Mary Connealy (50 page)

She looked away from Adam to see a cabin, tiny compared to where she’d lived, but neat, with smoke pouring out of the chimney and lights glowing in each window. She saw a looming barn to her right. Wooden corral fences stretched away from the barn, and in the moonlight she saw grazing horses and other outbuildings.

A man strode toward them from the barn and caught the horse’s reins.

Adam immediately started for the house as if he was afraid she didn’t have much time.

“I heard they found the schoolmarm eloped with Daniel Reeves,” the man called after them. “Did you catch up with Mrs. Reeves making a break from Reeves Canyon?”

“No, it’s someone else. She’s hurt. Sophie, open up.” Adam strode along, taking her somewhere against her will.

Her whole life had been lived against her will. “I can walk.”

Adam smiled down at her as his spurs clanked. “I’ve got your feet all wrapped tight. I’ll put you down when we get out of the snow.” He climbed a few steps to a porch, and a door opened and swung wide.

“What happened?” A very pregnant blond woman stepped back to let Adam in.

He entered the house as an equal, not submissively.

Tillie looked away from the woman by reflex. She’d learned well not to look a white man or woman straight in the eye.

Children filled the room. A bevy of little girls came up to Adam, trying to take a peek. Tillie turned her head so they could see her and felt the fear ease. The pretty smiles, bright lantern light, and warm home were so different from where she’d been.

“Bring her into the back room, Adam. It’s the warmest. Mandy and Beth can share a bed tonight.”

“I don’t want to share a bed with her! She kicks!” the oldest girl screeched.

There hadn’t been children in Master Virgil’s house. She stopped herself. No, she wouldn’t think of him as “master.” But the name was branded into her mind.

The girls bickered, full of life and energy and courage, as Adam laid her on a feather bed. The chain on her ankle clinked against the wooden frame.

“What in the world is that?” Sophie reached for the chain, then stopped and looked sharply at Adam. “What’s going on here?”

Adam would drop his gaze now. He’d back down and start saying, “Yes’m,” and “No, ma’am,” in the face of the lady’s upset.

Adam didn’t blink. Instead, he actually glared at the lady. “I don’t know. But it’s coming off.” He wheeled and headed out of the room.

“Wait. Her ankle is cut up from this thing.” The lady—Sophie—looked at Tillie. “What happened to you? Adam, go for the sheriff. He can be out here in an hour. They can arrest—”

“No!” Tillie hadn’t meant to shout, and she had to fight not to cringe. But her cringing days were over. “Please, don’t call the sheriff. Please.”

A tense silence stretched out. Sophie stood with her hands on her hips, obviously unsettled. Adam was holding on to the doorknob, looking eager to go for the law. Tillie was hoping, even praying, until she caught herself and stopped, that they’d let it drop.

Adam stepped back to the bedside. “Whoever did this broke the law. The days of chaining up another human being are gone.” Adam’s jaw clenched until Tillie wondered if he’d grind his teeth down.

Sophie patted Adam’s arm and spoke quietly. “Get the tools and tell Clay to quit fighting with the girls and get in here to help. While you’re finding the tools, I’ll talk to her.”

“Thanks, Sophie.”

Tillie’s mind almost couldn’t wrap around the way the white woman touched Adam without landing a blow or issuing a harsh command. And Adam’s response was even more astonishing. Respectfully, he’d backed off, but there was no bowing or scraping.

His eyes met Tillie’s, and a thousand questions wanted to rush from her lips. Who was he? How had he found this life? Was he truly considered an equal by these people?

The girls screamed in the background, and a man who must be Clay hollered at them to be quiet. It sounded like the same man who’d taken Adam’s horse, almost as if Clay served Adam. Except the girls were calling him Pa and they’d called Sophie Ma, so this must be their home and their family with Adam as a guest.

The fighting changed to giggling.

Sophie sat on the side of the bed and looked up at Adam. “Ask Clay to bring in some of the stew for her. It’s still warm. Then go eat a bowl yourself. You’ve been out all day. It’ll be a few minutes before I’m ready to have you work on the shackle.”

Adam nodded then looked at Tillie. “I’ll be right in the next room if you need me. Sophie won’t hurt you. Promise me you won’t try and run away again.”

Tillie hesitated, but Adam looked as if he wasn’t going to leave unless she gave her word.

