Nor had he ever suspected how much pleasure Kennisaw Jones would take in the hilarity of it all, feeding into the growing legend with his own tall tales.
But Kennisaw Jones would never laugh again.
A soft sound behind Garret made him stiffen. He could feel her—the woman, watching him with those wide blue eyes. He could smell the wild rose scent that he'd buried himself in when he'd crushed her in his arms, kissed the hell out of her.
Well, he'd already paid a hundredfold for the churlishness of that kiss—paid with the loss of the one person in the world Garret MacQuade gave a damn about.
He turned and raised dull eyes to hers. "I want to see him."
Nodding her assent, she led the way toward the wagon.
The faces of the children huddled there were clearer in the moonlight, and Garret felt as if he were running an Apache gauntlet when he saw the loathing in their eyes.
The flaxen-haired girl of twelve looked as if she could cheerfully have slit him from stem to stern, the lame boy as if he were contemplating wielding his crutch like a sword; and the littlest one, the girl with masses of dark hair, only peered up at him in a condemning silence that pierced even Garret's killing grief.
"Damn it, I'm not going to hurt"—Garret hesitated, groping for what the boy Renny had said—"I'm not going to hurt your sister. So you can quit looking at me like—"
"She's not our sister." The lame boy bristled. "She's Sister Mary Ashleen."
At what must have been his look of total bewilderment the older girl tipped up her nose in utter contempt. "She's a nun sister, not a sister sister."
A nun, sister? Judas Priest, he'd been mauling a nun?
"An' I know you won't hurt her"—the boy brandished his crutch—"'cause if you do, I—I'll shoot you dead! We got a Hawkin, and—"
Garret dragged a weary hand through his hair, the children's rage making his head throb unmercifully. "Don't make threats you can't make good on, boy," he snapped. "You couldn't even lift a Hawkin, let alone use it, and any man who's been in the west three days would know it."
The child flinched, but he stuck out his chin, defiant. "You're mean. If the Bear Man were still alive, he'd eat you right up! He wouldn't let you yell like that!"
The Bear Man... there could be no doubt in Garret's mind whom the belligerent brat meant. Kennisaw, with his stories of wrestling grizzlies. Kennisaw, with the huge, pawlike hands that could wield an axe and then dance a bow across fiddle strings with so much skill no one's feet could keep from tapping.
Kennisaw who had always had time for children. In every town, in every settlement, in every Indian village there had been a bevy of the greedy little creatures hanging on the old man, digging into his pockets for horehound drops or pennies or shiny rocks he had saved for them.
He had remembered all of their names, remembered their favorite trinkets. Hell, he'd even remembered the colors of their dogs!
Garret had tried to forget.
He turned away from the boy and strode the last steps to the wagon.
Bracing one hand on the tailgate, he swung up into the box. Light from a lantern suspended from an iron hook at the top of a bow shed a soft, homey glow about the canvas-roofed interior.
Garret heard the swish of the woman's skirts as she climbed in beside him. With a delicate hand she gestured to where a plump feather tick was wedged in the corner of the wagon, a faded patchwork quilt spread with tender of care over the bulky figure pillowed upon it.
Slowly Garret made his way toward the shrouded form, one hand grasping the edge of the covering. He hesitated for a pulse beat, as if he could delude himself that Kennisaw was alive as long as he didn’t look into Jones's death-masked face.
But at last Garret steeled himself, drawing back the quilt as carefully as if he were afraid of waking the old man from sleep.
Light spilled across features battered yet serene in a way that the living Kennisaw Jones had never been.
Lacerations and bruises marred a face more savaged than Garret had seen in a half-dozen saloon brawls, but this time they had been cleansed and tended by loving hands. His barrel chest was naked, stripped no doubt of a shirt badly bloodied in whatever altercation had led Kennisaw to his death. A wadding of white cloth bandage covered the wound in the old man's belly. Unable to help himself, Garret lifted the pad of cloth and stared at the small hole beneath.
Countless scars had crisscrossed Kennisaw's flesh for as long as Garret could remember—scars from battles with Indians and outlaws, grizzlies and panthers and jealous husbands. It seemed ludicrous that this one tiny mark could have sent Kennisaw Jones to his grave.
"Damn you, you old bastard," Garret gritted, his eyes stinging, "what the hell did you have to go and do this for?" Garret's jaw clenched as the merciless finality of Kennisaw's death swept over him.
"Goddamn it!" Dropping the quilt, he swung around, slamming one fist into the bumpy tin lid of an old trunk. The woman started at the sound as the raggedy metal and half-splintered wood scraped his hand, but Garret barely felt it.
He sucked in a steadying breath, wishing he were somewhere else—anywhere but in this cozy wagon with its quilts, its lantern glow, and its few handmade toys tucked lovingly in the nooks and crannies left by boxes and barrels.
