Chapter 11

It's nothing, Cassie told herself, rubbing away the gooseflesh along her arms. No one is watching you.

Yet someone was. She had awakened this morning with the hum of anticipation in her belly. She felt the prickling down her back as she heated Drew's shaving water and fed him breakfast, as she kissed him good-bye and sent him off to headquarters. It was the third week of their marriage, and Cassie was doing everything she could think of to be a good wife to him.

But as she followed Drew out the cabin door, the sense of being watched became stronger. She sheltered Meggie with the wing of her cloak and looked around. On the parade ground a squad of new recruits were being put through their paces by a bawling infantry sergeant. A trio of muleteers stood smoking together. Three friendly Indians rode past, one with a mule deer across his saddle. No one so much as looked in her direction. Still, the queasy feeling persisted.

"It's nothing," Cassie muttered under her breath and led Meggie down the steps.

On the porch next door, Sylvie Noonan took one look at the two of them and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

Or maybe it's everything.

These last weeks had been difficult. Only the McGarritys and Lila Wilcox had accepted her marriage to Drew. She and Drew had not been invited to Amos Parker's birthday party, or to the Noonans' for an evening of charades. Several of the laundresses had pointedly turned their heads when Cassie passed, and Drew had confined one of his men to the guardhouse for referring to Cassie as "the captain's In'jun whore." Even Meggie had suffered. Sylvie Noonan's children had held her down and streaked her face with mud so she'd be "just like her Indian ma."

And once the Indians started raiding, Cassie knew the resentment against her would worsen.

Trying to ignore the foreboding, Cassie and Meggie set off toward the sutler's store. Cassandra tried to avoid the place, hating to be reminded of the day she's stolen the scissors. But it was necessary to buy from Jessup now that the quartermaster's stores were down to salt pork and hardtack, rice and beans, cornmeal and flour. There hadn't been any coffee or sugar in weeks, and the entire compound was suffering through the deprivation. Even Alain Jalbert's hunting parties hadn't been able to keep ahead of the fort's demand for game. The first supply train of the season couldn't come too soon.

As she and Meggie followed the mucky path along the side of the cavalry stables, a new ripple of uneasiness chased up Cassie's spine. This time when she looked, she caught sight of an Indian woman lurking behind one of the commissary wagons.

When the woman motioned Cassie toward her, Cass hastily looked away. She could not speak to an Indian and give the people here at the fort another reason to doubt her sympathies. But as they reached the corner, Cassie recognized the woman. Only something of grave importance would bring Runs Like a Doe all this way.

Cassie gave the woman a nod of acknowledgment and hustled Meggie along ahead of her. What could Runs Like a Doe want?

Nothing that should matter to you, came Drew's voice in her head.

But it did matter. This woman and her family had befriended Cassie when Gray Falcon brought her to the Cheyenne camp, and she owed them for teaching her how to make a life there. She owed them for taking her in when her husband divorced her and removed her belongings from his tepee.

Cassie saw the wide double doors to the cavalry stable gaping halfway down the barn and knew what she must do. She dragged Meggie inside and approached the young soldier on stable duty.

"Good morning, private," she greeted him.

The wiry, dark-haired private turned from where he had been forking hay into the nearest stall. She could see right off he knew who she was.

"M-M-M-Morning, ma'am," he managed to gasp. He was looking at her as if he expected her to pull out a knife and take his hair.

Cassie smiled grimly and forged ahead. "Captain Reynolds was telling us last night at supper that you had a new litter of kittens here at the barn."

The private's expression softened.

"Meggie would very much like to see the kittens."

"The kittens," he mumbled.

"Perhaps you could show them to her while I see about something at the commissary?"

"Oh, yes, please!" Meggie begged.

The private nodded. "An' they're as fine a batch of fee-lines as I ever seen. I'll be happy to show those kittens to Miss Meggie."

"Thank you," Cassie murmured. "I shouldn't be long."

With Meggie safely out of harm's way, Cassie ducked out of the barn and hurried over to where Runs Like a Doe was waiting.

