Holt's Gamble (40 page)

From where he stood, he could see the boy, clad now in deerskin leggings and shirt, nose to nose with a handsomely proportioned pinto gelding. The boy made soothing noises with his tongue and spoke to the horse in soft tones. Behind his back, he gripped a handful of purple clover. Smelling the sweet stuff, the pinto nudged him for it, shoving the boy backward, and again, until the boy relented with a laugh and fed it to him.

"He's a fine-looking horse, Little Fox," Clay observed, speaking in Cheyenne.

The boy jumped at the sound of Clay's voice and turned to face him, glaring at the intrusion.

"Is he yours?" Clay asked, approaching the pair. The boy had washed the grime from his face, leaving behind the fair but tanned skin of his Scottish ancestry. His dark hair was tied back from his face with a leather thong. The resemblance to Kierin, now that Clay had a good look at him, was astonishing.

The boy nodded silently and turned back to his pony, scratching it absently behind its ears. The pinto snorted a steamy breath and blinked at Clay.

"It looks like you're friends already," Clay said.
"E-pe- va?e.
That is good. Have you ridden him yet?"

The boy nodded and looked at him obliquely. "He's faster than all the others," he boasted.

The horse seemed a safe subject, Clay thought. "A man needs a fast horse."

The youth's proud green eyes darted up to Clay's blue ones. Watching. Waiting. Clay reached out and smoothed a hand over the animal's well-muscled hindquarters. The boy didn't succeed in hiding his surprise when the pony didn't skitter away, but stood enjoying Clay's touch.

"You speak Cheyenne well for being here such a short time, Matthew." This time his words were spoken in English. Clay saw the boy's Adam's apple bob in his throat.

"H-how do you know my name?" He spoke in his native tongue now, too.

"I know a lot more about you than you think."

Matthew moved so the horse stood between them. "Who are you?"

"A friend."

"I don't know you."

"Your sister does."

Matthew's eyes flew open and a rush of memories clouded them. "M-my sister?"

Clay smiled. "She's been looking for you for a long time."

His expression sank again into mistrust. "I don't believe you. Why should I believe you? She's—"

"Kierin's told me all about you. About how you love the stars, and how you used to sit on your roof poring over astronomy charts..." This peaked the boy's interest. "About how she helped raise you when your mother died. And how it broke her heart when your father took you West without her..."

Matthew peered intently at the Pinto's soft coat, emotion riding the rims of his eyes. "She doesn't even know—"

"What happened to you? No, you're right. She doesn't. They told her you were killed in that attack in the South Pass."

Matthew's doubtful eyes met his again. "Then how did you-?"

"Blind luck," he answered. "I'm here on other business. Many Horses is an old friend of mine. So is his son, Lame Fox."

The boy hesitated. "I've heard the story of how a white man saved him from a grizzly. Was that... you?"

"Knowing the Cheyenne, I'm sure the story's grown some in the telling," he answered with a soft laugh.

Wide-eyed, Matthew stared at him with new respect. If this was Sacred Bear Killer, perhaps he could trust him after all. Didn't his Cheyenne uncle speak of this man like a brother?

"Still have your doubts?" Clay undid the locket around his neck and handed it to the boy. "Maybe this will convince you."

Matthew's mouth dropped open. "How did you get this? M-my father sold it at—"

"Fort Kearny," Clay finished. "That's where we found it. Kierin gave it to me to carry when I left her a few days ago."

Questions spun around in Matthew's head like a whirlwind as he pried open the locket. Where was his sister now? How did this man know her? What did he want of him? He held his tongue, knowing that answers to all those things would come in time. That was what Buffalo Wallow Woman had taught him.

Beside his picture, inside the gold locket, was Kierin's. Tears burned the backs of his eyes, but he blinked them back. He'd worked too hard this year to become a man to let it all fall apart now. "If I believe you," he asked, "what then?"

"Then," Clay answered with a smile, "we need to talk."

