Cherish (43 page)

Cutter Gulch, Colorado
1876—nearly eight years later

Folding the letter into its envelope and stowing it in the
reticule that dangled from her wrist, Rebecca Ann Spencer smiled over the news she’d just received from the church farm in Santa Fe. All was well with the Brothers in Christ, according to Nessa Patterson. George Hess and his ruthless hired guns were still in prison. The farm had shown a profit again this last year, which was good, and Samuel Stevens, one of Rebecca’s dearest lifelong friends, had finally gotten married last June to Molly Parker, a lovely girl who Rebecca felt sure would make him a wonderful life partner. Nessa had also sent word that Henry Rusk’s wife, Arlene, had recently presented him with a third child, a beautiful baby girl. Rebecca would always feel a special fondness for Henry, who might have become her husband if things had gone differently. It was so good to know that he was as happy with his life as she was and that all the people who had once made up her world were doing so well.

Firmly taking each of her sons by the hand, Rebecca walked briskly along, the hem of her specially made, doeskin riding skirt snapping saucily with each tap of her boot heels on the boardwalk. She was running late for a luncheon date with a very handsome and extremely important man, her husband of exactly eight years. To mark the
occasion, they would celebrate with Pete and the children over lunch, and then tonight they would have a private candlelight supper for just the two of them.

“Ma, what’s an annie versey?” seven-year-old Zachariah Spencer asked. “Am I gonna have one when I grow up?”

Rebecca was about to answer when five-year-old Abe piped in and said, “You get ever’ darned thing, Zachariah. I’m gonna get the annie versey. Pa said!”

“Huh-uh! He never!”

Smiling, Rebecca glanced down at each of her long-legged, sable-haired sons. By some odd quirk of Mother Nature, they had inherited only one physical trait from their mother, her sky-blue eyes, which were almost startling in contrast to their dark skin. Otherwise, they greatly resembled their father, both possessing his strong, chiseled features, sturdy build, and lazy, loose-hipped stride. The little stinkers even had Race Spencer’s crooked grin, which still made Rebecca’s pulse quicken when he flashed it in her direction. They were both going to be devastatingly attractive men, just like their pa.

“I have a feeling you will both celebrate many an anniversary,” she said with a chuckle. “If you don’t grow up so wild and ornery that you scare all the girls off, that is. Keep on as you are, and to find a wife, you’ll both have to hogtie a girl and pack her back to the ranch across the rump of your horse!”

“A girl?” Zachariah pretended to retch. “Havin’ Rachel and Sarah underfoot is bad enough! I ain’t packin’ home no wife! I’ll let you have the annie versey, Abe. If there’s a female attached, I’m runnin’ the other way.” Zachariah glanced up. “Except for you, Ma. For a female, you aren’t too bad.”

“Well, thank you. I think.” Rebecca laughed as she stepped down off the boardwalk to cross the alley. “I’ll remind you of your present sentiment about females in about twenty years, young man. We’ll see how you feel—”

A muffled scream from somewhere in the alley brought Rebecca reeling to a halt. Releasing the boys’ hands, she cupped a palm over her eyes to peer into the gloom be
tween the buildings. What she saw made her heart stutter in her chest. Two very rough-looking men had an Indian woman on the ground, and though Rebecca couldn’t see clearly, it appeared to her that they were trying to rape her. Her chest went cold. She threw a frightened glance up the street, then glanced back over her shoulder. It being Sunday, the shops were closed, and there wasn’t another soul on the boardwalk in either direction.

“Zachariah, listen to me,” she said in a low, no-nonsense voice. “I want you to take Abe by the hand and run like the very devil to the hotel restaurant. Tell your pa and grandpa Pete where I am and that I’m in trouble. Can you do that?”

Zachariah stared, wide-eyed, into the gloom. “Ma, what’re those men doin’?”

“A very bad thing.” She caught her elder son’s face between her hands. “Zachariah,
go
! Tell your pa I need him, faster than fast! Hurry, sweetie.”

Zachariah jutted his chin, looking very like his father when he turned stubborn about something. “No! I ain’t leavin’ you!” He leaned around to look at his smaller brother. “Abe, you run for Pa! He’s at the restaurant! You tell him to come quick. I’m stayin’ here to watch after Ma!”