"I would hardly have known you, Sweet Grass Woman," the Indian woman greeted her, speaking in Cheyenne. "You are much changed in these last weeks."

Knowing there was danger in being seen together, Cassie caught the woman's arm and dragged her into the shadows.

"Why have you come?" she asked urgently.

"I come for Blue Flower," Runs Like a Doe answered. "I have ridden two sleeps to ask your help."

"What is it Blue Flower needs of me?" Cassie asked, already knowing she could not refuse.

Runs Like a Doe's face was lined with worry. "She has birthed a fine strong boy but has no milk. Every woman in our band has weaned her children, so there is no one who can nourish him. Though Blue Flower tries to give him what he needs, he grows weaker every day. Soon he will die if we cannot find a way to feed him."

Cassie's heart went out to Blue Flower. She had lost her only daughter at Sand Creek more than two years before, and her pregnancy had helped her recover from the loss. How deeply her friend would grieve if this child died.

"Why hasn't Sharp Knife killed a mother antelope for her milk or stolen a cow?" Cassie asked. "Why have you not given Blue Flower a brew of white baneberry leaves to increase the flow of her milk?"

"If we had not tried those things, would I have come all this way? They say that the sutlers at the forts have a kind of milk that comes in cans."

Cassie nodded, remembering the tin can of milk Sally had bought the night Drew came to dinner.

"Can you buy the white man's milk?" When Cassie nodded, the woman went on. "If you do, then Blue Flower's child will live."

What Runs Like a Doe wanted seemed simple enough. Cassie would get the milk and Runs Like a Doe would take it back to the Cheyenne village. No one need know what she had done.

"Do you have money?" Cassandra asked. "These white sutlers take money for their goods."

The Indian woman took a handful of coins from a pouch at her waist. "Is this enough?" she asked.

"I do not know," Cassie answered. "I will buy as much milk as I can with it."

Cassie's mouth went dry as she approached the sutler's trading post. She could feel Jessup's eyes on her the moment she stepped inside. She made a circuit of the big, dim room, taking note of the large stock of milk that stood on the shelves behind the counter. The milk must be expensive if Jessup put it there.

"Is there something you want?" the sutler asked, sauntering toward her.

Cassandra swallowed down her dislike and spilled the handful of coins on the counter. "I want as many cans of milk as I can get with this."

Jessup counted the money and set three cans of milk beside the coins.

"Is that all I get for this?" Cassie asked in dismay.

"Condensed milk is damned expensive."

"How much is it exactly?"

"It's not cheap back in the States," he began, "and after having someone cart it all this way, I don't think a dollar a can is too much to ask."

A dollar a can! Even Cassie realized how outrageous that was. She also knew that three cans of milk were not enough to keep Blue Flower's baby alive.

"How many more cans do you have?" she asked him.

"More than you can afford to buy," he taunted. "Unless you mean to steal them."

Heat burned in her cheeks, but Cassie ignored it. "How many more cans of milk do you have?"

He turned to look. "Fifteen."

If Blue Flower were careful, she could make eighteen cans of milk last long enough to give her son a start in life.

"I will take-them all."

A sneer lifted one corner of Jessup's mouth. "And just what do you intend to do with all these cans of milk, Mrs. Reynolds?"

Cassie stood her ground. "I don't know that that's any of your concern, Mr. Jessup."

"I s'pose it's not," he answered. "What does concern me is how you mean to pay for them."

Cassie swallowed hard. She had $2.29 in the change purse Drew had given her. It was all she'd need, he'd told her, to see to their household expenses until the end of the month. She fumbled the money out of the purse.

"You're forty cents shy of six cans of milk." Jessup was enjoying the hint of desperation he sensed in her.

What was a child's life worth? Cassie found herself wondering.

Anything, came the answer. Anything.

She looked down at her wedding ring. It was all she could offer in payment—the ring or herself. She shuddered at the thought of what it would be like to lie beneath this horrible man.

Then Sally McGarity's remarkable phrase flashed through her head. "Just put them on my husband's account." Cassie said. It was how Sally had paid for her goods that first day, the day Cassie had stolen the scissors.

