Whitefeather's Woman

Chapter Four

“That cradleboard was a fine idea. Thank you…John.”

How would she have managed this past busy week without it? Jane wondered as she took a hasty bite of her own dinner, then offered Barton a spoonful of applesauce. Fortunately, the child liked fruit a great deal better than he liked vegetables.

“Glad I could help.” John glanced at his nephew and winked. “You seemed to have your hands full that first day.”

Except for Barton’s company, she and John were eating their midday meal alone. Zeke was in school and Caleb had ridden out to a place called Sweetgrass after breakfast to check on Ruth. An outbreak of scarlet fever among the Cheyenne children had kept her there for several days.

“You were kind to help me out after I was so ungracious.” Jane kept her eyes fixed on the baby. As she brought another spoonful of applesauce to his mouth, her hand trembled slightly. “I’ve wanted to apologize to you before this, but I never had the chance.” Or the nerve.

Over the past week, John Whitefeather had proven himself a very different kind of man than Emery Endicott. He did have a temper, though. Jane hadn’t wanted to risk rousing it by reminding him of the rocky start to their acquaintance.

“No harm done.” John reached for a biscuit.

His sudden movement made her flinch, but if he noticed, he pretended not to. He spread butter on his biscuit without missing a beat. “You seem to be getting along better, lately.”

Jane smiled to herself. If only he knew how many mistakes she’d made in the past few days. How many chores she’d had to do over two or three times until the result satisfied her. But she’d persevered. On the Kincaid ranch, she felt needed in a way she never had in all her years with Mrs. Endicott.

“If Mrs. Muldoon would tarry in Bismarck another few weeks, I might develop a knack for this domestic routine.”

As she glanced around the tidy kitchen and at the contented baby, a strange feeling swelled in Jane’s heart. Though she couldn’t be certain, she wondered if it might be…pride?

John reached over and tickled his nephew under the chin. “You and Barton got any big plans for this afternoon?”

“Nothing special.” Noticing John’s dinner plate was empty, she fetched him a slice of plum cake and a cup of coffee. “We washed the laundry and hung it out this morning. If I can work up the courage, I might fry a batch of doughnuts while Barton takes his nap.”

John bit into the cake. “This tastes good.” He sounded more than a little surprised. “I saw you hanging out the wash. That was a clever idea, tethering Barton to the clothesline so he wouldn’t wander off.”

She’d come up with it all on her own, too. The peculiar feeling in Jane’s heart burned warmer. “He’s steadier on his feet every day, and he does like to walk. Besides, it was too hard on my back, stooping to get wet clothes out of the basket with him in the cradleboard.”

Jane didn’t mention the fat green grasshopper she’d had to fish out of Barton’s mouth. Why he spit out peas and carrots, but not live insects, was more than she could figure.

“Maybe later you could bring this little buckeroo over to the corral and we could take him for a ride.” John leaned back in his chair and took a long drink of his coffee. “He always gets a kick out of that.”

“Are you certain it would be safe?”

Jane wiped Barton’s face and lifted him out of his high chair. For a moment, she cradled his warm, sturdy little body against hers. The swiftness and intensity of her fondness for the child frightened her. It would be hard enough to leave the Kincaid ranch when the time came, even without strong emotional ties.

She looked up and caught John watching her with intense, perplexing concentration. The blue of his eyes sparkled as clear and brilliant as sapphires. And twice as hard.

His stare stoked a sudden fevered blush right to the roots of Jane’s hair. She tried to break eye contact with him, only to discover she couldn’t. His piercing gaze held her, probing her secrets. Then he let her go and she found herself capable of breathing again.

“The boy’s not made of glass, Miss Harris.” He spoke quietly, as always, but in a tone that brooked no argument. “Even if he was, we’d have to toughen him up.”

“At the risk of shattering him?” Jane heard herself ask.

Where had this unaccustomed defiance come from? Had John Whitefeather’s relentless blue gaze planted it within her?

“I’m not going to set him on the back of a bucking bronco, ma’am. Just a gentle old mare who can’t do much better than walk. I’ll hold on to him good and tight in front of me.”

John held out a large brown hand to the baby. “What do you say, Thundercloud?”

