Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,9

man back in St. Joseph would have me. I couldn't stand the looks any longer. That's part of the reason we left. We were just going to tell people Nathan's father was dead, but I love you too much to lie to you, Luke Fontaine." There! She had said it. She loved him. "Now let me go. And stop coming around and playing with Nathan. It isn't fair to him."

She turned and climbed into the wagon. Luke stood there for a moment, feeling numb, then angry. He wanted to kill the man who had raped her and left behind a shamed, shattered woman and a bastard son. How well he knew the feeling of being branded like that!

He realized then that Lettie's mother was standing nearby. She had heard their argument, and the look of tragedy in her eyes told him of the hell she and her husband had been through over what had happened to their daughter. There was no time now to talk about it, but a lot of things were more clear to him now. He realized that the married name of Dougan must be fake; he understood why Lettie had been afraid to show any love for him, why she seemed to cringe whenever a discussion of the border raids came up. He knew now why Nathan didn't look anything like the MacBrides, and why Lettie was afraid to let him get too close. She feared Luke would be repulsed by Nathan once he knew the truth, and she didn't want her son to be hurt.

He could not hate her or the boy. He could only love Nathan more, knowing firsthand how a son needed a father's love; and he admired the quality and stamina of the boy's mother. She had kept her baby, seemed to love the boy as much as any mother loved her child. She was a strong, brave young woman who had protected an innocent child from the ugliness of his conception. That took courage, and an immense capacity to love.

"She's a good girl, Luke," Mrs. MacBride told him. "She needs a man who can show her how to be a woman and not be afraid."

Luke stood there with rain pouring down his face, his hair soaked to his scalp. It was only then he realized he'd lost his hat somewhere. "I don't doubt that for a minute, ma'am. She thinks she's scared me away, but I don't scare that easy."

Lettie's mother smiled. "I didn't think you would, but it was up to her to tell you, not us."

Looking past Mrs. MacBride, Luke saw that one wagon had been destroyed. Someone began shouting, asking where Mrs. Nolan was, the young widow who had lost her husband to snakebite. She was nowhere near the wagons.

"I'd better go help with the cleanup," he told Mrs. MacBride, "but this isn't finished. Your daughter and I are going to have a good talk."

She smiled sadly and touched his arm. "I hope you do."

Luke glanced at the MacBride wagon once more, then left to help look for poor Hester Nolan.

The rain turned to drizzle, a fitting accompaniment to the sad burial. Hester Nolan had run out into the storm and shot herself in the head. No one had seen her run away, and no one had heard the shot above the sound of the wind. Hank Preston said a few words over her grave, after which everyone went through the young woman's belongings, to decide whom to notify back east of her husband's and her deaths. Preston rather callously explained how everything would be done. Personal belongings would be left at Jules-berg for relatives to claim. The wagon and oxen would be sold to anyone at Julesberg who might want them, or to a member of the wagon train, the money held with the personal belongings. A few other things would be divided up among the other travelers.

It seemed a cold and matter-of-fact way to dispose of everything, but Luke was fast learning that in this land there was little room for sentiment, little time for tears over what might have been. They had to keep moving or risk dying in the mountains. That was the way it was, and there was no getting around it.

While the others were still gathered over the Nolans' possessions, Luke pulled Henry MacBride aside. Lettie turned and gave him a discouraging look as though to warn him it was useless to say anything to her father; her answer would still be