Chapter 6
The tension grew in Wade until Abby thought he might snap.
He looked more like himself with his hair cut short and his face clean shaven.
It was easier to separate herself from the horror of her village riding beside Wade as he’d looked last fall.
She did her best to turn her mind away from the death she’d witnessed.
The gunshots still rang in her ears. The blood was there every time she closed her eyes.
She tried to shut it down by focusing on Wade and this strange world of the whites.
She’d let Cassie convince her to don a gingham dress. It pushed up high on her legs as she rode her pony barebacked. Wade had urged her to use a saddle, but she’d refused to load the horse down with heavy leather and iron.
The closer they rode to Wade’s ranch, the tighter his jaw clenched. Tension vibrated off him in nearly visible waves.
A rugged trail opened to lush valleys of grass edging along the mountain slopes. As they rounded an outcropping of rock, Wade pulled up and turned on the trail to face her. “You told me you were a believer, a Christian…is that right?”
What was the man fretting over now? Wild Eagle had faced everything steadily.
He rarely laughed, rarely got angry. He was a rock she could lean on.
But a rock was hard, and she’d been hurt by that hardness many times.
By contract, Abby knew pretty much every thought that went through Wade’s head, and if she couldn’t figure it out, she just had to wait a bit because he’d tell her.
“Yes, a Blackrobe lived among our people. He spent part of the winter with us, in our winter hunting grounds. He told us of the white man’s God and how He’d given His life to save us.
A beautiful story, a story only God would have written.
Our small village embraced Jesus. As I learned more, I remembered stories my own parents had told me of Jesus and Christmas and Easter.
When the Blackrobe heard me speak to him in his tongue, he let me say his white words to my people in their tongue. ”
“I noticed you have been speaking English well. Would it be all right if we prayed right now?”
“Prayed? You and I together?”
“Yes. Once we round this bend, you’ll see my father’s house.
I don’t want to make a show of praying in front of the cowhands or my father.
There aren’t many believers among them. I’d like to go in there with another believer at my side.
” Wade shook his head. “I’ve been praying since Red came to tell me I had to go home.
I should have let Red come along. He’s a wise man.
He fills in for the circuit rider in Divide, but he’d been on the trail a long time searching for me. He needed to get home.”
“What is it you pray for?”
A humorless laugh escaped from Wade’s lips. “Courage.”
“Are you lacking courage? I had not noticed.”
Wade tilted his head a bit. “Thank you. But when it comes to my father…I’m afraid of everything.
Afraid of what he’ll say. He has a cruel tongue, Abby.
And there’s more. I’m afraid of my own anger.
Red told me I’m to honor my father, and I know that’s true.
God sets it down in the Good Book as a commandment.
But my thoughts toward Pa are angry, even violent.
I want to yell back at him all the angry words that I’ve got in my head, and I know that’s a sin. ”
“Why is it a sin to tell him of your anger?”
“Because I picture myself screaming, ‘I hate you.’ And in my mind, while I yell that, I punch him and pay him back for all the years and years of hurt I suffered at his hands.”
Abby pursed her lips. “Well, take out the screaming and the punching, but the rest is just honest. There can be no honor without honesty. The words are the same.”
Wade peered at her as if he wanted to see inside her mind.
“That’s true. I could just be honest but without the fury.
I see rage as a sign of strength. But that’s from Pa.
Truth is strong and needs no anger.” He nodded, then rode up beside her so they faced each other.
“It would be a…a light. There is so much darkness on the M Bar S.”
Wade tugged his hat off and hung it from his saddle horn, pulled away a single leather glove, and held out his bare hand. “Will you join me?”
Since it seemed to be what he expected for some reason, Abby took his hand. When he closed his eyes, she followed his lead.
It was a simple prayer. As he spoke quietly of his desire to be sinless and courageous, a sudden image of her white father kneeling beside her bed, holding her hand and praying with her, flickered and was gone.
Was that a memory or her imagination? Was it just once, at the end of his life when he knew the family was dying?
Or had it been a normal part of her day?
For some reason, she thought of bedtime and prayer together.
But it was only an impression. There was no memory beyond that lightning-quick image of her father in prayer.
Wade finished his heartfelt words, then looked up. Their eyes caught. Their hands held. A moment stretched too long, and still, neither of them looked away.
At last, Wade quietly dropped her hand. “Thank you, Abby.”
They rode forward, and it was as Wade had said. The second she rounded the outcropping of rocks, the massive log house commanded her vision. “What kind of fool builds such a house in this cold land?”
Wade turned to face her, his brow furrowed. “A fool? You’re calling my father a fool?”
Not the best way to get along with Wade, but she reminded herself that she didn’t want him touching her hand.
She didn’t want to look deeply into his eyes again.
She had no wish to get along with Wade, so it mattered nothing if she insulted his home.
“How many hours a day does he spend chopping wood to keep a fire going to warm such a place?”
Considering he was wound tight as a coiled rattler, that Wade managed to smile seemed akin to a miracle. “That’s good for me to hear. My father does struggle to keep it warm. And even with hired men chopping the wood for it, it’s never really comfortable in the winter.”
“And winter lasts half the year.” Abby sniffed her contempt. “Better to live in a tepee. One small fire would warm your entire home.”
Wade squared his shoulders. He appeared to have relaxed a bit. Perhaps she should insult his father more. It seemed to agree with him.
“How many trees were cut down so your father could be so… so…grand?”
“Too many. My pa was never one to worry about what he took from the land, only what it could give him.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I’m glad you decided not to stay with Belle.”
“Your offer of a job was the only way I could think to take care of myself right now. I have nowhere else to go.”