Jessup glared at her. "You sure about that?"

Cassie stood firm though she was quaking inside. "Do you want to sell the milk or don't you?"

Jessup nodded and made a notation in a big, clothbound book. "You want this in a box?"

"A burlap sack will do just as well."

The cans weighed a good deal more than Cassie expected. It took both hands to carry the bag, and the cans kept banging her shins as she hobbled toward where Runs Like a Doe was waiting.

"You got them!" she exclaimed.

Cassie nodded and handed the Indian woman the bag. "Add water to the milk to make it last," she cautioned.

Runs Like a Doe reached across and grasped Cassandra's hand. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, one that spoke of deep gratitude and abiding trust.

Cassie clasped the woman's fingers in her own, missing the friendship she'd shared with her and her younger sister.

"Take care as you ride out," Cassie admonished. "Now that the weather is better the soldiers are spoiling for a fight."

"It is the same in Standing Pine's camp. There will be blood on the earth when the summer comes," Runs Like a Doe whispered and turned toward the scattering of tepees to the west of the fort.

Cassie made her way back to the cavalry stables, where she found Meggie knee-deep in kittens. She stood watching the child and wondering how she would explain buying all those cans of milk when the sutler's bill came due.

* * *

"Meggie!" Cassie called out as she hauled the buckets of water up the riverbank. Behind her the Platte glistened like quicksilver, a soft, dawn-pink mist rising off the water, but Cassie couldn't stop to watch it. She had to be back to the cabin in time to fix Drew breakfast before first drill. "Meggie, do come on!" she shouted again.

The little girl came running, a bouquet of buttercups clutched in her grubby, mud-stained hands. "Look, Cassie!" Meggie crowed. "I picked them myself."

After weeks of unsettled weather, spring had finally gained a toehold on the prairie. The wind still gusted out of the west, but now there was the scent of earth in it, of life and growing things. Rains boiled over the plains and blew away. Beneath the wide, wild sky the grass was greening.

Cassie knew what that meant. All the women did. The winter truce was over. The men were preparing for war.

When Cassie pushed through the door to the cabin a few minutes later, she found Drew standing in the middle of the kitchen. "There's no hot water for shaving," he complained.

"I just came back from the river. I'll put some on to boil."

The corners of Drew's mouth tightened beneath his mustache. "I'm not sure I can wait. And why would you go all the way to the river when there's bound to be water in the water wagon?"

"She says that water's dead," Meggie answered helpfully, plopping the mangled wildflowers on the table.

"Dead?" Drew echoed. "What nonsense is that?"

Cassie pretended she didn't hear him and hastily poured water into a small pot hanging over the fire.

"Water that stands all night is dead," Meggie continued, repeating the explanation Cassie had given her weeks before when they'd begun the dawn trips to the river.

"Cassie?"

"I'll have hot water for you shortly," she promised.

"Cassie?" Drew persisted. "Is 'dead water' some kind of redskin foolishness?"

Cassie stood without meeting his eyes. Over the years she had learned that subservience sometimes deflected questions she did not want to answer.

"Cassie?"

She could hear the disapproval in his tone, the conviction that he was justified in questioning her.

"The Cheyenne start every day by dumping out the old water and getting fresh," she explained as simply as she could. "It's something I got used to doing."

"And you explained that to Meggie with some Indian fable?"

"I suppose I did," she conceded.

"Well then, let me make this clear to you," he blustered, standing over her. "I won't have my daughter exposed to heathen ways. Don't tell her any more stories. Don't expose her to any more Indian superstitions. And I won't have you practicing them either.

"You said you wanted a place to belong. I married you to give you that. The very least I can expect is for you to act like an officer's wife. Giving up your Indian ways is the start of that."

As if giving up my Indian ways will make a difference, Cassie thought begrudgingly. The tattoo on her cheek prevented anyone from seeing who she was or how she behaved. Even Drew.

"Do you understand me, Cassie?" he demanded, still towering over her. "I'll hear no more about water going dead overnight."

