Whitefeather's Woman (18 page)

Then one night she happened to look in the reticule she'd brought from Boston. The instant she spied the pawn ticket, she knew. If she was ever to convince John, and herself, that she wasn't the same quivering bundle of fears who'd washed up in Whitehorn two months ago, she would have to confront her past. That would mean compensating Mrs. Endicott for the theft of the brooch and explaining why she'd taken it.

Jane tried to think of some other way. Communicating with her former employer would mean alerting Emery to her whereabouts. And what if Mrs. Endicott did decide to press charges? Could a theft in Boston get her arrested
out here in Montana? The very fact that she was afraid of doing it made Jane realize no other test of her precarious courage would serve.

“Mr. Kincaid?” she asked William at supper that night. “Can you tell me how I'd go about sending a sum of money back East?”

“Come by the bank tomorrow and we'll arrange it for you, Jane,” replied Will Kincaid. “If you need funds, I'll be glad to make you an advance of your salary.”

“Thank you, but I believe I have enough from what your brother paid me.”

Fearing her letter might fall into Emery's hands, Jane addressed it to Mrs. Endicott's solicitor instead. Writing the letter itself proved the most difficult part of the whole task. She sat up late one night at Lizzie's writing desk composing her message.

Revealing the shameful secret of Emery's abuse to his aunt made Jane relive the dark, stifling atmosphere of that house. At times she had to lay down her pen because her hand trembled too badly to write. Then she thought of John. Of his strength and bravery. Of how he'd encouraged her in every tottering step she'd taken toward self-reliance.

Jane forced herself to pick up the pen and keep on writing.

Once it was despatched to Boston, however, a curious lightness of spirit came over her. As though, by writing about what had happened to her, she had trapped all her demons on the paper and mailed them out of her life. She could picture John standing behind her, appreciating the effort it had cost her, and radiating quiet pride in this modest feat.

“A storm's brewing, I think.” Lizzie looked up from her rocking chair when Jane returned to the Kincaids' after
posting her letter. “I hope we'll get some rain to dampen that dust the wind is whipping around.”

Jane's thoughts flew immediately to John, out riding the range. Would Caleb call off the roundup if rain came? Might John's experience with the harsh life of the trail further convince him she was too soft and spineless a creature to make him a good wife?

“Lizzie?” she asked. “Would you mind answering a question…well…of a rather intimate nature?”

Lowering the soft white baby blanket she was knitting, Lizzie flashed a mischievous grin. “Well, you
have
got my attention! As far as I'm concerned, there are few more amusing pastimes than talking over intimate matters with my lady friends.” She giggled. “Except enjoying them with my husband.”

If she hadn't liked this lively, generous girl so much, Jane feared she would have been eaten alive with envy of Lizzie. Not of her elegant home or her pretty clothes or her social standing in town, but of the way William doted on her. The sweet sly smiles they exchanged over the supper table that betrayed their anticipation of bedtime. Their joyful excitement over the tiny product of their love that was growing inside Lizzie.

“I was wondering…” Jane's cheeks tingled with a hot blush. Where had all the frank wantonness with which she'd seduced John Whitefeather gone? “How soon can a woman tell if she's going to have a baby?”

“Bless my soul.” Lizzie's sparkling eyes widened. “You and…Ruth's brother?” She fanned her face with her hand. “He
is
a handsome fellow. I've often thought what a criminal waste it is for him to stay a bachelor… Ooh!” She twitched in her rocking chair and laid a hand over her belly. “I don't know whether I've got a baby in there or a bucking
bronco! I have my doubts this rambunctious young fellow will be content to follow his papa into banking.”

Jane began to wonder if Lizzie would ever give her an answer.

“Oh, yes. About babies. Haley told me all sorts of interesting things. She's a midwife, you know. I wish she lived handy enough to deliver my baby. Mind you, Dr. Gray is awfully nice. I wonder if he'll ever get married?”

Lizzie fell silent for a moment, perhaps weighing the local prospects of a match for the doctor. Then she remembered Jane's question again. “Sometimes it can take a while to be certain you
are
going to have a baby, especially if…your courses don't follow the moon too regularly.”

Jane digested this information, wondering what exactly to make of it.

“Mind you, it's dead easy to tell if you
aren't
expecting,” added Lizzie.

Beckoning Jane to come closer, Lizzie whispered the secret in her ear.

“Oh,” breathed Jane as understanding dawned on her.

