Chapter 22
All that first day Mary had kept Shane drugged with a medicated tea, so it wasn’t until the following morning that he realized that Caitlin was gone. “Where is she?” he’d roared. “And where’s Gabe? And Justice?”
“Take horses to fort,” Mary answered. She held out another cup of her special brew. “Sell stock,” she added, as if Shane couldn’t figure the rest out for himself.
“The hell they have!”
“No danger,” Mary said. “Gabriel tell Thompson woman you dead.”
“No danger?” Shane repeated. “Two hundred miles of open country. Renegades, crazy mountain men, army deserters, and horse thieves. One wrangler, an Irish lady, and a boy? Just how do you figure they’re in no danger?”
Derry hid behind Mary’s skirt and peeked out with big eyes. “ ’Kenna mad at Mama?” she asked.
“No, darlin’,” he managed between clenched teeth. He fixed Mary with a cold stare. “Why did you go along with this? You’ve got more sense than the three of them put together.”
Mary shrugged. “This place Justice home. He keep, he need fight, maybe.”
“Saddle me a horse, if they’ve left me one.”
Mary stuck her pipe between her teeth. “McKenna too sick ride,” she mumbled. “McKenna sleep. Eat. Ride tomorrow.”
He sat up and immediately sank back onto the pillow. His shoulder was as stiff as a block of wood, and it burned as if it were on fire. His gorge rose, and he was afraid he’d disgrace himself by vomiting all over the bedcovers.
“Bring me my clothes,” he said.
“Too sick—”
“Now, Mary!” He pushed himself to a sitting position and stayed up by sheer willpower. The room was spinning, and his stomach was trying to turn itself inside out.
“Pants!” he insisted. “And get that baby out of here. I’m stark naked under this sheet.”
Mary shoved some clothing at him and shooed Derry from the room. Sweat broke out on Shane’s forehead as he set about dressing himself. He thought he’d been in pain when the bull had stomped him, but that was nothing compared to this. “Pack food and make a bedroll for me!” he shouted through the closed door. “I’m goin’ after them.”
Mary didn’t answer.
Gabe drove the herd hard all the next day and harder still the day after that. Caitlin’s back ached, and her face and hands were sunburned. Every bone and muscle in her body felt as if it had been pounded with a blacksmith’s hammer and then stretched like Christmas taffy.
They ate on horseback during the daylight hours, and supper was whatever Gabe or Justice shot during the day. The third night out, Caitlin ate rattlesnake roasted over an open fire and was too hungry to even protest.
“If we’d brought the wagon with us, we could have had coffee and corn cakes and beans,” Justice said. “But the wagon and team would slow us down. The Thompsons travel with two wagons. We can go over the rough spots that would snap a wagon wheel like tinder.”
No wagon also meant no extra blankets and few changes of clothing. A single blanket roll and two saddlebags contained all Caitlin’s belongings for the trip. As she left the house, she’d snatched Shane’s hat off a peg for a good-luck charm, and she thanked God for it. Her fair skin blistered and peeled in the warm Missouri sunshine, but the hat kept down the glare and shielded part of her face. The broad brim also helped to keep some of the rain out of her eyes.
They crossed streams and rocky valleys and threaded through thick forests that had grown there for thousands of years. They rode through foggy mornings and bright afternoons. Gabe started the horse herd moving when the last stars were just vanishing in the eastern sky and kept them walking at a fast pace until twilight faded into dusk.
Caitlin saw deer and bear, foxes and coyotes. She watched eagles wheel across the sky and great vees of ducks and geese winging overhead. Her head was filled with images of bright-colored birds, wild creatures, ancient trees, and swirling sunsets. But ever constant were the horses and mules that made up the Kilronan herd.
Gabe and Justice knew every animal by name and personality. And many of them Caitlin came to recognize as well. Nancy, the bell mare, was short-tempered and would kick if you came up on her left side, but nothing startled her. The black mule named Trot hated water and had to be driven across any creek, and Babe, a stocky gelding, would wander off if someone didn’t keep him in the center of the herd.
