Brave the Wild Wind Read online

  Johanna Lindsey

  Brave the Wild Wind

  For my brother Michael, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Johanna Lindsey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  1863, Wyoming Territory.

  THOMAS Blair paused on a hill overlooking the valley where his ranch nestled among juniper and pine, his eyes glowing with pride. The house was only three rooms, and made of logs, but it would stand up to the blizzards of winter. Rachel claimed she didn’t mind the harsh home he’d brought her to. After all, they’d started the ranch only two years ago. There would be time to build Rachel a huge house, a place she could be proud of.

  How patient she was, his beautiful young wife. And how he worshiped her. She was the epitome of goodness, beauty, and virtue. Because of Rachel and the ranch that Thomas now knew would thrive, he had everything he wanted out of life. Everything. Well…not quite everything. There was still the matter of a son that one daughter and two miscarriages had robbed him of. He didn’t blame Rachel, though. She had tried, uncomplaining at all times. It was Jessica he resented for not being the son he had prayed for, especially so because he had mistaken her for a boy during the whole first week of her life. He’d even had her baptized Kenneth, Kenneth Jesse Blair. The widow Johnson, who had helped with the birthing when the doctor couldn’t be found, had been too afraid of Thomas to tell him the truth once he began assuming the baby was a boy. And Rachel, who had nearly died and was so weak she could hardly feed the baby, also assumed she had given him a son.

  It was a shock to both of them when Mrs. Johnson could no longer bear the situation and confessed the truth. How bitter he had been! He had never wanted to lay eyes on the baby again. And he never did warm to her, never forgave her for being a female.

  That had been eight years before, in St. Louis. Thomas had married Rachel the year before, and she talked him into settling down there. For her he had given up the mountains and the plains of the West, where he had spent most of his life trapping, scouting, and hauling supplies to wilderness forts.

  St. Louis was too civilized, too confined for a man used to the splendor of the Rocky Mountains, the awesome quiet of the plains. But he stuck it out for six years, running the supply store Rachel’s parents had left her. For six years he supplied the settlers who were heading west, to his West, his wide open spaces. It was not until gold was discovered in Colorado and the Oregon Territory that he got the idea of supplying beef to the mining camps and towns that were spreading over the land he knew so well.

  He might have let the idea die, but for Rachel’s encouragement. She had never known hardship, never slept on an open plain, but Rachel loved him and knew he was unhappy living in the city. Although she didn’t like it, she agreed to sell the store and was willing to wait for Thomas for the year it took him to start the ranch, to gather the wild steers of Texas that were there for the taking, to buy the stockier eastern cattle to crossbreed, to build them a house. At long last, he’d brought Rachel out there to live, letting her name the ranch Rocky Valley.

  Rachel’s only request before starting a wholly alien life was that their daughter be given the education she would have received if they’d stayed in St. Louis. She wanted Jessica left in the private academy for young ladies she’d been attending since the age of five. Thomas readily agreed to that, not caring particularly if he never saw his daughter again.

  His daughter called herself K. Jessica Blair. Jessica, as Rachel had nicknamed her, let anyone who didn’t see her name written down assume the K was not an initial but the name Kay. Having the name Kenneth was a dreadful mortification for the doll-like creature she had become. With hair as black as an eagle’s wing and eyes the color of turquoise, she was the spitting image of Thomas and therefore a constant reminder of his longing for a son.

  But all that was about to change. Rachel was pregnant again, and because the hardest part of starting a new life was over, he could devote more time to her. His cattle had survived two winters and multiplied, and he had met with complete success on the first drive to Virginia City, where he’d sold every head for twice what he could have gotten in St. Louis. Now he was home, much sooner than he had told Rachel to expect him, eager to tell her of his success. So eager, in fact, that he had left his three men behind at Ft. Laramie.

  He wanted to surprise Rachel, to delight her with his success, to make love to her for the rest of the day without interruption. He’d been gone for nearly a month. How he’d missed her!

  Thomas started down the hill, picturing the look of surprise and joy on Rachel’s face when she saw him. No one was outside. Will Phengle and his old friend Jeb Hart, whom Thomas had left behind to look out for things, would be out on the Shoshone range with the herd at this time of day. And the Shoshone half-breed he called Kate would be busy in the kitchen.

  The main room of the house was empty. There was a delightful odor of baked apples and cinnamon from the kitchen, and he saw a pie on the kitchen table, but there was no Kate. It was so quiet that he decided Rachel was taking a nap in the big bed they had shipped from St. Louis. He left his guns by the front door so they wouldn’t be in the way, and slowly, quietly, Thomas opened the door to his bedroom, hoping not to wake his lovely, golden-haired Rachel just yet.

