Mary Connealy (79 page)

Leaning over Harv’s blood-soaked form, Sid thought about that beautiful critter this dumb ox had grabbed. All that blond hair stuck there in the middle of that Flathead village. Young and beautiful and feisty and hair glowing like gold.

Hard to blame Harv when Sid had wanted her himself.

But there was golden hair and there was just plain gold. Sid would have killed the woman without hesitation to clear the way to the gold. But he’d wanted those Flathead cleared out of there more and for the only reason Sid was gonna keep Harv alive.

“Grab him, Paddy.” Sid didn’t bother to ask Boog. The man had a bullet in his shoulder. Sid had been half afraid Boog would fall off his horse before they got home, too. But Boog was a hard man to bring down.

Paddy giggled as he swung down. He came up beside Harv. On opposite sides, the two of them hoisted Harv to his feet.

Harv clenched his jaw—his jaw slit by that wild woman’s knife. She’d cut his face and his arm, and she’d opened up wounds on his chest and neck, too. Harvey had to know he was lucky to be alive. “She got my mask off, Sid.” Harv grabbed Sid’s shirtfront in a death grip. “I’m done riding with you if we can’t shut her up.”

“You mean she can identify you?” Sid hadn’t so much as looked at Harv until they’d crossed the Flathead village and gone over the rim of that valley. Sid assumed Harv had pulled his mask down himself, though none of the rest of them did until they were well clear.

Sid’s fingers itched to put a bullet in Harv right now. But Harv had the whole gang over a barrel and knew it. “Yep, we have to shut her up.” It went against his grain to kill a woman. But if it came down to life and death, Sid reckoned he could do whatever was necessary.

Boog rode up beside them, his left arm hanging motionless at his side, blood soaking his shirtfront. His face was sheet white, but he still sat tall and steady in the saddle. “The man who shot me and saved the wild woman saw you, too.”

Sid’s jaw tensed. “You’re sure? No one’s gonna pay much attention to a half-wild woman been living with the Flatheads. But if a white man saw him …”

“I’m sure.”

“You’ll have to lie low awhile, Harv, till we make sure it’s safe.” Unless the cut turned septic and killed him. Save Sid the trouble but lose him a fortune.

Now someone had seen Harv’s face. If the man who’d shot Boog had a sharp eye, he might recognize them even with their faces covered. Western men knew details—boots, guns, saddles, brands. You didn’t always have to see a man’s face to recognize him later.

A gritty sound of pain escaped, but Harvey held his own weight and headed silently for his horse, which Boog had caught and led back. Nursing one arm, Harvey nearly fell as he struggled to remount.

“Just a coupla more miles and we can patch you up.”

Harvey nodded, but he didn’t unclench his jaw to speak.

Sid set a slower pace. There’d been no sign of pursuit, and they’d put hours and mountains between them and that village. They’d circled around the whole mountain valley because the man coming along had forced them to run for it to the west, but this canyon was on the east side of the Flathead village.

But now they could rest.

And plan.

S
he was no longer Glowing Sun.

Her eyes flickered open at that thought. She didn’t know how to be anyone else.

Abby. No last name to her recollection. Just Abby. She’d been ten. Surely she’d known her last name. But her life with her white family had faded completely.

A flash of her white father laid out in his grave came from somewhere deep in her memory, and she wondered how much else was there.

She pushed back the blanket salvaged from the wreckage of her village. As she sat up from where she’d slept near Wild Eagle’s mother, she saw Wade sleeping on the far side of the fire. And no one else. “She’s gone!”

Wade was on his feet, his gun drawn, before Abby had finished speaking. Looking around, seeing no gunmen, he holstered his weapon and rubbed his eyes. “Who’s gone?” But he figured it out before she could answer. “She must have started out for the Bitterroot without us. They can’t go back alone. She’s hurt. The boy couldn’t even walk yesterday.”

“I suppose she decided she’d rather risk death than travel with me.” Abby pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her face against them, closing her eyes against the pain. She’d known she wasn’t her mother-in-law’s choice for Wild Eagle. But Wild Eagle had wanted her, and the woman had accepted it. Only now did the woman show contempt. Maybe with the death of her family, all Wild Eagle’s mother had left was hate and she’d needed to aim it at someone. Abby would never know.

