Winter's Touch (4 page)

“If you have a mind to ride with us, Mr. MacDougall, we’d be honored.”

“Innes, lad. Call me Innes. I may not go all the way to the ranch with you, mind. I’ve family—a son and daughter—south of here. The place where their band winters would be on my way.”

“Their band?”

“Aye.” Innes feigned indifference, but watched this young Dulaney carefully. The lad might not be as open-minded as his father had been. “My wife—their mother, God rest her soul—was Arapaho. Winter Fawn and Hunter live with their Arapaho grandmother.”

“My father told me you’d lost your wife. That was one of the things the two of you had in common, he said.”

That, and that we both ran off and left our bairns for others to raise,
thought Innes, his gut tightening as it did every time he thought of the way he’d left them.

But that was old news. More importantly just now was that this Carson Dulaney hadn’t batted an eye at hearing that Innes’s children were half Arapaho. Maybe Edmond had told him, but that was all right with Innes. He wasn’t one to put up with any nonsense about his wife and bairns from anybody. The last man who had sneered and called him a squaw man had swallowed his own teeth for his supper. After Innes had obligingly knocked them out for him.

“To tell you the truth,” Carson said, slowing his pace to let the girls walk on ahead toward the trading post, “I’ve been wondering how safe it is to travel the direction we’re headed, after the talk I heard yesterday when we got in.”

“Ach, ‘tis the Cheyenne you be meanin’.”

“I hear they killed some people south of here a few days ago.”

“Aye. And the Army, in all their wisdom, went out and found themselves three Indians to kill in retaliation.”

“I heard that, too.”

“The trouble is,” Innes said with disgust, “the Army didna notice, or more rightly, didna care, that the Indians they killed were Arapaho, not Cheyenne.”

“Which means what? That the Arapaho will want revenge?”

Innes scratched his beard. “If it was anybody else but the Arapaho, I’d say aye. But the ones who winter in this area have made a deliberate attempt to stay clear of whites. They want peace. Still, they have their young hotheads, just like all people do. Which is why you need me, lad. These are people who know me. I lived with them for many years.”

“We could wait,” Carson said reluctantly. “Not that I don’t want you to ride with us. I do. But if waiting a few days would be safer…I have to think of the girls.”

“Aye, and right bonny lassies they be, too. But unless you’ve got a mind to lock them in their hotel room for the next day our two, you’d be better off heading out. The Cheyenne are long gone from the area. Like to hit and run, they do. Our People won’t cause any trouble.”

“Our People?”

“The Arapaho. That’s what they call themselves in their own language.
Inuna-ina.
Our People.”

Carson filed that bit of information away, and frowned. “Why would I need to keep the girls in their room if we stay?”

“’Tis Saturday, lad. Come this evening, ever farmer and rancher within thirty miles will be coming to town to let off steam. So will a goodly number of soldiers from Fort Reynolds just east of here. There’ll be whoopin’ and hollerin’ and fightin’ in the streets from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow. It gets fair wild here of a Saturday night. No’ a fit place for yon wee lassies at all.”

Carson gnawed on the inside of his jaw as he weighed staying in Pueblo for a few more days versus leaving right away. According to his father, no one knew the Indians in the area better than did Innes MacDougall. If Innes thought it was better to leave now, then that’s what they would do.

“All right.” He gave a sharp nod. “How soon can you be ready to leave?”

Innes grinned. “If you started hitching up your new team right this minute, I’d be ready afore ye.”

By noon that same day they were out of Pueblo and headed south along the Santa Fe Trail. When they neared Colorado City—a rather grandiose name for such the small town twenty-five miles south of Pueblo—they would take the Taos cutoff, which would angle them southwest toward the ranch.

The wagon was loaded with basic supplies: flour, sugar, coffee, bacon, beans, corn, oats, two ground sheets, three blankets, a skillet, coffeepot, tin plates, and eating utensils. Carson’s, Megan’s, and Bess’s luggage rode easily in with all the rest.

They could have waited and bought most of the supplies from Hernandez in Badito down near the ranch, but prices were better in Pueblo, and he’d needed the wagon and team in any case.

