Whitefeather's Woman

Mrs. Kincaid shot her husband an odd, searching look, then she caught sight of Jane’s face. “What happened to you, kâse’ee’he? Did you fall off the horse on your ride out here? No, these bruises have begun to heal.”

Jane took a deep breath, ready to launch into the contrived explanation for her injuries. At the last moment, she faltered. What if she got confused and told Mrs. Kincaid a slightly different story than she’d told the foreman? Might he trip her up in the lie?

To her surprise, John Whitefeather came to her rescue. “Some cars on her train got derailed back in Chicago. She lost all her bags in the accident, too.”

Ruth Kincaid shook her head and made a crooning noise of sympathy. “You must be hungry and tired, dear. Sit down and eat, then we’ll talk. Before you go to bed, I’ll put a poultice on your cheek. It might draw that bruise. And you need some salve for the scrape on your chin.”

Gratefully Jane sank down onto one of the plain, solid chairs ranged around the big kitchen table, and took off her hat and gloves. Eking out her last few crackers on the train, she thought she’d grown accustomed to the vague biliousness of constant hunger. It had gnawed at her stomach like a toothless old dog worrying a bone. Now, as she inhaled a savory blend of meat and onions, her appetite suddenly grew the fangs of a wolf.

Mrs. Kincaid set a plate of stew in front of Jane and another in front of John Whitefeather, who had taken a seat opposite her. Years of strictly minding her manners, and the consciousness of her new employers’ eyes upon her, kept Jane from falling on her supper like a starving beast.

Nothing could stifle her groan of pleasure upon sinking her teeth into a tender morsel of richly flavored meat.

Mrs. Kincaid smiled as she set a plate of biscuits and a crock of butter on the table between Jane and the foreman. “Is this the first time you’ve tasted venison, Miss Harris?”

Jane abruptly stopped chewing. She swallowed hard to work that mouthful down. “Deer meat?”

She reached for a biscuit at the same moment as John Whitefeather. His large, brown knuckles swiped across hers, making them look smaller, softer and paler. She suddenly had a vivid flash of memory—Emery’s sallow, bony fist flying toward her eye. With a gasp and a start, she jerked her hand back, as though she’d touched a red-hot stove.

“Don’t worry, Miss Harris.” The foreman glanced at Mrs. Kincaid, his dark brows raised. “There’s plenty of biscuits here for both of us.”

Jane caught the rancher’s wife returning John Whitefeather’s dubious look. A sense of impending trouble ambushed her again.

Caleb Kincaid smoked in watchful silence as Jane and John Whitefeather finished their meal. Only when his wife had removed the plates from the table did he speak.

“I’m afraid we have a problem, Miss Harris.” The rancher stared hard at the kitchen floor, as if suddenly finding its wood grain of absorbing interest.

Here it came. Jane’s insides constricted into a tiny little lump, heavy as lead.

“Problem?” She almost gagged on the word.

Three thousand miles from home, with nothing. There couldn’t be a problem with her only means to earn a living. There just couldn’t.

The rancher was a big man. Not quite as big as his foreman, but still tall and powerfully made. Having broached the subject, he now cast a helpless glance at his wife, who looked every bit as ill at ease.

“Did you not read the letter we sent you, kâse’ee’he?” Ruth Kincaid set the dishes in the washtub, then stood beside her husband’s chair.

“Of course I read it,” blurted Jane, then she hesitated. What if the Kincaids asked her to quote particulars? “I mean…not with my own eyes. It…arrived on a rainy day…and the ink ran.”

Oh dear, why could she not invent a more plausible explanation for coming all the way to Montana without actually having seen the Kincaids’ offer of employment? After all, she’d had years of practice lying about the injuries Emery had done her.

She toyed with the notion of telling them the humiliating truth, but firmly rejected it. Better to let the Kincaids turn her out on the empty grasslands, with wolves howling in the distance, than have to admit her fiancé had burned their letter before her eyes, then beaten her insensible for trying to escape him.

“I just assumed you must be writing to offer me the job.” Though she struggled against it, her voice rose, shrill and plaintive. “No one writes all the way from Montana to Boston to say they don’t want you.”

Neither Caleb Kincaid nor his wife would meet her eyes, so she addressed her hopeless question across the table, to the only person in the room who did not flinch from her imploring gaze.

