Chapter 23
Wade came into the kitchen the next day in his best black pants, wearing a black leather vest and his newest white shirt.
He’d found the clothes in his old room, or he’d’ve had nothing after his winter in the mountains.
He should count it a blessing his father hadn’t dragged his clothes out onto the ground and burned them to ashes.
After he’d worked four hours on the morning chores, taken a bath in the spring, dried off, and dressed, he’d come in to shave and comb his hair at the kitchen sink.
“I’ve got water boiling and your razor laid out, Wade.” Gertie was at the stove scooping eggs and bacon onto a plate. The house smelled so good, Wade decided to eat first and then shave. No sign of Pa or Tom. It was too much to wish they were gone for good, though.
Abby added two biscuits to Wade’s plate and set a ball of butter and a dish of preserves on the table beside him.
“Gertie tells me there is a proper way to dress for church.” Abby frowned, but she didn’t go for her knife, so Wade took that to mean she’d cooperate. “I can see that you’ve put on special clothes, so I must, too, then.”
A cup of coffee was added to Wade’s meal by Gertie, then the two women hurried off with Gertie talking, possibly giving Abby pointers on church behavior. No one had ever threatened to stab anyone at church before. It might be a day to remember.
The food went down fast, and Wade shaved quickly, not wanting anything like a weapon in his hands lest Tom Linscott made an appearance. Could the man be sleeping this late?
Up in his room, Wade found his best Stetson, the one with the shiny silver hatband and a small feather on the side of the band.
The feather made him think of Glowing Sun—Abby—as she’d been in her doeskin dress and moccasins.
She was dressing in gingham and calico now, but she wore her civilization very lightly.
Wade would like to see her in that beaded dress she’d had on the day he’d found her after the massacre.
He’d fallen in love with her in that dress.
Abby came out of her room seconds later, her hair untied from its braid, curling about her shoulders with the shine of sunlight.
She was wearing a dress Wade had never seen before.
The fit wasn’t perfect, but the sky-blue gingham sprigged with yellow flowers made her sun-bronzed skin and white-blond hair glow like—Wade couldn’t see it any other way—like a glowing sun.
Wade pulled his eyes away from Abby when Tom entered the room. He’d only brought one set of clothes, and he didn’t seem inclined to go home anytime soon and clean up. “Is it time for church yet?” He sounded like a choir boy, eager, good, sincere.
Wade wasn’t fooled. “Don’t you have a ranch to run?”
Tom just smirked. “Good thing I got done with roundup… about a month ago.”
Wade had no response to that fit for a Sunday morning—or any day.
They headed for the corral. The three of them, always together.
As they approached the nearest horse pen, Abby whistled to the pinto mare grazing in the far corner of the corral.
The half-wild pony perked her head up, whickered, and trotted toward Abby.
She’d done the same thing the morning they’d ridden to town to inspect the herd Red brought in.
Wade had to keep his mouth clamped shut.
He’d ridden that pinto. It was small, but it was mean and fast. Blue blazes as a cow pony, if you could stick on her back long enough to calm her down.
Catching the pinto usually involved a fast-moving horse and a cowboy with a lasso. Now Abby had the little stinker eating out of her hand. And she hadn’t lost a finger yet.
Tom’s shining black stallion lifted his head, too, in a neighboring corral.
Wade had taken to moving his best mares into the corral with the stallion.
Maybe he’d get some good foals out of the beast. He’d pointed out what he was doing to Tom, hoping the man would throw a fit and go home. Tom didn’t seem to care one whit.
The beautiful killer whickered at Abby as if he was being slighted and moved in his pen to the closest point to her.
The mare came to her. Abby slipped on the bridle she’d rigged to have no bit. Leading the pinto out of the corral, she mounted up bareback with one supple leap while Wade was still leading his horse to the barn for a saddle.
Abby’s skirts flew about, her ankles clearly visible. She batted at the fabric impatiently. “Stupid gingham dress.”
Tom’s stallion he’d mounted was busy trying to commit murder, though his heart wasn’t really in it or Tom never would have gotten leather on the brute.