Sophie looked at Adam, and her eyes narrowed. “What happened to you?”

Adam jabbed a finger at Tillie. “She fought me when I found her.”

Sophie looked back at Tillie, her eyes wide with amusement. “You really gave him a pounding. Good girl.”

“Hey!” Adam’s chin came up, and his eyes blazed bright as if his very manhood had been questioned. “I was being careful. I just didn’t want to hurt her, so I didn’t defend myself.”

Sophie laughed then took Tillie’s hand. “You’re my kind of woman.”

Tillie felt a spurt of amusement that shocked her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been tempted to smile.

Adam snorted. “I’ll get the soup. But watch her like a hawk, Sophie. She doesn’t seem to have the sense to realize she can’t go walking in the middle of a Texas snowstorm with no food and no horse and no coat.”

Sophie waved her hand at Adam. “Shoo! She needs to eat, and you do, too. Get her some stew; then get something in your own stomach.”

A
foot landed in Grace’s stomach.

Her eyes flew open as her…son?—Mark—tripped and landed smack on top of her.

If she could have breathed, she’d have breathed a prayer of thanks. There were bigger feet than Mark’s in this family. And she imagined it was only a matter of time until they all stomped on her one way or another.

“Hi, Ma!” Mark shouted like a banshee.

Why did this family say every word at the top of their lungs? He scrambled up off of her, then tripped and toppled toward the red-hot stove. She lurched up to rescue him, but he managed to evade disaster at the last second.

Hollering all the while, he leaped toward Luke, who skidded to a stop and missed stepping on her by inches.

The front door—the only door—hung wide open. Snow gusted in, pushed by a wicked, moaning wind.

“One of you boys shut the door,” she said in her teacher’s voice. She recognized it plainly.

So did they. They ignored her just like always.

Luke dived at Mark’s ankles. They crashed to the floor, slamming up against the cast iron legs of the stove, which weren’t as hot as the belly, thank heavens. Luke pounded a huge fistful of snow into Mark’s face as Mark howled loudly enough to bring down the rafters.

Grace looked up. They had no rafters.

Mark crawled and rolled until he could regain his feet. The shrieking and threatening never paused. The two of them disappeared out the door.

“I told you boys to close that door.”

Grace had been about to say that, but Daniel saved her the trouble as he came in, dragging snow inside with every step. The boys ignored him, too. He set a bucket down. Grace could see it was brimming with milk. He yelled, “Breakfast in just a minute,” out the door that was swung inward, hanging from leather hinges. Daniel shoved it shut across the frozen ground.

Grace had just a glimpse of the swirling white world outside. The snow was scraped back from the cave a few feet, and footprints had battered it down somewhat past that.

Grace heard the whoops and hollers of a thousand marauding Apaches outside.

“Those scamps.” Daniel shook his head and laughed as he picked up his bucket and turned to the stove. He saw her and froze as surely as the cold winter world outside this gopher hole. “You’re awake.”

Grace didn’t point out that he was stating the obvious. She started to push back her blanket and then clawed it back, remembering her nightgown. And that’s when she realized she was dressed. Brown broadcloth pants—of all things—stuck out from under blue flannel. A heavy brown and white shirt buttoned down the front. She even had boots on.

She’d crawled back under her blanket last night without giving her attire a moment’s notice. Now she noticed. She felt her skin burn with embarrassment as she saw the way the too-short pants hugged her ankles.

“You’re going to wear those until I can get to town and buy you something else. And they’re the only spare pants Abe has, so you’d better appreciate ’em,” Daniel ordered.

“So you’ve taken up mind reading, then?” Grace snapped. She held tight, for one last precious second, to any thought of modesty. It showed in the clinging grip of her hands on the blanket. She looked at her white knuckles sunk into the coarse gray deer hide; then, sick with humiliation, she thrust her cover aside.

She stood up, looked at the ridiculous sight of herself in a long nightgown, pants, and a shirt, and said, “I’ll need you to step outside while I remove my nightgown.”

Daniel glared at her. “I’ve got breakfast to get on. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll look away for exactly one minute.” He wheeled around. “Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight…”

Grace opened her mouth to protest and just generally scold the man for his very existence.

“Fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight…”

He meant it. Grace whirled away from him and dragged the shirt off. She tore the nightgown off over her head and thrust her arms back into the shirtsleeves.

“Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five…”

Grace buttoned the shirt with scrambling fingers.

“Twenty-three, twenty-two, twenty-one…”

The pants were indecent. Tight all over. After a shaky moment of indecision, she left the shirttails hanging out in hopes of maintaining a shred of decency.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven…”

The shirt covered her nearly to her knees. It had to be Daniel’s. She couldn’t walk around dressed in a strange man’s clothing. She couldn’t….

“Three, two, one.” Daniel turned around and started plopping steaks directly on the cast-iron top of the stove.

Grace gasped, “I am horrified that you wouldn’t give me a moment of privacy. It is completely inappropriate for you to—”

“D’ ya know how to make biscuits?”

“Your manners leave me speechless. I cannot live in a place where—”

“Speechless ain’t as quiet as it used to be, that’s for sure. How about the biscuits, wife?”

Grace did
not
know how to make biscuits. She braced herself for the ridicule when she admitted it. “No, Mr. Reeves, I’m afraid I don’t….”

He didn’t disappoint her. “So I got stuck with a wife who’s so worthless she can’t even make a biscuit. Looks like my luck is holding. You ever heard tell of a woman giving birth to
four
babies all to onest?”

“Four babies at once?” She didn’t even try to keep the horror out of her voice.

“If it can happen to anyone, it’ll most likely happen to me. No need to concern yourself. We won’t be risking young’uns, no way, nohow. Get over here and keep an eye out for these steaks. I’ll mix up the biscuits.”

Grace edged between the table and the stove.

Daniel thrust a fork her way and, without giving her so much as a look-see, slipped by her and went to a canister sitting by the front door. He began scooping out flour onto the table.

Grace looked away from him when a flame jumped up from inside the stove through a slit in the lid. It flared nearly to the ceiling. Grace screamed, jumped back, and dropped the fork.

Daniel placed both hands on her waist, shoved her none too gently aside, and sneered under his breath, “Consarned woman’ll manage to burn down a house made’a rock and dirt.”

He stooped to pick up the fork. The tines had stabbed into the packed dirt floor so that the fork stood straight up. Daniel plucked it off the floor, swiped it front and back on his pant leg, and expertly flipped seven steaks with fire dancing madly all around his arm. He turned, still not looking at her.

She jumped back to keep him from tripping over her.

He went to the door, flung it wide open, and roared, “Ike, get in here and help with breakfast.” Daniel left the door open and went back to the table and his biscuits.

Finally, a job I can handle
. Going to close the door, she leaned outward into a world that was pure white: ground, trees, mountains, air all around, and sky up above.

Ike jumped down—from on high apparently—and almost took her arm off. With a shout of raucous laughter, he stomped into the house, making a damp floor even worse.

His cat raced in on his heels. Had the cat, no longer the skinny animal Ike had rescued, come down from overhead, too? Grace didn’t have the courage to ask. The unflappable cat, as wild as the Reeves boys, seemed content to live the rough-and-tumble life.

“I thought Ma was gonna do the cookin’ now. Why in Sam Hill’d’ya git ’er if’n she weren’t gonna do nothing? You done mighty poor by us, Pa.”

Grace wanted to point out that it was rude to talk about people as if they weren’t there. Honesty prevented her from actually denying Ike’s words, though, because Daniel
had
done mighty poor by his boys when he’d gone and gotten himself married to her.

“Mind the steaks.” Daniel’s voice shook the room. He always seemed to talk at a near shout, except when he shouted, which was extremely loud, so Grace knew the difference.

Grace went back to the door just as all four boys still outside came flying down from above.

Mark first, then Abe, then Luke, with John right on his heels. Each landed on a snowdrift and rolled out of the way so the brother plummeting down next wouldn’t crash-land on him.

The boys wallowed in the snow, kicking a drift back into Grace’s face. She paused long enough to make sure they were all alive. Wrestling, pummeling each other with snowballs, shrieking through mouths full of snow, she judged them to have survived. Fine. They plunged from the sky and lived. She slammed the door.

Ike played in the fire behind her back. “Pa, why’re we cooking? Why’re we doin’ women’s work now that we’ve got us a woman? Pa, I wanna go back outside ’n’ play. It don’t snow much, an’ this is our chance to…”