Badlands Bride. Cheryl St.John
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for meal and flour at the mercantile. It’s all sewn into bags when we get it.”
The black-haired woman nodded and pounded.
Hallie sat on a nearby stump and watched. She ignored the echoing sound of lumber being stacked. The Indian woman really was pretty. Her black hair caught highlights in the sun and black lashes and brows complemented her sleek brown skin. She moved and worked with grace and confidence.
Hallie could see how she would appeal to a man. Besides her unassuming beauty, she was hardworking and quiet. Was that the kind of woman Cooper thought he would get from the city, too? What kind of woman would submissively sit by and allow him to dally with another woman? The thought got her hackles up again.
Hallie glanced at the pot bubbling over the fire and the rustic tools gathered nearby. Chumani had been working on this earlier, and had apparently joined Hallie inside while she ate, as a courtesy.
Yellow Eagle brought firewood, stacked it a safe distance from the cookfire and disappeared.
Growing restless after an interminable length of time, Hallie asked, “Can I help?”
Chumani tilted her head.
Hallie pointed to herself. “Me. Help?”
She made a useless gesture of busy hands, but Chumani seemed to understand. She led her to the pot over the fire where corn bubbled in blackish water. Demonstrating, she carried a wooden scoopful of corn to a piece of burlap stretched between four sticks stuck in the ground, and poured the corn onto the fabric. Next, she took a dipper of fresh water from a bucket and poured it over the kernels. The water rinsed the corn and ran through the burlap.
She handed Hallie the scoop.
“I understand,” Hallie said, grateful for a task to keep her hands and mind busy. “Rinse the corn. I can do that.” Energetically, she set about the task. After several scoops of corn, she raised the bucket. “Water’s gone.”
Chumani nodded.
Hallie studied her.
The woman pointed at the pail, at another one nearby, then behind the soddies.
Finally comprehending, Hallie muttered, “Go get more.” She carried the buckets and headed in the direction indicated, discovering she was upstream on the river she’d washed in and drunk from the night before. She staggered back into the clearing. “These are a lot heavier on the way back.”
Chumani’s innocent smile gave her a moment’s wonder, but she shrugged it off. She’d made five more trips up and down the riverbank before the corn was rinsed. Chumani’s job was looking better and better all the time.
Hallie assisted her in moving the heavy kettle from the fire. Chumani ran green sticks through several sickly pale headless blobs of flesh with flopping appendages and hung them over the fire.
Hallie’s stomach turned. “What are those?”
“Gu-Que,” Chumani replied. At Hallie’s lack of comprehension, she tucked her arms in and flapped her elbows.
“Some kind of bird,” Hallie said with an uncharacteristic lack of appetite.
Yellow Eagle brought several pieces of bark and placed them beside the fire. Chumani stirred together a batter using the cornmeal and poured it into the concave bark strips. She placed them before the fire.
The birds turned a golden brown and the smells actually resembled an appealing dinner cooking. The batter in the bark bowls gradually turned into crusty cornbread.
Chumani spoke to Yellow Eagle and he ran toward the freight building. Several minutes later DeWitt and the two men—all properly clothed, thank heavens—appeared, and everyone traipsed into the sod house. DeWitt stood aside and allowed Hallie to enter ahead of him. Their eyes met briefly.
“Mr. Clark,” DeWitt said, indicating the middle-aged man with lank brown hair that hung to his shoulders. “And Mr. Gilman. They’re freighters from up north.”
The second man was younger, with shoulders as wide as DeWitt’s, and gray eyes that roamed her face and hair before she lowered her gaze, unwilling to witness the rest of his perusal.
None of them pulled out a chair for her; she did it herself, pretending she hadn’t noticed.
“Unusual to see a young gal like you in these parts,” Mr. Clark said. “How’d you come to be here?”
“Well, I—”
“She’s meeting her husband here,” DeWitt interrupted from the seat he’d taken beside Chumani. Hallie noticed he’d recently washed and the hair at his temples was damp. “They’ll be moving on to Colorado.”
Hallie glared at him, but he ate his food placidly. She kept silent through the rest of the meal, except to ask Yellow Eagle what kind of bird they were eating.
“Pheasant,” he replied curtly.
She’d eaten pheasant before, but their preparation gave the meal a whole new perspective.
The freighters thanked Chumani and headed out.
“Are you going to keep your word and speak with me?” Hallie asked DeWitt as he finished his coffee.
His blue gaze bored into her. “Go ahead.”
She glanced at Chumani. “May we go outside?”
He stood and ushered her ahead of him.
Hallie stopped behind his log house and turned. “First, why did you tell those men a he about me meeting a husband?”
“For your safety.”
“What do you think you’re protecting me from?”
“Men out here don’t live by the civilized rules you’re used to,” he said. “You should’ve learned that from your stage trip.”
The reminder of what could have happened to Olivia and the rest of them at the hands of those stage robbers squelched any other objections she may have had. Hallie rushed on to the real problem. “I’m disappointed in you.”
His expression didn’t change. He waited.
“I think it’s deplorable that you sent for a bride when you already have a wife!”
He frowned. “Chumani?” he asked.
“You know very well that I mean Chumani. Perhaps she doesn’t mind sharing a husband with another wife, but I can assure you that any wife you get from back East will have plenty of objections.”
His fair brows rose, wrinkling his forehead.
“What were you thinking of?” Hallie asked, waving her hand, inspired by her topic. “If the men out here expect women to endure the hardships of the travels and this land, then they’d better start living by more civilized rules.”
His expression didn’t flicker.
“The first rule being one wife per man.”
“She’s my brother’s wife, not mine.”
“I really thought you were serious about wanting a wife, the way you fixed up the house and all, but—what?”
“It’s the duty of a dead warrior’s brother to take his wife as his own.”
Hallie frowned, mulling over his words. His brother was an Indian? How could that be when he was as white as she was? The possibilities intrigued her. There was a story here, somewhere, and a fascinating one at that!
“Chumani agrees I should have a white wife. I provide for her, but she’s not my wife. Not in the way that you’re thinking.”
Hallie’s neck and cheeks grew warm. “I see.”
“May I work now?” he asked.
She nodded and he walked away. She would have to break through