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“This... How can this be?”
~ Moriah
EVEN BEFORE MORIAH opened her eyes the next morning, a powerful ache pulsed through her entire body. Her cheek burned, but at least the place on her left side where it had felt like a knife was being twisted now only throbbed a dull pain.
A sound worked its way through her awareness. A low vibrato, almost a humming.
She pried her eyelids open and struggled to focus her sleepy vision. Beyond her brush shelter, Samuel knelt over his bed pallet, working on a bundle of blankets. A tiny leg kicked up from the cloths. A little foot she would never tire of seeing.
He was talking in a low murmur to the babe, his face animated with whatever he was saying. Those dark eyebrows rose and lowered with each expression, his eyes growing wide, then narrowing in a grin as a coo drifted up from the blankets.
No wonder Cherry loved him so. This big strapping frontiersman was willing to throw off his dignity to please a tiny babe. Moriah wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen anything more attractive.
Samuel must have felt her gaze, for he looked over. A grin touched the corners of his mouth. “I was just changing her wet things and hoping she’d let you sleep longer.”
He turned back to the baby and wrapped the blankets tighter around her, then lifted her up into the crook of his arm. He had a way of carrying Cherry somewhat upright, so she could see the world ahead of them. Probably another reason her daughter liked him. She hated to be held flat so all she saw was the sky.
“Here’s your mama.” He carried the babe over to Moriah and dropped to his knees. “How’s your face this morning?”
She shifted so she could touch the cut running down her cheek. “It’ll heal.” Thankfully, the gash was near enough to her hairline that it wouldn’t be obvious at first sight. “And you?”
Her gaze wandered down to his middle where he’d uncovered a gash from the mountain lion the night before. He waved the question away now. “I don’t even feel it.”
She met his gaze. “Make sure you put the salve on it this morning. Mountain lion wounds will fester badly without those herbs.”
He nodded, giving her a pointed look. “You do the same.” His expression softened. “How about the rest of you? Feeling better?” He reached forward and brushed his fingers across her forehead. Maybe he was only feeling for fever, but his touch sent a tingle all the way down her back.
She managed a smile. “I think so. I’ll be ready to leave this morning.”
His brow furrowed. “This is a good place to camp. Why don’t we wait one more day?”
She shook her head. She couldn’t be the weakling any longer. “I’m strong enough. There’s no need to wait.”
He tipped his head, studying her. But not with the intensity his gaze sometimes held. This look was easygoing and relaxed. “Tell ya what. Why don’t we eat a good breakfast of cougar tenderloin, then see how everyone’s feeling once we’re up and around. If we want an extra day to enjoy the hot spring, we’ll just take it.”
She couldn’t help a smile at his cougar tenderloin comment. And there was no sense in arguing with him when he was giving her a chance to prove her readiness. She’d just have to make sure she didn’t show any more weakness.
Cherry took the moment to squeeze her face into a complaint, and Moriah reached for her. “She’s hungry.”
Samuel handed over the bundle, then pushed to his feet. “Matisse is checking the horses, but he left another garlic clove for you. And here’s some water to wash it down. If that stuff tastes as bad as it smells, I don’t envy you.”
He placed the cup and plate beside her, then turned back to the fire. “I’m off to get more water for breakfast. Just call out if you need anything.”
As he walked away, Moriah couldn’t help the warm, protected feeling that slipped through her.
But as Cherry nursed, Moriah’s mind churned forward to the journey ahead. They probably had only another day’s ride before they reached her people. Then Samuel would leave her.
How in the world would she let him go?
~ ~ ~
A DAY LATER, SAMUEL eased back in the saddle as things finally started to feel back to normal. Aside from his raw wrinkled fingers anyway, a side-effect from washing soiled baby cloths in the spring that morning.
Never had he expected he’d be washing a newborn’s laundry in the middle of the Canadian mountains, but Cherry was running out of clean cloths, and Moriah still looked pretty pale. She’d insisted she wouldn’t hold them back another day, but if she started to look feverish again, he’d call a halt no matter how much she argued.
As his gelding charged up a rocky section of the trail, he wrapped a protective hand around the baby strapped to his chest. At least Moriah had allowed him to carry her for this first stretch. She’d have her hands full just staying in the saddle now that the terrain was more treacherous.
