Wolf Runner (5 page)

What could she do to make sure he didn’t get his hands on Cheyenne? she wondered in desperation.

Ivy felt that Cheyenne was like a fly caught in a spiderweb, and Nigel was just waiting to pounce.

Time was against Ivy. She laid her hand on Cheyenne’s dark head. “Promise me you will not have anything to do with that man. Promise me,” she urged.

“But if we had money—”

Interrupting Cheyenne, Ivy frowned and shook her head. “I don’t want his kind of money and neither do you. The truth is, he brings women who are no better than they should be into the hotel and puts them up right in front of his wife and children. He is not to be trusted.”

Cheyenne’s face whitened and she put a new interpretation on Mr. Sullivan’s offer to hire her. Remembering the way he’d looked at her made her shiver with dread. “I promise,” she agreed, knowing Gram was not the kind of woman who would spread gossip about anyone unless it was true. “I will not go near him.”

With her mind in a quandary, Cheyenne stood. “I’ll put the soup on now. You need to eat.”

“Child, you do not have to pander to my every need. Get out in the sunshine. Visit Maria.”

“Gram, you took care of me all the years I was a child.” She pressed her cheek to the old woman. “Now it’s time I took care of you.”

When Cheyenne left the room, Ivy hung her head. There was trouble coming for that dear girl and she had to do something to forestall it.

But what?

Later in the afternoon, after Cheyenne had finished her chores, she found her grandmother still sitting in her rocking chair, her head bent over her knitting, her gnarled fingers struggling to loop the yarn.

“I promised Maria I would help hem her gown today. You should see it, Gram! It is pink, with white lace on the bodice. She will be the best-dressed girl at the dance tomorrow night, and the prettiest.”

Ivy felt a stabbing pain in her chest and gripped the arms of her chair, hoping Cheyenne did not notice. When she could speak, she asked, “Are you never disappointed, child, that you aren’t invited to the young people’s gatherings?”

Cheyenne lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t know how to dance, so if I went I would just have to stand around watching everyone else have fun.”

There was self-recrimination in Ivy’s voice when she said, “I should have taught you how to dance. I should have done a lot of things.”

“I learned long ago that people here will not accept me. Don’t distress yourself over it. It matters but little to me.”

Ivy reached out her hand and clasped Cheyenne’s, knowing it did matter. Even now tears gathered in her granddaughter’s eyes. “You are a lovely young woman filled with goodness. I pray for the day when
some special man will come along and see you for who you are.” Something had to be done to help Cheyenne while she was still able to do it. “Of late, I have come to understand that you came from two proud races. I wish I had made an effort to know your mother better—but that is a wrong I have to live with. She must have been wonderful for my son to love her as much as he did.”

Cheyenne could see her grandmother was upset and decided to change the subject. “Gram, Maria told me the owner of Mesa del Fuego is a half-breed like me. Remember we saw him when he rode into town? People seem to accept him for who he is. According to Maria he went to school in Washington, and even dined at the White House with the president!”

Ivy managed to smile. “It seems your friend certainly has lots of information about the young man. I’m sure he is the talk of the town.”

“Mr. Mendoza talks to everyone and he hears things that he passes on to Maria, and she tells me.”

Ivy looked pensive. “The young man would be the son of Marianna Bryant. I don’t think I ever told you she was captured by Indians when she was but a child, and married one of them. Cullen Worthington once told me she is happy with her life among the Black-foot and even has an Indian name.” Her gaze wondered out the window to the lilac bush in full bloom. “I wonder what her son could be doing here?”

“Maria said the older ranch hands call him Wolf. Did you not think him handsome?” Cheyenne did not know her eyes were sparkling with excitement, but her grandmother noticed. “At least he appeared handsome from a distance. Maria told me that he speaks English as if he had been born to it—at least that’s what Mr. Mendoza told her.”

Ivy was lost in thought for a moment; then her gaze settled on her granddaughter. “Of course I recall seeing him. Sometimes I forget things, but I didn’t forget about him.” Her hands trembled as she clutched them together. “It is a frightful thing to get old, child.”

Feeling pain in her heart Cheyenne touched her grandmother’s hands to help still them. “Gram, I will always be here to help you. Don’t be afraid.”

Ivy’s quaking hand touched Cheyenne’s cheek. “Sweet child, it is I who should have taken better care of you. But never fear, I will rectify that.”

“Gram, I don’t understand. You have been the best grandmother a girl could ask for.”