They rode up to the house, Wade on his chestnut, Abby on a roan mare.
Dismounting, Abby followed Wade up the four steps of the porch that stretched the length of this monster of a house.
The door swung open. A woman as wide as she was tall moved with startling speed for one so elderly. She darted across the broad porch and flung her arms around Wade.
Her weight and enthusiasm nearly knocked Wade down the steps. He grabbed for a sturdy pillar and caught himself in time.
“My boy! My boy is home!”
Wade hugged the woman close, leaning his tall frame down to press his cheek on the gray head.
Was Wade correct about his mother being dead? It didn’t seem like the kind of thing a man would be mistaken about.
“I heard about Pa.”
The woman nodded but didn’t speak, her face still buried in Wade’s chest.
Abby came up beside Wade. The longing she felt for this kind of contact was stunning. Her Salish… no…Flathead—that was the white word—mother had been kind to her, but the woman wasn’t given to hugs. Her Flathead father had been as quiet as Wild Eagle. Abby had no memory of her own long-lost ma.
A fleeting image of a woman as thin as a sapling pulling Abby onto her lap was there in her mind. Was that her white mother?
Ma… Yes, thinking of the woman as Ma fit.
But what other name? It itched inside Abby’s mind that she’d so completely left her white family behind.
Perhaps more would come back to her now that she had reentered the white world.
Her anger welled up. The white world had killed her Flathead family.
But now the rest of her tribe didn’t want her. She belonged nowhere.
The woman pulled away from Wade, wiping her eyes on her apron.
Finally, she looked up. “Mort’s fit to be tied.
Laid up in bed, near to thrashing anyone who comes within reach.
He’s spitting mad that he can’t move his legs.
The foreman comes and takes his orders and gives reports.
Besides him, I’m the only one who goes in his room.
It’s like trying to talk to a wounded grizzly. ”
Wade’s shoulders slumped. Clearly, he was dreading this meeting.
“He’s been shouting for someone to find you and bring you home. He won’t be happy to see you, though. He’ll just take more of his temper out on you, son. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll see him and give him a chance, Gertie.” Wade slid his arm around the stocky woman’s shoulders. “That’s all I’ll promise.”
“No.” Gertie’s hand clamped on Wade’s. “Give me more than that. We need you here, Wade. The men aren’t working anymore. Most of the old reliable hands have left. And new ones have come in that…that scare me.” She looked hard into his eyes.
Abby felt the force of Gertie’s will. This one was strong. Despite the tears and the hugs, the woman possessed an iron core.
“I can’t leave your pa, and I’m afraid to stay. Afraid for both him and myself. Please promise me you won’t leave—at least as long as your pa is alive. Once he’s gone—the doctor says he can’t live long like this—we can let the jackals take the ranch.”
“Take the ranch?” Wade shook his head quickly. “It’s Pa’s ranch. Who’s gonna take it?”
“Anyone who’s strong enough, Wade. This is the West. There’s no law outside the city limits of Divide. And precious little there.”
“Divide’s a quiet little town, Gertie.”
“Not since the rustling started.” Her tight bun quivered as she shook her head.
“People are on edge. Mort’s new hands are too quick with a gun.
The old sheriff quit and moved to Helena to live with his son.
The new one isn’t strong enough to keep the peace.
Mort either holds this place or loses it with the strength of his back and his will. And his back doesn’t work anymore.”
“Let’s go see him.”
“Promise me first.”
Wade fell silent.
They stepped inside the house.
Abby’s eyes widened at the huge living room stretching to her left.
A set of stairs rose up along her right.
Doors opened on the left side and at the far end of the massive room.
Foolish whites to close in the outside, then be forced to heat it and clean it.
Waste. Pride. She was ashamed of the color of her skin. “Foolish.”
Wade turned to her.
The old woman did too.
Wade shifted. “Excuse my manners. You taught me better than this, Gertie. Let me introduce Abby. We found her along the trail. Her…uh…”
They hadn’t discussed what to tell people.
Did she want the whole world to know she’d spent years with the Flathead tribe?
In the gingham dress Cassie had given her, with her hair neatly braided, she outwardly fit in with the white world, even though her soul boiled with contempt for the whites, for their violence and lust for her blond hair and their stupid, immovable homes.
“My family died.” Her tone came out stilted although she had rediscovered her white language almost completely.
One day soon, would she not be able to remember her Indian family just as she had forgotten her white family?
How did her mind do that? Separate her from her past like this?
“Wade came along and helped me. I have nowhere to go.”
“I told her there would be work for her. What about it, Gertie? Could you use a hand?”
Gertie looked Abby up and down. Her eyes had the sage look of the oldest women of the Flathead village. Finally, Gertie nodded. “I can always use help. I’d be glad to have you, Abby…” Gertie fell silent, letting the phrase hang.
Abby shrugged.
“Salish.” Wade gave Abby a look of apology as though it was his fault that she’d been cornered into telling a lie. “Her name is Abby Salish.”
Gertie nodded. But those sharp eyes hadn’t missed the strange exchange between Abby and Wade. “Well, Abby, you might as well go on into the kitchen. No need for you to listen to Mort’s poison.”
Wade’s arm snaked out and grabbed Abby. “No, I’ve told her about Pa, and she’s been giving me a hard time for not honoring my father. I want her to see Mort Sawyer in action.” Wade turned, challenging Abby with a look.
Abby lifted her chin. “I would love a chance to have my father back. You should appreciate him more.”
A roar sounded from upstairs. “Gertie! Get this slop away from me!”
Wade arched his brows at Abby as if daring her to honor that angry man.
“Let’s go meet your father.”