Chapter 3
She was no longer Glowing Sun.
Her eyes flickered open at that thought. She didn’t know how to be anyone else.
Abby. No last name to her recollection. Just Abby. She’d been ten. Surely, she’d known her last name. But her life with her white family had faded completely.
A flash of her white father laid out in his grave came from somewhere deep in her memory. How much else was there?
She pushed back the blanket salvaged from the wreckage of her village. As she sat up from where she’d slept near Wild Eagle’s mother, she saw Wade sleeping on the far side of the fire. And no one else. “She’s gone!”
Wade was on his feet, his gun drawn, before Abby had finished speaking.
Looking around, seeing no gunmen, he holstered his weapon and rubbed his eyes.
“Who’s gone?” But he figured it out before she could answer.
“She must have started out for the Bitterroot without us. They can’t go back alone.
She’s hurt. The boy couldn’t even walk yesterday. ”
“I suppose she decided she’d rather risk death than travel with me.
” Abby pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her face against them, closing her eyes against the pain.
She’d known she wasn’t her mother-in-law’s choice for Wild Eagle.
But Wild Eagle had wanted her, and the woman had accepted it.
Only now did the woman show contempt. Maybe with the death of her family, all Wild Eagle’s mother had left was hate, and she’d needed to aim it at someone. Abby would never know.
“We’ll catch up to them.” Wade began packing his bedroll. “You can go to the larger village to live.”
Was he so eager to be rid of her? “I won’t return to the Salish people. That life is dead to me.” She reached for her hair. Usually, she carefully tended it, running a comb through it and braiding it every night. Then upon waking, she let the braid free, combing and braiding it again.
It reached nearly to her waist, and she’d had it unbraided when the men attacked yesterday morning.
She’d washed it in the cold creek the night before the attack and let it dry in the spring breeze.
Then all day yesterday, after Wild Eagle’s mother’s cruel words, she’d ignored it, hated it.
She’d never given a thought to ridding it of its knots.
She might as well have a rat’s nest on her head for the snarls.
A sudden bitter wildness gripped her, and she pulled her knife. Hating her hair. Hating that her difference had separated her from the life she loved. She slashed a chunk of snarls away and grabbed for another.
Wade’s running footsteps warned her, and she turned. He caught her hand. “Stop!”
“You like my hair, then?” She slammed the hank of near-white snarls against his chest. “Take it. I’d been kidnapped for it last time we met.
My village had been slaughtered for it. Wild Eagle’s mother hates me for it.
My yellow hair affects white men like it is truly gold.
It makes you all act like fools. So of course you like it, too, Wade. ”
“Glowing Sun, I didn’t—” Wade held on to her knife-wielding hand.
“No!” She pulled against his grip, eager to fight, to rage instead of hurt. “My name is Abby. I will never answer to my Salish name again. Strike it from your mind.”
Before she could attack, the sound of hoofbeats pulled her eyes toward the rim of the mountain valley.
Two horsemen appeared.
Wade shoved her behind him and pulled his gun with the soft whoosh of leather against steel.
They rode silhouetted against the morning sun and appeared only as black shapes, faceless. One led a packhorse behind him.
“Perhaps the men from yesterday have returned.” Abby stepped to his left side. “Perhaps the gold of my hair is too much for the fools to resist.”
Wade reached for her, then looked at her knife. A smile spread across his face. A handsome face, though it was lost behind whiskers. She’d thought so when they’d been together last fall. And now he seemed to approve of—even enjoy—the fact that she’d drawn a knife.
What a strange heart for a white man. Not a brutish coward like those who had attacked her village.
She well remembered from last fall that he’d also been kind when other white men had tried to take her from her village.
Wade had come along and protected her. Not that she wasn’t doing well at protecting herself, but he’d helped.
And he’d been so kind. It was his kindness that had captivated her far more than his looks.
His kindness had made her long to stay with him when she was promised to Wild Eagle.
And now he looked like a crazy man, his dark hair flowing, his beard covering his face. But his kindness was still there in every word and deed.