Ivy shook her head and sighed. “What else does Señor Mendoza have to say about Marianna’s son?”

“He says the young man came to Santa Fe on some business for the ranch—he didn’t know what it was. He said Wolf would not be staying long because he wanted to return to Blackfoot country.” Cheyenne sank back on the stool. “I wish I could meet him. He would know how it feels to have an Indian and a white parent.”

“I would think he does—but he has some very powerful friends if he dined at the White House and probably never experienced prejudice as you have.”

Ivy fell silent for a moment, deep in thought as a plan grew in her mind. Daring as it might be, it just might work. She wondered if Marianna had received her message. And if she had, would she act on it?

“Hadn’t you better be leaving, child,” she said, “if you want to help Maria with her gown? I have something I must do.” She tapped her finger on the arm of the chair. “Ask Señor Mendoza if he’ll come by the house tomorrow with his horse and wagon—I want
either him or one of his sons to drive me somewhere. Make sure you tell him I will pay him for his trouble.”

Cheyenne looked puzzled for a moment, wondering who her grandmother would be visiting.

“Hurry on, child,” Ivy urged. “You haven’t got all day.”

Kissing Gram’s cheek, Cheyenne rushed to the back door, then quickly returned, smiling. “I forgot my bonnet.” She grabbed up the green-and-white-checked bonnet suspended from a hook and settled it on her head, tying the ribbons beneath her chin.

Ivy smiled. “You always forget your bonnet.”

Turning at the door, Cheyenne glanced back and smiled, arching her eyebrow. “Are you concerned that my skin will be darkened by the sun?” she giggled. “Hmm?”

Ivy laughed at her granddaughter’s antics and watched her leave. Silence soon settled around her. It seemed when Cheyenne left the house she took the sunshine with her. Gripping the arms of her chair, Ivy stood on shaky legs and braced her hand against the wall. Slowly making her way to the bedroom, she opened the trunk at the foot of her bed and withdrew a small chest that held all her savings. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money to her—but would it be enough for the young half-breed called Wolf?

Sitting on the Mendozas’ brick floor with pins in her mouth, Cheyenne motioned for Maria to turn around. She held up her hand for Maria to stop and slipped a pin in the hem of the gown.

Removing the pins from her mouth, Cheyenne exclaimed, “It’s perfect for you!” The pale pink of the dress accentuated Maria’s long black hair and shining brown eyes. They had been friends since childhood—they
knew and kept each other’s deepest secrets. “You are going to have such fun.”

Maria shook her head. “I will not have as much fun as I would if you were going to be there.”

“Yes, you will. Now take off that gown so I can hem it.”

At that moment Señora Mendoza entered the room, her arms full of laundry. “Maria is right. You should go with her.”

Señora Mendoza was everything Cheyenne imagined a mother should be. She ruled her family with her kind heart. Not that she couldn’t be strict—she certainly could put the fear of God in her children when the situation called for it. Although the señora was no more than forty-six, her hair was mostly white. She was short and plump, but her voice was soft when she spoke to her children, and husband, and to Cheyenne.

“I don’t know how to dance, and Maria would not have any fun for watching me standing around without a partner.”

“I have told you over and over, I can teach you to dance,” Maria said with feeling.

Cheyenne knew she would not be welcome at the dance, but she smiled. “As I told Gram when she asked me the same thing, I have no wish to attend the dance.” She watched Señora Mendoza place the folded laundry into a trunk at the foot of Maria’s bed. “What about Francisco? Will you dance with him?”

Maria’s face brightened. “I will save all my dances for him. I believe he will soon ask me to be his wife—if he were not so shy, he would already have done so.”

Watching her friend’s glowing face, Cheyenne wondered what it would feel like to love a man the way her friend loved Francisco Manual.

“Only this morning Francisco asked your father if he could talk to him,” Maria’s mother said, pausing in the door. “What do you suppose that can be about?”

Cheyenne laughed and Maria blushed. “So he is finding his courage after all,” Cheyenne said, glancing about the tiny bedroom. Three small beds were crammed in the room, and there was hardly space to walk. Since there were six children in the Mendoza family, Cheyenne often wondered where they all slept with only two bedrooms in the small house.

After she finished hemming the gown, Cheyenne gathered her sewing basket. “I must hurry along. I have bread to bake, and I think I’ll make Gram an apple pie. I want to make something special for her to tempt her to eat.”

