Читать книгу Call Of The White Wolf - Carol Finch - Страница 11

During the days that followed, John’s energy returned gradually. He received periodic visits from the brood of children. They came alone. They came in pairs. They came in a group. But Tara never once approached him without a chaperone of one or two children following at her heels. He reckoned the impulsive kiss he’d planted on her dewy, soft lips was responsible for her standoffish manner.

Not that he blamed her. He’d been more than a little surprised by it himself, especially after he’d sworn up one side and down the other that there could be nothing more than friendship between them. He supposed the agonizing pain of the ordeal had triggered the impulse, making natural instinct difficult to control.

He should apologize, but the truth was that he wasn’t sorry he’d kissed her. She was the one taste of purity and sweetness in his violent and isolated world. He wouldn’t let it happen again, of course. His Irish angel of mercy was now, and forever more, off-limits.

“You want some bread and wild grape jelly, Zohn Whoof?” young Flora asked as she sank down cross-legged beside him on the pallet.

John smiled at the cute little tyke who had already wedged her way into his heart. He couldn’t help himself. The kid was warm and giving and altogether adorable, especially when she invented her own unique way of pronouncing his name.

“Bread and jelly sounds mighty good, half-pint.”

Flora slathered jelly on a slice of bread, then handed it to him. “I help Tara make the jelly. We have jars and jars of it stored in the root cellar.”

John sighed contentedly at the first bite. Someone around here really could cook, and he presumed it was Tara. Of course, as far as he could tell, there wasn’t much that she couldn’t do well. He’d watched her come and go from dawn until dusk without a single complaint. She always had a smile and kind word for the children. Her organizational skills, he’d noted, were a marvel, and she made time for each child’s individual needs.

This unique family fascinated him, even though the life they led was utterly foreign to him. It’d been years since John had felt family ties, felt as if he belonged anywhere. Not that he belonged here, of course. But this family didn’t treat him as an outsider, the way most folks did when he ventured into one town, then another. Usually, people didn’t engage him in conversation or venture too close. He figured most folks considered a man who was part lawman, gunfighter and bounty hunter unworthy of respect because he dealt with evil, violence and death on a regular basis.

John had pried bits and pieces of information from the younger children to appease his curiosity about Tara, though he told himself repeatedly that his fascination with her was ill-advised and impractical. He’d discovered that Tara was a passable markswoman who could put wild game on the table to feed her brood. That she harvested and processed vegetables from the garden, and had somehow managed to acquire the livestock that grazed in the canyon. He was incredibly curious to know how these acquisitions were made on her limited budget.

There were, however, two other things about Tara that he didn’t know and was dying to find out—where had she acquired her unique family and where had she been sleeping since John crawled onto the pallet so she could sleep on her bed. She wasn’t using the bed, he’d discovered. He figured he’d ferret the information from the loquacious five-year-old who was feeding him bread and jelly. If there was one thing he’d learned about Flora it was that she loved to talk, and most of the thoughts bouncing around in her head made their way to her tongue.

“Do you have another bedroom in the cabin where you and the other children sleep?” he asked nonchalantly.

Flora sampled a piece of bread, then nodded. “Maureen and I sleep in the other bedroom and the boys sleep in the loft above us.”

“Tara has been sleeping with you, too?”

She shook her dark head. “Nope, she moved into the barn loft.”

The barn loft? John cursed under his breath. That woman was making all sorts of sacrifices for him and the children. He was the one who should be sleeping in the straw. He’d slept in the great out-of-doors for years and was accustomed to it. On rare occasions, while on his forays to track down criminals, he rented a hotel room.

“Tell Tara that I’ll be trading places with her,” John requested.

“Can’t do that,” Flora replied as she wiped her mouth, smearing jelly on her chin. “Tara says she wants you somewhere that’s clean and dry so you can mend properly. She also says the boys are gonna take you to the spring to bathe tomorrow. She says the mineral spring we found near one of the rock ledges will be good for you.”

“Hmm, Tara sure has lots to say, doesn’t she?”