Caitlin was riding Jack, a big-headed paint, on the left flank of the herd when they reached a dead end of a narrow valley. On two sides the ground rose sharply in a tangle of rocks and scrub trees. The remaining route, westerly, seemed scarcely better. The steep incline was stepped upward in sections scattered with loose gravel.
“We’ve got to turn around and go back,” Caitlin called to Gabe. The bell mare, Nancy, had already circled inside of the natural corral and was headed out.
Gabe pointed. “Nope, we’re headin’ up there.”
Caitlin was sure that her expression must have revealed her doubt, because the cowboy grinned. “These animals can do it. We’ll take half a day off our trip by cutting over this ridge.”
“Trust your horse,” Justice said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
She trusted the pinto. It was her riding that she worried about. What if she fell off and rolled back? Caitlin gritted her teeth and pushed the image of her crushed and broken body out of her mind.
Gabe was always right where the horses were concerned, wasn’t he? Caitlin shuddered. “Have you come this way before?”
He shouted an answer, but it was lost in the clatter of hooves and his whoop as he whirled a rope over his head and drove Nancy and two other animals up over the first ledge. Bessie plunged after them, followed by a black mare.
Caitlin’s heart fluttered like a trapped bird in a chimney as she closed her eyes and dug her heels into Jack’s sides. The horse leaped up the hill, seemingly oblivious to loose rocks and jostling animals. Caitlin ignored Shane’s riding lessons and held on tightly to the saddle horn.
To her left, a bay stumbled and went down on his knees. A dun crashed into him and whinnied in pain. Then both animals scrambled to their feet and climbed on. Caitlin looked back over her shoulder to see Justice on his pinto pony gamely driving the last of the mules up the rugged slope.
Caitlin held her breath as Jack’s powerful legs drove them on. Once he slipped and came close to coming down on his right knee, but then he found solid rock and continued up. Caitlin didn’t look back again until they had reached the crest of the hill. To her surprise, there were no injured horses or mules lying helplessly on the valley floor. Even Justice’s pony had made the climb successfully.
The descent down the far side was rough but nothing like the rocky slope. And at the bottom of the hill was a grove of trees and a fast-running stream.
“I want to see the Thompsons get their wagons over that,” Caitlin said triumphantly.
Justice laughed. “Me, too.”
“I told you the herd could do it,” Gabe said.
The boy caught Caitlin’s horse and held it so that she could dismount. “Wait until McKenna hears about this,” he said.
“Doesn’t Shane come this way with his herd every year?” she asked.
Gabe laughed. “Hell, no—” He broke off and flushed red under his tan. “McKenna never thought we could make it up that hill with the herd.”
“You . . . you . . .” Caitlin opened her mouth to call him the worst name she could think of, but all that came out was laughter. “We did it, didn’t we?” she said when she could speak again. “We really did it.”
“Yep,” Justice agreed. “And Gabe thinks we’ll pass the Thompson herd sometime tomorrow.”
It was Caitlin’s turn to build the fire. Justice hobbled the horses while Gabe walked off to hunt some game for dinner. No other herds had passed this way, and there was wood lying along the creek.
The three of them worked well together. Caitlin was surprised at how different Gabriel acted toward her than he had at home on Kilronan. He’d always been polite, but here on the trail, he laughed and joked with her, including her in conversations he had with Justice.
Caitlin could see why Shane valued Gabe so highly. He had a magical way with horses; he always seemed to know exactly where he was going without landmarks or roads. Gabe’s patience—even toward her and her ignorance about camp life—seemed unending.
That night, after they devoured the grouse and grilled trout over the open fire, Caitlin, Justice, and Gabe sat up for a long time, staring into the fire and talking.
Justice had so many questions about Ireland and her sea voyage to America. He wanted to know if she’d seen whales or pirates, and he asked about the ocean waves and fish that flew through the air.
