Cheyenne Wife

Lily demanded, scrambling to her feet. “How dare you! You have the gall to stand there and—”

“We have to go back to the fort.” He reached for her arm.

Lily jerked away. “I have no intention of going anywhere with you.”

“It’s a longer walk back than you think. It’ll be dark soon.”

She squared her shoulders, a strength she hadn’t felt before filling her. “I’ll manage, thank you just the same.” Lily drew in a great breath. “I’ll go back to the fort when I choose. And I’ll get there on my own.”

“You won’t make it,” North said, anger creeping into his voice. “Most of the men at the fort will end up out here searching for you, risking their own lives.”

And she isn’t worth it, his look seemed to say….

Praise for JUDITH STACY’S recent titles

The Nanny

“…one of the most entertaining and sweetly satisfying tales I’ve had the pleasure to encounter.”

—The Romance Reader

The Dreammaker

“…a delightful story of the triumph of love.”

—Rendezvous

The Heart of a Hero

“Judith Stacy is a fine writer with both polished style and heartwarming sensitivity.”

—bestselling author Pamela Morsi

Cheyenne Wife

Judith Stacy

To David, Judy and Stacy—

thanks for keeping me sane.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following people for their assistance with this book: Debra Brown, Candace Craven, Martha Cooper, Joan Fry, Jane LaMunyon, Jolene Smith, Bonnie Stone, Tanya Stowe, Gary Kodel, M.D., Greg Holt, National Parks Service.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Chapter One

Santa Fe Trail, 1844

She’d gone to hell.

Lily St. Claire pressed the damp cloth to her brow, desperate for a moment’s relief. She’d died. Yes, that must be it, she decided. Because right now, she had to be in hell.

The covered wagon lurched, a wheel finding another rut in what some overly optimistic guide—a man whom Lily believed truly deserved to be cast into the pit of eternal hellfire—had referred to as a “trail.” She braced her foot against a wooden trunk and grabbed the edge of the narrow bunk to keep from toppling to the floor.

A mournful groan reminded Lily that she was very much alive despite the heat, the suffocating wagon, the foul stench of sickness. The man lying on the damp sheets mumbled incoherently. Sweat trickled from his fevered brow, soaking his hair, his tangled gray beard and his thin white nightshirt.

Her father.

A stranger, really.

For weeks—Lily wasn’t sure how many—Augustus St. Claire had burned with fever, flailed his arms, conversed with unseen people, even Lily’s mother, dead twelve years now.

Lily dipped the cloth into the bucket of tepid water and laid it on her father’s forehead. Fear and guilt crept into her thoughts. Fear that he wasn’t getting any better. Guilt that he was dying before her eyes, and she didn’t know how to help him.

A wealthy businessman from Saint Louis, Augustus had stunned Lily when he’d told her of his plan to explore the West, to expand his business holdings in the wilds of Santa Fe. His plan to send her away.

Again.

Since her mother’s death when she was seven years old, Lily had lived in boarding schools. Fine institutes all, catering to the daughters of the wealthy. She’d just graduated from Saint Louis’s most prestigious academy for young women, prepared to do what was expected of her and take her place among polite society, when her father had revealed his intentions.

He’d wanted her to move to her aunt Maribel’s home in Richmond, Virginia, where Lily could take up the sort of life she’d been raised to lead. He told her harrowing accounts of Indian raids on the Trail, stories of disease and hardship. Yet for all his attempts to discourage her, Lily insisted that she accompany him. She had to take this chance—perhaps her very last chance—to get to know the man who was her father.

The trip had promised to be an adventure. Before leaving Saint Louis, Lily had been contacted by the editor of the newspaper and was asked to chronicle the trip in a series of articles. She’d packed her journal, her paints and brushes, intending to write poetry and sketch the scenery along the way.

Setting out, she’d envisioned she and her father working side by side to start the new business, carve out a living together in the new land. Finally, they would truly be a family. Lily’s heart had soared at the prospect. Perhaps, she’d hoped, he might even tell her all the things she’d longed to hear about her mother.

