before they parted. Never had she longed more fervently to be with her family back at the spacious home they had left behind in St. Joseph, where people lived in reasonable numbers, and anything they needed was close at hand.

She was only vaguely aware when Luke left again. When he returned minutes later with an armload of food and other supplies they would need for the night, she was still standing in the middle of the room looking around in stunned disappointment at the shack. She said nothing when Luke took Nathan from her arms and laid him on a pile of blankets on the bed. Silently, she untied and removed the wool hat she'd been wearing. She was shaken by her sense of doubt, not only over her choice to come to this lonely, desolate place, but also over her decision to marry. She loved Luke, and he had been attentive and caring and protective throughout their dangerous, trying journey to get here; but being his wife meant fulfilling other needs he had not yet demanded of her. This was the first time they had been truly alone since marrying at Fort Laramie. When Luke had slept in the wagon with her, he had only held her. Was he waiting for her to make the first move; or had he patiently been waiting for this moment, when he had her alone? Between the realization that he would surely expect to consummate their marriage now, and the knowledge that she would spend the rest of the winter holed up in this tiny cabin, with rats running over her feet, she felt panic building.