Rain Shadow(5)

"You must be tired," Anton said. "I know I am."

She turned her upper body and faced him, irrational resentment flaring.  This situation wasn't his fault, but he'd involved himself by bringing  Slade here. "He's never been separated from me before."

"Well, you're together now."

That was it then. He expected her to stay in his room, too. "I can't stay here."

"Why not?"

She stood. "I can't stay here," she said again and glanced around  uncomfortably. Outside of one or two hotels in London, she'd never slept  indoors. The thought brought more panic than it should have, and she  tamped it down.

"You'd leave him here alone with me, then?"

"I-" She frowned at Slade's slight form on the huge bed. Of course she  couldn't leave him alone here. "No. I must stay with him."

Anton stood, bent at the waist and plucked the book from the floor. The  ticking of his pocket watch on the table amplified the silence of the  room. Her child's breathing was audible. "Why don't you lay down there  beside him... just for tonight? Tomorrow we-you can figure out what to  do."

She had no other choice. Her lodge was packed in the number-ten  excursion railcar several miles away. "My father won't know where I am.  He stayed in Butler for word of Slade."

"I'll get a message to him. He can stay here, too."

Two Feathers had never slept in a house in his life. He slept on the  ground near a fire as he had since his birth. She couldn't imagine him  spreading his furs on these wooden floors. "He'll need to camp with the  others who are guarding the cars and the animals."

Anton tossed the book on the chair seat. "It's settled, then. I'll send word. What's your pa's name?"

"Two Feathers."

He nodded. "I'll carry my son down to the parlor. We'll sleep there."

His son? Where was his wife? She'd seen no evidence of a woman sharing the room.

"If you want a nightshirt, grab one from the second drawer of the  chest." He knelt and easily scooped his sleeping child, pallet and all,  into his arms. "If Slade wakes up, give him a spoonful of this." He  nodded to the corked bottle on the chest of drawers. "See you in the  mornin'."

"Jack!" She'd belatedly remembered her pony waiting patiently outside.

"Ma'am?" Anton paused and raised his sandy brows in puzzlement.

"Jack. My pony. He's outside."

"I'll put him up in the barn for you."

"I'm obliged." I don't want to be, but there's not much I can do about it tonight.                       
       
           



       

The door clicked shut.

Rain Shadow glanced around, avoiding the sight of the portrait on the  wall and stifling the turbulent emotions vying for prominence in her  mind and heart. What was it about Anton Neubauer that threatened her so?

She took a deep breath. She was more exhausted than she'd realized. With  inbred stealth, she slipped off her moccasins, lay atop the coverlet  and comforted herself by touching her son's hair and cheek.

Slade was alive. That was all that mattered. Everything-everyone-else  she could deal with. With that determination her body relaxed, and  eventually she slept.





Chapter Two




The morning was unseasonably warm for late October. Anton stripped off  his shirt and tied the sleeves around his waist. Raising his right arm  and swiveling it in the shoulder socket, he tilted his head to the side  and worked out the kink between his shoulder blades. Hitching dead  buffalo to teams of oxen was exhausting work. The animals had to be  dragged far away from the train cars before being burned. Trenches had  to be dug around each pile to prevent the fire from spreading to nearby  woods and farmland.

The smell of overturned dirt snagged a memory. He'd plowed acres of  fertile ground each spring, and the earthy smell always carried the  promise of new life, a new season. This time the scent stirred the  recollection of a dismal day nearly ten years ago-before Emily, and  before Jakob had married Lydia. Franz and Annette had buried their tiny  baby boy in the family graveyard on a rise behind the house.

A fresher memory, buried deeper than any other, bobbed to the surface.  The pain scissored through his chest as it always did when he  remembered. Emily was buried on that same rise. A crisp fall day with  acrid ash floating on the autumn air, he'd dug his wife's body from the  charred ruins of the barn.

"You gonna lean on that shovel all day?"

Anton realized Jakob must have spoken twice, but since his brother was  off to the left, Anton hadn't caught the question the first time. A near  fatal case of measles as a child had left him deaf in that ear. Letting  go of the memories, he scooped a shovelful of earth and flung it at  Jakob. Jakob dodged and the dirt hit Franz and clung to his perspiring  chest.

Franz jerked his gaze up to his older brother. He snatched a dirt clod  from the pile at his feet and let it fly. Within minutes, others  joining, the game became an impromptu contest of mosche balle with one  bizarre deviation-more than one ball was in play. The nearby sound of  men grunting as they shoveled earth on escaping embers brought the game  to an end. The carcasses were ablaze, and Anton pulled his kerchief up  over his nose. The perspiring brothers picked up their shovels and  resumed their gruesome task.

Anton couldn't remember the last time he'd missed a Sunday church  service, but even Reverend Mercer had turned out to help this morning.  They dragged, dug and burned. And all the while Anton's thoughts  returned to the boy in his bed... and to the boy's mother.

The more he thought, the more convinced he was that the boy wasn't  Indian, either. Black hair, black eyes, teak-colored skin-quite possibly  from the sun.

Anton's memory unfolded the young woman in vivid detail. The garb, her  hair and skin-even her silent walk was misleading. Everything about her  suggested Indian ancestry at first glance-everything, that was, except  her eyes. Her eyes...bewitched. This morning as she'd returned from  tending her pony, he'd stepped off the back porch.

"Mornin'."

"Mr. Neubauer."

"How was Slade's night?"

"He woke several times. I gave him the medicine twice."

Once again her hair hung braided in a long, black rope, the end tied  with a leather thong from which intricate silver leaves hung. She  regarded him solemnly, the morning sun catching blue-black highlights in  her hair. Her most unusual feature, her eyes, were almost exotic, the  color of a stormy sky at sunset. Anton had to force himself to think  about what she was saying.

"If your sister-in-law will be kind enough to sit with Slade later this morning, I'll bring my things from the train."

He'd tried not to let his surprise show and nodded toward Franz and  Annette's smaller house, only a few hundred feet to the west of the main  house. "I'll stop over before I head out. She'll be coming to tend the  others anyway, so I'm sure she won't mind."                       
       
           



       

"Thank you."

"Surely." He'd moved aside, and she'd gone into the house.

Now, leading a lumbering team of oxen back to the overturned railcars,  he wondered what her position in the show was. He'd never been to a  performance of the Wild West Show, but he'd read about it and seen  photographs. He had listened to several men this morning, and their jobs  ranged from singers and musicians to blacksmiths and cavalry soldiers.  She could be a seamstress or a cook. Or perhaps her husband was the show  person.

Anton shook himself. What did it matter anyway? She would be gone as soon as Slade's leg healed.

The question slunk back like a fox worrying a mongoose. Where was her husband?

* * *

Anton gave his enormous bay his head and galloped up the drive toward  the barn. Attention drawn to the dooryard, he reined in the animal,  leaned across the saddle horn and studied the alien sight from beneath  the brim of his dusty Stetson.

A tepee stood in his yard.

Centered in the dooryard, it was almost as tall as the second story of  the house and painted with geometric designs and hunting scenes. Anton  noted smoke curling out of a hole in the top, where several poles were  lashed together as supports. An occupied tepee.

Nudging the bay into a walk, he circled the hide structure. Who had set  it up here? Maybe the family of one of the Pawnees in the upstairs  bedroom. Annette and Lydia must be befuddled now that a band of Indians  had invaded their homestead. His thoughts raced ahead. They had an  autumn barn dance scheduled next Saturday night.

He slid from the saddle and whacked the horse's rump, and the General  galloped toward the barn. Anton stood before the closed flap. How did a  body knock on a tent? "Hello?"