Breed True (17 page)

When the three came in and sat down to the meal, they looked at Dawn curiously and then ignored her too. That confirmed what Julie had suspected—the men were not accustomed to being around females and treated them all like strange creatures they'd just discovered.

She set a plate of flapjacks on the table and targeted Rowdy with her question. She'd already discovered that he was the weak link. He liked to talk. "Where is Mr. Hawks?"

Rowdy had a pancake speared and answered automatically. "Dunno. He and Dakota were up and gone before first light."

The other two men offered no information, but Dan Two-Horse spoke softly to the woman by the window, and she answered in the same language.

He relayed the information, looking directly at Julie for the first time since she'd been on Hawks Nest Land. "She says he went looking for a cow—for the babies."

"Oh." There was a storm; she hadn't thought that he would be that determined, or that foolish. Her stomach knotted painfully at the evidence of his obsessive focus.

Her face heated. She was embarrassed that they all knew why a cow was being procured.

"Might be awhile till he gets back," Navajo Leonard looked at Dan Two-Horse, but his words were for her ears. "Take some doing to find a cow with calf this time of year."

"Yep," Rowdy snorted. "We might not see him again till spring thaw." And Julie realized that they were, in some strange male way, teasing her.

Hesitantly, she spoke to them. "Would you ask her what her name is and tell her my name is Julie Fulton"—she hesitated—"Julie Fulton Hawks, and I would be pleased if she would join me for the morning meal." It didn't occur to her until much later that she'd taken her old name back. Sometime in the month that she'd lived with Grady Hawks, he'd erased Jewel Rossiter from the fabric of her being.

But the men remained silent as though considering her request, and Julie was afraid she'd pushed too hard again. They finished their food, pulled on coats and hats, and headed for the door. As they left, Dan Two-Horse spoke to the woman in a rapid burst of sound Julie longed to be able to understand.

The woman turned from the window and answered him, looking all the time at Julie.

"Says her name is Dawn, and she will eat with you." Dan Two-Horse was out the door leaving her
thank you
said to his backside.

Julie had a name to work with—that would do. "Dawn, won't you break your fast with me?"

The women ate side by side, cleared the table silently, and then as one moved to clean the floor of the muddy tracks left by the ranch hands.

Julie felt at ease bringing the girls to the big room, now that it was clear that Grady Hawks was fetching a milk cow. Her aversion to having her children drink from another woman's breast made no sense, but it was strong.

Apparently, Dawn had the same aversion to feeding a baby not her own. In agreement on the milk cow, that barrier was removed, and the women relaxed in each other's company, each standing in front of the window, with a twin on her hip, watching for the men to come home.

Each girl took right off to having a woman all to herself. Julie was, at first, jealous that Emma didn't reach for her when Dawn held her. But the novelty of having another woman to hand a baby to overrode her fears and anxiety, and she hummed to herself, soothed by Dawn's calm presence.

When the babies began to fuss and announce their hunger, Julie sat on the bench in front of the fire and unbuttoned her dress. Dawn held Amy and sat on the bench next to Julie and Emma. As Julie put the baby to her breast to feed, Dawn sighed sadly and pulled up her loose top.

As Julie looked on with horror, Amy latched on to Dawn's teat and suckled, happy with her meal. The tears of sorrow that rolled down the Indian woman's face prevented the harsh words that Julie would have shouted.

And then she realized that she was crying also. She sat beside Dawn, feeding one twin, while the fragile Indian woman fed the other.

They rocked the babies to a shared melodious tune that had no words, no ending, and no beginning, and wept their unhappiness together. They were still there when the cabin door slammed open, and Grady Hawks and Dakota returned.

"We put the cow in the barn." Those were the first words from Grady Hawks' mouth.

When he realized what he was seeing, his voice trickled to a stop in mid-sentence.

Dakota stumbled against him, pushing him into the room.

Julie looked at him sadly. The past month had quickly filled each day with things that needed done, and Grady Hawks had accepted her services, first with grudging approval and later with respect. He was a hard man, strange in ways she didn't understand, but his determination to get her with child superseded everything else.