Rebecca grabbed her son’s arm and gave him a shake. “You’ll do as I say, young man!” Even as she spoke, she heard Abe’s small feet beating a rapid tattoo down the boardwalk toward the hotel. “Oh, lands! Zachariah, I swow, you’re Spencer stubborn and twice as ornery!” She pointed at the ground. “Don’t you move from this spot. Do you hear me? Not one inch. If I holler out, you start yelling at the top of your lungs for help. But you stay put!”

“All right, Ma.”

Rebecca straightened, wiping her suddenly damp palms on her riding skirt.
Oh, God
. As she started into the alley, the sudden lack of sunlight made her blood run cold. She wanted nothing more than to turn and run to get Race herself. Going down there, empty-handed, to confront two
possibly drunk, mean-natured men wasn’t very smart. But just as her footsteps faltered, Rebecca heard a child crying. Her heart caught, and she broke into a run.

She’d covered only a few feet when she saw several two-by-fours of varying lengths leaning against the building, scrap wood, she guessed, from recent repairs that had been done to the boardwalk. She paused just long enough to grab one of the boards, then proceeded down the alley.

Stopping about six feet shy of the struggling trio, Rebecca straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, hid the two-by-four behind her back, and cried, “Gentlemen, desist this
instant
!”

The two would-be rapists whirled in startlement to stare at her. Rebecca could smell the whiskey on them even at a distance. The terrified squaw tried to jerk down her skirt and wriggle away, but one of the men had a firm grip on her ankles and was holding her legs spread wide. The sight made Rebecca want to vomit. Standing a few feet farther down the alley, just beyond the adults, was a tiny Indian girl whom Rebecca guessed to be about four, her daughter Sarah’s age. The child was so terrified, she had lost control of her bladder and drenched her little moccasins. Rivulets of urine had made tracks in the dust that filmed her skinny brown legs.

“Who’n hell are you?” one of the drunks demanded to know.

Rebecca stared at his unshaven face. Tobacco juice had run from the corners of his mouth and dried in the creases of his whiskery chin. She’d seen him trying to kiss the poor Indian woman. Rebecca wondered how the poor thing was keeping her gorge down. These two were filthy, vile excuses for men, if ever she had seen any.

“I, sir, am Mrs. Race Spencer! And I demand that you release that woman. Now!”

“Go away and mind your own business, lady. We just bought this here squaw, and we’ll do what we damned well want with her!”

Over my dead body, Rebecca thought. She kept her vow to herself, however. If Race had stressed anything while teaching her to defend herself, it had been to em
ploy the element of surprise to best advantage when she pitted her strength against men.

She tightened her grip on the two-by-four. If these no-accounts persisted in their activities, they were about to get a surprise, all right. Possibly the biggest surprise of their lives.

“Gentlemen, I shall ask you one more time. Do, please, desist!”

The men ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken. Rebecca remembered Race once assuring her that he wasn’t planning to tear into her like two dogs fighting over a bone. That was exactly how these two men were going after the poor Indian woman, as if she were a morsel to be fought over and devoured. They cared not a whit about the terrified little girl who watched them mistreating her mother. Knowing that Race had once witnessed a similar atrocity being inflicted upon his Indian mother, Rebecca grew more furious by the second, determined that this situation was going to end much more happily for both child and mother.

Rebecca drew the two-by-four from behind her, positioned her hands at one end for good swinging power, and waded in.
Never back off. Give no quarter. Go for blood, darlin
’. Rebecca’s first swing, which she executed with all her strength and every ounce of her weight, caught the man nearest her alongside his head. He sprawled sideways, bawling like a castrated calf. On her backward swing, Rebecca caught the other man squarely on the chin. His eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled, finally granting her request and desisting, as she had so politely asked him to do, not just once, but twice.

Before Rebecca could execute another swing with the two-by-four, the first man regained his senses and dove at her legs, catching her around the knees. The board flew from her hands, she fell backward on the ground, and he crawled up her sprawled body, nearly suffocating her with his fetid breath.

“You want some of the same, you stupid bitch!” he roared, grabbing the lapels of her blouse. “I can have the
squaw any old time. Ain’t often I get to sample a fine thing like you!”

Just as the man’s hands settled over Rebecca’s breasts, something small and dark cannoned into him, knocking him backward. “You take your filthy hands off my ma!”