Señora Mendoza reentered the room with another armload of laundry, and nodded sadly. “You need not bake a pie today. I will send several of my apple tarts for the two of you.”

Cheyenne hugged the dear woman. “I’m worried about Gram.”

“I know you are. We all are,” Maria’s mother said, hugging Cheyenne back. “Come with me to the kitchen while I wrap the tarts.”

After leaving the Mendozas’ house, Cheyenne hurried home. These days it worried her to leave Gram alone for very long.

She sighed, thinking of Maria dancing in the arms of the man she loved. Cheyenne had never had a man’s attention, other than the lustful glances that were usually followed by crude comments.

What would it feel like to have a man’s arms about her?

“Nonsense,” she mumbled opening the gate and
hurrying up the rock pathway to the front door, the delicious scent of Señora Mendoza’s apple tarts tempting her.

Still, to whirl and dance in a beautiful gown in the arms of a man looking at her with love in his eyes would be a dream come true.

With Satanta keeping in step with his horse, Wolf Runner rode over the uneven ground, watching the sun strike the mountains and turning them the color of glittering gold.

No matter how he tried, Wolf Runner felt no kinship with this land that was so far away from his own beloved mountains. Yet here in the shadow of the majestic Sangre de Cristos he had discovered honor among the white man in the cowhands who had loyally served the ranch for years. Across the meadow the wild sunflowers had turned their yellow petals toward the sun, and he tried to view the land as his mother’s white parents must have seen it when they settled there.

He thought back to the time he had spent in Washington—except for the company of his aunt and uncle he had found the society there false. There had been little honor in the people who had been mere social climbers and tried to win his powerful uncle’s notice.

Here, on the ranch, the cowhands worked with the sweat of their brow from sunup until sundown. Some of their dedication Wolf Runner attributed to Cullen’s management. Wolf Runner smiled. Cullen ran the ranch as if ordering troops into battle.

Homesickness crept into his soul as he felt the cool breeze on his face. High grass covered the rolling hills
where fat cattle grazed contentedly in the shadow of the mountain. In the distance he could see the ranch house with its red tile roof and earth-colored adobe walls. His white grandparents had built the home, but there was no warmth of family connected to it—not for Wolf Runner.

The opposite was true. When he was younger, he had felt that the ranch would destroy his family.

He had not liked the change that came over his mother whenever they visited the ranch. She always put aside her buckskin gown and moccasins and donned the trappings of a white woman as soon as they left the Blackfoot village. At those times, she had worn her beautiful golden hair in a bun, rather than in braids, and had answered to the name “Mari-anna” instead of her real name, Rain Song. She had made him don the white man’s clothes as well and speak only English.

At the time he had feared his mother would not return to their home in Montana. He had been too young to understand then, as he did now, she could not have gone about the country dressed as an Indian.

As Satanta circled him, Wolf Runner laid his hand on the animal’s head, thinking of the twenty-four ranch hands who depended on Mesa del Fuego for their living. Five of those hands had worked for his grandparents and were too old to get employment elsewhere. His brow furrowed—this ranch was the only home those men had.

A sudden gust of wind whipped down the gullies that cut deeply into the foothills, stirring the knee-high grass, and suddenly the land called to him. It was peaceful here when he was alone. And if he closed his eyes, the smells of rain on the high grass reminded him of Blackfoot land.

Staring into the distance, he felt an urgency to leave this place and sell the ranch because he did not want to feel attached to this land. But what if his brother or his sister one day decided to live here? Did he have the right to deprive them of that decision?

Wolf Runner had a lot of thinking to do.

Hearing someone approaching from the north, he waited for whoever it was to come into sight. When the man cleared the hill Wolf Runner saw that it was Doff.

Drawing even with Wolf Runner, the old man leaned forward in the saddle and grinned. “You got a caller up to the big house, Mr. Wolf.”

Doff wasn’t usually one to stand on ceremony, but Wolf Runner could see he was still having trouble trying to decide what to call him now that he was grown. “Who is it?”

“It’s Mrs. Ivy Gatlin, in person. Says she needs to see you pronto.”

Feeling guilty because he had not yet called on the woman his mother asked him to find out about, Wolf Runner frowned. “Did she say what she wanted?”

“No, sir, Mr. Wolf—she didn’t tell me nothin’.”

“Doff, just call me Wolf. It makes me uncomfortable when a man of your experience refers to me with such formality.”

“Well, sir, that don’t zactly seem right, you being the boss and all.”