Barton immediately grasped one of his uncle’s fingers and pulled it close to Jane’s face.

She thrust the baby into John’s arms, trying not to sound as alarmed as the sudden movement made her feel. “Is that his Cheyenne name?”

“That’s what it means. Ruth gave it to him because he makes a lot of noise for a critter so small. You’ll come riding with us to keep an eye on him, won’t you, ma’am?”

Jane shook her head with some vigor. “Except for that trip in from Whitehorn, I’ve never sat a horse in my life.”

“Why didn’t you say so? I would have made Lionel give us a wagon to drive out here even if I had to steal one. No two ways about it—you’ll have to learn to ride if you’re going to survive in Big Sky Country. Tell you what. I’ve got an old gelding who couldn’t work up a gallop if you dropped a jar of nitroglycerin behind him.”

A bubble of laughter swelled inside Jane, all the more buoyant for being so unexpected. It rose and burst from her lips. “I suppose I could try.”

“Sure you can. Unless I miss my guess, you’ve done plenty of things this past week that you’ve never tackled before.”

Did a hint of admiration warm his words?

“That’s true.” She’d made a fair job of them, too. But riding high off the ground on the back of such a large, powerful animal? “Then again, I’ve never heard of a person getting bucked off a washboard.”

John saddled both horses, though he had more than a few doubts that Jane Harris would show up for their ride. To his surprise, she did.

To his greater surprise, she looked almost beautiful.

In the week since her arrival, the scrapes and bruises on her face had healed. Suddenly, John noticed.

Somewhere in that trunk of Marie Kincaid’s, Jane had found a riding habit. The cloth was a little rumpled in places, but the fitted black jacket showed off the curve of her bosom in a way that made the collar of John’s shirt tighten. A ruffle of white lace at the throat emphasized the daintiness of her features. She might not be as striking a beauty as Ruth or Lizzie or Abby, but she was every inch a lady.

A lady far more suited to the refined city life back East than to the vital, rough-edged existence in Big Sky Country. She was a woman who needed a wealthy, cultured gentleman to pamper her the way she deserved. With a sudden pang of regret, John realized he wasn’t doing her any favors by helping her fit in around the ranch. Sooner or later, she’d figure out this wasn’t the place for her.

Then she’d go away.

“I hope we won’t be keeping you from your work.” Her voice held a note of uncertainty, as though she was fishing for any excuse not to do this.

John thought about the maverick filly he’d privately dubbed Cactus Heart. “I haven’t got a single thing in the world I’d rather do than take my nephew for a ride.”

Barton clearly felt the same way. He held his stout little arms out to the horses and babbled with delight. John mounted the mare and reached down to lift the baby from Jane’s arms.

She let him go reluctantly. “You will keep a tight hold on him, won’t you? He squirms like the dickens when he gets excited.”

“I know that, ma’am. Been around this young fellow since the day he was born.” Somehow, John felt he should resent her protectiveness of his nephew. But he couldn’t work up a pinch of the feeling that usually overwhelmed him when he was dealing with white folks.

Her arms looked strangely empty without the baby in them.

“I’m sorry,” said Jane.

John had never met a person so quick to say those words. They usually stuck tight in his own craw.

“You’re right, of course,” she continued. “It’s just that he’s my responsibility and I’ve become very attached to him in the short time we’ve been together.”

John knew that, too. It showed in the way she held the boy. It glowed in her smile and warmed her words when she spoke to him. That soft, maternal quality flattered her appearance far more than all Marie Kincaid’s fancy clothes. Maybe that was why he found it impossible to resent her.

John Whitefeather had never been much given to smiling, and he didn’t smile now. But he cast Jane a look he hoped would reassure her.

“Don’t you fret about young Barton. I’m partial to the little rascal myself. I’ll see he doesn’t come to any harm.”

Too late, John realized Barton’s pretty nanny would need his help to mount the gelding.

So did she, by the look of it.

“You and Barton go ahead and ride. I’ll just watch from here.” Sounding more relieved than anything, she waved them on their way.

Out of the corner of his eye, John noticed one of the ranch hands approaching the corral.

