Judith E French (5 page)

“This is my wife, Caitlin,” Shane offered.

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. After a slight hesitation, he nodded.

Caitlin hastened to offer a cordial greeting, but the cowboy didn’t smile in return. Instead, he continued to stare at her with a gaze as hostile as Justice’s.

So much for that, Caitlin thought, as Shane drove on to the house. It looked as though it would be Derry and her against all the rest.

“Down! Down!” Derry demanded. She kicked out with both feet and wiggled to be free. She stuck out her bottom lip and scowled. “I want down!”

“Let her go,” Shane said. “If she stays away from the corrals and out of the creek, there’s nothing much to hurt her.”

Caitlin lowered the squirming child to the ground. Derry dropped onto her bottom, and the frown became an expression of delight that widened into a grin. “Klicken!” she squealed. Before Caitlin could get down out of the wagon, Derry darted behind it and charged after a large white duck.

“No! Come back!” Caitlin called. The hem of her dress caught on the corner of the wagon seat. She tugged and heard the material rip. Oh! A surge of regret welled up, but she had no time to stop and examine the damage. She ran after the toddler. “Derry, no!”

“Klicken!” Derry shouted. She dove at the duck and seized a handful of tail feathers. The duck squawked and flapped his wings, then pulled free, leaving Derry holding two soiled white feathers.

The duck flew a few feet off the ground, but crashed
back to earth and waddled furiously away with Derry in hot pursuit.

“Derry!” Caitlin admonished. Before she could reach them, both duck and toddler vanished around the corner of the house.

“Klicken!” Derry shrieked, then broke into a wail of distress.

Caitlin rounded the corner after her.

Derry stood stock-still staring up at a stern-faced, nut-brown woman with a corncob pipe between her teeth.

“Who chasey Mary’s duck?” demanded the woman, snatching the pipe out of her mouth. She shook a slim finger at the child. “You? Ba-ad. Bad chasey duck.”

“I’m sorry.” Caitlin captured Derry’s hand. “She didn’t mean any harm.”

The toddler’s small chin thrust forward, and she shook a finger back at the woman. “No! No!” she said, still clutching the feathers in a tight fist. “My klicken. Berry not bad. You baad!”

“Derry, that isn’t nice.” Caitlin bent and lifted the child in her arms. “She wouldn’t hurt your duck,” Caitlin explained to the woman. “Really. She loves chickens. She thinks it’s a—”

“Duck. Mary’s duck.”

Derry shook her finger at her again. “Mine.”

“It isn’t yours,” Caitlin scolded the child. “And it was bad to pull the duck’s tail.” She glanced back at the woman and forced an embarrassed smile. “I’m Mrs. McKenna. You must be Mary Red Jacket.”

“Hmmpt.” Mary looked at the duck. The creature had taken shelter behind a woodpile and hissed as it preened its ruffled feathers. Apparently satisfied that the bird had taken no serious hurt, the Indian woman scowled at Derry. “Fleurblanche, she lay egg. No happy, no egg.
You wantee eat, no be ba-ad girl, pull Fleurblanche’s tail.”

“Say you’re sorry,” Caitlin coaxed.

“Ba-ad klicken,” Derry pronounced.

Shane appeared at Caitlin’s side. “You need to watch the baby close,” he warned. “She’ll come to no harm chasing a duck in the backyard, but I’ve got an evil-tempered bull in the far pound.” He paused and nodded to the dark-skinned woman. “I see you’ve met Mary.”

“Yes,” Caitlin said.

“Mary, this is my wife, Caity,” Shane continued. “You can show her the house. Put her in the front corner bedroom.”

“Why you not want Missy-Wife in your room, McKenna?”

Shane flushed under his dark tan. “Caity has had a long trip. She needs time to …” He looked at Caitlin helplessly.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’m tired from the journey. It would be a good thing if I could share a room with Derry. Just … just until we’re settled in.” A weight slid from her shoulders. She had hoped he wouldn’t expect them to resume marital relations immediately. “A temporary arrangement,” she stammered.

Shane’s expression of gratitude heartened her, and she smiled at him.

“Mary will look after you,” he said. “Gabe tells me that I’ve got a mare in trouble in the west pasture. It’s her first colt, and she’s been in labor all day. I don’t know how long I’ll be. Mary will find you something to eat.”

“You won’t be sharing the evening meal with us?” Caitlin asked.

“This could take half the night. She’s a good mare. I’d hate to lose her or her colt.”