The stallion reared toward the sky, then landed stiff-legged and crow-hopped sideways.
Tom hung on expertly. “Abby, you need to put a saddle on that horse.”
When Wade and Abby had ridden to town to check the cattle Red had brought in, Wade had taken this same position. And lost. Now it gave him pleasure to stand back and watch Tom lose.
Abby made an incredibly rude noise for such a pretty woman and started for town without a backward glance.
Wade, thinking of the dry-gulchers gunning for her, raced through his preparations and was on the trail while Tom was still letting the black work its kinks out by jumping and rearing.
Wade caught up to Abby quickly, but soon enough, Tom came along. Wade had hoped to visit with Abby on their rides to and from church. Maybe risk asking her if she might one day have feelings for him, but with Tom along, that was impossible. They set a swift pace and made it to town in record time.
The church in Divide was so new, it still smelled of wood shavings, but it was painted bright white, as clean as a new penny. Wade had noticed it in passing when they’d come in for the cattle, but now he could really appreciate the tight little building the town had erected.
They tied their horses to the hitching post alongside a dozen other mounts and scattered buggies and buckboards. Inside were tidy rows of oak pews. The church was packed, and Wade, Tom, and Abby stood, leaning against the back wall with several other worshippers.
Church was its usual informal affair. The service was different when the circuit rider was in town.
Parson Bergstrom ran a very proper, orderly service, and Wade enjoyed that well enough.
But he much preferred it when Red was in charge.
Red was far more casual. He had told Wade that he was working on getting himself named a real legal minister so he could perform weddings.
It was unlikely that Red’s style would change much, though, if he got papers calling him a real live parson.
Today he talked on one of Wade’s favorite verses. It was from the first chapter of John.
“‘In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.’”
It reminded Wade so much of the dark world he’d lived in before he found his faith.
Wade found light once he understood about Jesus dying for him.
But Pa still lived in that dark place. And just as the verse said, he couldn’t comprehend the light.
It grieved Wade to think how lost Pa was, but Wade also battled an angry, sinful part of himself.
He bitterly resented the abuse he’d taken from his father’s hands.
It was a real struggle to pray for his father.
A cruel voice inside of Wade said Pa deserved a terrible afterlife for the way he’d lived this one.
Most of Wade’s petitions for God to open his father’s heart ended with Wade begging God’s forgiveness for himself, not his pa.
Tom seemed to be listening attentively to Red’s talk and asked some good questions. Even though Tom was a leech who was determined never to let Wade and Abby be alone, Wade prayed silently for Tom to hear truth.
When the service was over, Wade, Abby, and Tom stayed to visit.
Abby took a turn holding Michael, but all the women wanted to hold the baby.
A fair number of the men wanted turns too.
Wade loved Cassie and Red’s children, although he’d been gone for most of little Michael’s life.
He knew Susannah well from all his time spent at the Dawson place, so she giggled and demanded a hug as if he was a beloved uncle.
As they stood outside the church, a rider galloped into town on a horse wearing Tom’s brand. The man pulled his mount to a halt when he spotted Tom. “I thought I’d have to ride all the way to the Sawyer place. We’ve got trouble out at the Double L. Big Black ran afoul of a grizzly.”
Wade recognized the name of the prizewinning Angus bull Tom had brought out from Kansas City at great expense. It was the first pure black breed anyone in these parts had ever seen.
Angus cattle had only just been imported into America.
They were reputed to be as hardy as a longhorn but faster growing with tender meat where a longhorn tended toward gristle.
Wade was skeptical. He figured some snake oil salesman had gotten the best of Tom.
But Tom had a good head for ranching, and he loved to talk cattle more than any man Wade had ever known, so he might have heard of the breed somewhere, even before he came West. Wade had seen the bull a year ago, and there was no denying he was a beauty.
“Is he dead?” Tom slapped his Stetson on his head and started for the hitching post in front of the closed general store, where his black stallion stood tied, well away from the other horses.