But barely two weeks into the journey, Augustus had sliced open his leg with a hatchet while attempting to split kindling. A deep, nasty cut; Lily had nearly fainted at the sight.

Her years at boarding school had been spent learning deportment, etiquette, menu planning, the proper way to supervise a household staff. Madame DuBois’s lesson plan had contained nothing about medicine.

With no doctor on the wagon train, a few of the older women had told Lily how to care for her father. She’d forced herself to look at the gaping wound, the oozing mustard-colored pus, and endured the stench. She’d sat at his bedside tending to him endlessly. Yet despite everything she’d done, his condition had only worsened.

And grew worse by the hour.

A slice of sunlight cut through the wagon’s dim interior, bringing a welcome breath of fresh air with it as Jamie Nelson pulled back the canvas opening. He was only fifteen years old, yet he handled the team of horses like a grown man.

Augustus had hired the Nelsons, a family also heading west, to assist them on the journey. Though they traveled in their own wagon, Mrs. Nelson cooked and cleaned for Lily and her father, while Jamie, their oldest son, took care of the horses and drove the wagon.

Lily’s stomach lurched. “Are we there?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

“No, not yet,” Jamie said, holding the reins, looking back over his shoulder.

“Is your mother coming?” she asked, her words more a plea than a question.

“Ah…no, Miss Lily,” he replied with an apologetic dip of his head.

Why not? she wanted to scream. Why hadn’t they arrived at the fort yet? Why wouldn’t Mrs. Nelson walk back to her wagon and help nurse Augustus?

And why wouldn’t someone make this nightmare end?

“You—you want to come sit up front for a while, Miss Lily?” Jamie asked. He gulped. “With…me?”

The desire to escape tempted Lily. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to be confined in this airless wagon, trying to figure out how to care for her ailing father, worried sick with fear, scared that he might die at any moment.

For an instant, Lily wanted to shout at Jamie to turn the wagon around, take her east again, deliver her to her aunt’s home in Virginia. She wanted a bath—a hot bath with lavender scents, a maid to style her hair, fresh clothing. That’s where she belonged. That’s where Augustus belonged, as well, with real doctors and nurses who knew what they were doing. Neither of them belonged here, suffering under these inhumane conditions, horrified by the constant threat of Indian attacks and fatal disease, filled with an aching loneliness.

Augustus groaned and Lily turned back to him. He mumbled something she couldn’t understand. She removed the cloth from his forehead and wrung it in the water, then swiped it over her own forehead, smoothing back an errant strand of her dark hair.

If she weren’t here, who would take care of her father? Again, Lily wondered at his original intention of making this trip alone.

“Miss Lily?” Jamie asked, jarring her thoughts.

She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll stay here. With Papa.”

“Oh…”

“But you’ll let me know when we get there, won’t you?” she asked, her excitement building. “When we get close, I mean. When you can see it?”

After the wagon train had reached the Arkansas River, most of the wagons had taken the Cimarron Cutoff, the southern—and more dangerous—branch of the Trail for the final leg into Santa Fe. With her father so ill, Lily had gone with two other wagons along the Mountain Branch toward Bent’s Fort. The fort was a center for trade along the Trail, not a military installation. There, they would rest and re-supply before continuing.

“Sure thing, Miss Lily. I’ll let you know the minute I see the fort,” Jamie promised, then pulled the canvas closed.

Lily gulped hard, forcing back a sudden wave of tears. Once they reached the fort, surely someone would make this nightmare end.

“Here comes trouble.”

Standing in the shadows of the adobe walls of Bent’s Fort, North Walker whispered the words to the horse tethered to the hitching rail. The brown mare rubbed her head against his pale-blue shirt, seeming to nod in agreement, but North didn’t notice.

The arrival of covered wagons at the fort—even as few as these three—brought news from the East, a chance to trade goods and services, make money.

