The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (19 page)

      
His plan worked. By early 1874 army contractors and overland stage companies had placed a thousand-dollar reward on the head of a raider known from the Platte to the Arkansas as the White Wolf, but no one could catch him. Nor did anyone understand how he knew which stagecoaches, supply trains or army details carried guns or gold.

      
In the spring of the year, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer received his marching orders to invade the sacred Black Hills, searching for the gold so many miners had sworn lay waiting in chunks in the rivers and streams. The Northern Cheyenne and their Sioux and Arapaho allies girded themselves for the war everyone knew was coming.

      
A few men on both sides still hoped for peace. William B. Allison from the office of Indian affairs wanted to negotiate an amicable cession of mineral rights to the hills and Red Cloud of the Sioux came to listen, but their cause was hopeless against the overwhelming forces of public opinion across the nation. The common sentiment was that it would be easier to raise a turkey from a snake egg than to raise a papoose to be a good citizen. There was rich agricultural land and a fortune in minerals just waiting to be taken by the God-fearing pioneers and miners who looked to the army for protection.

      
And the army, under Phil Sheridan, was eager to oblige. The general handpicked his favorite young officer, Custer, to open what would become known as the ‘Thieves Road” into the Black Hills. The final showdown grew increasingly inevitable as the days of 1874 spun on.

* * * *

      
But for Stephanie Summerfield Phillips a “showdown” had already been lost. Josiah was dead. Stephanie had never really known her father, certainly never felt the kinship of love that an only child should feel for a sole parent. Her grief was not because of his death, but rather for his life, a life of isolation and indifference, even impatience dealing with a frightened child who had turned to him at her mother’s death. Josiah had not responded. During her lifetime Paulina had. Paulina she could mourn. For Josiah, Stephanie felt only profound regret.

      
Coupled to that regret now was a stunning sense of shock. Before the will had been read, Stephanie knew the vast extent of her father's worth, millions, in mercantile houses, banking and shipping industries. What she had never guessed, even imagined, was that Josiah would leave it all to Hugh.

      
Not a cent to his only child.

      
Shortly after her marriage, the will had apparently been rewritten, naming Hugh as heir. If she produced no male offspring by the union, Josiah's fortune would revert upon her own and Hugh's death to his brother, Frazier. Stephanie had always detested her husband’s cold patrician family, most especially Frazier Phillips, the elder son who, like Josiah, was a merchant. Unlike her father, however, Frazier had already produced three sons.

      
I never mattered in the slightest to my own father
. When he had seen her at all, it had been only as the potential means of guaranteeing male heirs to run his empire. She, Stephanie Summerfield, meant nothing...nothing at all.

      
How pleased Hugh would be. Of course it would probably motivate him to return to her bed in hopes of impregnating her. She shuddered in revulsion, thinking of the stale smell of whiskey and cheap perfume from his whores. Tears clogged her throat as she paced across the sitting room floor. A thin shaft of early spring sunlight filtered in the window. Boston in April was every bit as bleak and chilly as she remembered it.

      
Drawing her cashmere shawl more tightly across her shoulders, she took a seat on the Voltaire chair. Every man who had been important to her had betrayed her—her father, her husband...Chase. In spite of this most recent sting of rejection from Josiah, she knew in her heart of hearts that Chase Remington’s desertion would always cause her the most pain. Not a night since he left Boston and she moved on with her life had she failed to dream of him.

      
Perhaps she did share the blame with Hugh for the failure of their marriage.
Did I marry Hugh so that he would take me west...to Chase?
She flinched at the harsh unvarnished truth, admitting to herself that unconsciously she had done just that. “Whether I was aware of it or not doesn't matter. I must go back to Hugh for there's nowhere else to turn,” she murmured to herself bitterly.

      
Not that she had not considered all manner of desperate alternatives, from bargaining with him for a modest settlement from the Summerfield estate in return for a divorce to simply leaving him and applying somewhere for a position as a governess in order to support herself. But her own common sense had quickly prevailed. Hugh would never countenance the scandal of a divorce any sooner than he would give up the hope of bestowing the Summerfield wealth on his own heirs. And no one would ever hire a governess who had left her husband. Indeed, no one would hire such a person to scrub pots, for that matter! She would have to return to Hugh.

      
Perhaps she might yet conceive. A child might fill the void in her heart, someone small and trusting, someone who might love her just a tiny bit in return. Upon that slender hope, Stephanie resolved to make the long arduous journey to Bismarck as soon as the snows allowed passage by cars from Chicago into Dakota Territory.

* * * *

      
Hugh lounged against the crude clapboard shack that passed for a railway station in Bismarck, waiting impatiently for the afternoon train carrying his wife. Stephanie was rejoining him, considerably chastened, he imagined with a cool smirk. He had been stunned and utterly delighted when the documents from old Josiah Summerfield’s attorneys had arrived. How bereft his poor little wife must have been to learn that her husband, not she, was heir to the family fortune. How relieved he had been!

      
After their hostile parting a month earlier, he had feared that she might decide to ensconce herself in Josiah's Boston mansion and prosecute a divorce, using her newfound wealth to finance such long, drawn-out and expensive proceedings. He would have been utterly ruined both socially and financially if she had done it, and he had little doubt that she would have. Stephanie had always been headstrong and heedless of social censure in spite of her deep-seated insecurities.

      
Hugh smiled to himself, remembering their first meeting. He had handled her well then, playing on her shock and hurt at being snubbed—not that she did not deserve it. On their wedding night he had frankly been amazed that she proved a virgin. But he had planned to wed her, maidenhead or no.

