Page 8 of Wellspring

A WEEK after setting out with Webster, Erick realized how vastly he’d underestimated the demands of his new life.

He’d thought the flimsy cot on the ship from Bremen had inured him to the loss of his soft feather mattress, until he’d tried sleeping with nothing but a thin bedroll between him and the hard and often rocky soil.

When it rained, the ground was damp even beneath the protection of the wagon.

When it was cold, no doubt he’d shiver, though at present he more often sweltered in the unaccustomed warmth and humidity.

He still ached from spending most of the day in an unfamiliar saddle, though adopting the looser posture he’d observed in Webster seemed to help.

Instead of lavish banquets, his meals consisted of beans and jerky and whatever game he or Webster could manage to hunt.

He hadn’t been able to bathe since he’d left the boarding house in Galveston.

He had only Webster’s belief that his employers would offer Erick a job at the end of their journey.

He was used to being in control of his life, of knowing his role in society and among his peers.

Leaving that rigid, stifling formality had seemed a grand adventure, but he hadn’t foreseen being so out of his depth.

In truth, he wondered how he would have fared had he not had the good fortune to fall in with Webster on his arrival.

He’d learned so much already through watching and doing his best to echo the cowboy’s actions.

“It’s getting late,” Webster called from his place on the wagon seat, dragging Erick from his spiraling thoughts. “Let’s find a place to stop for the night and I’ll see if I can find us some meat. If you don’t mind me borrowing Zephyr.”

“Even though you have not yet trusted me with your wagon, I suppose I must trust you with my horse,” Erick said wryly. He was learning to recognize the fauna in his new home, but there was no question that Webster was the better hunter.

“There’s no must about it, not with a man’s horse,” Webster said.

“The wagon and draft horses are ranch property. Anyone can use them. A man’s horse, though, that’s different.

Fastest way to get yourself shot is to mess with another man’s horse.

So if you don’t want to let me borrow him, I won’t.

I’ll hunt on foot. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

” He pulled a bow from beneath the wagon bench and rested it across his knees.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and scare up some game while we’re looking for a campsite. ”

This wasn’t the first time Webster had made a point about the sanctity of a man’s horse.

He clearly hadn’t taken the remark the way Erick had meant it.

Another aspect that apparently didn’t carry over to his new life.

He drew up the reins and dismounted. “I meant no offense,” he said formally.

“I know Zephyr will come to no harm with you.”

Webster grinned, cocky and yet shyly pleased, a combination Erick had not known was possible until he saw it cross the cowboy’s face.

It was an expression he would gladly elicit more often.

“Thanks, Heller. I’ll take good care of him, and I’ll find us something good to eat tonight.

” He slung the bow over his shoulder and jumped down from the wagon seat to take the reins Erick offered him.

“When you find a good spot, get a fire started. I’ll find you. ”

Before Erick could ask how or anything else, Webster had swung up onto Zephyr’s back, dug his heels into the horse’s side, and raced away with a loud whoop.

He spent a moment watching man and horse fly down the dusty road before climbing into the wagon.

Webster gave himself over to the experience the way he’d given himself over to everything Erick had seen him do—wholeheartedly and without hesitation.

It made Erick wonder if he would make love the same way.

The thought made him blush, even though there was no one there to see it.

“ Mach schon ,” he murmured, flicking the reins over the team’s backs.

They lumbered forward, and he smothered a pang of regret for the matched pair of bays he’d left behind along with the rest of his former life.

This was his life now, and looking back served no purpose. He could only move forward.

CADE GAVE Zephyr his head and reveled in the wind whipping against his face and through his loose shirt.

He’d left his jacket in the wagon. He’d be glad for it when the sun went down and the temperatures dropped, but already in mid-March, the Texas sun was warm enough to make him take it off during the day.

He sank deeper into the saddle, letting his body adapt to Zephyr’s smooth gait.

Heller had lucked out when he found the stallion.

Cade had ridden his fair share of horses, and this one was as good or better than any of them. Not that he’d tell Nahnia that.

When Zephyr slowed of his own accord, Cade wrapped the reins around the saddle horn, set an arrow loosely to the string of his bow, and settled in to hunt. Zephyr was well-trained enough to respond to nudges from Cade’s legs and shifting weight.

A deer sprang across the path in front of him.

Cade raised his bow out of habit, but they had no way to preserve the meat, and the two of them wouldn’t eat it fast enough to keep it from going bad.

Cade had learned many lessons from the tribe that raised him, but the most basic had been to take only what he needed. Greed was a white man’s crime.

The young hog that ran across his path, on the other hand, was the perfect size.

Enough for dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow, and they could smoke the rest for the next few days.

He drew and fired with barely a second’s pause.

The animal did not even have time to squeal as the arrow pierced its eye.

Cade dismounted smoothly and slit its throat, giving silent thanks for its sacrifice the way he’d been taught.

Then he tied the limp body to the back of the saddle and turned Zephyr around the way they’d come, scanning the horizon as he did for signs of smoke from the campfire.

Hopefully Heller had found somewhere to set up camp.

His sharp eyes caught the uneven puffs against the darkening horizon. Behind him the sun was still lighting the sky in dazzling colors, but to the southeast, back toward Galveston, it was edging toward black.

“Let’s go, Zephyr. We don’t want to get lost in the dark before we find the campsite.”

Zephyr understood the way he leaned forward in the saddle, if not the words themselves, and took off at a ground-eating canter.