“We’ll catch up to them.” Wade began packing his bedroll. “You can go to the larger village to live.” Wade appeared eager to be rid of her.

“I won’t return to the Salish people. That life is dead to me.” She reached for her hair. Usually she carefully tended it, running a comb through it and braiding it every night. Then upon waking, she let the braid free, combing and braiding it again.

It reached nearly to her waist, and she’d had it unbraided when the men attacked yesterday morning. She’d washed it in the cold creek the night before the attack and let it dry in the spring breeze. Then all day yesterday, after Wild Eagle’s mother’s cruel words, she’d ignored it, hated it. She’d never given a thought to ridding it of its knots. She might as well have a rat’s nest on her head for the snarls.

A sudden bitter wildness gripped her, and she pulled her knife. Hating her hair. Hating that her difference had separated her from the life she loved. She slashed a chunk of snarls away and grabbed for another.

Wade’s running footsteps warned her, and she turned. He caught her hand. “Stop!”

“You like my hair, then?” She slammed the hank of white snarls against his chest. “Take it. I’d been kidnapped for it last time we met. My village had been slaughtered for it. Wild Eagle’s mother hates me for it. My yellow hair affects white men like it is truly gold. It makes you all act like fools. So of course you like it, too, Wade.”

“Glowing Sun, I didn’t—” Wade held on to her knife-wielding hand.

“No!” She pulled against his grip, eager to fight, to rage instead of hurt. “My name is
Abby.
I will
never
answer to my Salish name again. Strike it from your mind.”

Before she could attack, the sound of hoofbeats pulled her eyes toward the rim of the mountain valley.

Two horsemen appeared.

Wade shoved her behind him and pulled his gun with the soft
whoosh
of leather against steel.

They rode silhouetted against the morning sun and appeared only as black shapes, faceless. One led a packhorse behind him.

“Perhaps the men from yesterday have returned.” Abby stepped to his left side. “Perhaps the gold of my hair is too much for the fools to resist.”

Wade reached for her then looked at her knife. A smile spread across his face. A handsome face, Abby realized, though it was lost behind whiskers. And she remembered she’d thought so when they’d been together last fall. And now he seemed to approve of, even enjoy the fact that she’d drawn a knife.

What a strange heart for a white man. Not a brutish coward like those who had attacked her village. She well remembered from last fall that he’d also been kind when other white men had tried to take her from her village. Wade had come along and protected her. Not that she wasn’t doing well at protecting herself, but he’d helped. And he’d been so kind. It was his kindness that had captivated her far more than his looks. His kindness had made her long to stay with him when she was promised to Wild Eagle.

And now he looked like a crazy man, his dark hair flowing, his beard covering every inch of his face. But his kindness was still there in every word and deed.

The disloyalty to Wild Eagle, only hours dead, shocked her into raising her knife toward the men.

“Wade!” one of the men called out.

“Stop!” With a lightning-quick move, Wade caught her hand as she prepared to send her knife whizzing at the intruders. “I know one of them. He’s a friend. Red Dawson. These aren’t the men who attacked you.”

“He is white.” She twisted, trying to escape his grip. “He cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted.”

“You trust me already, Abby. You’re just mad. I don’t blame you.” Wade hung on gamely to Abby’s wrist with his left hand while he holstered his gun with his right. “They mean us no harm.”

Abby had to give Wade credit for not trusting her, because he wrested her knife away from her.

“Ow.” He looked at a quarter-inch slit in his thumb, wiped the blood on his shirt, and arched one brow at her as he tucked the knife into his boot. “Behave yourself.”

Abby wanted to claw his eyes out. The arrival of the two men intervened.

Red pulled up beside Wade and swung down, the other man just a moment behind him. “What happened here?”

The men studied the carnage and the long row of covered bodies stretched out alongside the stream. “Let me go and give me back my knife. Your friends are safe enough.”

Wade gave her a penetrating look then released her and plucked the knife from his boot. “It was a massacre of Glowing Sun’s…uh…Abby’s …” Wade shook his head and ran his hand through his tousled hair. “This was a Flathead village. This woman, Abby, lived with them and was one of the few left alive.” As Wade quickly told them the rest, Abby noticed he’d smeared blood on his forehead; his finger was cut more deeply than she’d realized.

