Untamed (2 page)

Chapter 1

Miles City, Montana Territory

October, 1886

It wasn't as if she'd been caught with her drawers down around her ankles.

True, her skirts were mussed and her hem was raised high enough for an indecent glimpse of her knees. She wasn't exactly sure how the buttons of her blouse had popped open or why the pink ribbon that normally held her chemise together had slipped its bow, exposing most of her left breast, but it was true, sordid as it might be, all too true.

Still, it wasn't as if Josephine Baum had allowed a neighboring rancher's son to mount her and ride her as if she were a wild pony. Fornication led to babies and that led to nothing but backbreaking work and skin so raw it bled. Proof of that lay in the years and years Josie had been caring for her frail mother and her babies, not to mention tending the house in her place. When her mother had passed on some six months before during the stillbirth of what would have been her sixteenth son, Josie swore that she would never allow any man to put her in the position of raising his endless leavings or risk dying giving birth to one of them.

Of course, that didn't mean she wasn't curious about the physical process itself. A gal didn't grow up surrounded by men of all ages without giving some thought to their little spigots and all the importance attached to them. She also wondered a great deal about her own God-givens, especially in relation to the way they fit with that of a male. She didn't, however, plan to learn about that final puzzlement firsthand. Josie intended led to hang on to her virginity until her dying day.

In the meantime she didn't see the harm in finding out all she could about sex—short of committing the hurdy-gurdy, as she and he brothers referred to the act. That was why she'd invited poor Henry to step into the barn. Unfortunately, he'd barely gotten the chance to kiss her and fondle her breasts a little before her stepfather happened across them in the hayloft. She expected Peter Baum to be shocked and perhaps a little angry, of course, but never in her wildest dreams could Josie have imagined his extreme reaction at finding her in such a state.

She had long suffered her overly zealous stepfather's belief that sparing the rod spoiled the child. She also knew why her fourteen stepbrothers tasted their father's switch with far more frequency than she did—Baum wasn't about to risk serious injury to the only female and therefore slave in a house filled with men of all ages.

Or so she had thought.

When Peter stumbled across Josie and Henry 'in the damning heat of rut,' as he put it, he fired a load of buckshot at poor Henry's backside as he ran off, then turned his self-righteous wrath and hickory switch on Josie. The beating she received was unmerciful, leaving welts across her back, bottom, and thighs, along with more than a couple of patches of broken skin. Brutal, yes, but not so bad as to break her, spiritually or physically.

What happened less than ten minutes after the beating, however, was nearly Josie's undoing.

Taking no more care than he would have given a sack of potatoes, Peter flung her into the back of the supply wagon, and then drove to Miles City. Instead of taking his usual route and skirting the saloons and unseemly businesses along the way, he drove straight toward them, pulling up at a place called Lola's Saloon and Pleasure Palace.

After that shocking turn, Josie's stepfather dragged her out of the wagon and tossed her through the front door of Lola's, shouting loudly enough for everyone in the county to hear that she was a fornicating Jezebel who belonged among her own kind. Washing his hands of her, Peter Baum then returned to the wagon and took off for his ranch with never a look back.

It took a minute for Josie to realize that she'd been turned out by her own family, shunned. When that shock wore off, she saw that several erring sisters who worked at the pleasure house had gathered around to have a look and a giggle at her expense. A few actually offered condolences, but Josie took little comfort in the gestures. At that point, her pride stung a whole lot more than her backside. It wasn't until Lola herself came to Josie's aid that she finally saw her ultimate humiliation for what it really was—freedom. A chance to make something of herself, on her own.

But for the toss of God's coin, she'd have been born male—a four letter word that meant free. Now it looked as if Peter Baum had accidentally righted that fateful coin by forcing her to find her own way in the world. She might even try cattle ranching, a lofty dream for a gal alone, but one that had sparkled in her mind like a distant star since she was knee-high to a steer.

As for the matter of obtaining that goal while her good name lay in tatters, Josie could only hope and pray for the sympathy of others. Besides, how could working in a whorehouse harm her reputation any more than it had already suffered at the hands of her no-account bastard of a stepfather?

Chapter 2

Northern Cheyenne Reservation

To Daniel McCord's way of thinking, a man wasn't much of a man if he couldn't admit his mistakes and then take the necessary steps to correct them. Rectifying his father's poor judgment was what Daniel had in mind some seven years before when he first set out to find his mother, whom he hadn't seen since he was six years old. He'd located her people, the Northern Cheyenne Indians, only to learn that she'd died during the tribe's bold escape from the hated reservation in Oklahoma, where they'd been forced to live.

Five years after that futile escape, the government finally sent down an executive order proclaiming a quarter million acres of their former homelands in southeastern Montana as property of the Northern Cheyenne tribe. An army scout at the time, Daniel was offered the head job at the new Tongue River Agency. Still trying to right his father's wrong, he accepted the assignment. Back then he also thought it would be a good idea to rehabilitate and educate his Cheyenne brother-in-law, Long Belly, with thoughts of turning him into an accomplished representative of his people.

