John Jacob Andrews followed his last customer outside. When the man climbed on his horse and rode down the river road, John Jacob stood on the narrow porch sniffing the air. It had finally stopped raining, and he breathed deep of the fresh, crisp air.
John Jacob was still getting used to this country; it was so different from the place he had left behind three months ago. Missouri was hot and humid by this time of the year, and got more so when summer came along. He hadn’t meant to settle in Wyoming. His plan was to travel to Montana. But there had been a fierce fight between a bunch of trappers and buffalo hunters the night he stopped in for a drink at the Grizzly Bear saloon here at the trading post. In the melee the owner of the place was shot and killed. The heir to the place was the owner’s nephew.
The young man was a spineless sort who hated the saloon and was afraid of the rough men who patronized the place. He knew that he would never be able to control them.
And that young man’s weakness is the reason I have a good-paying business now, John Jacob thought.
He had been like a tumbleweed all his life, blowing from one place to another as an itinerant teacher. He had grabbed at the chance to settle down when the young nephew offered to sell him the saloon at a ridiculously low price.
When he was asked if he thought he could handle the carousers who gathered there, he only laughed. He was an old wolf from Nebraska, rough and wild as an unbroken mustang. It was known in most parts that a man would do well to leave John Jacob Andrews alone.
The skin around his eyes crinkled in amusement. In the few weeks he’d owned the post, he had already demonstrated that to his customers, He was a big man, six foot tall and weighing close to two hundred pounds. Those who challenged him had ended with black eyes, cut lips, sometimes a broken nose and a few cracked ribs. Consequently, the almost constant brawling that had gone on before was slowly tapering off.
There were still fights, off and on, usually over one of the saloon girls. He didn’t allow the men to fight inside, to break up his tables and chairs. They could kill each other outside if they wanted to.
John Jacob yawned and stretched his powerful body. Rosie was waiting for him and it was time he got to bed. Four women had come with the business, and he could have his pick of them. Rosie, however, suited him. She was older than the others, and she realized that he was no spring chicken himself. She didn’t make any fancy demands of him.
He was ready to return inside and lock up for the night when he saw a horse coming slowly down the river road. Its rider was either a woman or a teenager. Whichever one, the rider was having a hard time staying in the saddle. He stepped off the porch just in time to catch the slender figure that slid out of the saddle. He held the woman against his chest as he climbed the two porch steps. When he stepped into the saloon and the light from a wall lamp fell on long, white-blond hair, his heart gave a lurch.
He was still standing beneath the light, staring down at Rachel’s face when Rosie entered the saloon from their living quarters.
“Where did she come from, John Jacob?” Rosie asked as she came close and looked down at Rachel. “She looks half dead.”
Rosie gave him a curious look when he muttered, “Oh, God, don’t say that.”
Rosie laid her hand on Rachel’s forehead. “She’s burning up with fever, John Jacob!” she exclaimed. “Let’s get her to bed and do what doctoring we can for her.”
“Yes, we must do that right away,” John Jacob said and started walking toward the door that led to their quarters behind the bar.
“Why are you taking her to our room?” Rosie asked then, but he made no response.
She was leery of breaking his purposeful stride and perplexed by the strange look on his face. He’s probably not thinking straight, she thought, making an excuse for his strange behavior. But she really didn’t believe it. There was something about the girl that had hit him hard.
When John Jacob laid Rachel down on his bed and Rosie had a close look at her, she understood better her lover’s strange reaction to the girl. Everyone in the mountains talked about Rachel Sutter’s beauty. Rosie had also heard that she was to marry that brute Homer Quade. Had he beaten her already? Had she run away from him?
Rosie decided that she’d best tell John the girl was a married woman. If he had any romantic notions about her, he’d better forget them. Otherwise, Homer Quade would hide behind a tree and shoot him dead.
As she followed John Jacob into their bedroom, she said, “I recognize the girl.”
“You did?” John Jacob straightened up from laying Rachel down. “Who is she?”
“She used to be Rachel Sutter. But I heard from one of the girls that she was to marry Homer Quade. I guess that makes her Rachel Quade.”