The girls rode on the seat with Carson, while the Scotsman trailed along beside them on his big sorrel gelding. It took a big horse to easily carry a man the size of Innes MacDougall. His pack mule followed along untethered.

When they had started out, Carson had suggested Innes tie the mule to the back of the wagon.

“No need,” he’d responded with a booming laugh. “Hail Mary would follow this horse off the edge of the earth, she would, and that’s a fact.”

“Hail Mary?” Carson’s lips had twitched. “Sounds Catholic. I thought all you Scotsmen were dyed-in-the-wool Protestants.”

“Oh, Aye. Presbyterian and proud of it. Got Hail Mary off an old papist up in the gold digs. Seein’ as how she took a great affection for me gelding, I decided to leave her name alone.”

Carson had laughed. “Should I ask the horse’s name?”

White teeth gleamed through the bushy red beard. “Auld Kirk is his name. Scottish for Old Church, meanin’ the Church of Scotland.”

“Hedging your bets?”

“Couldna hurt, lad, couldna hurt.”

The road they traveled rose toward the south. He’d ridden it before, last year when he’d first come to see about the ranch. About ten or so miles south of Pueblo it crossed the St. Charles River, with its scattering of cottonwoods and willows. Off to the west, looking closer than they actually were, sat the Sierra Mojada, the Wet Mountains, with a gathering of gray clouds trapped by their peaks.

He’d been there, too, the Wet Mountains, just about this same time of year. He’d gone there looking for something. Peace, maybe, or maybe he’d just been trying to find some small piece of himself. The tall pines had been startlingly green against the oak and scrub oak just starting to bud. Higher up the oaks thinned and aspen, slower to leaf out than the oaks, replaced them, spruce overtook pines, and patches of snow hid in the shade.

Valleys and meadows, from tiny spots to acres and acres wide, dotted the mountain slopes, as did the occasional outcropping of bare rock. There were huge flat slabs of granite, along with giant chunks worn smooth by time, and others still jagged from where they’d broken off from the mountain above or been thrust up from the earth beneath.

The soil in the mountains ranged from rich loam to barren sand to red clay.

And there were streams. The Spaniards weren’t joking when they’d named them the Wets. Clear, rushing streams in every depression of land, icy cold from snowmelt.

One day, he remembered, he’d been lost up there in the clouds. Another he’d been surprised to run across a deserted cabin. He’d wondered about the type of man who would choose to live in so isolated a place. According to his father, Innes MacDougall was just such a man.

Someday, when he had the ranch in order, Carson would go back there.

East of the trail they now traveled, the plains stretched clear to tomorrow’s sunrise and flat as milk on a saucer. Overhead the sky was a pale spring blue.

The trail dipped into gullies and washes, crested small rises that didn’t deserve the word “hills,” and skirted outcroppings of rocks. By the time the sun had started its descent both girls were nodding drowsily. Ahead the track disappeared around yet another outcropping of tall, tumbled rocks. The team rounded the bend, and for a moment Innes and his packhorse were out of sight behind them.

That’s when it happened. One minute the only sounds were the creek and rattle of the wagon, the soft clomp of hooves on dusty ground, the jingle of the harness. The next, the air was rent with the shrill cries of attack from a half dozen mounted Indians with tattoos on their chests and paint on their faces.

There was no time to think or plan. With rifles pointed at him and one warrior moving to grab the harness and halt the team, Carson shouted a hoarse, “Get down!” at the girls and cracked the reins sharply against the horses’ backs. “Giddup!”

The wagon team bolted.

The Indians fired. Carson felt a sting along the outside of his left shoulder as one shot came too close.

Behind the wagon and coming on fast, Innes bellowed in outrage.

The wagon hit a rock, jolting it severely. Bess lost her grip on the seat and, with a high scream of terror, sailed over the side.

Carson’s heart stopped.
Bess!
Bracing his foot against the brake with all his weight, he pulled back as hard as he could on the traces to halt the team. Down on the floor board, next to his leg where she’d fallen when he had first shouted at the girls to get down, Megan screamed and screamed and screamed. There was no time to comfort her, no words with which to do the job if there had been time.

Damn his hide. What the hell had he been thinking to bring two innocent young girls into this wild land? They would die now, because of him, because of his need to get away from the South and all its reminders of war.

