Daisies In The Wind (31 page)

When she brought the chicken and carrots over
just before supper one night, she was surprised to find Abigail
Pritchard and Coral Mae Taggett working side by side in Caitlin’s
kitchen. Coral was removing a batch of cinnamon rolls from the oven
as Abigail tossed onions and turnips into a frying pan sizzling
with butter.

Neither woman appeared to be speaking much to
the other, but they both forced tense smiles when Rebeccah came in.
She soon learned that since the schoolhouse dance they’d been
trying to become better acquainted.

“I reckon if Waylon’s so set on her, there
must be something to recommend her,” Abigail muttered after
summoning Rebeccah to a private conference in the parlor. “She’s
corning to supper tomorrow night, and then we’ll see. But I can’t
help wishing Waylon had picked someone more like you, Miss
Rawlings. Or like Nel Westerly. She’s a sensible, respectable young
woman, and her father’s property adjoins ours. Why, a union between
those two would be downright convenient. Still,” she added
regretfully, “I’ve a hunch Nel’s already spoken for —or will be
soon.” She smiled confidentially at Rebeccah. “Rumor has it that
Wolf proposed to her the day after Caitlin’s funeral, and she
accepted, but they don’t want to announce it until a decent
mourning period has passed.”

Before Rebeccah could react to this startling
pronouncement, Coral Mae Taggett, who’d obviously been
eavesdropping, stuck her head out the kitchen doorway. “Don’t
believe everything you hear, Mrs. Pritchard!” she informed Abigail
tartly. “Molly Duke has been seeing a lot of Wolf lately, and she
told Hank Boswell, who in turn told me, that Wolf is planning to
propose to Lorelie Simpson within the week.”

Coral noticed Rebeccah’s sudden pallor. “Miss
Rawlings, what in heaven’s name is the matter with you?” she cried
in alarm, and then let out a muffled oath as she recalled the way
the very drunk Miss Rawlings had looked at Wolf Bodine the night of
the schoolhouse dance.

“N-nothing. I’d better be going,” Rebeccah
said faintly, trying not to think about Wolf with either Molly
Duke, Lorelie Simpson, or Nel Westerly. She made her excuses and
fled the Double B as quickly as she could.

Yet she lingered for several moments in the
buckboard before starting the team toward home, pretending to
settle her cloak more comfortably around her while she struggled to
contain her inner turmoil.

Could those rumors be true—any of them? Most
likely not, she reasoned, trying to stop her hands from trembling
as she picked up the reins. Rebeccah had already learned that towns
like Powder Creek thrived on gossip, much of it untrue. But she
would have dearly loved to see Wolf Bodine come riding up at that
moment so that she could ask him straight out if they were true. It
would be embarrassing—no,
humiliating
—to show such
interest in his affairs, but Rebeccah would rather at that moment
have known humiliation than the frantic uncertainty churning inside
of her after hearing what Abigail and Coral had to say.

But the trail from town was deserted, and
there was no sign of Wolf returning home, so she clucked to the
horses and went on her way, telling herself that Wolf could not be
planning marriage to either of those women because Caitlin had said
he cared for
her
.

And hadn’t he confided in her about Clarissa,
admitting that no one else in Powder Creek knew the truth? That
counted for something—it must. It showed trust, didn’t it? And the
way that he kissed her ...

A strangled sob rose in her throat. Did he
kiss
them
with the same hungry, urgent intensity? Did he
hold them in his arms and make them feel that what they thought and
felt mattered to him deeply and that he’d rather be there kissing
them and touching them than be anywhere else?

She spent a sleepless night, listening to the
coyotes howl in the windswept darkness, pacing the cabin, trying to
lose herself to no avail in the poetry of Byron, but the knots in
her stomach seemed to be closing off her lungs, making it difficult
to breathe. At last, just as a delicate peach-colored dawn was
painting the sky, she wrapped herself in the eiderdown quilt, flung
herself onto her front porch, and gulped in great deep breaths of
crystal-sharp air. Gazing out at the jade glitter of the distant
lakes tucked in the steep ridges of the mountains and scanning the
high, magnificently forested horizon in every direction, she
wondered if she would not have been better off remaining in Boston,
in that cold, stifling life she had known before she’d come to
Powder Creek. She may not have been happy there, but now the grief
and heartbreak and love and despair that enveloped her seemed too
much to bear. Gazing out at the vast, breathtaking beauty of
mountains, forests, lakes, and prairies, of soaring eagles above
the firs and the solitary elk she spied on a distant butte, she
felt tiny, insignificant, and powerless. She had come to Montana
for peace and solitude, and instead she had found bursting,
confusing Life: rambunctious children, kind friends, lonely danger,
death, isolation, a sense of community, hope, desire, love—and
uncertainty.