“Do they?”

For the first time since she’d come face-to-face with him that afternoon, John Whitefeather’s sternly handsome features softened in a look of sympathy. He cleared his throat.

“We can’t do anything about this tonight.” He addressed his words to the Kincaids. “Miss Harris is here and she can’t go back to Whitehorn until morning. Maybe after a good night’s sleep we’ll all see our way clearer.”

Jane wasn’t certain what to make of a hired man advising his employers with such authority. She couldn’t picture herself bidding Mrs. Endicott to do anything.

After spending so many nights dozing fitfully on the upright seat of a jolting railway carriage, she yearned to lie flat on her back to sleep. As John Whitefeather had said, the situation couldn’t help but look a little brighter in the morning. At the moment, her problem seemed insurmountable.

Unfortunately, nothing was going to make it disappear overnight.

“Why…?” Her lower lip began to quiver. She drew a breath to steady herself, only to exhale a humiliating sob. “Why don’t you want me? You need someone to look after your baby, and I’ve looked after Mrs. Endicott since I was twelve years old. She’s not a baby, I know, but sometimes when she won’t take her pills like the doctor orders, and when she rings the bell for me half a dozen times in the night, she’s every bit as much trouble. And she doesn’t smell sweet like a baby or hold out her arms and smile like babies do to let you know they…”

The forlorn little words love you were lost as Jane shielded her face with her hands and fought to compose herself.

Suddenly she felt a pair of strong arms warm around her shoulders. Her breath caught in her throat and she jerked back from the comforting embrace. She relaxed slightly when she found it was Mrs. Kincaid, not John Whitefeather, holding her.

Ruth Kincaid crooned some words Jane could not understand before easing into English. “It was not you we turned down, Jane Harris. I asked Caleb to make that plain in his letter. There must have been a mix-up. We didn’t even run our notice in any newspapers so far East.”

Jane remembered. She’d read the Kincaids’ advertisement in one of the newspapers Mrs. Endicott’s cousin had sent her from Saint Louis. Wanting to get as far away from Emery as possible, Jane had scoured the western papers for employment opportunities. Of several inquiries she’d sent, only the Kincaids in distant Montana had answered.

To say they didn’t want her.

Ruth Kincaid patted Jane’s shoulder, then took a seat beside her at the table. “I’m a healer, and when my people call on me in an emergency, I have to go. Someone needs to be here to care for the baby and for Caleb’s boy, Zeke, while I am away. Women who come to Montana from back East often don’t stay. Our land is too big and too hard for them. When the letters came applying for the job, we chose a widow from Bismarck. She knows this country. She’ll stay for as long as we need her.”

“I w-w-would have stayed.” Jane fought the urge to give way to tears harder than she’d ever fought anything. Childish blubbering would only convince the Kincaids they’d been right to hire someone else.

Smoothing the tumbled strands of hair back from Jane’s face, Ruth nodded gravely. “I think you would have. I’m sorry you came so far and through so many troubles for nothing.”

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” By rote, the words fell from Jane’s lips. This time, she meant them. “I should have taken the time to confirm what was written in your letter and not come dashing out to Montana based on a hopeful assumption.”

After her ride from Whitehorn on the back of John Whitefeather’s spotted horse, she understood what Mrs. Kincaid meant about women from the East Coast not staying long in Montana. Everything about the place was on such a vast scale. It dwarfed all her efforts and her dreams. Such country demanded strength from its daughters, and Jane sensed it would not take kindly to a foundling like her.

The dispiriting fact remained: she had nowhere to go and no means to get there if she did.

Jane took a deep breath, trying to make herself look fearless, capable and steady. She doubted either the Kincaids or John Whitefeather would be fooled. “I’ll be obliged to you for letting me stay the night. I don’t suppose you know anyone else hereabouts who needs help looking after their children?”

“Well now, let me think on it.” Caleb Kincaid scratched his chin in a pensive fashion.

“Think tonight and we’ll talk more in the morning.” The rancher’s wife beckoned to Jane. “Come along, dear. Let’s find you a bed and a nightgown, then I’ll bring my medicines.”

Despite her worries, or perhaps because of them, Jane longed to stretch out on any excuse for a bed and to flee from her troubles into the land of dreams.

