Blood Feather (18 page)

“Oh yes, yes, yes, a thousand time yes!” she said, kissing him deeply again.

Joshua said, “Not the most romantic setting, but it was something I needed to say or burst.”

“Oh, Joshua,” she said, “I don't care. I have prayed for this moment for so long!”

Her eyes glistened.

Strongheart said, “Honey, I hate to get out of the moment, but we better move fast. I am really worried about getting Missy and her mom out of here. When they are gone, we can shop for an engagement ring in Pueblo.”

She went back to preparing food, saying, “No, you are going to sleep for a day at least before we do anything.”

The buggy arrived and took them to the house a half hour later. Missy was wide awake after being told her mommy was there. They pulled up, and she jumped down, running to the door of Belle's house. The door opened, and Lucille came out to sweep her little girl up in her arms. She hugged her and kissed her over and over.

She then set Missy down and ran forward to hug Joshua and say, “Oh, God bless you, Joshua! Thank you so much! Thank you so much! I can never thank you enough! You saved my baby.”

She started crying and threw her face against his chest. hugging him tightly while she sobbed. The two deputies just grinned, and Belle got choked up.

Lucy pulled away and grabbed Missy again, picking her up and mouthing the words to Joshua “Thank you. God bless you.”

They went inside.

Grabbing Lucille's suitcase and throwing it on the bed, Belle explained, “You have to move back east immediately and get Missy out of here.”

Lucille said, “I don't understand. Didn't you kill that beast of a human, Joshua?”

“No,” he said, “and he is following us. I wounded him, but I know he is headed this way. He is obsessed with Missy, and we must get her out of the area, far away. We are going to ride on the train with you to Pueblo and stay with you until you are on your way to Denver.”

Lucille started crying again and said, “Joshua Strongheart, you will be in my prayers every day the rest of my life. We heard stories of this killer and I was certain she was lost forever, but you returned my Missy to me. God bless you!”

Strongheart said, “You gave her a little pocketknife she showed me when she was here before. She kept it hidden in her shoe and used it to cut through the leather straps she was bound with. She jumped on a packhorse and ran away with him chasing her. Your little girl is the hero, not me. You have taught her to be a survivor, Lucy, which will always serve her well.”

Both Belle and Lucy listened with mouths open, shaking their heads in amazement. They looked at Missy, who was fast asleep on Belle's davenport.

Lucy was soon packed, and Strongheart carried the still-sleeping little girl to the buggy. They left for the train depot. Within an hour, they were on their way to Pueblo. In Pueblo, they got lucky again, and quickly put Lucy and Missy on the train for Denver, where they would make a connection in a few hours and head back east. Once Strongheart got them on the Denver train, he was much more comfortable.

It would not be that many years before Pueblo would start being called “the Pittsburgh of the West.” However, Joshua Strongheart was not interested in industry or the railroad yards. He wanted to take Belle shopping.

Holding hands, they walked along the street in downtown Pueblo, a town that had started out as a place Indians liked coming to winter at the confluence of the Arkansas River and the large Fountain Creek. Joshua and Annabelle found a mercantile that had a collection of jewelry and fine china. Two very large bearded men who looked to be teamsters walked in. Both smelled like a brewery.

They stared at Belle and Strongheart, who were now acting very romantic, snuggling and kissing. The men at first whispered and snickered, and Joshua knew trouble was coming. They finally approached the couple.

The larger one said, “This makes me sick to my stomach. I cain't stand seeing no red nigger hand-holding a white woman.”

Here it was, Strongheart thought, and he stood ready for battle, sizing up both potential opponents. He stared at them but spoke to Annabelle, saying, “Darling, if we are to be married, I warn you we will occasionally hear remarks like this from ignorant people.”

Both men spread apart a little to give each other swinging and kicking room. One pulled an axe handle from a basket and was ready to use it. Belle stepped forward, putting her hand on Joshua's forearm.