  But she wasn’t sleeping. The sight that met Thomas was so utterly incredible that he just stood, frozen, in the doorway. What he saw was the whole of his dream shattering, his wife making love with Will Phengle, her legs beneath him, her arms clasped around him. Thankfully, her face was hidden beneath Will.

  “Easy, woman.” Will’s deep chuckle bounced off the walls as his hips ground into hers. “There’s no hurry. God, you’re starved for it, ain’t you?”

  A deep sound started in Thomas, a low rumble that erupted into a savage growl so chilling, it stopped all movement on the bed.

  “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you both!”

  Will Phengle was off the bed in a flash, grabbing his scattered clothes from the floor. Seeing the empty doorway, he knew Thomas Blair had gone for a gun. He was a dead man.

  “There is no need to run, Will. He only need see he is—”

  “Are you crazy, woman!” Will cried. “That man will shoot first and then look. You stay and explain if you�
��re lookin’ to die, but I’m gone!” Before he’d even finished he was climbing out of the narrow window.

  Through the red haze blinding him, Thomas finally got back to the bedroom. Instantly he fired off two shots from the rifle. When the haze cleared, he saw that the bed was empty. So was the rest of the room. He heard a horse galloping away and ran outside, emptying the rifle at the naked form of Will Phengle riding bareback. The last shot missed along with the others.

  “Rachel!” Thomas bellowed as he reloaded the rifle. “You won’t be as lucky as he was! Rachel!” He looked around the yard and back at the house, then started running toward the stable. “You can’t hide from me, Rachel!”

  She was not in the stable, either. And the more he looked, the more enraged he became. Coldly and without the slightest hesitation, he shot the two horses in the stable and then went back to the front of the house and shot his own horse.

  “We’ll see if you can escape now, Rachel!” he hollered at the sky, his voice echoing through the whole valley. “You’ll never get away from here without a horse. Do you hear me, whore? You’re going to die by my hand or die on the range, but you’re dead to me already!”

  Then he went back into the house and proceeded to get roaring drunk. As the rotgut took effect, his rage turned to heartache, then to rage again. Every so often he would get up and look out the windows to see if he could see his wife. As he got more and more drunk, he thought he could finally understand the Indians’ drive for vengeance. The Cheyenne and Sioux he had traded with and become friends with had sometimes lived for revenge, died for it, going without rest until it was exacted. He understood that now. Drunk, he understood slowly—but he understood.

  When Jeb came in from the range late that afternoon and demanded to know who had killed the horses and where the women were, Thomas wouldn’t explain. At gunpoint he insisted Jeb ride for Ft. Laramie to intercept Thomas’s men and turn them back for a week or so. Jeb, too, was to stay away. He tossed Jeb the gold he had gotten for the herd, caring about nothing but his privacy.

  Jeb wasn’t going to argue with a drunken man, especially one with a gun in his hand. He had known Thomas Blair for nearly thirty years, and he never thought the women might be in danger alone with Thomas. So he left.

  And Thomas waited, and drank more. At one point he remembered Kate and wondered where she had gone, but he didn’t give her much thought. He had never given the Indian girl much thought. She was the daughter of Old Frenchy and a Shoshone squaw, and Frenchy had asked Thomas to look out for her if anything happened to him. It did, and Thomas found the girl at the fort supply depot, whoring for the soldiers there. So he took her in, and it worked out fine, Kate being grateful for a home and Rachel needing the help Kate could give her.

  Thomas didn’t think about Kate much, and never even saw all the longing, hopeful looks she turned his way. He had never paid attention to what was clearly in her eyes. His eyes had always been only for Rachel, even after all these years.

  He waited and waited. Not in vain. She entered the house just as the sun was setting, and Thomas was on her before she could say a word. He hit her and hit her and wouldn’t stop, screaming at her, giving her no chance to answer the accusations he heaped on her along with each blow. And after a time she couldn’t answer anyway, for her tongue was lacerated and her jaw broken. Two fingers and her left wrist were broken from trying to block his fists. Her eyes were blurred and swelled quickly, and when she crumbled to the floor he began to use his feet on her. A rib broke before he stopped. She didn’t know why he stopped, but suddenly he did.

  “Get out,” she heard after an agonizing silence. “If you live, I want never to lay eyes on you again. If you don’t, I’ll bury you decently. But get out now before I finish what I started.”

  Jeb’s curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he returned to the ranch that night, something nagging at the back of his mind. He found Rachel just over the top of the north hill that formed the little valley. That was as far as she’d gotten before losing consciousness. Jeb didn’t learn until later what had happened to her and why. At the moment he knew only that if she didn’t get help she would die, and the nearest doctor was a good two days’ ride.

