Luke grew up watching his every thought and deed, repressing his feelings no matter how he ached to show them. At first he held back for his mother's sake. Later, upon reaching manhood, he held back for fear of what he might discover about himself.
As a result of this constant restraint, years of bottled-up emotions exploded in uncontrollable rage when he found his pregnant wife dead. He had little memory of what happened that day. All he could do was guess at the possible events that led up to the doctor's death. One thing was clear: his mother's worst fears had been realized; his father's evil seeds were inherent.
Luke glanced at his son. Because of that long-ago day, the boy was locked in silence. No one knew whether or not Matthew would ever speak again.
Luke gripped the reins until his knuckles turned white. Oh, Matthew. His heart filled with anguish. He'd hoped and prayed that Matthew would not inherit the same bad seed that had plagued the
Tyler men for at least two generations.
He'd tried so hard to ignore the signs, but he could no longer in good conscience do so. Matthew's temper tantrums were growing progressively worse. The sins of the father…
He blinked rapidly against the moisture in his eyes, blaming his blurred vision on the dust. He didn't dare let himself to give in to emotion. It was dangerous to allow himself to love fully; even with Matthew he held back for fear of what could possibly happen if he hugged him too tightly or otherwise showed the full extent of his love and affection.
It angered him that circumstances made it necessary to withhold anything from Matthew. Lord knew, he had little enough to give him as it was. But anger, bitterness--all of those troubling feelings that kept simmering somewhere inside, had to be fought against at all costs. Bad feelings or good ones--they all came from the same source. To repress one was to repress them all.
The moisture in his eyes was definitely caused by the wind and the dust.
The wind, Lord, the wind. Or all the things he'd come to dislike about
Kansas
, the wind was the worst. His poor wife never did adjust to the elements of nature that were so much a part of the
Kansas
landscape.
There was a time when he'd had such wondrous dreams, wondrous plans: not ever Catherine-Anne's initial dislike of
Kansas
had deterred him. He'd been confident that, given time, she would come to accept the raw new land as home. He promised to build her the best house in the state. He vowed to make every piece of furniture himself, provide her with every comfort.
But that was before he learned that dreams, like feelings, must be avoided at any cost.
It was late afternoon by the time Luke reached the simple one-room sod house where he and Matthew lived. He'd built the house with his own two hands soon after he and his family had arrived in
Kansas
. It was meant to be a temporary house. But after Catherine-Anne had died, there's been no reason to build the house he promised her.
The wooden windmill spun in the wind as he drove the wagon to the front of the house. "Matthew, we're home." He jumped to the ground and, keeping his head low against the wind, walked to his son's side. "We're home, son." Like slipped his arms beneath Matthew and lifted the boy's exhausted body from the buckboard.
Maddie's apprehension increased as the day progressed. The sun slowly inched toward the western horizon and was all but hidden by dark clouds of dust that cast the late-afternoon sky into an eerie gray dusk.
It had been hours since she'd left the station, and she'd not seen a living soul. Not so much as a bird or a lizard. Thankfully the wind had died down, but the sickening smell of ashes filled her nose and mouth like rancid cotton.
It took forever, it seemed, to pass through the charred landscape, but when she finally reached the ankle-high green grass that now grew on either side of the rutted road, she literally cried out with joy. Surely now she would find a farm or some other sign of civilization.
She was puzzled by the dark mounds ahead. At first she thought they were boulders, but she soon realized her error. It was a buffalo herd, and the thrill of viewing a live buffalo up close made her momentarily forget her present predicament.
Before she'd spotted buffalo from the train, her only experience with the animal was through her father, the renowned Whittaker M. Percy, chief taxidermist for the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington
,
D.C. All during her childhood, her father had spent a great deal of his time away on some expedition or other, capturing wild animals to be mounted and displayed in the national museum.
Maddie's mother, a woman of fine breeding who had created a scandal when she bucked convention and married the adventurer, was nonetheless appalled by the stories he told of being chased by natives in the wilds of
Africa. Once he'd been treed by a wild rhino. Another time he'd nearly been squeezed to death by a boa constrictor.
Maddie had been intrigued with his adventures, and she begged him throughout her childhood to take her along on one of his expeditions. He'd promised to take her on a trip as soon as she turned sixteen. Two weeks before her birthday, he defied her mother's dire predictions about his premature death at the hands of cannibals or wild animals and died peacefully in his sleep.
In the years that followed, Maddie consoled herself with happy memories of the time she spent with him in the laboratory. She had been with him the night they carted in the first buffalo ever brought to the nation's Capitol. Weighing in at sixteen hundred pounds, it was an impressive sight.
But dangerous, her father had told her, and it was those words that made her now take the fork in the road that led away from the grazing herd.
Even so, she couldn't help but recall the look on the face of the dying bull she'd seen earlier, and she wondered why it had never before occurred to her that her father was first and foremost a hunter. To her, his job had seemed exciting and glamorous; it wasn't until she saw that magnificent buffalo fall to its knees that she considered the reality.
She came to a grove of cottonwood trees growing along a creek. They were the first trees she'd seen since leaving the train. While her horse drank thirstily from the water that trickled over a bed of smooth white pebbles, she filled her cupped hands and brought the cool, sweet water to her own parched lips. After quenching her considerable thirst, she washed the dust off her face and hands.