But this one had brought something else.

Trouble.

North pulled his black hat lower on his forehead as he watched men step out of the trade room, the kitchen, the dining room. They stood in doorways and lingered in the shadows, staring. North’s gut tightened a bit, urging him to cross the dirt plaza as well.

Young white women—especially pretty ones—were rare at the fort and in this part of the country. This one, who had just climbed out of one of the wagons, hardly seemed to realize she was the center of attention as she spoke to Old Man Fredericks.

North kept his distance.

Half Cheyenne, half white, North was accepted by the men at the fort for what he was. A horse trader, a guide, a messenger.

His other activities he kept to himself.

Tall and broad shouldered like his father, North dressed in Western clothing to better blend into the activities at the fort. He had his Cheyenne mother’s dark eyes, but his skin was more white than bronze. His only concession to his Indian heritage was his long black hair, tied at his nape with a leather thong.

His father had been a mountain man who’d left his family and a comfortable life behind and come west with the beaver trade; he’d eventually married a Cheyenne woman. North had learned Eastern customs and Indian ways from each of his parents, and was equally comfortable in the two worlds.

Worlds that were on a collision course.

Evidenced by the young white woman who was still talking to Hiram Fredericks, sending four men scurrying to do her bidding.

Stepping out of a hot wagon after weeks on the trail, she somehow looked refreshed and poised. Dark hair artfully piled atop her head, a dress of delicate, light fabric that flowed in the late-afternoon breeze. There was an economy of movement as she spoke with Fredericks, a grace North had never seen.

A lady.

That’s what his father had called women like this one, North realized. Telling his stories of growing up in the East, he’d described the pampered women there, the hours they spent on grooming, attire and appearance, the value they placed on personal conduct. North had thought it outrageous. Hours spent in the practice of walking? Not to surprise an enemy or spring a trap, but to simply look pretty while in motion?

North had hardly believed him.

Until now.

This one moved like the whisper of the wind, a silent call in the wilderness.

Trouble.

North patted the mare’s thick neck, content to keep his distance for now.

This woman was trouble, all right.

But maybe just the sort of trouble he was looking for.

Chapter Two

Lily woke with a start and sat up quickly on the narrow cot. A moment passed before she remembered where she was.

The fort, she realized. The room Hiram Fredericks had given her and her father yesterday.

She sank onto the pillow once again.

After the confines of the covered wagon Augustus had crammed full of the goods he intended to sell in Santa Fe, this room seemed like a palatial bed-chamber. A solid roof over her head, four sturdy walls, a real floor—even if they were made of the plain adobe of the fort.

Yet any pleasure Lily might find in her new accommodations didn’t relieve the anxiousness that hung over her, that had followed her, dogged her since her father had injured himself weeks ago.

She pushed herself up on her elbow, the familiar anxiety that she’d lived with for so long settling upon her like a thick quilt. She eyed her father on the cot across the room, his eyes closed, his breathing even. He slept peacefully, as he had during the night.

A good sign? Surely it was. But, really, she didn’t know.

One more thing this journey had shown her she didn’t know.

Thank goodness Hiram Fredericks had helped her yesterday. Tall, lean Mr. Fredericks, with his head of white hair and bushy mustache, had proved a godsend. He seemed to be in charge of things here at the fort, though Lily didn’t know if he had an official title.

He’d secured quarters for her and her father, arranged for meals to be delivered to their room, and for her clothes to be laundered. He’d had the blacksmith take charge of the horses and their wagon.

Then he’d sent for the fort’s medical expert who’d examined her father’s wound and changed the bandage; he’d promised to come back twice a day, if that was what Lily wanted. She did.

Lily said a quick prayer of thanks that gentlemen existed, even in this hostile land.

Squinting against the morning sunlight that came in around the shuttered window, Lily washed and dressed. She hadn’t left her room since arriving yesterday, but had seen the Nelson family bedding down last night in their covered wagon outside the gate.

