door on hands and knees. She lay on the floor, pressed her cheek against the wood and tried to see through the crack between the door and floor.
It was too dark to see anything, but she knew that Joe was out there. She could not see him, but she sensed his presence.
Tonight, there was no escape.
She waited a few moments more, then she crawled back to the sleeping place, pulled off a covering and wrapped it around her shoulders.
So tired she could barely sit upright, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. The white woman had not stopped talking all day. The sound of her words was tormenting. She knew not what the woman was saying, and yet the longer Hattee-Hattee spoke, the more the words wormed their way into her mind.
Tonight, the woman had sat in a chair that rocked back and forth, holding a heavy block on her lap and chanting a tale of some kind. The words had flowed over Eyes-of-the-Sky, over and through her until she was forced to rub her fingers in circles against her temples.
It was all too much. Too raw and foreign and confusing.
Finally, when she could no longer fight her exhaustion, she stretched out on the wood beneath her. Every bone in her body ached. She longed to sleep, but her troubled mind would not quiet.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the Blue Coat raid all over again, smelled the blood, the smoke. Heard the screams.
Not again.
The confusing thought came out of nowhere.
Not again.
She stuffed her fist against her mouth, refused to cry. She refused to show weakness, even here, alone in the dark. She would not shame those who had gone before her.
She would bide her time. She would remain on alert and wary of these strange people with their gruff language and their big wooden lodge from which there was no escape.
Most of all, she would be on guard against the white man with bitterness in his eyes. She’d seen the same look on the faces of the Comanche warriors who had no hope for the future. Men who had lost all hope for the Nermernuh.
She feared him far more than she did the woman. He had nothing to lose.
She promised herself never to give in. As soon as she was stronger, she would try to run, to find who, if any, of her people were still alive.
But now she was so very weary. She closed her eyes on a sigh.
Daybreak was soon enough to start planning an escape.
Chapter Six
H attie rose early the next day and nearly stumbled over Joe asleep in the dim morning light of the hallway. She woke him gently, half-afraid he’d awaken with a start and grab his shotgun.
He was mumbling and grumbling his way to his own room when she knocked on Deborah’s door and then slipped inside the bedroom.
Deborah’s eyes were suspiciously red and swollen, as if she’d cried herself to sleep. It was the first and only sign of vulnerability and loss that was apparent.
Hattie noticed Joe didn’t look as if he’d fared much better. When he sat down at the breakfast table, there were dark shadows in the hollows beneath his eyes and he moved as if his back was stiff as a cedar plank.
Hattie was amazed at how the girl shadowed her all week. Deborah was complacent and willing to do whatever task she was shown though she’d yet to utter a word.
Those first few days, Joe didn’t trust the girl enough to do anything that involved straying too far from the house. He was convinced she would try to escape, but time wore on and Deborah continued to placidly follow Hattie around, silently doing her bidding.
Hattie knew it was better to let her hardheaded son come to terms with the situation in his own time, so she didn’t push. She waited him out and sure enough, a week after they had brought the girl home, he began to fall into his old routine and ventured farther from the house and barn.
They’d been hit by spring showers for the past two days, but he’d still ridden out to cull the Rocking e cattle from the commingled herds closest to home.
Driving in a few head at a time was a chore he could accomplish on his own, but time was near when he’d be forced to ride into Glory and contract a few extra hands to help out.
It was an expense Hattie knew he’d like to avoid, but a necessity. There was no way he could single-handedly round up all their cattle that spread across the open range.
While he was gone, she and Deborah worked side by side putting in the vegetable garden. It was a backbreaking chore, and yet it was another sign of spring that always filled Hattie with delight after a long winter inside.
Deborah never gave any sign that she understood, but Hattie spoke and gestured to her continuously as she taught the girl to move slowly down the paths between the furrows and flick precious seeds out from between her thumb and forefinger, depositing them into holes they’d bored into the dirt with thin sticks.
“This is one of the greatest gifts God has given me, outside of my Joe, that is,” Hattie told her. “And Orson and Mellie, rest their souls. I love digging my hands deep into the soil, feeling the richness of the earth. Out here, beneath the open sky, I like to pause and listen for God’s word as I work. As the Good Book says, ‘And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden.’”
Though Deborah never refused to work, there were times when Hattie would stand and stretch her back and legs, only to discover the girl staring off toward the horizon, her lovely features a study in sorrow.
In those poignant, silent moments, Hattie let her be and waited until Deborah turned to her work again. Hattie would offer up a prayer and ask God to look down upon the girl, to grant her swift healing and acceptance of this new life He’d given her.
The rain had run them out of the garden earlier this morning and now, inside the kitchen, Hattie worked at the sideboard, up to her elbows in bread dough. Her joints ached and she grew more and more tired as the day wore on. By the time she was mixing a double batch of dough in the huge crockery bowl, her head was pounding. She was punching the dough down when she heard Joe’s whistle. He was still a ways off, but letting her know she should run out and stand ready at the corral gate.
If she didn’t hurry, there was a risk of an ornery cow breaking away and trampling the newly seeded garden.
She worked the bread as fast as she could, knowing by the sound of the bawling cattle that Joe wasn’t that close yet.
Punch, knead, fold, press. She was working so fast she felt dizzy. She glanced over her shoulder at Deborah, who was sitting in a straight-back chair with a mixing bowl in her lap, busy creaming together butter, sugar and eggs for currant cakes.
Hattie thought she had plenty of time—until she heard Joe’s deep voice carry across the yard with greater urgency.
“Ma! The gate!” he hollered.
Another wave of dizziness hit her. She called over her shoulder, “Deborah!”
The girl immediately looked up at the sound of her name, stopped stirring and waited expectantly.
Thrilled, Hattie smiled. It was the first time Deborah had shown any response to her name. Usually all she did was mimic Hattie’s motions.
“The gate. Go open the gate.” Hattie nodded toward the door. Deborah had seen her open the gate and had stood back as Joe drove the cattle into the corral for two days now.
“Open the gate. Gate,” Hattie told her with greater urgency. “Joe’s back.”
By now Joe was yelling and whooping to beat the band. The bawling of the cattle intensified as they drew nearer to the corral.
Hattie held up her flour-coated hands and, like a general facing his troops, barked out the order. “Go open the gate!”
The