"No. I said I wasn't going anywhere, but you're free to leave. The way I see it, you've done more than you agreed on. I only ask you to stay with me until after the babe... for one more month." She bit her lip, willing the fear back into its hiding place. "I know I can't pay you like I said, but I'd still be obliged.

Someday...."

Emmet wanted to take her between his two hands and shake some sense into her.

There was no way she and William could make it over the Blues without his help.

Why she wasn't any bigger than a minute and William probably didn't know the first thing about wagons, for he'd been a field slave, not a carter.

But she needed to stay and he couldn't leave her behind.

Neither could he force her to go and risk her child on a trail that took all the strength and luck a man could bring to it, and often much more.

"I'll stay. But only until June." He started to stride away, but her hand on his arm stopped him.

A small, gentle hand, but it stopped him more surely than a manacle of iron.

"Emmet, I can't ask...."

"You didn't. I said I'd stay and that's all there is to it. Tarnation, woman, what kind of man would I be to go off and leave you here? What kind of man do you think I am?" He knew he wasn't great shakes when it came to protecting those who depended on him, but he'd have no one, especially not Hattie, thinking Emmet Lachlan wasn't a man of his word.

Then she was in his arms, pulling his face down to be kissed. Involuntarily Emmet tightened his arms about her, liking the warmth of her against him. Her full breasts pressed into his ribs and her belly against his groin. He felt his body waking, even as he pushed her away. "There now," he said, holding her a hand's breadth from him, "there's no need to slobber all over me."

Her expression made him think of a whipped pup. "You really hate me, don't you?"

she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I've kept you here and you hate me for it."

"Aw, hell!" Hating himself, he pulled her back into his arms. With one hand, he tipped her face up. "Hattie, girl, I'm so far from hatin' you it ain't even funny." Swinging his hips slightly, he let her feel the strength of his desire.

"Feel that?" He dipped to take her mouth, tasting the sweetness of her. Against her lips he said, "Woman, if I weren't an honorable man, I'd have you on your back and me deep inside you, right here. Right now." Once more he ground himself against the firm roundness of her belly and felt the babe respond to the pressure. "But I gave you my word to do more than get you to the Willamette. And I mean to keep it." Once more he thrust her away, but this time with gentleness and real regret. Great God, but she had felt right against him!

"I'm goin' for a walk. See you at supper." He strode off toward the river, wondering if the spring salmon were running yet, knowing they were not.

Hattie watched Emmet with new respect when he returned that evening. His desire was no surprise to her, for she'd known several times how much of a rein he kept on it. What had surprised her was his insistence on staying with her, when she knew he chafed at his voluntary bonds.

The cabin seemed empty without Buffalo, but fortunately the next few days were clear and warm. Hattie stayed outside as much as she could, airing Buffalo's bedding, washing every stitch of clothing and linen in the cabin, even cooking their meals over a campfire rather than in the fireplace. She felt newly freed from imprisonment and she had no intention of going back unless forced.

William came in three days later with the livestock, fat and sassy. "That there bottomland's as good a pasture as I'se ever seed," he told Emmet over dinner.

They'd brought the table outside at Hattie's insistence, to take advantage of the balmy spell. "If'n I wasn't bent on goin' on to that there Orygone, I'd jest stay here and build me a house."

He looked at Hattie and smiled and she knew he was thinking of his kingdom.

"You're already in Oregon," Emmet told him, smiling as well. He explained that the goal of the westward migrants was not just Oregon that extended from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, but the Willamette Valley, still far to the west. "You might be better off here than there," he said, "considering that there will be a few settlers from back where you come from."

William's eyes grew round, as if he'd never thought of that possibility. "You mean they'd make me to be a slave?"

"They might," Hattie said, also surprised that the idea had not occurred to her either. "People don't change just because they move on." Recently she'd wondered how many more times Karl would have moved before he finally found what he was looking for.

William's expression was gloomy. "I ain't never gonna find me a place," he said.

Hattie reached across the table and touched his hand. "You have a place, William. You can stay with me. You can be my friend, not my slave."

"You could do worse," Emmet agreed. "As long as people think you belong with Hattie, you shouldn't have any trouble. And you could still...." He stared over William's shoulder for a moment. "Hattie, get inside. Get the shotgun. William, you head out into the brush"

Hattie didn't move.

"Go, woman! Somebody's comin'!"

She went, slamming the cabin door behind her. William disappeared as well. Emmet stood, holding his rifle easy, but with his finger on the trigger guard. He watched the two approaching horses, wondering if this would be the encounter he'd been dreading ever since the snow cleared. Goat Runner had passed on talk of a band of renegades--white and red--that had raided a village up north, killing men and children, carrying off women and older girls.

