Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,63

nothin' more you can do. Go on home to Lettie and your new baby. You've got a wife and two other kids waitin' for you."

Luke looked at the man with tear-filled eyes. "I can't go home without Nathan."

"You've got no choice, friend." Will grasped his shoulder. "Luke, we've got to get out of here."

Luke turned away, wiping at tears with his shirtsleeve as he mounted Paint. "You know my brand. Go pick out a few of the better horses and four foals like he said. I need to be alone for a few minutes." He mounted up and turned his horse to ride out of the village.

Will gazed after him, his heart aching for the man.

Something had happened to Luke Fontaine these last two months. There was a raw edge to him now, a man hardened by adversity and personal loss. This was not the same Luke Fontaine he had first met when he came to Billings. That Luke was gone forever.

Lettie looked up from the rocker in which she sat on the porch of her own home. Every day she came out here to nurse her new son and watch the horizon for her husband and another son. She had wanted to come here to wait, so that Nathan could come back to his own house, his own room. The baby had been three weeks old when she asked Henny to find a man to bring her back. That was a week ago. Henny was still with her, and Lettie knew she was worried their husbands would never return, that they, too, had been killed by the Sioux.

It was July now, 1865. The garden had been overgrown with weeds and drying up when they returned, and Henny had kindly pulled some of the weeds and watered what plants had survived. She had brought Bear and Patch with her for company, knowing how much Nathan enjoyed playing with the animals. She had cooked and cleaned, helped with Katie. Lettie wasn't sure what she would have done without the woman's help and company over the nearly three months since Luke had left with Will and the others to find Nathan.

One by one the others had returned, each with the same reports. No Nathan, but Luke and Will had not given up. Meanwhile Lettie and Henny had hired two men to keep the ranch going, and to protect them, until Luke returned. There was irony in that, Lettie realized, since she no longer felt she needed protection from the Indians. Half Nose had already gotten what he wanted.

"Riders coming!" one of the new hired help shouted then. His horse thundered up to the front of the house. "Coming in from the northwest. I think it's your husband, ma'am."

Lettie's heart pounded with both hope and dread. "Did you see whether there is a little boy with them?"

"No, ma'am. Too far away, but they are bringing a few horses back with them. They must have made some kind of deal with the Sioux to get those horses."

Henny came out of the house to stand beside Lettie and wait. Minutes seemed like hours for the two women as they watched the distant figures approach. The two hired men rode out to greet them. Lettie could see them well enough now to know Nathan was not with them. She recognized Luke, knew how he sat in a saddle, recognized Paint. She wondered if she was going to faint. "Oh, God, Henny, they didn't find him!"

Henny touched Lettie's shoulder reassuringly. "Wait and see what he tells you."

Lettie slowly rose as Luke came closer, and for a brief moment she forgot her own sorrow at the sight of him. He was somehow changed, leaner, harder, a terrible sorrow in those blue eyes, but also a new determination. And older. He looked older.

The men dismounted as they reached the house. Henny ran to Will, who embraced her and led her away to give Luke and Lettie a few moments alone.

They stared at each other for several long, silent, miserable seconds.

"I figured we'd ride through here first, check the damage," Luke told her then. "I didn't think you'd be here."

She swallowed back the lump in her throat. "I wanted to come home."

Luke glanced at the bundle in her arms. "I told you I'd be with you when this one was born," he said, his voice strained. "I'm sorry, Lettie, sorry about a whole lot of things." He dismounted wearily. "Where's Katie?"

"Sleeping inside."

He came up the steps, looked down at the