“Can I be of service, ma’am?” Floyd Cobbs removed his hat. John didn’t think the fellow was much to look at, but by all accounts Floyd fancied himself a ladies’ man. “Help you onto that horse, maybe?”

John’s brows tightened into a scowl. “Aren’t you supposed to be keeping an eye on the Price boy, Floyd?”

“I’ve been watching him real close, boss.” The words were respectful enough. To John’s ears at least, the tone was anything but. “He’s having hisself a little siesta right now, so I thought I’d stretch my legs.”

The cowboy turned his attention back to Jane. “Pardon my manners, ma’am. I reckon we haven’t been properly introduced. Name’s Floyd Cobbs. I’ve been working the Kincaid spread for over three years now.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cobbs.” She didn’t sound pleased. In fact, John could have sworn she took a couple of small steps back, until the corral fence prevented her from retreating any farther. “M-my name’s Jane Harris. I’m just here for a short while to give Mrs. Kincaid a hand with the children and the house.”

She reminded John for all the world of a rabbit doe cornered by a weasel—skin paler than usual, movements twitchy.

A blaze of rage kindled deep in his belly, but John did his best to ignore it. The lady wasn’t in any real danger. And besides, he couldn’t look after every stray who crossed his path.

“Well, that’s real fine.” The cowboy eyed Jane slowly from the crest of her saucily veiled hat to the tips of her high button boots peeping out from beneath the skirt of her riding habit. “Maybe you’ll take a fancy to Whitehorn and decide to stay. If there’s one thing wrong with the state of Montana, it’s that we need more women.”

John fought the urge to scramble down from his horse and pummel the insolent cowboy. What right did he have, though? Miss Jane Harris was nothing to him.

“Perhaps.” She didn’t sound very certain. Was her little Western adventure beginning to pale already?

“What do you say, ma’am? Want me to help you into the saddle?” Floyd spoke the words in an innocent tone, but John thought he detected a mocking double meaning.

“T-thank you for the offer.” She eyed Floyd Cobbs as if he was a giant-size bedbug. “But I don’t believe I’ll ride today, after all.”

“Good enough, ma’am.” Floyd grinned and took another step toward her. “Then you and me can keep each other company here while Mr. Whitefeather trots young Kincaid around.”

Absorbed in watching Jane and the cowboy, and trying to sort out his unduly strong reaction, John didn’t notice Barton dig his fists into the mare’s mane and yank. The horse tossed her head and whinnied. If she’d been a couple of years younger, she might have reared.

“On second thought,” gasped Jane, “perhaps I’d better stay as close as possible to Barton, in case he gets himself in trouble.” She ducked past Floyd Cobbs and fled into the corral.

Jane stuck one foot in the gelding’s stirrup—the wrong foot—then grabbed hold of the saddle horn and tried to hoist herself up. She fell back into Floyd’s waiting arms.

“Careful there, little lady, you could hurt yourself.”

The way Floyd spoke the words little lady, as though they were some kind of endearment, set rage buzzing in John’s head like a swarm of bees.

“Set Miss Harris on her feet, Cobbs,” he rumbled, with all the menace of a death threat. “Then hustle yourself back to the bunkhouse to watch Price.”

“If she’d have let me help her mount in the first place, she wouldn’t have fell.” The cowboy hoisted Jane upright, his hands lingering on her far too long and far too intimately to suit John.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” With an exaggerated bow and a parting scowl at John, Floyd Cobbs meandered back to the bunkhouse.

Jane stood pale and tremulous as an aspen leaf.

“Are you hurt?” John edged his horse toward her.

She forced a tight little smile that didn’t fool him for a second. “Only my dignity.”

“Can we try again, then? You take Barton back and I’ll lift you both into the saddle. Then you can pass him to me once I’ve mounted.”

“Well…”

Before she could object, he lowered the baby into her arms and sprang from his saddle. Then he lifted them onto the gelding’s back, letting go the instant he could tell she was seated securely. The sensation of her soft, slender frame in his arms unsettled him too much to risk prolonging it.

Words of protest died on Jane’s lips before she could get them out. She gave a little laugh that sounded both nervous and a bit excited. Barton chortled.