As she rose from the table to follow her hostess out of the kitchen, John Whitefeather spoke. “I have a thought, if you want to hear it.”

Ruth Kincaid chuckled. “Was there ever a time we didn’t pay you mind, hestatanemo?” To Jane, she added, “It was my brother who advised me to leave our people and make a life with Caleb Kincaid.”

Brother? Jane tried to mask her surprise as she berated herself for not guessing sooner. Her stomach churned as she recalled all the subtle ways she must have offended John Whitefeather since the first moment she’d approached him in the saloon. What wise counsel was he going to give his sister and brother-in-law concerning their unwanted houseguest?

Jane braced herself.

“When’s this other lady supposed to come?” John asked, drumming his fingers on the table.

Caleb Kincaid shrugged. “Mrs. Muldoon didn’t rightly give a date. Said she had to settle her affairs in Bismarck first. Another few weeks, a month, who knows?”

Nodding, as if gravely pleased with the answer, John Whitefeather cast a look at his sister. “Didn’t you get called out just the other night, when Ghost Moon had trouble birthing her twins?”

“You know I did, since you rode with me.”

“Well, then, since Mrs. Muldoon won’t be coming for a spell and Miss Harris is already here and could use a job, why don’t you let her look after the boys? That way she could at least earn the price of a train ticket back to Boston.”

Before Jane could help herself, the words burst out. “I’m not going back to Boston—not ever!” Not as long as Emery Endicott was there, at least.

They all ignored her outburst. Ruth and Caleb Kincaid exchanged a long gaze, as though sharing each other’s thoughts without words.

Jane held still, scarcely breathing as she silently willed them to give her a chance. Her eyes met John Whitefeather’s, and she offered him a timid half smile for intervening on her behalf. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken up for her.

At last Ruth Kincaid nodded. “My brother’s plan is a good one for all of us. Would you be willing to stay, Miss Harris, until Mrs. Muldoon can come?”

“Yes.” Jane blurted out her acceptance before the Kincaids had time to think better of the idea. “Thank you.”

The matter settled, Mrs. Kincaid hustled her upstairs to a rustic but snug little room under the eaves. A narrow bed stood in one corner, while a small bureau and a washstand of matching, pale-hued wood bracketed the window. Green curtains, a round braided rug and a patchwork quilt added touches of color and warmth.

Her new employer fetched Jane a pitcher of hot water, a nightgown and an extra quilt.

“The nights can still get cold this time of year, and you don’t have much meat on your bones, dear. We must try to fatten you up while you’re with us.”

When Mrs. Kincaid returned later with her medicines, Jane was standing at the window, staring out at a small, sturdy cabin not far from the main house.

“I can’t think why my brother insists on sleeping out in the foreman’s cabin when he takes all his meals with us.” As Ruth Kincaid spoke she set several clay pots of salve on top of the bureau.

Jane remembered what the bartender in town had said about John Whitefeather always keeping to himself. That would suit her just fine. The fewer men she had to deal with in her new position, the better.

Casting dubious looks at Ruth’s medicines, Jane wrinkled her nose at some of the smells. Patiently Ruth Kincaid told her the ingredients of each compound and what good it would do. Then she applied generous daubs on Jane’s injuries with a whisper-light touch.

“Do you hurt anywhere else that needs tending, dear?”

Jane’s stomach churned at Ruth Kincaid’s matter-of-fact question.

“No.” Her hand flew to the modestly buttoned throat of her borrowed nightgown before she could stop it. “I guess my clothes must have protected the rest of me when I got thrown around the train carriage.”

In truth, she wished Mrs. Kincaid could employ her healing touch on the ribs a doctor at the Boston infirmary had pronounced cracked. That injury and the ugly purple bruising on her bosom could easily be explained by the train-crash story. For Mrs. Kincaid to examine her ribs, though, Jane would have to expose her shoulders and upper arms. Those wounds, where Emery had dug in his nails and gouged her flesh, would betray her shameful secret.

When she’d changed for bed, Jane had noticed the injured skin was still red and swollen. She feared the wounds would leave telltale scars.

Mrs. Kincaid gathered up her medicines. “If that’s all I can do for you now, I’ll say good-night. Sleep well—it’s the best healer. In the morning we’ll find clothes for you.”