“Of course, you must see to your horse,” she agreed. “I’ll see that Justice has his supper and—”

“The boy comes with me.”

“But he must be hungry, Shane. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt for Justice to—”

“Stock comes first on Kilronan. If you’re going to be a stockman’s wife, you’d best know that.”

“Yes.” Caitlin nodded, trying not to lose her temper. “Naturally, you must take care of your animals, but I hardly think your livelihood will rise or fall on whether or not a child has his supper before he—”

“Boy eat, then help with horse,” Mary declared. She stuck her pipe back in her mouth and trudged toward the house.

Shane shrugged. “He’d best eat fast, then.”

“You told me that you wanted me to care for Justice as though I were his mother,” Caitlin reminded him.

Scowling, Shane turned his back and strode around the corner of the house.

“Berry hun-gry,” Derry said.

“All right,” Caitlin soothed. “Aunty Cait will find you some supper.”

Mary left the back door ajar, and Caitlin entered a large kitchen with log beams and a massive stone fireplace. A long wooden trestle table, two benches, and a rocking chair were the only furnishings. The floor was bare planks; the area in front of the hearth, stone. Two windows were tightly shuttered.

Gloomy, Caitlin thought, looking around. Gloomy as a bat’s cave and none too clean. She smelled something cooking and glanced at the kettle hanging over the coals. Her stomach gurgled. “Oh, excuse me,” she said.

“Missy-Wife eat,” Mary ordered. She took two battered tin plates from a wall cupboard and bent over the hearth. The pipe, unlit, remained firmly in Mary’s mouth.

“We need to wash,” Caitlin said. “Derry’s hands are—”

“There.” The woman pointed to a stone sink in the corner.

“Thank you.” Caitlin led Derry to the sink. To Caitlin’s surprise, there was a continuous flow of water from a pipe attached to the wall. “How lovely,” she said, using her hands to splash Derry’s dusty face. “Where does the water come from?”

“Spring.”

“The water runs all the time?” Caitlin washed the child’s hands and looked around for a towel. Since there seemed to be no drying cloths, Caitlin ushered Derry to the table.

“Good spring.” Mary placed the two plates none too gently on the scarred table. She removed her pipe long enough to say, “Stew hot. Eat.”

“But Justice? Shane said that he could—”

“Eat,” Mary ordered. “Mary take care of boy.”

Derry grabbed a spoon and dipped into the lumpy gray stew.

“Grace first,” Caitlin reminded her. Quickly she offered a blessing and then nodded to the child. Derry began to spoon the food into her mouth.

“Good,” Mary pronounced as she dropped a flat pancake beside each plate. “Bread. Eat.”

Caitlin offered another silent prayer that the swill would be edible and took a taste. To her surprise, it tasted delicious. The bread, however, was hard and flavorless.

Mary stared at them for a few moments, then produced a slab of roast beef and sawed off several generous slices. Taking the meat and a handful of the bread rounds, she left the kitchen by the back door.

Caitlin surveyed the room in dismay. Dusty herbs and a haunch of dried meat hung from the overhead beams. The cracks between the floorboards were filled with dirt.
The only cooking utensils seemed to be the battered stew kettle, a long-handled frying pan, a Dutch oven, and a blackened tin coffeepot.

“What have we come to, baby?” she murmured, absently stroking Derry’s dark tousled curls.

Derry smiled up at her. “Mama,” she said.

“Aunty Cait,” Caitlin corrected gently.

Derry shook her head firmly. “Mama.”

Caitlin sighed. “Mama,” she agreed. “Why not? Someone might as well be happy in this house.”

In the barn, Shane tightened the cinch on his saddle and thrust his boot into the leather stirrup. As he swung up onto his second favorite horse, a leggy roan gelding, he noticed a movement in the shadows. “Justice?”

“Oui.”

When he was troubled, Shane noted that the boy used backwoods French that he’d learned from his mama. “You unharness the team like I told you, boy?”

Justice nodded.

The last light of a fading day cast a pool of liquid sunshine through the open doorway. Shane could see that Justice’s eyes were red. Justice never cried, not even when they’d watched his mother’s body lowered into the ground. “What’s wrong, son?”

The boy chewed at his lower lip. Shane dismounted, crossed the distance between him and Justice, and laid a gloved hand on the child’s shoulder. Justice flinched, but not as much as he had when he’d first come to live at Kilronan, and he didn’t back away.

“I don’t want her here.” Justice kicked at a heap of straw.

“Caity’s a good woman. You’ll like her if you give her half a chance.”

