Rain Shadow(33)

Anton turned to leave, pausing at Rain Shadow's side. "Keep thinking," he murmured in her ear.

She sat across from him at dinner, Two Feathers and Slade flanking her.  The Neubauers joined hands and lowered their heads, Rain Shadow and her  family following suit. Franz prayed, thanking his God for their food,  health and children, and asking Him to protect and guide them. "Amens"  echoed around the room, and the bowls and platters circulated with  enthusiasm.

The Neubauer brothers told amusing tales about one another during  dinner. Slade and Nikolaus absorbed each word, listening in wide-eyed  fascination to Johann's stories of his childhood, of growing up with  brothers and sisters and parents. Johann knew where his parents had been  born, he even had a Bible with his entire family's births and deaths  recorded.

Rain Shadow met Anton's gaze. This family knew each and every ancestor,  shared their stories like the Indians. Everyone at the table had  memories of families...everyone, that was, except her.

A chasm opened in her chest, an unexplainable hurt and inferiority, a  gnawing, insatiable hunger that had nothing to do with the feast spread  before her on the table. Rain Shadow swallowed the ache and focused on  the man across from her. "Your grandfather taught you to fix clocks?"

Anton nodded. "I have a shop in town that belonged to him."

Annette pushed her chair back. "Did you fellas say you were going to wash the dishes?"

Franz took his wife's hand and pressed it to his lips. "Did you say you  wanted your grandma's china entrusted to these delicate hands?" He and  his brothers raised enormous palms toward her.

Annette laughed and waved her apron at them. "Oh, shoo, you bunch of conniving sluggards!"

The men stood and headed toward the parlor. Annette threaded her fingers  through her husband's and leaned toward him. "My mother warned me about  you."

Franz bobbed his head and kissed her quickly. "Aren't you glad she was right?"

Rain Shadow met Anton's gaze where he stood in the doorway watching her.  He'd had a wife. A proper wife just like his brothers', and he'd lost  her.

He had a family. He didn't need Rain Shadow.

He wanted her.

She needed him.

* * *

The following morning Jakob rode up the long drive to the barn and  called out. From the barn, Rain Shadow watched Anton and Johann meet  him. They spoke briefly, and Jakob galloped toward Franz and Annette's.

"What's wrong?" Rain Shadow asked Anton when he stepped through the doorway.

"Have to dig a new well on Jakob's land." He strode to the back and returned with shovels.

Instinctively sensing trouble, she watched him carry harnesses from the tack room. "What's wrong with their well?"

"Salt in it."

"Someone poured salt in their well?"                       
       
           



       

"Probably yesterday while we were all at Franz's." Horror prickled at her scalp. "Is the stock sick?"

"Nah. They're too smart to drink it. We'll need to carry water until the  new well's dug. Good thing the ground's not frozen solid yet."

"I'll help," she said quickly, knowing she was responsible for the Neubauers' misfortune.

"You have to stay with Slade." He stared at her pointedly. "We all know who did this."

She wiped her palms on her trousers. Miguel. And he'd been bold enough,  certain enough of their whereabouts to know just when and where to cause  trouble. A tremor began in her chest and radiated outward until her  shoulders shook. The Neubauers! This warm, wonderful family was under  siege because of her.

As soon as Miguel appeared, she should have run as fast and far as she  could. If only Slade had been able to travel. Was it safe to go now?  Maybe she should bundle up her son and father and run. Anger and  frustration welled within her until she could easily burst.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit someone or something. She needed to cry and hated herself for the weakness.

"Rain Shadow."

Anton's hand rested on her shoulder, and she realized she'd turned her  back on him and stood shaking. She found her voice. "I'll stay with the  boys and look after the stock. You go dig."

From behind, he roped her braid around his fist, forced her head around,  shoulders and body following, until she curled into the curve of his  arm. It was easy, then, to lay her forehead against the warmth of his  broad chest and fold her arms around his waist. She turned her cheek,  and his heart beat steadily beneath it.