“Doff, it is my wish.” Wolf Runner glanced in the direction of the house. “What do you know about this Ivy Gatlin?”

“She was once a friend of your grandma and grandpa. Her and her husband ran one of the first newspapers in Santa Fe. She’s mighty respected in these parts, and she’s a woman who always speaks
her mind. You won’t never be in question of where you stand with her.” The old man frowned, shifting in his saddle. “She seemed like she was real sick to me. ’Course, I’m not a doc, so I can’t say for sure.”

As the man rattled on, Wolf Runner mounted his horse. “Then let us not keep her waiting.”

Ivy slumped back against the oversize chair, her hands trembling, her eyes damp. There were memories in this room—memories that had come rushing back to her the moment she had come through the door. It was as if time stood still and she was a younger woman, holding a baby in her arms. In those troubled days Ivy had been weighted down with sorrow—as a friend of the family she had come to the ranch the moment she learned the Bryants had been buried in a landslide. She had taken their infant daughter in her arms and cried for the child’s loss.

She tried to shake off sad memories, but they clung to her like a second skin.

Ivy was reaching her own mortality and had provisions to make for her granddaughter’s future.

Still, her mind took her back to the day her dear friends had died. Ivy had taken Marianna Bryant home with her and cared for her until the baby’s aunt could come for her. In the months it had taken the aunt to receive word of the tragedy and arrive in Santa Fe, Ivy had become attached to the child—more than attached. The lovely little girl had wrapped herself around Ivy’s heart. Ivy remembered rocking Marianna to sleep each night as the child cried for her mother. She had sung her songs and read her stories. After several weeks Marianna had stopped asking for her mother and father and settled easily into a life with Ivy.

Ivy saw little of the child after her aunt had arrived. For a time Marianna had remained on the ranch with her aunt Cora. After a year Cora had married an officer from a nearby fort. Her husband had eventually been assigned to Fort Benton in Missouri, and they moved away.

In a few years word had sifted down to Ivy that a Blackfoot raiding party had kidnapped Marianna, and Ivy had feared for the child—prayed for her nightly.

Again she tried to free her mind of ghosts of the past. She glanced at the bookshelves, then reached out to run her hand over the heavy pine furniture that smelled of lemon oil. This was a house for a family to live in, but they were all gone now. All except the son who had returned.

Yes, there were memories in this room.

Lately the whole world had turned sad.

Folding her hands in her lap, Ivy lowered her head because it took too much effort to hold it upright. She did not hear the man who silently entered the room until he spoke to her.

“I am told you wanted to see me, Mrs. Gatlin.”

Slowly she raised her head and stared at Marianna’s son. He was dressed in what any ranch hand would wear: rough-out chaps, boots, and a blue shirt, rolled up to the elbow. Ivy looked for any sign of Marianna in his face. He was a half-breed all right, and a handsome one at that. His hair was tied back with a rawhide strip, and his eyes—she could not discern their real color from the distance and of course her eyesight wasn’t much good anymore.

But those eyes were studying her intently.

Nodding, she settled back in the soft chair. “I am Ivy Gatlin—I’m sorry I don’t know your name. I
should have asked the housekeeper when she showed me to this room.”

He settled on a chair near hers, an amused smile curving his lips. “Here it seems to suit everyone to call me Wolf.”

“That must be part of your Blackfoot name. What’s your whole name?”

He quickly drew the conclusion that the elderly Mrs. Gatlin was astute, and sharp witted. And she certainly was not a woman to waste words on pleasantries. He shrugged. “Not everyone is as observant as you, Mrs. Gatlin. My name is Wolf Runner.”

Ivy nodded. “You are lucky to be accepted for who you are since you are a breed.”

She watched those eyes narrow and she knew she had made him angry.

“And you don’t like to be called that,” she said quietly, watching his reaction. “But you mistake me. I meant no disrespect. I was just making comparisons and reminding myself what wealth can buy.” She waved a frail, blue-veined hand in his direction. “I’ll get to that later.”

Baffled, Wolf Runner waited for her to continue.

“I was a friend of your grandparents. I knew your mother as a baby. I was at your aunt’s wedding when she married your uncle—I guess if I was to be accurate I’d have to say they are your great-aunt and great-uncle.” She blinked and refocused her eyes. “How are they faring?”

“Very well. When Uncle Matt retired, they remained in Washington.”

“They were a lovely couple.”

“Yes. They still are. But that is not the reason you wanted to see me. What can I do for you, Mrs. Gatlin?”