Damn his hide to hell.

The team stopped so suddenly that the wagon slewed sideways. Before it stopped skidding Carson had his rifle out from beneath the seat and was standing, turning, taking aim at the Indian who had Bess by the hair. He fired and swore. He’d hit the Indian in the shoulder. It was enough to make the bastard release Bess, but not enough to take him out of the fight.

Megan had hold of his leg now, hampering him as he tried to turn back and face the others. Pain exploded across the back of his head.

He never heard his daughter scream again for her daddy, never saw the look of horror on his sister’s face. Never felt himself fall to the ground.

He never heard the wild shrill cry of victory as Crooked Oak raised his rifle into the air in triumph.

The sun was down, the sky turning a deep, dark blue and the air beginning to cool rapidly when the first shrill cries of victory echoed across the small valley camp. Winter Fawn was on her way back from the stream with a jug of water when she heard the commotion.

The warriors had returned!

Alarm skittered down her arms in the form gooseflesh. Victory? Over whom? Had they fought? Was the Army even now riding to destroy them? Would the children and old people be slaughtered, as they were at Sand Creek?

Heart pounding, Winter Fawn dropped her water jug near the hide her grandmother was tanning and rushed toward the commotion at the center of camp.

She was nearly the last to arrive. Yet even before she reached the returning warriors, she knew something was wrong. Most of the shouting was from the warriors themselves. Those who had come to meet them had fallen into an uneasy silence.

“A captive?” someone said in a shocked voice.

“What have they done?” said another. “Is he dead?”

“Why have they brought him here?”

Murmurs and mutters rose around her, growing and building until they sounded like a hive of upset bees.

Finally Winter Fawn broke through the crowd.

The warriors had returned, making as much noise as if they had just come victorious from some huge battle. Winter Fawn’s uncle, Two Feathers, rode in the lead. Then came Talks Loud, Long Chin, Red Bull, and Spotted Calf, who sported a bloody hole in his shouder.

Crooked Oak trailed behind the others, worrying his horse to make it prance. With jaw set and eyes blazing, he held his rifle above his head and shouted victory. He led another horse which bore the body of a white man slung belly-down over its back. The white man did not move, except to sway with the horse’s movements. His hands and feet were tightly bound, and the back of his head was bloody.

Had they done it, then? Had they gone out and found themselves a white man to kill?

Why would they tie his hands and feet if he was dead? Why bring a dead man back to camp?

But the answer to the latter was simple. To prove they had avenged the deaths of their friends.

But really, Winter Fawn thought with irritation, a simple scalp would have sufficed.

Then another shout rang out that took Winter Fawn’s attention completely away from the warriors.

“Red Beard!”

Winter Fawn whirled. He rode easily on his big sorrel horse. The wide brim of his hat hid half his face, and he carried a small white girl before him, with an older white girl riding the cantle at his back, but Winter Fawn would have known him if he’d had a buffalo robe over his head and a bear cub before and behind him instead of a girl. She knew those shoulders, that beard, the way he sat a horse. Oh, how she knew them! Shoving her way through the crowd, she rushed to his side. “Father!”

Hunter echoed her cry as he ran to join her.

Before dismounting, her father lifted the small girl from before him and handed her to Winter Fawn.

“This be Megan, and her aunt,” he added helping the older girl slide down, “Bess. They be me guests. Keep them safe, lass. Don’t let your uncle or any o’ his bloody friends get their hands on ‘em.”

“What’s happened?” Winter Fawn asked. “What’s going on?”

He swung down from the saddle and handed his reins to Hunter. There was anger in his eyes. “That’s what I be after findin’ oot.” With a roar of outrage, he shouldered his way through the throng of people who had gathered around the white man.

Winter Fawn was adult enough to understand that these were extraordinary circumstances. She knew the look of rage in her father’s eyes was not directed at her, and that he had serious business on his mind.

But she was also child enough to be devastated that he should arrive in camp for the first time since this time last spring and have not a single word for her other than about the white girls he had thrust at her.

After a brief but hard-fought struggle, the adult in her prevailed. Her father had entrusted the girls to her care. She would keep them safe, as he bade.