“That’s all very well for you, Thundercloud.” She nuzzled the baby’s fat cheek. “You’re more accustomed to being on horseback than I am.”

Back astride his own mare, John reached over and took the baby from her. “Hold your reins loose, now, and hang on to the saddle horn if you have to.”

“How do I make him go?” Jane clutched the saddle horn so tightly her whole hand whitened.

“Don’t worry about that, today. He’ll follow along wherever the mare goes. They’re kind of like an old married couple—easy with each other and always sticking close together.”

He urged the mare to a slow walk and, true to his word, the gelding followed.

“Is that what your parents are like?”

Jane’s casual question almost knocked John out of his saddle. He’d been thinking of old Bearspeaker and Walks on Ice.

A hundred possible responses raced through his mind, some bitter, all pained. “My folks didn’t get the chance to be that way.”

For a few moments the horses continued their sedate walk, while Barton wriggled in John’s arms and made loud noises of delight.

So loud, they almost drowned out Jane’s next words. “I’m sorry. Did they pass on long ago? My father was lost at sea.” She balked for an instant. “Then my mother and my brother died of the typhoid when I was twelve.”

John didn’t intend to answer. He had never talked about the deaths of his parents and his brothers with anyone. Not Bearspeaker. Not even Ruth.

But Jane’s experience paralleled his own too closely not to acknowledge. “Mine were killed by white buffalo hunters when I was ten.”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke, and he hardly noticed her horse pulling alongside his. Then her hand settled on his arm, with no more force than a hovering butterfly. Through the sturdy cotton of this shirt, her gentle touch communicated so many things words couldn’t express.

Understanding. Sympathy. Comfort.

Sometimes he could bring himself to offer such gifts to others. Receiving them, especially from so foreign a creature as Miss Jane Harris, gave him a chilling sense of vulnerability. A warrior of the Big Sky could not afford that dangerous indulgence.

Abruptly he pulled away from her and wheeled his mare back toward the ranch house.

If John Whitefeather had lashed out and struck her, as Emery had so many times, Jane could not have been more shocked. Or dismayed.

His guarded confession of their painful common bond had rocked her. It had also called to her on a level deeper than her fears, and she had battled her fears to respond. She had little to offer a man like John Whitefeather. But she did have a heart that remembered and understood the loss of a family to cruel, capricious forces beyond a child’s control.

She’d reached out to him, and he had slammed the door in her face. It might have hurt less if she had not sensed that door momentarily held ajar for her, a warm hearth light flickering from within. Or had she only imagined that because she wanted it to be true?

The way she had imagined strength and protectiveness in Emery’s character where there had been only a domineering will and an easily provoked temper.

Men had other ways of hurting a woman that left no visible bruises or scars. From what she’d come to know of John Whitefeather over the past week, Jane doubted she had reason to fear for her physical safety with him. Just now, he had served her warning that she needed to be cautious around him, all the same.

The more she found herself drawn to him, the more cautious she must be.

Perhaps her poor gelding was as startled by the abrupt turn of John’s mare as Jane herself. With more energy than he’d shown since she mounted him, the horse swung about to follow his companion, speeding his pace to catch up. Jane bit back a scream and hung on for dear life.

As she bounced and swayed in the saddle, the hard-packed earth beneath the gelding’s hooves looked a long way down. She imagined it lunging up to meet her, like an enormous brown fist.

She was almost faint with relief when her horse caught up with John’s at the corral fence. Then a fresh worry rocked her back in the saddle. Would John Whitefeather pass Barton back to her, then lift the two of them down off the gelding’s back?

After the way he’d rebuffed her, she wasn’t sure she could stand the sensation of his hands on her body. Nor the fleeting moment, as her feet touched the ground, when she stood in the circle of his arms with the baby cradled between them. Why, she’d sooner throw herself to the ground and be done with it. Experience had taught her that bones healed easier than hearts.

Fortunately, Ruth and Caleb Kincaid were waiting for them. As Ruth held up her arms to receive little Barton, Jane extracted her feet from the stirrups. Clinging to the saddle horn, she melted off the gelding’s back until her feet gratefully touched the earth.