“Certainly does,” Flora agreed. “But most of all, and she says this is very, very, very important, we’re a family and we’ll be together forever. She says no one will break our family apart ’cause we belong to each other.”

John wondered why that was the first commandment in the gospel according to Tara. Who wanted to break up this unusual family? And why did Tara instill that sense of unity and belonging in these children? It sounded a mite overprotective to him, but what the hell did he know? He hadn’t been a part of a clan for over five years.

“Where did you meet Tara, half-pint?” he asked.

Suspicion filled those wide, soulful eyes. “Tara says we’re not supposed to say anything to anybody about where we came from or how we got here. It’s a secret.”

Interesting, he mused. Maybe Tara had something to hide. If she thought he’d sit in judgment she was mistaken, because John Wolfe wasn’t who folks thought he was, either. After all, he’d slipped away from the reservation under cover of darkness, without permission.

According to the Indian roll call conducted the morning after Chief Gray Eagle bade him to escape and return to white society, White Wolf didn’t exist and his name wasn’t to be uttered again. In the Apache culture, the name of a deceased person was rarely mentioned. As far as the tribe was concerned, White Wolf was dead and gone.

Maybe he needed to have a private talk with Tara and assure her that whatever concerns his presence provoked were unnecessary…unless there were criminal charges involved and she felt threatened by his profession as a law officer. Damn, this could get ugly, thought John. Maybe he didn’t want to unlock those guarded secrets he saw flashes of in Tara’s eyes, after all.

“I have to leave now.” Flora popped to her feet. “Tara says I have to walk the lambs around the canyon to make ’em stronger.”

John suspected these compulsory walks were designed to build little Flora’s own stamina. The child was entirely too frail and thin.

“Calvin has to go with me,” Flora added as she scooped up the jar of jelly and leftover bread, “just in case I have trouble managing the sheep.”

Calvin, the seven-year-old with the noticeable limp, he mused. No doubt Tara ensured Calvin was getting his daily requirement of therapeutical exercise, too.

To John’s complete surprise, Flora abruptly reversed direction, dropped to her knees in front of him, then flung her bony arms around his neck to hug him tightly. “I love you, Zohn Whoof,” she whispered in his ear. “Maybe when you feel better you can walk the lambs with Calvin and me.”

John battled to draw breath after Flora scurried off. He couldn’t afford to become attached to these endearing children, damn it. Gray Eagle had given him a lifetime assignment of protecting the Apache from the whites. Plus Raven was running loose, aligning himself with a merciless outlaw gang, giving the Apache a bad name—as if the whites’ publicity hadn’t given the tribe a bad reputation already.

John had witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed against Indians. They’d been slaughtered like buffalo—women, children, elders and warriors alike. They’d been poisoned with strychnine, herded onto reservations and forced to sign treaties that gave white men their valuable and productive lands. In fact, Gray Eagle had been ordered, under penalty of death, to sign over several strips of land where silver and copper deposits had been discovered so the prospectors could mine the ores without sharing with the Indians.

John had done his damnedest to prevent the whites from stealing the Apache blind, but to no avail. He’d reclaimed his white heritage hoping to make a difference—and he’d failed, time and time again. It was enough to make a grown man weep, especially when he cursed himself countless times for being born white and growing up Apache. Half the time John didn’t know who the hell he was or where he rightfully belonged. And now this sweet little child, with her hollow eyes, pasty skin and delicate bones, was gushing with affection for him and looking up to him as if he were her beloved father. The kid was killing him, while he was trying to maintain an emotional distance from her and the rest of this extraordinary family.

John sighed heavily. This child and her entire family were definitely getting to him, hour by hour, day by day. He couldn’t afford to become attached, because it would make leaving this valley more difficult. He’d locked away all sentimental emotions the day the Apache captured him as a child and started training him to be one of them. If he allowed all these conflicts that roiled inside him to surface he wouldn’t know how to deal with them. He wasn’t sure he could face a single one without his thoughts getting all tangled up with the other feelings he’d buried in order to survive all the trials he’d faced in his life.