How odd it felt to be separated from them, after the close proximity of their wagons on the Trail.

The men in the third wagon who’d accompanied them to the fort had slept outside, also. Lily couldn’t remember their names and hadn’t especially liked them, anyway, yet she wondered how they were faring.

She would let them know when her father was well enough to resume their travels, and they could all continue on to Santa Fe.

A knock sounded at the door. Lily jumped at the unfamiliar sound. She hesitated answering, still a little uncomfortable in her surroundings, despite the kindness that had been shown her; she wished Mrs. Nelson would come by.

When she finally opened the door, a young man stood before her holding a breakfast tray covered with a white linen cloth. Tall, thin, he had brown hair in need of a trim, and wore clothing that, more than likely, used to belong to someone else; he was no older than she. His generous smile put her at ease.

“Morning, ma’am,” he said, and ducked his head. “My name’s Jacob. Jacob Tanner. I work over in the kitchen. The cook sent me over here with breakfast for you and your pa.”

“Thank you,” Lily said, reaching for the tray, genuinely pleased.

“I’d better set it down for you, ma’am. It’s kind of heavy,” Jacob said, hesitating on the doorstep. “If’n that’s all right with you, of course.”

While allowing a man into her quarters would be unheard of in other circumstances, Lily decided Jacob seemed harmless—and her life hadn’t exactly been filled with her usual circumstances, anyway.

“That’s very kind of you,” Lily said, stepping back from the door.

“There’s broth here for your pa. Cook made it special, just for him.” Jacob placed the tray on the little table in the corner, took a quick glance at Augustus in bed, and hurried back outside.

“Did you prepare the other food?” Lily asked, anxious suddenly to have someone to chat with this morning.

“I do some of the cooking, ma’am. But mostly I just fetch and carry for the cook.” His cheeks flushed slightly, and his gaze wandered over the door casing before he spoke again. “If you need anything special, just let me know. Mr. Fredericks says we’re supposed to take good care of you and your pa.”

“Thank you,” Lily said. “I appreciate everything that’s been done for us. In fact, I thought I’d go over to the kitchen tonight after supper, when the cook’s not busy, and thank him personally.”

Jacob’s expression darkened, and he met her gaze for the first time. He lowered his voice and leaned just a little closer.

“No, ma’am, you ought not be out alone after dark, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he told her. “It’s not safe for a…a woman.”

A little chill slid up Lily’s spine. “Well, all right. Thank you for bringing breakfast.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jacob murmured. He ducked his head and hurried away.

Lily closed the door quickly. Now she really wished Mrs. Nelson would come by.

After Lily ate, she attempted to get her father to drink some broth the cook had sent, but Augustus remained in the deep sleep that had kept him quiet throughout the night and morning.

She was relieved when Oliver Sykes, the man who served as the fort’s doctor, came to check on Augustus. He was an older gentleman, not much taller than Lily, who had somehow managed to grow a round, soft belly here in this lean, harsh land.

“He’s better, don’t you think?” Lily asked, twisting her fingers together as she and Sykes stood beside her father’s bed. “He’s resting so comfortably now. He didn’t wake once during the night.”

“Maybe you ought to get some fresh air, Miss St. Claire,” Sykes suggested, not looking at her, “while I check over your pa.”

A knot of anxiety rose in Lily’s chest. “But—but he’s doing better, isn’t he?” she asked.

Sykes’s heavy jowls wobbled as he worried his lips together, his expression growing intense. “You just run on outside for a while.”

Lily searched his lined face for a hint of his thoughts, but found nothing.

“Very well,” she said, easing toward the door. “But I’ll be right outside in case…well, just in case.”

When he didn’t answer, she slipped from the room and closed the door behind her. She hesitated a few seconds, wanting to go back inside. After all these weeks at her father’s side, the separation seemed odd and uncomfortable.

But Mr. Sykes was a capable man—much more knowledgeable than herself. She should leave him to his task, let him handle it. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted since her father had injured himself?