“It's okay, darling,” she said, smiling at the two behemoths. “I just read an article the other day in
Harper's Weekly
,
and it stated that they did a study and discovered that men who make such statements do so because of immense feelings of inadequacy. Usually the problem stems from such men having very tiny penises.”

Joshua could not believe what he had just heard from his fiancée. He turned his head and stared at her, but he also could not help but notice how red the faces of both men were. They stared at Belle, then each other, with startled looks and then, as if on a silent signal, simply turned and quickly left the store.

Belle's face was red, but she looked at Joshua and started laughing, and he just bellowed with laughter.

“Where did that come from?” he said, still laughing.

She said, “I just made it up. I didn't want any fighting today.”

“I never heard anything like that in my life,” said the storeowner who was behind them, tears of laughter spilling down his cheeks. “I could not believe how quickly those two varmints egressed the store. That was some slice of pumpkin pie, young lady,” he added. He turned his head slightly and said, “Did you hear what the young lady said, Henrietta?”

Joshua and Belle, still laughing, turned their heads to see a roly-poly, gray-haired woman in a gingham dress literally lying across a table of linens, laughing so hysterically she could barely breathe.

It seemed almost providential that they would find the engagement and wedding rings they wanted in that store. Belle told Joshua she could simply wear her former wedding ring, since he had gone through so much to get it back for her when they first met. He was insistent though that her rings would be picked out by them together. She found several that were less expensive, but he could tell there was one set she was drawn to. He told the storekeeper that was what they wanted. Her eyes glistened as he paid for the rings. He then stuck them in his pocket and led her outside.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He led her outside town to the banks of Fountain Creek, which had Russian olive and manzanita trees along them. There now were no people around, and there was still daylight in the sky. He knelt down in front of the fast-flowing creek and said, “Annabelle, I have loved you since the first moment I saw you. Anything and everything I do is simply to make you proud of me. Please say yes, you will marry me and spend the rest of our lives together.”

Tears filled her eyes and she could hardly breathe she loved this man so much.

“Yes, Joshua,” she said. “Oh, my word, yes. I love you with all my heart, darling, and will forever.”

He placed the engagement ring on her finger, stood, and they kissed long and slowly.

Their ride home to Cañon City did not begin until right after dark, and the whole way they talked about the future and their plans. At the depot, they found a neighbor with a wagon who offered them a ride to the house. Belle kept looking at her new ring, then she would look at this brave hero of hers.

They went into her house and soon had a fire going and started kissing on the couch. Strongheart wanted this woman so badly, and she would soon be his wife. He got up and took a deep breath.

She stood, and he said, “I am going to head to the Hot Springs Hotel, honey, and will see you for breakfast in the morning.”

He took one step and her hand grabbed his. She pulled him close.

Belle said, “Joshua Strongheart, you are my fiancé now, officially. You will soon be my husband, and as far as I am concerned, you already are. You are not leaving me tonight.”

She turned and led him by the hand toward her bedroom.

In the morning, they walked to the café right after daybreak. After the very long day and longer night, Joshua felt strangely very refreshed. He was in love, deeply in love. He felt this had to be a love like his biological father, Claw Marks, had had with his mother, but he would not ride off like his father. He planned to be with Belle until death came for one of them, hopefully many decades into the future. They got to the café, and he carried firewood in for her.

The sheriff came in for breakfast, and grabbing a cup of coffee, Joshua sat down with him.

“Sheriff, until I can track down this killer,” Strongheart asked, “can you spare a deputy to keep an eye on Belle when I am not around?”

“I sure can, Strongheart,” the lawman replied. “I have a good deputy, Stephen Vaughn. Big man himself, maybe three hundred pounds. I will put him at your disposal starting this morning.”

Joshua stayed at the restaurant until Deputy Vaughan arrived riding a big bay Morgan-Thoroughbred cross. He had a deep, booming voice and low-key relaxed manner. He wore a Russian .44 in a cross-draw holster, and by the wear and tear of the leather Strongheart could tell he had practiced that draw many hours.