Life.

Later that day, still in a troubled mood,
Rebeccah felt a flicker of irritation when Chance Navarro arrived
at the schoolhouse just as the last of the children trudged off for
home.

“Something’s wrong,” he said at once,
following her back toward her desk at the front of the classroom.
“It’s Mrs. Bodine’s death, isn’t it, honey? You’re missing
her?”

“I didn’t think it showed.” She wasn’t about
to tell Chance the other reasons for her low spirits. “I’ve been
trying to put on a cheerful front for the children, especially
Billy. I know how hard it is to lose someone so important to you.
He must feel as if he’ll never recover from the pain.” She picked
up the apple Evan Kramer had brought her that morning and studied
its glowing red skin.

“You know, Chance, when my father died, I
felt as if I’d lost the only person who had ever cared about me,
the only person who ever
would
care about me. He was all I
had, all I had ever had. I loved him so very much that for a long
time after he died, the pain was like a great weight pressing on
me, crushing me.”

“You’ve never mentioned your father to me
before, Rebeccah.”

Startled, her eyes flew to his face. “Haven’t
I? Well, I don’t usually talk about him, I suppose. You ... know
about him, I’m sure. Everybody does.”

“That he was Bear Rawlings, the famous
outlaw? I sure do, honey. But I’m the last one in the world who
would ever hold that against you.” Chance covered her hand with
his. “You see, my daddy was an outlaw too.”

She let the apple slip from her angers and
thud onto the desk, her eyes mirroring her astonishment. “Who ...
was he?”

“Oh, no one as famous as Bear Rawlings, but
he had a bad reputation throughout Missouri. Why do you think I
changed my name? Rebeccah,” Chance said softly, “I told you all
along that we have a lot in common.”

“Yes, but I never realized ... Chance, it’s
strange isn’t it? To love someone so much and yet the person you
love is someone others despise? To know that they’ve done wrong and
yet ...”

Seeing her distress, he clasped her hand and
held it firmly. “I know, honey. My daddy was a good man—at least to
me. My ma brought me up, and we didn’t see much of him, but he sent
money regularly, and Ma was so grateful, she didn’t even bother to
ask where it came from. I guess she figured we were better off not
knowing.”

Rebeccah nodded. Bear’s exploits had kept her
in elegant gowns, jewels, and fripperies, and enrolled at Miss
Wright’s Academy for years. She didn’t like to think about
that.

“Did your father leave you pretty well taken
care of?” Chance asked, studying the slender hand cradled in his.
“I reckon he must have, with all the bank jobs he got away with.
I’ll wager you just haven’t had time yet to build up your ranch,
but surely come spring you’ll be buying yourself a whole big herd
of cattle and cashing in on the beef market in the East.”

“I don’t know what will happen come spring.”
Rebeccah shrugged. She slid her hand free of his and straightened a
pile of papers on her desk. “I donated the stock holdings and money
Bear left me to some far worthier causes and only kept the ranch
because he won it honestly—but as you can see, it’s not much. I
plan to buy some cattle, a little at a time, and to build a corral
and try to make a go of ranching—but it’ll take time. Right now I’m
trying to save up enough money to start with a small herd of
longhorns and a part-time ranch hand to do the branding.”

Chance fingered the brim of his derby, his
green eyes jewel-bright against his leather-brown skin.

“Donated the stock holdings? And the money?
You’re downright noble, honey.”

Rebeccah retrieved her dark blue cloak from
its peg by the door. “Noble, my foot. I accepted Bear’s ill-gotten
gains for years and enjoyed the luxuries they bought me. But at
some point while I was at school, I started thinking about the
suffering that was caused by his stealing that money, about the
innocent people who might have needed it, needed it far more than
Bear or I did, and then ... well, I couldn’t benefit from it
anymore.”

