Capture the Sun (Cheyenne Series) (34 page)

      
Rider accepted it and took a sip, then said, “We may have us a problem, boss.”

      
Noah looked up, his face wary now. “What?”

      
“Your foreman, Lowery, he's been doing some snooping, I think. Caught him up by Krueger's property line, looking over the mixed herds there, where I cut all the K Bar stock out last month after that storm.”

      
“So you think he's suspicious?” Noah's eyes were cold. He and Frank Lowery went back a lot of years. The man was a top ramrod. He was also a shrewd son of a bitch who just might create some really serious trouble. Noah swore. Damn the fool! He had always known that his foreman had been in love with Marah. Why Frank stayed on after she died, he never understood, but until now he had been glad of it. However, if Frank tried to expose Noah Sinclair as a rustler, he would die for his trouble.

* * * *

      
Frank Lowery let out a sharp volley of oaths as he stood up and brushed the dust from the knee of his pants. Clear sign, all right. There was no doubt about it. That sharpie range detective—Frank snorted in disgust at the title—was stealing Karl Krueger blind. At least one hundred head of prime K Bar stock had been taken off this range in the past couple of days, run in with Circle S cattle and driven east, probably to meet with some Dakota buyer who wasn't particular about previous ownership and who quickly drove them to the railhead for sale.

      
Frank had followed Rider's comings and goings for over a month now and knew his horse's prints. No doubt about who led the strange riders to the herd and helped them drive it off. These tracks were damning evidence. Caleb was guilty, but was he working for·himself or for Noah? Much as Frank would have liked to believe otherwise for Carrie's sake, he strongly suspected Noah had ordered the thievery. Too many times this spring he had watched his employer ride out with the gunman. Noah had not been present at this operation, but doubtless he knew about it.

      
As he mounted and headed slowly back toward Circle S, the old foreman mulled over what he should do. Lay a trap for Rider and catch him red-handed? If he did that, Rider might implicate his boss and then Carrie would face the humiliation of seeing the father of her unborn child hang for rustling. Much as she might be better off with Noah dead, that was not the way to handle it! Circle S was her child's inheritance, and Frank would not jeopardize it. He wished Noah would show as much concern. If Sinclair continued this war with Krueger, one of them would destroy the other. He cursed roundly. If innocent people weren't their victims, they could fight to the death for all he cared and the devil take all the cattle and land in Montana Territory.

      
Lowery thought back over the years he had worked for Noah Sinclair. The man had more than any one human ever deserved—a fabulously successful ranch, a position of prestige and power in the territory. Most importantly of all, he had been gifted with two lovely, spirited wives, a splendid son, and another child on the way. Why was nothing ever enough for some men?

      
Grimly, he decided he would confront Noah as soon as he had enough evidence. If nothing else, he would blackmail the son of a bitch into stopping this madness.

      
As Frank crossed the stream, swollen with melted snow, he decided to stop for a cooling drink. It was an unseasonably warm May, and he was thirsty. Born in the dry country of southwest Texas, Frank had always loved the sweet abundant water of Montana. He drank deeply and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Ah, it was so good. It was the last sensation he ever felt. The rifle slug hit him cleanly in the back of the head, killing him instantly and propelling his lanky body face downward in the clean, rushing waters, now pink with his blood.

* * * *

      
Hank Allen found Frank the next afternoon, far over on a deserted stretch of the northeastern range adjoining Krueger's place. Noah stormed and swore vengeance, laying the blame on K Bar men. Of course, Krueger denied it and nothing could be proven.

      
Carrie grieved as if her own father had died. Kyle and Hawk were gone, and now Frank. Only Feliz remained as her friend in this hostile wilderness.

      
Living with gnawing guilt and fear about the baby's paternity, Carrie had been ill and depressed during most of her pregnancy. Dr. Lark had assured her last week that she had only another six weeks to go. She was huge now. Walking was tiring, and when as she lay down to rest, the baby moved and kept her awake. She could hardly wait until her child was born.

