Comanche Woman (30 page)

“You mean you’d have stayed with those brutal savages if you’d been given a choice?” Sloan asked, incredulous.

“They’re not savages!”

“It’s not savage to lasso a baby and drag it alive and screaming through cactus? It’s not savage to rape a woman and leave her pinioned to the ground with a Comanche lance? It’s not savage to kill and pillage and destroy for no good reason?”

“You don’t understand!” Bay protested.

Sloan shook her head in disbelief. “Are you actually defending them?”

“It’s not all one-sided, Sloan. They also love and—”

“Ahhhh,
love
,” Sloan said with a cynical smile. “That explains everything.”

This was not the Sloan that Bay remembered. This woman had been hurt and had hardened her heart against more pain. It was clear Sloan didn’t think much of Bay’s defense of the Comanches. To be honest, Bay thought, there was no defending the atrocities practiced by either whites or Comanches against each other. Yet each side seemed so sure it was right. For the first time Bay could see the extent of the problem faced by Long Quiet, who walked a narrow path between two worlds.

“What’s going on in here?” Cricket said, stepping inside Bay’s bedroom and closing the door behind her. “I could hear the two of you shouting all the way down the hall.”

Cricket walked over to Sloan and touched the red mark that still stood out on her cheek.

“We were just talking,” Sloan said, brushing Cricket’s hand aside.

“So I see,” Cricket said. Bay flushed when Cricket turned and looked inquiringly at her. “Would you mind telling me what brought you two clabberheads to blows?”

Sloan smirked. “Babies.”

Cricket’s brow arched in confusion. “Babies?”

“Bastard babies,” Sloan clarified.

“Oh.”

“Bay seemed to think I should have kept Antonio’s baby.”

“
Your
baby,” Bay corrected.

“Not anymore it isn’t.”

“Hold it. Hold it!” Cricket said. “This isn’t getting you stubborn, lard-headed mules anywhere.”

“You’re right,” Sloan said. “I’ve got work to do and I don’t have time to stand around arguing about the past. Rip asked me to come see if Bay felt up to doing some bookkeeping.” She stared at Bay. “Well, do you?”

Bay swallowed the misery in her throat. “Yes, of course. I’ll come down as soon as I’m dressed.”

“Fine. I’ll tell Rip.” Sloan turned and left the room.

“How long has she been like this?” Bay asked, staring at the closed door.

“Like what?” Cricket asked.

“Bitter. Cynical. Angry. We were never close, but I don’t think I ever felt so frustrated trying to talk to her.”

Cricket crossed to sit on the bed. She pulled her long auburn braid around and chewed on the end of it before she spoke. “I can understand your feelings, Bay, believe me. But Sloan’s decision to give her baby to the Guerrero family was made a long time ago. It’s too late to do anything about it now. All that can result if you argue with her is to make things worse.”

“How could you let her do it?”

“Nobody
let
her do it,” Cricket retorted. “Rip was furious. But by the time he’d found out what she’d done, the Guerreros had Francisco and wouldn’t give him up.”

“Francisco?”

“That’s what the Guerreros named the baby. They call him Cisco.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes, once. I went to visit Cruz, Antonio’s older brother, and he let me hold the baby. Oh, he’s so beautiful, Bay. He has sable hair, just like Sloan’s, and blue, blue eyes.” Cricket pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Actually, I’d say he looks more like Cruz than Antonio. I don’t know how Sloan could bear to give him up.”

“Maybe if she saw the baby again she’d change her mind,” Bay murmured.

“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“Could be,” Bay said. “But speaking of beautiful babies, when am I going to see Jesse?”

“As soon as you’re dressed. While you were sleeping I laid out a dress and muslin petticoat for you.” Cricket gestured to the practical brown dress made of muslin delaine, a soft, lightweight wool. “It buttons up the front, so you should be able to get into it by yourself. I’ll stay to lace you into your corset if you like.”

“I don’t think I’ll wear the corset,” Bay said. “I . . . it’s just that wearing underclothes at all feels strange and I don’t know if I could stand to be laced into a corset just yet. Maybe in a little while . . .”

“Nothing seems the same, is that it?”

“I guess.”

Cricket’s eyes narrowed appraisingly. “You seem changed, too.”

“I do? How?”

“Well, for one thing,” Cricket said with a chuckle, “I don’t think that dress is going to fit as well as it might have three years ago.”

Bay blushed as Cricket eyed her substantial cleavage.

“But that’s not the biggest change,” Cricket continued.

“It isn’t?”

“Can you imagine the Bay who left here three years ago even daring to argue with Sloan, let alone raising her hand to anyone?”

Bay frowned, hurt by the slightly accusatory tone in Cricket’s voice. “I suppose not. But . . .” Bay wasn’t sure how to explain what had happened between her and Sloan. She wasn’t really sure she could. Or that she owed it to Cricket to try. Stormy violet eyes challenged Cricket’s inquiring gaze. When Cricket lowered her eyes, Bay admitted softly, “I guess that other Bay is gone.”

Cricket met Bay’s gaze again, her gray eyes sad. “I suppose so. I’ll see you in Jesse’s room when you’re dressed. All right?”

“Sure,” Bay said.

When Bay walked into the room down the hall, she found Cricket nursing the baby. She was appalled by the stab of envy that washed over her, even more so when she realized that what she imagined was Long Quiet’s child at her breast. She would never have Long Quiet’s child now.

She hurriedly stuffed her envy back into the hole it had crawled from and let herself be happy for her sister. “I never pictured you like this. I mean, all the time I was gone, I kept remembering you at the pond with Creed. But you look wonderful with a baby at your breast,” Bay said.