The disloyalty to Wild Eagle, only hours dead, shocked her into raising her knife toward the men.
“Wade,” one of the men called out.
“Stop!” With a lightning-quick move, Wade caught her hand as she prepared to send her knife whizzing at the intruders. “I know one of them. He’s a friend. Red Dawson. These aren’t the men who attacked you.”
“He is white.” She twisted, trying to escape his grip. “He cannot be trusted. You cannot be trusted.”
“You trust me already, Abby. You’re just mad. I don’t blame you.” Wade hung on to Abby’s wrist with his left hand while he holstered his gun with his right. “They mean us no harm.”
Abby had to give Wade credit for not trusting her, because he wrested her knife away from her.
“Ow.” He looked at a quarter-inch slit in his thumb, wiped the blood on his shirt, and arched one brow at her as he tucked the knife into his boot. “Behave yourself.”
Abby wanted to claw his eyes out. The arrival of the two men intervened.
Red pulled up beside Wade and swung down, the other man just a moment behind him. “What happened here?”
The men studied the carnage and the long row of covered bodies stretched out alongside the stream. “Let me go, and give me back my knife. Your friends are safe enough.”
Wade gave her a penetrating look, then released her and plucked the knife from his boot.
“It was a massacre of Glowing Sun’s…uh…Abby’s…
” Wade shook his head and ran his hand through his tousled hair.
“This was a Flathead village. This woman, Abby, lived with them and was one of the few left alive.” Wade quickly told them the rest. He’d smeared blood on his forehead, so his finger was cut more deeply than she’d realized.
“Glowing Sun?” The other man looked at Abby as he removed his hat. His long brown hair reminded her of Wild Eagle’s. Of course, her Salish man’s hair had been longer, but it was as thick.
“I’ve heard of you. I’m Silas Harden. I’m married to Belle Tanner Harden. Some drovers who helped with our cattle drive last fall told of a white woman named Glowing Sun who lived with the Flathead. It must be you.”
“My name is no longer Glowing Sun.” Abby’s eyes narrowed. “With the slaughter of my village, I leave my Salish name behind. My name is Abby. The white name I was born with.”
“So Buck made it to help with the drive?” Wade extended his hand. “I sent him. I’m Wade Sawyer.”
Silas shook Wade’s hand. “Yes, Buck, Roy, Shorty. Roy ended up marrying my daughter Lindsay.”
“Honest?” Wade left a streak of blood on Silas’s hand. “He was just a boy.”
Pulling out a handkerchief, Wade pressed the cloth to his wound. Disgusted with his fumbling efforts, Abby jerked the kerchief away from him and tied it tightly against the paltry cut.
“I know.” Silas shook his head and crossed his arms in disgust. “And my daughter was too young. But we couldn’t talk any sense into ’em.”
When Abby was done with her bandaging, she looked up into Wade’s eyes. He’d watched her, his head bent low. Now they were too close. Abby stepped back and to his side.
Silas looked at Abby, but there was no evil in his eyes, not like in the men who’d come yesterday. “They told us about the kidnapping and that Wade had gone after you when you ran off. I’m sorry about your village. Who did this?”
Abby shook her head silently.
“We don’t know.” Wade rubbed his bandaged thumb. “We haven’t had time to turn our thoughts to tracking them down. There were wounded to tend. Two other survivors headed back to the main Flathead village in the Bitterroot Valley. What brings you out this way?”
The redheaded man pulled off his hat. His serious expression indicated this wasn’t a show of manners so much as a sign of respect for whatever news he carried.
“There’s been an accident, Wade. Your pa’s hurt bad.
He asked for you. There’ve been people out looking for weeks.
No one had seen a sign of you. Then the gap finally opened to the Tanner Ranch?—”
“The Harden Ranch,” Silas interrupted. “How long do you think it’s gonna take for you to remember Belle’s married?”
“It’s not that I forget she’s married. You’re standing right here, after all. It’s just hard to break the habit of wondering whether one of her husbands will last.” Red shrugged one shoulder sheepishly.
One of her husbands will last? Abby had a sudden desire to meet this woman.
