A Lantern in the Window (11 page)

Instead, he looked toward the house.
Smoke curled cheerfully from the chimney. It was a dark afternoon,
and the lamp shone from the window. He imagined the little
Christmas tree and thought he could hear Annie and Bets laughing
together as they so often did over their work.

They were his family now, and he
desperately wanted to tell them so. He needed the comfort that
affirmation would provide, but he couldn’t go in now, with red,
shamefully swollen eyes. He’d only be gone two hours. He'd tell
them when he returned.

When he came home, he’d take Annie in
his arms and confess how wrong he’d been all these months. He’d beg
her forgiveness, and because he knew her so well by now, he knew
she’d give it freely, with all the fervor of her passionate,
generous nature.

His chest filled with warmth and
anticipation. At the last moment, he remembered the wolves that
preyed on his cattle and went back to the barn for his rifle. Then
he clucked to Buck and headed off across the snow-covered
landscape.

Annie and Bets were totally engrossed
by the pleasurable task of readying the baby’s room. Bets wiped the
cradle down and made it up with its tiny sheets and warm shawls.
They smiled and made admiring faces at the wealth of meticulously
hand- sewn shirts, knitted sweaters, and tiny flannel nightdresses
in the trunk. Annie arranged some of the wooden toys on the
dresser, only vaguely aware that the wind had gotten up and snow
was beginning to fall outside.

At last Bets drew her attention to the
window, and

Annie was shocked at the ferocity of
the storm. A flicker of uneasiness made her shiver as she caught
sight of the clock.

"Lordie, Bets, we’d better hurry
supper. Noah must have come back hours ago. He’ll be hungry,” she
murmured, grunting as she bent over the wood box to get a log for
the cook stove. Her huge belly made bending difficult, and her back
had been aching on and off all afternoon.

"You peel these potatoes, and I’ll
start some sausage frying,” she instructed her sister. "We'll open
a jar of crabapples; they’ll do for dessert.”

For the next half hour, she and Bets
hurried to get the meal prepared, anticipating Noah’s arrival at
any second. But the minutes passed, and when all was ready and
she’d walked to the window a dozen times to peer out, Annie tried
to hide her growing concern from Bets.

“
Noah must have decided to
do the milking early, what with this blizzard,” she said. “I’m just
going to walk over to the barn and see if I can help. It’s getting
late.”

But Bets grabbed her sister’s arm.
"You will not. I will go. What if you fall on the ice?” She made a
face and a slicing motion across her throat. "Noah will kill me if
I let you outside in this.” She grabbed an old coat, tied a shawl
over her head, and stuck her feet into a pair of Zachary’s
boots.

Annie went with her to the door. When
they opened it, both were shocked at the force of the storm. A
maelstrom of wind and snow whirled around Bets as she set off in
the direction of the barn.

Annie shut the door and leaned back
against it, cupping her hands around her belly, trying to take
comfort in the restlessness of the child inside, trying to still
the fear that was making her heart hammer and her hands
tremble.

Where was Noah?

It seemed to Annie that an eternity
went by before the kitchen door opened again and Bets was half
blown in on a cloud of swirling snow and frigid air. What little
daylight there had been was now entirely gone.

Bets tugged off her mitts, but even
before her fingers flew with their message, the alarm on her
sister’s face told Annie what was wrong.

"Noah is not there. He’s still gone
with Buck and the hay sled.”

They stared at one another, their eyes
filled with horror.

Outside, the wind howled like a mad
demon, and the snow blew thick and blinding. The windowpanes
rattled, and even the stoves hissed as snow was driven down the
chimney and hit the burning coals.

"Something’s happened. Something
awful’s happened to him, Bets,” Annie whispered. Inside her, fear
and urgency combined with a terrible feeling of helplessness. A
woman big with child, a half-grown girl, a raging blizzard; what in
heaven could they do?

"I will ride to Hopkins and get help.”
Bets’s fingers flew. "I will take Noah’s horse, Sultan. I know how
to saddle him. Noah showed me.”

"Oh, sweetheart, you can't.” Annie
gave her brave sister a hug, then stood back so she could explain.
“For one thing, it’s storming far too hard to ride to the Hopkins
place. You’d get lost. And for another, Noah’s the only one who can
ride Sultan. He’s a demon, Noah says so himself.”

Bets’s bravado disappeared and she
started to cry. "We must help. We must do something.”

Annie reached out and wiped away the
tears from her sister’s face with a comer of her apron. “We will,
but it’s not going to help if we go out and get ourselves lost, so
we’ll wait until the worst of this storm stops and then we’ll get
on old Bright and go find him together. Bright can carry us both.
And in the meantime, we’ll light the extra lantern and put it in
the window, so if Noah comes, he’ll see the light from a distance
and not lose his way in the storm.”

Even as she signed the optimistic
words, Annie knew that blizzards like this could last days and
days, and that unless the storm abated soon, it would be too
late.

She turned her head and gazed at the
frost-covered window. If anything, the wind had
increased.

“
I love Noah,” Bets signed
in her forthright manner. “Always, he is good and kind to me. Never
he makes me feel less because I am deaf.”

Anguish and terror filled Annie’s
heart, and a low moan came from her throat.

Noah, my husband, where
are you?

With all the fierceness of her being,
she willed him safe, but she knew that no one could survive long
outside in these conditions.

Together, they found the lantern,
filled and lit it.

They prepared an emergency bundle with
food and dry clothes and a blanket, and they gathered their warmest
clothes, ready to put on at a moment’s notice.

But as the night deepened, the storm
raged on. Bets finally fell asleep on the couch, but weary as she
was, Annie couldn’t rest.