Besides, this family really didn’t have a place in his world, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. He went about his grisly business of tracking down and apprehending vicious criminals that were overrunning the territory. No feelings allowed, John told himself sensibly, and he’d better not forget it. Life was a test of survival—that was the gospel according to John Wolfe.

Tara wasn’t prepared for the shock of seeing her patient fresh from his bath at the mineral springs where the boys had taken him. When she returned from doing chores in the barn, he was sitting on the wooden bench on the front porch. She missed a step when her gaze landed on his face, now devoid of the week’s growth of dark beard. To say that John was ruggedly handsome, with his bronzed skin, athletic physique, electrifying eyes and sensuous lips, had to be the understatement of the decade. The entire package of lean, powerful masculinity was enough to increase her heart rate and leave her feminine body aquiver.

Lord, listen to her, Tara scolded herself. She sounded as bad as Flora and Maureen, who sang John’s praises the whole livelong day. Of course, Tara had asked around Rambler Springs to see if anyone had heard of Marshal Wolfe. What she’d discovered was impressive and unnerving at once. This man who braved death on a daily basis was the stuff legends were made of, according to Wilma and Henry Prague, who ran the general store, as well as Corrine and Thomas Denton, who owned the restaurant. It was true that Wilma Prague was long-winded and tended to get caught up in the tales she liked to spin, but the hearsay she’d conveyed had kept Tara on the edge of her seat. John Wolfe’s feats of capturing the worst criminals in the territory were nothing short of phenomenal.

“Good morning, Irish,” John greeted her, breaking into her thoughts.

“Morning,” Tara murmured as she sank down on the bench beside him. “How are you feeling after your bath?”

“Revived and not the least bit anxious to spend another day indoors.”

“Not accustomed to it, I suppose, considering your line of work.”

He inclined his shiny raven head. “Exactly, which is why we’ll be switching sleeping quarters this evening,” he asserted.

That sounded like an order, and Tara had never been much good at taking them. “Excuse me, Mr. Wolfe, but I’m the one in charge of your rehabilitation. I’ll decide where you’ll sleep, especially when this happens to be my house you’re convalescing in.”

He merely chuckled at her flare of temper. “I’ve watched you and listened to you handle this passel of children with patience and gentle requests for nearly a week, Irish. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been shot. You’re supposed to be nice to me.”

“I have been for a week,” she countered. “So don’t push your luck.”

“How is it that I’ve ended up at the sharp end of your tongue? Is it me in particular or men in general?” He waited a beat, then asked, “Or is it because of that kiss?”

Tara glanced over to meet his penetrating stare, noticed that quirk of a smile that did funny things to her insides. She steeled herself against her innate attraction to him. “Perhaps a bit of all three,” she admitted honestly.

He stared across the grass, then his gaze lifted to the rock-capped summits of the canyon, admiring the panoramic view. “You’ve nothing to fear from me, Irish. There’ll be no incidents like the one you recently had with the miners. As for that kiss…well, consider it a needed compensation for the pain I was suffering. It won’t happen again.”

Tara couldn’t honestly say if she was disappointed or relieved. What was she thinking? Of course she was relieved, even if she felt as if she’d suffered another form of rejection. But allowing herself to become as attached to John as the children were already was dangerous business.

“Good, I’m glad we have that settled and out of the way,” she said, flashing him a smile. “As for the sleeping arrangements, you’re staying in my room and I don’t wish to hear another word about it.”

He smiled a mysterious smile, then shrugged. “Have it your way, Irish. I suspect you usually do.”

Tara snapped her head around and frowned at him.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” she challenged.

“Only that you’re accustomed to controlling the children, though I admit you rule with such a gentle hand and winsome smile that they don’t realize they’re being bossed around.”

“I suppose you’re accustomed to probing and prying and sticking your nose in various places because of your line of work.” Tara snapped her mouth shut, amazed that she was addressing John in such a sarcastic tone. Blast it, this man didn’t fit into the nice, neat world she’d created for the children and herself in Paradise Valley, and she was having trouble dealing with him. Why was that?