Matthew shared the cook fire that night with Many Horses, Corn Woman, and Clay. Buffalo Wallow Woman and her husband, Gray Wolf, joined them for a feast of roast rabbit and fragrant soup. Buffalo Wallow Woman made fry bread and brought fresh, tart huckleberries for desert. It was the best food Clay had in days and he ate ravenously.

Matthew was quiet as was his adoptive mother, Buffalo Wallow. Clay had put his proposition to them both. He wanted to take Matthew back to his sister. It was to be Matthew's decision and he could see it would be a difficult one.

There was no question, by the look he saw in the boy's eyes when he spoke of Kierin, that he loved and missed her. But, he'd become attached to Buffalo Wallow and her husband, and had carved a niche for himself here among the Northern Cheyenne. It was a hard decision, and Clay said he would give him the night to think about it.

Morning mist still shrouded the camp when Clay stepped out of the warm confines of Many Horses' lodge the next morning, carrying a towel from his saddlebags and a bar of brown soap. He needed a bath after a week on the trail and preferred to do it privately.

The camp was still silent. Asleep. A few dogs stirred from their nightly repose, sniffing his heels, then wandered away, satisfied he was not a threat.

When Clay reached the pond, he stripped his clothes off and, with a quick in-drawn breath, waded into the frigid water. He ducked beneath the surface, every nerve alive as the cold water sluiced past his body. He hadn't slept much last night and his body felt the lack. Matthew's decision preyed heavily upon him. If the boy decided to return to Kierin, it meant Clay would have to give up the notion of returning to Independence for now. How ironic, that a boy could hold so much power over his life.

But did he? Clay wondered as he surfaced. Perhaps that was what Many Horses had meant last night when he'd reminded Clay that
Ma?heo?o,
the All Father, had his own plans for us while we were busy making our own. Was he talking about Fate? Clay had never been a believer in the word but he was beginning to doubt his own convictions.

What were the odds against finding Matthew here among his friends? What were the odds that Matthew had survived that attack at all? Astronomical, he supposed.

He smiled, imagining Kierin's reaction when he returned with her brother. He smiled just thinking about seeing her face again. A fresh pang of loneliness constricted his throat and he dove beneath the water again, pushing the feeling back.

He surfaced to the sight of Matthew, squatting near the bank of the pond watching him. Silently, the boy proffered the bar of brown soap to him.

"Pave-vooná?o,"
Clay said. Good morning.

"Morning," Matthew answered with a tentative smile.

It was good to see the grim look of suspicion gone from his eyes, Clay thought, taking the soap from him. "You're up early."

"I didn't sleep much," the boy admitted.

"Funny, neither did I."

Matthew swallowed hard. "You said I could tell you my decision this morning."

Clay waited.

"I've decided to go back."

Clay ran a wet hand down his face. "It was a man's decision, Matthew, any way you slice it. I know it wasn't easy for you to make it. But I know, from personal experience, you'll always have another home here if you want it. To the Cheyenne, you're family now. Time won't change that."

"Gray Wolf said the same thing to me." Matthew tipped his head down, his freckles more evident in the morning light. "Buffalo Wallow cried when I told her." He rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. "When will we go?"

He'd planned on spending a week or so with the Cheyenne to rest up before going on. Now, that time could only work against them. "The sooner the better. Kierin's not getting any closer to us here. We should be able to catch up with the train in a couple of weeks on horseback."

Matthew gave a curt nod and stood, unfurling his lean, coltish legs. "I'll get my things together then. Well leave today."

As he watched Matthew walk away, Clay decided he wouldn't regret spending the next two weeks getting to know the boy. Matthew reminded him a little of himself—the boy he'd been, years ago. He smiled at the bittersweet memory of his own youth.

Clay knew that the boy who'd become Little Fox would live on in Matthew even after he'd left the Cheyenne and what he'd learned here would hold him in good stead for the rest of his life.

He'd forgotten the water's chill until a shiver raced down his back and he ducked down under the water again to finish his bath. It was no use wondering what he'd do after he saw Matthew safely to Kierin. He'd learned a long time ago to do what was in front of him. Right now, that was getting Matthew home. After that? Perhaps, he sighed, the same force that seemed to be guiding his life now would lead his footsteps again.