She shrank from a sharp look Caleb Kincaid shot her. Despite his gruffly respectful manner, Jane knew he didn’t have much use for her. But his wife liked her and so did his sons. That made three more friends than she had back in Boston.

Jane couldn’t bear the thought of being exiled from them so soon. If only some kindly matchmaker in Bismarck would set up the widowed Mrs. Muldoon with a new husband. Then she might stay put in North Dakota and leave Jane to the relative peace and security she’d found in Whitehorn.

Chapter Five

“That girl needs a husband.” Ruth Kincaid looked up from her beadwork at her husband and brother.

John spared a glance from his late evening checker game at the kitchen table with Caleb. His sister had a determined look in her eye. It made him uneasy.

“What girl?” Caleb asked absently as John jumped two of his checkers.

“Why, Jane Harris, of course. What other girl is there?”

John plucked Caleb’s black checkers from the board and said, “King me,” as though he hadn’t heard his sister.

But his conscience squirmed like a heifer under the branding iron. In fact, he wondered if the memory of Jane’s white face and stricken eyes had been seared into his brain along with the recollection of her hand squeezing his arm. Like a brand, they stung. They would never go away.

And in some baffling fashion, they had put her claiming mark upon him.

“She’s a willing little thing.” Ruth bowed her dark head over her beadwork again, but kept on talking as the men jumped their red and black disks across the checkerboard. “She works hard and she’s eager to learn, but she needs looking after. I can’t help feeling bad that she came all this way and lost everything in that train wreck on our account.”

Caleb’s head snapped up. “It’s not our fault the fool gal didn’t even stop to read the letter we sent.”

Hard as John tried to clamp his mouth shut, the words spilled out. “I reckon there’s more to that than she’s letting on, Caleb.”

His sister nodded. “There’s much more to Jane Harris than she’s willing to tell.”

Turning his attention back to the checkerboard, Caleb muttered, “Don’t expect an argument from me on that score. I sent off a wire to the Boston police yesterday, just to make sure she isn’t on the wrong side of the law.”

“Oh, Caleb, of all the foolishness! That girl hasn’t got it in her to hurt a fly. Can you imagine her holding up a bank or a train?”

The iron-willed rancher looked shamefaced by his wife’s gentle rebuke. “I don’t suppose I can, at that. I’ll admit, she’s been real handy around here while you were gone, and the boys have taken a shine to her. Just something about that gal doesn’t sit right with me. She always looks as though she expects I’m going to bite her head off.”

“I’m sure she’d rather you did that than telegraph the Boston police about her behind her back. If you’d just give her half a chance you’d soon see what a nice little thing she is.” Ruth concentrated on rethreading her needle. “I think you don’t like her because she reminds you too much of Marie.”

“Fiddlesticks.” Caleb scowled at the checkerboard as John handily won the game.

Had Caleb forgotten that he’d openly compared Jane to his late wife on the night she arrived? John wondered.

The men set up the board for a rematch, and for a while the kitchen was quiet except for the soft crackle of the fire in the stove and the click of checkers.

“She’s bound and determined not to go back East,” Ruth murmured at last, almost as though she was talking to herself.

John swallowed a grin. His sister had learned this trick from their aunt, Walks on Ice. Raising a subject again and again with a question here, a chance remark there, until she wore Bearspeaker down, like a hunting party trailing a wounded buffalo.

“I don’t reckon she has much to go back to, poor child.” Ruth shook her head.

His sister’s words hit John like a gunshot.

He knew perfectly well Jane Harris had nothing and no one waiting for her back in Boston. If he hadn’t been ambushed by painful memories from his past or terrified by his own involuntary confession, he might have paid closer attention when she’d told him about the deaths of her family.

Most folks might say it was a greater tragedy to have your parents murdered than to have them die of sickness or be lost at sea. Either way, they were still dead.

At least he’d had Ruth and their Cheyenne band. As far as he could tell, Jane Harris had been left completely alone in a pitiless city. All at once, John felt a sense of responsibility for this winsome little stray who’d landed here by mistake. Setting her adrift again in a few weeks’ time with the price of a train ticket out of their lives suddenly felt like a callous act of cruelty.