Lily turned away and took in the fort. Upon her arrival yesterday, she’d hardly noticed the place in her hurry to get her father settled in a room. Now, she took a good look around.

The two-story fort was the only major permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail, according to what everyone on the wagon train had told her. Yesterday, Hiram Fredericks had proudly explained that the fort provided travelers, explorers and, occasionally, the U.S. Army, with a place to obtain supplies, livestock, food, fresh water, as well as rest and relaxation.

There was a bell tower and bastions at opposite corners of the fort that were used for lookout posts and for storage. Each bastion was armed with a cannon. Fredericks had explained that, so far, they’d never been used for defense, but for signals and to welcome important people, a fact that Lily was pleased to hear.

The fort housed much the same things as a small town: a kitchen, dining room, blacksmith and carpenter shop, warehouses and, of course, the trade room. Lily wasn’t sure what was upstairs on the second floor of the fort, other than more living quarters and the billiard room Fredericks had mentioned last night.

What Lily did know, for certain, was that the fort was populated mostly by men.

She kept her eyes forward as she walked, but felt the gazes of the men upon her. They paused in midstride. They stopped their chores, their conversations. Their faces appeared in windows and doorways.

Men. Big men. Frightening-looking men. Wild hair and unkempt beards. Buckskins stained with sweat. Faces lined with wind and sun. Trappers, mountain men, hunters, prospectors, explorers, adventurers.

A new awareness came with Lily’s every step, her every movement. The sway of her skirt, the rustle of her petticoats, the tug of the breeze in her hair, the fabric of her collar against her throat.

Lily glanced around. Where was Mrs. Nelson? Surely other women were here at the fort. Where were they?

A fear, a vulnerability settled in the pit of Lily’s stomach. Outnumbered. Overmatched. A lamb among the wolves.

She considered rushing back to her room, closing herself up inside, bolting the door, but Mr. Sykes had asked her to leave while he examined her father. She couldn’t burst in unannounced. What would he think of her if she walked in at an inappropriate moment?

Lily kept walking, dozens of gazes tracking her steps. She held her chin up, feigning a leisurely stroll, then darted through the passageway near the carpenter’s shop and into the alley behind.

No men.

She waited and held her breath as she watched the passageway. No one followed.

Relieved, Lily eased between the wooden crates and barrels stacked in the shade of the building, and found a spot to sit down. Hidden in the clutter, she felt somewhat safe and secure.

Across the alley, a horse was tethered to the corral fence at the corner of the stable. It stamped the ground, stirring up little dust clouds, and tossed its head fitfully, pulling at the rope.

The animal was no more comfortable at the fort than she was, Lily thought.

She sat back, trying to get comfortable, trying to relax, willing herself to shake the feeling of foreboding that still hung over her like a dark cloud, and turned her thoughts to her aunt in Richmond.

What would Aunt Maribel be doing at this exact moment? she wondered, turning her face skyward to catch the sun.

Or better still, what if Lily had talked her father out of making this trip altogether? Yes, that was a better fantasy, she decided. He’d be well and healthy, going about his business, as usual, in Saint Louis.

But the prospect of how different her life would be at this very moment if she’d gone to visit her wealthy aunt instead of making this trip, came unbidden into Lily’s mind once more.

She sighed quietly, indulging herself in the imaginary scene her mind conjured up.

She’d have spent her first week in her aunt’s lovely home getting acclimated to the new house, recovering from the journey, learning about the city. She’d luxuriate in a steaming tub, nap often, and be fawned over by a parade of maids and servants. Then preparations for the social outings to come would commence. Fabrics and patterns discussed, new gowns commissioned. The parties, teas and luncheons given in her honor to introduce her and welcome her to the city would take weeks, all amid ladies and gentlemen of good breeding and impeccable deportment.

Yet here she sat on a wooden crate, civilization but a distant memory, with the vague odor of animal manure in the air.