Zachariah! Rebecca scrambled to her feet, horrified. Her seven-year-old son was swinging his arms like a windmill in a high gale, his little fists pummeling the man in a hail of blows. Rebecca retrieved her board, terrified her child might be harmed. With all her might, she hit the man over the head. He didn’t go down. She hit him again. And still he didn’t go down. Just then, the other man revived and came to his knees. He would have tackled Rebecca, but the little Indian girl, taking her cue from Zachariah, leaped onto his back like a crazed little badger, reaching around to claw at his eyes and sinking her teeth into his ear. Rebecca went back to work on Zachariah’s opponent. The fourth time she beaned the man, he went down like a felled pine tree, out cold.

Zachariah sat astraddle him, his small fists doubled, his lips snarled to show his teeth, his blue eyes fiery. He looked for all the world as if he’d whipped the man completely by himself.

Rebecca turned her attention to the other man, ordering the little girl to get out of the way. The instant the child leaped from the fellow’s back, Rebecca swung with the board, nailing him along his jaw. He fell face first to the ground and didn’t move.

Silence
. Rebecca stood there for a moment, ready to bean both men if they so much as twitched. Neither did. When she deduced that they were unconscious, she leaned her club against the building and hunkered down beside the poor Indian woman, who had obviously endured some cuffing and rough handling. After helping her to sit up, Rebecca began checking her for injuries.

“Are you badly hurt, dear heart?” she asked.

The woman didn’t reply. Rebecca guessed she spoke no English and, after studying her a moment, decided she must be a Cheyenne. Since the Sand Creek Massacre, the Cheyennes were a downtrodden lot. Rebecca wasn’t at all
surprised that some no-account white man had taken advantage of the Cheyenne people’s misfortune to buy himself a squaw. The Indians believed the price paid for a woman to her family was her “bride price,” the reverse of a dowry, and that a purchased girl was going to be a white man’s honored wife. Unfortunately, most white men didn’t see it quite that way and, after buying an Indian woman, treated her like chattel, working her like a slave and lending her to his friends. It was a horrible fate for any woman, and one that Rebecca sorely wished never occurred.

The child looked as if she might be a half-breed. Rebecca turned on the balls of her feet and held out an arm to her. “Come here, sweetness. It’s all right now. Those mean men aren’t going to hurt your ma anymore. I give you my solemn oath.”

Some gestures were evidently universal, the offer of a hug being one of them. The little girl ran straight into Rebecca’s arms and clung to her, still shaking with fear. Just then Race appeared at the end of the alley. He swung Sarah down from her perch on his shoulders and ran toward his wife and elder son. Pete arrived seconds later with Rachel and Abe in tow. Leaving all three children standing between the two sections of boardwalk, the wiry ranch foreman hurried to follow Race.

“What happened!” Race roared when he took in the scene. “My God, Rebecca Ann, are you all right?”

The poor squaw quailed in fright, flattening herself against the wall. Rebecca felt the child in her arms begin to shake more violently. “Race, sweetheart, please, don’t yell. You’re frightening them half to death.” Choosing her words carefully out of regard for her son’s innocence, Rebecca told Race and Pete the story. “I couldn’t just walk away, so Abe ran for help.”

Race glanced at the unconscious men. “Help? You wantin’ me to haul ’em over to see Doc? Or should we just bury ’em?”

Zachariah chortled with laughter. “You should’ve seen her, Pa. She flat walloped the sand right out of ’em with that board!”

“Your son didn’t make a bad showing of himself, either,” Rebecca said proudly. Nodding toward one of the unconscious men, she said, “He knocked him off me and pounded his face. I didn’t know he could take up for me like that.”

After running his big hands over Rebecca to make certain she was unharmed, Race hunkered down and tousled Zachariah’s hair. “Good work, son. I thank you for stayin’ to watch after your ma. I guess you’re growin’ up, ain’t you?”

Rebecca smiled when her husband’s dark gaze turned back to her. He cupped her chin to tip her face and better examine it. “You sure you’re okay, darlin’?”

The husky concern in his voice caught at Rebecca’s heart. On this, their eighth anniversary, she would have expected their love for each other to have become complacent and less consuming. But if anything, their feelings ran deeper, their passion as easily kindled as it had been at the first, if not more so. He caught her gaze, and for a moment, they regarded each other, communicating without words, the warmth in his eyes telling her how very much he loved her. She thought her answering smile probably sent him the same message in return. He feathered his thumb over her cheek, then looked back at their son.