“You and half the other people around here.” Silas shook his head, looking disgusted.
“Sorry.”
“Work on it.”
Red turned back to Wade. “Silas knew you’d been up in this country late last winter. The two of us’ve been scouting around for a week. This morning, we finally found a trail and backtracked you here. You need to come home, Wade.”
“That’s not my home. Not anymore.”
Amazing how much Wade sounded like Abby.
“His back is busted up. He got thrown by a mustang out riding alone and lay there through a cold night.”
“My pa fell off his horse?” Wade sounded incredulous.
“He hasn’t been able to walk since. He’s asking for you.”
Wade shook his head. “Not interested.”
Red rested one gloved hand on Wade’s shoulder. “You can always leave again. Going to see him now is the right thing to do.”
“I’ve told you what he’s like. He’s the one who?—”
“Wade,” Red said, cutting him off, “honor your mother and your father. It’s as simple as that. Nowhere in that commandment does it say they have to deserve it. He’s a broken man. Come, if only to say goodbye. He doesn’t have long to live.”
“That spiteful old man will live forever.”
For the first time, Glowing Sun realized how young Wade was.
She’d thought little of his age. But his words now were the words of a boy, not a man.
Abby turned and glared at him. “Your father has asked for a chance to say goodbye. I have lost two fathers. You should cherish the father you still have.”
“Cherish my father?” Wade gaped at her, the kindness gone. It made him a different man, cold and empty, a stranger. “My father was a tyrant who…who…”
Wade sighed so deeply, his whole body nearly emptied of breath. He shook his head as if to clear it and shrugged. “Yes, of course, I’ll go. Let’s get packed up.”
“We can split what’s left of our supplies between us and let Abby ride our packhorse.”
He reached for Abby’s arm, but she evaded his touch. “I have no place with you. Ride away and return to your life.”
Wade froze. “No. If you won’t go with me, then I’ll stay. I won’t leave you here alone.”
“I am alone, no matter where I go now. I cannot return to my village, and I will not fit into the white world.”
Wade squared off in front of her, as solid and unmoving as the mountains that surrounded them. “I won’t leave you.”
Abby stared at him. Their gazes held a long time. Too long. Clearly, he meant it. But he needed to go home. Well, she’d ride along with him, then, and leave when he was busy saying goodbye to his father. With a snort of pure disgust, she said, “Fine.”
They packed up in minutes.
“Don’t you want us to stay and bury them?” Red asked.
“Glowing…uh…Abby…said her people would have a special rite for the dead. They’ll be back to see to them.”
Red looked doubtful, but after a long hesitation, he settled his Stetson firmly on his head and swung up onto his buckskin gelding.
“You’ve left Cassie alone at the ranch for a week?” Wade asked as he mounted his chestnut.
“I left her to visit Belle.”
Wade blew a long, low whistle through his lips. “Do you know Belle Tanner?”
“Harden,” Silas said through clenched teeth as he mounted his roan.
“Sure, I know Belle.” Red sounded kind of sad.
Wade shook his head. “Cassie’s never gonna be the same.”
The men looked at each other for a long moment, then started laughing.
Abby had no idea why.
They fell into line as the trail narrowed over the edge of the valley. She took one look back. This was the second life taken from her. It must be something about her. God must have created her to be alone.
Well, fine. She’d be alone. That suited her.
As they crested the valley walls, Red took the lead, glancing at Wade as he passed him. “You look like a wild man, Wade. You’d better shave and cut your hair before your pa sees you.”
Wade fell into place behind Red. He ran one hand into his beard, nodding. “I haven’t given it a thought all winter.”
Silas brought up the rear. Because they thought she’d run?
She ran her hand across the knife she’d hidden in the pouch at the small of her back.
Well, they had the right of it. She would run.
But not now. Not until she’d seen Wade home.
He’d saved her from that awful, murderous brute.
In fact, he’d saved her last fall too. So she was indebted to him, and that didn’t sit right.
She’d see him home because he wouldn’t go otherwise. And then they’d be even. She’d owe no white man.