She turned down the wick on Jane’s lamp, easing the tiny gable room into a warm cocoon of darkness.

With a sigh of contentment Jane gave herself up to the modest luxury of a clean, warm bed. She could scarcely remember a time when she’d been cared for with the tenderness Mrs. Kincaid had shown her tonight. The sturdy construction of the ranch house made her feel safer than she had felt in a long time. Already she shrank from the prospect of leaving it.

She would repay the Kincaids for their kindness, Jane vowed as exhaustion overcame her. She would work hard to care for the children and do everything possible to help Mrs. Kincaid around the house.

If she really, really tried, perhaps she could even make herself indispensable.

As she lapsed into dreams, Jane found herself reliving her ride from town in the untalkative company of John Whitefeather. Even when she’d doubted whether she could trust him, her arms had instinctively latched on to his warm, solid frame. She had breathed his scent, a faint masculine compound of sweet dry hay mingled with the musk of horses and leather. The contrast to Emery’s overpowering pomade comforted her somehow.

Why had John Whitefeather not mentioned he was related to the Kincaids? And what had prompted him to intercede on her behalf? Jane had lived too long and been hurt too often not to question his motives. She knew from bitter experience the danger of fraternizing with a member of her employer’s family.

Not that such a thing was apt to happen in her case. For all she knew, John Whitefeather might be happily married, though his sister’s comment about the foreman’s cabin made Jane doubt it. Even if he was a bachelor, such a handsome man must have plenty of ladies waiting at his beck and call. What interest would he have in some mousey, penniless hired girl from the East? None at all, Jane insisted to herself as her cracked ribs began to ache.

Or was it, perhaps, her heart?

“I swear I could see her heart thumping.” John shook his head, recalling the spectacle of Miss Jane Harris venturing into the Double Deuce Saloon. “Like a rabbit come calling in a coyotes’ den.”

Caleb Kincaid threw back his tawny head and let out a whoop of laughter. “I’ll bet a few of those hungry coyotes were licking their chops, all right! She could be a fetching little filly if she didn’t look like she just lost a barroom brawl.”

Somehow the thought of those cowboys at the Double Deuce casting hungry eyes over Miss Harris sobered John’s mood of levity. He didn’t reckon he had any call to make fun of the lady. She’d shown some backbone traipsing into a tough spot like the Double Deuce to find him. The fact that she’d done what she had to in spite of her obvious fear kindled a grudging glimmer of respect in him.

As far as John Whitefeather was concerned, that was the true mark of courage.

“What do you reckon brought her all the way out here, from Boston?” he asked, as much to himself as to Caleb. The woman was a bundle of mysteries and contradictions, all of which intrigued John too much for his liking.

Caleb Kincaid took a long draw on his pipe, as if the tobacco smoke fueled his thoughts. “Could be most anything. Maybe she got itchy feet and figured Montana would be a big adventure. Or she might have read about the gold fields and figured this was prime hunting ground for a rich husband.”

John shook his head slowly. Neither of these guesses tallied with what he’d so far experienced of Miss Jane Harris. Not that he had much practice with women, but he knew enough of men and horses to recognize a look of desperation when he saw it.

“I got the feeling she wouldn’t be in Montana if she had a choice.”

Caleb mulled that over for a long, silent moment. “Think she might be on the run from the law? Maybe I ought to send a wire to the police in Boston. Don’t want some criminal taking care of my boys, no matter how good-looking she is.”

For no good reason that John could figure, his brother-in-law’s words provoked him. He responded in a sharper tone than he intended. “How come you’re so set on thinking the worst of this poor gal, Caleb? I can’t picture her getting up the gumption to do anything against the law.”

Caleb replied with a smug, mocking smile that John wanted to wipe off his face—by force if necessary. “How come you’re so set on defending her? That’s a far more entertaining question, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask.” John rose abruptly from the table. “Can’t sit around jawing with you all night. Got to work some more on that little maverick filly tomorrow. Maybe she got to missing me while I was gone today, and she’ll be ready to make friends.”

As he fetched his hat and coat from the hook by the door, his brother-in-law rose and stretched. “Always plenty to do, is right. A man needs to grab his sleep when he’s got a soft, warm bed.”

He ambled over to the stove, lifted the lid off the firebox and knocked the ashes from his pipe into it.