He shrugged a broad shoulder, seemingly unoffended by her sassy rejoinder. “I suppose you’re right, Irish. I do spend considerable time grilling witnesses before I track criminals. I’m inquisitive by nature and by habit….So, how’d you come to acquire this abandoned homestead here in what the Apache call the Canyon of the Sun?”

Tara blinked in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“About the abandoned ranch, you mean? The boys told me. They don’t seem to be quite as cautious about divulging information as you are. No doubt you instructed them to watch what they said around me. Now why is that?”

Tara opened her mouth to ask how he knew she’d instructed the children not to reveal more than necessary about their past, then figured she could already guess the answer. Flora had difficulty refraining from telling everything she knew, just to hear herself talk. So did young Calvin. He’d jabber all day if you let him.

Tara decided that telling the truth—or as much of the truth as she could—wouldn’t do any harm in this instance. “I acquired the deed to this abandoned farm after the children and I happened onto it, while searching for a shelter during a storm. When I inquired about the ranch in Rambler Springs, I learned the previous owners had left during the Indian uprising six years ago. Since the Apache were confined to San Carlos, it seemed safe enough to set up housekeeping here.” She peered questioningly at him. “How did you know this is sacred ground to the Apache?”

He was silent for a long moment while he scanned the panoramic valley with its towering cap rock, wild tumble of boulders, canopies of cedars, cottonwoods and pines, and its refreshing springs. Then he shifted slightly, and his solemn gaze probed hers with an intensity she’d come to expect from him. John didn’t simply look at her; he examined, studied and looked into her, as if he were reading her private thoughts.

“If I tell you the truth about that, will you explain how you came to acquire this unique family of yours, Irish?”

She knew he saw her flinch, for his astute gaze never seemed to miss a thing. She was beginning to think the phenomenal feats, the unerring instincts and tracking skills that Wilma Prague raved about weren’t an exaggeration. There was an extraordinary aura about this man—especially now that he was recovering from his injuries. He was sharply attuned to everything that transpired around him. He had a sixth sense she envied.

“Irish?” he prompted, holding her captive with nothing more than the intensity of his silvery stare. “What I’m offering here is something you can hold over my head, in exchange for something I can hold over yours. That will keep the battleground even, wouldn’t you agree?”

“We are going to do battle?” she asked, smiling impishly.

“I don’t know. Are we?” he questioned in turn.

She wasn’t quite sure she understood what made this unusual man tick. He wasn’t like her other male acquaintances. He was asking her to give him a weapon to use against her. In return, he was handing her a weapon. Why? she kept asking herself.

John studied the wary expression that claimed her enchanting features. He could tell she wasn’t sure what to make of him and his unexpected offer. But he’d be damned—literally—if he told her the truth about himself without some leverage, and he had to know if he could trust her to hold in confidence what he was about to tell her. Considering what this amazing woman had done for him, he wanted to trust her, to confide something that only Gray Eagle knew.

Why he was willing to stick out his neck John wasn’t sure. Maybe it was an instinctive response to the feelings Tara evoked in him. Maybe, with this life of isolation he’d been leading, he sought some kind of connection. Maybe he simply felt indebted because she’d saved his life. Maybe…John refused to delve deeper into the whys and wherefores. He’d looked a little too deeply already when it came to the feelings and sensations Tara aroused in him.

“Very well, John Wolfe, you have a bargain,” she agreed. “A sword for a sword, so to speak. But I want you to remember that you wouldn’t be alive today if not for me.”

He grinned, amused by her insistence that he shouldn’t forget he owed her his life.

“But I must have your word of honor that if you do decide to turn against me, after I answer your question, that you’ll become responsible for these children,” she insisted.

That was an odd thing for her to say, he thought. It suggested some deep dark secret that would make it impossible for her to care for the children if the truth came out.

John stared her straight in the eye and said, “I know this canyon is sacred Apache ground because I am Apache. Or at least I was an Apache until five years ago, when the uprisings were contained and the tribe was herded onto the reservation. Fact is, there is no John Wolfe.”