“How does the captain drive the boat? Did you see—”
“One question at a time,” she said. But Justice’s excitement was contagious, and it thrilled her to see how eager he was to learn about the world. “Someday you’ll see it all,” she promised. “You could go to college in Dublin or Edinburgh.”
“Don’t fill his head with such,” Gabriel warned. “Indians don’t go to school in Missouri, at least not to regular schools with white folks.”
“Justice is only part Indian. He’s French and—”
“And what?” the boy asked wryly.
“Irish,” she replied without a moment’s hesitation. “And it makes no difference in my homeland. They’ve never seen an Osage there. He’s little darker than Derry. A McKenna he is, the son of Caitlin and Shane McKenna, and a McKenna with the coin to pay the fee would be welcome in any college in Europe.”
Gabe chuckled. “You’re a devious woman.”
“Thank you.”
They all laughed at that.
Caitlin sighed and stretched and gazed up at the glorious night sky arching overhead. It looked like a bottomless fairy pool filled with diamonds. The burnished copper moon—as large as a dinner plate—hung so low that she was certain Gabe could throw a rope around it. And the air . . . she’d never smelled anything that made her feel so alive. The scents of the animals mingled with that of the cherry wood embers, the new grass, and the leather saddle she lay against.
Justice’s eyes grew heavy, and he began to listen more than talk. And after a few minutes, his head slumped sideways onto Caitlin’s shoulder.
She slipped an arm around him, and immediately he stiffened and sat bolt upright. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you don’t like to be touched.”
The boy averted his eyes. “I don’t care. Not so long as it’s you.”
“He’s a little skittish because his mother beat him,” Gabe said as he tossed another log on the fire.
Justice frowned. “Only when she was liquored up. Whiskey made her crazy mean.”
“Irish and Indians,” Caitlin murmured. “I guess they’re more alike than I’d guessed.” Her gaze met Gabe’s across the campfire. “Shane doesn’t drink anymore, does he?”
“No,” the wrangler replied. “He used to, but no more. Not a drop since Cerise’s death.”
“He blames himself,” Caitlin said. Here in this lonely place with the endless night sky stretching over them, a sense of comradeship linked the three of them. Caitlin felt comfortable talking of what she couldn’t at Kilronan.
“I told you,” Justice put in. “McKenna didn’t kill her. He ain’t the one who stabbed her.”
Caitlin covered Justice’s hand with hers. “Who did?” She gave him a squeeze. “You know, don’t you?”
The boy’s eyes widened in the firelight. “You think I kilt her.”
“He’s innocent,” Gabe said. “Tell her, Justice. Tell her what really happened that night.”
Caitlin tensed.
“No!” Justice jumped to his feet. “I’ll never tell! I swore I wouldn’t.”
“And you keep your promises, don’t you, boy.” Gabe crouched beside the fire and stared into the glowing coals. “He was there, hidin’ under his mother’s bed. McKenna didn’t know it, and I didn’t know it either.”
“You?” Gooseflesh rose on Caitlin’s arms. “You were there, Gabriel?”
The wrangler nodded. “I killed her. She was my sister, and I killed her.”
“That ain’t so,” Justice protested from the far side of the fire. “It was an accident. She kilt herself.”
“How?” Caitlin asked.
“She and McKenna fought over the baby, like I told you before,” Justice said angrily. “Cerise was drunked up out of her head. She always wanted to cut somebody when she got that way. McKenna struggled with her, but he was as drunk as she was. He hit his head on the table and passed out.”
“I’d come to town with McKenna that night, and I was outside on the balcony,” Gabe said. “I wasn’t spyin’ on them. I’d come to see my sister.”
“Indians aren’t welcome in Fat Rose’s—at least not as customers,” Justice explained. “Gabe always had to climb over the roof and in the window. Cerise never told nobody that Gabe was her brother—least of all McKenna. She was ashamed of him because he looked Osage.”