John Jacob shook his head. “It’s strange that she would be out alone on a night like this. You’d think she would be with him.”
“Maybe,” Rosie said. “Let’s take a look at her back.”
“Why should we do that?” John Jacob frowned.
“Homer Quade is noted for his brutal treatment of women,” Rosie began, then exclaimed, “Would you look at this!”
When John saw the bandages on Rachel’s back and the welts beneath them, he exclaimed hoarsely, “My lord, she’s been beaten! Could Homer Quade do this to his new bride?”
“He could and he did,” Rosie said, fire in her eyes. “She’s not the first woman he ever beat. And he would have especially enjoyed beating Rachel.”
“Why do you say that?” John pulled the blanket up over Rachel’s back.
“She once whacked him on the head with a tree branch when he tried to have his way with her.”
“Why in the world would she marry him, then?” John gently smoothed a hand over Rachel’s back.
“The folks on the mountain think that Taig Sutter made Rachel marry Homer.”
“What sort of man is Taig Sutter to force his daughter to marry such a man?” John Jacob asked in anger and disbelief.
“You see, Rachel is the only one of eight younguns to have that white-blond hair. Taig thinks she’s not his. He always treated the girl badly. He’d jump at the chance to be rid of her. He wouldn’t care if Homer beat her to death.”
John Jacob didn’t speak for a minute. He had gone strangely still. He said then, “That bastard is as guilty as Homer Quade.”
“Yes, he is, in a manner of speaking.”
“By God!” John Jacob hit the wall with his fist. “Those two men will answer to me.”
“What are you going to do with the girl?” Rosie asked. “Will you find some family to take her in? I’d hate to see her go back to either one of those men.”
“Don’t worry about that happening, Rosie,” John Jacob said, an angry glint in his eyes. “She’s staying right here with me. If either of those men come around, I’ll put a bullet through his heart.
“Right now I’m going down to the Indian village to talk to the medicine man. He’ll give me something that will perk Rachel right up.”
Rosie gave him a surprised look. “I never knew you were acquainted with that old redskin.”
“It’s been years since we saw each other, but our friendship will still be as strong as when I last saw him.”
John Jacob settled his hat on his head and, saying he wouldn’t be gone long, walked outside.
John Jacob loped his stallion over the well-trodden path leading to the Indian village where he had spent many pleasant hours when he was a teacher in a one-room mountain schoolhouse eighteen years ago. He thought back over those years.
Strangely, upon his arrival in the area to take up his first teaching job, it was a nearby tribe of Indians he’d initially become friends with. He had become especially close to a young brave called Yellow Feather.
The two young men hunted and fished and roamed the mountains together. Evenings were spent sitting around a large fire listening to the elders tell stories of their youth.
John Jacob smiled. Yellow Feather was in love with a pretty little maid. He had confided that when they were a couple years older, they would wed. John Jacob wondered if the two had married each other. He smiled again. He couldn’t picture his wild friend being a father.
A somberness came over John Jacob. That summer he had fallen in love himself.
Ida Hawkins was a lovely young woman, shy and sweet with curly black hair. She hadn’t been one of his students, though. She’d already had two years of schooling, and her parents thought that was enough book-learning for a girl. Especially since she would be getting married soon.
But Ida hadn’t cared for the thin, tobacco-chewing man she’d been promised to and didn’t want to marry him. Still, the parents kept on insisting. Ida’s grandmother favored John Jacob but the rest of her kin didn’t look on the schoolteacher as a suitable husband. He was a “furriner,” they claimed, with different ways from theirs.
John Jacob and Ida had been meeting secretly for months before they made love. They were so wrapped up in each other then, the days slid into weeks and months, and before they knew it, school was out. They spent the lazy, sunny days of summer in the mountains or walking along the river.
One day in August John Jacob received a letter offering him a teaching job in Nebraska, his home state. He and Ida had spent a tearful night together in her grandmother’s cabin. He had promised that as soon as he found a place for them to live, he would come back for her and they would marry.
He had honestly meant to come back for her. But the deaths of his parents that fall in Nebraska had delayed his return. When he’d finally come back to Tulane Ridge, his heart had been broken when he learned that Ida had married Taig Sutter.