  Chapter 1

  1873, Wyoming Territory.

  BLUE Parker saw her coming a mile away, trotting along on that big-boned Appaloosa she’d come home with last year. A mean-tempered horse if there ever was one. But then, Jessica Blair was pretty feisty, too. Oh, not always. Sometimes she was the sweetest lady, a kindhearted angel. She had a way of bringing out a man’s protective instincts, turning a man’s heart clear inside out.

  Blue’s heart had been lost the very first time she’d smiled at him, flashing her lovely white teeth in a warm grin. Two years ago it’d been, the day he’d come to work for her father, signing on as an extra hand for the fall roundup. He’d stayed on after the roundup, and he’d come to know Jessie well, working alongside her. He’d come to love her—come to hate her at times, too, the times when she’d close up to him and everyone else. Or when she’d fight with her father and take it out on anyone close at hand. She could be cruel then, though Blue doubted it was ever intentional. Her bitterness sometimes made her lash out, that was all. Jessica Blair had not had an easy life. He sure wanted to make it easier for her, but when he’d gotten up the nerve to ask her hand in marriage, she’d thought he was joking.

  She was drawing closer, and she spotted Blue and waved. He held his breath, hoping she would stop. He’d seen her so seldom lately. Ever since her father had died she’d stopped working on the range…until last week, when they had arrived. Blue had never seen her so mad. She’d stormed out of the house and nearly killed her horse riding him so hard.

  Jessie stopped, leaning forward in the saddle, resting her arms on the horn. She gave Blue a half-grin. “Jeb spotted some mavericks by the creek south of here yesterday. How about giving me a hand with them, Blue?”

  She knew what his answer would be, and as he nodded, his face lighting up with pleasure, her grin widened. She was feeling reckless today. She had passed several other hands but hadn’t asked them for help, wanting to find Blue instead.

  Full of daring, she challenged, “I’ll race you there, and you’ll owe me a kiss if I win.”

  “You’re on, gal!”

  The creek was only a few miles away. Of course Jessie won. Even if Blue’s sorrel had been as good as Blackstar, Blue wouldn’t have let him win.

  Jessie had given the race her all, letting out some of the tension coiled inside her in an ever-tightening knot. Winded, she dismounted and fell into the high grass along the creek bed, laughing. Blue was there a moment later to forfeit his kiss, a forfeit that couldn’t have made him gladder.

  This is what Jessie had wanted all along, this and more she told herself rebelliously. Blue’s kissing was nice. But then, she’d known it would be because he’d kissed her once before, in the spring, and she’d liked it. It had been her first kiss. Other men wanted to kiss her, she knew that, but she was the boss’s daughter, and they were afraid of both her quick temper and his anger. So none of them dared. But Blue had dared. She hadn’t minded at all.

  He was a fine-looking man, Blue Parker, with his golden hair and brown eyes, deeply expressive eyes that told her how much he liked her. Most men looked at her the way Blue did, even though her femininity was hidden beneath the male attire her father had insisted she wear.

  Her father. Her mood plummeted with thoughts of him.

  Just months ago she had been despondent over how alone she was in the world. Yet now she wasn’t alone anymore, and she hated that even worse. Whatever had possessed her father to write the letter that had brought them to the ranch? She had seen the letter, and she knew her father’s handwriting well enough. But why had he done it?

  The inconceivability of Thomas Blair asking for help from the person he hated above all others! Hadn’t Jessie known that hatred for the last ten years? Hadn’t she learned to hate, too, becau
se of his hating?

  But her father had written that letter. And then he had died, and the letter had been delivered as his will directed. They had come then, and put an end to Jessie’s newfound freedom. And she couldn’t do anything about it, for her father had arranged it.

  It was wholly unjust! Jessie didn’t need a guardian. After all, her father had made certain she could take care of herself. She had learned to hunt, to ride—to shoot better than most men! She knew all the aspects of ranching and could, in fact, run the ranch just as well as her father had run it.

  Blue was sitting a little way off, knowing she needed to think. She was remembering the first eight years of her life, before her father took her out of boarding school and brought her to his ranch. He’d forced her to understand the truth about her mother, but she had still loved him even so. Perhaps she had never stopped loving him, even when she hated him. Hadn’t she grieved horribly when he died? Hadn’t she wanted to kill the man who shot him? But, still, there had been the realization that his death meant her freedom. It was not the way she had hoped to win it, but she had, nonetheless, the chance to be what she really was—not what Thomas Blair had made her into. Now freedom was being denied her again.