She gaped at him for a full minute. When her questioning gaze continued to focus directly on him, he nodded in confirmation. Then, suddenly, she burst out laughing. That wasn’t the reaction John had anticipated. Her riotous laughter drew the attention of the children, who were tending to various chores. The boys appeared from the shadows of the root cellar, which was in actuality a small cavern tucked beneath an overhanging rock ledge. The girls emerged from the house to stare at Tara in complete bewilderment.

Tara tossed back her head, sending the haphazard braid of red-gold hair cascading down her back. She cackled uproariously, then slapped her knee and cackled some more. To John’s disbelief, she curled into a ball and rolled off the bench onto the planked porch. Still giggling and gasping for breath, she clamped her hands around her ribs and guffawed. John and the children stared at her as if she’d gone insane.

“Oh, that…is…funny,” she said between howls of laughter.

Despite his baffled confusion, John broke into a grin while Tara rolled around on the porch, giggling and struggling to draw breath.

“Is she okay?” Samuel asked as he jogged toward the house.

“My gosh, what’s happening to her?” Derek said in alarm.

It was obvious to John that Tara had never allowed the children to see her reduced to fits of laughter. But why his confidential announcement had caused this reaction, he had no idea. He suspected Tara usually took her responsibility for the children quite earnestly and always displayed a facade of control—whether she felt in constant control or not.

Face flushed, tears streaming down her cheeks, Tara looked up at him and erupted in another fit of giggles. Each time she peered at him the hysterical fit began all over again.

“She’ll be fine,” he assured the concerned children. “Go tend to your chores. Maureen, perhaps you could bring Irish a cup of water. I think she’ll be needing one when she recovers from her fit of giggles.”

Reluctantly, the children turned away, but not without casting several worried glances over their shoulders. Tara was down to muffled snickers by the time Maureen returned with the water.

When Tara took the cup and sipped, John waved Maureen back into the house. He looked down at the woman who was curled up at his feet. “I assume your grave secret is that you have a tendency toward madness.” He was giving her a way out. He wondered if she’d take it. When she shook her head, he was confident he could trust her with his secrets.

After Tara regained a semblance of composure and slumped beside him on the bench, she glanced at him. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I suspect your week has been as long and stressful as mine, Irish. If I could reduce myself to busting a gut laughing, without splitting a stitch, I’d like to try it. That looked like fun.”

“It was, actually. Discovering that you don’t exist stuck me as hilarious. You’re entirely too real to be a figment of anyone’s imagination.”

“There really is no John Wolfe,” he repeated. “I was born white, captured by the Apache at the age of ten and rigorously trained to become one of the elite group of warriors who were sent on the most dangerous missions. I lived with my clan, accompanied them on raids against invading hordes of Spaniards, Mexicans and whites, and then I was confined to the reservation. The fact is I’ll always be more Apache than white.”

“Captured?” The laughter in her eyes died.

“Rescued would probably be more accurate. My father was a drunken prospector. An Apache hunting party overtook us while he was beating me, as he had a habit of doing on a regular basis. My ability to speak English made me useful to the Apache, who were dealing with whites more often than they preferred. I was taught the Apache dialect, as well as Spanish. In turn, I was instructed to teach Chief Gray Eagle and his family to speak English. Being the only white captive in our clan, I was often called upon to translate during conferences with the army. Because of the color of my eyes, Chief Gray Eagle always kept me conveniently obscured from the soldiers because he considered me too valuable an asset to release.”

“What is your Indian name?” she asked.

“White Wolf.”

“And your white name?”

He hadn’t spoken his given name in twenty years. It felt unfamiliar as it tumbled off his tongue. “Daniel Braxton.”

Why he had gotten sidetracked with particulars of his life that he hadn’t divulged to anyone else, he couldn’t say. What was there about this woman that drew his confidence? he wondered. He truly was treating her like a friend—the first he’d had in years.

