After the Thunder Read online

  She put her hand lightly on Cotannah’s arm and pulled her toward the stairs. They hurried upward, their heels striking rapidly on the wide oak risers.

  “I have a surprise for you, too, packed in my trunk,” Cotannah said, “Cole and Miranda sent you a drawing of Joanna’s new foal. They spent all morning the day before we left the ranch sitting out in the pasture with their paper and pencils, one drawing the off side of the colt and one the near, ‘so Aunt Mimi can see the whole new baby horse.’”

  Emily’s eyes filled with big tears.

  “I still miss them so much,” she said, “I can’t wait until they meet Sophia.”

  She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

  “I’m not going to think about who isn’t here now, though,” she said resolutely. “I’m going to revel in the fact that you are here and in the look on your face when you see what has miraculously come to light at last.”

  “Emily! You’re too mysterious,” Cotannah cried as Emily took the steps even faster. “You have to tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ll see.”

  They reached the second floor, and Emily drew her across the brightly patterned carpet runner to a door standing open on the west side of the wide hall. She led her inside and into the middle of the large, square room, where she took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the mirrored dresser.

  “Look!”

  Emily pointed impatiently. There, on the stiffly starched white dresser scarf sat two tall combs of fancy cutout silver.

  Cotannah stared. They seemed to brighten, almost to dance, before her disbelieving eyes. A strange sensation ran up the back of her neck.

  Could it be? Could they really be the ones she’d heard about all her life?

  She took a step closer. Yes. The open design was that of the sunburst enclosing a star.

  Goose bumps broke out on her arms. For the last twenty years, ever since her mother died giving birth to her, Aunt Ancie had searched for this treasure.

  Deep, turbulent feelings stirred, where she’d locked them away in her soul. The old longings, the wordless yearnings to see her mother, to know the feel of her mother’s touch and the shape of her face, to hear the sound of her voice and smell the scent of her hair, the old need to look into her mother’s eyes and see a boundless love for her only daughter shining there, all the ancient, hopeless cravings that went all the way back to a time before she could really remember filled her heart like a river rising. She opened her mouth, but at first she couldn’t speak.

  Finally, in a whisper, she asked, “Are they Mama’s?”

  “Yes! Can you believe it? Polly Two-Roads has had them all these years, your mother had traded her the combs for a wagonload of corn and a team when your father was sick and couldn’t make a crop.”

  “But why … why now? Why didn’t she say she had them a long time ago? I would have bought them from her …”

  “Polly says you’re just now old enough to appreciate them. When she heard you were coming to visit us she brought them here for you herself although she’s so arthritic that she has to be lifted, sitting in a straight chair, in and out of the wagon.”

  “Aunt Ancie has searched endlessly for these. She asked all the neighbors and kin about them when Mama died, and she’s looked for them ever since.”

  “That’s what Polly said, too. She explained that Ancie’s always been too flighty for her own good, ever since they were girls together, so she never would have entrusted something as valuable as the combs to her. She was waiting to give them to you when you grew up.”

  “Ancie? Flighty?”

  They looked at each other through the tears that were welling up, beginning to flow down both their faces, and they laughed out loud.

  “Ancie?”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “That was the word Polly used for our strict, extremely particular Aunt Ancie. Flighty.”

  Cotannah took a step toward the dresser, then another.

  “This is like a dream.”

  “I knew it would be.”

  She touched one of the combs with the tips of her fingers. The silver was warm from the sunlight streaming in through the window, so warm she could pretend for one, flying instant that her mother had just laid them there.

  “I’m going to wear them.”

  “Wear them to dinner tonight,” Emily said, with a little catch in her voice. “They’ll be gorgeous against your black hair.”

  Cotannah touched the second comb.

  “I was here in the Nation two years ago. I was eighteen then. Didn’t Polly Two-Roads notice that I was grown up?”

  “She says no. She told me that she saw you at the election dance and she knew you were still a child. She says the Great Spirit tells her that now is the time in your life for the combs to come to you.”