If she was going to have his baby, she knew John would put aside his misgivings and marry her. Then she would have a chance to prove her constancy and to make him love her. She didn't want to hope too hard, though. She had known too much disappointment in her life for that.

But there could no denying she was several days late.

 

“It is too late,” Night Horse, son of Whitefeather, told the Sweetgrass Cheyenne around the council fire. “
Ve'ho'e
are here to stay. They are the new masters of this land. We are not prairie dogs who can hide in our burrows. We must seize this chance to help ourselves. Cows may not be as big as buffalo and their hides are not as rugged, but their meat makes good eating and they are not so dangerous.
The buffalo herds are dwindling and they move where they will. We cannot follow them anymore. Cattle we can keep on our land.”

John sensed their resistance. They wanted no more part of this than Caleb's ranch hands did. Even if their combined efforts would yield benefits for both, they had lived too long in a climate of mutual fear and suspicion to suddenly embrace cooperation.

“May I speak?” asked Ravencrest, one of the youngest and most recklessly courageous of the hunters. Bearspeaker nodded.

“Haven't we settled here in Sweetgrass to keep our people away from the whites?” Ravencrest challenged the council. “To protect our language and our beliefs, which they would steal from our children? For us to go and work with them might bring bad ideas among us, the way smallpox comes.”

John wanted to stand and refute the young man's fears, but a warning look from his friend Red Stone kept him silent.

“I have met these cow herders,” Red Stone chuckled. “They don't have many ideas, good or bad.”

After the quiet laughter died, he added in a more serious tone, “Except perhaps the foolish idea that Cheyenne are killers and thieves. Maybe we can change this idea, a little, if we ride with them. Maybe if we open our hearts, we will learn more about them, too.”

Bearspeaker nodded. “Learning is a slow way to overcome enmity. But there is no fast road. There can be no learning if there is no contact. Besides, cow meat is easy on my old tapeworks.”

“One more thing we must consider.” Red Stone looked around the circle at each one in turn. “Think of all Night Horse has done for us. Without him and Caleb Kincaid,
we would be on a reservation now. If they ask this of us, we would be ungrateful to refuse.”

They continued to talk until everyone had his say, but John could tell Red Stone and Bearspeaker had turned the tide. John was wise enough to realize his closed mouth would draw no flies.

Instead, as he looked through the rippling air above the fire, he pictured Jane sitting among the women, as she had on his last visit to Sweetgrass. Would she find the strength to keep her promise and wait in Whitehorn for his return? Had his seed taken root in her womb and begun to grow? And when he concluded that it must be so, was the bewildering feeling that pulsed in his veins elation, or terror?

Bearspeaker seemed to sense his mood. When the council finally broke up with an agreement to Caleb's proposal, the old man beckoned John away from the tepees.

“Come walk with me,
Taa'evâhe'hame.
A devil hangs over you, I think. Tonight, the wind pushes the clouds and they hide the stars. Tell me what troubles you and hides the truth?”

All his life John had kept his own counsel, dealt with his own problems. Who among the whites or the Cheyenne could understand more than half of anything that troubled him? Then he had bared his dark memories with Jane. She had shared his old pain and eased it in ways he could not have foreseen.

“Tell me, old one, can a single woman be both completely right for a man and completely wrong?”

Bearspeaker gave a gravelly chuckle.
“Seheso?”
he asked.
The little snowbird?

John's reply caught in his throat. He had used exactly that endearment in a tender moment.

As if catching his answer in John's silence, Bearspeaker continued, “Who can say when two people will suit for life?
Never tell Walks on Ice, but I only asked for her when my friend Whitefeather beat me to my first choice. But after so many years, her heartbeats in my chest and mine in hers.”

John stopped in his tracks. “You wanted…my mother?”

“No, no.” Bearspeaker's voice moved away from him and John followed, stumbling on the uneven ground. “Your mother was not Whitefeather's first wife, remember. Running Doe was killed with their two daughters at Sand Creek. When I saw how Whitefeather mourned them, I was happy the Great Spirit had denied me the woman I'd first wanted. Then Little Wolf led us north, back to our old lands, and on the way we found your mother. She had killed her evil coward of a husband when he was beating her, and she feared the white soldiers would hang her for his death. So she came with us and in time she healed Whitefeather's heart.”

So his Norwegian mother had battled her own Emery Endicott. Had John heard this story when he was too young to understand? Was that why Jane Harris had drawn him so?

“I told Whitefeather he was crazy to take the white woman for his wife,” continued Bearspeaker. “But they were happy together and from their union our band gained you and your sister. You have both been a great blessing to us. Again I was wrong. Love is a trickster,
Taa'evâhe'hame.
Even wise men cannot fathom his riddles.”

