Ruth (21 page)

They ate the turnips, each huddled separately in a blanket. The baby fell asleep shortly after dark. Ruth tucked her in, using one of Dylan’s blankets to protect her in spite of the dropping temperature. She would stay warm in her wool cocoon.

The wind howled, bending towering aspens, rattling their branches like dry bones. The clouds continually lowered and the constant wind spit random flakes into the air. Dylan watched Ruth refuse to acknowledge the worsening conditions. She moved as if she were sleepwalking, until he told her to roll up in the bedroll to get warm.

Every bone in the marshall’s body ached tonight. He closed his eyes, willing the pain to ease. It was an old trick he’d learned from a friend. The Kiowa Indian was a scout for an army fort where Dylan had stayed from time to time early in his career. The brave had taught Dylan survival skills, including how to endure pain. Tonight those skills failed him. He’d never been more exhausted or felt more useless. Though he was bone weary, sleep failed to come.

In its place he thought about Ruth and the baby, responsibilities he couldn’t shirk despite the growing weakness of his body. For the first time he tasted defeat, and he didn’t like the flavor.

He opened his eyes to stare at the sleeping infant cradled in his arms. Long, dark eyelashes feathered across her nut brown skin. Tendrils of black shiny hair framed the little girl’s face. This was what fatherhood must be like—staring at the miracle you created with the woman you loved. Dylan had never thought much about being a father; that would come years down the road, if ever. He’d never seriously considered being a parent, taking on a responsibility he couldn’t walk away from. But here was responsibility nestled in his arms like a purring kitten. The surprise was, he didn’t mind, nor did he mind having Ruth around. Most women got on his nerves with their silly giggles and flighty nature, but Ruth was neither silly nor flighty. Independent as a hog on ice, granted. Set in her ways but not fickle.

The admission amused him.

When had he come to that realization? When had he begun to forget she was a nuisance and start looking forward to her nippy responses, that sudden glow in her cheeks when she knew she’d pushed him too far or had embarrassed herself?

He’d never met a woman he wanted to marry, and he’d met his share of females. Attractions had come along, but it had been surprisingly easy to ride away when the time came to leave.

He glanced across the fire and studied Ruth’s form huddled against the cold wind. He’d always walked away easily . . . until she’d happened along. This woman wasn’t going to be easy to ride away from—but he would. When it came right down to it, women were all alike—actors, deceivers. He’d learned that from a master. Sara Dunnigan had fooled the world—at least her world. She’d burned with religious fervor, thumping her Bible and predicting the imminent end of the world and telling him he’d better repent of his sins. Every Sunday morning Sara and Dylan were in their place on the hard wooden church pew. Second pew from the front, where the preacher would be sure to see them and know righteous Sara was doing her Christian duty by the child God had put upon her.

The preacher—Dylan couldn’t remember the name but he saw the face every night in his boyish nightmares—was a pulpit pounder. Sweat rolled from his temples and his booming voice lifted the rafters when he proclaimed that sinners were going to burn in a pit of fire.

One morning, the man had taken off his coat and beat the pulpit with the homespun fabric, his voice bellowing off the walls. Dylan couldn’t have been more than six or seven at the time. Overcome with terror, he suddenly sprang to his feet and hopped up on the pew. He looked at Sara and declared in a voice loud enough to be heard over the brimstone, “Let’s go, Sara! That man is angry!”

Sara yanked him by the ear and set him down in the pew. “You sit!” she hissed. “God will punish you for this.”

He’d sat for the next hour and a half, cowering and crying, confused and angry. How could God love him and want to hurt him at the same time? Suppose he could punish him. Suppose there was a hell. Dylan didn’t know how it all worked, but it sounded terrifying.

When they got home that afternoon, Sara had switched his legs and back with a willow branch until red welts formed. With every strike Sara had reminded him that God was angry, that he didn’t like smart-mouthed boys, that God had given him to Sara to teach him righteousness, and she would do her Christian duty by him even if it meant humiliation in front of her neighbors.