Less than twenty minutes later, he rode up to the campsite to find the horses unhitched and brushed down, both bedrolls laid out under the wagon, and a pot of coffee on the fire.

And Heller, hatless, stripped down to his shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing strong forearms dusted with the same dark hair that covered his head and peeked out of his open collar.

With each mile they put between Heller and his old life, he seemed to relax that much more, shedding another layer of his past. Cade wondered how many more layers he could convince the man to shed before they reached Wellspring.

“You’re efficient,” he commented to Heller as he untacked and settled Zephyr.

“It needed done, and now we can prepare what you have brought.” Heller raised a brow when Cade untied the hog and dropped it beside the fire. “A fine shot indeed. I have hunted boar, and they are cunning prey.”

“This one was too young to be savvy, but thanks,” Cade said with a shrug. “We’ll eat well for a few days at least. Then it’ll be back to beans and jerky unless we get lucky again. Probably not quite what you’re used to, back home.”

It wasn’t exactly subtle, but Cade had grown up with people who valued forthrightness over subterfuge. He’d reintegrated in the white man’s world for the most part, but he still had no patience with double-speak.

“It matters not what I was used to.” Heller pulled the knife from his belt and began to expertly gut the hog. “This is home now.”

And that right there—the mystery all wrapped up with unexpected demonstrations of skill—were enough to drive Cade crazy.

Maybe if he talked about his past a little, Heller would be more willing to open up?

“I know that feeling. It’s happened to me twice, in fact.

Once after my parents died and the Comanche took me in, and a second time when I left them.

It takes a brave man to leave behind everything he knows to start a new life. ”

“You lived with the Comanche?” After carving a portion from the hog’s belly, Heller set it on the fire to roast. “I know little of the native people of this land save what I have read, and I suspect it is more sensationalism than fact.”

“Scaremongering, anyway,” Cade replied. He took the rest of the meat Heller had already carved and strung it over the fire, high enough to smoke it without exposing it directly to the heat of the flames.

“Each tribe is different, and anyone who tells you otherwise don’t know what they’re talking about.

White men brand them as savages because their ways are different, but they took in an orphaned child whose parents died of starvation or disease, leaving him wandering alone, all of six years old.

That’s more than I can say for most white men.

I don’t have a lot of memories from before, but I remember at least one wagon driving by and ignoring me, even though I begged for help.

The Comanche family that adopted me treated me the same as the rest of their children, even though I obviously wasn’t one of them by birth. ”

“That is how you came by your skill with the bow?” Finished dismembering the hog, Heller wiped his knife on a kerchief before replacing it in his belt. “It is most impressive.”

“Yeah, they taught me to hunt and ride and cook and how to live with the land instead of exploiting it,” Cade replied. “What about you? Where’d you learn your skills?”

Heller hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.

“Hunting was an expected pastime. Certainly one I preferred to frivolous balls and soirees.” As he paused again, a vision of him in fancy dress flashed through Cade’s mind, and for one impossible second, Cade imagined himself in the scene, joining Heller on the dance floor, but he barely belonged in the world he lived in now.

He would never fit in the world Heller had left behind.

“In Prussia, my life was constrained by social status and expectations. My marriage was arranged, as I told you, for reasons of status and finance. When my wife died and our son with her….” He drew a breath.

“The expectation was that I would wed again, to provide an heir. I would not take part in such a sham a second time. I signed the estate over to a cousin and embarked on a new life, one in which I can make my own way.”

Not many men of Cade’s acquaintance—white men, anyway—would have been as forthright.

They would have claimed a great love affair as a reason not to marry again, even if they’d been in Heller’s exact situation, because it would gain them sympathy.

That Heller would choose honesty over sympathy only added to his attractiveness in Cade’s eyes, not that Heller needed much help in that regard.

“Social status don’t mean much out here unless you got the money to buy a big tract of land.

A cowboy is a cowboy, unless you’re a black man or were raised by Indians.

Then people get all twisted up about you, but the Wellspring outfit don’t care about that.

They can’t rightly, with Payne in the lead,” Cade said.

“I am sorry about your wife and son, though. I know what Nadua, my adoptive mother, went through when my brother Pahayoko died. Even if it was an arranged marriage, it must have been hard to lose them.”

He didn’t mention that Pahayoko’s death had been the trigger that eventually led Cade to leave the tribe. That was a story best saved for another time.

“Enough to make me realize how purposeless was my life. Here I will earn through my own efforts what I need.” Heller flipped the pork belly and settled back. “Your story is of far more interest than mine. How long were you among the Comanche?”

Cade wasn’t sure his life was all that interesting, but he let it go for now.

He’d have more time to ask Heller questions.

“Fifteen years,” Cade said. Fifteen wonderful years.

“It’s been another ten since I left, and I still miss them every day.

” He might have found something like a new family at Wellspring, but it didn’t keep him from missing Nadua and the braves who had been brothers to him.

He’d made a point after he left the tribe to make sure his remaining brother knew where to find him, even if he didn’t always know where to find them.

Heller held his gaze long enough to make Cade wonder what he saw in his expression. “You give me hope that I may weather my changes as well as you have surmounted yours.”

Cade summoned a smile that didn’t feel too forced. “You’ve done pretty damn well so far. You just have to remember that where you are don’t change who you are.”

And that was as philosophical as he was willing to get. “Think that roast is done yet?”