Warm. Solid. Safe.

Too easy. Too easy to let herself grow soft and comfortable. Too easy to  open a small door of trust and cleave to this immovable man. He was a  boulder in a raging river, but she could cling only temporarily until  the current carried her downstream.

She recognized his smell-horses and leather, soap and his own musky  scent. From that day on, whenever she thought of Pennsylvania, she would  smell sunshine and warm growing things, hear the steady beat of his  heart and see a golden man, feet firmly planted on his own soil.

Sissy Clanton was a fool. A prim and proper, pale and freckled fool.

Anton released her hair, his thumb sliding along her jaw, caressing the  sensitive skin behind her ear. Rain Shadow sensed the subtle change in  his body. Her thoughts, turned inward until now, flowered out until she  recognized the hard length of his body along hers, noticed her breasts  crushed against the front of his jacket.

Her nipples grew sensitive to the brush of her flannel shirt, and she  remembered another day she'd turned into his arms for comfort. He'd  kissed her the way she'd never dreamed anyone would kiss her, pressed  his face into her shirt and opened it, exposing her to his heated blue  gaze and the sunlight filtering through the window.

She would remember each moment with him as long as she lived. Memories  of expectant sunshine, golden hair and lashes, vivid blue eyes. She  could carry the reminders with her anywhere, keep them to cheer endless  train rides, savor them on lonely nights by a fire, fold them away for  the years ahead.

She stepped back, hands slowly falling from his waist, and looked up.

"One of us will stay here with you," he stated softly.

"No. The more of you who work, the sooner you'll have the well dug."

He ran his hand across his jaw. "I can't leave you alone."

"Anton. I'm a better shot than any of you," she said, and wondered belatedly if she'd wounded his male pride again.

"Better than all of us put together, probably," he said with a wry shrug  that reassured her. That steel-bright blue gaze fixed on her, guarded,  unfathomable. "Will you be okay?"

She nodded. She'd be okay...at least for the moment.

* * *

It had been dark an hour, but the men had taken lanterns. Lydia had come  and helped milk earlier, and Rain Shadow had asked how to use the stove  and oven. Now she cleared away the dishes from the simple meal she'd  prepared for herself and the boys.

"I have to use the outhouse, Ma." Slade hopped across the kitchen, the crutch Johann had made him tucked under one arm.                       
       
           



       

"Get your jackets, both of you. This is your last trip for the night."  She slipped into her coat and buckled on her holster, checking her  revolver for the tenth time.

Their breath puffed out ahead of them, Slade's huffing in gusts because  of his rapid hopping. "Look how big the moon is!" Nikolaus exclaimed,  stopping, and Slade ran into his back. The two of them chortled and  ducked into the outhouse. Rain Shadow studied the silhouette of the  farmhouse in the moonlight.

She had to leave. Endangering the Neubauers, disrupting their lives was  inexcusable. Slade was getting by on his crutch. There was no reason to  stay any longer.

After her turn, they headed back, twigs snapping beneath their feet. A  vague scent teased her nostrils, raised the hair on the back of her  neck. Cigar smoke, expensive and distinctive. Had it only been her  imagination?

"Stop," she whispered.

Ahead of her the boys froze obediently, straining to hear or see what  she saw. She sniffed the air, listened to the brittle maple branches  clicking in the brisk wind. In the distance a calf bawled.

"It's nothing. Go on." She scurried them onto the back porch. "Lock the door while I check the horses."

Crossing the dooryard, she pulled her collar over her chin and settled  her flat-brimmed hat more securely on her head. Loping up the grade  toward the barn, the dooryard pitched and rolled in the sway of lantern  light. Ahead, a horse nickered. Intuition prickled at Rain Shadow's  scalp.

In a split second, she drew and aimed dead center of the figure ahead.

Twenty feet from the corner of the barn, Miguel stood beside the animal.  In the cold, pale moonlight the silver conches on his saddle glittered.  He wore a hat much like hers.