“We argued,” Gabriel continued. “We always argued. I wanted her to stop the drinkin’—to go with McKenna or some other decent man and stop sellin’ her body. And when I heard her tell McKenna she wanted money to get rid of the baby, it made me furious.”
“Gabe never meant to hurt her,” Justice said.
“She shamed me and she shamed our people. But she was still my sister, and I loved her.”
“Cerise swung at him with the knife,” the boy explained. “Gabe tried to take the knife away from her, but she slipped and fell on it.”
“I ran away,” the cowboy finished. “I let McKenna take the blame because I knew an Indian couldn’t get a fair trial. Nobody would have listened to me tell what happened. A dead whore, a dead Indian.”
“But you can’t tell either,” Justice said. “Mary doesn’t know. Nobody knows but us.”
Gabe covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t have the courage to tell my mother that I killed my sister. I still don’t.”
Caitlin ached for them both . . . and for Shane. Her eyes stung with unshed tears. “But you told me.”
“You’ll keep our secret,” Justice said.
“Can you be sure?” she asked him.
The child nodded. “I guess I know who I can trust and who I can’t.”
She looked at Gabe. “But Shane should know. He’s carried a terrible burden of guilt for her death. If it was all her own fault . . .”
“Someday,” Justice promised. “Someday I’ll tell him, but not yet. And if you tell—”
“I won’t,” she said softly. “But I think you need to. He’ll understand. I know he will.” I hope he will, she thought.
“But what if he doesn’t?” Gabe asked. “He’s my friend, and I betrayed him.”
“Did you believe he’d hang for killing your sister?” she replied.
“A white man? A landowner? If they’d found him guilty, he’d have been let off with a fine. Twenty dollars, tops for killin’ an Indian whore.”
Caitlin went to Justice and hugged him. “Have faith in Shane,” she said as she ruffled his thick hair. “Your uncle is his friend, and you’re his son. He may have loved Cerise, but he loves the two of you as well. He’ll see why you thought you had to do what you did.”
For a minute Justice returned her embrace, and then he pulled back, embarrassed. “You don’t have to get mushy on me. I’m too old for that stuff.”
“Not from a mother,” Gabe suggested.
“She ain’t . . .” Justice looked at Caitlin, and then back at his uncle and shrugged. “Well, I suppose, since she ain’t got a boy of her own . . .”
“We could . . . sort of pretend,” Caitlin offered. “Since Cerise isn’t here, maybe she wouldn’t mind if I did the mothering in her place.”
“I guess it would be all right,” Justice agreed with a great show of reluctance. “So long as you don’t act stupid in front of other people.”
“Deal.” She offered her hand. “Shake on it?”
Justice laughed. His small, callused fingers grasped hers. “Deal, Ma.”
“Mama,” she corrected.
He shook his head. “Quit while you’re winnin’.”
“Ma, it is,” she conceded gracefully. “Your Irish grandmother, my mother—rest her soul—is probably turning over in her grave at that.”
Caitlin stirred and felt around with her hand, uncertain where she was. She touched grass at the same time she opened her eyes. The stars still winked faintly in a misty sky, but the moon was nowhere in sight.
She listened, hearing nothing more than the chirp of crickets, the ribit, ribit of a frog, and the restless shuffling of horses’ feet. She sighed and turned over, noting the outline of Justice sleeping only an arm’s distance away from the fire. Gabe’s blanket was there, but she knew he dozed upright in the saddle, catching what rest he could as he rode guard on the herd each night.
From far off Caitlin heard the rumble of thunder. A thin needle of lightning shimmered on the far horizon. “Please, God,” she whispered sleepily. “No rain.” It would be dawn soon, and she’d be back on a horse. She’d do what she had to when the time came, but for now all she wanted to do was catch another hour’s sleep.
She snuggled down and pulled the blanket over her head. The ground beneath her was not as hard as it would have been if Justice hadn’t crafted her a mattress of evergreen boughs.
“They keep away bugs,” he’d told her when he dragged the branches to the campfire.
