“Bread and jelly sounds mighty good, half-pint.”
Flora slathered jelly on a slice of bread, then handed it to him. “I help Tara make the jelly. We have jars and jars of it stored in the root cellar.”
John sighed contentedly at the first bite. Someone around here really could cook, and he presumed it was Tara. Of course, as far as he could tell, there wasn’t much that she couldn’t do well. He’d watched her come and go from dawn until dusk without a single complaint. She always had a smile and kind word for the children. Her organizational skills, he’d noted, were a marvel, and she made time for each child’s individual needs.
This unique family fascinated him, even though the life they led was utterly foreign to him. It’d been years since John had felt family ties, felt as if he belonged anywhere. Not that he belonged here, of course. But this family didn’t treat him as an outsider, the way most folks did when he ventured into one town, then another. Usually, people didn’t engage him in conversation or venture too close. He figured most folks considered a man who was part lawman, gunfighter and bounty hunter unworthy of respect because he dealt with evil, violence and death on a regular basis.
John had pried bits and pieces of information from the younger children to appease his curiosity about Tara, though he told himself repeatedly that his fascination with her was ill-advised and impractical. He’d discovered that Tara was a passable markswoman who could put wild game on the table to feed her brood. That she harvested and processed vegetables from the garden, and had somehow managed to acquire the livestock that grazed in the canyon. He was incredibly curious to know how these acquisitions were made on her limited budget.
There were, however, two other things about Tara that he didn’t know and was dying to find out—where had she acquired her unique family and where had she been sleeping since John crawled onto the pallet so she could sleep on her bed. She wasn’t using the bed, he’d discovered. He figured he’d ferret the information from the loquacious five-year-old who was feeding him bread and jelly. If there was one thing he’d learned about Flora it was that she loved to talk, and most of the thoughts bouncing around in her head made their way to her tongue.
“Do you have another bedroom in the cabin where you and the other children sleep?” he asked nonchalantly.
Flora sampled a piece of bread, then nodded. “Maureen and I sleep in the other bedroom and the boys sleep in the loft above us.”
“Tara has been sleeping with you, too?”
She shook her dark head. “Nope, she moved into the barn loft.”
The barn loft? John cursed under his breath. That woman was making all sorts of sacrifices for him and the children. He was the one who should be sleeping in the straw. He’d slept in the great out-of-doors for years and was accustomed to it. On rare occasions, while on his forays to track down criminals, he rented a hotel room.
“Tell Tara that I’ll be trading places with her,” John requested.
“Can’t do that,” Flora replied as she wiped her mouth, smearing jelly on her chin. “Tara says she wants you somewhere that’s clean and dry so you can mend properly. She also says the boys are gonna take you to the spring to bathe tomorrow. She says the mineral spring we found near one of the rock ledges will be good for you.”
“Hmm, Tara sure has lots to say, doesn’t she?”
“Certainly does,” Flora agreed. “But most of all, and she says this is very, very, very important, we’re a family and we’ll be together forever. She says no one will break our family apart ’cause we belong to each other.”
John wondered why that was the first commandment in the gospel according to Tara. Who wanted to break up this unusual family? And why did Tara instill that sense of unity and belonging in these children? It sounded a mite overprotective to him, but what the hell did he know? He hadn’t been a part of a clan for over five years.
“Where did you meet Tara, half-pint?” he asked.
Suspicion filled those wide, soulful eyes. “Tara says we’re not supposed to say anything to anybody about where we came from or how we got here. It’s a secret.”
Interesting, he mused. Maybe Tara had something to hide. If she thought he’d sit in judgment she was mistaken, because John Wolfe wasn’t who folks thought he was, either. After all, he’d slipped away from the reservation under cover of darkness, without permission.
According to the Indian roll call conducted the morning after Chief Gray Eagle bade him to escape and return to white society, White Wolf didn’t exist and his name wasn’t to be uttered again. In the Apache culture, the name of a deceased person was rarely mentioned. As far as the tribe was concerned, White Wolf was dead and gone.
Maybe he needed to have a private talk with Tara and assure her that whatever concerns his presence provoked were unnecessary…unless there were criminal charges involved and she felt threatened by his profession as a law officer. Damn, this could get ugly, thought John. Maybe he didn’t want to unlock those guarded secrets he saw flashes of in Tara’s eyes, after all.
“I have to leave now.” Flora popped to her feet. “Tara says I have to walk the lambs around the canyon to make ’em stronger.”
John suspected these compulsory walks were designed to build little Flora’s own stamina. The child was entirely too frail and thin.
“Calvin has to go with me,” Flora added as she scooped up the jar of jelly and leftover bread, “just in case I have trouble managing the sheep.”
Calvin, the seven-year-old with the noticeable limp, he mused. No doubt Tara ensured Calvin was getting his daily requirement of therapeutical exercise, too.
To John’s complete surprise, Flora abruptly reversed direction, dropped to her knees in front of him, then flung her bony arms around his neck to hug him tightly. “I love you, Zohn Whoof,” she whispered in his ear. “Maybe when you feel better you can walk the lambs with Calvin and me.”
John battled to draw breath after Flora scurried off. He couldn’t afford to become attached to these endearing children, damn it. Gray Eagle had given him a lifetime assignment of protecting the Apache from the whites. Plus Raven was running loose, aligning himself with a merciless outlaw gang, giving the Apache a bad name—as if the whites’ publicity hadn’t given the tribe a bad reputation already.
John had witnessed firsthand the atrocities committed against Indians. They’d been slaughtered like buffalo—women, children, elders and warriors alike. They’d been poisoned with strychnine, herded onto reservations and forced to sign treaties that gave white men their valuable and productive lands. In fact, Gray Eagle had been ordered, under penalty of death, to sign over several strips of land where silver and copper deposits had been discovered so the prospectors could mine the ores without sharing with the Indians.
John had done his damnedest to prevent the whites from stealing the Apache blind, but to no avail. He’d reclaimed his white heritage hoping to make a difference—and he’d failed, time and time again. It was enough to make a grown man weep, especially when he cursed himself countless times for being born white and growing up Apache. Half the time John didn’t know who the hell he was or where he rightfully belonged. And now this sweet little child, with her hollow eyes, pasty skin and delicate bones, was gushing with affection for him and looking up to him as if he were her beloved father. The kid was killing him, while he was trying to maintain an emotional distance from her and the rest of this extraordinary family.
John sighed heavily. This child and her entire family were definitely getting to him, hour by hour, day by day. He couldn’t afford to become attached, because it would make leaving this valley more difficult. He’d locked away all sentimental emotions the day the Apache captured him as a child and started training him to be one of them. If he allowed all these conflicts that roiled inside him to surface he wouldn’t know how to deal with them. He wasn’t sure he could face a single one without his thoughts getting all tangled up with the other feelings he’d buried in order