Cricket blushed, but was obviously pleased by Bay’s compliment. “Don’t let Creed hear you say that. He already wants another one.”

Jesse’s mouth was playing with the nipple now rather than sucking. “She’s finished,” Cricket said. “Would you like to hold her while I put myself back together?”

Bay took the baby while Cricket buttoned herself back into her clothes. “Oh, Cricket, she’s so perfect!”

“She is, isn’t she,” Cricket agreed with a grin.

“When is the christening?”

“As soon as Creed returns from Mexico.”

“I thought he was just meeting Long Quiet in Laredo.”

Cricket shook her head in wry acceptance. “He couldn’t stand to miss out on the fun, and since Jesse and I would be safe here, he decided to go with Long Quiet. It won’t really delay the christening that much, because we have to wait for Creed’s brother, Tom, and his wife, Amy, to arrive from Tennessee anyway. They’re going to be Jesse’s godparents.”

“When are you expecting them?”

“Sometime in the next couple of weeks, assuming the weather cooperates. If the rains start too soon, the roads will be mud pies.”

“So Creed should be back in a couple of weeks?”

“I hope so,” Cricket said with a laugh. “I don’t know how I’m going to last even that long without him.”

Bay’s shoulders sagged at the thought of a lifetime without Long Quiet. She could never even share with her sisters the memories of their brief time as husband and wife. But as Bay handed the sleeping baby back to Cricket, she kept her bleak thoughts to herself. “I guess I’d better get downstairs and get to work.”

Just as Bay reached the door, Cricket called out to stop her. “Bay?”

“Yes, Cricket?”

“It’ll get easier.”

“Thanks, Cricket, for understanding. I’ll see you at supper.”

The plantation office was on the main floor of the house, with one set of windows overlooking the front porch and a second set revealing vast cotton fields. Bay knew that a quarter-mile away, beyond sight and smell of the house, the cotton gin and baling screw were housed. The slave quarters for Rip’s sixty field hands were a quarter-mile in the other direction. Out back of the house were the bachelors’ quarters, which, Sloan had told her at dinner, hadn’t been damaged by the fire.

The office itself was reminiscent of what it had been in the past—a room that smelled of leather and tobacco, with three rough rawhide chairs situated before a rock fireplace. Rip had re-created here the same bastion of power that had existed before the fire. Bay pulled down a heavy tome from the shelves that made up Rip’s library and opened it to the current entries.

The first Tuesday of the month was the normal day of Wilkerson’s advertised public sale of Negroes, horses, mules, and carriages in Houston. Bay discerned from the entries that Rip had attended the most recent sale and purchased one male African Negro and three mules. He’d also bought a score of hogs to be slaughtered by the hog boys. She also noted from the entries that the plough boys and hoe hands had been fitted with leather shoes for the coming winter.

“I see you found the books,” Rip said, interrupting Bay’s perusal.

“Yes. It looks like you’ve been busy.”

“There’s a lot more to do before the weather chills. Have to get a new gate built for the corral, along with some horse troughs, and there are some ploughs that need fixing. Oh yes, and the barn needs to be cleaned out. You know. The usual.”

Bay felt a moment of sympathy for Sloan. In preparing his eldest daughter to one day take her rightful place as his heir, Rip had appointed Sloan as overseer for Three Oaks. It was Sloan’s job to make sure Rip’s will was done on the cotton plantation. Bay only had to keep track of everything that was accomplished and make sure supplies were ordered and available for all the work Rip dictated. Still, even that was a huge job for a plantation the size of Three Oaks. However, Bay was looking forward to the work to keep her mind off the past.

“From what you said at dinner yesterday about the poor crops, I expected to see the books in worse shape,” Bay said.

“It’s been bad enough,” Rip replied. “Whole damn army of cutworms ate us out in the spring. Had no choice but to replant. Damned if we didn’t get caught by army worms next. Stripped the fields sere! If that wasn’t enough, we had so much rain late in the season the cotton bolls either mildewed or washed down to the ground, where they rotted out or got so stained as to be useless. Pickers should be out there right now snatching cotton, only what little there was has already been picked. It’s been bad, all right. Second year in a row, too.”

“Has it been this bad for everyone?”

“Peach Point and Evergreen have been even harder hit,” Rip said grimly. “Longwood, Birchfield, and Pleasant Grove are about the same as us. Monte Verde seems to have escaped the worst of it, but we’re all feeling the bite.”

Bay smiled slightly at Rip’s unintentional pun. It sounded as if most of the cotton plantations along the Brazos River had been victims of insects and bad weather.

“There’ll be more homespun worn for a while, that’s for sure,” Rip finished. “Jesse’s christening couldn’t have come at a better time. People are ready to put their worries aside for a few hours and kick up their heels. Which brings me to the young man I’ve invited to join us for supper this evening.”

“I’m not ready to meet anyone yet.”

“You’re as ready as you’ll ever be,” Rip said.

“I’m not ready to meet anyone who thinks I’ve been away touring the Continent,” Bay protested, “when what I’ve actually been doing is tanning animal hides and sewing beaded moccasins. Don’t you understand? Half the time I’m still thinking in Comanche.”

“I’m disappointed—”

“Don’t you dare!” Bay raged, jumping to her feet, her hands clenched in fists. “Don’t you dare say you’re disappointed in me. I survived. Against all the odds and when I didn’t think I could, I survived!”

Rip’s bushy red brows arched in amazement. “What brought all this on? I was merely going to say I’m disappointed that you don’t feel more like meeting company.”

Bay’s face reflected her chagrin. “I’m . . .” Bay bit her lower lip. She would not apologize. She wasn’t the least bit sorry for her outburst. “I can’t forget what happened to me. I’m not the same as I was.”