She sensed a presence and, thinking she was about to be attacked by a buffalo, spun around, ready to take flight. An Indian, naked from his waist up and wearing precious little below, sat upon a spotted pony not fifty yards away. His long, black hair was shoulder-length, and glossy strands blew across his high-boned cheeks.
Her father had told her bloodcurdling stories of being attacked by Indians. She suspected the tales were more fantasy than fact, but just in case her father had not exaggerated, she eyed the Indian with caution. He didn't appear to be threatening, and if he had an ounce of common modesty he would surely refrain from doing anything that would dislodge his pitifully inadequate loincloth.
On the chance that modesty was not a consideration of his, she decided her best defense was to assert the kind of authority that worked well in a classroom. Indeed, if she could earn the respect of thirty students certainly she could make one Indian think twice before doing her harm.
"I'm Madeline Percy," she called out in the brisk no-nonsense voice cultivated during her years of teaching. It was a tone that had been used with real success on students who had shown the slightest inclination toward inappropriate thought or action. She only hoped that the months away from the classroom had not lessened the stern ring of her voice, for if he were truly intent upon claiming her scalp, she wouldn't have much of a chance to defend herself. "Do you speak English?"
The Indian's face showed no expression, but Maddie was convinced he was eyeing the strands of red hair that had escaped the confines of her bonnet.
A cold chill crept along her spine. She had spent her entire life hating her flaming red hair--had, indeed spent much of her youth devising concoctions to change its color. None of them had worked, unfortunately, and the red color remained intact, horrid as it was. At the moment, however, she was prepared to fight tooth and nail to save every unsavory red hair on her head.
Fortunately she didn't have to. For, as suddenly as the Indian had appeared, he turned his pony in the opposite direction and rode off.
"Wait!" she called. He was the only human she'd seen in hours and she had no intention of letting him get away. Not until he had pointed her in the direction of civilization--if, indeed, there was such a thing in
Kansas
.
Besides, it occurred to her that since he was the one trying to escape, he was obviously more frightened of her than she was of him. Encouraged by this last thought, she stuck her forefinger and middle finger into her mouth and let out a bloodcurdling whistle (as her father referred to it) that was followed by a noisy protest as every bird within earshot squawked aloud and took to the skies. The Indian glanced back over his shoulder as if to check the source of the unearthly sound.
When her whistle failed to achieve its intent, she scrambled aboard the wagon and grabbed hold of the traces. "Giddyup!"
Dirt and dust flew from beneath her wheels as she chased after the fleeing Indian. "Come back. I won't hurt you!" The wind all but carried her voice away, and she whistled again.
Without warning, the Indian vanished before her eyes. Startled, she slowed her horse to a trot and scanned the area. It then became clear how the Indian had managed to disappear from sight. This part of the prairie was not as flat as it had first appeared. A closer look revealed valleys and hills that could easily hide a man.
A line of horses suddenly broke the crest of a not-too-distant hill. Startled, she yanked on the reins. "Jumping bullfrogs!" she cried aloud. Not only could the terrain conceal a man, it was sufficiently generous enough to hide an entire Indian tribe!
Her usual brave front deserting her, she gave the traces a commanding shake, spun the wagon around on two wheels and headed in the opposite direction. Shouting a command to the horse, she drove hellbent for Betsy--as her father had so often described his own narrow escapes--back the way she'd come.
Now that an Indian attack appeared imminent, the buffalo herd seemed suddenly less threatening, commanding little more than a glance as she flew by.
Not daring to look back, she kept going until her poor horse was winded. Fearing he was about to topple over with exhaustion, she glanced over her shoulder. Much to her relief, not an Indian was in sight.
She brought the wagon to a stop. Her heartbeat so fast she could barely breathe. She gasped for air and scanned the hazy distance.
She thought she saw something ahead, a pinpoint of light, perhaps, flickering through the dust.
Thinking it might be an Indian campfire, she proceeded forward with caution. She cast a worried glance over her shoulder again, keeping an eye on the motionless mounds she knew were buffalo and watching for Indians. Self-sufficient to a fault, she seldom called on outside help. But this was no time to take chances. Lord Almighty," she called aloud, "if I ever get out of this mess alive I'll…" She gave careful thought to what she was willing to sacrifice. She might be desperate, but it was no reason to be foolhardy. "I'll hardly ever again question your judgment."
She was so busy worrying about what was behind her, she failed to see the windmill until she was practically on top of it, and even then it was the grinding sound of the flywheel spinning in the breeze that finally caught her attention. Not far from the windmill stood an odd-looking building with sod walls. A think line of smoke drew her attention to the roof, which in the fast-fading light appeared to be flat and covered in grass.
She left her horse by the water trough and walked up to the house. Although a thin layer of light could still be seen in the western sky, it was completely dark overhead, the stars blocked out by the thick layer of dust.
She concentrated on the soft light that flickered from behind the single window.
She swallowed hard and willed her heart to stay in her chest. Determined to keep her wits about her no matter what waited her, she gave the door a brisk knock.
The door flew open so quickly, it caught her by surprise. She certainly was not prepared for the tall, dark-haired man who stood glaring at her like a bull about to attack.
His sharp black eyes could have been lances, the way they bored into her, glaring at her from a hard, cold face. "What the hell do you want?"