  “Polly must be as opinionated and bossy as flighty Aunt Ancie,” Cotannah said, her voice breaking completely on the name of the aunt who had raised her.

  She scooped up the combs and held them clasped to her breast with both hands, her head bent over them.

  “I’m going to leave you alone now, ’Tannah,” Emily whispered. “Supper’s at six.”

  Cotannah nodded and stood without moving until she heard the door softly close. The minute Emily was gone, she turned and ran to the bed, threw herself across it and let the tears pour out of her while she cradled the combs in her hands.

  She wasn’t crying about being an orphan who never had known her mother or her father, though. She wasn’t even going to think about that.

  No, she had been needing to cry ever since Pretty Feather had reared up and scared her so badly; ever since Walks-With-Spirits had looked into her eyes and seen all the way to her soul. He knew her, he really did, and he didn’t care to be around her.

  He had told her to hush, not even to talk to him, and he had sent her away from him just as Cade had done.

  If the truth were told, she had been needing to cry ever since Cade told her he was ashamed of her behavior and sent her off the ranch.

  She sobbed harder and held the combs tighter, so tight that their slender teeth cut into her skin.

  If Mama could see her today, if she knew everything Cotannah had said and done in the past two years, would she be ashamed of her like Cade?

  Cotannah’s spirits lifted considerably when she studied her reflection in the mirror just before dinner. Her deep yellow-colored dress with its low, curving neckline was infinitely becoming, and the silver combs in her hauset off its black shine. They were gorgeous, and they gave her an intriguing air.

  Yes. She looked fine, plenty fine enough to make Walks-With-Spirits want to talk with her instead of telling her to hush—fine enough, certainly, to compete with a wounded coyote for his attention. Well, now he’d be lucky if he could coax one kind word from her lips!

  It’d serve him right if she made him fall in love with her and then deliberately broke his heart the way Cade always accused her of doing, she thought, as she arranged her long, loose hair in artful disarray around her face, then reset the combs in the traditional fashion—one in the front to “frame her face” as Aunt Ancie and her friends called it and the other at the back of her neck. He deserved a hard time for treating her like a child.

  She left the room, walked down the hall, and slowly descended the curving front staircase, hoping she was late enough to make an entrance in the dining room. There were boarders here at Tall Pine and always visitors for supper, mostly travelers. There was lots of business going on in Tuskahoma these days, Emily had written in her letters to the ranch, yet the town still had no hotel. Surely there would be other men to notice her. It would hardly matter if Walks-With-Spirits was present. She could care less if she ever saw him again. Truly.

  The big clock in the hallway struck six as she reached the first floor, but even its loud chiming couldn’t drown out the laughter and talk that spilled from the wide double doors of the dining room. There were lots of different
voices, mostly masculine ones, and they sounded wonderfully festive to Cotannah after three long weeks on the road with only Ancie and Jumper and her escort of vaqueros.

  She strolled down the hall to the wide doorway and stopped beneath its arch.

  “’Tannah, you’re just in time!” Emily cried. “Come sit here beside me and after the blessing I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

  Walks-With-Spirits was the first person she saw, there at Emily’s right, dressed in a fresh, sky-blue shirt. In spite of all she could do, her eyes went to him before she even focused on Emily’s face. He met her gaze as she stepped into the room, and his eyes sent a sharp, quick thrill right through her, as if his hand had touched her skin. Yet he didn’t smile, didn’t even give any indication he knew her.

  She lifted her chin and made herself look past him. At the man across the table from him. At Tay, who looked exactly the same but who, to her relief, had absolutely no effect on her anymore. At the portly, blond man who flashed her a welcoming smile.

  Another young man smiled at her and inclined his head as she walked past, his dark eyes devouring her face. Another cleared his throat and stepped away from his chair to pull hers away from the table for her. Emily reached out and patted her hand in welcome as they bowed their heads.