“She don’t like me.”

Justice looked up into Shane’s eyes, and he read the fear and uncertainty flickering in the boy’s gaze. “You don’t know that. It never pays for a man to make quick judgments on people.”

The boy’s dark eyes—his mother’s eyes—took on the sheen of wet obsidian. “I hate her. Her and her whining brat.” He kicked the dirt again with a scuffed boot. “We was doin’ all right by ourselves.”

Shane swallowed, trying to dissolve the constriction in his throat. He wanted to pull the kid into his arms and reassure him with a hug, but he knew better than to try. Justice was as wary as a coyote about letting anyone too close.

“This is hard for you,” Shane said. “It’s hard for me, and for Caity, too. Change is always difficult, but I sent for Caity because I thought it would be good for all of us.”

“Still think that?”

Shane cleared his throat. Justice was a kid, but he’d always treated him like a man. He’d never lied to him or tried to pretty up an unpleasant truth, and he didn’t want to start now. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “It’s too soon for me to tell.”

“You shoulda left her over the salt water, her and her fancy clothes and her fancy talk. Kilronan ain’t no place fer them. They’re trouble.”

“If they don’t fit in, we’ll know soon enough. Until then, trust me to do what’s right.” He lifted the boy’s chin. “And act decent, do you hear? Give her respect—for my sake if not for hers.”

Justice sighed and his shoulders slumped. “If she had to have a kid, why not a boy? Girls are useless.”

Shane allowed himself the hint of a smile. “You may not think that when you’re older.” Then he made his voice stern. “I expect you to play a man’s part, Justice. A
man protects women, whether he approves of them or not.”

“Like you an’ Cerise?”

Justice had the knack of asking questions that sliced straight to the gut. He struggled with the urge to shake the hell out of the kid. Instead, he swore under his breath and knotted his hands into tight fists.

A hard fist or a kick in the ribs was Shane’s own father’s way, but it wouldn’t work with Justice any more than it had worked with him. He’d never struck the boy and he never would; Justice had suffered enough of that treatment from his mother.

“I failed her, Justice. I couldn’t protect her when she needed me,” Shane admitted. “But I swear to you, I’m not the one who stabbed her.”

Justice met his gaze and held it, his features immobile, his mouth tight.

“You believe me, don’t you?” Shane asked him.

“Yes, sir.”

The answer was the right one, but Shane wasn’t sure it was truthful. He nodded. “Run to the kitchen. Mary will have something for you to eat. When you’re finished, you can ride out to the west pasture and give us a hand with the mare. Deal?”

“Deal.” Justice grinned.

The boy’s words troubled Shane as he rode away from the farmyard. Maybe Justice was right. Maybe bringing Caitlin to Missouri was the biggest mistake of his life. Shane only knew that he was bone weary of being alone.

Other men had a woman to listen to their dreams and walk with in the twilight. Caitlin was his wife, for all that she’d betrayed him and cheated him out of two years’ hard-won wages when she hadn’t come the first time he’d sent for her.

But she had come this time, and that should be an end
to the hard feelings on his part. She’d hurt him bad, but a man couldn’t move on with life if he wasn’t willing to put the past behind him.

As he’d told her, they were husband and wife in God’s eyes. He wanted to bring legitimate children into the world. He wanted to put down roots for those that would come after him. He wanted the McKenna name to stand for something solid in Missouri.

There were a dozen good reasons why it would have made more sense to find himself an Indian squaw who wouldn’t shirk at the hard work and who wouldn’t care if their union was common-law. Many white men did it, rough men, those who lived on the fringes of white society.

He guided his horse alongside a gate and slipped the rope tie off the post. He pushed the gate open, rode through, and then backed the roan up to secure the fence. Dusk was falling fast, but he didn’t need daylight to find his way around Kilronan.

God but he loved every inch of it, briars, rocks, and gullies. This land demanded sweat and blood if he was ever going to make it into a prime spread. Oh, Kilronan had beauty aplenty, what with her rich soil, abundant water, and lush grass. But there were trees to cut, fences to build, horses and mules to break.

Livestock was his cash crop, and providing prime animals for the Oregon Trail trade wasn’t the easiest way for a man to earn a living. He had no spare time or money to make life easy for a gentle-bred woman.

Which was just what he’d spent every cent he had in the world to bring here. Caitlin had never done a hard day’s work in her life. She had a fair face and a figure that would turn any man’s head. She could sing and play the harp. She could stitch fancy needlework and recite poetry. None of which were worth spit on Kilronan.