Dorothy Garlock

“Logan . . . I love you.
You know that, don’t you?”

He let his hard-held breath escape. “Yes,” he whispered.

“I know you’re afraid to love me. But I’m not afraid.”

“Oh, God, Rosalee, I’m not afraid for myself, but for you!”

“Don’t be afraid for me. I’m a grown woman. I know what I want. I want you, Logan. I’m shameless for saying so, but I want to be with you, stay with you.”

“I’d marry you in a minute if I thought there was any chance it might not ruin you . . . any thread of hope we’d be able to live in peace. In the end it would destroy you!” His voice shook as a flood of despair knocked at his heart.

“I’m not convinced of that. I’ve waited for you all my life. If you love me, even half as much as I love you, you’ll not turn me away. I’m asking you to take me in all the ways a man takes the woman he loves,” she whispered . . .

“Five stars! Dorothy Garlock is to historical romantic fiction what Elizabeth Barrett Browning is to the love sonnet!”

—
Affaire de Coeur
on
Restless Wind

Books by Dorothy Garlock

A
lmost
E
den

A
nnie
L
ash

D
ream
R
iver

F
orever
V
ictoria

A G
entle
G
iving

G
lorious
D
awn

H
omeplace

L
onesome
R
iver

L
ove and
C
herish

L
arkspur

M
idnight
B
lue

N
ightrose

R
estless
W
ind

R
ibbon in the
S
ky

R
iver of
T
omorrow

T
he
S
earching
H
earts

S
ins of
S
ummer

S
weetwater

T
enderness

T
he
L
istening
S
ky

T
his
L
oving
L
and

W
ayward
W
ind

W
ild
S
weet
W
ilderness

W
ind of
P
romise

W
ith
H
ope

Y
esteryear

Published by

WARNER BOOKS

For my sisters,

Mary Bruza,

because she faces what

comes and never looks back

and

Betty O’Haver,

for all that she is, and

for all she means to me

The town of Junction City is a fictitious name for Loveland, Colorado, a beautiful city just east of the Rocky Mountains, as I imagined it would be had it existed at the time of this story.

All the persons in this book are fictitious with the exception of historical figures such as Colonel J.M. Chivington, a former Methodist minister. As commander of the Military District of Colorado he was responsible for the deaths of five hundred Indians, mostly women, children and old people in a deed known as the Sand Creek Massacre. However, the people in my story could have lived in the Colorado Territory in the late 1860’s where the Indians, a people considered less than human by some of the whites, and who were dispensable because they were an obstruction in a stream of insatiable dreamers, lost their world, and are no more!

Dorothy Garlock
          

The sound of rain dripping on the dirt floor woke Rosalee from a sound sleep. The roof had sprung a leak! She sat up on the edge of the bed and slipped her feet into her shoes. It was so dark she could not see the lamp or the matches, and groped around, hands outstretched. She found the match and drew the head along under the table top, held the flame to the wick, and turned it low before replacing the glass chimney. When she finally located the leak, she set a bucket under the drip.

A low moaning wind swept around the corners and under the cabin eaves. The drops of rain fell slowly and heavily, beating against the tin roof and splattering against the window. The night was so black she could see nothing but her own reflection in the small pane of glass. Not even a flash of lightning broke the darkness.

She wrapped her arms around herself as a chill crept over her skin. How gloomy and still this stone cabin was! She looked at the yellowstone chimney and fireplace and was tempted to build a fire. The clock on the mantel told her it was several hours until dawn, yet she was reluctant to blow out the lamp and return to the double bunk where her younger sister slept. She glanced at the ladder leading to the loft where her brother had his bed.

“Poor Ben. Only fourteen and so much responsibility.”

Ben had come in after dark tired and wet. All he had to show for his day’s work was a tough, wild steer he had rousted out of the brush. Tomorrow she would help him mark it with their Rolling S brand and add it to their small herd. With any luck they would gather enough unbranded stock to buy supplies for another year—if they could get them to the rail head.

Drip, drip, drip. Rosalee eyed the bucket, grateful the leak was not in the roof above where Ben slept. She was wide awake now. She held up her gown and went across the hard-packed earthen floor to listen at the hide covered door leading to the lean-to. Her father was snoring peaceably. She glanced down at Charlie, the big, brown, mongrel dog that lay with his rear against the outside door, his heavy jowls on his paws and his eyes on her.

The cabin was built of native stone taken from the bluffs behind the house. It consisted of one large room and a lean-to that served as her father’s room. It had a peaked roof, with a loft at one end of it. There was a large fireplace, a square table, a double bunk attached to the wall, two chairs and two benches. Shelves along the walls above the sheet-iron cookstove held the cookware, and pegs for the clothing lined the opposite wall. Three years on a dirt floor! How her mother would have hated it! They had always been poor, but until now they’d had a house with a wooden floor.

Rosalee flung the long, thick braid of light brown, sun-streaked hair back over her shoulder. There would be no money this year to buy planks for flooring. Every dollar would be needed for food and for shells to hunt meat for the table and, if necessary, to protect this little spot they called home.

Her father had been a dreamer, a drifter. A thousand acres of preempted government land and this cabin were all he had to show for a lifetime of work. He had worked hard—when he worked. He was a man skilled at both the carpenter’s and mason’s trade, but he never stayed in one place long enough to build anything permanent for himself. Now he was as dependent on Rosalee and Ben as was their ten-year-old sister, Odell.

Rosalee stood beside the table and thought about when they had first come to the Colorado Territory three years ago. The land had lain empty, lonely and still. The last town had been twenty miles behind them. In all that distance they had not seen another ranch or a line shack or a fence . . . not even a horse or a cow. She had not been able to suppress her disappointment.