      
The Phillips, family had been long on noble lineage and short on cash for several generations. All his life he had burned to succeed where the other men in his family had failed. Fools, all of them, giving themselves to losing causes, joining the Confederacy and wasting what precious little remained of their resources. But he knew his best path, the one chosen by destiny for him, lay with the Union Army. He was born to be a soldier, had dreamed of nothing else since he was a boy, filled with tales of illustrious Phillips ancestors who had distinguished themselves in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Mexican War.

      
To succeed in the army, however, required more than courage, dedication and fierce ambition. Climbing the ladder of rank was as much a social as a military process and the former required money. That was why he married Stephanie. He heard the faint echo of a whistle. “My beloved will be here soon.” He chuckled sardonically.

      
Best if he handled her with tact at this point. She might still prove troublesome and cause him some embarrassment. Gossip on any officers' row was worse than that in the highest social circles of Boston or Baltimore. To date Stephanie had gained a reputation as something of an angel of mercy, tending sick soldiers in the infirmary and even civilians in Bismarck since he had been forced to leave her here while construction of Fort Lincoln was completed.

      
She had such strong maternal instincts, he thought with a smile. Best if he got her breeding. Babies would occupy her leisure time when he didn't require her services as hostess. Also, he reminded himself grimly, providing a direct heir would keep the Summerfield fortune from passing to Frazier's sniveling brats.

      
“Yes, my dear, I do believe we shall begin a new phase in our relationship,” he murmured, stroking his chin as he watched the train rumble and hiss to a stop in front of the station.

      
Stephanie climbed down from the car, tired and sooty, looking as wilted by defeat as she felt. But she had washed her face and freshened her heavy hair into a sleek chignon beneath a fashionable bonnet at the last stop. Even if propriety demanded she wear black for months yet, she must still look the part of an officer's lady. Hugh approached, smiling broadly at her. There was more than a hint of smug satisfaction in his expression.

      
“My dear, I've missed you,” he said, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek and taking her arm proprietarily. “I assume the journey was not too arduous.”

      
When he looked down at her, she gasped softly in surprise, reaching up to touch the wide white scar across his cheek. ‘‘You've been hurt.”
Probably in a bar brawl or cut by one of your whores.

      
His expression darkened and the naked fury in his eyes turned his face from the boyish handsomeness of a moment earlier to a cold, frightening mask. “A half-breed renegade shot me while we were out on campaign, but I will effect retribution,” he replied stiffly.

      
“I'm sorry, Hugh,” she said, feeling guilty for her earlier uncharitable thoughts.

      
He stroked the scar unconsciously as they walked to the elegant George IV phaeton he had purchased upon receiving word of the inheritance. With a flourish, he lifted her into it. ‘‘For you, my dear. A present to celebrate your safe return. I know how you love to go visiting the other officers' wives. This gives you the means to do it in style.”

      
“It's...it's quite beautiful, Hugh.”
Purchased with my money,
she thought sadly, reminding herself that it was no longer hers but his now. “Do you think it will be practical in the mud at Fort Lincoln?”

      
Hugh shrugged as he slapped the reins and the phaeton took off. “It will serve well enough now here in Bismarck. After that we'll have it stored until we return to a larger post—when I'm promoted.” He paused, waiting for her reaction, then went on. “Oh, my last letter didn't have time to reach you, did it? We aren't going to Lincoln. I've applied for a transfer to Wyoming Territory on the Union Pacific rail line, to Fort Fred Steele.”

      
“But the general and Mrs. Custer are here,” Stephanie said, bewildered by the sudden turnabout.

      
Hugh had not written to her at all regarding the change. It pleased him to throw her off balance. “I believe it in the best interest of my career to part company with Autie. He's incurred the disfavor of President Grant over some scandals in Washington. Even Sheridan hasn't been able to rescue him. Anyway,” he added dismissively, “I have a special reason for requesting this posting to Steele. That's where the action is, where a man can earn his captain's bars. You've heard the rumors about the Indian raids to the south, on payroll details, stagecoaches carrying gold, even munitions trains—”

      
“That renegade called White Wolf—a Sioux, isn't he? Or at least so the Eastern papers say.” She nodded, feeling for some inexplicable reason a sense of disquietude steal over her.

      
“He could be Sioux, no one's certain, any more than they can figure out how an ignorant savage always seems to pick targets that are not only vulnerable but carrying weapons or money. The reward on him's just been raised to five thousand dollars.”

      
“And you intend to be the one to capture him,” she said in understanding.

      
“No, I plan to flush him out and kill him and his whole cutthroat band.”

      
When they reached the hotel he turned the team over to a stable boy waiting at the porch, then assisted her down. “I expect it'll take you a while to unpack, once the striker brings your trunks from the depot. Let's plan on a late supper, here in our suite.”

      
The husky intimacy of his voice took her by surprise. “Hugh...” She moistened her lips nervously as they smiled greetings at another first lieutenant's wife and passed through the small lobby headed upstairs.

      
Once they were inside the parlor, he closed the door and drew her into his arms. She came woodenly, pressing her hands against the stiff wool and cold brass buttons of his uniform jacket.

      
“So chilly, Stephanie. I'd hoped so long an absence might warm your blood a bit.”

      
“You haven't complained of a cold bed for some time, Hugh. You've always found some woman more than willing to warm it.”

      
“Ah, but those women aren't my wife. They can't provide me with children. You do want children, don't you, my dear?”

      
A suffocating panic squeezed the breath from her. “Yes, I do, but you don't. You want heirs for the Summerfield estate, Hugh.”

      
He did not deny it.

      
“What do you want, eh, wife? Did you ever stop to think it was your coldness that drove me from your bed? All you've ever done was lie rigid as a stick, enduring your duty.”

      
The accusation stung for she did hate his touch and had indeed forced herself to endure rather than welcome it. “A lady isn't supposed to know how to...how to...” She stumbled over the words in a misery of shame and guilt.
With Chase you responded—you knew what to do!