Maverick Heart (36 page)

Oh, dear child, how could you think I would hold you to blame? I, who have been brutalized by a monster, would never think less of you for being a victim, as well
. Verity opened her arms and enfolded the young woman in a circle of warmth and welcome.

She angled her head to Rand and asked, “Where have you been? How did you get here?”

“We’ve been living at Hawk’s camp,” Rand said.

“What in heaven’s name—”

“It’s a long story, Mother,” Rand interrupted. “And we don’t have much time. Hawk is on his way here with a raiding party. We followed him from the village. He’s camped not far from here. I think he’s planning to attack at daybreak.”

The sun inched beyond the horizon, and a shaft of sunlight struck Verity in the face. She exchanged a panicked look with Miles.

“How many men does Hawk have with him?” Miles asked Rand.

“At least a dozen, sir,” Rand said.

“I’ll go alert the men. You barricade the windows here in the house. And do something with this goddamned door,” Miles said, kicking it savagely as he stalked outside.

They set frantically to work. Once the windows were shuttered, the only view of the outside was through the gun holes that had been cut at various points along the log wall when the house was built. Rand rolled a nearly full flour barrel close to the
door for use in blocking it as soon as Miles was back inside.

But, the attack came before he returned to the house.

“You can’t lock Miles out!” Verity cried when Rand started to roll the barrel into place.

“We can’t wait for him, Mother,” Rand said. “We need to make sure the door is going to stay closed so we can concentrate on defending ourselves.”

He dropped the barrel into place and accepted the Winchester Freddy handed him from where it had been racked over the mantel. “You two cover the bedroom window,” Rand said. “I’ll watch the front.”

It was plain neither woman wanted to let him out of her sight, but Rand gave them both a severe look and ordered, “Go!”

They went.

Rand hoped all Hawk wanted was a few more cattle. But he knew from stories he had heard in the village that Hawk had recently attacked a ranch somewhere in the area and burned it to the ground, merely for the hate he bore the white man.

Though he hadn’t let the women see it, he was worried about Miles. He fully expected him to try to make it back to the house, but there was an awful lot of open ground to be covered between here and the bunkhouse. Miles would make an easy target for the Sioux.

Rand had spent a lot of time thinking about his father over the past six weeks. The whole story had
spilled out to Freddy on the nightlong race to get back to the Muleshoe before Hawk. Freddy had interrupted frequently in typical Freddy fashion to ask questions, forcing him to put into words all the things he had been thinking about Miles Broderick.

“Do you like him, Rand?” Freddy had asked.

“It’s hard not to like him.”

“Do you want him to be your father?”

“I don’t think I have any experience with the sort of father Miles Broderick would be.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s so helpful … so interested … so …”

“Fatherly?”

“Is that what fathers are supposed to be like? Mine never was.”

“Talbot, you mean?”

“Yes. Talbot.”

“Why not give Miles a chance, Rand?”

“I suppose I should,” he had said at last. He hadn’t admitted his reservations to her.
What if he disappoints me? What if he doesn’t live up to all my expectations?

In the end, all Rand had determined for sure was that he wanted to get to know Miles Broderick better. That wasn’t going to happen if the fool man managed to get himself killed in the next few minutes.

Rand kept a sharp eye out for movement through the gun hole closest to the front door. Sure enough, he caught sight of Miles edging his
way along the log wall of the bunkhouse, getting ready to brave the run across the open field that separated the ram pasture from the house.

“Go back inside,” Rand muttered. “I can take care of the women. Stay where you are.”

But he knew if it had been him, he would have come. He realized he hadn’t expected any less of Miles. That, he supposed, was the big difference between the man who actually was his father and the man who had let himself be called by that name from the time Rand was born. Broderick never thought of himself first. Talbot always had.

Rand eyed the flour barrel and realized he had better move it out of the way. His father was going to be in a hell of a hurry by the time he hit the front door.

As he heaved the barrel out of the way, Rand heard a Sioux war cry and the sound of galloping hooves. He hurried back to the gun hole to see what was happening.