When she inclined her head in assent, he wheeled and went off to finish dressing.

"I didn't think he'd get so mad about it," Meggie whispered when he was gone.

"You had no way of knowing," Cassie consoled her. "And he's right. I should never have told you that story."

"But I like your stories. Knowing about the Indians keeps me from being afraid when I see them here at the fort," Meggie admitted after a moment.

Cassie sighed. "Be that as it may, I don't think I'll be telling you stories anymore."

Once the water over the fire began to steam, she filled Drew's china shaving basin and took it into the bedroom.

While Meggie finished breakfast, Cassie set about her tasks for the day. Someone—and she had a very good idea who—had been leaving her fresh game. There had been pigeons last week and a clutch of quail the week before. This morning two plump rabbits were on the step when she went outside. Taking time to skin them was what had made her late getting down to the river. Now she added salt to one of the buckets and put the rabbits in to soak.

"What happened to their hair?" Meggie asked.

"I skinned them."

"Skinned them how?"

Cassie didn't think Drew would like her regaling Meggie with the details. "Well," she said, "I imagine it's a little bit like the way a man squirms out of his knitted underclothes."

Meggie hooted with laughter, then clamped her hands over her mouth as Drew came back.

"I haven't time for breakfast," he told Cassandra just as reveille sounded. "And tonight I'm holding extra drill. This new group of recruits is as green as grass. Half of them have never sat a horse, and some barely know one end of a rifle from the other. We have to work them hard so they'll be ready when our orders come."

She heard the eagerness in Drew's voice. He wanted to fight. He needed the riding and the shooting and the death to avenge their families' massacre. She just couldn't help wondering if once he'd had his chance to kill a few Indians his need would ease, or if the hatred had already bitten too deep.

Cassie slid another slice of corn bread onto Meggie's plate. "Then you won't be home for dinner?" she asked him.

When he shook his head, she continued. "I want you to know that I'm sorry about the water."

"I shouldn't have to remind you that you're Cassandra Reynolds now, not some Indian squaw." He left with the ring of bootheels and the slam of the front door.

Cassandra stared after him and sighed. Somehow the Cheyenne way of thinking had become ingrained in her. The basic beliefs, the innate practicality, the reverence for nature were as much a part of her as her heartbeat or her breathing. Hunter Jalbert had tried to tell her how much she'd changed, but she'd refused to believe him. What she had to find was a way to put that life behind her and become the woman Drew needed her to be.

After she washed the breakfast dishes, Cassie went in to the bedroom and pulled her small, battered trunk from beneath the bed. Inside were her belongings, her beaded blanket, her leggings, and her moccasins. Her jewelry and her tools. Her precious herb and medicine bundles.

Drawn by the creak of the trunk lid, Meggie appeared at the foot of the bed.

"What are those?" the girl asked, staring at the leather-wrapped bundle Cassie had taken from inside the trunk.

"This," Cassie said, picking out an angled buffalo bone, "is a scraper. This one's a flesher." She held up an angled tool with a metal blade. "And these are some pegs and an awl."

"What are they for?"

"Well, I thought I would tan those two rabbit skins," Cassie told her, "and make you a pair of slippers."

"You're going to make me slippers from real rabbits? The hopping kind?"

Cassie laughed. "I think all rabbits hop."

Meggie threw her arms around Cassie's neck. Cassandra hugged her back, liking the weight and warmth of that solid young body in her arms.

It's almost as if she's mine, almost as if she belongs to me, Cassie found herself thinking. But the little girl wasn't hers. She was Drew's—Drew, who didn't want the responsibility of a daughter. Drew, who had long ago pledged himself to something else entirely.

Cassie frowned at the irony as Meggie squirmed away.

"It will be a while before the slippers are finished. First I have to prepare the skins. Then I'll cut the pattern—"

"Can I help?"

"If you like," Cassie answered, ready to close the lid of the trunk. But before she could, Meggie reached inside and fingered the object lying on top of Cassie's beaded blanket.

"Is this the doll you made for me?"