“Glowing Sun?” The other man looked at Abby as he removed his hat. His long brown hair reminded Abby of Wild Eagle. Of course her Salish man’s hair had been longer, but it was as thick.

“I’ve heard of you. I’m Silas Harden. I’m married to Belle Tanner Harden. Some drovers who helped with our cattle drive last fall told of a white woman named Glowing Sun who lived with the Flathead. It must be you.”

“My name is no longer Glowing Sun.” Abby’s eyes narrowed. “With the slaughter of my village, I leave my Salish name behind. My name is Abby. The white name I was born with.”

“So Buck made it to help with the drive?” Wade extended his hand. “I sent him. I’m Wade Sawyer.”

Silas shook Wade’s hand. “Yes, Buck, Roy, Shorty. Roy ended up marrying my daughter Lindsay.”

“Honest?” Wade noticed he was bleeding when he left a streak of blood on Silas’s hand. “He was just a boy.”

Pulling out a handkerchief, Wade pressed the cloth to his wound. Disgusted with his fumbling efforts, Abby jerked the kerchief away from him and tied it tightly against the paltry cut.

“I know.” Silas shook his head and crossed his arms in disgust. “And my daughter was too young. But we couldn’t talk any sense into ’em.”

When Abby was done with her bandaging, she looked up into Wade’s eyes. He’d watched her, his head bent low. Now they were too close. Abby stepped back and to his side.

Silas looked at Abby, but there was no evil in his eyes, not like in the men who’d come yesterday. “They told us about the kidnapping and that Wade had gone after you when you ran off. I’m sorry about your village. Who did this?”

Abby shook her head silently.

“We don’t know.” Wade rubbed his bandaged thumb. “We haven’t had time to turn our thoughts to tracking them down. There were wounded to tend. Two other survivors headed back to the main Flathead village in the Bitterroot Valley. What brings you out this way?”

The redheaded man pulled off his hat. Glowing Sun saw his serious expression and knew this wasn’t a show of manners so much as a sign of respect for whatever news he carried.

“There’s been an accident, Wade. Your pa’s hurt bad. He asked for you. There’ve been people out looking for weeks. No one had seen a sign of you. Then the gap finally opened to the Tanner Ranch—”

“The Harden Ranch,” Silas interrupted. “How long do you think it’s gonna take for you to remember Belle’s married?”

“It’s not that I forget she’s married. You’re standing right here, after all. It’s just hard to break the habit of wondering whether one of her husbands will last.” Red shrugged one shoulder sheepishly.

One of her husbands will last?
Abby had a sudden desire to meet this woman.

“You and half the other people around here.” Silas shook his head, looking disgusted.

“Sorry.”

“Work on it.”

Red turned back to Wade. “Silas knew you’d been up in this country late last winter. The two of us’ve been scouting around for a week. This morning we finally found a trail and backtracked you here. You need to come home, Wade.”

“That’s not my home. Not anymore.”

Abby was struck by how much Wade sounded like her.

“His back is busted up. He got thrown by a mustang out riding alone and lay there through a cold night.”

“My pa fell off his horse?” Wade sounded incredulous.

“He hasn’t been able to walk since. He’s asking for you.”

Wade shook his head. “Not interested.”

Red rested one gloved hand on Wade’s shoulder. “You can always leave again. Going to see him now is the right thing to do.”

“I’ve told you what he’s like. He’s the one who—”

“Wade,” Red said, cutting him off, “honor your mother and your father. It’s as simple as that. Nowhere in that commandment does it say they have to deserve it. He’s a broken man. Come, if only to say good-bye. He doesn’t have long to live.”

“That spiteful old man will live forever.”

For the first time, Glowing Sun realized how young Wade was. She’d thought little of his age. But his words now were the words of a boy, not a man. Abby turned and glared at him. “Your father has asked for a chance to say good-bye. I have lost two fathers. You should cherish the father you still have.”

“Cherish my father?” Wade looked at her, the kindness gone. It made him a different man, cold and empty, a stranger. “My father was a tyrant who…who …”

Wade sighed so deeply, Abby could see his whole body nearly empty of breath. He shook his head as if to clear it and shrugged. “Yes, of course I’ll go. Let’s get packed up.”

“We can split what’s left of our supplies between us and let Abby ride our packhorse.”