Joshua walked out of the back door of the restaurant and looked at the new McClure House hotel just a block away. Mrs. Maria M. Sheetz was the first manager of the hotel, and it had sixty rooms, three suites, and even ten indoor bathrooms in it. Little did Joshua know that the McClure House, which was one of the most popular hotels in the area, would be sold to British investors in twenty-six years, at the turn of the century, and renamed the Strathmore Hotel. It would have shocked him to know that it would still be standing in 2012 completely renovated. The redbrick building was solid. Right then, it was brand-new and had just officially opened, although it had been built two years earlier, in 1872, and William McClure had used red bricks made right there in Fremont County.

He wondered if he should take a room there or at the Hot Springs Hotel at the edge of town, and he decided on the McClure House. He would make sure he got a room where he could keep an eye on Belle's restaurant, too, or at least the back of it. He had spent the night with Belle and knew she would want him to stay, but he did not want any gossips wagging their tongues about her any more than they already were because he was a half-breed.

Strongheart knew how cruel people could be. He had grown up with it. First, he was the bastard love child of an Indian and a white woman, so even while very small he could sense rejection from some. Then, when his mother married Dan Cooper, his stepfather, who became a real dad to him, things got much better. People had no choice. Dan was a tall, quiet man who was quite serious, but crossing him, by any man, was as wise as trying to lasso a cyclone.

He fondly recalled the time that the town blacksmith's son started teasing him at school, calling him “half-breed” and “red mongrel.” Dan came home for lunch and found Joshua hiding in the barn, and streaks on his face showed he had been crying,

“You been playing hooky, son?” the lawman asked.

Joshua Strongheart simply would not lie, so he shyly said, “Yes, sir.”

Dan said, “Get me a stout switch.”

Joshua hung his head and walked out the barn door, hearing the shout after him, “Never drop your head down, boy. Hold it high, even when you're in trouble. Especially when you're in trouble.”

He came back five minutes later with a stick he'd cut and shaved with his pocketknife and handed it to Dan, who sat on an upended barrel. Dan held the switch in his right hand.

He said, “You know you do not miss school, period. And you know you are getting a whipping, but first you get to have your say. What do you have to say about this, Joshua?”

“Nothing, sir,” young Joshua said. “I don't have an excuse. I am sorry, Pa. I'm ready to take my whipping.”

“Well, boy, you said the right thing,” the graying marshal said, “but it is just you and me here. You were crying before I came in. Why?”

“I'm sorry I cried, Pa,” Joshua exclaimed, panicked thinking that he would get a worse spanking now.

Dan grinned, saying, “Never apologize for crying, son. I cry myself sometimes.”

“You cry?” Joshua said, totally surprised.

“Sure, sometimes a man needs to cry,” his stepdad explained. “Just don't do it that often. Womenfolk want and need a
man
around, not some dandy, so always be a man of parts. Now, what happened?”

“Well,” young Joshua said, “you know the blacksmith's son Billy?”

Dan nodded.

Joshua said, “He started calling me ‘half-breed' and ‘red mongrel' and ‘blanket nigger.' I ignored him, Pa, but he kept it up and got some of the other kids to do it, too.”

“Then what?”

“He shoved me, Pa, so I hit him the way you taught me and gave him a bloody nose and knocked him down,” the boy stated, “then the teacher just saw me hitting him and told me I was getting a paddling today.”

“Did you tell her that he shoved you?”

“Yes, sir,” Joshua replied. “And she said that he only shoved me, but I hit him, so I was in trouble. I didn't think it was fair and didn't know what I should do, so I acted like a yellow belly and played hooky.”

“Okay,” Dan said. “Yer not getting a spanking today or tomorrow. I'm taking you to school tomorrow and am sending a message to the blacksmith to meet us there with his boy, and we will have a meeting with the schoolmarm. Get out of here and do your chores.”

“Yes, sir!” Joshua said, running toward the barn, a big smile of relief on his face and a ton of worry sliding off his shoulders while he ran.

He could not wait until the next morning.

The next day as they walked to the school Joshua was excited, as there was no red hue in the sky.