His father was halfway to the house, running at full tilt, Colt in hand, when a lasso settled around his shoulders and jerked him violently to the ground. The gun flew out of his hand as he was dragged away in a rising cloud of dust.

Rand raced for the door and swore when it stuck in the frame. He pounded it with his fist to unjam it, then dragged it open.

“Rand, is something going on in there?” his mother called.

“Everything’s fine, Mother,” he called as he raced out the front door. “Stay where you are.”

Rand didn’t take aim, just swung the rifle up as he ran down the porch steps and fired. The shot missed, but it scared off Hawk, who let go of the rope, kicked his pony into a gallop, and disappeared behind the barn.

Rand didn’t bother shooting again, although he could hear other weapons being fired at the escaping Sioux. His entire attention was focused on his father. Miles had been dragged some distance, and Rand wasn’t sure how badly he was hurt.

He sank down on one knee, just as Miles rolled over and shoved himself up on his hands. Rand loosened the lasso and pulled it up and off.

“Hold on to me, Father,” he said. He slid his arm around the injured man, hauled him to his feet, and headed back toward the house at a shambling run.

He was aware of Miles eyeing him the whole, impossibly long distance to the front door.

Why did I call him Father?

He hadn’t planned to say it. It had just come out. Was it because he had always dreamed of having such a father? Was it because in the heat of the moment he had spoken what he yearned for in his heart?

They stumbled up the porch steps and inside the house under the covering fire of the men in the bunkhouse. Rand settled his father on a chair at the table and hurried back to replace the door in its frame and roll the flour barrel back into place. He had just pivoted back around when screams and gunshots erupted in the bedroom.

Both men headed for the closed bedroom door on the run.

Freddy had dreaded facing Miles and Verity after the ordeal she had been through. Rand had convinced her that neither of them would do or say anything to make her feel uncomfortable.

“Mother loves you, Freddy. And she knows I love you. She’ll welcome you back with open arms.”

He had been blessedly right. Freddy had felt a great weight drop from her shoulders when Verity had hugged her. What guilt and shame was left, she could carry with Rand’s help.

She and Verity had each claimed one of the gun holes on either side of the bedroom window. Freddy had a Winchester rifle. Verity had Miles’s Colt .45.

“Do you see anything?” Freddy asked.

“Nothing’s moving over here,” Verity replied.

“Do you think anyone in London would believe me if I told them about this?” Freddy said with a whimsical smile.

Verity looked at Freddy standing there in jeans, holding a rifle aimed out a hole in a log wall at savages on the other side and laughed. “No. They’d think you were making it up.”

Both women sobered as their eyes met and held.

What was happening now was all too real. What had happened to Freddy had been real, too.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Verity asked.

Freddy’s breath shuddered out. “I’m not sure I can.”

Both women froze at the sounds of commotion in the next room. Their eyes focused on the closed bedroom door.

“Rand, is something going on in there?” Verity called.

“Everything’s fine, Mother. Stay where you are,” Rand called back.

Verity stared at the door a moment longer, but when there was no further disturbance, she turned her attention back to Freddy.

“What have you and Rand been doing all these weeks?”

“Rand spent the time hunting … I gathered wood and carried water … And we got married.”

“You
what?
”

The waggish smile that curled Freddy’s lips was a mere shadow of her former mischievous grin, Verity thought, but it was a start.

“Of course, it was only an Indian ceremony,” Freddy said. “But Rand says we’ll be seeing the chaplain at Fort Laramie the first chance we get.”

“I’m so happy for you, Freddy,” Verity said. “And for Rand. He’s lucky to have you.”

“How can you say that,” Freddy whispered, “after …?”

Verity dropped the Colt on the foot of the bed as she crossed to put her arms around Freddy. “A beastly act performed upon you can’t take away who you are inside,” she said.

Freddy shivered. “Rand said the same thing. But I feel … I feel …”

“Unclean?” she supplied.

Freddy nodded.

Verity stepped back arm’s length to look into Freddy’s eyes. “I don’t know what comfort I can give. I—”

A fifty-pound barrel of horseshoe nails came crashing through the shuttered window, spraying nails everywhere when it broke apart on landing and leaving a gaping sunlit hole through which two ferocious, war-painted Indians could clearly be seen.

