Dorothy Garlock (41 page)

Several times during the last few years there had been small Indian raids in the valley. Geronimo and another colorful chief, Victoriano, were raiding and causing havoc in southern New Mexico, Arizona, and southeastern Texas, but they had kept their word, so far, and had left Macklin Valley in peace. Burr still took supplies down when the Indians came to the valley, but now they came in small pitiful groups, made up mostly of women, children, and old men.

Johanna went toward a small mound. The marker was newer than the others.

NATHAN CALLOWAY

3 months, 2 days

son of

Burnett and Johanna

Tears filled her eyes. Four years had failed to dull the pain of losing her second son. She and Burr had had a daughter the first year of their marriage and three years later a son. Both children were blond, blue-eyed, and bounding with energy. Little Nathan was born with a yellowish tinge to his skin, and they had known almost from the first that he would never grow up to be as healthy as his brother and sister.

Two weeks ago Johanna had presented her husband with a third son, and from the way he had pulled on her breast when she fed him this morning she was sure he was going to be as robust as her other two children. She had left him with Anna, her eleven-year-old daughter, who was fascinated with him and had vowed she was going to have dozens and dozens of babies of her own.

Luis and Jacy had three children and another on the way. Tiny Marietta was almost a year older than Johanna’s Anna, yet barely came up to her shoulder. She had long, shiny black hair and large black eyes and was as shy as Anna was daring. Both girls had the same lament; their fathers were overprotective.

Johanna passed Codger’s grave and that of Red and Rosita’s little one and moved on to stand beside the grave at the far end of the cemetery. At her insistence a marker had been placed there.

MACK MACKLIN

He found the valley

She never lingered beside the old man’s grave, but passed on, as if by doing so she had somehow done her duty. Looking down toward the ranch house, she saw a rider come out of the corral and head up toward the hill. She knew who it was before he took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead and the sun glistened on hair yellow as cactus blossoms. She leaned against the stone fence and waited for him.

From her vantage point the land fell away, sweeping down to the sparkling stream whose waters threaded their way across the valley carpeted with waving knee-high grasses. She let her glance wander to the mountain peaks where the green timber gave way to rocky, snow-covered towers. She remembered Burr’s words on that night, so long ago, when they had declared their love. “’Cause Luis and I think this is the best place to be don’t make it so for everyone.” It was the place she wanted to be, she thought. The only place in the world she wanted to be.

“Johanna.” Burr’s voice drifted up the hill.

She waved to him and laughed when she saw the scowl on his face and knew she was in for a scolding. The instant he got off his horse she hurried to him, and his outstretched arms welcomed her. He kissed her tenderly at first, then roughly, almost savagely.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

He held her away from him and looked down with mocking sternness. “Don’t be tryin’ to get around me with honeyed words. You shouldn’t’ve walked all the way up here. It’s only two weeks tomorrow since you had the baby. You’re not strong enough yet.”

“I’ve missed you,” she said again with sparkling eyes.

“What am I goin’ to do with you, woman? You don’t have the brains of a flea, but I . . . love you, love you. And I’ve missed you, too.” He folded her to him lovingly, and she raised her mouth for his kiss.

“How much longer do I have to wait?” He breathed the words in her ear.

She drew back and laughed up at him. “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” His face twisted with pain, then the old roguish grin she adored claimed his features. “I’ll have to go to El Paso and visit the—”

She drew back her foot and kicked his shin.

“You just try to get out of this valley without me, Burr Calloway, and you’ll soon find out how mean I can be!”

His laugh was rich and satisfying. “Come on, you mule-headed shrew. I’ll give you a ride home.”

He lifted her gently up onto the saddle, placed her hands on the pommel, and cautioned her to hold on, then jumped up behind her. She leaned back against him, feeling loved and protected, and reveling in the strength of his arms as he took the reins. The horse moved on down the slope.

“Have I told you today that I love you, Mrs. Calloway?” The soft, familiar words were whispered in her ear.

“Yes,
querido,
” she murmured, “but tell me again.”

IF YOU ENJOYED

GLORIOUS DAWN

look for

A GENTLE GIVING

by Dorothy Garlock

Set in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming during the late 1800’s,
A GENTLE GIVING
is a hauntingly beautiful love story. Smith Bowman is a lonely guilt-ridden man; Willa Hammer, a gentle, giving woman. The story will make you laugh, love, cry, and hate.

CHAPTER

1

A
wakened
by the heat beating against her face, she leaped from her bed. Fire had enveloped the table and the bureau where she kept the pictures of her mother and the few mementos she had managed to save over the years. Suddenly, the straw mattress on the bed erupted into a ball of fire.

Over the sound of crackling flames, a murmur of angry voices reached her. She ran out the door as the fire, turning into an inferno, roared angrily into the room where her stepfather made his beautiful clocks.

Was this a dream—the roof ablaze and flames dancing a queer rigadoon against the dark sky?

Willa Hammer faced the angry crowd. Why had they come here to the edge of town to set afire the little shack she had so lovingly made into a home? A dirt clod struck her cheek. She cried out in surprise and terror, and lifted her hand to shield her face.

“Slut! Spawn of the devil!” The woman who threw the clod had spoken to her just that morning when she went to post a letter. She had not been friendly but she had been civil. “It’s because of you—”

“We don’t want ya here!” yelled another.

“It’s evil ya ’n’ that deformed monster brought to this town,” a man shouted. “Nothin’s been right since ya come here.”

“Get the hell out of Hublett or . . . we’ll tar ’n’ feather ya!”