By the time they stopped for a midday rest and meal, Moriah’s face had grown pale again. He settled her and the baby in as comfortable a spot as he could find, then turned to Matisse. “We should let the horses graze a little if we can find grass.”
With both of them gone, Moriah would have a private moment to care for the little one. And grazing the horses would give them an excuse for an extended rest.
A little bit later, they sat in a circle, eating the last of the pemmican and leftover beans. Even cold, the meal satisfied all the hungry places in his gut. Matisse practically swallowed his food whole, a practice Samuel kept waiting for him to ease out of now that he had regular meals. But the boy never seemed to fill. Kind of like Rachel’s son Andy had been on their journey northward.
He leaned back against a rock and watched Matisse stuff an oversized bite of pemmican in his mouth. “I think you’ve grown an inch or two since you joined up with us.”
Matisse glanced up, eyes wide and guilty, as though he’d been caught stealing an extra bite of pie from the serving tin. Then one corner of his mouth tipped up. “Mrs. Clark’s food is much better than Pierre’s ever was.” He slid a glance to Moriah as a bit of color filled his ruddy cheeks.
She offered him a weak smile. “I learned from my mother, who’s full Peigan. She’s the best cook in the camp.”
A yearning crept into Matisse’s gaze. “How many are in your camp?”
“About fifteen lodges most of the time. Maybe forty or fifty people.” Her face softened. “My mother will likely take you in as another son. If we don’t find your real family, that is. She’s always caring for strays and anyone who needs a place to stay.”
Matisse’s jaw set in a hard line, but his eyes kept that longing, almost fragile expression.
They’d done a good thing inviting the lad to ride with them. Thank you, Lord, for helping it turn out well.
The boy pushed to his feet, maybe in an attempt to steel himself from a topic that left him vulnerable. “I saw a stream down the hill. I’ll go bring up some drinking water.”
As his steps faded into the distance, Samuel turned his focus to Moriah. “Do you recognize any of the land we’re traveling through?”
She met his gaze. “I do actually. I remember riding through here when I’d hunt with my brothers.” There was something in her eyes that drew him. Maybe the same longing that had been in Matisse’s look.
“I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing your family again.” A lump lodged in his chest. He didn’t begrudge her the reunion, but that meant he would need to walk away. To leave her and the baby. Forever? He wasn’t sure he could handle never seeing her again.
She nodded, then something shuttered her gaze. “What will you do? Go back to your family and Rachel?”
He pretended to contemplate the question, but really he was scrambling for a good way to ask if he could come back to see her. “I need to let them know about her brother’s—I mean, your husband’s—passing.” Her jaw flexed when he stumbled through the words. “I’m not sure how soon they’ll want to go on with the wedding. Rachel will likely need some time to grieve.”
Moriah nodded but didn’t speak. Was she holding in her own grief? He shouldn’t have brought it up.
Now was a bad time to ask what he’d planned to ask, but this might be his only chance to talk with her alone. Especially if they reached the camp that night. “Once things calm down again, I thought maybe I’d come back up here and see how you and the babe are settling in. Would that be all right?”
Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed as if her eyes took on a glimmer. Was that good or bad?
She nodded. “Cherry and I would both like you to come.”
Some of the tension in his chest eased. “Good.”
~ ~ ~
EXCITEMENT HAD BEEN building in Moriah’s chest for hours now. The bittersweet kind, for she still wasn’t sure how she’d handle Samuel leaving. But they were close to the camp now. Within the next few minutes, she would see her mother. And Grandfather. And all her people.
It seemed too wonderful to believe, these familiar landmarks they’d been passing as dusk settled. Each one brought back memories of a different lifetime. A past life she knew and loved, but one far distant from the world she lived in now.
And then the horses shuffled down an incline, winding around the massive boulder that marked the opening into the valley. Her ears strained for the sounds of industry that always drifted from the village. Even on a cold day like this one, the youngsters would be out playing. The thud of her beating heart must have been drowning out the noise.
She leaned around the boulder to catch sight of the lodges stretched out in neat rows. With each step, she strained harder.