He had drifted for years after that, teaching sometimes, gambling, sometimes working on ranches or at any job that turned up. He had been a solitary man, a drifter, with no more home than a tumbleweed until the day he drifted into Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
But all that changed tonight when he looked down on his daughter’s lovely face. Rachel didn’t look like him, but she was the image of his mother, her grandmother, dead now for eighteen years.
John Jacob might not be able to do anything for the woman he’d once loved, but he was determined to protect his daughter. Just then, a half-dozen rib-thin dogs came charging out of a stand of pines. His lips spread in a wide smile. In a matter of a few minutes he would see his old friend.
He pulled the stallion up in front of the largest tepee in the village, but he remained in the saddle. He would stay there until Yellow Feather opened the leather door flap and quieted the dogs.
It was but a short time before a stern masculine voice hushed the clamoring animals.
He has not changed much, John Jacob thought of his friend when Yellow Feather stepped outside. He had put on some weight, and there were streaks of gray in his long hair. Otherwise he was the same, even to the smile that lit up his black eyes.
“So, my brother, you have come back at last.” The big Indian moved forward to grasp the hand John Jacob held down to him.
“Yes, friend. But as I’m sure you know, not soon enough.”
Yellow Feather nodded solemnly as he released John Jacob’s hand. “The little white-haired one has had it hard, living with the Sutters, taking Taig’s abuse. He, like everyone else in the mountains, doesn’t believe the girl is his.”
John Jacob avoided Yellow Feather’s eye as he asked, “Who do they think the father is?”
Yellow Feather was silent for a moment; then with a trace of sorrow in his voice he answered, “Some have guessed the truth, that a young schoolteacher fathered the child when he was teaching in the mountain schoolhouse.”
John Jacob brought his gaze back to Yellow Feather. “How is Ida? Is she well?”
“What is your opinion of that, friend? You know what kind of young man Taig Sutter was. Time hasn’t softened him. Poor Ida has lived a life of hell, along with her firstborn. He works her like a horse, and she’s worn out from having a baby every year.”
John Jacob sighed deeply. He understood now why Ida had not been able to wait for him. She had needed a father for her baby. He had ruined a young girl’s life. He looked at Yellow Feather and asked, “Did you know that Rachel has married Homer Quade?”
“I know. I also know that Quade was shot and killed by an outraged husband a couple hours later.”
What else does Yellow Feather know? John Jacob wondered. It seemed he had a way of knowing about everything that happened in the area. John Jacob looked at his friend and asked gravely, “Do you know what happened to Rachel, then?”
Yellow Feather shook his head. “One of my braves saw the girl riding down from the mountain yesterday. He didn’t know where she was headed.”
“That’s why I’m here at this hour, Yellow Feather. Rachel is at my place, and she’s very ill. I’m afraid she has pneumonia. She has a very high fever and she’s wheezing. I’ve come to you for help, friend.”
“Let me get my blanket and we’ll go talk to the medicine man. He knows how to treat the lungs.”
When John Jacob left the medicine man’s lodge a half hour later, he carried with him two leather pouches. There was a large-sized one that held roots, barks and dried berries. In another pouch, much smaller, was a brownish powder. He’d told John Jacob that he was to make tea from each bag. The roots and berries would break up the congestion in Rachel’s lungs, and the ground powder would lower her fever.
John Jacob thanked the medicine man and said to Yellow Feather, “As soon as Rachel is better, I would like to go hunting with you again.”
The Indian nodded and said quietly, “Just like it used to be.”
When John Jacob reached the post and entered through the back door leading into the kitchen, he laid the bags on the table and hurried to where Rosie sat at Rachel’s head, sponging her forehead with cold water.
“She is no better,” Rosie said in answer to the question in John Jacob’s eyes. “She’s been talking a lot, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
“She is delirious from her fever. There are two bags on the kitchen table. I got them from the medicine man in Yellow Feather’s village. He said she should be feeling better tomorrow. I will sit with Rachel while you make the tea.”
“It won’t take me long,” Rosie said, relinquishing her seat to John Jacob. “I’ve had a kettle of water boiling ever since you left.”