But no. One of the riders was a woman.

He watched until he was certain. Then he called out, "Hattie, it's all right.

You can come out now."

She did, stopping in the doorway to stare at the newcomers. After a moment, she dropped the shotgun and ran forward, awkwardly. "Silas!" she cried, and Emmet wondered what it would be like to hear that much love in her voice when she spoke his name. "Oh, Silas, you're back. You're back!"

"It was like a wild goose chase," Silas said, his grin wide and proud. They were finally sitting together around the campfire. Hattie had stopped weeping, the horses had been tended, and Flower-in-the-Rock had been introduced. When Emmet told her of her father's death, Flower had said only, "He had not expected to live so long." Hattie had heard the slight tremor in her voice, had known she was hiding her pain.

Flower was a tall, slim woman with clear gray eyes like Buffalo's and straight, gleaming black hair like her mother's. She looked exotic and mysterious, and so beautiful it made Hattie almost sick. But Emmet, bless the man, seemed to think of her as a younger sister and treated her accordingly.

William was speechless, and Hattie wondered if it was due to Flower's beauty or because he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"So what happened after your horse was stolen?" she said.

"Well, I latched onto a train headin' up towards Whitman's Mission," Silas said.

"They were goin' pretty slow, but I figured I couldn't make no better time alone and afoot. When I got to the mission, Mrs. Whitman, she said she hadn't seen Flower up that way for more'n a year. She was the one sent me on to Lapwai. Said I must'a heard wrong?"

"Had you?"

"No'm. That Injun at Grande Ronde told me sure as I'm sittin' here that Flower had gone up to Waiilatpu. He didn't say nothin' about the Spaldings."

"So you went on to Lapwai?"

"I sure did, and got caught in a blizzard halfway there." He shivered reminiscently. "Had to hole up for better'n a week." A chuckle. "I got mighty hungry, but at least I never froze to death."

Emmet brought the coffeepot to the table and filled his cup and Silas's. Hattie was sure he'd been almost as glad to get the coffee they'd brought as he was to see Silas and Flower. "How long did it take you to get to Lapwai?"

"I'm not sure, 'cause I never did know what day it was until I got there. Mrs.

Spalding, she had herself a calendar and she told me it was the twelfth of November."

"He was ragged and half-starved," Flower said. "I was afraid of him, so wild looking." She smiled at Silas and he at her. "It took him a long time to convince me to come with him, even though he had the letter from you, Emmet."

"We couldn't have gone anywheres anyhow," Silas countered. "Winter really settled in once I got there. Reverend Spalding, he wasn't going to let us go nowhere until spring."

"As soon as the snow started to melt he was raring to go," Flower said, "and nothing was going to stop him." Her pride in Silas's determination was evident.

Hattie knew how she felt. Although she'd always thought Silas extraordinarily competent, she'd not really appreciated him. All winter long she'd wondered if he was capable of completing his mission, and now she was learning how much more he'd done. Silas, who she'd learned to think of as a little brother, was very close to being a man.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said, smiling. "Both of you." And particularly Flower, for just having another woman present had eased her mind more than anything she could imagine.

"How long is this going to take?" Emmet said, aware that neither of the others knew even as much as he did about the process of birth. At least he had dim memories of his mother screaming in pain for what had seemed like hours before he was told he had a brother.

Hattie hadn't screamed once. Did that mean something was going wrong?

"I don't know," Silas said. "I've never been around a woman before, but I know some calves are born real quick and some take a long time." He sat on the upturned log, apparently unworried, but Emmet had seen the way he chewed at his lower lip.

"Flower, she seem to know what she's doin'," William said, digging the blade of his knife deeply into the willow branch he was reducing to long slivers. "And Nigra women, they much like cows, I guess. Some take a long time, some get done real soon." His teeth flashed in a smile, but it was not his usual wide grin.

Jaws clenched, Emmet forced his hands to continue their task. The ax was sharp enough to shave with, but he still worked on its edge, needing something to do besides following Silas, back and forth, from the corner of the cabin to the edge of the clearing.

Finally he could stand it no longer. He shot to his feet. "I'm going in there."

William clamped an iron-hard hand around his forearm. "No you ain't Mist' Em.

You's a gonna stay outdoors here with me 'n' Silas, like Flower done tol' you."

"Take your hand off me," Emmet snarled. He reached for his Bowie knife.

"Nossir, not unless you sit yourself down and stop frettin'."

Black eyes stared back at him, implacable. They might have stood like that, face to face, neither giving an inch, if Hattie hadn't yelled.