      
Considering her rounded belly, she thought to herself,
Despite my guilt and even the fear of what Noah would do, I want you to be
his
, not my husband's. Am I really so wantonly wicked?
She shook her head sadly. Realizing it was far more likely to be Noah's child, she vowed to love the baby anyway, regardless of how much she had grown to hate and mistrust the father.

      
Frank's death had thrown her into bleak depression, and Mrs. Thorndyke's hovering malevolence continued to cast a pall over the house. Carrie had finally concluded the old woman was deranged, imagining herself to be mistress of Circle S all the years since she had been hired as a housekeeper. If Mrs. Thorndyke wasn't so mean-spirited and filled with hate, Carrie would actually have felt pity for the woman who counted the silverware as conscientiously as if it were her own. She had accepted the news of Carrie's pregnancy resentfully and watched with stiffly repressed jealousy as the young woman's belly grew. The child cemented Carrie's position at Circle S. No matter how Carrie and Noah hated one another, if she gave him a white son, the boy would inherit everything and Carrie would live out her days as mistress of the Sinclair empire.

* * * *

      
Carrie sat in the flower garden, on the very bench where Hawk had found her weeping that night. Since the weather had become pleasant, she had come there every afternoon to watch the spring flowers grow and to feel in some small way close to her lost love. She had never again gone into his old room. It would have been too painful and certainly would have aroused suspicions if she had been found there.

      
Until yesterday the room had been closed up without having been cleaned. Noah had announced at dinner last night that it would make a good room for the nurse he planned to hire for his son. Today Mrs. Thorndyke was in there sorting through Hawk's things, directing the maids in their task of scrubbing years' worth of dust and neglect.

      
Carrie's heart ached as she thought of Hawk's things being thrown away, displaced as carelessly as he had been. Circle S should belong to Noah's firstborn, and here she was, the very instrument of his disinheritance. How sadly ironic. Her pensive spell was shattered by Mrs. Thorndyke's clipped nasal voice.

      
“Mr. Noah wants to see you in his study, right now.” The feral gleam in her eyes brightened them from their, usual stone-gray flatness to an almost whitish-silver shine. Her whole face radiated triumphant hate. She stood over Carrie as if restraining an impulse to pounce and disembowel her prey.

      
Realizing the hateful woman was waiting until she did as ordered, Carrie got up. The hair on the back of her neck prickled in warning. What was going on to make the housekeeper so agitated and gloating? Why did Noah want to see her in midafternoon?

      
Slowly, feet dragging, she walked toward the house with a terrible foreboding filling her breast. Mrs. Thorndyke followed her like a shadow. When Carrie reached the door to Noah's office, she turned to dismiss her jailor, but something in the woman's facial expression stopped her. Stepping inside, she simply shut the door in the housekeeper's face.

      
“You wanted to see me, Noah?” Her voice was level and calm despite her strong sense of unease.

      
When he turned from the window and faced her, she gasped and took a step back, trapped against the door. Using it to steady herself, she met his piercing stare. His face was not triumphant like Mrs. Thorndyke's’, but furious in cold, murderous rage. Carrie had lived with Noah's moods long enough to recognize that.

      
He took several steps across the room until he stood at arm's length from her. “Yes, my darling wife. I have something to show you.” He paused, then reached in his pocket and pulled out a soiled length of ribbon. Loose, fluffy bits of dust clung to its satiny length. It had once been bright orange. “Recognize this?” His voice was almost silky.

      
She reached for it almost involuntarily, baffled. “Yes, it's from my white silk night rail. I never found it. You tore it—Oh! Last fall...” Her voice trailed away as a dawning horror began to choke her throat. “Where—”

      
“Where did I find it? I didn't. Mrs. Thorndyke did—under Hawk's bed!” Each word cracked like a whiplash in the hot, still room. His eyes riveted her to the door like barbed arrows. “Care to hazard any guesses as to how it got there? Let's see, it must have been eight or nine months ago, somewhere around the time you conceived that.” He suddenly placed one hand on her belly, pressing until he could feel the baby kick.