John clapped an arm around his uncle's shoulder, partly to turn him back toward the camp, partly in fondness and jest. “For a wise elder, you haven't been much help, Bearspeaker.”

“Your doubts are like howling coyotes, Nephew. Throw
a piece of meat to quiet them. Once they are silent, listen for the whisper of your heart and follow it.”

“And if that whisper lures me away from my people and my duty?”

“Are you so sure it will?”

“I'm only one man, Bearspeaker. Some of what I give to the band now, I would owe to my family.”

In silence they walked back toward the dying fire within the circle of tepees. At last the old man spoke again. “When a tall tree falls in the forest, saplings that were starved for sun in his shadow may rise to take his place. Maybe you have done
too much
for us,
Taa'evâhe'hame,
when we need to do more for ourselves. Don't blame our people if you lack the courage to risk your heart.”

An angry retort rose to John's lips and died there. Could Bearspeaker be right? Could all his doubts about Jane and his duty to the Cheyenne simply be a self-righteous mask for the cowardice of his own heart?

“C
hin up, Jane. No Cheyenne warrior wants a coward for a wife.”

If she thought or muttered those words to herself once over the next week, Jane thought or muttered them a hundred times. Lizzie's belly had expanded to such a size that she didn't feel much like stirring outside her own house. She also had a touch of dropsy that swelled her delicate ankles and hands, and made Dr. Gray look anxious.

So Jane had to run many errands around town. Daily trips to Mr. Lundburg's meat market and Whitehorn Mercantile. To the little Chinese fish market built of oil cans. Into the post office to fetch the mail. Once to summon the doctor on account of false labor.

When she'd first come to Whitehorn, such duties would have sent Jane into a swooning fit. Since she'd gotten to know so many folks in town, it had become much less of an ordeal.

“Good morning, Mrs. Dillard. A pound of coffee, please, and a tin of baking powder. No sign of the baby yet, though Mrs. Kincaid sent for the doctor yesterday. Both Mr. and
Mrs. Kincaid said to thank you for the chicken and dumplings you sent over last night. I don't know when you get the time to cook with the mercantile so busy. Good morning, Mrs. Fairfax. No, the stork hasn't arrived at the Kincaids' yet. I hope your mother-in-law's improving. Summer colds are the worst.”

Leaving the mercantile with her purchases stowed in her basket, Jane savored a sense of belonging unlike any she'd ever known. She enjoyed recognizing faces and being able to call so many people by name. Having them take a neighborly interest in the Kincaids and in her.

There was still one fly in the ointment, however. Jane had yet to discover a route for running her errands that did not take her past at least one saloon, and often more. The Double Deuce, where she'd first met John Whitefeather, was easily the largest and busiest. Gamblers congregated at the Four Kings, which belonged to Mr. Hill, the man she'd baptized with creamed peas.

The circuit judge held court in the Gribble and Warren Saloon. Jane had once heard a gunshot fired from inside that establishment. The Centennial catered to a somewhat better crowd. Even Will Kincaid went there now and then for a drink and a game of billiards. Big Mike's Music Hall and Opera House, for all its fine-sounding name, was actually no more than a saloon with a stage, a banjo player and a few hard-faced dancing girls.

Jane never walked past one of these places without her stomach seething and her palms breaking out in cold moisture. Between the fumes of alcohol and the frequent clamor of raised voices, they always seemed poised to erupt in violence. Each time she had to pass a saloon, she reminded herself that the Cheyenne prized courage above all virtues. Like some magical incantation, it always heartened her.

Then one day, when she'd just left the butcher's with a brown paper parcel of pork chops, the swinging doors of Gribble and Warren crashed open and two cowboys came flying out, fists flailing. Jane let out a terrified squeak and stumbled back.

One of the combatants saw her and froze. The other glanced her way and his fist fell to his side.

“Aw, Jeb, ye done scared the lady.”

The two of them hung their heads like naughty schoolboys. On closer inspection, Jane guessed neither of them had ever seen the business end of a razor.

“Sorry about that, ma'am.”

“Like he said, ma'am.”

Jane's hammering heart slowed a little. A queer bubble of ironic humor swelled inside her.

She shook her head in gentle reproach. “Gentlemen, what would your dear mamas think if they knew you were frequenting a saloon at this hour?”