Now Daniel wished that he'd never returned to his mother's tribe or tried to help them out. If he hadn't, he wouldn't know the frustration of having reservation lands stolen by the very same government that had allotted them, and wouldn't have watched helplessly as the Cheyenne's deep sense of honesty made them easy prey for dishonest whites. Even Daniel's own Irish fur-trader father, Michael, shamelessly defrauded the Indians, this despite the fact that his only son was the product of his short-lived liaison with a Cheyenne woman.

Daniel supposed his father's culpability in helping to eradicate the buffalo was the driving force behind his decision to help rehabilitate the tribe. He'd even tried to convince Michael to join him in that effort, but all he got for his efforts was a lot of name-calling and curses. The old man took off for Canada shortly after that, and Daniel hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since.

His problems today were of the opposite kind. Not only was Long Belly grateful for the efforts on behalf of the Cheyenne nation, he was slowly driving Daniel out of his mind with his mulish determination to repay what he saw as an eternal debt—the fact that thanks to Daniel's efforts, his tribe might become self-sufficient again through cattle ranching.

What Long Belly and the others didn't know was that Daniel not only hated the sight, smell, and thought of cattle, he didn't know any more about raising them than the Indians did. Now, thanks to his stupid plan, a spooky heifer, and his inability to get those damned cattle to follow his orders, Daniel had a broken leg, which pretty much left him helpless. Long Belly, smelling yet another way to repay the Cheyenne debt, insisted on living with him in order to tend his needs—a situation that left Daniel completely at his brother-in-law's mercy.

For the past four days, thank God, the crazy Indian had been gone, off on yet another insane search for the last surviving buffalo. Although no one had seen a live bison in the Territories for better than two years now, this thickheaded issue of his mother's half sister insisted that a lone bull still roamed the surrounding hills. If that were true, Daniel would be a happy man at last—free of the guilt and obligation he felt thanks to the fact that he and his father had been right in the thick of the last feel buffalo hunts.

But it couldn't be true, which meant that Long Belly's plan was sheer fantasy. The buffalo were gone, they weren't coming back, and yet the stubborn Indian was set on the task and couldn't be dissuaded. Although Daniel would much rather have him working on his English lessons, at least Long Belly's fruitless quest gave Daniel a few days of peace and quiet now and then.

Today wasn't one of those days.

As much as Daniel normally enjoyed his solitude, there was a certain value in having someone around during his long recuperation period. Since he needed both of his hands to grip his crude wooden crutches, he couldn't hunt, cook, or even empty his town damn slop pail, which was full. All of that would just have to wait for Long Belly's return. Daniel couldn't.

After a slow and painful trip out of the cabin and down the stairs, he no longer had the time of the inclination to make the journey down to where the privy sat. The temperature had dropped dramatically from what it was a day or two ago and the wind had kicked up, chilling Daniel through to the marrow of his aching shinbone. The cold felt good after the unusually warm spring and blistering hot days of summer, but the frigid air made the urge to urinate unbearable.

In a big hurry now, Daniel dragged himself across the fifteen feet of dirt separating the house from a scraggly pine, propped his crutch against the tree, and quickly opened his trousers. The first rush of water had barely hit the ground before he realized that he wasn't alone. Someone or something was behind him.

Unable to stop the torrent, Daniel whirled around in midstream, spraying the legs of his buckskin trousers and bare feet, and came face-to-face with Long Belly.

The Cheyenne stood in the clearing like a great apparition,

His feet spread apart, the flaps of his great buffalo robe raised high, swept out along his sides like the wings of an eagle, Long Belly quickly glanced from Daniel's surprised expression, to his still unbuttoned trousers, and Finally to his wet feet.

Then he smiled and said, "So, my brother—is it your plan to attract a mother for your sons this way, or is this how you wash your feet in my absence?"

Daniel adjusted his clothing, then grabbed his crutches, waving one of them at Long Belly as if it were a bludgeon. "l ought to beat you to a pile of dumpling dust for putting a scare on me that way. Now I've got to wash out these pants, which means I'm also going to have to cut up another pair to make room for this damn fool splint."

Long Belly's playful expression sobered. "I have been rude and do not deserve your friendship. What can I do to bring peace to your mind again? A gift, perhaps?"

"No, dammit." Daniel shoved the crutches into his armpits and started for the cabin. "No gifts and no favors—unless you've got a big fat steak in your pocket. I'm sick to death of salt pork and dried-up beans."

Long Belly surprised him by reaching into the folds of his buffalo robe and producing a fat rabbit. "How is this? He should make a tasty pot of stew for us to share."

"A rabbit, huh?" Daniel laughed from over his shoulder as he made his way inside the house. "I thought for sure you'd be bringing us back some buffalo steaks. What happened? Did your elusive ghost bison fade away again with the fog?"

"These eyes have yet to see a buffalo." If Daniel had offended him, Long Belly's tone did not betray those feelings. "But I know the great one is out there waiting for me. He is clever and hides from all white men and Indians, but he is no ghost. I saw this beast in a dream."

There was no dissuading the man when it came to his dreams. Daniel ignored the comment and made his way to the bed. By now his shinbone was pounding like a war drum. Daniel rolled onto his back and propped the broken leg up on the good one.