But the teepees never appeared.
Had she fallen into a dream? A horrible nightmare? Where was the camp? Her mare stepped onto the level ground, revealing every part of valley in clear detail.
Nothing was left. Not a person, not even barren patches where the lodges had stood. As if they’d never been here. A numbness took over her chest, spreading up to her face. Clouding her mind.
“Moriah?” Samuel’s voice barely penetrated her fog, and she couldn’t find the words to respond. Her body simply wouldn’t move.
All her plans—her only goal for months as she’d holed up like a prisoner in the little cabin Henry had built her—was to come back to this place. To reunite with her family, the people who would keep her and Cherry safe. Protected. She’d come so far. Finally reached her home.
Yet everyone had left. Abandoned her.
She slipped from her horse, then stumbled forward along the path that had been trodden so thoroughly, she’d have never thought grass would grow there again. Yet winter-brown blades crunched under her feet. The barren patches where each lodge had stood were barren no longer. The grass wasn’t quite as tall as other areas, yet the land was reclaiming what it had lost, covering any evidence that an entire group of people—people she’d loved and sacrificed for—had lived and worked and thrived in this place.
She trudged down the first row, stopping at the third circle of shortened grass on the right. Her home for so many years. In the middle of the patch, she kicked aside grass to find the charred remains of what had been their fire ring. She couldn’t begin to count the meals she’d cooked there. For Grandfather and the rest of her family and anyone he could coax in to join them for the meal. He was so well-respected, it was an honor to eat a meal in War Eagle’s lodge. To eat of his women’s cooking.
Dropping to her knees, she clamped her hands over her mouth, barely holding in the sob that surged up her throat. Why would they have left her? Where would they have gone? In her mind, she knew they’d assumed she was permanently settled and would have no need to return to their shelter. But couldn’t her mother have sent one of the boys to tell her where they were going? Didn’t she think maybe Moriah would need her, or simply want to visit on occasion?
But maybe when she’d finally wed Moriah off—to a white man, no less—she’d been relieved. Finally free of the burden cast on her by a hateful Frenchman all those years ago. Maybe she’d urged the elders to leave that place with all haste. To disappear into a land so distant Moriah would never find them.
She pressed her eyes shut, her chest aching as though a horse stood on it. As though her heart were truly breaking. She couldn’t let herself slide into this pit, though. Her mother would never have left only to escape her tainted daughter. Moriah knew it down deep. She’d almost never treated Moriah like she wasn’t wanted.
She had to focus her thoughts on something productive. Where would her people have gone? Surely not back to the place where they’d lived in the years before coming here. That had been a good camp with plenty of grazing for the horses, a regular buffalo route, and a hearty stream to supply them with clean water.
But then the white men had found their precious gold nearby and come in droves. Dirty, unshaven, ill-mannered masses. The place was no longer safe for her quiet people. They wouldn’t have gone back there.
In the distance, a baby’s cry drifted through her thoughts, so far away the sound almost didn’t penetrate. She could keep her eyes closed and be back among her people, children laughing, babies making their needs known, women sharing news as they worked in the sun, tanning hides or preparing food.
The baby’s cry grew louder, then a man’s quiet murmur joined the sound. She forced her eyes open. She couldn’t stay in that world, no matter how much she craved the peaceful haven. The safety she’d always felt there.
She blinked away the moisture blurring her vision. Samuel dropped to his knees beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. His presence eased over her like a warm breeze on a cold day. The baby lay in the sling across his front, her eyes wide but no longer crying.
A warm hand slipped around her shoulders. Steady. Strong.
Something inside her broke with the contact. She turned into him, the sob rising again. He pulled her close, and she rested her head on his shoulder, her face tucked into the crook of his neck. The babe lay between them, keeping her from hiding completely in his security. Yet she huddled as close as she could get. Craving his touch with everything in her.
Another sob broke loose, erupting from her chest in a jerky impulse. How long had it been since she cried? Not since Cherry was born.
And now... A hot tear leaked from her eye. She squeezed Samuel’s arms, struggling to get herself under control. She couldn’t break down. Not in front of him and the boy both.
She would find a way. She always did. And tears wouldn’t help.