Cassie nodded, watching the little girl, wondering what she was thinking. "Would you like to hold her?"

Meggie hesitated then took the doll. She ran her fingers over its face and hair. "I remember that Mama's hair was the same color as this," she said. "And I always liked when she wore this dress, because it had a lot of red in it."

Cassie waited, a strange, breathless heat collecting in her chest.

"Papa said Mama is an angel now, that she comes and watches me while I sleep," Meggie confided. "Do you think that's true?"

"If your papa says it is."

"Cassie?" Meggie's voice shook a little. "I can't remember my mama's face. How will I know when she comes to me?"

Cassie didn't know much about angels, but she was learning more about being a mother every day.

"Oh, Meggie," she breathed, drawing the little girl into her lap. "Mothers always know their babies, and their babies know them."

"How do they know?"

"They know it with their hearts," she said, pressing one hand against Meggie's chest. "There's a special kind of love between mothers and daughters that isn't like anything else."

Meggie stared up at her. "Papa said your mother died when you were little. Is that how you got to know about the special love?" she asked in a whisper.

Cassie closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears, remembering her mother, feeling a bond with the woman who'd given her life. "That is exactly how I know," Cassie whispered back. "Do you think," she continued after a moment, "that it would help you remember your mama if you kept the doll?"

Meggie hesitated, then nodded her head. "I think it might."

"Very well, then," Cassie said, closing the lid and pushing the trunk back under the bed. "Bring your dolly along. We need to start work on those rabbit skins."

Cassie was on her knees scraping the second rabbit skin when Lila Wilcox happened by carrying two huge baskets of clothes.

"Seems like I just get one load of clean clothes delivered, and there's an even bigger pile of dirty ones waiting to be washed," she complained, setting the baskets aside and lowering herself onto Drew's back step. "And can they pay me? No! There's not a soul in this whole damn fort with so much as a penny to bless him. If the paymaster don't come soon, there'll be a whole year of credit on everyone's books!"

"It's the quartermaster's wagons I'm waiting on," Cassie confessed. "Drew keeps promising that there will be more than salt pork and cornmeal to eat once they get here."

The older woman huffed. "Looks like you got some rabbits, anyway."

"Someone left them on the step this morning."

"Oh?" Lila angled. "Any idea who?"

Cassie lowered her eyes. It was not unusual for the officers' ladies to have admirers, but she'd heard favors generally ran to flowers and poetry. She guessed she just wasn't the kind of woman who inspired verse.

When she didn't answer, Lila turned her attention to what Cassie was doing. When she realized what it was, she gave a snort of derision and shook her head. "You just can't let a body forget how you got here, can you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Not one wife here at the fort would touch a dead rabbit, much less skin the critter," Lila admonished her.

With a huff of frustration, Cassie realized that Lila was right. And just this morning she'd been vowing to try harder to fit into her wifely role.

"As if anyone could forget where I came from," Cassie challenged, "once they got a look at my face."

"Some of us might be able to."

Cassandra glanced up at Lila in surprise.

"Stopping by every day or so like I've been doing," Lila continued, "I've got so what I see is how you are with that little girl. I see that you take time with her, that you play with her and teach her things. It makes me look at what you are down deep. And now that I can do that, the outside just don't matter so much."

Cassie didn't know what to say to her. She hadn't dared to hope that what Lila said was possible.

Certainly Drew hadn't learned to look past the tattoo. He blew out the light when they made love. He closed his eyes when he kissed her so he could pretend she was the Cassie he'd loved nine years ago. Knowing that made her want to rage and weep and shake him.

Yet Lila had given her hope that Drew might learn to see her as she was. At least she had to believe that such a thing was possible.

When Cassie didn't respond, Lila gestured to where Meggie was serving "tea" and "cakes" to her dolly.

"Where'd she get the doll?"

Cassie sat back on her heels and glanced across to where Meggie was playing. "She saw it with my things and asked for her. Said she couldn't remember her mother's face, that she thought it would help."

"Do you remember yours?" Lila asked after a moment.

