Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,50

be a pretty thing, her hair dark like Luke's, her eyes a hazel color. She was a happy baby, plump and healthy and already crawling on fat knees. Lettie was wondering how she was going to keep up with Nathan and her after yet a third child was born. Being alone so much and having the privacy of a bedroom had led to another pregnancy. The baby was due in June, only two months away. Maybe this one would be another son.

She picked up a straw basket full of wet clothes to carry it outside. This year it had not warmed so quickly, and there was still snow on the ground; but today was the prettiest day they had had in months. She was sick of hanging clothes inside the house. She left Katie sleeping in a small pine bed Luke had built for her and carried the clothes basket outside, setting it under the clothesline Luke had strung between two cross posts buried solidly into the ground. She smelled deeply of the sweet spring air, left the basket a moment to walk farther away and watch Luke ride amid the herd of horses below to single out the pregnant mares. He intended to corral them separately so he could keep an eye on their progress.

She smiled, thinking how Luke bragged about the fact that out of his herd of thirty-eight horses, twelve were pregnant. "Those outlaws picked a couple of good stud horses," he had told her the night before at supper. "At least they knew what they were doing, picked good stock. I can thank them for that much." She knew the killings still ate at him a little, and he'd seemed harder in some ways since then; but she understood the necessity of the act. Sometimes she sensed he'd like to talk about it, but he had not brought it up again after burying the men.

Nathan ran past her then, grabbing the tail of a puppy Will had given him. "Bear's son," Will had told the boy. "Got it from a litter birthed by a big ol' collie that belongs to a neighbor of mine." Nathan simply called the dog Pup, and although it was obvious the animal was going to be as big or bigger than Bear, Lettie had a feeling the unlikely name would stick.

"Be careful you don't hurt Pup," she warned Nathan.

Nathan petted the dog then, rubbing its soft fur. "My puppy," he said with a delighted grin.

Lettie watched the boy and dog, wanting to remember the sweet scene, but her attention was interrupted when she saw riders approaching from the other side of the valley. Even from this distance she could see that their horses as well as their half-naked bodies were painted, and that they wore feathers in their hair. Indians!

Luke culled another pregnant mare from the herd, riding a sturdy gelded gray-and-white spotted Appaloosa he had favored since claiming the horses the outlaws had left behind. He called the horse Paint, because its gray coat was splattered and spotted with white, as though someone had spilled paint on it. He figured that whoever had originally owned the animal must surely have been bitterly angry over the loss when it was stolen, just as angry as he would be now if someone in turn tried to steal Paint or any other horses from him. He had grown as attached to the Appaloosa as he had been to Red, and he still mourned Red's loss to the thieving Indian who had stolen him.

He gave out a whistle and waved his hat, chasing the mare into the corral with eight others. He thought what a bountiful spring this was going to be, twelve foals, and another child of his own on the way. Life was good. He patted his own horse's neck and closed the gate to the corral.

It was then he heard the singing arrow. It whirred past him near his head and landed with a thud in the trunk of a nearby pine tree. He whirled Paint around to see eight or ten Indian warriors riding into the valley, shouting and whooping their war cries, out to claim some free horseflesh for themselves, at his expense. More arrows narrowly missed him as he pulled his rifle from its boot and rode Paint hard up a small hill to a shed he had built to store feed. Quickly he dismounted and tied Paint, then took a position behind a few bales of hay.