  When Uncle Jumper had finished with his usual, rather lengthy blessing, they all sat down. Cotannah fought to keep from looking at Walks-With-Spirits again as the bowls and platters of food were passed around the table, as Tay welcomed her and Ancie and Jumper to Tall Pine and he and Emily introduced all three of them to the other visitors. A quick glance told her that only one was a woman—she, Emily, Aunt Ancie, and a middle-aged white woman named Jane Trahorn, who boarded at Tall Pine while she taught at Pleasant Valley School, were the only women present.

  Tay was still marvelously handsome, with his black hair and his sparkling silver eyes, and he still had his silver tongue; he always knew exactly what to say.

  “I’m so disappointed that I wasn’t home when you arrived, ’Tannah,” he said, flashing a grin at her in his old teasing way. “I knew you were here, though, and more beautiful than ever because while I was riding home the sun dimmed, despairing of competing with you.”

  “And you’re more handsome than ever,” she told him, laughing with the others, “and just as full of nonsense.”

  They smiled at each other then, and she knew without a doubt that no shred of feeling save friendship was left in her heart for him. Not even anger or hurt at being betrayed. Not anymore.

  Walks-With-Spirits’s introductions came last because Emily had started at the other end of the table. He acknowledged each of them with a quiet nod, but said nothing at all to Aunt Ancie or Uncle Jumper. His intense, dark amber eyes met Cotannah’s for the space of one heartbeat when Emily told them each other’s names, and for a moment she thought he would say something to her. But he didn’t.

  “We’ve met, but not formally,” she said, as a challenge. Then, with the finest shading of sarcasm in her tone, she asked, “And how is your friend, Taloa, this evening?”

  “Resting, thank you.”

  Well, now. He could be gracious and polite when the subject was his mangy animal instead of her and Pretty Feather. She felt her cheeks grow hot.

  Yet the sound of his voice was like cool water flowing over her wrists, like a soothing hand passing over her brow. Its music mesmerized her, it was as different from the blatant noises of the other men at the table as the ridges of the Nation’s blue mountains were from the rolling prairies of the Texas rancho. She had to say something else, anything that would make him talk to her again, never mind her vow to make him beg for a word from her.

  But he was concentrating on his plate, his gaze diverted from her and his mind clearly somewhere else. As a balm to her pride, she glanced around to confirm that several other of the men, however, were looking at her, as she had expected.

  So she spoke to the young man whose eyes had been avidly following her ever since she came into the room. Jacob Charley, Emily said was his name. Jacob Charley, who also was about the same age as she and who possessed sparkling dark eyes and who was finely dressed, more finely, even, than Tay. And he, unlike Walks-With-Spirits, had noticed that he was a man and she was a woman.

  “Mr. Charley,” she said, “are you one of the boarders here at Tall Pine?”

  He smiled at her broadly, obviously pleased to be chosen for her attention.

  “Only occasionally,” he said. “When business brings me to Tuskahoma, I impose on the generous hospitality dispensed by our Principal Chief and his lovely Miss Emily here at Tall Pine. My home is a day’s ride away.”

  “I live here, Miss Cotannah,” the plump, older blond man said smoothly. “If ever you’re seeking a partner at cards or a companion to sit on the veranda and watch the sunset, I’d be honored to oblige you.”

  Most of the company chuckled at that sally, but Jacob Charley turned to the man with a quick retort.

  “You’ll be too busy for porch sitting, Phillips,” he said. “If you’re keeping an eye on business for us, there’s plenty of work to keep you in town until long after the sun goes down,”

  The man called Phillips beamed at him.

  “Don’t forget you have a few responsibilities for the mercantile yourself, lad,” he said heartily. “I’ll wager you’ll be spending more time in Tuskahoma after our store opens than you ever have before.”