Buffalo Wallow Woman and Corn Woman together packed enough food to last weeks and Clay carefully stowed it beneath the duck covering on his pack mule. Matthew had donned his best deer-hide shirt and leggings for his departure. The shirt was intricately quilled, a gift, Clay guessed, from Buffalo Wallow Woman.

At his side was a finely beaded sheath with a large bone-handled knife. With his long hair held back with a strip of tanned leather, Matthew looked every bit the part of the Cheyenne he'd become.

"Në-sta-vä-hóse-vóomatse,"
the boy told Buffalo Wallow Woman and Gray Wolf. "I'll see you again." Corn Woman's sister embraced the boy, holding back her own tears.

When they parted, Gray Wolf pressed a small, fur-wrapped bundle into Matthew's hand. "Do not forget what I have taught you, Little Fox," he said. "May the All Father guide your path."

Matthew swallowed hard and nodded, squeezing the medicine bundle in his hand. "Good-bye, Gray Wolf. I will not forget you."

Clay said his farewells to Many Horses and Corn Woman and mounted Taeva. Matthew swung up on the back of his steady Pinto and glanced at Clay.

"Ready, boy?"

Silently, Matthew nodded. Without looking back, he nudged his pony forward with the touch of his moccasined-heels. Clay did the same and together, with the sun on their backs, they galloped out of the village of their brothers, the Northern Cheyenne.

* * *

"What do you mean she's
gone?"
Clay exploded, sending Jacob stumbling back a step. With nearly two weeks of grueling riding behind them, Clay was in no mood for guessing games. Blind anger overrode the panic welling in Clay's chest on hearing the bombshell Jacob had just dropped in his lap. "Where the hell is she?"

"I be
tryin'
to tell you..." Jacob's expression revealed what it had cost him to tell Clay this news. "She left more'n a week ago."

"Where? Where'd she go?"

Dove moved protectively toward her man. Jacob's arm went around her and his uneasy glance flicked back and forth between the boy and Clay. "To California... wid her pa."

"Her
pa?"
came Matthew and Clay's stunned echo.

Clay shook his head with disbelief. "What the hell—? I thought he was killed in the massacre." He glanced at Matthew, the other unexpected survivor, whose worried expression now rivaled his own.

Matthew had told him as much as he could remember about the massacre—which wasn't a lot. He'd been in shock and most of it remained simply a shadowy nightmare for him. But one thing was certain now, Clay thought. If Asa McKendry
had
lived through it somehow, he sure as hell hadn't bothered to go back to see if his son held, too.

"You're
sure
it was him?"

Jacob nodded reluctantly.

"Dammit." Clay whirled around and slammed his open palm against the side of the wagon. "Damn it to hell." He and Matthew had pushed hard for nearly two weeks to get back here. They'd damn near worn out their horses and themselves in the process. And she'd left him. Just like that.

Well, he thought, to be fair, he'd left her first.

He knew she'd been angry when he'd left. He thought she'd get over it once she thought about it rationally. Thought she'd see he'd had no other choice but to go. But he'd never expected something like this.

Jacob cleared his throat. "That ain't all of it, Clay?"

Clay turned on Jacob, an angry light burning behind his steely eyes. He gave a short, bitter laugh. "It's worse?"

"Well, it ain't what you be thinkin'. I tell you, she wouldn'a gone wid him at all, 'cept'n he told her Matthew be waitin' for her in San Francisco."

Clay's jaw dropped open. "He...
what?"

"I had a bad feelin' 'bout the whole thing," Jacob told him with a regretful frown. "I tried to tell her..."

Like a sail suddenly stripped of its wind, Clay slumped against the wagon with a groan. He stared out onto the sage-covered bottomland of the Raft River without really seeing it. What kind of a father—hell, what kind of man—manipulated his daughter with such blatant lies? And to what end? What could he want with her in San Francisco? He closed his eyes against the fearful hollow pounding of his heart.