“That explains why an Apache warrior has silver-blue eyes rather than dark ones,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s also why townsfolk praise your legendary skills and instincts. According to gossip around Rambler Springs, you’re part bloodhound. Your success rate in tracking and apprehending criminals is incredible, bordering on supernatural.”

“It’s the result of years of meticulous Apache training,” he explained. “It’s a culture of introspect, reflection and a life closely attuned to nature. Whites get too caught up in the acquisition of property and wealth to fully understand who they are and how they fit into the world around them.

“I cannot begin to explain the torment of knowing my white ancestors are responsible for the atrocities committed against the Apache, and vice versa. It’s like straddling a picket fence, uncertain which culture is my true enemy. But I do know that if the truth is revealed, I’ll be jailed and sentenced by the white courts because I was involved in retaliations against whites who committed unspeakable atrocities against the Apache.”

Her expression turned compassionate. To his surprise, she reached out to touch his hand, which had involuntarily curled into a fist—an outward manifestation of his inner turmoil.

“I’m sorry, John. I promise that your secret is safe with me. I’m most thankful that I was able to save such a unique man.”

An unfamiliar lump formed in his throat. She accepted his explanation, accepted him, without making judgments. He didn’t elaborate on the particulars of his life story, didn’t want to disturb this unexpected sense of peace and contentment that stole over him. He’d never experienced anything quite like the sensations thrumming through him. He simply sat there, surrounded by the towering sandstone walls of the canyon, absorbing the tranquility of the moment and enjoying the breath of wind stirring through the trees.

Suddenly he realized just how badly he needed this hiatus in the place Tara called Paradise Valley. Being here with her and the children, in this spectacular location, was like lingering at an oasis after a grueling walk in the desert sun.

“Now that you’ve revealed your truths, I’m obliged to reveal mine,” Tara murmured as she withdrew her hand. “It’s ironic that you’re the one man who poses the greatest threat to my existence, and yet we’re exchanging confidences.”

She swallowed uneasily, because she’d never confided this tale to another living soul. Certainly, the children in her care knew fragments of the story, but they didn’t know the whole truth.

“My parents immigrated to Boston,” she began quietly. “I lost them in a flu epidemic and I nearly died myself. I had no other family to take me in and I was forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence in the streets and alleys with several other children who found themselves in the same predicament. We begged for food and picked pockets to survive…until one night when three policemen swarmed in and gathered up the strays. The older, more experienced street urchins managed to vanish in the network of alleys, but I was frail and sickly, like little Flora, at the time. I was taken to an orphanage, given a cot, a ration of food and hand-me-down clothes that were so thin from numerous washings that it was like being naked during the cold winter months.”

Tara darted a glance at John. He was staring intently at her again. She swore she’d never met another living soul who listened with such concentrated absorption. He didn’t even blink an eye when she admitted to stealing to survive.

“Occasionally families visited the orphanage to take children into their homes, but I was always overlooked. I guess they considered me too old to be trainable, too frail to put in a hard day’s work.”

“Which is why, I suspect, little Flora and Calvin are in your care. You see yourself in them, don’t you?” he asked.

Tara nodded. “Flora was just an infant when her mother, the daughter of a wealthy family, brought her to the orphanage. The woman was unmarried and feared wrath and disinheritance.

“Calvin was left alone when his parents were killed in the carriage accident that mangled his leg and scarred his chin. Maureen couldn’t speak a word for the first two years she lived in the orphanage. The caretakers thought she was a deaf-mute, because she made no contact with anyone. Thankfully, she’s emerged from her shell. But to this day she refuses to speak of whatever tragedy landed her at the orphanage.

“As for Samuel and Derek, they know nothing of their heritage, nor do I. They simply arrived in the dark of night as young children. They were already there when I was taken into the orphanage. You wouldn’t know by looking at them now, but they were sickly, weak and shamefully unsure of themselves.”

Tara took a sip of water, then continued. “When the time came, we were scrubbed and dressed in an exceptionally better set of hand-me-downs than what we usually wore. We were hustled aboard a westbound train without being informed of our destination or purpose. We stopped in nameless towns in Missouri and were herded into local churches. Like livestock on the auction block, we were presented for adoption. Many of the younger children were carted off to foster homes.”