“Be careful around this little maverick filly, John.” Caleb nodded upward to signal that he meant Jane Harris. “I’ve got a bad feeling about her. Reminds me of Zeke’s mama, God rest her soul. She just wasn’t fit for this kind of life, and she made the boy and me miserable for a long spell before and after she died. I don’t know what would have become of us if Ruth hadn’t come back into my life again when she did.”

The rancher’s rugged features softened and his wary tone warmed as he spoke of his wife.

John knew how many years his sister had quietly suffered, her heart held captive by a married man who couldn’t claim her. One of his greatest joys in life was to see her so happy and fulfilled in her union with Caleb Kincaid. Part of him envied what Ruth and Caleb had together, while another part shied from going after it himself. Every moment of happiness they enjoyed now had cost them a matching moment of pain.

Besides, a wife was a responsibility, and he already had more than enough responsibility for the folks at Sweetgrass. One day, perhaps, if he found a woman capable of easing his burdens, rather than adding to them, he might be willing to gamble his heart and his hard-won peace of spirit.

“Save your warning, Caleb.” John jammed on his hat and pulled open the kitchen door. “Once I delivered Jane Harris to the ranch, my obligation and my interest both ended. Even if I was fool enough to hanker after her, you never saw the way she looked at me in town today. I reckon the lady would sooner be courted by a grizzly.”

Caleb’s husky laughter followed him out into the night.

Though the clean, still air was chilly for late May, John didn’t bother to put on his coat for his short saunter from the Kincaids’ kitchen door to the foreman’s cabin, where he spent his nights.

In the distance, lights flickered from the windows of the cowboys’ bunkhouse. The sounds of talk, laughter and the plaintive croon of a harmonica spilled out into the night. John knew if he set foot inside, the music and gossip would stop and the cowboys would hit their bunks, where they belonged. Tonight he didn’t have the heart to interrupt their fun.

He hesitated at the door of his cabin, a refuge of solitude between the homey bustle of Ruth and Caleb’s place and the bachelor commotion of the bunkhouse.

Overhead, the wide, black Montana sky glittered with a mother lode of tiny silver nuggets—calm and beautiful, but also distant and cold. For the first time since coming to the Kincaid ranch, over a year ago, John Whitefeather went to bed in a foreman’s cabin that felt lonesome and empty.

Chapter Three

“Indispensable. In-dispensable.” Over and over, Jane muttered the word to herself as she confronted her first day of provisional employment.

To her surprise, she’d slept deeply and peacefully, untroubled by nightmares of Emery hunting her down. Between Mrs. Kincaid’s pungent salves and the healing night’s rest, Jane did not wince too painfully at the sight of her face in the oval looking glass above the bureau.

A soft knock on the door made her jump. Her newfound sense of security must not run very deep, after all.

“W-who is it?”

“It’s Ruth, Miss Harris. I heard you stirring and thought I should bring you some clean clothes.”

Jane pulled open the door. “That’s very kind of you.”

Expecting only Ruth, she started at the sight of a boy, nine or ten years old. If he was home from school, this must be Saturday. Jane realized she’d lost track of the days during her exhausting journey west from Boston.

If she noticed Jane’s jumpiness, the rancher’s wife gave no sign. “Jane Harris, this is Zeke, Caleb’s son. He helped me bring down this trunk of clothes from the attic. They belonged to his mother and they’re too small for me. They might fit you until we can make some new ones.”

“Thank you.” Jane looked from the trunk to Zeke Kincaid. “If it’ll upset you to see me wearing clothes that belonged to your mother, I can get by with the blouse and skirt I wore from Boston.”

The boy shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor. “I don’t mind, ma’am, honest. My ma’s been gone quite a spell now and Ruth told me all your bags got burned up in a train wreck.” He glanced up at her, then looked away again, blushing. “That must’ve been exciting.”

“I suppose so.” Jane hoped Zeke wouldn’t pester her for details that might unravel her tangled falsehood. “Not exciting in a good way, I’m afraid.”

Was there a good kind of excitement?

Before the boy could inquire further, a loud and sustained wail rang out downstairs.

Ruth Kincaid turned to her stepson. “Go see what your brother’s done to himself this time, Zeke. I’ll be right down.”

The boy grimaced. “Aw, do I have to?”

“Please, Zeke.”