The one named Jeb looked ready to cry. They stammered an almost incoherent mix of excuses and apologies until she bid them goodday and walked on. Later, when she shared the story with Lizzie, they both laughed until their sides ached. Jane concluded that the Boston Ladies' Temperance Society would have been proud of her.

“What's all this frivolity?” William Kincaid affected a stern, bankerish frown that couldn't mask the glow of love in his eyes for Lizzie.

“See if you don't laugh, too, when you hear.” Lizzie grasped her husband's hand and held it against her cheek. “Tell it again, Jane.”

She repeated the story, though with a little less sparkle than her first telling. The sweet bond between the banker and his young wife was so intense, Jane fancied she could taste it, like tangy, refreshing lemonade on a hot day. This
was what she wanted with John, and she couldn't bring herself to settle for anything less.

At times she would remember their night together and glow with blissful certainty. Then she would recall what John had said to Ruth, and what he'd confessed to her in Lizzie's garden. Brooding over the tragedies of his past, she wondered if he was capable of loving her as she needed to be loved.

When the familiar ache started deep in the pit of her belly and she knew John had not sown a baby inside her, after all, she feared he might not even want to try.

 

“I'm getting soft, John.” Gingerly, Caleb Kincaid lowered himself onto a wide flat rock beside his brother-in-law. “Soft and old. Why, I used to love nothing better than going on a cattle drive down to Texas with my pa. Sleeping on the hard ground every night under the stars. Wearing the same clothes for days on end. Eating out of the back of a chuck wagon and never seeing a face prettier than a heifer's.”

His mouth full of beans and fry bread, John cocked an eyebrow to ask Caleb how he liked riding the range these days.

Caleb chuckled. “Can you imagine anything so danged foolish?”

“We're on the home swing now.” John glanced around, his senses alert to any sign of trouble.

During the past week, he'd felt like he was treading on eggshells, as the cowboys and the Cheyenne began working together. They'd exchanged dark, wary looks and camped apart every night.

Walks on Ice had volunteered to come along and prepare food for the hunters. By the end of the second day, she and Cookie were swapping recipes, even though neither could speak a word of the other's language. A few of the cowboys
grumbled when Cookie declared he was done messing with sourdough till they got back to the ranch. After their first taste of fry bread, they quit complaining.

Caleb seemed to read John's thoughts. “This wasn't such a bad idea, after all. I'm surprised everything's gone as smoothly as it has. Who'd have thought Floyd Cobbs and that Ravencrest boy would have taken such a shine to one another?”

John licked molasses off his spoon. “Not me, that's for sure.”

The first day Caleb had paired the two biggest potential troublemakers, John had braced for all-out war. When they'd been late getting back to camp, he'd feared perhaps they'd killed one another. But they'd finally appeared with the largest roundup of cattle yet to join the herd, grinning like a pair of fools. Something had happened out on the range and John didn't want to know what. Perhaps they'd saved one another's hides, or maybe they'd just taken the measure of each other's skills and come away impressed. Whatever it was, John was grateful for it.

“I wasn't happy about going on this roundup,” he admitted to Caleb. “But seeing what shape the stock's in, I think it's a good thing you went ahead with it.”

“If we ever see the rain that's been threatening all week, I may look like a darn fool in front of the Stock Growers Association.” Caleb took a swig of coffee to wash down his supper. “You still sore at me for dragging you away from Jane Harris?”

Jane. Caleb might have dragged John away from her in body, but not in heart. Through the past weeks, she'd never been more than a thought away. Sometimes he almost fancied he could feel her perched on Hawkwing's hindquarters, clinging to his waist, the way she had on their first ride from Whitehorn.

He shrugged. “I miss her. Like Zeke used to say, it feels like my heart has a toothache. But I needed some time to think, and I reckon she did, too. I'm scared of rushing into something…and twice as scared of losing her.”

“I hear what you're saying.” Caleb stared off into the fire. “You know, John, I reckon I owe your Jane an apology, sending that fool wire off to Boston. Ruth told me what was what about Jane taking that pin of the old lady's. Wish I could get my hands on that varmint who beat her. I'd hog-tie him to the belly of a longhorn steer.”

“No way you could have known about that, Caleb.” His own blindness to Jane's problems still haunted John. She needed a man who could shelter her and help her heal, not one too busy wrestling his own demons to care about hers.

Caleb scuffed the dust with the heel of his boot. “I hope you didn't take too much to heart those things I said about Jane being like Marie. I like to blame all the troubles of my first marriage on Marie not being suited for life in Montana. The fact is, she probably wouldn't have been half so discontented if I'd loved her.”