A sixgun fired into the air made an unspoken threat clear to even Willa’s befuddled mind.

Pelted with clumps of dirt, she raised her arm to protect her head and turned toward the road. A man with a hickory switch in his hand blocked her way.

“Uppity whore! Whelp of a thievin’ murderin’ hunchback,” he shouted, his sneering face so close to her she could smell his sour breath. Willa tried to edge around him, but he caught her nightdress at the neck and ripped it, leaving an arm and shoulder bare. Then he lifted his arm again.

She heard the breathy hiss of the switch slicing through the air just before it sent a serpent of flame writhing across her back.

“Ya ain’t got no shotgun now.”

Unremitting terror engulfed her. This was the man she had turned away a few nights ago when he had come pounding on their door, drunk, and showing off for his friends. He had wanted to know what she would charge for an hour in bed. She had endured the shouted insults until he had attempted to break down the door. Then she had flung it open and faced him with the shotgun. With fear making her stomach roil, even though she had been through this many times before in so many towns she had even forgotten the names, she had ordered him to leave.

“Bitch! Ever since ya come here ya’ve been looking down yore nose at us decent folks.” The switch came down on her back again.

In a daze of pain and confusion, she cried out, stumbled, regained her balance and tried to run. Again and again she felt the bite of the switch. The end of the pliable bough curled around her neck and stung her mouth.

Too numb to cry, too frightened to think, she ran to escape the agony of the switch and the clods and stones being thrown by the angry crowd. The light from the fire and the bright moon sent her shadow dancing crazily in front of her as she ran barefoot down the path. She reached the end of the lane to find it blocked by a canvas-covered, high-wheeled, heavily constructed wagon. Unsure as to what to do, she paused.

When a stone, thrown harder than any of the others, hit her in the middle of the back, the pain forced a scream from her lips. She staggered and grabbed the wagon wheel to keep from falling to her knees.

“Up here, girl! Quick!”

She had no idea who was on the other end of the hand that was extended to her. She grasped it gratefully, placed her foot on a thick spoke and was pulled up onto the seat. The instant she was in the wagon, a long whip snaked out and stung the backs of the mules.

“H’yaw! Hee-yaw!” The driver shouted at the team as he cracked the whip over their backs. The wagon lurched forward. It made a wide loop and headed for open country.

“Papa! Wait for Papa and Buddy—” Willa cried.

“Too late fer yore pa, girl. They already hung ’em.”

“No! Oh, God—”

Then in the wavering light of a bonfire, she saw the body of Papa Igor hanging from a tree in a grove between their house and town. His shirt had been torn away. The white skin on the large hump on his back shone in the light from the fire. His head, oversized in proportion to the rest of his body and covered with thick dark hair, was tilted back as if he were looking at the heavens above.

There, abandoned and lifeless, was the only person in the world whom she loved and who loved her. The scene was burned into Willa’s mind. It would stay forever.

There is a time when a human being has taken all that can be endured; a time when strength and logic are burned away. This was that moment for Willa Hammer. The physical pain was so intense it was scarcely to be borne, but within her the awareness of her loss seared far more deeply.

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

It was the cry of a soul in agony—a sound most of the crowd would never forget. It pierced the cool night air, shattering the silence, moving like a cold, desolate wind, sweeping down from the mountains, raking the mob with fingers of ice, chilling and awesome.

As the screams died away, a sorrowing voice spoke from among the hushed throng standing in front of the burning house.

“Dear God. What possessed us to do such a terrible thing?”

But it was too late for regrets. The deed was done.

*  *  *

“What the . . . hell!”

To the west in the Bighorn Mountains, Smith Bowman, startled out of a half-sleep, dropped the empty whiskey bottle and leaped to his feet. Screams, wordless, terrified, unearthly screams blasted the silence. They filled every crevice of the mountains and sent a shiver of terror pouring through him.

The screams stopped suddenly and all was quiet again.

Smith shook his head to clear it. He must be drunker than he thought. The cries he’d heard must have been a cougar’s mating call, but he would have sworn they were a woman’s primeval screams of grief.

An hour earlier he had awakened abruptly from a tortured sleep, reared up out of his bedroll, his eyes wide open, his face drenched with sweat, his hands reaching. A wave of sickness had washed over him, as it did each time the nightmare forced him to relive the horror of that dreadful day. Would he ever forget the pleading look in Oliver’s eyes as he reached for his hand just before—just before—he had just coaxed sleep back again when the shrieking began.

Smith’s shaking fingers combed through his thick blond hair before he pulled another whiskey bottle from his saddlebag. He took a long swallow, then cradled the bottle in his two hands. When he was a boy, he had yearned for a horse of his own, but when he was left alone after his family was lost in a flash flood, he wanted nothing more than to see another human face. Then when he went to Eastwood, he had a desperate desire to belong. Now, all he wanted was to be free of the invisible chains of guilt.

A tear slipped from the corner of Smith Bowman’s eye and rolled slowly down his cheek.

Dear God, would it ever end? It had been six long years since Oliver’s death—and guilt still clung to his back like a leech.

He drank from the bottle again. This was all the whiskey he had to last him until he reached Byers’ Station. He would stop there and buy more before he crossed the river and headed for Eastwood ranch.

He lay back down on his bedroll. Long ago he had developed an awed affection for the Bighorn Mountains, marveling at their trickery, their beauty, their valleys and their towering trees. Tonight they wore a crown of a million stars. Smith watched the shadows and listened to the sounds of the forest, wondering if there were another human being in the world who felt as desperately alone as he did.