Julie's
what-ifs
game seemed foolish now.
What-if
it could be a real marriage, one that brought a child when the time was right, not from a forced breeding program?
What-if
Emma and Amy could grow up the respected daughters of a Texas rancher?

Her feelings, emotions she'd kept repressed to survive, had ruled her. His intimacies had kept her in a confused state. When he was alone with her, he changed from the grim rancher to a man of passion. She'd told herself that she hated his touch but couldn't deny that her body relished it.

And then there was the truth that Grady Hawks made her feel safe for the first time in years. He'd protected her the night of Frank's death, and he'd taken her daughters into his home without question.

She'd felt him stealing her resistance, but had been unable to stop his siege. That he had finally completed their coupling should not have surprised her. It was why she'd been hired.

She'd been silly, playing a child's game of wishful thinking. But when he'd been so intent on his goal he'd suffered a storm to get a cow to bring her fertility back, it was a splash of cold reality.

He had made it difficult to remember that her role in his household was temporary, but she wouldn't forget again. As she ended one phase of her motherhood, she turned her thoughts from
what-ifs
and accepted what was.
I have eleven more months to endure.

Chapter Fourteen

Winter settled in with an icy blast that kept Grady out of the cabin and digging out steers. The snow continued for days, leaving the ground frozen and leftover fall grasses buried. Hawks Nest riders spent from dawn to dusk herding the animals into protected areas for shelter from the storm, where hay could be hauled to them.

Grady had more than one occasion to be thankful for the extra shadow-hands that rode his land. Without them, he stood to lose half of his herd.

It was the special cattle that he had tucked away in a holding pen that he worried about the most. Henry Hawks had imported the red Hereford bull from New England and paid a fortune for him. But, he'd survived last year's mild winter and proven his potency when the longhorn cows had dropped their mixed breed calves in the spring.

Grady watched to see if they would survive Texas.

"Henry would be proud." Dan Two-Horse gazed down at the number of red cattle milling around the hay that had been scattered for their feed. The Herefords were stocky, and therefore beefier than the rangy longhorns. They had more meat on them and were less trouble, forgoing the wild behavior of their long-horned cousins.

"The real question," Grady's face was grim, "is will they be able to live on their own without this pampering."

Most of the longhorns were scattered over the open range, and in spite of their attempts to get hay and feed to them, the storm had limited Grady's access.

"You worry too much about what you can't control. Enjoy the sight of your father's dream come true. It'll be spring soon, and this bunch will make a good start for herd building."

Grady knew his cousin spoke true. It was foolish to worry about what he couldn't control.

"And your other breeding program—how goes it, Grady?" Dan Two-Horse was an enigma. Some called him a magician—others a
whisperer
.

Whatever he was called, the truth was Dan had a way with animals, especially horses, like nothing Grady had ever seen. No matter how crazed or devil-filled, Dan could gentle the animal, leaving the owner with a dependable mount.

Grady had taken his marital advice and coaxed his distrustful wife into passion. That thought brought a frown of regret to his face. He'd let Hamilton Quince's visit rile him.

He shouldn't have forced Julie to wean the twins. Nothing had been the same since. But the thought of her leaving the ranch—leaving him—had clouded his judgment.

He knew she'd never leave a baby behind, so he'd been in a rush to put one inside of her. Unfortunately, his hindsight was perfect, and he knew he'd handled things wrong, but he had no way to rectify the error.

Grady studied Dan hopefully. He'd be damned if he would admit to his cousin that he'd messed things up with his wife, but if the man wanted to share some more of his horse sense, Grady was willing to listen.

Dan was in demand and was gone most of the time, three seasons of the year. It was only in the winter months that he and his cousin saw each other. Usually, Dan bunked down in the cabin with Grady. This year, the cabin was full of females.

"Women are not like men." It was the only thing he could think to say in answer to Dan's question.

Dan clapped him on the back and laughed aloud. "At last you noticed."