  “As long as Miss Cotannah is here, I’ll agree that I will,” Jacob Charley said, a teasing tone creeping into his voice. “I’ll have to come to town to liven things up for her, since you’ll be wearying her with your old man’s card games and rocking chairs on the veranda.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Charley,” she said, flashing a coquettish smile at him and then at Phillips, “but I’m sure Mr. Phillips’s company wouldn’t prove tiresome at all.”

  Then she glanced at Walks-With-Spirits, unable to resist trying to see whether he’d taken notice of her popularity with the gentlemen.

  He had not. He was eating his dinner and making some quiet remark to Emily.

  She felt Jacob Charley’s gaze on her again and turned to meet it.

  “Mr. Phillips and I are partners in a new mercantile venture in Tuskahoma,” he said, “and I’d be most honored if you’d permit me to drive you in and show it to you, Miss Cotannah. It’s to be the first brick building in town, and our brick just arrived today.”

  “How fascinating,” she said. “Of course, I’ve only arrived today, also, Mr. Charley, so I must rest a bit from my journey and consult with my hostess before I begin making my social plans.”

  There. That would whet his appetite if he had to wait and work a little bit at persuading her to go out driving with him. Plus she could use the time to advantage and ask Emily and Tay whether Jacob Charley would be suitable to squire her around—that would be the diplomatic thing to do since they would soon be writing to Cade, and the more docile she appeared, the sooner he would lift her punishment.

  “Now, Jacob, I need to be the one to show Miss Cotannah around the store since you haven’t been there but one day all this week,” Phillips said.

  Phillips wasn’t serious, though—he was mostly only teasing Jacob Charley and admiring Cotannah in an avuncular way. She smiled at him.

  “I’m more interested in seeing the ribbon and lace counter than the bricks,” she told him.

  “And you shall, my dear. You certainly shall. I’ll make you a gift of ribbons myself, just as soon as the freighter brings in our merchandise.”

  She smiled at Jacob again and met his frankly admiring look, but she kept wanting to glance at Walks-With-Spirits, wanting to see his reaction to these mild flirtations. Risking another quick glimpse, she caught his eye as he stopped talking with Emily and looked up.

  Jacob Charley must have followed her glance.

  “Hey, there, Animal Man,” he said, in that same teasing tone he had used with his friend, Phillips, “I heard Miss Cotan
nah ask you something a little while ago. Was that one of your furry little buddies you said is resting? Somebody told me one of ‘em got shot today.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Walks-With-Spirits turned his piercing amber gaze onto Jacob Charley.

  “They don’t belong to me,” he said.

  Jacob Charley stared at him through narrowed eyes as if trying mightily to read the meaning behind the words.

  “Well, now. You all sure do stick close together, though, now, don’t you? Maybe I got it backwards—maybe it’s you that belongs to them, maybe you’re the pet of the four-legged ones.”

  Someone chuckled, several people stopped talking to listen to Walks-With-Spirits’s response. But he didn’t speak, only looked at Jacob.

  “It’s got to be one way or the other,” Jacob insisted, “because every time I see you, in town or in the woods or running the tops of the ridges, you’re right in the middle of that coyote and that mountain lion and God knows what all else.”

  “You’re never in the woods or on the ridges,” Walks-With-Spirits said offhandedly. “If you rode a stone’s throw off the road, your horse would have to find your way home.”

  More chuckles broke out, and all the other conversations died down.

  Jacob Charley’s grin broadened.

  “At least I ride a horse, like a regular man, instead of tromping around on foot in between a coyote and a mountain lion with a bird nesting in my hair and a raccoon running up and down my arm!”

  Cotannah giggled at the image.

  “I didn’t know you had a mountain lion, too,” she said to Walks-With-Spirits. “Where was he today?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  Because the animals were his companions, not his pets. But he didn’t explain that, and Jacob didn’t understand.

  “Everybody here knows that’s not true,” he said. “Why, nobody in the Nation would recognize you if you happened to be out by yourself.”

  Walks-With-Spirits gave a small shrug. “As you would not recognize the truth?”