Both women screamed.

For a panicked instant, Verity forgot what she had done with her gun. The Indians were already climbing inside the hole they had created by the time she remembered where it was.

“Freddy, get away from the window!” she shrieked as she raced for the bed.

Freddy had already begun to level the Winchester at the first Indian coming through the ragged opening. Before she could gather the nerve to fire, he grabbed the end of the barrel and shoved it upward. When she pulled the trigger, the shot blasted harmlessly into the ceiling.

By then, Verity had the Colt in hand, but the second Indian was upon her. He grabbed her wrist to wrench the weapon from her and the gun went off, wounding him in the stomach. He lurched but didn’t fall.

Then all hell broke loose.

The two men charged through the bedroom door like avenging angels, faces contorted in masks of rage and retribution. The Indians tried to disengage to meet this new foe, but seeing reinforcements, the women harried their attackers as best they could.

Miles leveled the mortally wounded Indian with one powerful blow of his fist.

The other Indian had managed to wrest the rifle from Freddy’s hands. When he turned to fire at Rand, Freddy gave a fearsome shriek and threw her shoulder into his body, knocking his aim askew.

The bullet landed with a
thunk
in the wall beyond Rand’s head.

The Indian dropped the rifle, which was useless in close combat, to grab a knife from the sheath at his waist, while Rand closed the distance between them.

Using his own rifle as a defense against the Indian’s first deadly swipes, Rand saw an opening and slammed the butt of his Winchester hard up under the Indian’s chin, sending him flying head over heels backward through the hole in the wall.

The Sioux scrambled to his feet and ran for safety around the corner of the house. Rand started out through the window after him, but Freddy grabbed his arm.

“No, Rand. Let him go. Please.”

Rand ushered Freddy and Verity to the relative safety to be found in the front of the house. Miles followed as soon as he made sure the dying Indian
had no weapon, closing the bedroom door behind him.

Verity could see through the gun hole nearest the front door that the Sioux were retreating, sprinting to safety on horseback amid a hail of bullets from Miles’s men stationed in the bunkhouse and the barn. As she watched, the Indian she had left wounded in the bedroom, who had seemed on the verge of death, came into view perched precariously on his mount, racing to catch up with the others.

In the distance, she saw that several other Sioux had stampeded the cattle.

“They’re taking our cattle, Miles!” she cried.

The look on his face was bitter, angry. “They’ll keep them running until they’re scattered all over hell and gone,” he said. “It’ll take us a month to round them all up again. At least, all of them we’re going to find. Hawk will cut out a herd for himself, just like he did last time.”

Verity didn’t suggest going after the Sioux. A few cattle weren’t worth putting Miles and Rand in danger. She held her breath waiting to see whether the idea would occur to Miles.

It did.

“Could you find Hawk’s village again?” Miles asked Rand as the two men rolled the flour barrel away from the door and yanked it ajar.

“Probably,” Rand answered, as all four of them flooded out onto the porch.

“I’ll get the men,” Miles said, heading down the
porch steps. “This time Hawk isn’t going to get away.”

“Miles, let them go,” Verity pleaded.

“This has to be done, Verity,” he said, not even turning around, his voice implacable.

“Father,” Rand said.

Verity watched the word stop Miles in his tracks. He pivoted to face Rand, one foot on the bottom step, one on the ground.

“Let him go, Father. Hawk saved our lives. Not willingly, but Freddy and I would have died in the blizzard if he hadn’t helped us. We’ve been guests in his village. I’ve met a great many of the people who live there. I don’t want to kill them.”

“So we let him get away with this?” Miles asked. “He’ll be back, you know.”

“We’ll be ready for him,” Rand said.

In that one sentence Rand had revealed his intention to stay at the Muleshoe, to be a son to his father. Verity felt her heart leap with gladness. She saw the fierce light of joy in Miles’s eyes.

“Son, I—” Miles’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “We’ll need to get started on a place for you and Freddy,” he said.