"I noticed," he muttered. Julie and Dawn had changed the cabin. He couldn't even count the ways. It had started with the rugs.

"I took those cloth rags from the barn," she'd told him after dinner one night. He didn't know what she was talking about, but it was so rare that she struck up a conversation he'd given it his full attention.

"I washed them, and Dawn and I are braiding them into floor rugs." He'd mumbled some stupid answer that must have been an okay, because she'd nodded and gone back to her bread making.

And then, the feed-sack material he'd stacked to sell back to the Mercantile in Eclipse, had disappeared. He told Dan Two-Horse, "She put curtains at the windows."

He asked his cousin. "Why cut a hole in the wall to look out, and then cover it with feed sacks?"

Dan said, "Women are a mystery, cousin, but you're lucky to have found such a fine woman. Your children will be blessed if they have her beauty and not your ugly face."

"It's been almost two months." His frown spoke volumes. It had taken less time than he'd thought for her milk to disappear. He was impatient for her to get with child. He needed a son, but he needed her more. In his mind, one got him the other. He was just confused about which came first.

She'd cried at night when she thought him asleep, but she'd never turned away from him or refused his touch. And he'd touched a lot—after the first night, he'd become insatiable. He shifted uneasily in his saddle, his groin area suddenly tight with the memory of her heat the night before.

"
Cetan Nagin
," Dan scolded him using his Apache name—
Shadow Hawk
. "Do you think to breed this woman as if she is one of your cows?"

"Same principle," he grunted.

"Maybe you don't know what you're doing,
Cetan
." Dan laughed at him.

Grady pulled his mount around and navigated the slippery slope down to the boxed corral that contained a hundred and fifty head of bawling mix-breed cattle and the prize bull his father had imported. "Breed true for me," his murmured request was as much for his wife as it was for his bull.

If that was incongruous, so be it. He fixed on his original purpose for this whole charade because he didn't understand how to keep the treasure he'd unexpectedly claimed and having a white son from her fixed both things. He couldn't lose sight of the fact that the legislature in Austin was back in session and debating the Indian Allotment and Relocation Act.

Ambrose Quince was there, representing ranchers from this side of the state. Grady trusted the Quince brothers more than most men outside his ranch and friends. But in his mind, it was better to remove any future doubt about who owned the land. When his son was born, he would deed his share of Hawks Nest to him.

Dan brought his horse alongside Grady, not finished with his advice. "You need to learn your woman. Do you talk to her? Do you give her presents?"

"She doesn't want to talk." And then he added, "There's no time alone to have conversation."

It was an irritant of small matter, but the crowding of the cabin bothered him. Dakota did not leave his woman when he wasn't working. Dawn didn't leave the babies, so Dawn and Dakota occupied the big room all evening. The two of them sat close, communicating without words.

Sometimes, Grady sat alone, watching them, and felt like an outsider in his own home. After Julie put the girls into the crib he'd made for them, she worked in the kitchen and ignored everyone. Even if she allowed it, there was no place to take her for those moments of intimacy he'd enjoyed in the first month. He almost groaned aloud, remembering the taste of her.

Dan tapped his head and spoke to him in Kiowa. "You sleep in the same bed. Talk to her there."

Grady resented his cousin's words; at the same time, he mulled them over on the way home.

When he walked through the cabin, two hours later, after he'd bedded down the horses for the night and fed the rest of the livestock, he stood amazed anew at the cabin's transformation.

Curtains, rugs, children—the twins were toddling and were everywhere they shouldn't be. Dawn had produced a
Gunpiiudai
, and Julie had hung the Kiowa protector talisman over the hallway door.

And when he let his gaze rest on Julie, he pondered her change as well. Her hair had grown and now hung midway down her back. She wore it pulled back in the leather thong he'd tied it in the first day. It shone with health, and he knew she brushed it with vigor at night because when he came to bed, sometimes it seemed to crackle with life.

But
she doesn't.
The thought soured in his mind. His wife would have hung from the rafters and serviced him if he'd asked. She was ever accommodating, never complaining.