That was the day Dylan decided he didn’t put much faith in God, couldn’t love a God that meted out such harsh judgment on a boy who couldn’t understand him or his ways. Dylan’s feelings hadn’t changed over the years. He’d endured the horsewhippings and verbal abuse, but Sara Dunnigan couldn’t beat religion into him. He swore that someday he would be on his own, and he’d never answer to another person. Sara’s God would have no say over him.

If there was a God who had made women like Sara Dunnigan, Dylan didn’t want anything to do with him, no matter what Ruth said about the deity she believed in.

Ruth’s sleepy voice drifted to him across the fire. “Penny for your thoughts.”

He stirred, uncomfortable. Had he voiced resentment aloud? “I thought you were asleep.”

“I am . . . sort of.” She sighed, snuggling deeper into the bag. “You were looking so serious. What were you thinking?”

He closed his eyes. “Nothing.” He didn’t usually think much about his past, but all this stuff with Ruth and the baby had set him off.

Ruth persisted. “You were thinking something. I could see it. Are you worried?”

“Only a fool wouldn’t be.”

“That’s true,” she whispered. “But God will see us through.”

“God.” He shifted, pulling the blanket tighter. He stared at minuscule flakes whipping the air. Conditions could be worse and he figured “God” was about to prove it. “Don’t you ever get angry about Norris taking you back to the orphanage?”

A log snapped in the campfire, sending sparks shooting up like a shower of red stars. He thought Ruth wasn’t going to answer the question.

“Anger doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s taken me a while to get that through my stubborn head, but I finally realized anger only hurts the person experiencing it.”

Dylan smiled, thinking of the day he’d first met her. A real spitfire, all explosion and bluster. Had that been only weeks ago? Impossible. It seemed she had been in his life always, and yet the past few days he had started to experience something inside him he thought had died. Hope. The first stirrings of real feeling.

He didn’t trust the emotion. He didn’t want it; he liked his life. He liked answering only to himself, worrying only about himself and today.

“Tell me about your childhood,” she said quietly.

He rolled to his stomach, careful not to disturb the baby. His childhood. Now there was a black page in history.

“Didn’t have one.”

She laughed softly. “Everyone had one whether they liked it or not. I gather you didn’t like yours?”

He thought about the answer, fully aware she wasn’t going to give up. She’d find another way to ask the same question.

“I liked part of it. The part when Grandma was alive.”

She flipped over and met his gaze across the fire. “You had a good grandma?”

“The best.” A smile formed at the corners of his mouth. “Ma and Pa died in a wagon accident coming west. Grandma took me in and raised me until I was six.” He hesitated, memories starting to compete with the pain in his shoulder. “The Indian wars were going on then, and a band of renegades rode onto the farm one day. They were hungry and Grandma took them in and fed them. That was her way. She’d take the food off her own plate and give it to a stranger. She sent me to the barn to gather eggs. When I came back, the savages had cut her throat and were sacking up food. I dropped the egg basket and ran as hard as I could. They came after me, but I hid in an old root cellar on a neighbor’s property. Sara Dunnigan’s root cellar.” He laughed humorlessly. “Sara had gone to church that morning or the renegades would have killed her too.”

Cynicism seeped into his tone. “Pity that her life was spared. Sara found me the next day still huddled in the cellar. She took me to raise because there wasn’t anyone else to do it. She was alone, set in her ways.”

Dylan paused, aware he had just told Ruth more than he’d ever told another human being. There was something about her that drew the truth from him, truth that he never intended anyone to know.

“Did she mistreat you?”

He stared up into the black sky, scenes flashing through his mind like a succession of painted pictures: A red-faced Sara with a belt in her hand. Sara making him roll out of bed long before daybreak to hoe and plant, milk the cow, then work in the cornfield under a blazing sun. Sara yelling, threatening, berating him morning, noon, and night until her voice rang in his head like a drumbeat.