Sipping Cookie's bitter coffee in silence, John felt the healing balm of Caleb's words sinking into his aching heart. He wondered what it had cost his proud brother-in-law to take responsibility for the failure of his first marriage. Caleb had wed Marie against the inclination of his heart, because he'd believed Ruth was lost to him and because Marie had tricked him into her bed and gotten pregnant.

It was different for John and Jane. No other woman had ever touched him as she had, and he was certain none ever would. How he hoped he would find her waiting for him back in Whitehorn. If she was carrying his child, he might convince her to marry him. If he worked as hard to
prove his love as he had worked to prove his loyalty to the Cheyenne, it might be enough to keep her with him.

A bright flash in the sky backlit the Crazy Mountains.

“What was that?” Cicero Price called out.

“If it ain't lightning, we're in trouble,” quipped Floyd Cobbs.

“And if it is?” the young fellow asked.

That sobered Floyd right up. “Then we could be in even worse trouble.”

Beside John, Caleb hauled off his hat and slapped it against his knee. “Damn, I'm tired of being wrong,” he muttered. Then he raised his voice. “Break out the canvas, boys! You may not get dry again until we're back in Whitehorn.”

He barely got the words out when the first fat drops of rain came plummeting to earth and embedded themselves in the parched Montana soil.

 

“Is that rain at last?” Lizzie glanced toward the window.

As Jane got up to check, a jagged fork of lightning spiked the evening sky. The abruptness of it made her jump back.

“That's rain, all right. I'll go make sure the windows are shut.” Though she braced herself for the following roll of thunder, it still made her heart jump into her throat.

She ran to the west-facing side of the house first, where the wind lashed rain hardest against the windowpanes. Later, when she peered out her own east-facing window, Jane looked toward the rolling rangeland outside town. Would John have any shelter tonight? Might Caleb abandon the roundup once some rain fell?

A blinding flash of lightning shattered the darkness of the Big Sky, followed by a deafening clap of thunder. None
of the storms she'd experienced in Boston had ever seemed as violent as this one promised to be. Was it possible John could be in danger out on the range? A tight chill crept into Jane's stomach and lodged there.

“I wish William hadn't needed to stay late at the bank this evening,” said Lizzie when Jane returned to the sitting room. “He'll get drenched to the bone coming home in this downpour.”

“Do you still want to wait supper for him, or should we go ahead and eat?” Jane stifled a yelp as another clap of thunder rumbled overhead.

“Hmm. I don't feel very hungry. Knowing Will, he may decide to stay put at the bank until the rain eases. And who knows when that's likely to be?”

As Lizzie struggled to rise from the rocking chair, she let out a squeak of surprise and sat down again, hard. “Oh dear. I'm wet.”

“Wet?” Jane glanced at the ceiling, expecting to see rain leaking through.

“From the baby.” Lizzie's creamy complexion paled to the bluish cast of skim milk. “Haley told me this might happen, so I'd be prepared. It means the baby's going to come soon. Can you help me up to the bedroom, Jane, then go fetch Will?”

Jane's glance skittered toward the windows, where the rain hammered. “Y-yes, of course.”

She knelt by Lizzie's chair. “Put your arms around my neck and lean all your weight on me when we stand up. There.”

They walked slowly to the stairs and began to mount them. Halfway up to the first landing, Lizzie clenched the banister and sucked a raspy breath in through her teeth. Jane could scarcely believe the force with which her tiny friend clutched her hand. It almost brought tears to Jane's eyes.

After a minute or two, Lizzie's grip eased and she let out a shaky sigh. “That was much worse than anything from the other day. Jane, I haven't told Will, because I don't want to worry him, but I'm scared.”

In spite of her bulging middle, Lizzie suddenly looked so very young and vulnerable.

Jane wrapped her in a swift embrace. “That's all right. I'm scared most of the time, with a lot less reason. Let's get you to bed, so I can go tell William to bring the doctor. Once they're here, I'm sure you'll feel better. And just think, Lizzie, very soon you'll have a beautiful little son or daughter in your arms.”

In spite of the frightening ordeal ahead of Lizzie, Jane would have changed places with her friend in a heartbeat. How she wished she'd conceived John's child that night in the foreman's cabin.

“I—I will, won't I?” Lizzie caught her quivering lower lip between her teeth. “I wonder which it will be and who it'll take after in its looks?”

“Your little one's pretty sure to be blond.” Jane coaxed Lizzie up the rest of the stairs. “Have you and William settled on any names yet?”