She stoked the fires, one hand pressed
to her aching back, and walked a million times to the window where
the lantern burned, praying each time that the storm had lessened,
that some miracle would bring Noah bursting through the
door.

It didn’t happen. It was a long time
later when, half dozing beside Bets, the sudden silence brought
Annie fully awake.

The wind had died. She lumbered to her
feet and hurried to the window. The lantern, still shining bravely,
had kept the pane clear of frost, and outside Annie could see snow
falling heavily, but the worst of the blizzard was over. Her eyes
flew to the clock.

Four
a
.
m
.
It was
Christmas Eve morning, and he’d been gone for more than twelve
hours.

She sent up a desperate prayer, then
went over and touched Bets.

"It's time to go for Noah,” she signed
when the girl’s eyes opened.

He was within a mile of the cattle
when the first of the blizzard hit, and Noah considered turning
back, but he knew that if he did, many of his cattle in the south
pasture would die; they were already short of feed, and unlike
horses, they couldn’t paw down to the frozen earth for
sustenance.

He’d been allowing Buck to go along at
his own speed, but now Noah hollered and used the reins to hurry
the big animal onward.

Buck nickered in protest, but he
responded, going from an ambling walk to a cumbersome trot. The
sleigh where Noah rode atop the hay bounced along, but the wind and
snow increased until Noah could hardly make out the horse’s shape
through the storm.

He drew his scarf up over his nose and
mouth, thankful for his buffalo coat but cursing himself for a
fool. Being out alone on the prairie in a blizzard was a hazardous
thing, and if he’d had his wits about him, he would never have left
the ranch.

At last he came upon the huddled
shapes of the cattle. Using the pitchfork he’d brought along, Noah
unloaded the hay as fast as he could. Driving pellets of snow and
the howling wind snatched his breath away, blinding him and making
his face and hands numb with cold. The cattle grouped themselves
around the feed, backs to the wind.

He should stay here, he knew, waiting
out the storm in the dubious protection of the cattle’s warm
bodies. It was the sensible thing to do, because the trip back
would be treacherous.

But who knew how long the blizzard
would last? Annie would be terrified at his absence, and she was
close to her birthing time.

He needed to tell her how much he
wanted their baby. .. .

He had to get home, even though by now
he couldn’t see a single foot in front of him, and all his usual
good sense of direction was gone.

Buck would know where the ranch was.
Animals were uncanny in that regard.

Swiftly undoing the harness, Noah
abandoned the sleigh.

"Let’s go home, old man.” Rifle on his
shoulder, Noah leaped up to the horse’s broad back, noting that
already there was no sign of the tracks they’d made; the blowing
snow had obliterated everything.

The horse stood for a moment, getting
his bearings, then began to move steadily ahead into what seemed a
holocaust.

Time disappeared in the unholy force
of the storm. Noah, lying almost flat along Buck’s broad back, had
no idea how long they'd been blundering through the knee-deep
drifts when suddenly the big horse stumbled and Noah heard the
horrifying crack of breaking bone and, in the next instant, his
horse’s awful scream of agony as Buck’s broken foreleg crumpled
beneath him.

Knowing he was in danger of being
pinned beneath the huge animal’s body, Noah tried to throw himself
free.

He landed on a patch of frozen ground
blown free of snow, and the impact stunned him, but he could hear
Buck’s unendurable screaming even over the roaring of the wind. It
sickened him.

He knew what he had to do as he
scrambled to his feet and searched frantically for his rifle.
Finding it, he struggled against the might of the storm to reach
Buck, nausea choking him.

“
Easy, old friend, my poor
old friend.”

He cursed in a long, helpless stream.
Then he tugged off his mittens, raised the rifle, laid it against
Buck’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The screaming stopped, and Noah
retched into the snow. It was only when the sickness passed and
reason returned that he was able to acknowledge that the animal’s
death almost certainly meant his own.

Already, his fingers were numb, his
toes aching with the cold. He crouched beside the still-warm
carcass, his mind as chaotic as the storm that raged around him,
and what he thought of first was Annie.

If he died here, he’d never have
the chance to tell her that he loved her.
He’d never see the
baby they’d made together. He wouldn’t be around to make sure that
the young men who came courting pretty Bets in a year or two were
suitable.

Damnation, if he died, there'd soon be
suitors lining up and fighting over Annie.

She was full of life, passionate,
funny, endearing. In fact, Noah admitted, Annie was everything any
man could ever want in a wife. And confound it, she
was
his.

The thought of those faceless men
daring to come courting his wife sent a rush of jealousy and
primitive anger through Noah, and with the anger came
determination.

He wasn’t going to die out here, damn
it. There’d been enough tragedy in the Ferguson family. He refused
to add to it.

He needed the chance to set things
right, to tell Annie he loved her, to welcome his new son or
daughter, to live out the rest of the years of his life unafraid of
what fate might bring. He’d been a total fool this past year, but
he was going to make up for it.

Like a light going on in the depths of
his soul, Noah knew he was going to survive. He just had to figure
out how.

His mind became very focused, very
clear.

Setting off on foot in this howling
storm would certainly get him lost. He'd wander in circles and
finally freeze to death.

He had to stay where he was. His only
chance lay in the hope that the storm would blow itself out before
Buck’s huge carcass began to grow cold. If the wind finally died,
Noah knew that his sense of direction would unerringly tell him
which way to go, but in the meantime, his only chance was to huddle
close to the dead horse, using him as a shield against the
storm.

With the image of Annie and all the
things he had to say to her firmly lodged in his brain, Noah
hunkered down beside Buck and waited, pressing himself against the
still warm horseflesh.