"My mother?" Cassie asked, calling up the image of Claire Morgan, seeing her standing over the hearth of their house in Kentucky. "Of course I remember my mother, but I was a whole lot older than Meggie was when I lost her."

Lila heaved a gusty sigh. "Sometimes it's a curse to remember the dead. When I look at Josh, all I can see is him roughhousing with his brothers."

"I didn't know you'd had other children," Cassie said, thinking of the big, rawboned corporal who served in Noonan's infantry.

"I lost three of my boys in the war—James at the first Bull Run, Richard at Chancellorsville, and Emmett at Petersburg."

Cassie sensed the depth of Lila's pain, as if the most vital reason for living had been ripped away. Cass understood in a way she might not have mere weeks before. She understood because of Meggie, and the realization frightened her.

Lila pushed to her feet as if she were irritated with herself for remembering. "I guess I'm not likely to get these shirts and socks and drawers dried before nightfall if I don't get at it."

"Oh, wait," Cassie said, springing to her feet and rushing into the house. When she came back she was carrying what looked like a small, dark crock of grease.

"What is that?" Lila asked.

"It's an ointment for your hands. I noticed the last time you came how red they were."

Lila took the crock and sniffed it. "What's in here?"

"Well, there's bear grease and beebalm, beardstongue and blanket flower—"

"Will it work?"

"I use it myself sometimes."

Lila thought that over. "So you know about herbs?"

Cassie nodded. "Most Indian women do since they don't have patent medicines to rely on."

"Do you know anything that can help an aching back?" Lila asked. "Will was helping the blacksmith shoe horses yesterday, and by nightfall he could hardly move."

"I'll brew something up and send it over with Meggie."

"Thank you," Lila said, hefting the baskets again.

"I'm glad I could help."

Lila nodded. "And you think on what I said now, girl, about giving folks a chance to look beyond the mark on your face. A fool's as blind as those who cannot see."

Cassie watched Lila disappear toward soapsuds row and knew that here at Fort Carr she'd found at least one true friend.

* * *

Cassandra heard the front door slam and looked up from the dandelion greens she was slicing just as Drew loomed in the kitchen doorway. His eyes were blazing, and his face was like fire. He crossed the room in two long strides and waved a paper in Cassie's face.

"What in the name of God were you thinking?" he thundered.

Meggie looked up from where she was rocking her dolly to sleep in her arms.

"Whatever are you talking about?" Cassie asked, moving to where Meggie was sitting, lifting the little girl to her feet, and propelling her out the open door. No child should be privy to her parents' arguments. Whatever had Drew so upset was between the two of them.

Once Meggie was safely outside, Drew shoved the paper into Cassie's hands. "Do you know what this is?" he demanded.

Cassie stared at the words and numbers on the page. Though her ability to read English was coming back, she couldn't make much sense of them.

"It's the sutler's bill—a list of the things that have been charged to my account since the first of the year."

Cassie's stomach lurched.

"The way this works is before the paymaster gives any of us our wages, the sutler collects his due. Do you have any idea how much Tyler Jessup took out of my pay?"

Cassie stared at the figure at the bottom of the column, her heart in her throat.

"One hundred and thirty seven dollars," Drew answered for her. "Nearly half of what I made in four months' time. I expected the bill to be high. I told you to buy what you needed to make some clothes. I didn't want you going around in someone's castoffs. And because the commissary wagons didn't come until last week, we bought more from the sutler than we might have ordinarily. But there's this"—he pointed to an item two thirds of the way down the page—"thirteen cans of condensed milk. When I first saw the notation I thought it was a mistake, so I went to check with Tyler Jessup. And do you know what he told me?"

Cassie knew.

"He said you bought the milk, eighteen cans in all, and carted it off in a burlap sack."

There was no denying what she'd done.

"Now, Cassie," Drew asked with exaggerated patience, "since I've already paid for all that milk, I'd like to know what you did with it."

Cassie had known all along she'd have to own up to this. She just figured she'd have some warning, some time to make up a story Drew would believe. She knew how he'd respond to the truth.

