Mary Connealy (89 page)

Frowning, Wade reached his hand down for Abby and she swung up in front of him. It was her designated place, after all.

“If you’re right and it wasn’t one of your people, then who else would know how a Flathead arrow looks?” Wade asked.

“My village is…was solitary, and only a small group of us spent summers in that valley. Years ago my Flathead father and Wild Eagle’s father defied the rest of the tribe. We would go with our tribe for the winter, but in the summer we returned to our ancestors’ hunting grounds. The rest of our people live far to the south all the time, but the land is not so fair as our high mountain meadow. We hunt and fish and live quietly there. We don’t run off livestock or steal horses. We have never harmed anyone, but neither do we mix with the whites or trade with them. Knowing how we make our arrows wouldn’t be common knowledge.”

They reached the outcropping of rock. “There’s a very good chance then that there is only one group of whites who would have access to one of your arrows.” Wade swung off the horse then reached up to lift Abby down before she could tell him she’d manage fine on her own.

“The men who killed my people.”

“Yes.” Wade lowered her to the ground. “And I’ve made men angry enough that they might want to harm me here on the M Bar S, so somehow my ranch hands might have knowledge of your people. A lot of ’em are new. If they rode the mountain trails, they could have come upon your people. Their anger could explain the burrs under my saddle and even someone taking a shot at me. But why you? Why both of us together? The only thing we’ve done together is see that man and face your angry mother-in-law.”

Abby frowned. “What is that word, ‘mother-in-law’? What does it mean?”

“Your husband, Wild Eagle—his mother is your mother-in-law.”

Abby nodded slowly. “But Wild Eagle wasn’t my husband. We were to be wed at midsummer.”

Wade stopped studying the crags above and turned to her. “You told me he was your husband. Was he or wasn’t he?”

Abby shrugged then pointed upward. “He would have needed to be about there?”

Wade caught her by the shoulder and turned her to face him.

“What?” She scowled, annoyed at being interrupted from her search for a path up the steep rocks.

“Were you married to Wild Eagle or not?”

Abby tried to sort the vague meaning of his words. “We were…to be married. He had spoken for me and the marriage was coming very soon. As soon as we settled in our summer grounds.”

Wade’s hand stayed on her shoulder. He looked into her eyes in a way that made Abby allow his touch when she should have shaken him off. “I…I’m sorry for your loss. You must have loved him very much.”

“Love is…it is not a reason among my people to marry. At least not for me. I was treated well by the Flatheads, but I was not one of them and they never let me forget it. It was not a choice for me to marry him. Even less so because of my white heritage. In fact, I am much too old by my village’s standards to be marrying for the first time. And I might not have ever been accepted as a wife if Wild Eagle hadn’t wanted me after his first wife died. I was given an order. Wild Eagle was to be the future chief of our village. He could have any woman he chose. It was an honor that he chose me.”

The concern and kindness in his eyes drew Abby in, made her want to look closer, deeper. Her body swayed, and possibly Wade helped her along because she was closer to him. His grip, with those gentle hands, was firm and compelling.

“Abby.” His voice was a whisper, so soft it seemed to come from inside her, from her own thoughts and feelings. “Do you mourn him?”

Against her will, her head shook just a bit, just enough to warm his gaze.

“Did you let him into your heart, or is there room in there for another?”

She opened her mouth to reply, not sure what that answer would be, but his lips touched hers, brushing softly as if a butterfly had passed by.

Drawing in a sudden breath from the enticement of those lips, Abby waited, watched. Then her eyes drifted closed and the butterfly returned and landed.

After seconds passed, Wade lifted his head and studied her. “I’ll take that for an answer that there is room. For me.”

Her eyes opened and her mind began to work again…and her ability to reason. She took two quick steps back and crossed her arms. “That should not have happened.”

“You’re right.”

“You will stay away from…I’m right?”

“Yes, you’re a guest in my home. It’s not proper that such as that kiss passed between us. I will explain things to Gertie when we get home, and she will become more than the housekeeper. She’ll become a chaperone. I won’t dishonor you, Abby. But my feelings for you …” He looked back at his hat. “I won’t ignore them either.”

At the sight of Wade’s bowed head, something far away and faint trickled into Abby’s head. The image of her father. He’d had a way about him of protecting her, sheltering her. A flash of his face, browned from the sun, came to her mind. He was tall and wore a hat as battered as Wade’s. Blond hair instead of Wade’s darker shade. Then the memory widened and Abby saw her mother, too, her parents together in the kitchen smiling at each other across a table. And one other child sitting in a high chair near her mother.

“Lind. I…I think my name is Abby Lind.” Abby straightened as more memories flooded in. “We lived far from here, I believe. I traveled a long way with the Flatheads. It seemed that we traveled for days on end, but I’m not sure. When their hunting party found me, my family was dead.” Abby’s voice broke.

“And the hunting party came …” Wade urged her to continue, saving her from that most horrible memory of being alone with her father’s body. “And …”

“My father, my tribal father, took me to live with his people. Walter Lind, maybe. I think that’s right.”

Abby looked up. “I could find them, I believe, now that I know my father’s name. And maybe I have family somewhere back East. I had an older brother. He was grown up and gone—married I think—when we moved West.” Abby closed her eyes as she tried to force the memory. “Why can’t I remember? I wasn’t that young.”

“I suppose your life with the Flathead people was so completely different than what you’d had before, there was nothing to remind you of your early years.”

Frustrated, Abby exhaled hard. “Maybe that’s it, but it seems wrong, sinful, that I forgot my family.”

“You want to search for your brother? Maybe go back East and live with him?”

The tone of Wade’s voice told Abby that he was dismayed at that news. It pulled her out of her discouragement at the blank wall where her memories ought to be.