      
Carrie thought her knees would surely buckle when he removed his clawlike fingers. Her thoughts whirled in a maelstrom of frantic confusion. “But how? I don't know! You tore it loose.”

      
How vividly that ugly memory stuck with her after all this time, right alongside the beautiful memory of how gently Hawk had taken the gown from her later that same night. Her cheeks flooded with incriminating crimson as she stood mute and frozen.

      
“I may have torn it loose, but my son,” he spat the word like an oath, “seems to have pulled it free. No doubt as he bared these for his pleasure!” With that he grasped her breasts in his hands and cruelly pinched the nipples, grinding the swollen globes against her ribs until she gasped in breathless pain.

      
“Don't, please, don't hurt the baby, Noah!” The plea was torn from her.

      
He jerked his hands away as if she were a leper. “The baby, yes! Whose baby seems to be the question. Well, whose is it? Am I to be a father or grandfather? Or do you even know!”

      
As she struggled to regain her breath, Carrie choked out, “It must be yours, Noah. After all the times, surely it is. I was only with him one night, just one—”

      
He hit her then, so hard she saw an explosion of red and yellow light behind her eyes and the room began to grow dim. She could hear his voice, raised from its low, cold pitch to full-blown screaming rage now. “So, you expect me to thank you for only cuckolding me one time! You filthy slut! What is it about women and that goddamned stinking savage! You, so cold and prim, so innocent, as different from Lola as day from night, and still you went to him! Was it really only one night, or were there others? Why the hell should I believe you!”

      
“Because it's true,” she ground out, struggling to stay on her feet and clear her spinning head. God, if she fell, he might turn on her like a wolf on a downed deer, tearing her limb from limb! “That's why he left the next morning. We both knew it could go no further. We never intended for it to happen.”

      
As he stared into her clear green eyes, full of fear, yet also hinting at a resolute, growing strength, he began to regain some semblance of control over his raging emotions. Yes, she was probably telling him the truth. She had never been good at hiding her feelings or dissembling. More likely the child was his.

      
He took a long breath. “We'll just have to wait and see, won't we, dear wife?” His eyes were calm and calculating. He had a position to consider in the territory. After his fiasco with Lola, he would not have another wayward wife. “Yes, I'll know when the child is born if it's Indian or not. If it's mine, and a boy, I'll allow you to live here, with proper guardianship, of course. If it's a girl, I'll get you breeding again.” He paused and reached out to stroke her face, which was beginning to swell and discolor from his blow. “But, oh my dear, if the little bastard is a filthy redskin I will personally kill you both. You have my word on it!”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      
Wind Song awoke to the sound of spring birds. The sun was bright, but the breeze brisk and cool, for the last of the snows were only now leaving the valley. It was a glorious day—their wedding day. Her elkskin dress, tanned soft as butter, trimmed with elaborate rows of gleaming elk teeth, lay before her. Lovingly, she ran her fingers over its rich folds. She had already sent her wedding gift to Hawk, a magnificent shirt of antelope hide, painstakingly worked with porcupine quills.

      
Eagerly she awaited Sweet Rain and Calf Woman, who were to assist her in the ritual preparations for her wedding night. First she would go to the women's sweat lodge, then bathe in the icy stream. Her hair would be freshly washed and perfumed and she would be dressed in her finery. The Cheyenne had no marriage ceremony as such. The relatives of the bride simply carried her to her bridegroom on a new blanket, depositing her at the door of their new lodge. Iron Heart would stand in place of her father, imparting his unspoken blessing on their union this night. She knew the day would seem endless.

      
Hawk, too, thought of the night to come as he dove into the breathtakingly cold water. Over and over he told himself he was doing the right thing. Every time he saw Angry Wolf and felt his silent hate, he knew Wind Song was well rid of the cruel warrior.
But you don't love her.
His conscience would not leave him in peace. He rationalized his answer as he had thousands of times before in the past five weeks. He would learn to love her. They would share a life together, children; he would belong. Lord knew, Wind Song loved enough for both of them. Secure in that fact, he let the old arguments die and busily began drying himself.