“But not frail-looking Flora or crippled Calvin,” John surmised.

“No, the six of us were rejected for one reason or another, so we returned to the train and ventured into Texas. When the train pulled into a dusty cow town there, we were the only ones left. A man who owned a fleabag hotel notorious for housing rowdy drifters took in Flora and Maureen. Although they were young—especially Flora—they were put to work cleaning and sweeping. The boys ended up working for a cantankerous farmer who practiced your father’s technique of controlling and disciplining children.”

“And you, Irish?” he questioned. “How old were you at the time?”

Leave it to this man to poke and pry into places she planned to skip over with only the briefest of explanation. “I wasn’t quite eighteen,” she told him reluctantly.

“Marrying age,” he murmured shrewdly.

“Something like that,” she replied, unable to meet his perceptive gaze. “I was taken in by a rancher who claimed he needed a foster child capable of caring for his ailing wife.”

John hadn’t liked the sound of this story from the beginning. It was growing more distasteful by the minute. The fact that Tara’s expression had closed up, that she was suddenly holding herself upright on the bench, keeping a stranglehold on the cup of water and staring sightlessly at the canyon walls, alerted him that the rancher had had unseemly designs on her. An unfamiliar sense of rage swept through John, momentarily overriding the nagging pain in his rib and thigh.

“There was no ailing wife, was there?” he said through clenched teeth.

She didn’t answer for a moment, didn’t glance his direction. Finally she said, “There was a gravesite on the far side of the garden.” She shivered slightly, cleared her throat, then continued. “There were also metal cuffs dangling from the headboard and footboard of his bed.”

John felt as if someone had gut-punched him. Damn it to hell, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what came next. In fact, he refused to hear and he didn’t want to imagine what Tara had endured, so he leaped ahead to spare her the telling.

“So I assume you regathered the children from their various residences and decided to make a new life together.”

She breathed a relieved sigh and smiled ruefully. “Yes, the children are now my family, and I promised to make a home for them. We hopped a cattle train and followed the rails west as far as they went. For three months we wandered like nomads, feeding off the land, living for short periods of time at missions and in abandoned shacks along the way—wherever we found shelter. We gathered stray livestock that we encountered along our route through New Mexico Territory and we took temporary employment where we could, but we never stayed in one place long enough to become acquainted with anyone. We traveled into towns in separate groups so as not to arouse suspicion or raise questions we didn’t want to answer.”

It occurred to John that Tara might’ve done something in the past that made her fearful he’d cause trouble for her. In spite of that, she’d taken him into the fold and nursed him back to health. That said a great deal about her character—and she had considerably more character than most folks.

“When we happened onto this canyon, with its rundown buildings, I knew this was where we belonged. I knew that with hard work and determination I could make a real home for the children. This is the place of permanence, stability and security none of us ever had.”

When she turned toward him, John could feel the intensity and determination radiating from her. “This family of cast-off children, who have been rejected more times than I care to count, will have a full understanding of belonging. They’ll feel a strong sense of welcome and acceptance. They’ll be confident that when they set off to find their places in this world, I’ll be here to welcome them back with open arms.”

When she stood up and strode off to attend her limitless chores, his gaze followed her until she disappeared into the root cellar. Tara didn’t hang around long enough for John to caution her about setting her sights on this canyon as a permanent home. This part of the territory, though it had escaped violence in recent years, was becoming a hotbed of criminal activity because of the silver and copper mines discovered in the area. Gangs of ruthless outlaws preyed on prospectors and anyone else who provided easy pickings. Tara and the children wouldn’t stand a chance against men like the outlaws Raven had fallen in with.

Although John knew it wouldn’t be easy, he had to convince Tara to move into town where there was more protection. That was one conversation he wasn’t looking forward to, especially now that he knew she’d put down roots and had no intention of leaving. No doubt he and Tara were destined to butt heads about that.