Chapter Twenty-eight

I need hardly bore you with the rest of Duncan’s visit to 303 McDermott Street. My parents were surprisingly calm about the matter, Father probably thinking he could change my mind, and Mother? Hard to say. They both urged me not to do anything rash.

Phil got my carpetbag and small trunk out of the attic and gave Duncan some of his own clothes. He let him bed down on the couch in his room that night. Duncan protested and said he would be quite comfortable on the floor, but Phil wouldn’t hear of it.

I’ve since told Phil how grateful I am for his wholehearted kindness to Duncan Stuart. Phil just grins in that maddening way of his and assures me he’s never had cause to regret it. “Besides, Sis, I owe him one. If Duncan hadn’t come along, I’d have had to eventually support you in your spinsterhood, now, wouldn’t I?”

I remembered to send a telegram to the Red Cloud rancher, suggesting that no matter what he had in store for me, I was already engaged, and he might not want to drop by the house. I never heard back, but I wished him well in my heart.

After a somewhat stiff and restrained breakfast that next day, Duncan and I rode the trolley car – he enjoyed that – to the end of the line then walked a mile to the pasture where we found Fair One and her spotted son and daughter, plus the now-gentrified Henry Watkins and our former housekeeper, who had begun a pie-making business.

What pleasure it was to watch Duncan as he leaned his arms on the railing and let himself fall under the Appaloosa spell again. He rode Fair One, then dismounted in front of Muskrat and handed him the reins. “Mr. Watkins, would you keep them here for me?”

“They’re your horses,” I reminded him. Muskrat echoed my reminder.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “With Mr. Watkins permission, they will stay here until I decide if The Hot Place is a good pasture for what I have in mind.”

“My pleasure,” Muskrat said. “When you’re ready, they’ll be ready, sonny.”

On the quiet trolley ride home, I told Hawk about Bright Star, and the big guns and the stars that fell like harbingers of death for The People. He held my hand, watching my face with nothing but kindness and love when I told him about Elizabeth Ann and her wyakim. “I have no Indian name. How could I? But I don’t need one.”

He considered that. Duncan is not an overly demonstrative man. That’s not who he is. He is still water that runs very deep and I have not one regret for loving him. He surprised me, though.