“The grizz had him down and tore him up, but he’s got a chance. You’re the best hand with hurt animals, Tom. You’ve gotta come and come fast.”
Tom jerked his chin in agreement and started to mount up. Then he halted and looked back at Abby. “Sorry, Ab. I’ll be coming around again as soon as I can.” Tom gave Wade one hard glare that promised swift, brutal retribution if any harm came to his sister.
Abby watched as Tom galloped out of town behind his cowhand, but she didn’t look particularly sad to see him go.
Wade was outright thrilled.
The fellowship outside the church broke up with a lot of conversation about that magnificent blue-black Angus bull. Red even led them in a prayer for the big animal.
Wade and Abby rode out of town with Wade on top of the world. “Let’s not go directly home, Abby. I want to spend some time away from Pa and his bad temper.”
Abby gave a harsh half laugh. “I feel no excitement to return to your father’s side.”
“There’s a house I want you to see out here. You think my pa’s place is foolish—this is even worse. But it is beautiful.”
“More beautiful than the trees they cut down to build it?”
Wade laughed. “Maybe not. And definitely not now that it’s abandoned. We use it as a line shack. I think it will be safe. No one can waylay us because they can’t know we’d ride that direction.”
When they came to the fork in the road that led toward the old Griffin place, Wade guided his horse down the faint trail. “So are you happy to have found a brother, Abby?”
Abby looked sideways at Wade, barely touching her reins, so comfortable was she on her barebacked horse.
“I remember Tom just a bit. I have felt so separated from memories of my white family here in Montana, remembering back to living in the East is even more confusing. I have this image of rushing wagons and people and noise. I need to ask Tom more about our home back there, but I can tell…he’s… angry that I can’t remember.”
“Hurt, I think, not angry. But Tom is a Western man now. He’s going to cover his hurt with gruff words.”
“My Flathead father was like that. Once, my little brother fell into the water and had to be pulled out. He wasn’t breathing, and for a few minutes, we thought he was dead.
Once it was over, my father was furious.
But he was scared, I know. He just saw those feelings as weak, so he covered them with stronger emotions. ”
“I spent a lot of my life doing that.” The warm breeze on Wade’s face told him summer had come to Montana.
It came late up this high and left early, but for now, he enjoyed it.
The season of growth gave Wade the nerve to say more about his life before he’d become a man of faith.
“My father punished me every time I showed fear or cried. Pa saw that as weakness. So I became rude and insulting and arrogant to cover my fear. I managed to pick a few fights with your brother along the way too.”
Abby sat up straight. “Really? You punched Tom?”
“Well, not so much punched him. Insulted him, threatened him, but I always had M Bar S riders with me. I thought I was being brave, but I always knew they’d step in if I got into trouble I couldn’t handle.”
They rounded a curve that followed a rockslide at the base of a mountain.
A clump of pines surrounded Cassie’s old house.
Wade had come visiting many times before Cassie’s first husband had died.
There was a twisting trail up into the rocks they’d just skirted.
He would lie in wait. When Griff would leave, as he did nearly every Saturday to ride to Divide to waste more of Cassie’s money, Wade would go see Cassie.
“This curve in the trail marks the end of your brother’s property and the beginning of the Sawyer holding. ”
“My brother lives near here?” Abby looked around as if she expected to see a house.
“No, this is the far north edge of his ranch. His cabin is a couple of hours away, but he holds a lot of rangeland. The house is right behind those trees. It’s only a few yards from a spring that never dries up, which makes it as valuable as gold.
Cassie Dawson lived here with her first husband.
When he died, Pa and your brother had a dustup deciding who would own it, and Pa paid a big price to win. ”
“Tom is so much younger than your father. I’m surprised he’d enter into a fight like that.”
“He’s one tough hombre, your brother. He’s a respected man in these parts. Age doesn’t have that much to do with earning respect.”
“And you, Wade, are you a tough hombre?”
“No.” Wade laughed to even think of such a thing. “Far from it.”
Wade’s eyes narrowed as the chimney came into view above the trees. Smoke curled up into the sky.