“I hated her.” He heard Ruth’s small gasp and realized that this was the first time he’d ever spoken about it out loud. He hated Sara, simple as that. Nothing about the feeling fazed him; he’d lived with hate for so many years, he’d hardened himself against the sentiment and what it could do to a man. He was content to let the emotion fester and taint his life without ridding himself of the pain. He would never rid himself of the memory of Sara Dunnigan.

“I spent my childhood figuring how to get away from her. When I was fifteen, I escaped and never looked back.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

Ruth’s tone held pity. He didn’t want pity. Yet he couldn’t keep from telling Ruth more about the evil woman draped in “Christian love and duty.” He’d heard her brag to others about her own generosity and goodness of heart—about how she’d taken in the McCall boy, fed and clothed him, “though goodness knows I’m just living hand to mouth myself,” she’d say. Given him a pallet and a place at her table was all she’d done, and she’d done that grudgingly. She’d never shown one ounce of love or compassion toward him. He grew up with a willow switch at his backside and the guilt that he was a burden Sara felt forced to bear. With Sara and her friends as examples, God-fearing women had come to mean one thing to Dylan: hypocrisy.

After spilling his bitterness over Sara Dunnigan, Dylan fell silent. He thought of how different Ruth was. In getting to know Ruth, he witnessed a strong faith of a seemingly different stripe. . . .

He mentally shook the thought away. Ruth had tricked him. She wasn’t Sara, but she had lied to him. She’d tried to bend him to her will, just like Sara did. Ruth was a contradiction within herself. One part of her was giving and kind, another part as manipulative as Sara had ever been. Well, he’d been fooled by women before, but not lately. Ruth would need more accomplished wiles than he’d seen so far if she intended to coerce him into doing anything he didn’t want to do.

Beware, Dylan. Women are still all alike even though the one on the other side of the fire stirs a longing in you that you never knew you had.

“It’s late.” He shifted to his opposite side. They lay in the darkness with only the popping fire breaking the strained silence. He wondered what she was thinking. He wished he’d never mentioned Sara or his past. Now Ruth would be trying to pry information from him, and there was nothing more to tell. She seemed to think that sharing information was important, like the girls on the wagon train had done with each other. Ruth had prodded Glory until she learned all about Uncle Amos and the gold and how Poppy had died. Glory had embraced Ruth’s friendship and caring like a hungry pup, and she’d become a part of the “family” of women.

But Dylan wasn’t part of the family; he wasn’t part of any family. He was a loner, and that’s how he wanted to keep it. He wasn’t going to be swayed by Ruth’s plight, even though he suspected her childhood couldn’t have been any better than his.

“I’m sorry, but I want you to know that I care about you. In a friendly way, of course.” She had spoken so softly he wasn’t sure she’d spoken at all or if his imagination was working overtime.

“Dylan, did you hear me?”

He closed his eyes. “Go to sleep, Ruth. This snow is going to come down hard by morning, and the walk will take more energy.”

“But I am sorry, Dylan. I’m sorry that a woman like Sara gives religion a black eye. Most likely she believed that she was doing the right thing, but obviously she didn’t know the God I worship. He is a God of love and certainly a God to be feared and respected. But he chastens as a loving father, not a vindictive tyrant. Some read the Good Book and try to accept the Word, but deep down they’re not willing to let God’s Spirit abide in them.

“I make no excuses for Sara. What she did to a vulnerable young boy is inexcusable, but that rests on her soul. My concern is why you let evil continue to ruin your life. Sara will be held accountable and have to face her mistakes. You are responsible for your own errors.”

Preachy women drove Dylan crazy. “No sermons.” He’d had enough of those to last a lifetime. Empty words meant nothing. “I’m going to sleep now, Ruth. You can stay up and talk all night if you want.”