Deliberately she bowed her head. While she was with the Kiowa and Cheyenne, she'd learned to subjugate herself, to acknowledge her mistake by silence and servitude. It was one way she'd survived, and it only cost her pride.

But Drew wasn't Little Otter, who lived to see Cassandra humiliated. He wasn't Gray Falcon, who accepted her submissiveness as license for punishment. Drew stood over her waiting for an answer.

At length Cassie dared to raise her head. A child was alive because of her, and she refused to disavow what she'd done to save it.

"A woman I knew, a Cheyenne woman, came to me and asked for help," she began, explaining as simply as she could. "Her sister's child was dying for want of milk. I bought the cans so the baby would live."

She heard Drew suck in his breath.

"Let me understand this." His voice was so low and filled with fury that Cassie wished he were shouting. "You spent my money on milk so some redskin baby could live? You saved his life so that in a few years' time he can ride out in battle against me?"

Cassie knew he spoke the truth. There were years of fighting ahead, and the child she'd done her best to save would undoubtedly become a warrior.

Drew slammed his fist on the table beside her. "Damn it, Cassie, answer me!"

Heat built inside her, filling her chest, making her ears ring and fingers tingle, it had been nine long years since she had dared to feel either anger or pride. She'd spent those years bowing her head and biting her lip, suppressing her outrage, and fighting down her indignation. Suddenly those feelings raced through her blood like a dose of spirits.

"No baby will ever die if it is in my power to save it!" she vowed in a voice that shook with determination. "No white baby nor Indian baby, either."

"Well, you'd damn well better not let me catch you helping the Indians or their babies again. I came here to kill the redskins, not to coddle them."

Cassie stood her ground, her head high and her jaw clenched, holding tight to her convictions in the face of his anger.

"Do you understand me, Cassie?" Drew bellowed.

Before she could draw breath to answer, someone knocked on their front door.

Both of them clung to the moment, needing the question resolved between them. The silence thickened.

The knocking came again, louder and more insistent.

"Oh, Christ!" Drew spit, and spun away.

Weak at the knees, Cassie sank down on the bench beside the table. Over the drumming of her pulse, she could hear the conversation going on at the front door.

"Begging your pardon, sir," someone was saying. "Major McGarrity has asked me to inform you that the Sioux chief, Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse, has come into the fort. There's to be a dinner in his honor at seven o'clock."

"A dinner?" Drew echoed. "To honor some Sioux chief?"

"Yes, sir. At the headquarters building, sir. And the major says that the ladies are invited, too."

"Are they now?" Cassie could hear the sarcasm in Drew's tone. They'd been cut off from fort society all these weeks.

"Shall I tell the major that you and Mrs. Reynolds will attend?"

"Indeed we will," Drew answered, as if he had a choice.

Cassie heard the door bang closed, and a moment later Drew came bowling into the kitchen. "Who in hell is this Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse?"

"He's peace chief for the Sioux," Cassie answered. "He has an encampment up on the Powder River. There are many warriors at his command if he should choose to ride to war with Red Cloud, but so far he has steered a moderate course."

"And why would he come here?" Drew asked, giving voice to the very question Cassie herself was asking.

She glanced up at him and shrugged. "I don't know. He could have skins to trade, or prisoners."

"Where would they get prisoners?"

"Where did they get me?"

Drew nodded. "Well, it's safe to assume he wants something."

He hesitated a moment, staring into space, and then looked down at her. "It's too late to do anything about the milk, but this can never happen again. If we were at war, what you've done would be construed as giving aid to the enemy. You could be hanged for that, and I'd be court-martialed. Is that what you want?"

Cassie shook her head.

"Then you must promise not to help the Indians, no matter what." When she said nothing, Drew went on. "This is important, Cassie. Your actions could hurt everyone at the fort. They could compromise my position here."

Cassie inclined her head in acknowledgment. She understood the consequences of what she'd done. What's more, she loved this man. She loved his daughter, too. She didn't want to see either of them hurt.

It wasn't hard to speak the words when she had so much at stake. "I promise," she said, and wanted with all her heart for the vow to be true.