“You’ve got an honest soul, honey.” Chance
sounded almost amused. “What about the rest of what Bear left
you?”

“The rest? That was all—except for a few
jewels and keepsakes, and I’m going to try to hang on to those ...
for sentimental reasons. It might not be exactly right, but
...”

“There must have been more—he acquired a lot
of loot in his life, from what I heard....”

Rebeccah stared at him, and abruptly Chance
broke off. Color flooded his cheeks. “Sorry, Rebeccah. It’s sure
none of my business. But this is the first time you’ve opened up to
me about your pa, and since we have so much in common, I thought
... well, I’m curious, you see. I thought for sure he’d have left
you rolling in gold, or silver....”

“You thought wrong,” Rebeccah said. But she
was staring at him, really staring at him, and a faint prickle of
uneasiness slid down her spine. She suddenly became aware of how
isolated she was here in the schoolhouse with Chance Navarro.
Strange, she had never been uneasy being alone with him before, but
suddenly all of his questions disturbed her. The eager glow in his
eyes disturbed her. She must be loco, she told herself,
unconsciously squaring her shoulders as she turned away toward the
schoolhouse door. What she was thinking was ridiculous. Just
because Chance had asked her a lot of questions ...

“I have to go now,” she said, forcing a
smile. “The Moseleys have invited me to supper with them, and I
promised to tutor Cara Sue in her mathematical tables, so I mustn’t
be late.”

“I’ll ride over with you,” Chance offered,
following her out of the schoolhouse into the chill, clear air, but
Rebeccah shook her head and kept the smile pasted on her face.

“There’s no need. It’s not far. Good
day!”

She’d been rude, she realized as she
clambered into her buckboard before he could assist her, and then
wondered with a stab of conscience, as she saw the chagrin tighten
his face, if she had been wrong. Maybe Chance was not unduly
interested in Bear and his ill-gotten gains, and in her own
acquisition of them, but she couldn’t shake the suspicion that
there was something besides innocent curiosity underlying all of
his questions. She felt unaccountably relieved when he mounted his
horse without pressing her further, and simply lifted a hand in
parting.

In light of his odd behavior this afternoon
she needed time to think. To be alone and to think. She waited
until Chance had ridden off toward Powder Creek and then she turned
the team east toward the Moseley ranch, her mind full of unwelcome
suspicion.

She didn’t see the cluster of riders watching
her from the butte behind the schoolhouse.

And she didn’t see them disappear one by one
over the bluff as she headed alone along the deserted trail.

“Heard something today. Thought it might
interest you,” Molly Duke murmured over the rim of her whiskey
glass. She was stretched languorously across the crimson velvet
coverlet of her bed, hoping Wolf would be so overcome by the sight
of her voluptuous breasts peeping naughtily out of her purple satin
dressing gown that he would swoop down and take her there and then.
But Wolf, damn it, seemed perfectly comfortable right where he was,
leaning back against the cushions of the overstuffed velvet chair,
his big boots planted firmly on the floor.

So Molly sighed and continued, running a
finger absently around the rim of her glass. “It’s about the
Rawlings gang.”

Immediately she had his attention. His eyes
razored in on her, and she saw his shoulders tense. “What about
them?”

“Fellow came in a while ago and got to
talking to Pokey at the bar. Mentioned a name—the same name you
asked me about not too long ago—Russ Gaglin. Wasn’t that one of the
hombres you wanted me to watch out for?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“Seems this fellow talking to Pokey met a man
by that very name over in Jefferson City a day or two ago. They got
to playing cards, and the fellow asked him how far it was to Powder
Creek. The reason he mentioned it was because this Gaglin hombre
later sneaked out of the saloon without paying up his debts, so
this man came to Powder Creek looking for him—said Gaglin owed him
fifty dollars. What do you think of that?”

“I think Gaglin’s mighty stupid or mighty
cocky to be using his own name like that,” Wolf replied, getting to
his feet. “But it’s sure a break for me.” He regarded her a moment,
breathing in the heavy, cloying but sensuous smell of her perfume
as, with her dressing gown open, she lounged across the bed. He
bent and kissed Molly’s fragrant cheek. “Thanks for the tip. Let me
know if you get wind of Gaglin or if you happen to hear anything
about Homer Bell or Fred Baker from that Rawlings
outfit—pronto.”