She couldn’t quite manage a smile, but her heart lightened. “I have no place in the East. Montana is too settled to suit me. There were great cities back there. I don’t remember living in one, but I was told. No, I have no wish to go, but I might want to learn of my white family, let them know I am alive.”

“I can help you with that. I’ll send some telegraphs the next time I’m in town. If your pa bought land, or homesteaded, there’d be a record of it.” Wade settled his hat back on his head firmly. “So your Flathead father took you to his village and raised you as his daughter?”

“He was a good man. But I remember now that my white father was a good man, too. I remember I loved him and my ma and little brother. It’s all so vague, though, the memories and the feelings.”

“You’ll remember more with time, I reckon. For now, let it go. It’s just upsetting you. Let’s see if we can find any evidence to identify our attacker.”

Abby pointed to an outcropping of rock. “He must have been up there.”

“How do you figure that?” Wade lifted his hat with one hand and smoothed down his hair with the other.

Abby noticed his hair was past his collar. Belle Harden had taken her scissors to it, but she hadn’t cut deeply. Not as long as Wild Eagle’s, but neither was he shorn like so many whites.

He’d been living in the mountains all winter. Near enough to her to hear gunshots. Roughing it nearly as much as…maybe more than…the people in their winter hunting grounds in the Bitterroot Valley.

“The arrow was slanted downward, but not arcing down. He couldn’t have been higher or lower than that ledge.”

Scowling, Wade turned from where she pointed. “You got all that while you were under my horse’s hooves?”

Abby snorted. “How do you whites survive in the West?”

“So were they shooting at you or me? Whoever put those burrs under my saddle couldn’t have known where you’d be standing, so maybe he was hoping—”

“Hoping to blame it on the Flathead people?”

“Or hoping in the distraction of the rearing horse he’d get us both at once.”

“I have done nothing to deserve murder.”

“Oh, well I suppose I have,” Wade said sarcastically.

“You’ve come home. It looks to me as if some among your people might have thought this ranch was free for the claiming with your father hurt and maybe dying.”

“It’s a fine welcome home, isn’t it? I’ve only been back one day.”

“And someone’s already trying to kill you.”

“No one tries to kill a man with a few burrs under a saddle. I’ve been thrown off many a horse in my day while breaking broncs. Sure, a man could die, but it’s not a reliable way to kill. Most often, you just get up and walk away.”

“Your father didn’t.”

Freezing where he stood, Wade seemed to look beyond what lay in front of him. “True. Someone could finish me off and make it look like a fall killed me.”

“But that would only work if there were no witnesses.”

“Like you.” Wade pulled the burrs and stones from his shirt pocket and glared at them. “Someone tried to kill my pa.”

“Not my people. We’d only moved to our summer grounds recently, long after your father was hurt. And now my whole village is dead or gone back to the larger tribal settlement. There are no Flatheads about to try and kill either of us.” Abby raised the arrow to eye level.

Throwing the burrs and rock on the ground, Wade stomped them with his boot. “So welcome home. It’s good to be back, huh?”

“It’s not my home, white man.”

“Lucky girl.”

S
id missed.

He’d had a chance to end this all at one time and blame it on the savages, but he’d missed. He’d done his share of bow hunting, so he was good, but he hadn’t counted on that horse being so close to her when it exploded.

Then that half-wild woman turned the horse so it blocked his next shots.

Furious at wasting the opportunity and putting Wade on guard, Sid jumped down from the rocks where they’d hidden the bow and the arrows they’d made to look like the Flatheads’. Ready for a chance to finish this and lay the blame on the Indians, Sid ran for Paddy, who waited just around the bend with his horse. They were far enough behind the cowhands that no one paid attention when they caught up to them in the mountain valley, lush with thick grass.

“We can’t stick together.” Sid glared at the incompetent cowhands he’d hired. He hadn’t wanted trail-savvy men on the payroll, but now hiring this pack of fools and running off so many of the experienced drovers would likely cost Sid his job. And he needed to be here, on the spot, to take the reins when the old man died…which was going to be soon.

Paddy knew cattle, Sid would give him that. “Let’s split those two up.” Paddy nodded toward a pair of half-grown boys, brothers who looked to be running away from nursery school. The pair didn’t know the kicking end of a horse from the biting end.

“They must have come West on the train. They don’t have a lick of horse sense.” Paddy snickered as he watched one of them fighting his well-trained pony when the pony was smarter than the kid. The sandy brown longhorns that dotted the flowing grassland ripped grass from the ground and chewed while the cowboys tried to get them moving.

“And try ‘n’ teach ’em something, Pad. Wade isn’t man enough to run me off, but there are enough of the old hands left that, if Chester tells ’em to back that young whelp, I won’t be able to hold on to this place.” Sid grunted when one of the boys nearly fell off his cutting horse. “Maybe if we bring a few of these men along, we can put off that fight. I want Boog and Harv here backing me when that happens.”

Paddy nodded and spurred his horse toward the pair.

Sid looked back to see Wade riding through the narrow canyon mouth. Sid scanned the lay of the land, figured where he’d perch to take a shot. He needed to finish this soon with the boy then take out that old he-coon Mort Sawyer. He should have shot him where he lay that night. Instead he’d left him for dead, preferring to make it look like an accident. He could have crushed his head with a rock, though. Or run his horse over the still form until there was nothing left of him.

He’d outsmarted himself that time.

Before Wade could ride up, Sid went and took one of the boys Paddy was working with under his own wing. The fool kid was game, Sid would give him that.

Silas dismounted and crouched by the half-gone hoofprint.

“The cattle passed this way for sure.” Red stayed on Buck and rode forward, patting his loyal old horse to encourage him. “They had to, but it looks like a solid wall of rock ahead.”