“So long as they keep away snakes,” she’d replied.
Snakes. Ugh. She shivered. Why did she have to think about snakes now? She rolled over onto her left side and curled into a ball.
A horse’s whinny brought her half awake, heart thumping. Nancy’s bell jingled, and another animal on the outside of the herd snorted.
“Justice?” Caitlin whispered. “Do you—”
A man’s hand clamped over her mouth. Instinctively Caitlin slammed upward with a fist and bit down on dirty fingers at the same time. Her assailant jerked away his hand and delivered a stunning blow to the side of her jaw.
Pinwheels of light exploded inside Caitlin’s head. She rolled and screamed Gabe’s name, then began to crawl away as gunfire erupted from the far side of the herd.
A mule leaped over the fire and galloped past, nearly crushing Caitlin’s skull with an iron-shod hoof. She tried to scramble to her feet, but someone wrestled her face down in the grass and seized a handful of her hair. “No!” she spat out dirt and screamed as he yanked her head back at an impossible angle.
“Let go of her!” Justice shouted.
From the corner of her eye, Caitlin caught sight of the boy, fists flying, hurling himself onto the man.
“Get away from me, you little red bastard!”
Caitlin struggled to free herself from her attacker as he fought off Justice. The man’s vile curses rang in her ears. I know that voice, she thought frantically. It’s Thompson! Beau Thompson! She got up onto her knees, turned, and butted him in the stomach. The three of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Beau cursed and knocked Justice away. He let go of Caitlin’s hair and grabbed his arm, and Caitlin saw blood welling up through his torn shirtsleeve.
“You bastard,” Beau swore, and fumbled for his pistol with his bad arm.
“No!” Caitlin cried.
Still clutching his knife, Justice sprang up defiantly to face him. “Run, Ma!”
Caitlin knew that Beau meant to kill the boy, and she knew just as surely that she couldn’t face Shane if she let that happen.
Lunging forward, she grabbed Beau’s bleeding arm and forced the muzzle of the weapon toward the ground. “Run, Justice! Run!”
The thunder of hooves drowned her screams.
Horses and mules stampeded through the camp, scattering the fire and engulfing Caitlin, Beau, and Justice in clouds of smoke and dust. Beau heaved Caitlin aside and cocked his weapon, but he could no longer see the boy in the river of churning horseflesh.
Caitlin grappled with Beau, beating him with her fists, trying to knock the gun from his hand. But he was too strong for her. He clamped an arm around her throat and began to drag her away.
Choking, unable to draw breath, Caitlin clawed at his arm and kicked his legs. Then, as her strength failed and she feared she was losing consciousness, a man on horseback appeared beside them.
“Give her to me!” he shouted.
“The hell with her!” Beau yelled back. He shoved Caitlin aside.
She would have fallen if she hadn’t slammed into the rider’s horse. Gasping, she sucked in ragged gulps of air and tried to keep from tumbling beneath the feet of the passing animals.
Beau seized the cowboy’s saddle horn. “Get me out of here, Nate!”
Nate’s horse leaped forward, and Caitlin staggered sideways. Another animal dashed toward her, and she grabbed the trailing reins amid the tangle of hooves. Her fingers closed around the leathers, and when she saw Gabe’s saddle, she realized that this was the paint the wrangler had been riding.
For a second, she thought she could hold on to the reins, but the pony’s terror made him uncontrollable. Her heart sank as the leather tore out of her grasp.
“Catch that horse!” Nate shouted at Beau. Then his hand closed on Caitlin’s shoulder, and he dragged her up across the front of his saddle.
She screamed and tried to shield her head as Nate drove his horse into the melee. Then the animal beneath her was galloping with the rest. Caitlin groaned in pain as Nate’s saddle horn pounded against her ribs, and the dust rose in choking clouds.
She was going to die, Caitlin realized. She was going to die there without ever seeing Shane again. That was the last lucid thought she had before blackness closed over her.