It was a yell, not a scream. There was no agony and terror in that cry as there had been in his mother's. Hattie's yell held determination and triumph.

"Nossir," William said again, stopping Emmet's tentative motion toward the cabin door. "You jest rest right here 'til Flower call you."

A second yell sounded, this one long and drawn out, as if the woman who made it was straining with all her might. And then, in mere seconds, he heard another sound.

A high-pitched cry.

Suddenly his legs might just as well have been wet rope. Emmet sank to his knees, an unspoken prayer in his heart. It was over.

After that the waiting wasn't so hard, although Emmet still worried for Hattie.

Women died in childbirth. Even strong, healthy ones.

At last the door opened, "You can all come in now," Flower called. "But only for a minute."

They crowded through the door. The room was, as always, dim, even with two candles on the table adding to the flickering light from the fire. But they could see Hattie's pale face in the dimness of the lower bunk. And she was smiling at the bundle in her arms.

Again Emmet fell to his knees, but this time because he wanted to see, up close, that she was truly all right. For a moment he saw only Hattie, for a moment he knew that had she died, he might just have well have done so too.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Hattie said, her voice soft and tired sounding. She touched the dark, damp hair on the baby's head. "Isn't she just about the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

Emmet reached out and touched Hattie's cheek with a careful finger. "Not any more beautiful than her ma," he said, wondering how he would ever be able to leave them behind.

Chapter Eleven.

Hattie was never sure whether it was Ellen's birth, the end of the longest, darkest winter in her memory, or simply having another woman about that made her life take on a brighter hue.

Of course, it probably was simply the weather. Within a few days the hillsides turned green and the last hidden snowdrifts disappeared. The infrequent rains occurred with dispatch, as if the clouds wanted to drop their burdens quickly and move on to unknown places. And when frost whitened the ground, as it did most mornings, it was gone by noon, except in the most secret dells and canyons.

She recovered from the birthing quickly. She insisted on resuming her cooking chores within a few days, aware that however good an herbalist Flower was, she had no talent with a spider and a stewpot. The young woman would let her do nothing else, though, and so Hattie often sat, nursing Ellen or simply enjoying the feel of her child in her arms, while Flower stitched or swept or scrubbed.

"Mother and I spent one winter at Fort Vancouver," Flower said as she used the point of Emmet's throwing knife to make a line of holes along the edges of a piece of deerskin. "I did not like it because I could not understand much of what the other children were saying. And Mother didn't like the rain."

"I've heard it rains quite a lot there."

"Oh, Hattie, you have never seen rain like it rains in the valley. It begins in the fall and does not stop until summer." She seemed to look at something far away. "Like most children I did not notice the weather as much as an adult, but looking back I can remember being cold and wet most of the time."

"I thought it never got really cold there."

Flower shook her head. "It does not. But when you are wet, even a little cold seems to sink bone deep." Putting down the knife, she picked up one of the long, narrow leather strips she'd cut earlier and began lacing two of the large pieces of cured skin together.

The skins, from the first few deer Emmet had brought in before winter, were cured to a soft, creamy color. Buffalo had worked on them before he got too sick to care. There were five of them, enough, Flower said, to make new garments for both herself and Hattie. "If the men want new shirts, let them bring me more cured hides," Flower had said when she found the deer skins hanging in the leanto. "You need these far more than they do."

"I guess no one ever talked about the rain," Hattie admitted. She wasn't sure she could adapt to never seeing the sun for months on end. Even in the fiercest winters, back in New York and Pennsylvania, there had been periods of clear weather--bitterly cold, but gloriously clear and sunny. "All I ever heard was that the valley was like a garden, where everything grows twice as big, twice as fast, and all year long."

Flower shrugged. "I suppose that is all true, in a way. But why do you think everything grows so well?"

"Plenty of water," Hattie said, smiling. "And I guess it has to come from somewhere, doesn't it?"

Hattie watched Flower as she laced, admiring the grace in her every movement.

Buffalo's daughter had inherited only his pale gray eyes. In every other way she looked much as her mother must have, with golden brown skin, coal black hair, and exotic features. She was tall, several inches taller than Hattie, another legacy, she'd said, of her father, and enviously slim.

"I feel like a cow," Hattie said, looking down at her body. The wool shirt she'd worn all winter was stretched across breasts achingly full of milk. She'd tried her only dress on the other day and the bodice had lacked several inches of closing.

"You look like a mother," Flower said. "That is when a woman is most beautiful."

"How did you get so wise?" Hattie demanded. She knew Flower was only a few months older than herself, but she seemed to have lived a lifetime longer.